Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new other than a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.

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

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Tobacco content

To avoid lawsuits based on children accessing such articles as "Copenhagen tobacco" and "Camel cigarettes", and, taking the absence of information as meaning that smoking is safe, all wikipedia articles on tobacco need to have a standard tag, a "surgeon general's warning", stating the known scientific facts as facts.

The scientific and factual health hazards are affirmed by world bodies with standing including the American Medical Association, the American Dental Association, the Royal medical society, and UNESCO,

As it stands, most tobacco content on wikipedia violates wikipedia's own standards of neutrality, since to ignore scientific facts as factual as can be is POV. The facticity is affirmed world-wide by bodies with standing: the facticity is agreed-to by the man in the street, including a significant plurality or majority of smokers.

It is possible that tobacco companies employ their people to remove health information from tobacco and bully people who create it. If I can prove this, and if a kid dies howling in agony at 19 from Copenhagen after reading the current article, you clowns will be out of business.

Edward G. Nilges —Preceding unsigned comment added by o202.82.33.202 (talk) 06:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Did you try reading what those clowns at Britannica did for the tobacco entries in their clownish encyclopedia? :P --- tqbf 06:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

No. You tell me, Bozo.202.82.33.202 (talk) 06:39, 6 December 2007 (UTC)Edward G. Nilges

Did you realize that, legally, Wikipedia can't be held responsible for any actions taken by its readers? Did you also realize legal threats like the one above are usually rewarded with harsh warnings and/or blocks? And, thirdly, did you realize that conflicts-of-interest here are reported and dealt with in a timely manner? -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 07:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

116.48.169.242 (talk) 13:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)Edward G. Nilges

Do YOU realize that wikipedia is subject to international law, and to hundreds of legal systems all over the world, some of them with civilized protection of children? As a legal matter, UN agreements may mean more in the near future than United States law in cases of conflict of laws.

Do YOU realize that Copenhagen is not a legal product in many countries outside of the United States pursuant to a UN agreement?

Do YOU realize that the world is turning sharply away from US-based barbarism, including tobacco articles silent on the facts of its lethal nature which materially support the merchants of death?

I am well aware that the convenience store clerks and anti-"vandalism" Vandals who have taken over wikipedia in recent years, in what probably is a drive to steal the intellectual property of its original community, are unaware of the true abuse of wikipedia by corporate posters and treat freedom of speech as abuse.

Are you so innocent as to believe that it is easy to mask conflicts of interest by using home sites while working for corporations?

If you don't want me to speak so sharply, get busy and tag the tobacco content with the facts, Ace.

"Do YOU realize that wikipedia is subject to international law"

No, it's not, except as it applies to Florida. ABOVE THE LAW, MWA HAHAH! No, but seriously, you are quite incorrect; WP is subject to the laws where it is established. Your statements about US-based barbarism, etc makes your own point of view quite clear- let's not call the kettle black, okay, pot? Epthorn (talk) 14:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

203.218.46.2 (talk) 17:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)Edward G. Nilges

Jurisdictions other than Florida can ban wikipedia and as a local BBS by the year 2015 it will be a joke. Florida law does NOT allow wikipedia to beam swastikas into Germany, and once health authorities in other countries are notified of its tacit sponsorship of an illegal product, its content will be censored.

Boo hoo, "censorship" ... of content that kills.

Wikipedia is indeed subject to international law, at least insofar as all treaties to which the US is a signatory have to be entered as US domestic laws: this happens to be a Constitutional requirement. If wikipedia tobacco content violates any of the numerous treaties the US has signed as a member state of the United Nations, this content is illegal under Federal, and therefore Florida, law.

Read your history. You rednecks can't "nullify". The Johnny Rebs tried that in the War of Southern Rebellion and they were defeated.

Furthermore, you haven't even tried to address the issue that the content through neglecting scientific fact is POV, because the tobacco articles are indefensible.

Finally, I stand by my statements about barbarism, starting with the barbaric conduct of United States Tobacco in marketing Copenhagen to children. By 2000, a critical mass of my fellow Americans had regressed to barbarism and this has been demonstrated recently...by mass shootings the day before yesterday in Omaha and last April in North Carolina. I recently lost a relative to a mass shooting in Kansas City. American barbarism is in fact having a field day.

The point, which you're not discussing, is that the tobacco articles are POV and will be until a tag is designed and placed on all these articles.

You might convince Britannica to blaze the trail there; as a commercial enterprise, they have so much more to lose from the impending tobacolypse. --- tqbf 17:39, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Please get off your high horse. Wikipedia is not the place to push a POV.--WaltCip (talk) 17:40, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

English spellings

Someone should write some code for the next revision of MediaWiki that adjusts your how certain words appear based on your IP, sort of like autocorrect in OpenOffice. Canada-kawaii 01:54, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I propose we table this suggestion. --Carnildo 04:31, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I second the motion, and raise you a shelf. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 07:05, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

How to deal with users of questionable mental stability

This issue is an important question for Wikipedia policy. How should administrators and the average user deal with other users who are mentally ill? What qualifies as mental illness? Where should the line be drawn? In terms of this matter, my view may be seen as rather strict. I believe that the contributions of an editor do not factor in their judgment if they have shown to be irrational and abusive towards other users. This is similar to how I think abusive editors (even if they are not mentally ill) should be treated. Currently, the administration seems to take a very laissez-faire approach. This is causing a great deal of harm here at Wikipedia as a whole and to individual users. - Cyborg Ninja 06:35, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

It is difficult to address this problem with any kind of guideline or policy, because it is a difficult problem even for mental health professionals in face-to-face situations. It will probably have to be dealt with on a case-to-case basis. Wikipedia assumes rationality and good faith, but as an activity it is vulnerable to intrusion by the corrupt, the malicious, and the deranged. The barbarians are always at the gates, and it only takes a few to destroy a civilization or a Wikipedia. We also have to recognize that Wikipedia has become an arena for contests for power. The high ranking :of its articles in the search engines is also an incentive for invasion, at first by subtle and skilled efforts that can seem to be "civilized" in this context but which if not repelled will eventually destroy the project. Jon Roland 07:59, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia, in general, takes a very laissez-faire approach -- it's one of the fundamental precepts of our philosophy, in general, both a great strength and a source of many problems. For my part, I'd rather we avoided throwing around a bunch of unqualified, amateur guesses as to whether so-and-so has such-and-such illness, and just focused on the issue of a person's participation in the project. Are they contributing? Is their behavior disruptive or productive? Is there anything we as a community might do to help them become a better editor? What chance of improvement is there? Again, as I mentioned in your other thread, it's very difficult to have these sorts of conversations in a general sense, and I'm not sure how productive it might be. Problematic users can be reported to the appropriate admin noticeboards for discussion and possible administrative response, if need be; I'd also encourage you to make use of the dispute resolution process, whenever possible. – Luna Santin (talk) 08:26, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Cyborg; While I can understand your concern at dealing with users who, as you say, are of "questionable mental stability", may I ask one small thing? If they don't give you any indication (by userbox, etc...) - what puts you in a position to be able to judge who is mentally stable or unstable? That's not meant as an argumentative statement, simply an idea for me to understand, say, do you have some experience of dealing with mentally unstable people by reason of work or something? No one on here has ever questioned my mental stability, but I suffer from Paranoia. If I hadn't said anything about that, would you have had some way of knowing that that was the case? Thor Malmjursson 13:44, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

There's a "This Wikipedian is off their meds" userbox? In all seriousness, having a bipolar userbox on a user page hardly qualifies as a legitimate means of diagnosis. Personally, I don't think we can make any special exceptions for disruptive editors because they're mentally ill, otherwise every malicious editor will try to use that as an excuse. Caknuck 15:37, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Caknuck, I quite agree. We don't make any exceptions for anyone based on their state of mind, that is true. But as I have said, How do you know they are mentally ill in the first place??? Thor Malmjursson 15:34, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Example?: I would like to offer Valery Fabrikant, a school shooting killer with chronic access to the Internet. When no access is available to him he asks his son to post on message boards, newsgroups and to update an 'official' web page. Perhaps even change his own WP page? Or worst change pages related to research of his victims (he claims said research is his and that was his motivation for the killings). This being said, current state of things shows that WP is pretty good at defending itself of abuses, and I offer Fabrikant only as a good example of 'questionable mental stability'.YegLi (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 20:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with Thor and Luna. There's just no way to tell for sure if someone does or does not have a mental illness, even if we had qualified professionals who were editors here. Also, even if there was a way to tell if an editor has a mental illness, they shouldn't be treated any differently unless their behavior is somehow disruptive to the community. GlassCobra 16:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm only referring to users who are disruptive. Paranoia doesn't count as something that would be very disruptive, IMO. In no way am I suggesting I be the person to decide who is mentally ill or not; neither is there an easy way to do this. There are some users on this site who do show their true colors, even after much productivity. I suggest dealing with it privately and to be very gentle, and only in cases that are obvious. At the same time, I don't think it would work for administrators to do that. It seems like a line is being crossed if they do. I've seen mental illness in online friends of mine who have later come clean about it to me (one was extremely paranoid). I tried to help him on a personal basis, but as you probably expect, it didn't work. So what we should focus on is to not ignore any obvious policy violations. We cannot use "Oh he was just angry and got over it" or "He's ill, let him be" as an excuse. I know a lot of you just take the "report it to AN/I" approach, but I've seen administrators turn the other way even in the most extreme of cases because they don't want to hurt someone's feelings, or deal with it any further. The problem is, with many of these people, they'll get upset again and the same thing will happen again. We need to be stronger than this. Thank you all for the replies. Sorry that came off as a bit of a rambling — I don't have all the answers. - Cyborg Ninja 20:36, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

There are some editors who are clearly disturbed, and it's sometimes helpful to conceive of their bizarre or abusive editing as the product of some personal issues. But mental illness isn't a yes or no thing. We're all a little sick in the head at times. And schizophrenics, obsessive compulsives, neurotics, bipolars, and even sociopaths are human beings too and may have something to contribute here. It would be sad and unfair to say that you're disqualified from Wikipedia for having an organic brain disorder. Judge the edits, not the editor, and don't punish people for being honest about their mental state. We shouldn't deny the obvious - our bipolar colleagues can be a total pain at times. But they can also be wickedly smart and productive, and deserve a seat at the table like everyone else provided they can get along.Wikidemo 21:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Some users do 'lose it' a bit very easily and appear unstable. We all know of those that when one of their articles is tagged even by a bot, say it's ruined their experience on Wikipedia. Or they go on massive WP:POINT campaigns, tagging numerous articles, solely because they feel one of theirs was tagged unfairly. It's not disparaging to those with mental health problems, most of whom can still contribute sanely to Wikipedia. But some people even if they haven't been diagnosed with any illness easily flip out, and go on a rampage. They may even say 'now I'm going to turn evil- ruhaha' or some such. Thhen go back to normal briefly and apologise slightly so they get away with it. Then a few days later something sets them off again. Hopefully they get blocked if they continue in such a pattern. As an individual editor, the best way to deal with them is probably to avoid much contact with them. As a community, to notice their history when they invite their latest block, and if the pattern has occurred several times, long-term block. 91.110.169.154 16:03, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

This is exactly what I'm talking about, and I'm glad that you noticed it too. "Unstable" is the keyword here. There are multiple editors who have this problem, and I think it's a part of their lifestyle, but I believe the laissez-faire approach at this site and others on the Web allows them to keep being disruptive. To add to your characterization, these editors take minor setbacks (tags, warnings, bots, etc) very personally and threaten other users for something that is quite minor. This, to me, shows that they are not trying to make Wikipedia a better place and that they are acting in poor faith. I'm sorry, but assuming good faith in evidence of obvious bad faith is absurd, and some administrators and many regular editors need to realize that and stop using that as an excuse. This is a serious problem on Wikipedia. I realize that some of these editors contribute plenty to Wikipedia, and therefore many people don't want to ban them, but if this is a pattern and if they are harming other users: it needs to stop. I try to be sensitive to unstable people like this both online and in real life. I have a grandmother who behaves like this, and the best my family can do is try to alleviate her stress to avoid setting her off. However, I recognize that she does have some ability to control herself and we do not accept every emotional outburst. We do love and forgive her, of course. But please realize, administrators, that if an unstable user has a pattern of this behavior and is harming other users, you absolutely should not accept it. I imagine that a lot of you are thinking "We don't," but I've seen this from other admins and users. The twisting of the WP:AGF policy is partly to blame. - Cyborg Ninja 19:55, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I should add that I have one person in mind right now (though he is not the only one to act like this). A quick glance of his Contributions page shows me that he makes 300+ edits a day and frequently spends over half of the day, every minute, editing Wikipedia. Every day. Now, I think I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia, but that's mostly to read articles to expand my knowledge. But that person's amount of time here... can we really call that normal, or healthy? He does everything the user above cited as conduct that an unstable editor does here. I'm not suggesting that we warn someone just because they spend vast amounts of time here obviously, but I think it's something to think about. - Cyborg Ninja 20:23, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we can be overly suspicious just due to 'spends too much time here.' What we are basically talking about is conduct that would lead to an RfC, but because the user spreads the conduct over different areas and his/her WP:POINT sprees target many different articles and people, it's hard to have an RfC that truly covers what they get upto, because RfCs have to be about 'the same dispute', so it's harder to raise the two people needed that have the boldness to stand up. If RfCs were allowed to address the user's behavior in general when they're having one of their 'episodes', then they would be a more accurate representation of the user. Because while it runs the risk of being seen as ganging up on someone, sometimes that kind of RfC would be useful/necessary.91.110.230.131 21:31, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Two RFCs have been done of one person I have considered as unstable. Even if a tagging spree spans over dozens of articles that are unrelated, a question comes into one's head: is it acceptable to do mass-tagging of articles that one has not spent more than 5 seconds with? I know we have bots that handle other operations, but most of what they do makes sense to me and is useful. Marking every article with a big citations tag at the top isn't really going to encourage people to improve the article. I mean, come on people, get real. Still, some admins think it's helpful. But on this issue; it's nowhere near the worst example and even I wouldn't consider anything more than an informal warning for it if I were an admin, unless they ignore the warning. As you hinted at, RfCs are dedicated to one episode or event. If a user's behavior over several months needed to be reviewed, where should it be done? - Cyborg Ninja 08:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

As an editor with a mental illness (although I don't think you would be able to guess that based on my contributions) I appreciate your concern, but I don't think that any special consideration should apply except for the application of the WP:CIVIL policy. If we just remember that this applies to comments made to all editors, even abusive ones, then there should be no problem. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:20, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I think we need to distinguish two things; (1) Having a mental illness, which isn't necessarily the project's business; (2) behaving disruptively, which is the project's business, but which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with a mental illness. I'm not saying there's never a relationship between the two, but it does seem to me the project's proper business is the second only. I don't see how Wikipedia volunteers could be trained or equipped to understand when (1) does and does not affect (2). One reason for a gentler approach with established editors is the belief that ordinary people sometimes get overheated and affected by emotions in conflicts and similar situations, in other words, a belief that variation and "instability" is a characteristic of ordinary people and not the exclusive province of the mentally ill. It's very important to avoid stereotyping here, to avoid a discriminatory prejudice that having a psychological diagnosis implies an editor or admin is going to be disruptive. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 06:56, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Since when are the vast majority of Wikipedia users qualified to diagnose anything over the internet? Oh right, we arn't.

Accusing or labeling another user of a mental illness can never be anything but a violation of WP:CIVIL. Jtrainor (talk) 17:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I see this as an irrelevant issue. Wikipedia editors are volunteers and their treatment is not subject to terms of employment, including consideration for disabilities. Peers should therefore determine their treatment of any editor solely on the basis of their contributions and interaction with others. NIGEDO 78.144.179.191 (talk) 06:24, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

New mental illness in established admins and editors

• I'm starting this as a new section because I believe it is worthy of its own category. - Cyborg Ninja 09:12, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The question seems loaded. Most abusive editors do not have any recognised mental illness. The interesting borderline case to consider here is: if there's a person who makes useful contributions, or even achieves adminship, while in a good mental state, and then their mental integrity degrades as a result of a illness-induced mood change, acquiring a new illness, or a change of medication, should they be de-adminned or banned, or should we wait for them to seek assistance and recover? If they do recover, do they have a means of requesting re-evaluation on this basis? Dcoetzee 14:10, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Depending on their behavior, if they are an admin and they behave poorly, then they should have their privileges taken away. You can't put power into the hands of someone who isn't mentally healthy. Of course, the admin would have to come out as having mental illness or it would have to be clearly discernible from normal behavior. Most cases won't be so easy. As for editors, it's a bit more difficult. I would not want to upset the user and taking away their ability to edit could have a drastic effect on them. But, as I've stated above, if there is a pattern of this behavior, it cannot be tolerated. If they decide to come back and state that they are now healthy and be open about their past, then I would welcome them. - Cyborg Ninja 09:13, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

An example that may help here is how this issue is handled in the professional world. If you fire someone for mental illness or addiction, you are not generally permitted to cite the illness or addiction; only the way the mental illness or addiction affected job performance. For instance, a friend once fired an employee and was called before a hearing board, where he explained "I fired the employee because he was chronically late, picked fights, etc." Only after asked, "Do you have any explanation for his poor performance?" could my friend add, "Yes, he was using meth." Mental illness on this board should be treated in the same manner; it's the pattern of behavior that needs to be addressed.3Tigers (talk) 04:00, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I see this as an irrelevant issue. Wikipedia editors are volunteers and their treatment is not subject to terms of employment, including consideration for disabilities. Peers should therefore determine their treatment of any editor solely on the basis of their contributions and interaction with others. NIGEDO 78.144.179.191 (talk) 06:24, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Please read the entirety of people's comments to this topic before commenting. Same goes for your other repetitive message at the end of the section above. - Cyborg Ninja 23:30, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I am really at odds with the NNOTABILITY/Trivia policy right now.

Sirs:

I am really at odds with the NOTABILITY/Trivia policy.

This policy has alienated a large number of WebComic advocates, and certainally cost WP some creadibility and good will, and some donation money too.

As I stated on my former user page, ( I will provbibly not log in again ):

"This is upsetting me, a lot. Articles are set for speedy deletion based upon the concept of Notability, i.e. popularization which to me has a connotation of sensationalizm. Since the most of the web is sensationalism and esoteric, and polarized in that way. ( Some eMusic sites I have been to only have 25~30 page views.)

Why would you want a encyclopedia, that only has popular topics? I really wound't want that. Id read 'People' Magazine if I wanted that. Encyclopedias should EMBRACE THE ESOTERIC. There is an article here on wikipedia for every pokemon character, and I %*&3 hate pokemon, but I respect its reverence amoung five year olds, and especially five year olds who use wikipedia as their reference. Can you imagine the effect of children growing up as knowing wikipedia as something that was usefull to them, and they would enjoy comtributing to?

By this criteria alone ( Notability ), we should delete ALL HISTORY before WWII for its irelevence. Is Joan D'Arc relevent? Practically no. But she has extrodinary significance to the history of religion, spirituality and philosophy." You can easily rewrite history, by only looking at the "popular" aspects of it.

I have an eye for detail and consistancy, and am about to actually work on my first complete rewrite, ( although, no one has stepped forward to guide me, or adopt me). Is it actually become sport to destory what others are passionate about? ( Feel free, of course, to delete this message if you feel that is not notable enough. )

What is being done policy wise about this?

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Comments:Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomic_community%27s_frustration_with_Wikipedia_guidelines#The_tip_of_an_iceberg.

end of soapbox — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.188.118.64 (talk) 08:17, November 12, 2007 (UTC)

You're clearly upset about the notability requirement, but I'm sorry to say that I don't understand much more than that. I'll take just a couple of your points: Why would you want a encyclopedia, that only has popular topics? Why indeed? But en:WP isn't that. (Brutalist architecture isn't a popular topic or a popular kind of architecture.) Again: By this criteria alone ( Notability ), we should delete ALL HISTORY before WWII for its irelevence. Is Joan D'Arc relevent? Practically no. But she has extrodinary significance to the history of religion, spirituality and philosophy. If she indeed has extraordinary significance to these three histories, then surely she's notable. Where's the (potential) problem with here? Perhaps you could rephrase your complaint. -- Hoary 09:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

It is no longer essentially nessessary. Wikipedia will be the only product of 'Group thought' and 'Mass popularizm' If its "interesting" to the admins It stays, I am taking Jim Bo's suggestion that I find something else significant to do with my life other than swim upstream. I have created other accounts on other wiki's and am developing my SPAM bot to help a few others using wiki-software that do not have the benefit of a few million dollars in resources. See ya. (i.e. dont waste your time ) Stupidly I didnt sign my very last, and final post. G'day mate! Artoftransformation 12:51, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

• The notability guideline sets some easy to follow and fairly objective standards, with a relatively low bar to inclusion. However, I do see uneven application of the standards at AfD, mostly by uninformed nominators and less informed evaluators. This is more of a problem than the guidelines. --Kevin Murray 13:14, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

For example? Editors being too strict about WP:N, or too lenient? I'm a relative newcomer that spends a bit of time at AfD, and in the wake of your comment, am now looking for guidance. --- tqbf 19:28, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

• A lot of people tried to abuse the rules by including webcomics that were just starting hadn't gotten any outside coverage (reliable or otherwise). I'm sure there are multiple webcomics that satisfy the current criteria. We just can't include ALL of them. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:53, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Why not include everything that gets submitted, if the information is correct? Are you short on money to buy more hard drives? Are people having a hard time finding the information they are looking for? Is there some other reason for the policy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.188.122.139 (talk)
    • If it doesn't pass the basic notability guidelines, there generally isn't enough verifiable information to be sure anything in the article is correct. Hence, it's often better just to delete it until such a time as some information is available from reliable sources. Sχeptomaniac^{χαιρετε} 22:16, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
      • In that case, just enforce the verifiability guidelines. Your argument if followed through leads to the conclusion that the notability requirement is redundant. Mdmkolbe 23:14, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

More on this, I finally figured that...the notability paradox, the more you exclude notability, the more insignificant you become. Britannica has an enormous amount of trivia, and because of this, errors or not, it will always be the encyclopedia of choice, vs wep which has notable authors such as the man who posed as the Dr of divinity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Artoftransformation (talk • contribs) 19:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Copyright vs. Trademark

There seems to be a big issue here on both Wikipedia and Commons, where users are confusing copyright versus trademark. This has been an issue with many logos, which cannot be copyrighted due to their simplicity, but are subject to trademark laws. For example, Image:Mbta-logo.svg cannot be copyrighted because it merely consists of the letter "T" inside a circle. An editor has been confusing copyright with trademark, and has since added a copyright image tag (in addition to the public domain tag), and now the image is listed for deletion. I don't want to start an edit war over this, or any other image, but it is certain that editors need to establish the difference between copyright and trademark, and know when to use {{Trademark}} and {{PD-ineligible}} on image pages. There is no detailed explanation about this at WP:LOGOS, and I think that a statement should be instated somewhere. I also think that a {{PD-logo}} should be created to help users understand this concept a little bit better. NOTE: This message was previously posted at Wikipedia talk:Logos on 2007-11-07 with no replies. –Dream out loud (talk) 16:59, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea to me. -- Ned Scott (talk) 21:29, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

As an additional note to the above, there is no legal regime that prevents Wikipedia from using a non-copyrightable trademark in any manner, except that we can not confuse the public into thinking that we are in fact produced by the company that is the owner of the mark (see Likelihood of confusion). bd2412 T 05:51, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm having an issue right now with an editor over the licensing status of Image:SEPTA.svg. The image is in public domain because it was first published without a copyright notice before 1978, and it also consists entirely of simple geometric shapes, which cannot be copyrighted to begin with. However, despite the fact that I added public domain tags to the image, another editor insists that the image must be copyrighted because it has a trademark. I tried explaining to the user the different between the two, but he continued to be ignorant after I left him a message and he changed the copyright status back to fair use because of a trademark disclaimer, and said NOT to change it back. I'm not starting an edit war here, but I need to get this issue resolved, as well as other issues regarding copyrights vs. trademarks. –Dream out loud (talk) 17:02, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

FYI, the arrangement of the "simple geometric shapes" in that logo could be copyrighted (even if in this case it isn't due to failure to go through the formalities), just like a Mondrian painting is. That "simple geometric shapes" exception is for truly simple things like a circle or a square. - JasonAQuest 16:09, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The wording of Template:Non-free logo doesn't help. It says "copyright and/or trademark". That basically implies that trademarks are fair use images. FunPika 20:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedians by contact information

I was surprised that there wasn't any categories that showed Wikipedians that could be contacted via means like IRC or AIM, so I decided to hunt down some userboxes and populate some. My thinking was that this is useful for collaboration. There are many times where I jump on #wikipedia to ask a quick silly question, like a naming convention, or to see if anyone remembered where a template was that could be used for format some external link. I've listed my own AIM screen name on my userpage and user talk page also as a method of collaboration. I created three categories at this point, Category:Wikipedians by contact information, Category:Wikipedians available through AIM, and Category:Wikipedians available through Jabber, using only templates that actually listed a contactable ID. I got to a template for MSN and saw that a similar category had been removed via CfD here, where it was deleted under the argument that Wikipedia wasn't a social networking site. While I agree with that general idea, I don't think this considered the categories as helping with collaboration in relation to Wikipedia. Before I continue I figured I should get more feedback about this (especially given only five editors were involved in the CfD). -- Ned Scott 06:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The argument that we're not a social networking site is spurious if applied to categorizing information already here. I'm not entirely sure what purpose the category would have but offhand I see no reason why it's inappropriate to gather information people have chosen to include about themselves.Wikidemo (talk) 09:39, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a good place to put a link to a discussion at CfD, encouraging other editors to go there. It's a bad place to have a discussion that really should occur at CFD, particularly since discussions there are archived (by the date started) while discussions here are not permanently archived at all. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Per the above suggestion, please continue discussion on WT:CFD#Wikipedians by contact information. -- Ned Scott 03:09, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Now listed at Wikipedia:Deletion review#:Category:Wikipedians by contact information. -- Ned Scott 20:06, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Veropedia Watchlist Advertising

There is an advertisment in our watchlists for a contest to improve certain articles. This seems to be the creation of Veropedia contributors who wish to improve the article on Wikipedia (and will pay people to do so) so they can have a Veropedia article on the subject. I have noting against the contest itself, but I am wondering why it is advertised in this way. Surely a message in the watchlist is for big events that could affect the whole community (such as ArbCom elections), not for advertising a project set up by a small group of editors. It'd be similar to advertising a WikiProject in a watchlist message. I'm assuming they have some sort of official permission, though, as this page doesn't seem able to be edited by ordinary users. I think allowing this space to be used for advertising a project sets a bad precedent. Lurker (said · done) 15:44, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is "advertising" at all. We're all here to improve the Encyclopedia, and this is simply an incentive. - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:49, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

There are some pretty popular user names dropped for this contest (Danny, Alison, and Walkerma), and off-linking this to veropedia. I'm all for contests, but perhaps we should move the "list" over to a project page here to be less adverty? (Full disclosure:I edited the watchlist message related to this, but only to adjust the formating, I don't have a strong opinion on to if it should be included). — xaosflux ^Talk 15:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Rjd0060- Plenty of projects etc. are here to inprove the encyclopedia. What makes this so different that it is promoted in such a prominent place? Surely only something along the lines of the upcoming ArbCom election should be promoted here, not a project created by a small group of people. Next, thing, WikiProjects will be wanting to use this space for promotion. Lurker (said · done) 16:00, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I've already "dismissed" the info, but weren't those names just to inform people as to who will be judging this little contest? - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:01, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Veropedia is scarcely relevant. All that matters is that Wikipedia articles get improved, and that's a matter that concerns the whole of the Wikipedia community - I want them all to participate. Sure, if you want to move the list of eligible articles over to a project page here, though, go ahead. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 16:14, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

• I've moved the list across and changed the link. The new list is here. ELIMINATORJR 16:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Worth mentioning there's related discussion at Wikipedia talk:The Core Contest -Halo (talk) 11:54, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The problem here is not the location of the list, but the fact that this contest is advertised in a space generally used for official announcements, such as software changes or elections. This creates a false impression that this is some kind of official Wikimedia Foundation event. Lurker (said · done) 14:15, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree, and have removed the advert. If some off-wiki company wants to have a contest, that's fine. Using the Wikimedia Foundation's equipment, bandwidth, and unique access to our users to subsidize the cost of advertising their contest is against the principles of the foundation. Gentgeen 04:53, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Geographical question

Where in the world does one need to have an address to be eligible for the 100$ award? I remember a little contest at the Dilbert blog that needed quite some text to explain what the conditions of the contest were, including "being a US resident", "legally"(!) and "physically"(!!!) I know that Wikimedia coworkers are of course much smarter than Scott Adams when it comes down to overcoming all sorts of practical problems when running a business, but does it really make no difference at all where one lives when participating in this competition? Or can one be disqualified for all sorts of reasons post factum? --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Payment can be made either by check or Paypal to the winners, so it does not really matter where they live. Danny (talk) 19:05, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Scott Adams clearly had a lawyer help with his contest rules/disclaimer, so the question is, was his work excessive, is our work deficient, or is this contest sufficiently informal/different that it doesn't need legalese? --Golbez (talk) 23:44, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The Veropedia crew see themselves as above the law. There is not much debate in here - people really shouldn't be ignoring this! There is debate on the Veropedia for-cash competition talk page, though it's mostly a few stickers against a number of Veropedians (including their boss Danny). People are effectively leaving Wikipedia to be become Veropedia editors to perfect and embalm our better grade articles - it's no small deal! The private for-profit company Veropedia use advertising, and they are demoting Wikipedia in promoting their 'final' 'perfected' versions (vetted, without independence, by them). Is it just me who doesn't like it? --Matt Lewis 04:13, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Veropedia reminds me of Neopia after Viacom acquired it. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 05:06, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

The Veropedia crew see themselves as above the law. Please specify which laws, rules and regulations Veropedia is meant to have broken or violated. Veropedia's preserved good state versions of articles will soon begin to be reviewed by independent academics. It disappoints me to watch a handful of people go around, drumming up support for their opinions and issues with Veropedia. Nothing wrong with healthy debate but this is getting a little silly now. --Sagaciousuk ^(talk) 00:40, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Policy for discussion of policy policy

As part of the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Privatemusings arbitration case it has been noted that the sockpuppetry policy had "diverged from established norms at some points". It is not alone. Other policies have been rewritten by parties in dispute in order to enable their behaviour.

I would like to suggest that all policies marked as such (with {{policy}}) be protected indefinitely, and any edits made solely on the basis of consensus on the discussion page and an {{editprotected}} request handled by an independent admin not part of the discussion.

This is not proposed in order to create bureaucracy, but in order to maintain a stable policy base so that people have a realistic chance of keeping wihtin policy, and to avoid the absurdity of arbitrators and administrators fishing through past versions of policy to find out whether a given act violated the policy as written on that day. Guy (Help!) 23:48, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I came here prepared to mock a policy proposal about policies as being needless bureaucracy and plain silly. But this is a sensible and workable proposal. The only potential downfall seems to be the transition from a proposed to an accepted policy. That doesn't seem to be a very fixed-in-stone or formal process but immediately protecting a new policy would seem to give more weight to those who accept the proposed policy as non-admins would then be in a poor position to challenge the policy's status as easily as they can right now. But that's not a show-stopper, IMHO, just an issue to keep in mind and try to avoid. --ElKevbo (talk) 00:06, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

With a 10% error margin, all proposed policies fail. There's no such thing that actually works. --Kim Bruning (talk) 04:20, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec)It's a good concept. I've been hoping for the introduction of 'stable versions' to allow a similar system wherein only revisions marked with the highest approval level (not available to most users) would be accepted policy... again requiring consensus before any updates are 'official'. Obstacles to be overcome would be how to handle policies which are currently subject to dispute and the long term possibility of ossification if people find the process to get updates made too difficult. I'd suggest holding off on declaring any version of the disputed pages 'official' until the dispute is settled and having some sort of standard where if a change suggested on the talk page isn't disputed for a set period (e.g. 7 days) it goes in automatically. --CBD 00:11, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Guy, there aren't a lot of times I agree with you completely, but this is one of them. This proposal addresses a long-time concern of mine; anyone can edit policy right now and half the edits to policy aren't even noticed, or people are chased away when making queries. Certainly if this practice had been in place we would not have seen six months of edit-warring, serial protection and "disputed" tags on WP:NPA. I concur with CBD that there are some fine points to be worked out (in addition to his examples, also looking at the links within policies to ensure they are going to "approved" rather than "proposed" pages), but I think this is quite workable. Risker (talk) 00:20, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that, in my opinion, if the above framework of article and policy hierarchy could be adopted as a standard for the entire project, you have the makings of a brilliant transition into the "new and much improved WP." Very... Nice (talk) 01:15, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I fully support this. Mackensen (talk) 02:12, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Guy, could you give us some specific examples of cases where parties to a dispute have rewritten policies to their advantage, and not been reverted or sanctioned for it? (In the Privatemusings case you mention, did PM make changes to the sockpuppet policy? Was the document changed in a way that violated consensus, or is the divergence of the policy from practice simply the result of a lack of timely updating?) At first blush, I like your suggestion, but I also get the but that's un-wiki vibe.

I'm concerned that protection of policy pages will exacerbate the problem by making maintenance of policy documents more difficult. Finally – and I may well regret opening this can of WP:BEANS – will this change just move edit wars and wikilawyering off the policy (and policy talk) pages and on to ancillary guideline pages? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:37, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines being more general, is that necessarily a problem? (Not to say it's not an important side-effect to consider.) One other problem here might be the introduction of new policy -- at what point do we protect the page? We could let "new" policies lay unprotected for a bit, to gather some momentum and build consistency/stability, before protecting them. Some policies are still developing, even if they do have wide support; others, WP:3RR comes to mind, are far more stable. – Luna Santin (talk) 03:24, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I've one minor quibble. This tends to make policy pages into something more akin to legislation, which gets changed only when an amendment is 'passed'. I've always understood policy pages to describe rather than proscribe. Policy changes not when the page changes, but when we start doing something a little different (which is normally gradual). Thus policy pages will often not reflect current policy anyway - they are designed to be dynamic.--Doc^g 02:26, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Possibly not a bad idea... policy pages, if not watched very carefully, can become a hodgepodge of random editors pet peeves and personal quirks writ large... everyone wants to add their own little thing, and most of these people mean well... but the end result is often a few core ideas with 50 minor things tacked on here and there, it's not very coherent. One problem with this plan is that it could make it hard to change the current state of policies... which evidently isn't very good in some places. --W.marsh 02:30, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Certainly worth trying for awhile. If we find the policies are getting too stagnant, then we can put them on a schedule for review maybe. FloNight♥♥♥ —Preceding comment was added at 02:38, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Let's be real - the people accused (no comment on the validity of the accusations; haven't looked at the case) of editing policy to enable their administrative actions are (of course) admins. If they were A) already knowingly going against current policy [if they didn't know, why change it] and B) changing policy against consensus; why would they not just edit the page anyway? What on earth does this accomplish?—Random832 03:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

This has been proposed before for the exact same reason. For what it's worth, I agree with the idea. It should be difficult for people to change policies to support their own agenda. Graham87 06:45, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Guy, I came here to laugh at you but instead find myself praising your brilliance. I'm astounded that a solution so elegant and simple has not been proposed before. east.718 at 11:39, November 25, 2007

I don't like it, but it does seem necessary unfortunately, so I also support this. Garion96 (talk) 11:48, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

"The absurdity of arbitrators and administrators fishing through past versions of policy to find out whether a given act violated the policy as written on that day." As far as I am aware, Wikipedia:Disruptive editing hasn't change. Just because an editor who specializes in throwing out red herrings for admins to follow doesn't mean they should be followed. And yes, I agree that policies susceptible to being rewritten by parties to enable questionable behavior may be protected as you suggest. -- Jreferee t/c 16:14, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Won't this encourage wikilawyering? If the ArbCom is actually fishing through policy page history to determine if an editors' actions are in line with nominal policies on particular days in the past, then frankly they're doing it wrong. Full protection of policy pages isn't the answer in that case; the ArbCom – and all Wikipedians who are trying to enforce policy – ought to be aware that the absolute letter of any policy or guideline is not the be-all and end-all. We are much more interested in maintaining the spirit of our rules—and even then, we enforce the rules only as a means to maintaining and improving the encyclopedia.

If an editor is doing something that is harmful to the encyclopedia, we ask them to stop. If an editor persists in deliberately doing things a reasonable person would think disruptive, we sanction. If there is disagreement about whether or not an action is harmful, we have a discussion. We don't hew to the bright line of the nitpicky wording of policies—that leads to the refrain that all of us (including Guy) have seen on AN/I in defense of one obnoxious act or another: "Show me the exact policy that says what I'm doing isn't allowed!". Permanent protection of policy pages will exacerbate those cries: "If there's no consensus to disallow my behaviour in policy, you can't block me for it and ArbCom can't sanction me for it!" While such arguments will get short shrift from individuals exercising common sense, there will nevertheless be cries of 'admin abuse!' and endless wikidrama from individuals who need letter-perfect adherence to these etched-in-stone policies.

Under the present system, such wikilawyering occasionally leads us to update the policy to close the loophole. More often, we acknowledge that there will be edge and pathological cases that our policy doesn't contemplate, and opt to use our best, collective judgement in the future. We realize that modifying policy to fit every odd case or specific situation is an exercise in futility (not to mention a risk of WP:BEANS) and that rewriting policy over single, rare occurrences can have unintended consequences.

Wikipedia policies evolve because it is sometimes useful to codify the practices and standards we refer to on a regular basis rather than having to reinvent the wheel each time we face a situation; they're specific expressions of commonly-used interpretations of the five pillars and the policy trifecta. (Indeed, I could see the value of permanently protecting short, sweet versions of those policies and those policies alone, and pushing everything that's interpretation of them off into regular, editable policy pages.) Wikipedia is not a legal system or an experiment in government; we don't attempt to control behaviour through a complex set of preestablished laws. Making the change to full protection of all policy pages will, I'm afraid, encourage the misconception that Wikipedia is a nomic and that policy pages are to be interpreted in a most lawyerly fashion. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:28, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

We can speculate all we want to about the various misfortunes that would fall on Wikipedia should policy pages be locked down; that way lies (in my opinion) simply inertia, since there isn't any way to get a 100% guarantee that any change will be positive. We're talking, what, forty-some pages? Why not just do a trial (say, three months) and see if problems arise? And the way to measure success would be simple: have reasonable proposals for changes (for example, copyediting) on the policy talk pages been ignored or implemented?

There certainly is no reason why, for locked-down policy pages, we can't put a big banner at the top telling editors how, and where, to suggest changes. Policy pages aren't articles; any editor coming to the page to get information isn't going to be put off by a clear notice about how to change the policy. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I oppose this on principle, per my earlier comments and TenOfAllTrades. Gives a wrong impression of how wikipedia works - and that is more dangerous than anything.--Doc^g 01:59, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Disagree per DocG and TenOfAllTrades. The people I've seen editing policy pages during a dispute to make them look better have the technical ability to edit protected pages. Better to leave them unprotected so that such edits during dispute can be reverted by anyone. Without a much stronger method of gathering input and testing consensus the suggestion is not viable. GRBerry 14:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent about this suggestion -- although willing to live with the outcome, at least for a while. On one hand, it does appear to be a good idea -- at least for some of the policies; this will silence the argument "but how do I know the rules won't change?" And it will be one area where we need not worry about edit wars. On the other hand, this weakens one of the reasons for ignore all rules: by locking these pages down, instead of encouraging people to follow the spirit of the policies, it encourages them to follow the letter. -- llywrch (talk) 19:59, 27 November 2007 (UTC) On second thought, after seeing this thread below, which is about the related discussion on Wikipedia talk:No original research, I am against this proposal. Right now, there is no worry that some crank might successfully weasel something into one policy or another that prevents us from writing useful content, so Wikipedians like me can leave these discussions to the policy wonks, cranks & so forth & concentrate on writing & improving articles. The possibility that one of these policies might actually be locked in a bad version (which is not the wrong version) would mean that the rest of us would have to regularly police these timesinks, & not have the time to write. I'll admit it: when I post here, or at WP:AN, or at WP:AN/I, & at similar places I'm slacking. However, if spending time in these fora were a requirement to write the articles I have been doing -- I'll leave. -- llywrch (talk) 20:37, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

This isn't a bad idea, as long as the {{editprotected}} is not used - that's not what it's for. The protection would, IMO, be to prevent changes without consensus to be made, and general shifting of policy on a day-to-day basis. It would be to make changes to policy pages a "special occasion". Thus, a discussion should simply be initiated, with no need for a template... but obviously we could continue using the template for simple spelling corrections and so on. The protection would also reduce vandalism to high-profile policy pages such as WP:3RR, WP:CIV and... it's got to be said, WP:VAND. All in all, it's a good idea... and I'm not an admin, so I'm signing away my birthright, here! --Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 18:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing the other day, but if we want to do that, we first need to cut down on the number of policy pages, especially in the "behaviour" section. A new, much pruned core set of stable policies needs to be devised, and it needs to concentrate on the creation and maintenance of content, not on micromanaging of user behaviour in backspace. Zocky | picture popups 11:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I said exactly the same thing months ago and got pooh-poohed for my trouble. But I guess I don't have the cachet of a User:JzG :/ Gatoclass (talk) 17:17, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Agree, but with the caveat that admins may not edit policy pages for any reason whatsoever without first discussing it on the talk page. Period. (Or full stop, according to your preference.) All edits should be discussed on the talk page, and in the case of large changes, planned on a draft page. They should be implemented either unanimously or with discussion that results in a consensus. A link to all major changes should be added to WP:VPT, {{cent}}, WP:RFC, and/or WP:AN, as appropriate. Otherwise, I oppose this measure per GRBerry. Gracenotes^T § 18:19, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Additionally, I'm not sure this needs to apply to all policies (for example, WP:BOT, which non-admin members of the BAG might need to edit) – merely ones on which contentious edit warring has previously occurred, especially behavioral policies. Gracenotes^T § 18:22, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Great idea, Guy. I also agree with the comment that admins should also not make changes (other than truly minor ones) without discussion on the talk page. i find the whole policy stability thing offputting. --A. B. ^(talk) 05:17, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

This is a philosophy shift from longstanding practice. One of Jimbo's fundamental principles (not necessarily policy) is that "'You can edit this page right now' is a core guiding check on everything that we do. We must respect this principle as sacred." I agree with Jimbo. Policy pages are Wikipedia pages too, and have benefitted greatly from the Wikipedia philosophy of WP:BOLD. If we lock them down, there will be three effects:

1. Policy will tend towards Creep, since even though consensus may not be established in favor of Creepy language in policy articles, you can also never get consensus to remove Creepy language, once it infects a policy article. There's always a cabal of Creeps who oppose it, so you don't have consensus, even though there is no consensus for it to be there in the first place.
2. For similar reasons, policy statements that do not reflect consensus, such as when consensus changes, can never in practice be removed, because even though there is no consensus as to a particular policy, there's also no consensus to remove that policy. Thus, we get stuck with 2005's consensus forever.
3. Policy page innovation will die, because nobody can be bold.

I don't think we want any of these consequences. COGDEN 04:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

May you consider just for a moment, that what as served the project well for 3 years, may also serve the project for another ten? Change for the sake of change, is not good practice. The community will find consensus when it needs it to change policy. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:41, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• What a brilliant idea, why hasn't this been done a long time ago? I dorftrottel I talk I 00:02, December 5, 2007

Oppose per my comments at the Admins Noticeboard, where this discussion has recently started. Anything which further divides admins from ordinary users is bad for everyone - it adds to feelings of "us and them", it reduces transparency, it gives admins a policy-making rôle which they were never intended to have, and it increases the risk of admin abuse. Being an admin, we are often told, is "no big deal - admins are ordinary editors". This proposal drives a coach and horses through that principle. We should be improving the way wikipedia gains consensus for policy and involving a broader, more representative section of the community in making policy. Preventing most editors from editing policy pages will reduce participation, increase bad-feeling and harm the Wikipedia. DuncanHill (talk) 10:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This (policy protection) is a profoundly bad idea that fails totally to connect with how consensus editing and development works. Insisting that you must have an admin's permission to update policies either by way of correction or bold proposal is wrong and creates a police-guard around the policies in question. Anyone can edit this encyclopedia, and its policies exist and mutate only because of that fact. If the motiviation to this is vandalism, then you know where to get off, and if it's bad changes to those policies well, just revert then discuss. There is no effect to either vandalism or a non-consensus change since neither carry any actual weight at all. Splash - tk 13:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Alternative idea: Post on talk page first, then implement

Random832 said it well above: Administors are people, too. (I can attest to that, I'm one myself). I don't think the distinction should be between admins and ordinary editors, but between discussed changes and undiscussed changes. Moreover, there are plenty of changes by non-admins or even IP accounts, such as interwiki links, for which we should not create an unnecessary hurdle. Therefore, I propose the following:

• Changes that affect the meaning of a policy need to be posted on the talk page first. If no objection is raised after 3*24 hours, they can be implemented on the page. Any meaning changes that are implemented in violation of this rule should be reverted by any editor. If that reversion is again reverted, it will be treated as revert warring.

A similar system is currently working very well on WT:SLR. — Sebastian 23:31, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

It might be worth a try I guess. It would certainly be better than the system in place now. Gatoclass 05:19, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

No, I think this proposal runs contrary to the idea of a wiki. It would probably have a chilling effect on constructive edits to these policy pages. Also, I think that sometimes users who are accused of violating policy (e.g. sockpuppetry) begin taking an interest in that policy at that point, and decide to make edits with the intent of bettering the policy. It's not necessarily just people wanting to legalize their own behavior. Sarsaparilla 04:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. One of Jimbo's fundamental principles (not necessarily policy) is that "'You can edit this page right now' is a core guiding check on everything that we do. We must respect this principle as sacred." I agree with Jimbo. COGDEN 04:24, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure, but official policies pages impose a further burden on editors wanting to edit it. Just read the disclaimers at the top of each official policy if you need a reminder. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:33, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

This page documents an official policy on the English Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. Please do not edit this page without first ensuring that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Am I strange to suggest that you should "merely" check to ensure your edit reflects consensus? --Kim Bruning (talk) 04:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Laboratory of democracy

Edit wars on protected pages are wheel wars

I'm uncomfortable with the general idea of protecting the policy pages, for many of the reasons discussed above, but mostly because of a gut feeling it's un-Wikipedia-like. Edit wars on protected pages are wheel wars, and it seems it might even escalate things on hotly-contested debates (raising the stakes of each edit). However, since there's so much interest in doing something, might I suggest a laboratory of democracy, and try it a couple of different ways on a couple of different pages, and see what happens? Use Guy's proposal on 2-3 policy pages, use Sebastian's sort of overlooked proposal on 2-3 pages, and, noting jossi's comment above, enforce more strictly the current statement in the policy box on 2-3 pages. Don't change anything in the other policies. See what happens it 1-2 months. --barneca (talk) 01:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

What a great idea! Here's a table where we can propose which policies could be good candidates for each way (or "policy policy"). — Sebastian 02:19, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Please add your proposals in the table. — Sebastian 02:19, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

LOL! You are proposing we violate IAR on IAR? :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 04:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

A novel proposal: Let's use Consensus

Wikipedia policy, guidelines and essays are descriptive, not prescriptive, and to date have been formed through consensus. It is official policy that you are not supposed to blindly follow policy, for many many reasons too numerous to list here.

By protecting these pages, while it is true that you prevent games of wiki-nomic (aka wiki-calvinball), you also prevent people from updating and maintaining policies, guidelines and essays according to the procedures stated at Wikipedia:Consensus.

It is better to deal with the occasional anomaly posed by consensus, than to not be able to fix problems at all (or only with great difficulty).

With that, could we relegate the protection of policy pages to "perennial proposals", and just get back to using consensus? :-)

--Kim Bruning (talk) 03:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Exactly! That's why I proposed First talk, then implement. Can you think of a better way to assure that changes are made by consensus? — Sebastian 10:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I can think of no better way to ensure they are not.

This is a wiki, many wikis have no separate talk page at all. A lot of people lazily use the talk page for purposes it was never intended for, and this makes it a lot harder to reach consensus.

Try to reach consensus by normal wiki-editing as much as possible. The talk page is there to discuss how you're doing.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 10:57, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Well phrased, Kim. I support this, and oppose the protection of policy pages. *runs off to add a bunch of them to his watchlist*--uɐɔlnʌɟoʞǝɹɐs 15:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The concept of protecting policy pages seems to me to be the antithesis of our very core principles. We are the encyclopedia that anyone can edit (with very - VERY - few exceptions). I do not believe that consensus has stopped speaking about policies. I do not agree that policy is done evolving, and I believe that anything that slows down or stops that evolution is a bad thing. - Philippe | Talk 04:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I support Kim's modest proposal, although I doubt it will prevail. It's only supported by WP:CONSENSUS; it doesn't subserve the power trips of those who got their pet notions into a policy page back in 2004, and therefore now claim that consensus is required to remove what they put in off the tops of their heads.

But then, in an ideal world, the revert warriors would also be held to the standard of ensuring that their reverts also reflected cconsensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

That is a very good 'idea', Kim. Fully support this use of consensus. Fully support the way things are and have always been with no particular consequences. Splash - tk 13:16, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Not blinding following policy is good, but you are raising a false dichotomy between that and consensus. Remember that policies and guidelines are based on consensus, and that consensus usually was more wide than that which will be stimulated on any one article. Epthorn (talk) 14:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The majority of fiction is non-notable

Can we just delete everything to do with fiction, period? It seems kind of subjective that we're deleting virtually every article on video games characters, often with very little warning (two articles that I frequently contributed to were deleted before I was even aware they had been nominated for deletion). And really, what fiction is important? I suppose Shakespeare can stay, and Dickens, and Austin, and "classic" literature, stuff like that. And I suppose some people would get quite upset if the Harry Potter or Foundation stuff went as well, but I don't see why we need an article on Pokémon, or CardCaptor Sakura, or Red Dwarf, or The Edge Chronicles. I mean let's face it - who cares? RobbieG (talk) 13:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Please feel free to take them to deletion review, but in general fictional concepts that have been around for over a century and are still actively studied and read, such as Dickens and Shakespeare characters, have sufficient independent scholarly sources as to allow a realistic assessment of their historic cultural importance. The character you have to kill to get to level 3 in Sonic is less unambiguously significant. Guy (Help!) 13:32, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I made that distinction. The works of Shakespeare are probably suitable material for an encyclopaedia, as is most classic literature. Apart from that, though, surely all fiction is irrelevant to Wikipedia's goals, right? RobbieG (talk) 13:46, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what you're trying to say. The notion of "classic" literature is extraordinarily flexible, at least if we concede that "modern classic" is more than a marketing gimmick, and especially if somebody claims that the term "instant classic" isn't mere hyperbole.

Putting aside the matter of what "classic" means and what it covers, there's a great amount of fiction that interests a substantial number of thinking people, although perhaps not you or me, and about which people may write intelligible and informative articles according to WP's precepts of "no original research" etc. As long as they follow the rules and also don't risk confusion of fiction and reality, I don't see what's problematic.

You introduce your question about fiction with something about video game characters. I don't see why video game characters merit articles (though I'm open to persuasion); and I also don't see why fictional characters merit articles, unless those characters are known (perhaps only faintly, and perhaps only has doubly fictional caricatures) to people who haven't read the fiction. The fiction might be fairly well read in this century (Lolita and Humbert in Lolita) and it might not (Svengali and perhaps Trilby in du Maurier's Trilby).

If you're unhappy about some deletion, you can take up the matter in "Deletion Review". -- Hoary (talk) 14:33, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

To be perfectly frank, I am unhappy with several specific deletions, but I really haven't the time or the energy to spend arguing my point, when I have very little confidence that the people at deletion review would take my complaints seriously anyway. But that's got little to do with the point I'm making here now, which is: do we need multiple pages listing every Pokémon from #1 to #however many there are by now? Compare the article on Wyatt's rebellion with the article on Dagger of the Mind, for example. A reader of Wikipedia would probably find out more information about the fictional history of Star Trek than the real world history of England. Doesn't this bother anyone else? RobbieG (talk) 14:45, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Deleting good articles on pop culture topics doesn't make articles on "important" topics any better... it's not like the guy carefully formatting Naruto infoboxes is going to just start working on articles about the French Revolution because you deleted his fiction articles. More likely he leaves and the "serious" articles still suck. --W.marsh 14:48, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

(ec) The solution to that problem isn't to delete Dagger of the Mind, but to improve Wyatt's rebellion. You say you haven't the time or energy to spend arguing your point, but what exactly is your point? Anomie⚔ 14:50, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

This is why notability for articles on fiction is present. It defines what level of external information for a fictional work should be present to allow for articles on it (this itself is the reason why many fictional articles are being put for deletion - its to help stop fancruft). Now, we may be overly strong on modern "fiction" and weak on older ones but that is primarily because of the makeup of the editors, with a larger fraction interested in these newer works than those of the older ones, but there's no reason why there can't be more coverage of classical works that met the same requirements for notability - we just need to find the editors to help out on those. --MASEM 14:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, man. Lady Macbeth (Shakespeare) cites no references showing real-world importance. Maybe I should speedy delete it just to be safe. --W.marsh 14:41, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, it was only a suggestion. I wasn't trying to disrupt anything, but if the cruft is here to stay, then so be it. RobbieG (talk) 14:55, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

You ask: do we need multiple pages listing every Pokémon from #1 to #however many there are by now? Answer: No. ¶ You ask: A reader of Wikipedia would probably find out more information about the fictional history of Star Trek than the real world history of England. Doesn't this bother anyone else? Answer: It bothers me. It bothers me that the real history of England (or anywhere else) is poorly covered; it alternately bothers me and hugely amuses me that great numbers of people would spend large chunks of their life writing up Star Warstrek. Well, WP is promoted as the encyclopedia anyone can edit, so its editors are likely to approach a cross-section of people capable of using a computer and writing in English. Now, if you look at what the anglophone masses read about, you'll find junk and trivia hugely represented. Hardly surprising that the Wikipedia-editing masses then choose to write about junk and trivia. -- Hoary (talk) 15:24, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

RobbieG brings a valueble point, especially with the Pokemon. I just checked and there are currently 493 pokemon. All that plus the articles on the characters from the show, the regions, the games, the movies, the manga, etc. You must have 500-600 articles just for Pokemon (which most of them are stubs). Are they really necessary? Should they be tolerated? My answer is no. Just by having 1 pokemon article is fine. Everything else belongs in a Pokemon Wikia. Lex ^T/_C Guest Book 16:09, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Most Pokemon characters are in lists such as List of Pokémon (1-20) (which has been pwned by the fair use guidelines/policies meaning we can't even have pics of most pokemon here). Notable ones such as Pikachu do however have their own articles. And if we come to the point that all Pokemon knowledge must either be transwikied or be simply deleted, I think Bulbapedia would be more suitable then Pokemon Wikia. FunPika 20:32, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

W. marsh has a good point. There are no references at all in that article. I hate inline citations, but a nice reference at the end is not too much to ask. Not so tongue in cheek. Keegan^talk 07:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• Disagree. A very large amount of fiction is undoubtedly notable according to Wikipedia policies, including all the examples that you give. Indeed, it would be difficult to include all the relevant information on Pokemon into a single article; it would be incredibly unwieldy. However, where Wikipedia falls down is the amount of articles on certain types of fiction. To give an example; there are currently over 600 articles on Gundam. Most of these articles could be happily deleted or merged without any loss of encyclopedic content, but it doesn't happen. Why? Because Wikipedia content, especially on fiction, is not based on actual notability, but how many Wikipedia editors think that content is notable. If you don't believe me, find a non-notable, unsourced, in-universe article on this topic (there are hundreds - here's a good starting point) and AfD it. Unless it's indefensibly NN, you will get a slew of WP:ILIKEIT keep votes (thus), and even if the closing admin correctly closes as Delete, the eventual outcome, after weeks of stress, will be that the information is merged somewhere else, resulting in an article with a long list of NN, unsourced information instead of individual articles (example). Sometimes they do get deleted; but it doesn't happen often. If you PROD an article, it'll probably be removed, and someone will claim to be writing a merged article; then nothing will happen ((example). No wonder that most people can't be bothered. ELIMINATORJR 16:36, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I find it telling that the only examples you provide are unwieldy mass-noms. Invariably, when someone shows up to mass-nom Gundam articles, it turns out they havn't examined them closely. Even more invariably, people who have problems with Gundam articles never post on WP:GUNDAM about it.

Current consensus is to merge minor stuff into list of articles and only make or keep articles about major things. That's policy and that's how we at WP:GUNDAM do things. Your claim about 'nothing being done' is in fact a blatant lie-- a lot of work is being done at the moment, but it mostly is focusing on mecha from a specific series at the moment. There are not many people working on WP:GUNDAM, and not all of them know everything about every series. Jtrainor (talk) 17:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

• Partly agree. I would not say Pokémon is not notable but I really think that many details of this phenomenon are non-notable and yet they are widely covered in Wikipedia. Like other fan stuff (Star Trek and so on) it has a coverage that goes well beyond what is logical: there is absolutely no reason to cover each epysode for instance; this doesn't happen with Pokémon, it seems (only a handful of epysodes in the list have active links, what is excessive), but it happens with Star Trek, what is absolutely ridiculous. The notability of other fiction stuff should as well be adressed properly, specially when it comes to have loads of articles about the most nimious related detail, be it characters, toys, epysodes... --Sugaar (talk) 17:13, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, be aware that I've thought about it and toned down my views a little since my last comment here. The thing is, I am in many ways an inclusionist (despite the impression I probably gave above). I don't see why we shouldn't have more detail on fiction than a print encyclopaedia because, well, Wikipedia is not paper. On the other hand, Gundam Wing is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. Wikia is full of specialist wikis for various works of fiction, the majority of them awful, due partly to a lack of material and partly to a lack of decent rules like the ones we have here. The result is that if someone wants to add their knowledge of Gundam Wing (for example) to a wiki, they won't go to Wikia, they'll come here. I don't think it helps that when something is declared non-notable, it is rarely transwikied to a Wikia site; in this deletion debate, I proposed that the content of a page be transwikied to a relevant wiki and deleted from Wikipedia. The material was not transwikied, as far as I can tell; it was promptly deleted. Consequently, we have this vicious circle where newcomers add information about their favourite work of fiction to Wikipedia, it gets deleted (quite rightly so), newbies leave in a huff, and more newcomers arrive, eager to add their own info. The Gundam wiki[1], meanwhile, is a bit pathetic, full of red links. To sum up my current view, I don't think modern fiction should be out of bounds for Wikipedia, but I do see that we seem to be the lead authority on a number of unencyclopaedic topics that ought to be other wikis' business, and I think we should do something to change that. RobbieG (talk) 17:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

With various discussions at WP:N, WP:WAF and WP:FICT, we're trying to address the problem of proliferation of fancruft articles that exist due to the previous definition of notability (which lacked the demonstration of coverage in secondary sources). That includes how to handle fancruft information and moving it to wikias. The problem is is that this process is not well defined yet, and you also have groups of editors that feel their work should not be removed because, primarily, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. It's a learning process, it's not going to change overnight. However, we need to education as many editors as to what is appropriate and what isn't, and yet not discourage editors from participating. --MASEM 17:32, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Just a thought. WP is a long-term project, right? So having lots of articles on stuff that young people find interesting draws them in and gives them the editing skills that they will remember when they come back in 5 or 10 or 40(!) years time and want to contribute to the subjects that they are interested in as older people. Rome wasn't built in a day.  —SMALLJIM  11:38, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment As it takes only 30 seconds to copy and paste an entire volume of game instructions into an article, it will probably only take 20 years before most of WP will comprise of nothing but Rome: Total War. Rome wasn't built in a day, but endless fancruft will flood into WP like barbarians very quickly unless admins make a greater effort to enforce the notability guidelines. --Gavin Collins (talk) 20:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I think Gavin Collins may have misunderstood my comment. I'm most certainly not advocating that we ignore the "endless fancruft that will flood into WP…". Exactly the opposite in fact - it's essential that we keep a firm hand on it, or else the young editors who are adding it will not have the chance to learn how things are done here. Reverting or amending any of their faulty contributions and explaining to them why we have done so is very important. We can't stop this addition of what to many editors is seen as trivia, so we should turn it to our (long-term) advantage as best as we can.  —SMALLJIM  15:01, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment Conversely it takes only 30 seconds to insert an AFD tag on an article, which seems to be done sometimes with no effort to improve an article on an otherwise notable subject. I think part of the difficulty is that many editors seem to rely solely on Google hits to "prove" that an article is notable or not. In any case, Rome: Total War is notable, just merely by having received awards from so many different magazines, but the article clearly needs to be sourced better than it is (like the vast majority of articles here). (I also can't think of another computer game, the main engine of which was used as the basis of a TV series on the BBC or any other television network, namely Time Commanders. I just wish they'd bring it back and let me on there to show everyone else how to win a battle properly.  ;) But then I'm a gamer/wargamer and that's not the candidates they'd like to have on their show.) In any event, this is starting to take us far afield from the original poster's concerns. As an aside I've cut way back on my editing essentially because it all got very tiresome even trying to convince editors that things that are notable are really notable (as the sources/refs I provided were even questioned). As a question of interest, when exactly does fiction pass from non-"classical" to "classical"? To take just one general genre, is Poe classical? Is Lovecraft (relatively unknown and unappreciated for his work while alive)? Is Stephen King? Is Poppy Z. Brite? Who "decides" these things anyway?  :) --Craw-daddy | T | 21:44, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment - My guess would be that if there is sufficient, non-trivial, discussion (such as review) of any work of fiction in what is generally counted as a reliable source, like newspapers, books, etc., that qualifies the fiction as notable. Lovecraft and Poe have both had several works published regarding their fiction, although, at least in Lovecraft's case, not all that fiction is necessarily reviewed, so not all of it is necessarily notable. King has also had several books of criticism published regarding his work, so I tend to think the material discussed at length there qualifies as notable. Don't know much about Brite (in the interests of objectivity, don't really like the stuff I know either), but any work of hers which has been subject of multiple significant, notable pieces of commentary probably qualifies as notable as well. John Carter (talk) 21:50, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment Well, I suppose my question might have been more rhetorical than not. The main distinction I was trying to make is between the notability criteria of Wikipedia and the more nebulous quality of being "classical literature". I haven't taken a survey of college or university literature courses, but I have the impression that, despite the critical analysis of his work, Lovecraft's writings aren't generally considered "classical literature". To me it's sort of like the words "encyclopedic" and "unencyclopedic" that editors throw around on various AFDs and other pages here. Those are words that have no real meaning as one man's "encyclopedic" article is another man's "cruft" (even if the subject under consideration could indeed be notable, Star Trek being an obvious example, there being loads of material (critical and otherwise) written about the original TV series and its derivatives, even, I'd wager a few PhD theses, but to other people it's all "cruft"). <shrug> --Craw-daddy | T | 22:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment And don't forget... Bulbasaur (of Pokémon fame) was, at one point, a featured article.  :) --Craw-daddy | T | 22:11, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer also has a lot of material written about it including academic studies.I believe there has been at least one PhD as well .Garda40 (talk) 22:29, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

We should be careful with terminology here. There is a difference here between 'classical' and 'classic' (compare the difference between 'historical' and 'historic'). Classical often refers to the period of classical antiquity, though as the disambiguation page shows, there are other periods called classical as well. Classic literature, on the other hand, is what we are talking about here (and what, to be fair, everyone was talking about before I pedantically pointed out the terminology snafu). That article doesn't do a good job of explaining what a classic is, though it does note that the origin of the phrase is from the word classical. Anyway, not all classics are literature and not all literature is classic. The standard of secondary literature on the topic is a good one. Tolkien Studies is a journal on the subject of Tolkien studies, and there is a fairly large body of secondary literature on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Not all of it good, but then you can't have everything. Carcharoth (talk) 22:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment Apologies for not using the correct terminology. If you agree with that (unsourced) article, then anything written less than a hundred years ago (or, more specifically after 1900) can't be "classic literature" unless it has particular "modern significance" or "perceived future significance". <shrug (again)> As I said, it's like that "encyclopedic/unencyclopedic" difference in some cases. To me Lovecraft's work is "classic literature" (going along with the "modern significance" argument if you like). To others he's still a hack, even though much critical work has been written about his writing. --Craw-daddy | T | 23:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Perhaps we're beating a dead horse at this juncture, but for what it's worth, in response to the original editor's proposition, "I care." MalikCarr (talk) 23:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I have moderated my view considerably since I wrote that. I am perfectly aware that "I don't care about it" is not, in itself, grounds to delete anything. Actually, it looks as though my proposal was nothing new; the rules are in place, they're just not consistently enforced. RobbieG (talk) 19:09, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

A simple question: How long before we start targetting articles about published novels? Probably 98% of our novel articles are 'simple info + plot summary' stubs.--Nydas^(Talk) 21:59, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Send the fancruft to Wikia. That's what Wikia is for. They host the Star Wars/Trek/Gate wikis and similar cruft. Wikia is in the business of monetizing fancruft. So let them have it and get it out of Wikipedia. --John Nagle 18:25, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with an article on any commercially and/or critically sucessful franchise such as Gundam or Pokemon. My objection is to devoted fans engaging in "fanspew" in that they take in an episode, then rush to the keyboard and spew out in-universe unreferenced articles about every minor event that happened in the episode, every character, costume, location, weapon, spell, space suit, spaceship, battle, or transformation. These things are better given appropriately brief mention in the general article about the show if they are important to the development of the plot arc or are ongoing elements of the show. If these elements receive independent scholarly analysis such as some objects or characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories or some episodes of Star Trek or Twilight Zone, then those reliable and independent sources can be used to write a split-off article. Edison (talk) 21:16, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Why is scholarly analysis the standard for fiction? What's wrong with the standard notability criteria (non-trivial, independent third party coverage)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chunky Rice (talk • contribs) 21:24, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Everybody commenting here should really try and adjust WP:FICT to stricter standards. It makes for a good exercise to learn a few things about how even the process of guideline-making has been hijacked to pave the way for uncurbed fan enthusiasm. On the issue of articles about novels vs articles about episode or minor character: William Pietri recently brought up the brilliant point that even average writers are always superb readers, whereas below-average readers cannot possibly write a coherent article. So that's what it has come to, as far as I'm concerned: Any hint that the author has read anything about the topic is enough for me to accept it. That means I can certainly tolerate an article about a book. But the unfortunately non-cliché 14-year-old half-literate who watches Family Guy or some such and then stuffs Wikipedia with every unimportant detail about it, convinced that he's doing a good thing, is something I cannot possibly combine with the idea of producing a serious encyclopedia. And the reason they keep fighting against the moving of such hopeless cruft articles to e.g. annex.wikia is a similar one, in that they are too lazy to even look for another place to gather. Wikipedia is right here, so why go somewhere else, right? Those people are unwilling (or unable, which is even worse) to do so much as google for sources and read them. I would endorse clamping down on those who do this, and on those who defend it by arguing for it. Alas, it's too late, the masses have already overrun Wikipedia and we may want to consider leaving it to them. A bit like with Moriarty in that "Ship in a Bottle" TNG episode. ¶ dorftrottel ¶ talk ¶ 21:39, December 5, 2007

Transwiki to Wiktionary - when is it appropriate?

I have had a number of articles listed as candidates for transwiki to wiktionary (e.g. cattiness, tattling, face saving). I wonder, when is it appropriate to transwiki and when is it OK to leave here? I was thinking of articles such as yo which give a definition but also some background. Often when an article is transwiki'd, the background is removed. I am aware of the existence of Help:Transwiki but thought more detail might be in order. Sarsaparilla (talk) 18:31, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

In case you haven't found them yet, Use–mention distinction, Wikipedia:Stub and Encyclopedic dictionary provide some information. HTH  —SMALLJIM  15:42, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

So, is it okay to have articles about words as opposed to the subjects those words describe? And in articles about subjects, is it okay to have information about the origins/etc. of the word or phrase that describes that subject (information normally found in a dictionary)? Sarsaparilla 16:46, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Index lists

We have a growing collection of index-like "lists of articles" and "lists of lists" (which I'll collectively call "Index lists", as specifically differentiated from "encyclopedic-lists" such as List of Polish flags), and we need to revisit some past discussions about how to handle them, and what namespace they belong in. I'll start off with the examples (4 of our best sets are those covering mathematics, geography, philosophy, and film, so I'll use those), and then give the points for consideration.

The lists are generally one of 3 types:

1. An alphabetical index
   • List of mathematics articles, List of geography topics, List of philosophical topics, List of film topics, etc
2. A list of "basic topics" in a reference-card/cheatsheet format
   • List of basic mathematics topics, List of basic geography topics, List of basic philosophy topics, List of basic film topics, etc
3. A listing of lists
   • Lists of mathematics topics (a featured list in Oct 2005), Lists of philosophy topics, Lists of films, etc
   • also pages like Lists of people, List of timelines, List of centuries, List of '1996 in' articles, List of cycles, etc

Index lists: the problems and options

Scope

• There are currently: 40 Lists of lists, ~30 Year lists, 129 Basic topic lists (and The Transhumanist is was running a recruitment drive to generate 900 more (since removed?)), and a few hundred alphabetical/topic lists (100 or so of Mathematic topics lists alone). There is the potential for a few thousand.

(there are a lot more than 40 lists of lists - they number in the hundreds. See [2], [3], and [4]    -TT) —Preceding comment was added at 20:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced

• Most of these are unsourced, and represent only what is currently written about within Wikipedia. A few of these can be sourced from academic and professional course lists (eg. The Transhumanist is trying to find appropriate sourcing for List of basic geography topics), but most of type #1 and #3 are inherently unsourcable, by their nature.

Wiki-project-like

• Do type #1 pages belong in project-space, like Wikipedia:List of standards topics or Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/List of Middle-earth topics are?

Disambiguation-like

• e.g. Lists of languages was recently tagged as being a disambig page. Is this what we should do with all the "Lists of lists" (type #3)?

Portal-like

• Should they become portal-subpages, like Portal:Energy/Explore and Portal:Science/Categories and Main topics are?
  • Don't forget dozens of "type #3" pages in the format Portal:Philosophy/Lists or Portal:Food/Food lists [5] – why should some of these "type #3" lists be in "Portal" namespace, while other portals have them only in main namespace? Wouldn't it be better to have them all in the same namespace, striving for a uniform treatment of "/lists" subpages across portals?
  • There is concern that subpages of portals would not be linkable directly from articles, and hence languish unseen? (see this thread for details)
    • Unjustified concern: linking practice is established, see {{Portal}} ("This template is used to link an article to its related portal") – see also below, suggestions under "A new namespace?" caption.
• The primary indexes (Portal:List of overviews, Portal:Lists of topics, Portal:Lists of basic topics, Portal:List of glossaries) were recently moved from mainspace to portal-space. This move is contested by The Transhumanist, and is still being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Contents#Contents pages, and lists of lists.
  • (note: discussion seems to have stalled there in the mean while)
    • Consensus met. Left as portals.
• "Portal:" namespace seems very suited for navigation purposes, per the description at Wikipedia:namespace#Portal: "The portal namespace (prefix Portal:) is for reader-oriented portals that help readers find and browse through articles related to a specific subject. It also may contain links to encourage readers to contribute to relevant WikiProjects" (bolding added)

Background

• Related policies/guidelines not mentioned: Wikipedia:Namespace, Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists), Wikipedia:Lists, Wikipedia:Featured list criteria
• Further related discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Lists#Contradiction between Wikipedia:Lists and Wikipedia:Avoid self-references

Notes

Index lists: discussion

Slowly-considered feedback would be very much appreciated. I've tried to summarize all the current suggestions, but read the links given above for further background. Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 05:24, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Summarizing my thoughts:

1. Indeed most of these pages do not belong in Main namespace (full agreement with Quiddity on this first point I suppose);
2. The problem is in most cases structural, meaning: by their very intent and content many of these pages don't belong in that namespace;
3. Portal namespace is a suitable venue for most of these pages, including the use of these pages as a coherent navigation utility, with an already largely standardised access from main namespace;
   • Note also that there are several links to portal namespace from Wikipedia's Main Page (by far the most visible page of the entire encyclopedia). From the 13 links highest on top of that page no less than 9 lead to portal namespace.
4. Other existing namespaces seem less suitable in most cases, although, arguably, some of these pages could be kept in Project ("Wikipedia:") namespace (linking to project namespace is less restricted from Portal namespace too while links to WikiProjects in project namespace are expressly foreseen to be placed in portal namespace, but largely discouraged from main namespace per WP:ASR) and a few others (like disambig pages, and WP:V/WP:NOR/WP:NPOV conforming lists) can be kept in main namespace (where they can link to portal namespace as described above); the possible overlap with category namespace is no part of the discussion here;
5. Creating a new namespace for these pages would probably have more downsides than advantages (e.g. decreasing visibility rather than increasing it on the short term, and needing to go through a lot of hoops before we even have the first page in such new namespace started, etc);
6. We can disagree on whether the "Portal" solution is the "least bad" or the "very best" solution we currently have available. But it is currently the best known immediately available solution and I propose to start implementing it without delay. I'm not interested in a "least bad" vs "very best" debate (which would be largely loss of time), and I can only encourage those who see better solutions to persue them, but that shouldn't keep us from proceeding with the best we can *with the available namespaces* (and their rules) we currently have. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:55, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Just a simplistic comment. I like the idea of putting navigation lists in the applicable portals. If there were some way to develop a simple convention to put them on their own pages somewhere, like to-do lists, then they could be transcluded for more than one purpose, if desired, without the headaches of maintaining redundant pages. RichardF (talk) 17:46, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

...and a simplistic answer: "Template:" namespace is more than any other namespace intended for transcluded content, especially if you want to standardise layout (like {{Navbox}}). But that's not the topic here (like a discussion of how this relates to "Category:" namespace isn't). The discussion regards which of the "Index"-type pages (as described in the intro) are displayed in which namespace (and under what page name). If you have a template (or use another page in whatever namespace as transcluded content), there still needs to be a page where one displays (transcludes) that content: well in what namespace should that content be? The only tangent regards the "search" function, that won't find transcluded content from another namespace than the one(s) one is searching. In other words, trancluding such content from "portal" or "template" namespace in main namespace would not yield any search results based on that transcluded content with "default" settings for the search. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I think this is looking better than it used to. {{Contents pages (footer box)}} now lives mostly in Portal: namespace and doesn't raise my hairs for {{self-reference}}. To my mind, type (3) lists of lists are fine, and we don't need to do anything about them just as long as they are strictly treated as WP:DAB. The problem is the "list of [basic] $TOPIC [topics|articles]" articles. I cannot for the life of me find any usefulness in type (1), List of geography topics or List of mathematics articles or (sob) List of mathematics categories (they must be compiled by people who haven't yet noticed that Wikipedia is searchable and categorized). But type (2) "cheatsheet formats" like List of mathematics topics can actually be useful as long as they are intelligently arranged and not alphabetized. So, my solution would be: {{move}} the type (1) "$TOPIC articles" pages to "$TOPIC topics" and convert them into something useful where possible ({{merge}} the "basic topics" into "topics": "basic" vs. "non-basic" is not a distinction we should be making). Where such an approach doesn't work or meets opposition, {{move}} the list articles out of article namespace, either to Portal:, or to a newly defined Index: or Contents: namespace. dab (𒁳) 19:31, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Re. "move", see Portal talk:Mathematics#Stalled move request... thus far 2 (as in "two") people expressed an opinion in Talk:Lists_of_mathematics_topics#Requested_move, a fortnight after the start - a third one asking a question. Seems very hard to get people interested in such move proposals. Not even a third party could be found to close the move request, for reasons explained here (5th bullet). --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:51, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

update: Talk:Lists_of_mathematics_topics#Requested_move somehow managed to get in a wrestle, after an admin had closed it yesterday. Feel free to weigh in - I primarily want the page move procedure closed (with no discrepancy between the comment on top of the closed poll and the actual name of the page, even if that means ammending the closing comment without further moving the page). --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:28, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

• Linking directly to portal-subpages from mainspace is (I think) the main concern that TT was raising. I agree that it should be (or become) acceptable practice.
  • Anyway, I don't think any guideline (or policy) page would need to be changed for this to become an acceptable practice (for instance with the template, observing "This template is meant to be placed at the bottom of the article in the "See also" section", from the {{Portal}} guidance). --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:28, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• Type #1 pages are primarily useful to editors, partly for the "relatedchanges" function, and partly for collecting suitable redlinks. More obsessive readers will also find them useful, for reading through our coverage of entire topics. (They exist mostly because our category system is still so rudimentary, e.g. can't display subcat contents all on one page. But also because it's weblike and not finite.)
• Also, I've now removed a thread concerning a new namespace, as it served only to distract from more realistic options.

Thanks :) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:57, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

above copied from Wikipedia:Lists/Index lists, where I'd asked for preliminary feedback to get the questions clearer.

• To split lists up over multiple namespaces could get confusing - it may not be immediately clear to editors that some lists go in the main namespace but others do not. Lists of lists are in essence lists that couldn't fit on one page and had to be expanded. Lists are subject to expansion and splitting just like other articles. Many lists are expanded without renaming them to "Lists of" - they remain "List of" even though they are lists of lists. This reflects the standard article expansion protocol. For an example of list expansion, see List of dog breeds. The Transhumanist    21:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • The list of lists of dog breeds by category may remain an article since these are defined by an international organization which may be cited. The lists of subjects, on the other hand, were compiled from various conflicting and overlapping sources, and perhaps the editors' own opinions. They may be useful as finding aids, but they are not the work of an authority or organization outside Wikipedia. GUllman (talk) 02:01, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
• If redirects aren't allowed to the portal namespace from the main namespace, you may find editors re-creating the missing lists. See Wikipedia:Cross-namespace redirects. The Transhumanist    20:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• Default-setting searches would no longer find lists that have been moved out of the main namespace. The default setting of the search box should be changed to include the portal namespace. Portals need more exposure anyways, and it makes no sense that they are not included in search results by default. Moving lists to portal space would effectively bury them with respect to users who rely primarily upon searches to navigate Wikipedia. The Transhumanist    20:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with The Transhumanist here. I would like to see the portal namespace included in the default search, or at least a debate started about this. Where would be the right place to talk about getting the default search behaviour changed? Carcharoth (talk) 21:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
    • WP:VPR. What happens next depends on what is required to change the settings. The power users at WP:VPT would know what must be done. The Transhumanist (talk) 21:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
      • Changing that is problematic because the majority of the pages in portalspace are tiny segments that are meant to be transcluded, hence are non-useful to the casual searcher. For example, if one searches for "Africa", only 4 of those 1071 results are useful: Portal:Africa, Portal:Current events/Africa, Portal:Military history of Africa, and Portal:South Africa.
      • I'd still be interested to see a full discussion though. Perhaps we can limit the search results from this namespace, somehow? -- Quiddity (talk) 22:50, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

• most of the lists of lists do not have corresponding portals. The Transhumanist    20:43, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Maybe they could be used as the starting point for new portals? Is there an approval process for portals, or can anyone start one? Carcharoth (talk) 21:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia pages do not require pre-approval. That's the essence of Wikipedia, and it applies to all page types. The Transhumanist (talk) 21:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
    • As far as content pages and portals go, I agree with you, but I thought WikiProjects at least had an approval process of sorts? Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals is what I'm thinking of, and the accompanying Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide. Some of the points about scope there seem to apply to portals as well. Too narrow a portal won't have enough material for a good portal. Too wide a scope and the portal could get overloaded. Of course, Wikipedia itself, as a whole, is the ultimate portal! (This could be said for the sister projects as well). Something we would do well to remember. Carcharoth (talk) 21:13, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• It is disturbing to see the maginificent Lists of mathematics topics (a featured list) mentioned in the same breath with List of timelines, since the latter seems like merely a navigational aid to Wikipedia's content, whereas the former was irresponsibly characterized that way when it was up for feature list status, and those who called it that needed to be told they didn't understand what they were talking about. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • What happens to the featured list status of Lists of mathematics topics if it becomes a portal subpage? The Transhumanist    20:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • To be fair, timelines are a more open-ended subject than a list of mathematical topics. I agree, though, Lists of mathematics topics is interesting. It is more a bullet-pointed overview of the subject, or a reading list, than an article written in prose. The word "list" is so inadequate to describe the reading and learning process going on there. I wonder if we can come up with a better name than "list"? It is still a navigational aid though, but designed more for browsing than for looking up an entry in an index. Carcharoth (talk) 21:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• This discussion has reminded me of Wikipedia:Index. Does anyone actually use that? :-) Carcharoth (talk) 21:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• the current guidelines for lists of lists, are the same ones that cover lists. See Wikipedia:Lists and Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists). The Transhumanist    21:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• many mirrors and forks of Wikipedia do not include the Portal namespace. Removing lists from the main namespace effectively removes them from those mirrors and forks, partially crippling them. For this reason, Lists of lists (all the types mentioned in the proposal above), like other lists, should remain in the main namespace where they will prove to be the most useful for browsing the encyclopedia. The Transhumanist    21:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, then they should be using the original site! Most search engines place the Wikipedia article near the top of the list of results, and any mirror site should include a link to the original article. If they're using a mirror site for a quick lookup of a fact, they're not interested in browsing the broad subject field anyway. GUllman (talk) 00:03, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

• re sourcing in particular. I think that for the most part the organization of content in index lists is uncontentious, and occasional inclusion disputes can be resolved through reasonable talk page discussion (as they have been from time to time). Another difference is that index lists invariably link to more specific articles on whatever material -- so if two people are in disagreement about, say, whether Zizek can be considered a postmodernist, it can effectively be treated as a dispute on the Zizek page and evaluated based on the sources there. Imagine if we didn't use sources directly in articles, but only in talk page discussions -- it could work in theory, but it would be inefficient and unorganized where controversial subject matter is involved. In this case I think it's feasible since disputes are uncommon, and although sources normally aren't explicitly referenced in the index list, they're usually just a few clicks away. As long as no one abuses their right to challenge (which I haven't seen with any index lists), I don't think it's a major issue. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 02:50, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

• Another potentially relevant difference between main namespace and portal namespace: the ability to include fair-use images. I'm not sure it affects many lists (since a list is less likely to have the in-depth discussion of the image's subject needed to justify fair use) but it's another sign that portalspace is still in some ways a second-class citizen here. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:59, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: There is no way that there is going to be consensus to move type #1 lists to portalspace. Type #2 and #3 - sure. But #1 can involve lists like List of wild mammal species in Florida, a featured list with lots of images and over 100 footnotes, which belongs in mainspace. Also, lots of lists are starting to be multi-column sortable tables - see List of social networking websites, for example, which is much more article-like than portal-like. In short, "List of" pages that don't hold themselves out as high-level indexes are prime examples of what should not be in portalspace. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:00, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
    • Those 2 examples you use aren't what I've designated as Type#1. List of biology topics, would be the closest type#1 page, to the wild mammal species example. Check my examples again, if that isn't clear.
    • Or here's another example:Type#1:List of Thailand-related topics Type#3:Portal:Thailand/Thailand lists. -- Quiddity (talk) 04:45, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
• Many of these lists are redundant to categories, so they could serve as index pages in the Category namespace. Or, in some cases, they could just be replaced with categories themselves. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Is there a way to disable MediaWiki's Category-space member listing without developer intervention? As far as I know there isn't, which would mean that putting a list in category namespace => weird formatting. Either we'd have a bunch of lists with "This category has no members" at the bottom, or we'd have hybrid list-categories... sounds pretty neat, but how would we get see also/external link sections to the bottom? — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 10:31, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
    • Categoryspace pages are very, very different from regular pages; I suggest dropping the idea and focusing on portalspace issues. Also see the guideline Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes, which discusses why these three things should co-exist, rather than dismantling one in favor of another. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:00, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

• How about leaving the final decision to the various wikiprojects? This allows for some continued experimentation in style and presentation, and if someone hits on a particularly charming and well-designed way of doing this, the meme will spread, and others will copy. I see no great need to overly formalize this at this stage. linas (talk) 14:41, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
  • But they're sets. The sets should be kept together. Splitting them up arbitrarily across namespaces would cause confusion. The Transhumanist (talk) 00:25, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

• An objection to moving lists of mathematics topics to the portal space is that then it would be available ONLY in the portal space. Other things available in the mathematics portal are available in the article space. The move would come at a high price: this Featured item would no longer be available in the article space. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:33, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Couldn't this be transformed into a featured portal? —Ruud 22:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
    • Then you'd have lists in the Featured List department and in the Featured Portal department. That's potentially confusing to users. We should keep all the lists in the same namespace, and all the featured lists together. The Transhumanist (talk) 00:25, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

• These lists typically represent the entrenched view of what can be a small number of participants, and can easily degenerate into a walled garden.--in this they resemble WikiProjects. But I think Wikiproject is a necessary way of compartmentalizing the work on this extremely large overall project, and most t of them seem to be adequately open. But they aren't in WP space, and there is no pretense that they give an encyclopedic NPOV in the same sense as articles. Same with portals. Same with these lists. They cannot go into article space. where they go is a matter of convenience. They're so close to portals in function that I'd say that's the most convenient, and we can find workarounds for the minor technical issues mentioned above. I'm not concerned about the mirrors. For full functionality, we're the place. DGG (talk) 08:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Discussion from WP:RM

Note from Dekimasu: this conversation occurred at Wikipedia:Requested moves, but as the discussion is really broader than a "move request" and the subsequent closes there have been to little avail, I am moving the dialogue here rather than simply deleting it from WP:RM. Take it as you will.

• Lists of basic topics, Lists of topics, and List of glossaries were moved to portal space completely out of the blue and without any discussion taking place prior to the move. A discussion is underway at Wikipedia:Lists concernng the apparent contradiction between lists and WP:SRTA (the guideline cited as the reason of the move). Please move the lists back to their original locations until it is decided they should be moved from their original locations. Thank you. The Transhumanist 22:10, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

  The main discussion over which namespace they belong in is at Wikipedia talk:Contents. I've asked for help with this issue at dozens of places over the last few months (namespace/list policypages, pumps, mailing list, individual admins, an RfC) without any solid consensus that The Transhumanist agrees with developing. More feedback there would be much appreciated. The other discussion that TT refers to is at Wikipedia talk:Lists#Contradiction between Wikipedia:Lists and Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. --Quiddity (talk) 21:17, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• I would recommend asking for opinions at the village pump. Dekimasuよ! 07:33, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

• Like I said, I've done that already. Literally asked at 3 policy talkpages, 1 rfc (posted for double-length), the pump (policy), the mailing list wikien-l, and individually asked a few admins. Like dab says, TT is a hard-sell ("filibustering") on whether we have consensus already (I believe that there is: 11 editors (5 of them admins) vs 2 (TT and Phoebe), if counting). Regarding this move, he even posted on ANI (plus 4 other places). If you want to remove this request from this page, that's fine by me (I didn't due to involvement, and instead just added context). If you'd like to help with the discussion too, that'd be even better :) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:52, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

• I apologize for my lack of reading comprehension. I think what happened is that I noticed the move request from mainspace to portal space for the mathematics topics in the backlog below, and I believed that discussion there should be superceded by the outcome of this one... but looking through the linked talk pages, it didn't appear that discussion was ongoing, or that a conclusion was reached, so I typed a generic suggestion without examining things further. Dekimasuよ! 04:43, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Lists of mathematics topics → Portal:Mathematics/Lists - decision of the closing admin overturned by a party involved in the survey, see Talk:Lists of mathematics topics#No consensus at all was reached on this move. This is bogus. Asking that (another?) closing admin / uninvolved party reviews the situation, and for instance:

Confirms the move back to its original place, in which case the rationale on top of the closed poll should be ammended;

-or- undoes the overturning of the closing admin's decision;

-or- re-opens the poll, seen the fact that I tried to get more mathematics people involved only yesterday (see Portal_talk:Mathematics#Stalled_move_request and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Stalled_move_request)

-or- ... (whatever seems best) --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

This should probably be negotiated through the admin who closed the request, but let us know if you're having trouble with that. Dekimasuよ! 10:14, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, see User_talk:Angusmclellan#Lists_of_mathematics_topics_.E2.86.92_Portal:Mathematics.2FLists_WP:RM --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:31, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

It says "decision of the closing admin overturned by a party involved in the survey". THAT IS FALSE. The decision of the closing administrator was "no consensus". The usual "do not modify" tag was added. Then the same admin came along and overturned his own decision, saying, absurdly, that there was a broad consensus for the move. That is nonsense. I moved the page back, thus leaving intact the closing admin's obviously correct "no consensus" outcome. The closing admin claimed there was another page where a broad consensus had been reached. That other page tangentially mentioned the issue twice. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics had not been told of that other discussion. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:54, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Index Lists is an attempt at a summary of this complex issue. It concerns pages in mainspace like List of timelines, List of basic mathematics topics, and List of film topics. Its scope is currently a few hundred pages, and potentially a few thousand pages. Feedback would be appreciated. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

(End of section moved from WP:RM)

What would happen if tomorrow, you were barred from directly citing peer-reviewed journals?

The controversy over at WP:NOR is continuing, and it is coming to somewhat of a head, with the anti-primary-source lobby threatening to end discussion by decree. The issues up for discussion have been summarized on the talk page for those who have not been following the discussion. Basically, the issues are as follows:

1. Do Wikipedia editors have a right to cite peer-reviewed journals directly, or do we need to cite to them via the mediation of some possibly biased secondary source?
2. Should NOR impose a "super-verifiability" requirement over and above WP:V that requires cited conclusions in peer-reviewed journals, books, novels, and interviews not only to be verifiable, but also to be corroborated and filtered through second-hand literature?
3. Should editors be allowed to cite raw data from peer-reviewed journals, but not the conclusions by the original author?

Any comments for or against these proposals are welcome on the NOR talk page. COGDEN 00:09, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a distortion of the actual issues under discussion, as there is no "anti-primary-source lobby". Primary sources can be used, but they must be used carefully to avoid editorial bias and interpretation. Secondary sources may be used in addition to primary sources to avoid this problem. There is nothing stopping anyone from attributing a scientific study or conclusion to the published author. The problem begins when an editor wishes to interpret a primary source, cherry picking primary source data to support a POV without secondary sources to support it. The questions you raise above aren't even relevant to the problem. —Viriditas | Talk 00:57, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

COGDEN seems to be suffering from an inability to grasp clear statements about the use of primary and secondary sources. The policy doesn't hold that primary (close to the subject being written about) sources are unacceptable, it holds that they should be treated with particular care to avoid going beyond the source and introducing synthesis or unsupported value judgements. Note that primary sources also includes self published sources which meet WP:RS in the context of an article about themselves, but which are generally unreliable. ... dave souza, talk 01:03, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit confused here. Aren't peer reviewed journal articles, by definition, secondary sources. In my field of interest, history, they certainly are. Dsmdgold (talk) 14:28, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

In my field, astronomy, most contain some quality of secondary sources, but are primarily primary sources, apart from review papers. WilyD 14:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, for the purposes of WP the parts of peer-reviewed papers that draw conclusions, give arguments, interpret data, or otherwise act like secondary sources are considered secondary sources. The only part that would be a primary source is actual experimental data or field notes. There is significant confusion about this point, since the dispute at NOR is about primary sources, which most peer-reviewed publications are not. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:41, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Nahh, I had a personal enoucnter with this issue: I got in a nasty argument with an editor who thought that vitamins were a waste of time and money and didn't do anything, and were crank medicine. To support his argument, he provided links to all sorts of literature, some of it possibley peer-reiewed. I donno. It was POV pushing. However, the the problem, as I see it, is not his use of citations, but his POV pushing. Eliminating this kind of use of citations will not eliminate POV-pushing. Don't treat the symptoms (citation use) treat the disease (POV pushing). linas (talk) 14:50, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The confusion over the difference between a primary source and a secondary source will not go away until we rename these terms as they are used here to something different from their use in the real world and then tighten up their definitions. I !vote for Wiki Type A sources and Wiki Type B sources (usage: "an eyewitness account is a WTA source"). This will have the additional benefit that editors could not assume that they know what the terms mean when they first come across them and therefore not bother looking them up - as doubtless happens now.  —SMALLJIM  16:16, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

You cannot eliminate the confusion because a primary source can sometimes be used as a secondary and the converse is true. The definition depends on two things: what type of source is being used and how it is being used. Furthermore, the definitions may be different depending on the field.—Viriditas | Talk 23:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe our discussion of the properties sources need to have to establish certain Wikipedia-specific claims like notability and significance should tied to a classification systemt that purports to explain inherent attributes of sources. Rather, they are better described as attibutes of the WP:N and WP:SIGNIF concepts. It would be a bit like discussing the requirements for becoming a doctor or a soldier under the topic "people" rather than under the topics of medicine and law. It would be silly to try to classify people into a set of categories like primary, secondary, and tertiary people and then to say things like secondary people can be used as doctors but tertiary people are needed as lawyers. We'd quickly find the categories make no sense and have no general applicability; better to talk specifically about what the medicine profession needs nd what the lawyering profession needs rather than try to project these needs onto people themselves as if our needs were inherent properties of the outside world. What we're doing here is equally projection. Like job requirements, Wikipedia's policy requirements are properties of Wikipedia policy, not properties of external objects such as people or sources. We need to describe and classify our needs directly, describing our policies and what they require. Projecting our needs onto external objects and trying to present our needs as if they were properties of the outside world is simply silly. We found a ready-made classification system intended for a different purpose (primary, secondary, tertiary) and thought it could be bent a bit and applied to Wikipedia. It seems clear our needs are different from the ones this schema is based on. Better to describe things in a way that directly reflects our needs. Best, --Shirahadasha 17:57, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

What scientists call primary sources are called secondary sources on wikipedia. (Folks enjoy confusing people). --Kim Bruning 19:19, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Whitewash actions on Talk:Ruud Lubbers

This may be interesting and surprising...:

1. Talk:Ruud Lubbers#Rewriting History
2. Talk:Ruud Lubbers#BLP Policy Blocking Editing

Apparently, it seems Wikimedia even actively helps and concedes to such censorship ??

--LimoWreck (talk) 18:23, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

This is outrageous. On the Ruud Lubbers article, it says he "resigned due to an unsubstantiated allegation". Not so. The official, public UN document says he sexually harassed the woman. After the fact, she was threatened to keep mum by the personnel officer. Apparently Mr. Lubbers office has 'handled' Jimbo, or WMF, so as to muzzle the information. Nice. Talk about no censorship.

That article is completely biased in Lubbers favor.. The official UN press release didn't deny the evidence but called it not worthy of a court case. But cases were filed in Switzerland and the U.S., though they didn't get traction. The victim was an American woman. She worked on short term contracts and her job was at threatened after she filed a claim.

What made this case so striking is that soldiers under UN hat (really national soldiers loaned out to help the agency) had a recent history of abusing refugee women. So for the head of the UNHCR agency to do this was huge. Lubbers was the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, so to make him fall was quite a big deal.85.5.180.9 21:22, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I will look further into this today, since the topic seems very quiet. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:06, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Private correspondence

A new policy proposal is under way, spun off from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Durova and Jehochman. It can be found at Wikipedia:Private correspondence/WP:PRIVATE. Thanks. • Lawrence Cohen 19:41, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Capitalizing "The" in reference to Denominations/Organizations

I am writing to get others' opinions about capitalizing "The" when "The" is part of the title of an organization or religious denomination. Specifically, I am under the understanding that "The" is part of the official title of The United Methodist Church. What should be done about this? What can be done about this? Is this such a minor issue that it need not take up our time? I don't want to go willy-nilly changing things, but it seems important to me to use titles properly.

--Macdonde (talk) 21:17, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual of style#Article titles: Unless part of a proper noun, a, an and the are normally avoided as the first word (Economy of the second empire, not The economy of the second empire). Examples: United States, United Kingdom but The Hague. EdJohnston (talk) 22:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

NoMoreLinks Notice

I found the following notice in the external links section of a couple of articles:

<!--===========================({{NoMoreLinks}})===============================
| DO NOT ADD MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE. WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A COLLECTION OF |
| LINKS. If you think that your link might be useful, do not add it here, |
| but put it on this article's discussion page first or submit your link |
| to the appropriate category at the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org)|
| and link back to that category using the {{dmoz}} template. |
| |
| Links that have not been verified WILL BE DELETED. |
| See [[Wikipedia:External links]] and [[Wikipedia:Spam]] for details |
===========================({{NoMoreLinks}})===============================-->

The sections I found them in were empty except for a single link. See external links section of Life extension and the Genetics article.

The notice is disturbing for three reasons:

1. The command "DO NOT ADD MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE" runs contrary to the very nature of wikis. It's a variation of "you cannot edit". Not good.
2. Edits are not subject to preapproval. Anybody can contribute to articles without getting their contributions approved first. This notice is setting a bad precedent.
3. The articles the notice is placed in can't be tracked. They don't show up for "What links here", because the notice is just a comment and doesn't contain any links. I have also been unable to find articles with the notice by using the search box.

I believe use of this notice should be discontinued, and that the notice should be removed from articles.

The notice itself is not a page, and therefore, a TfD is insufficient. The template:NoMoreLinks should be nominated for deletion if the notice is determined by the community to be inappropriate.

The Transhumanist 03:06, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

perhaps instead it should be modified. I will give it a try , and we can continue at its talk page. If you still do not like it, then TfD would seem the way to go. But let's see first if it can be worded less imperatively.DGG (talk) 07:14, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I've only seen this in use on Naruto, so I can only offer my opinion in that context, but this notice does help in cases of excessive linkspam. I would agree that, in the case of one link, its use seems inappropriate. Overall, I would probably vote delete if there were a TfD, as people can cobble together such messages (albeit not so brilliantly ASCII'ed) on their own. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 07:13, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I BOLDly changed it to:

I replaced it on the two page mentioned. I note that the EL section of Life Extension has a number of links, not just one-- some quite dubious, which I will remove later. I consider it a very appropriate place for such a template. Genetics had only one link at present, abut I want to trace the history of earlier links there before deciding it is unnecessary. I know many other pages where the template has been very useful indeed. If we are agree on the wording, we can try to hunt them down & fix DGG (talk) 07:38, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

incidentally, the template survived a previous TfD: on Jan 19, 2007 as a very strong keep. Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_January_19#Template:NoMoreLinks -- almost unanimous -- let's continue on the template discussion page, not here. DGG (talk) 07:43, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

(editconf)The notice is useful in places. I've seen many variants, in many of our large or heavily-edited articles, and even a few in featured articles (eg Microsoft, Absinthe, 300 (film)).

Can I recommend that you inquire at a template's talkpage first, in the future? There is often relevant discussion, or a previous/recent TfD notice (as there is in this case, which ended with a unanimous keep). Also, it leaves a trail of discussion in the most permanent and relevant place, for the benefit of the editors that turn up in the future. It is also good wikiquette to at least alert the people watching a page, that it is being discussed somewhere else. Thanks :-) -- Quiddity (talk) 07:46, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Spam#Tagging articles prone to spam and Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam#Regular clean-out of undiscussed links who instruct its use, and might know more. -- Quiddity (talk) 08:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

the template can just be removed from any articles where it is rather obtusely added. It's always been one of the most pretentious, and possibly the single easiest template to abuse, but there is no reason to ever leave it in place when either 1) it makes no sense when their is just one link to a non-official site, and 2) when it's addition has not been discussed on a talk page. One editor can't just pompously say 'no more links' and everybody else has to obey. The thing should only be given any creedance when it is the result of a talk consensus. 2005 (talk) 07:54, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

If you're seeing this notice in an article with few links, that probably means that there once was a problem with too many links so someone placed the tag. Then later, the links got cleaned up but the tag was still there. There's a good essay on link buildup over time: Spam Event Horizon (a.k.a., "The Spamhole Essay"). If you see this tag in the links section of an article and that article is no longer a spamhole, by all means feel free to remove it. --A. B. ^(talk) —Preceding comment was added at 04:21, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Searching

When I search, the default namespaces for searching are Mainspace, MediaWiki Talk, and Template Talk. As a suggestion, it might make it more useful to search the Mainspace, Image, Portal, and Help spaces. Searching the Wikipedia or MediaWiki space will probably result in non-useful policies (for the casual reader I mean) and archives/subpages/votes. Searching Talk pages of any type really doesn't make sense to me, since why would someone looking for an encyclopedic topic or site policy be interested in a conversation? Is this an issue for here or Meta? Mbisanz (talk) 06:47, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

This is changable in your preferences, and Mediawiki talk, etc is not the default setting. Dragons flight (talk) 09:18, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I logged in under a less-frequently used account and realized that. Would it be useful to include the Help and Image namespaces by default? Seems like those might be frequent hits for users searching for things. Mbisanz 17:19, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

How do we measure due weight?

In the (extensive!) discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Northern Ireland flag usage, one problem came up for me. Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Undue weight says that "NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each". So how do we actually measure the prominence of each viewpoint? It seems like any methodology to gauge prominence might be a violation of Wikipedia:No original research, would it not? Andrwsc 22:43, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Prominence is generally measured by status in mainstream scholarship. Without commenting on the specifics of this article, the key here is "reliable" source. If Oxford University Press has published the source, I am more likely to trust what it says as "reliable", than I would "Joe's Blog". Also, in situations like this, it is helpful to go beyond footnoting. If you said "John Doe, in the journal "Nature", has said" yada yada yada others can see the transparency of the sources. If all of the sources are reliable, and there is a genuine open debate in the reliable literature with two opposing viewpoints, then report the debate. If a crackpot is self-publishing their own wacko ideas, and no one even takes these ideas seriously enough even to respond, then it probably doesn't even deserve mentioning. The question that needs to be asked is "Do reliable sources acknowledge the minority viewpoint, even to summarily refute it." If yes, then the viewpoint probably bears mentioning. If the academics aren't even acknowledging the viewpoint, then we shouldn't either. Again, I have not looked at the particular article in question, and I am only making general comments. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Conflict of interest with Wikia links

During normal editing I noticed that the Family Guy article and every episode article from the first episode to the latest have links to Wikia articles. Now I am not suggesting that the Wikia Family Guy articles are not good quality (although I do not know if they are or not), but my problem is that I feel there is a very strong conflict of interest in linking to Wikia, seeing as Wikipedia is a not for profit organization and that Wikia is a for-profit company. And both Wikia and Wikipedia are headed by the same person, Jimmy Wales. I also now understand that linking to Wikia is common practice in a lot of Wikipedia articles. Simply clicking on these links immediately generates money for Jimmy Wales as the Wikia pages have ad views on every article.

I believe that the integrity of Wikipedia is at stake by linking to Wikia articles and the morals of a free encyclopedia which accepts donations linking to a for-profit site run by the very same person are extremely questionable. I do not think that Wikipedias purpose is to generate money for the Wikia corporation. I am aware that it is common practice, but that just makes me feel even more troubled. I believe that linking to Wikia is one small step from putting ads on Wikipedia itself. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this, or is anyone aware of this issue being brought up before? JayKeaton 13:33, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

In our current efforts to improve notability particularly for fictional works, transwiking information to Wikia is always preferred over losing that information, and generally, after some agrumentive discussion, the editors will eventually agree that transwiki the info over is the best way instead of fighting to keep it on WP. If we now turn around and state that Wikia links are no long valid, we are going to have a major problem on our hands, as we've now told people that we've taken their writing off WP and now you can't even link to that writing. I understand the COI interest, but transwiking to Wikia has been the status quo for a long time. --MASEM 15:20, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

• Yes it's been discussed ad infinitum. No, it's not generally considered a conflict of interest. Guy (Help!) 18:16, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

But 99.9999999% of the internet is for profit! Nearly every website we link to has ads, and how is this any different?--Phoenix-wiki ^{(talk · contribs)} 23:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

99 percent of the internet might be for profit, but Wikipedia has never been. Every link to Wikia is generating traffic for Wikipedia and cash for Wales. Even as I type this message there is a that thing about donating that wont stay hidden at the top of this page. Why should people donate their money to Wikipedia if Wikipedia is being used to generate money for Wikia/Wales? And it would obviously be in Wales best interests to see lots of links to Wikia, how can we trust that Wikipedia will be moral and just if suddenly it is in the creators best interest to flow traffic from Wikipedia to his for-profit side project Wikia? All of these little "Wikia" links on almost every single Family Guy page look like advertisements to me. How can we trust the higher ups to make the best decisions for Wikipedia when for them there is an alternate option, which is what is best to line their own pockets? JayKeaton 05:38, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The obvious answer is that we shouldn't. Dishonesty is apparently the order of the day here. --arkalochori ^|talk| 07:39, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia editors (at least in 99.99% of cases) have no affiliation with the Wikimedia Foundation other than happening to use a site the Foundation keeps up the servers for. The same is true of the majority of administrators, and admins happening to use Wikia to communicate no more links the Foundation with Wikia than admins using MSN Messenger to communicate entangles the Foundation and Microsoft. If the Foundation isn't mandating the links, and Jimbo isn't inserting them, I see no conflict of interest if regular editors feel that a link to Wikia is warranted, nor are they encouraging a business relationship between the two projects, even if it does happen to be beneficial. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 07:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem isn't the editors putting them in or the admins allowing it. Just because editors put the links in doesn't mean that the issue is completely absolved of a conflict of interests. 99.99 percent of all Family Guy articles link away to Wikia, and I imagine that many other Wikipedia projects and articles link to Wikia in a similar way. And that really is the problem, so many links to the for-profit Wikia. If regular editors felt the need to link dozens or hundreds of articles to their own sites full of ads that generate money for themselves, would you be ok with that too? Don't we have a responsibility to where we link to? If the information on the Wikia pages was not good enough for the Wikipedia articles, why is it then good enough to link on every single Family Guy related page? Or on the flip side if Wikia articles are good enough to have regular links to them, why isn't that information already on Wikipedia? Why do readers need to leave Wikipedia and need to look at ads that pad the wallets of Jimmy Wales? Even Angela Beesley has a questionable place in all this, how can she be on the not for profit Wikimedia Advisory Board when she is also a founder of the for-profit competing Wikia hosting corporation? In any case none of that matters so much right now with the current problem, which is the issue of Wikipedias relationship with Wikia which both have totally different goals, totally different structures (no one profits from one of them and charity donations pays for it, the other is a business model and only two people profit from it). And those two people just happen to own and operate both Wikipedia and Wikia. JayKeaton 10:04, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

We link to things we wouldn't allow on-wiki all the time. We wouldn't make the C++ article into a comprehensive manual on how to program in C++. On the other hand, we certainly might link to such a manual, or use one as a reference. The same is true of mass amounts of in-universe information. We don't allow it, but that doesn't mean we can't, when appropriate, link to it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:09, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Text removal. I just saw a huge text removal from this section pop up on my watchlist. Says it was a revert of a banned user, but original contributor doesn't look Banned or that he was creating "ban-able" content? Mbisanz 23:09, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Correction: User:Vividraise is now banned, but there is no notification on his user page. Still, why remove the comment? Mbisanz 23:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Vividraise has been blocked as a sock puppet of a banned User (banned by Jimbo Wales, no less). All edits by banned users are to be reverted on sight. Corvus cornix_talk 23:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Banned users don't get to comment, especially when they're dodging a ban to do it in the first place. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 23:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Understood, wasn't familar with that policy, thanks for the info. Mbisanz 23:32, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Leaving aside the whole "must sinence the banned user!" distraction, there's no reason for those links to Wikia per the policy. Just remove them.
CygnetSaIad 23:43, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

We are linking to an appropriate specialized external site. Were the leading fan wiki site elsewhere, we would link to that one. It's the subject editors responsibility to decide where the best link is. DGG (talk) 01:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia/Wikimedia have an Ethics Board for these sort of issues? The Wikia problem is prevalent on many Wikipedia articles and it is likely to become even more rampant in the near future. Besides bringing this up with an external charity ethicist is there any kind of internal review system that can be done that isn't conducted in the Village pump? I don't think any of us here are qualified to make a decision on something as important as a conflict of interest within a registered charity. JayKeaton 12:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

No connection has ever been documented between the editors creating the links, the foundation as owners of Wikipedia, the for-profit Wikia, and the users who create the Wikia sites. It's quite a leap of (bad) faith to assume any conflict of interest, when the links are not being added by anybody with a tangible connection to the foundation. Guy (Help!) 13:17, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Users with no documented connection adding the Wikia links is only part of the picture. The rest is that they are there to begin with, the problem is that there are no guidelines in place to cover this issue. If Wikipedia was an ordinary business then it would be fine. But it is not, it is a registered charity that asks for tax free donations. The Wikia links are about as morally just as a primary school adding Pepsi Cola to their curriculum or the World Aids Foundation selling aids pins and all the profit from those pins not going to charity at all. There should have been a little more corporate responsibility to stop this from happening to begin with, because having those links innocently added or not, there is still a conflict by having them at all. It's like a charity funded "free hospital" referring patients to another for-profit clinic that gives that profit only to the owner of the hospital (and not the hospital itself).

To even say that there is no conflict at all and that it isn't worth looking into is just lazy and foolish. We need to take these things seriously because the people that own Wikipedia will not take them seriously. It is OUR job to see these things and to try and figure them out. If you just assume that everything is fine on the surface and that nothing could possibly be wrong, then you may as well be working the books at Enron 15 years ago. Someone could have stopped the Enron scandal before it even started, but no one did. And I believe that Wikipedias morals, the very thing that Wikipedia is here for (which is free information for the world) is possibly at stake. The fact that Wikipedia is a registered charity just means that Wikipedia has to live up to it's own morals and it has the honor the morals it is trying to project to the 33,059 people that have already donated. Why should those people have donated if Wikipedia is helping put profit in Wales pockets? Wikipedia is creating traffic for Wikias "Replica Swiss Watches" advertisements, why should people donate their own hard earned money so the owner of Wikipedia can make more money for himself on the side through WP? JayKeaton 04:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Please see the TfD of Template:FreeContentMeta, that dealt exactly with these kinds of problems as well. I'm also of the opinion that what we do with these softredirects is basically rubberstamping one wiki (commercial) as "wikipedia-approved" and giving it an unfair advantage over its potential brother and sister wikis. I understand why people think it is a good idea, but I still don't approve. Its a symptom that is being fought and this is no solution to the problem. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow, thank you, I wasn't even aware of the FCM template. I really do believe that Wikipedia as an organization has to be responsible with it's relationship with Wikia as company. And that relationship should not exist, as it isn't very responsible at all for a persons charity to be supporting that persons business. Wikia as a business should be able to link to wherever it wants, give away as many free* iPods as it wants and sell as many replica swiss watches as it wants. But Wikipedia the charity needs to be responsible with these conflict of interests, as Wikipedias reputation as a charity and reputation as an unbiased encyclopedia is at stake. As well as the good faith and trust of the 33,628 people who have donated so far. They did not donate to help Wales do anything with Wikia or make more money with it. They donated to keep Wikipedia free and to maintain a level of professionalism within this 'pedia. JayKeaton (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

To be totally fair, remember that we also "support" in many ways something like imdb and tv.com. Something else that was raised repeatedly in the past. These cases are slightly different, because they are "established" database like sources for which no real free alternatives of equal or higher completeness exist. Still it is suboptimal and ideally and one time a free alternative will present itself that we could use. Still this soft-redirecting goes much further, even way beyond the concerns raised in the FCM discussions. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Some sites do seem to have been granted general favour with Wikipedia, which even if they were already influential they are now that little bit more influential because Wikipedia has found them to be a universal source. But there is no conflict of interest with any other site other than Wikia, unless any other board trustees own any sites that I don't know of. And I guess Wales old porn site, but I don't think that one is still running anymore somehow (Wikia is a big deal what with Amazon taking notice and millions of dollars being thrown around in advertising alone, any old little sites before that would have been abondoned). JayKeaton (talk) 21:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a set of domains (including Wikia) that can be linked to from Wikipedia pages using interwiki shortcuts instead of traditional external links. You can find it at meta:Interwiki map. If you look at the talk page, meta:Talk:Interwiki map, and its archives, you'll see the community discussions on which domains to add to the interwiki map.--A. B. ^(talk) 04:15, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Uncivil comments

If someone complains about an article, and I write in response that their "complaints appear to be baseless", is this uncivil of me?--Filll 04:09, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

• Yes.--WaltCip 04:30, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

In what way?--Filll 05:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

That isn't the worst of all possible wordings, by any stretch of the imagination, but we can aim higher than not the worst. "I can't see why you raised this concern, can you explain further" is a response that invites continued discussion, and is thus more civil for a collaborative environment than "complaints appear to be baseless" which amounts to saying "go away". GRBerry 05:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Freecycling is not fair

I am not sure where to complain about free cycle so I will put it here. My names is jennifer bryant and i am om the woodlands texas freecycle page. I offered a big screen tv, minor repair, then wanted, garage sale items, a hospital bed and a generator. The moderator, one Maurice, or Lo, or MCM (she has gone by all three ) put if I wanted garage sale items i must want them to resell. I said no, I would like to see if i could get some xmas items out of them, the hospital bed for my extremem bought of pleurisy and i wanted a generator. This "Lo," banned me because I did not agree with her take on my ad and then said my tv was probably not worth anything anyway. so this is freecycle? who determines who wants, who gives away and why they do it? is this some sort of criteria or does the lady have esp. someone has got to regulate these so called moderators who apparently act like they out and out own the free cycle sites. well i don not believe this to be the case and intend to go public with my very rude, adverse situation. what would you do? jennifer bryant phone number removed for privacy reasons Thanks and happy holidays. i will send you my nasty email from said moderator. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.240.222.20 (talk) 15:10, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear about this, but this does not come under the scope of Wikipedia. Also, it is not permitted to post private e-mails here without the consent of the sender. Tra (Talk) 15:52, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:CSD

I have been away for a short time, and I find that the {{speedy}} page appears to have changed; most nominations now come in as "other reason", with the standard reasons now elaborated on the second line. I obviously missed the policy discussion on this. Is there a sensible reason for this change, or it just my PC having a funny turn? --Anthony.bradbury^"talk" 17:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean... the speedy tags look mostly the same as ever. Most people using the standard reasons use templates like {{db-bio}} --W.marsh 22:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Ads sometimes appropriate source??

This has been on my mind lately: Can there ever be a reason/scenario when an ad would be an acceptable source for something added here? I contribute a'lot to magic here and some very old publications have ads for various manufacturers and magicians who started out very "small", but now are "big" names in the world of entertainment and sometimes I think it might add to the encyclopedic value here to note some of these old ads. 02:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why not. But please be careful to record exactly where such ads were originally published.--Pharos 05:16, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I think ads would count as self-published sources. That means the information in the them couldn't be used for establishing notability, but once that was established it could be used to fill in details. Karanacs (talk) 17:51, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

DYK

I have noticed that the DYK update is constantly overdue. It's supposed to be changed every six hours but it's often many hours late.

This is quite simply unfair to the many users who make submissions to the feature. Submissions for this feature expire after five days, which means that every time DYK is overdue, less submissions are promoted than should be the case and consequently many of the submissions which might otherwise get a promotion end up expiring when their five days are up.

It appears there simply aren't enough admins overseeing this project and it seems unlikeley that an effective method for recruiting more admins to the task will be found. Isn't it time therefore, that the process of promoting the current update was simply automated? It would save everyone a lot of hassle, and ensure that the maximum number of submissions get promoted in every five day cycle. Gatoclass 03:26, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm.. maybe someone could write a bot to do this, and run it through RfA. However, we'd need to be sure that the bot won't mess up, as the main page is supposed to exemplify our best work. Puchiko (Talk-email) 14:07, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

A bot could do it, or perhaps a developer could write some code to do it. A queue readable by a bot would need to be set up, if it hasn't been already. Sarsaparilla 04:06, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I briefly considered writing a bot for it, but I couldn't figure out the procedure currently being used. --Carnildo 11:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

A bot has been discussed before but several people said that a bot can't decide what is a good and bad hook, which hook is referenced, and which hook has a permitted photo (or improperly used photo). If there is bot involvement, it would be a spam message to administrators that the update is due. Many would hate to receive spam!

I try to help out by alerting admins manually, checking hooks, etc. Archtransit (talk) 21:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Update: I remember seeing a bot for DYK but it was blocked. I don't remember the name of it (Dykbot? Dickbot?)Archtransit (talk) 22:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I understand your point, a bot can't judge a hook and its corresponding article. Apart from a spammy bot, I have an idea. I'm not very technical though, so I can't say if it's possible. How about a user script which would have some sort of alert pop up if DYK was over due. Since you must install a script for it to take effect, only admins that want to would get the alerts. Puchiko (Talk-email) 01:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Why does it have to be admins who update it? They are only ordinary editors after all, and many are far to busy. DuncanHill (talk) 14:16, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

linking to hate groups

Hello. I was wondering if according to wikipedia rules and regulations, a user, could add a direct link to a Nazi website in an article? And if not, please provide me with the related quotes from the laws. --Kaaveh 08:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

It all depends on three things: Ein, if the link is not being spammed for business purposes (user contribs showing only additions of that link are red flags); Zwei, If the link is pertinent to the article and not added specifically as a shock site meant to offend other Wikipedians; Drei, if the site can be considered a RS at all (this three-tiered test is the status quo here on Wiki). I would need to see a diff before I could pass judgment, however - no policies apply all of the time. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 08:40, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

As Jeske says, it is a balancing act. In general, such links are appropriate to pages that discuss the hate group, but are unlikely to be appropriate in most other contexts. Dragons flight 08:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot to both of you. cheers --Kaaveh 09:42, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Linking to neo-Nazi websites is sometimes used as a form of POV-pushing. See Links to David Duke.--John Nagle 18:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

photographs of minors

I haven't been able to get an answer anywhere else, so I'll try here: Just because the person who took a photo claims to owns the rights and releases it for public domain does not necessarily mean that person really has the right to do so. Wikipedia acts in good faith in using those, but there may be legal issues with regard to the use of photos of minors. Just because you own the camera that takes a picture doesn't mean you have the legal right to post photos without the consent of the parent or guardian.

This comes up becomes the article on skinny dipping has four images of boys. This seems excessive regardless of the subject matter. Two of the images are paintings. Two of them, however, are photographs of minors with no information regarding authority to distribute photographs of those specific individuals, certainly not parental permission to distribute nude photos of minors. Wryspy 16:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Commons has a good guideline, which applies to people of all ages. According that, the images of the boys are borderline (though the Indian one is more controversial because one of the boys is clearly identifiable.) In this case, pixellating the faces of the children might be an appropriate measure.
However, you should be aware that this has nothing to do with copyright, it is restricted by personality rights. The personality rights template should be used with every identifiable image of a living person, yet this is not the case (yet). Puchiko (Talk-email) 17:37, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Community Bans

In the recent Arbitration Committee case, the committee urges the community to "develop a coherent policy regarding the method by which community bans are to be imposed." Case remedy

The current "Community ban" policy reads, from Wikipedia:Banning policy#Community ban:

There have been situations where a user has exhausted the community's patience to the point where he or she has been blocked long term, usually indefinitely, and there is no longer any administrator who proposes unblocking them. Such users may have been blocked as a result of the blocking policy, or the community may have discussed their behaviour on a relevant noticeboard such as the administrators' noticeboard or the now-inactive community sanction noticeboard (which was created for such a purpose), and reached a consensus not to unblock the user. When discussions fail to achieve a consensus due to disagreement amongst administrators, the cases are referred to the Arbitration Committee. Users who remain indefinitely blocked after due consideration by the community are considered "banned by the Wikipedia community" and listed on Wikipedia:List of banned users.

So my question is, is this policy coherent, effective, and accepted by a consensus of the community? If not, which areas need to be fixed, and is there some sort of policy that can be adopted to make everyone's life easier, while keeping the wikilawyers, trolls, etc. at bay?

I think it is safe to state that a noticeboard for community sanctions is not acceptable to a large portion of established Wikipedians. The current policy gives each administrator wide authority over overturning "community bans". Is this acceptable? The policy as currently written contradicts itself and needs to be articulated and clear. At this point I do not have a good suggestion, but just thought I would try and start the ball rolling towards an acceptable, lucid policy. So I ask, What should we do? Mahalo nui loa. --Ali'i 17:23, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

The list of banned users often does not have links to discussions of decisions. When you're on the list there may be no evidence that you belong on the list. -- SEWilco 17:39, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so should there be a requirement for discussion (which there is not currently... it just takes one admin to block someone, and have no one speak up to unblock for it to be a "community ban".), or perhaps, is there even a need to keep a list of banned users? Other than Arbitration Committee bans that are logged elsewhere? --Ali'i 17:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

• "Community Ban" is a somewhat nebulous term because (unlike the ArbCom) the community has no "official" mechanism with which to create such a ban. Absent a solid proposal for such, it would seem that (1) it cannot be a community ban unless there has been extensive discussion on the subject, generally on WP:ANI, and (2) it cannot be a community ban unless nobody can be found willing to unblock. That would serve as a definition, methinks. >Radiant< 23:17, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, the community are also being asked to uphold a decision made on their behalf, which involves individual community members imposing personal level sanctions of non-interaction or non-support or whatever. All the more reason for individuals to have access to a rationale as well as a list.

Perhaps what we are actually discussing is an administrators' ban on behalf of the community, and a request for the community to respect that by co-operating with it. Alastair Haines 05:02, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not sure if I follow you... the community has little choice to co-operate (or not) with a ban, since they cannot unblock the banned user. With respect to "bans on behalf of the community", we briefly had a "Votes for Banning" page, twice, and neither worked out particularly well. The present system is not ideal but so far we've been unable to think of a better one. >Radiant< 17:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

And that's what I'm trying to get to the point of. Either 1) There cannot be such a thing as a community ban; or 2) There can be such a thing as a community ban. If we accept number 2 (That there can be a community ban, and by definition, in order for something to be a community ban, the community at-large must agree to it), we have to decide how that can be. As I see it, it breaks down further: a) Someone is community banned through affirmative discussion; or b) Someone is banned through lack of opposition.

So, we have tried a) a couple of times (the sanctions noticeboard, quickpolls, discussion on the administrator's boards). These haven't worked out spectacularly. b) is sort of currently in place. The current working definition of a community ban is an indefinite block that no administrator is willing to lift. One problem with b) is visibility. If an admin blocks someone, they don't always report it anywhere. Also, if this is the definition, individual administrators are given quite a bit of power (one admin can decide that they want someone unbanned, and they are), and adminship becomes more of a "big deal".

So, where do we go from here? Do we want, as a community, to keep trying some sort of community-based banning discussions (that sort of currently take place on the admin boards), where the consensus rules? Or do we want to keep trying the "block that no admin is unwilling to lift" method, where one admin can basically over-rule consensus? Can the two co-exist with no problems? Is there another option that we can try? Are we wrong in accepting the fact that community bans can even exist? Thanks. --Ali'i 18:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

My feeling is that all indefinite blocks should be logged separately in the block logs (how many are there a day? Someone mentioned a figure of around 100 - a list of 100 blocks a day would be easy to review), and that definite blocks should be limited to a year or less. That would make it easier to see what indefinite blocks are being handed out (and to discuss them if needed for banning purposes), and to see if the culture of using indefinite blocks has spread beyond acceptable limits (persistent vandals and so on). Carcharoth 18:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

"I'm not sure if I follow you... the community has little choice to co-operate (or not) with a ban, since they cannot unblock the banned user." - a block and a ban are two different things. —Random832 19:03, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The community neither can unblock a blocked user, nor unblock a banned user... only an administrator can do that. I believe that's what Radiant! means. --Ali'i 19:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Right now a "Community Ban" is an informal act, with a circular definition -- if someone is indefinitely blocked, & no Admin reverts that block, it's a "Community Ban"; the moment any Admin removes the block, that person is not banned. Anyone can see how that's a bad thing. I think Carcharoth is on the right track: we change the definition of "Community Ban" to an indefinite block that is (1) logged, & (2) refers to a discussion that provides a basis for this. Enforcement of this is simple: failure to do this means that any Admin can revert an indefinite block without prior discussion. Howwever, blocks for fixed periods are not covered by this rule. -- llywrch 19:51, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so if something like this were to be implemented, would it be a manual logging of the indefinite block to be discussed (perhaps) somewhere, or would it be a technical logging of indefinite blocks (and is this technically feasable/something the developers would be interested in/something that a bot would do)? --Ali'i 20:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

If the developers do, or can, tweak the Special:Logs interface, it would be useful to bundle in changes like being able to select options to list unblocks separately from blocks, and to list indefinite blocks separately from definite blocks. It should be noted that the option to indefinitely block is often exercised if a temporary, emergency block is needed to allow discussion to take place before deciding on the final state of the block. This could be covered by the simple formula: "any indefinite block contested by another admin should either be changed or endorsed by a community discussion". The question is what do do in contentious cases when the community discussion is deadlocked or otherwise divisive? My feeling is that deadlocked community ban discussions should either go to ArbCom, or a block of a definite length used instead. There is also the problem of appealing a community ban. If anyone feels that the original discussion was inadequate, should the discussion be reopened? That could lead to perpetual discussions in divisive cases, and again, ArbCom would seem to be the answer there, though it should be noted that ArbCom bans seem to be limited to 1 year. Carcharoth (talk) 02:16, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This all looks like a developing "dispute resolution" process to handle indefinite blocks. Blocks of definite length can be handled adequately by the unblock template and review process, but indefinite blocks require a better review process. As always, initial discussion should take place with the blocking admin. If they refuse to unblock, then an appeal can be made via a community discussion. If that fails, an appeal can be made to ArbCom. Or just appeal straight to ArbCom (via e-mail) as at the moment. Carcharoth (talk) 02:23, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The List is the stable base of ban procedure

A ban should have documentation of the community agreement. A user should not be banned if not in the list of banned users. An entry in the list of banned users should include a reference (such as a link) to the community agreement. It should be acceptable to remove improperly documented bans from the list (perhaps after a [citation needed] period?). -- SEWilco 19:27, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The above is a suggestion of a minimum requirement for banning procedure. How the community decides to perform a ban is a separate process, and discussion on that topic is proceeding above. -- SEWilco 19:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

What happens if the community discussion of a ban (in whatever form it takes) contains harassment, personal information, and otherwise objectionable, unsavoury morsels? Say the discussion has been courtesy blanked... should a link still remain? Where does Wikipedia:Deny recognition fall into this paradigm, if anywhere? Mahalo. --Ali'i 20:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

There has to be some transparency as to the nature and reason of the ban. Results from the arbitration committee are frequently distilled into brief summaries by the clerks, maybe a similar system would work here. Instead of linking to the debate, the link would go to a summary of the debate generated by an (uninvolved) admin or clerk. That would keep the information and reasoning, but separate it from the shenanigans. ZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 15:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Courtesy blanking would be fine if each discussion were on a separate subpage like CheckUser. Cool Hand Luke 00:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Is there a specific policy for inappropriate images displayed in articles?

I searched for the article entitled Sexual Intercourse (admittedly in the event of my boredom)and I happened to notice some rather explicitly sexual images. I do acknowledge that the images are necessary to provide useful content in the article, but, I feel that the availability of such sensual images to minors is a serious problem, considering that there was no disclaimer of any kind in the article.

Whether the article's explicit content appears without warning on a computer in a public place or in front of elementary school kids, I believe that something should be done about it.

-Krono45 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Krono45 (talk • contribs) 20:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

wikipedia isn't censored. ~Sasha Callahan _(Talk) 20:52, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

However here's an interesting way to bypass wikipedia isn't censored .Garda40 21:31, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

See also the Wikipedia:Content disclaimer. Natalie 22:16, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Garda, misapplying policy is not a clever way to manipulate WP. --Kevin Murray (talk) 03:55, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

It appears that there is such a policy. The second cited in the edit comment linked above. Wikipedia is not censored except for ... ;) Alastair Haines 05:09, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

If you intentionally navigate to an article called "sexual intercourse," I cannot fathom how you'd be the least bit surprised to see... depictions of sexual intercourse. This is how we generally treat the issue. Of course there should not be gratuitous and pointless images where you would not expect to find them (Walt Disney, for example) but if a user is reading an encyclopedia article about sexual intercourse, it is reasonable to expect that the article will contain illustrations relating to the article topic. FCYTravis (talk) 03:46, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Profanity

Should there be some policy as to what profanities you can and can't use? I personally do not appreciate reading the f-word while doing my research, and would like to at least see it as f***. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LinuxMercedes (talk • contribs) 00:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• Profanities are not civil. And no, we're not going to make an exhaustive list. >Radiant< 00:20, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• Profanity directed at other editors is uncivil. --- tqbf 01:14, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Nevertheless, swearing profusely for no discernable reason is strongly discouraged, regardless of whether it is directed at other people. >Radiant< 17:09, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Doing anything profusely for no discernable reason should be discouraged, regardless of whether it is directed at other people. I leave the discussion to its merciful rapid end with this. --- tqbf 17:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• Wikipedia is not censored. --Golbez 01:21, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
• Is Linux referring to the words used on talk pages or in articles? I don't like to see profanity at the talk pages, though sometimes it fits the mood, but rarely the F-word. However, the only time where I can see an approproate use of profanity in an article is in a direct quote. In that case I don't think we should censor or substitute symbols for letters. --Kevin Murray 17:18, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
• I've actually written some javascript (with an eye towards letting the naysayers see Yoghurt how they want to see it) that could, in theory, be repurposed to allow an individual user to be shielded from particular words. —Random832 18:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
• Oh come on. Who cares about profanity? Maybe in some world that I've never seen, but "Fuck" is now used in common language amongst very successful, very intelligent, and very proper people. You're right, we shouldn't write in an article with "Intelligent design is a load of horseshit" (and it is, but that's not the point). But if an editor (and I know I don't care) says, "Intelligent design is a load of horseshit" in the talk space, who cares? Let's spend our time writing great articles, not on what words one may or may not use in their normal course of conversation. And by the way, who is to decide what is or isn't civil? I'm a Californian, and I rarely blow my horn encouraging someone to move at a green light. It's considered rude here. In New York, it's considered normal. So civility is defined by culture, by upbringing, by lots of things. And some admin is going to tell anyone what is civil? I don't think so. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 02:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Completely fucking agree with every word you said. Oh hell, now I killed another kitten or some such, sorry for that. I dorftrottel I talk I 03:33, December 5, 2007
    • Similar feelings here, but I would also like to point out that anyone offended is welcome to ask any other user to "tone-down" their words. Asking for something like this usually works a lot better than completely banning it or getting really angry about it. Within articles, it is used where it should be used and not censored. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:04, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
• Is this really a problem? Can you give an example of a specific instance where you believe it there is an inappropriate use? On talk pages the use of profanity is generally unhelpful, for example, but banning profanity would just cause more problems in my opinion (the biggest of which is censorship). The best idea is to address each instance rather than to try make a big guideline or something... Epthorn (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 14:19, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Quotations of Jimbo Wales

I notice a lot of policy pages quote Jimbo Wales (see, e.g., WP:USERPAGE#What_may_I_not_have_on_my_user_page.3F). Perhaps these are artifacts from the days when Jimbo used to unilaterally set policy. Now that he doesn't, are those quotes binding in the same sense as the legislative history of a statute, which influences/governs how the statute will be interpreted in a court of law? Or are they just non-binding obiter dicta which are basically just there for decoration at this point? If the latter, I would favor deleting those quotes for clarity's sake (as Jimbo's quote "this should be no big deal" was deleted from WP:RFA). Some people still quote them as though they are authoritative. Sarsaparilla 04:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You know, this perplexed me as well. But some people are very attached to the Jimbo quotes. So rather than fight them might as well engage in an act of self-promotion. A while back I created template:Jimboquote. It takes no position as to the value or appropriateness of including Jimbo quotations, but it does put them in a nice text box with a neutral but distinctive background color. You can see this template in use at WP:V and WP:BLP. Wikidemo 07:48, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and be bold about removing the quotes. Sarsaparilla 16:45, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Now that IS bold indeed. However, you may be sending the right message - it is no longer Jimbo that has the dictatorial control of Wikipedia, it is the Wikipedians with the Republican control.--WaltCip 16:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I share your confusion but I think actually that what is written above- similar to including quotes in a statute- is exactly the way it should be treated. I'm not sure deleting them will go over well, and I'm definitely not sure it's worth the effort... Epthorn (talk) 14:21, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Readability

Hello. I am Belicia. Since I am by far the smartest and most articulate of my classmates in school I have been draughted into proposing a policy that has strong support in my school.

In order to gain a wider readability and a consistent writing style, we propose that the articles in Wikipedia henceforth be written at the "Harry Potter" level of comprehension, to-wit, that correlating to the average reading skills of a 14 to 16 year old. Doing so would vastly expand the appreciation of Wikipedia.

In addition, this easily-read style of writing would help reach out to foreign readers whose English skills are not as sophisticated as native-born readers.

As further grounds we would asseverate that everyone knows most of the editors on Wikipedia, and a good proportion of its admins, are between 14-18. We also desire to formulate a committee (a formal proposal is being draughted to send to Mr. Whales) to review current articles and bring them into the 14-16 year old comprehension level.

In conclusion, this can only be a boon to Wikipedia and serve to enhance its advertising revenue. Thank you for your time and consideration. Belicia 04:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't have advertising revenue.

Some subjects simply can't be dealt with at such a level of comprehension - advanced mathematics articles, for example.

You might like to look at the Simple English Wikipedia, which is designed explicitly for people who read English as a second language.-gadfium 05:02, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

In reply, if mathematics is the language of numbers, then how does the style in which its accompanying prose is written hinder its ability in any way? Belicia 05:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I wont even comment on the advertisement revenue thing, but I must say that 14 - 16 year olds are far better off expanding their comprehension skills by reading "adult" prose, rather than dumbing it down for them. Reading, or trying to comprehend text that is beyond their reading level would probably be good for them. I cannot speak for the United States as I have never been, but I must say that I have NEVER met a 14 - 16 year old that wasn't able to read or figure out writings that most 24 - 36 year olds could understand. I think it would be a sad step backwards for their education if we dumbed down any writing that they might read and if they are incapable of comprehending what they read on the internet they are quite welcome to use the Simple English version of Wikipedia as gadfium recommended. JayKeaton 17:24, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course our proposal to Mr. Whales is almost ready. One aspect of it however is that we will be recruiting our peers to within the next ten days bring all the current articles into line with the proposed style, or be deleted outright. Belicia (talk) 21:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo is not the be-all-end-all boss. Anything he or the devs come up with has to go through community consensus first before it is implemented. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 22:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

This is not the first time this has been suggested on this page (although the previous requests are just old enough to not be in the archives anymore). The consensus was that some articles cannot be written in a more simplified grammar and still make sense, and that the Simple English wikipedia is the appropriate place for any simplified articles. Other articles should be written in the format that makes most sense to a native speaker, as there are Wikipedias for the other languages as well. If you have the ability, however, to get a group of people to actually look at all 2 million+ articles, please have them work on other cleanup issues. We need citations and wikiformatting!! Karanacs (talk) 21:49, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Even though we have simple.wikipedia.org and the rule that we do not "dumb things down", there is also a "convention" that the introductions of articles, the so called leads, should generally be written in a way that is understandable for a "broad public". That means that anyone should be able to get a general understanding of almost every topic simply by reading the first part of the article. Now for astrophysics and several other highly technical articles this of course will be very difficult, but then you can always "click trough" the terminology to read about those concepts. I'm also the first to admit however that not by a long way every single article adheres to this convention. And I think that is how it is and how it will be. Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia and not a schoolbook. That does not mean we do not welcome you Belicia and your peers to constantly comment, contribute and reflect upon wikipedia. This is great and there are always lessons to be learned which can only benefit everyone involved. But to reiterate my basic point, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a schoolbook. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

"everyone knows most of the editors on Wikipedia, and a good proportion of its admins, are between 14-18." WP:DNFT, people. Cool Hand Luke 00:55, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

• Belicia, you may have missed it, but take a look at Simple English Wikipedia like someone wrote above. It is almost exactly what you are talking about. It can be found here:[[6]] Epthorn (talk) 14:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Belicia, you might be interested in looking at Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible and at . There are a few introductory articles written specifically for 14-16 year olds like Introduction to evolution. I think many of us plan to create more.

The idea is not to just dumb-down the main Wikipedia articles, but to offer 3 different levels of articles instead. For people with a rudimentary understanding of English, there is Simple Wikipedia. For people who have a more advanced understanding, like 14-16 year olds, there are the introductory articles. Then there are the main Wikipedia articles. The goal is to have a very simple LEAD section of all Wikipedia articles that can be read and understood by most people. Of course, a lot of Wikipedia articles do not meet this goal, but at least I and others certainly try to aim for this.

Encyclopedia Britannica offers articles at 6 different levels of sophistication and understanding. And so it is completely reasonable that Wikipedia aims to have articles at 3 different levels of sophistication and understanding. We have a long ways to go, but remember that Wikipedia is just starting. If you looked at Wikipedia 5 years ago, it was very different. It will look very different in 5 more years, 10 more years and 20 more years, if it continues (which I hope it will).--Filll (talk) 15:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

More variations of Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Deleted_pages_should_be_visible

As Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Deleted_pages_should_be_visible notes, there have been many proposals to make deleted pages visible to non-admins. For instance:

• Wikipedia:Pure wiki deletion system
• Wikipedia:Viewing deleted articles

The latter included a proposal to limit viewing to logged-in users. What about this variant: Allow contributors to a deleted article to view it. This will at least enable users to easily get back their text and move it to their userspace in order to re-work it, as well as have something to reference at WP:DRV. Most people, especially newbies, are probably unaware that some sysops will userfy deleted stuff on demand – and in any case, that requires extra work on the sysops' part.

Another possibility might be to allow users with sufficiently old accounts to view deleted articles, similar to the restrictions on page moving. The main point of keeping them hidden is to prevent casual surfers from being able to read those articles, right? The perennial proposals page notes the difficulties associated with dealing with copyvios, threats, etc. and other stuff that has to stay hidden, but those concerns could be addressed easily enough with a two-tier system, in which you have deleted stuff viewable only to admins and deleted stuff viewable to a larger group. Sarsaparilla 05:09, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Admins _are_ the larger group - for truly problematic stuff we have WP:OVERSIGHT. There may, though, be some merit in adding a third tier for stuff that is deleted for e.g. notability reasons. —Random832 18:54, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. So what would go on the second tier and what would go on the third? (I presume the first tier would just be the three types (nonpublic personal info, libel, copyvios) mentioned at WP:OVERSIGHT.) Sarsaparilla 21:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

If you need the text of an article that was deleted, you can always ask any admin for it, providing that the article was not deleted due to BLP violations or office actions. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

So.... Why don't we just add that to pages that were deleted... ? "This article does not exist. You can create a new article, or if the article was previously deleted, you can ask the deleting admin (linked) or the admin forum (linked) to recover it for you so you can work to address its problems." Something like that ? Seems a lot simpler and doesn't require loads of extra rules and just a little bit of coding (for specific admin) --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:39, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a list somewhere of admins who are willing to userfy deleted pages. We should put a link to that list on the page to which you refer. Sarsaparilla (talk) 13:46, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I would like to see more access to deleted articles. I have no problem with deletion for BLP concerns and copyvios remaining invisible to most users (so laong as they can see that there has been a deletion), but for deletions for alleged non-notability or "lack of context" (which does not appear to have any meaningful definition) then certainly contributors should be able to see the content - how else can they improve? DuncanHill (talk) 13:51, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Discussion about image use and WP:NOR

Please come participate in the discussion here. It involves image use policy issues far beyond the template itself. Thanks. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 06:43, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Threats of violence posted on wikipedia

OK. I've searched for policies/guidelines/contacts for this and found none: What should we do when someone makes real-world violent threats on Wikipedia? In the case I have in mind, the threats weren't against a Wikipedia editor (as far as I know), just against someone identified by first and last name. They stated they would "shoot" that person.

The edits in question are here. I'll point out that aside from the threat, the edit looks like the old, commonplace act of juvenile libel. So chances are it's not serious. But it's a threat to shoot someone.

Now, as for the obvious, easy stuff: I've done that. Reverted the edits and warned the editor against vandalism. But I don't know what else to do, or how.

It's possible that the threat is serious. If I think there's a likelihood someone might get shot over this, perhaps I should inform law enforcement. Two problems:

# I'm not sure it's reasonable to do this for every threat of violence. There're probably a great many completely incredible threats for every credible one, simply because it's so easy to put anything (including threats) on the internet.

# If I were to report it, I don't know how, since I have no way of identifying the person who made the edit (or even getting an idea what jurisdiction they're in). And it's overall good that I have no way -- privacy being a very real concern. But then for something to be done, I have to bring it to the attention of someone who does have that power. I don't know who that is (admins?) much less what the appropriate way is to let them know (a mailing list? a noticeboard?).

What I'm looking for is, something like "there's already a policy on this, here it is" or "you should notify the such-and-such list about this" or "there's nothing you/we can do; just forget it" or "we haven't dealt with this before, let's have a discussion and maybe come up with a policy."

-- Why Not A Duck 21:52, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The general consensus is to block and inform the police in the area where the IP localizes to and/or the locale the poster appears to be threatening. If not an admin, bring it up at WP:AN/I. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 22:09, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I've posted a request there. -- Why Not A Duck 22:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't this fall under WP:HARRASS? In any case, I've called local police departments a number of times in response to crap posted on wikipedia. Fortunately nothing ever happened... but if myspace is a guide to all things intertube, then it's better safe-then-sorry. 67.164.220.177 (talk) 19:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Harassment only applies with respect to harassment, not death threats or suicide threats. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 16:33, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed policy WP:PRIVATE

Several editors of differing philosophies have been working on a proposed policy to address the posting of private correspondence on Wikipedia. Initially intended to address user behaviour, this has now been extended into areas that may affect content edits to the encyclopedia proper. In the interests of transparency, consensus and collaboration, other editors might wish to review and comment on this proposed policy. Risker (talk) 22:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

What does this have to do with building an encyclopedia? --- tqbf 00:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Fake message bars

I would like to propose a policy to ban fake message bars (such as the one on User:Just Jame's userpage). While fake message bars are perhaps ammusing or funny, some users find it annoying and immature as it disrupts the flow of wikipedia. Another reason why I think that fake message bars should be banned is that wikipedia is not a place for jokes or other non-sense, even if it is userfied. It creates a sense that wikipedia is losing it's goal of becoming a "fountain of knowledge" and that we're plummeting towards humorus entertainment such as uncylopedia. Please consider this idea with care.--Sunny910910 ^{(talk|Contributions)} 01:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

It is "not recommended". However, it is their userpage, they can do what they want in nearly every case. Unless this is malicious (link to somewhere distasteful for example), it is probably fine. And certainly userpages are not part of the "fountain of knowledge", so no need to worry about that. Prodego ^talk 01:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the time and customer goodwill that would be needed to scrutinize user pages for comformity to these sorts of standards might better be spent building the encyclopedia. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 02:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the main goal of wikipedia is to build an encyclopedia, but wouldn't being the fact that it should be "avoided except when necessary for testing purposes" mean that it shouldn't be on userpages without good reason to?--Sunny910910 ^{(talk|Contributions)} 02:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

It isn't worth the effort to make anyone remove it, basically. Unless it is hurting someone (like in my example), who cares? Prodego ^talk 02:23, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Sunny, is the reason you have a problem with this because you fell for it? ;) JayKeaton (talk) 17:46, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a rather long archived discussion about it (which has been listed at WP:LAME), which might be of interest as it presents some rational arguments.
My personal opinion is that it should be discouraged, but not forbidden. I think that users should have a lot of freedom on their user pages (I'm not saying they should have complete freedom, posting racist propaganda is still not acceptable there, but that's a different story).
One issue that has not been brought up in the linked discussion, and which I believe is important is screen readers. Generally, the screen reader will read the text, but not the web address it links to. This could cause problems for blind users. Puchiko (Talk-email) 19:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I think faking system messages is disruptive and it should be treated as such. I think it falls under the same rational why we don't let anyone edit under the usernames of "sysop" or "admin." 67.164.220.177 (talk) 19:40, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

If someone was using them to actually be misleading in a harmful way that's a bit different that someone just using them as a joke. Friday (talk) 19:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Based on the discussion at Wikipedia talk:User page/UI spoofing linked by Puchiko (thanks!), it looks like this issue has already been thoroughly addressed by the community. At a result, a section was added to the WP:UP guideline stating "The Wikipedia community generally frowns upon simulating the MediaWiki interface, and it should be avoided except when necessary for testing purposes." — Satori Son 19:47, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Examples - in DRASTIC need of an update

I surfed on in to the WP:NPOV page to look up a specific detail and randomly noticed the link to Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Examples. You can imagine my enormous surprise at finding that this page is essentially unchanged since the day I first posted it back in October 2001. (see the version at Nostalgia).

While I am deeply flattered that something I wrote so long ago is still being referenced, it is fair to say our collective perspective is (ahem) "a tad more sophisticated now". In my opinion we should either archive it as historical, or subject it to a complete re-write. The concept is useful, but the current version is hopelessly out of date.Manning 13:21, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The editing history suggests that the reason for this is that no one much has seen it since, at least, mid-2005; and those were following links and recent changes. But I don't see why that means we should throw it away or remodel it. Neutrality is not a different thing now than it was in 2001. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:04, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's Oligarchy

(moved here from the Reference Desk)

For the record I love everything about wikipedia. But it's hard not to get past all the grumbling I read in blogs [[7]]. Does Wikipedia have a serious problem in authority: oligarchy vs. democracy? Sappysap (talk) 23:55, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Depends on who you ask - it's a matter of opinion, and as such not good fodder for the refdesk. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:58, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

News stories and bloggers practically never get the nuances of how Wikipedia works right. But it can't function as an oligarchy; the program is inherently democratic, despite what some bloggers like to think. We all have the same powers; admins have a few extra buttons but there's just no viable way for an elite authority to sieze power that I can figure out... if I knew a workable way to be the Tyrant of Wikipedia, you'd all be bowing down before me already. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 00:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

There's plenty of scope for Oligarchy in wikipedia. The Register article illustrates one alleged aspect of it. Whether & the extent to which is occurs is a matter of opinion & some little controversy. As I said, not RD fodder. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The reality is always somewhat more mundane that what the bloggers would have you believe. That particular story is sensationalist nonsense, the so called "secret mailing list" was never particularly secret, nor is it some sort of anti-Wikipedia Review cabal. There are some horrendous examples of harassment and stalking that has taken place on and from Wikipedia, usually females who had the misfortune to attract the attentions of unbalanced (usually) males. This list is a serious attempt to address this problem by editors who have experience or expertise of such harassment. It not a club of the "senior editors" we always hear about (as the bloggers would have you believe), but a diverse group of everyday regular editors, most most of who have no interest in WR at all. Of course, thats not dramatic enough to blog about, so instead we get conspiracy theories. Rockpocket 00:24, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

1. Do not start debates or post diatribes. The reference desk is not a soapbox. Sigh. ==Tagishsimon (talk) 00:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a valid question to me, and there is information available from primary sources that answers it. Rockpocket 00:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Does wikipedia have a problem with. What part of the answer to that would not be opinion? Clearly some people do have a problem with it. Some people do not. Your "primary sources" are actions & posted opinions. Not RD fodder. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

My "primary source" is a someone who has direct access to that being discussed and thus is in a position to know exactly what that list is or is not. Everyone who is in a position to know has said that same thing, everyone who is not in a position to know speculates (incorrectly).However, if my primary source isn't good enough, here is a secondary reference for you. [8] Rockpocket 18:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

You’re not by any chance a member of this secret cult of Wikipedia rulers are you Tagishsimon? Trying to silence another lone voice of freedom and justice? :-) --S.dedalus (talk) 03:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree - it's quite sensationalist. I'm coming close to 2 years working on Wikipedia (yesterday I passed my 10,000'th edit!) - so I guess I'm entitled so some opinion (and it is only opinion). There are (broadly speaking) two kinds of Wikipedians - the ones who contruct this elaborate layered set of procedures and rules - and those who are actually writing the encyclopedia (or working the reference & help desks). There is some overlap - but it's nowhere near as great as the media seem to think it is. All of the upheaval about people talking on private mailing lists or changing our licensing to Creative Commons has almost zero impact on day-to-day encyclopedia writing - frankly, I don't give a damn what happens.

There are a few times when this split matters greatly - for example, the drive to exclude ALL 'fair use' pictures from the encyclopedia - that's something that could get pushed down by the political types from on high because it's somehow pure and idealogically wonderful - but it's something that most of the actual encyclopedia writers would find very painful and unnecessary. Compare the pictures in "Andy Warhol" in English Wikipedia to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol in the German Wikipedia (which doesn't allow 'fair use' pictures) to see what I mean.

But mostly, it's occasionally necessary for one of us to appeal to an admin to block a vandal or to use their guidelines to rap the knuckles of a clueless newbie...but mostly the politicians stay out of our way - and mostly, we return the favor. SteveBaker (talk) 00:35, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

SteveBaker, you know I'm your biggest fan, but this is hardly sensationalism. Tagishsimon: how is it ok to talk about politics and history and religion in other reference desk posts, but not talk about Wikipedia in general, and the standard we are all trying to set when in judging our world?

Brett Favre was SI's 2007 Sportsman of the year as of today. Early this morning I checked his article and it had not been edited because it was locked. I had to post on the discussion page and wait till an editor, sometime in mid-morning, observed it, to wait for an updated edit. Now no shame to him, he was an expeditious and smart editor, but what does this say about the democracy of Wikipedia? Sappysap (talk) 03:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

It says that the democracy of Wikipedia has to put up with vandals who have no lives. And why is this discussion on the Reference Desk? Corvus cornix_talk 03:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an historical document. This is the right place to discuss historical documents. Sappysap (talk) 03:14, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Why don't you write a historic essay on your historic userpage and invite some historic comments there? Nothing historic is going to happen here as a result of your historic question. :P --- tqbf 14:14, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Oligarchy in action lmaof! Here we go to the much-much less read village. Ah, thank you random admin/editor, for proving the point I was hoping to disprove: Wikipidea is not at all an historical document created by the masses. It is, in fact, ruled by an Oligarchy. Contributers unite against the oppression!! Sappysap (talk) 03:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Oligarchies are boring. I suggest a theocracy. All hail Jimbo!. Dragons flight (talk) 03:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Quite boring, indeed, when the page you prescribe about Jimbo is impervious to edits. Sappysap (talk) 03:38, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions for improving bans

Because of a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Matthew_Hoffman/Evidence#Suggestion, some ideas for improving blocks and bans, especially long term blocks and bans have emerged:

For example, how about:

• A requirement that all blocks be at most a year in length

• Some sort of automatic neutral review of all blocks

• A mandatory waiting period of 1-2 weeks before a long term block is certified

• A requirement that several people, maybe including a minimum number of other admins, sign off on a long term block to certify it

• Submission of all long term blocks to a committee of admins for certification

In addition, for example, if someone is blocked right now, there really is not a clear path for the blocked editor to take. One can appeal the block, and then more often than not, the person appealing gets a terse note from someone who does not want to be bothered, and is just left frustrated if a mistake was made.

I think that all long term blocks should be reviewed automatically by a committee, or need certification by other editors and/or administrators to implement it. I think something as onerous as an RfC might be too much. However, the hole here obviously is that one admin, maybe distracted, was able to make a short term block, and then make it a long term block and although he did post a notice of it, no one was forced to look at the situation to make sure it was proper.

Also, the blocked editor's pleas for assistance or pardon went unheard since he did not know who to contact for assistance. I can only imagine the frustration. There needs to be standard way for blocked editors to get their case reviewed, and a clear path for them to follow.

Comments?--Filll (talk) 03:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I think American (and, I suppose, international) law gives us some precedent for how long a ban from an individual admin can last: habeas corpus. We make the one admin ban equal to how long a prisoner can be held w/o trial in most countries, then refer the case to some sort of wiki judiciary. For example, nine admins could be randomly picked for every ban case (limits for who can be picked could take the form of judicial jurisdiction by subject area if you want the judges familiar with what is being edited).--75.69.118.1 (talk) 04:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This seems uncessarily beurocratic. Some people are permablocked for very good reasons, and often in such large numbers, that the above process would cause MAJOR problems, for example, Username violations or vandalism-only accounts. IPs are almost never perma-blocked; good and established users are almost never permanently blocked execpt for outstanding reasons. I really don't see any need for this. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 07:20, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree that the above is probably too bureaucratic - however unfair indef blocks were a problem for me just after I joined Wikipedia - I was indef blocked 25 June 2007, I would argue unfairly (see my contributions here [9] to judge for yourself) and was a newbie at the time. The whole experience nearly caused me to leave Wikipedia (not helped by the fact that I still get treated with distrust on here by some editors and admins because I have a block on my record). The blocking admin failed to respond to any of my emails and it took me a while to figure out how to appeal the block. (Fortunately a fair minded Admin reviewed the block). Not sure what the answer is (if I knew I'd suggest it) I don't think its the current system and I don't think its the suggestion made above either - maybe its somewhere in between? Kelpin (talk) 10:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

And all we'd need is ~50 000 more admins. I presume your plan includes where to find those? WilyD 12:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The plan as proposed seems impossible to implement. However (and I have issued a few indef blocks myself), if it were possible to implement a review of indefinite blocks, that might not be a bad idea. I'm not sure how many of those we get in a day, but if they could be highlighted as new pages are so that a reviewing admin could mark them as patrolled, that might well be a good checks & balance system. I say that with no knowledge whatsoever of how such a system could be implemented, if it could be implemented, or if there is some good reason why it would be utterly unworkable. :) Alternatively, I wonder if the block appeal process could be made more transparent, with a bot launched to leave notices when the blocking admins don't. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:25, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Checking, in the last hour there have only been nine indef blocks, which is less than I would've suspected. I suppose it's early in North America, where most editors are. Still, I probably overestimated the number of reviewing admins. —Preceding unsigned comment added by WilyD (talk • contribs) 13:31, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

there is a very wide range of practices between different admins in block length, and threshold, & it would be interesting to do a study, even manually. DGG (talk) 20:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Rc-cola-bottle.JPG

The following is a quote copied from a user's talk page as placed by User:BetacommandBot:

Thanks for uploading Image:Rc-cola-bottle.JPG. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 17:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This threat to routinely speedy delete obviously valid fair use material is egregious. It is a picture of a soda bottle taken by one of our editors for the purpose of illustrating an article about the product. Some one is out of control here with the bot, and this should stop! --Kevin Murray (talk) 18:10, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The image description page didn't say what article the rationale was for (and the image was used on a page it should not have been used on, Caramel color.) —Random832 19:20, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This is not a reason for deletion. It is a reason to fix the problem. --Kevin Murray (talk) 21:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

and for good measure I'm going to go edit {{no fair}} to make it more clear what the problem usually is. —Random832 19:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Drop the vendetta against trivia.

I'm sorry to inform you of this, but Wikipedia will never be widely accepted as an academic source of information. I don't understand the goal of "encyclopedic style" if it does nothing. You seek to make wikipedia respectable to those that will never respect it (researchers) at the expense of those that appreciate it for what it is (the internet culture). These newly or more strongly enforced policies such as "no triva" and "real world notability" only harm the site wikipedia used to be. It doesn't make any sense to scorn what you have.

Many people come here for the trivia, and only the trivia. Others only come here to read countless episode summaries of their favorite shows. By integrating or deleting trivia, and merging episode summaries, you slap these people in the face. Eventually Wikipedia will do nothing but outsource to other sites, and I don't want that. In the goal of making yourself more encyclopedic, you have alienated a good portion of your fanbase. Stop trying to be Britanica, and go back to the old Wikipedia we knew and loved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.184.82.235 (talk) 20:12, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

You mean the old Wikipedia of before the time when people began adding fancruft like crazy? ¶ dorftrottel ¶ talk ¶ 20:25, December 5, 2007

No, I mean the wikipedia that didn't have a mile long stick up its ass. It was a hell of a lot better than what we have now.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.184.82.235 (talk • contribs)

If you can provide some evidence that filling Wikipedia with references in Family Guy and minor video game characters is better to the public at large than reliably sourced information, people might be more inclined to take suggestions like this seriously. Mr.Z-man 21:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

There are alternative outlets for what you speak about. Also, trivia is simply used as term to describe a certain type of content. If you read the guideline, you would see that it advises you to find ways to properly add this stuff to an article in well written prose. If something cannot be integrated, then most likely, it's not useful information for an encyclopedia, and you should find another place that was intended for keeping the kind of information that you want to keep. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

That's the thing, people don't want prose, people want the trivia section. Who cares if its useful or not? This place was built on the idea of fun and useless information. As to appealing to the public at large, they aren't coming to wikipedia for information, they come for casual entertainment (usually via browsing obscure video game pages and Family Guy character pages). If people want serious, encyclopedic information, they aren'y coming here. I have no problem splitting the focus to include both serious information and "limited interest" info, yet Wikipedia seems hellbent on only dealing with the first type of information. Why I ask? It serves no purpose. Your space is damn near unlimited, and no one is going to take you seriously... ever. Let the "pointless" articles stand, or alienate a good portion of your fanbase, for no reason. Your choice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.184.82.235 (talk)

If you know of a better site, go to it. If you think you can run this one better and the people here won't listen to you, fork it and start your own. It's your right under a free licence. The rest of us will stay here and write an encyclopedia. Marnanel (talk) 02:19, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

"This place was built on the idea of fun and useless information." - Says who? I believe it was started as an encyclopedia. Mr.Z-man 02:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe he has us mixed up with Bulbapedia. Now that's fun and useless information (No insult to WP:PCP; I jest). -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} —Preceding comment was added at 02:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Deletion template

The template {{AFDWarning}} is but automatically on people's talk pages to inform them that a page they were involved in has been dropped on AFD. I believe it is overly verbose for the task; for instance, since it will often be sent to long-term editors, there really is no need for it to explain how signatures work. I'd like to prune it to the essentials, but would like some outside opinion on that. >Radiant< 23:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

We have {{AFDWarningNew}} for telling new users about stuff like signing. We don't need the template for established editors to explain things for the newbies. FunPika 23:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of hoaxes

Currently, there is no good way to speedily delete hoaxes. There have been suggestions to delete them as pure vandalism (G3) and nonsense (G1). They both need stretching to accomodate this. I for one am very much opposed to stretching speedy criteria. It either conforms to the CSD, or it doesn't. What triggered me to suggest adding this criterion, is this AfD. The correspondings articles talk page indicates good faith, which rules out vandalism. Nonsense shold only be applied to completely incoherent things. The WP:CSD explicity declare that hoaxes are not speedily deletable as nonsense. A new speedy category for unreferenced hoaxes would fill this gap. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 00:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Bad idea. Sometimes what seems to be an obvious hoax is true. Note that the article linked was originally created under its English title and deleted twice as an obvious hoax. The only problen is that it was true and created by one of our most esteemed editors. Dsmdgold (talk) 00:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

So who was so ignorant as to delete an article on a famous piece by a famous composer? I think we should be told! DuncanHill (talk) 01:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Look in the deletion log under the English title (literal translation).Dsmdgold (talk)

{After some confusion caused by American donkey-related spelling differences) - good lord, 2 admins both of whom are normally a lot better than that! I think people will have noticed I do have a bit of a beef with the way some speedies are handled, and this is an excellent example of admins acting in good faith but invincible ignorance. DuncanHill (talk) 11:15, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Dsmdgold; take a second and search AfD for "hoax"; once you get past the AfDs for articles with "hoax" in the name, there are plenty of hoaxes with "keep" votes. Keep votes in AfD seems like prima facie evidence that speedy is inapplicable, even if virtually all of these articles lose. --- tqbf 01:09, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

(E/Cx2) I have personally come across a number of articles tagged as hoaxes (and listed under G1 or G3) that were indeed not at all; just seemingly outlandish to the tagger. One that comes to mind (I can't remember the title and a Google search wasn't helpful) was about the practice in China of making tiny cages for crickets or cricket fighting or something like that. I found a New York Times article about the subject in about 2 seconds and if memory serves (it was a really long time ago), placed a reference and removed the speedy. I'm not against such a criteria per se. I see a lot of hoaxes and have deleted them invoking WP:IAR (I no longer attempt to stretch existing criteria and, like you, dislike the practice; I link to IAR in my deletion summary on those occasions instead of invoking a criterion that does not apply) but only after doing some due diligence—even when the subject strikes me as something "that-just-has-to-be-a-hoax". The question, then, is how to make the criteria specific enough so that it is objective, and uncontestable such that almost all articles that can be deleted using the rule, should be deleted. I would propose, if this has any traction, that we would need at least the following elements: 1) No sources listed in the article whatever, including putative sources such as external links; 2) the subject must clearly be intended to describe something real but false, and could not reasonably be an out of context plot summary, device or description based on a fictional work; and 4) something else which I haven't thought of--there has to be some due diligence requirement or something else which more stringently rules out the obscure but real. This is really the sticking point. We need that x-criteria for this to be viable. Otherwise, we will see obscure subjects speedily deleted too often.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:10, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I understand your sentiments, but the same goes for A7. It is up to the deleting admin to check if the tag is actualy correct. Your 'obvious hoax' should be checked, and found not to be such an obvious hoax. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 01:14, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

As an admin, I judiciously apply WP:IAR and speedy them anyway. (For the record, I do Google first.) I suspect that it would be difficult to construct a new speedy criterion circumscribed enough to be acceptable, yet broad enough to be both useful and worth having. Admins should be prepared to use common sense, albeit at their own risk. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

To directly reply to that, it would be far preferable to be able to speedily delete an article per CSD-HOAX, than IAR. Especialy since hoaxes are so common. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 01:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

(ECx2)Because of an edit conflict I wasn't yet replying to fuhgettaboutit. I looked at some AfD's. The ones that were obvious hoaxes didn't have keep votes, apart from creators, and first edits. The ones that did have keep votes were being discussed as notable hoaxes, the subject being the hoax, and how it's notable, or hoaxes that weren't so obvious. I'd like to stress again, that I propose a criterion for obvious hoaxes, not hoaxes in general. It would be a helpfull addition to the criteria, and like you say, it is possible to put some restraints on it. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 01:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

You don't think this is going to be routinely abused by good-faith editors? Lots of "obvious hoaxes" are notable; I understand that when you say "obvious hoax", you mean, "obvious hoax wikipedia articles", but that's because I'm taking the time to think about it. --- tqbf 01:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't actually, not on the hoax as the subject of the article front. The criterion itself can expressly state something to the effect that it only applies to hoaxes attempting to be perpetrated on Wikipedia. Real life hoaxes as the subject of articles are quite rare so the potential for misapplication as to them would be rare in any event, and I don't think many admins could fail to see that commonsense distinction, which is much easier to comprehend than say, the numerous users who can't seem to get the distinction between an assertion of importance and evidence of notability.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Given that there are admins (or at least one) who was willing to delete a referenced article on a real piece of music, merely because it had a vulgar title, at a time when hoaxes were explicitly not a speedy criterion, having a hoaxes as speedy criterion will lead to many valid, but unlikely sounding articles being tagged and deleted. Expecting the admin to do a google search is no cure. I once had an article on an illuminated manuscript sent to VfD (now AfD) in the days before CSD because another editor did not know how to use the British Library catalogs. He looked (in the wrong catalog) didn't find it, and sent it to AfD, despite the fact that the article had a reference (to a book). If hoaxes were a speedy criterion back then, he would have slapped a template on it, an admin would have looked at google and the BL catalogs, not found it and zapped it. Dsmdgold (talk) 05:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes, a clearly outlandish hoax can be nailed as either pure vandalism or nonsense (an article about a Martian landing on Jupiter, a fifty-foot-tall dust mite, or Mozart using a fusion-powered amplifier), but generally if it's at least plausible it should go to AfD for further investigation. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:41, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Having read your comments, and having slept on it, I have come up with the following: Unsourced material that is challenged should be removed from articles without question, or as Jimbo put it (from WP:V) "I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons." What I call a hoax, is an article that completely complies to this criterion: the entire article is unsourced, and the truthfullness of the claims in the article as a whole are challenged. This could build up to the following criterion for speedy deletion:

CSD A4, clearly false information:

1. The article has no sources at all, and
2. the thruthfullness of the subject of the article is strongly disputed.

The second criterion could also be put as 'the article is clearly false'.

The second part of the proposed criterion is open for interpetation, I know, but not much more so than G3, 10, 11, and 12, and especialy A7, which I often see misused at the moment, but in the meantime is the most powerfull, and probably most used criterion at the moment. If it is at all more open to interpetation.

I still quite dislike the idea of speedily deleting an article for vandalism, if there is even a sliver of the possibility that the edit is made in good faith. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:07, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't solve the problem of subjectivity or obscurity at all. It's basically a restatement of "I really (really) think it's a hoax."--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes and no. yes, Which is basicly no different from "I really (really) think this is advertising/vandlism/this copyright infringement is unsalvigable/the article doesn't sufficiently indicate its subjects notability". And no, there is also the requirement of being unsourced, which is a hard test. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:29, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Lack of sourcing in an article is an argument for cleanup, not deletion, as is drilled into me every time I write "unsourced" in an AfD. I get what you mean in context here, but if you can't even word the CSD directly, it's probably not workable. --- tqbf 13:40, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Lack of sourcing of credible statements is an argument for cleanup. Lack of sources for claims that are believed to be false, so no sources can be found is an argument for removal. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:45, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I misspoke. I'm talking about lack of sources in the article, and you're talking about people coming to the consensus that sources cannot be found to corroborate an article's claims, something that the AfD process does better than individual editors and overworked admins slogging through a backlog. --- tqbf 13:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Please could someone let other admins know that lack of sourcing of credible statements is an argument for cleanup, not deletion? DuncanHill (talk) 13:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course, some of us would like to see sourcing enforced more tightly (as in, "Cite the source or remove the material"). Currently, it's really our only core policy with no teeth, other than a wink-wink "Hey, cite a source, sometime, really, we mean it. But don't you dare actually do anything if someone fails to." It's really unfortunate, an unenforced policy may as well not be one. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, especially concerning biographies. We have tons and tons of completely unsourced biographical articles, which comprise a disaster waiting to happen. Yes, there's WP:BLP. But not all incorrect statements are obvious, much less so obviously "contentious" as to fall under the deletion guidelines of WP:BLP Raymond Arritt (talk) 17:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I would strongly oppose adding this to the list of speedy deletion criteria. Ideally, speedy deletion should be an objective evaluation. This one is just way too subjective to have one person making that determination. -Chunky Rice (talk) 17:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Chunky. Also note that comunity consensus for hoaxes can come out as keep, eg. Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2007 May 2#2007 Martian invasion of Earth .E2.86.92 Irregular_Webcomic!. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Taemyr (talk • contribs) 17:40, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of usernames at request, after move to new GDFL license?

Will it be possible to delete usernames at owner's request, after moving to the new GDFL license which will be compatible with CC?

The current policy prohibiting username deletions is there on the ground of GDFL requiring all authors be permanently attributed, which means that deleting a username will remove the attribution from edits, violating GDFL. The CC license, however, allows usernames requesting no attribution. Would it be possible for a person to request deleting his/her username, together with explicitly agreeing and requesting that all their past edits under that usernames never be attributed?

In fact, unless I'm not mistaken, the CC license has a provision where a person requesting no further attribution obliges users of derivative work to honor his/her quest, which in turn seems like deleting usernames (or least permanently hiding them from edit history) would be required for WP to be compatible with the license. 01:18, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know the technical details of the GFDL versus CC attribution. I'm not in favor of making it possible for contributors to remove their username from edits because it's too easy for this ability to be abused, and it will waste the time of admins and bureaucrats. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 17:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair-use images on the userpage of the uploading user?

If a user uploads an image with a valid fair-use rationale for some article, but then includes it in a gallery of "pictures I have uploaded" on their userpage, is this OK? It seems to me to be a violation of the fair-use policy; clearly there can be no fair-use rationale for using the image on the userpage. Should I just go in and remove the image from the userpage and leave a note, or should I leave a note for the user asking them to remove it themselves? - htonl (talk) 01:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

You have it right; it is not okay. Fair use pictures cannot be used in places the fair use is not the subject of, which includes userpages. See Wikipedia:User page#What may I not have on my user page? and Wikipedia:Removal of fair use images#Fair use images on lists of contributions. I would go ahead and remove it, and leave a note on talk, but also replace the image with a link to the image (just place a colon before the name and remove the image markup extras). That way you are telling them through action, "you can still be proud and list your work, just not in that manner..."--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:09, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

No original research

There are a number of active proposals for Wikipedia:No original research.

• WT:NOR#Proposal: just change the terms primary-->raw and secondary-->interpretive. A proposal to change the terminology used in WP:PSTS.
• WT:NOR#Revisiting a proposal. A proposed rewrite of WP:PSTS. Based on a recent proposal that generated broader support than previous attempts to reach consensus. Revised according to feedback received and concerns expressed.
• WT:NOR#Using sources. A proposal for an additional small subsection about using sources.
• WT:NOR#For clarity. This section has a good set of links for those wanting to get a better idea of the ongoing discussions and controversy surrounding WP:PSTS.

Feedback and constructive comments are quite welcome. Vassyana (talk) 03:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Transclusion of user talk pages.

[10]. Ignoring for the moment the removal of the warning, is there a policy against this. It seems sort of abusive. Taemyr (talk) 14:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I was a little worried when I saw it that the user was trying to trick visiting administrators into blocking ClueBot or some such rubbish, but then I realized that, thanks to the {{{BASEPAGENAME}}} attribute, pushing the big red button blocks the user instead.

That being said, I don't think that there is a specific policy against it--there's nothing in WP:UP or WP:TP that covers this. However, I've gone ahead and undone the transclusion based on the fact that it misrepresents the user and their interactions on Wikipedia, which is against the purpose of a userpage. As for the policy issue, I'm a little wary of extending policy to cover this. --jonny-mt^(t)_(c)I'm on editor review! 15:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Fake messages banner

User:Redmarkviolinist contains a simulated "You have new messages" banner, which is a bit iffy under this policy. I deleted the banner [11], and this was then undone. He then left a rather rude, inaccurate message on my talkpage. The banner is very realistic, and certainly fooled me - thus I would suggest that we form a consensus to remove it.--Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 16:07, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Lots of discussion here on the topic. --Onorem♠Dil 16:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I know, I saw that, and I referred the user to it in my edit summary. But I don't want to get into a dispute, so I'd like some fresh opinions on whether or not it is allowed. The policy I listed says to "avoid" them except for essential testing uses, and he certainly qualifies under that. Would someone else maybe enter dialogue with him?--Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 16:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

This was also mentioned above yesterday. I do not see anything wrong with it, the worst thing that could happen is that you fall for it, which wastes one second of your time but puts a smile on your face. JayKeaton (talk) 20:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

What is rude or inaccurate about the message he left you? --Kbdank71 (talk) 20:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

This is not really a proper venue for this discussion. An appropriate forum to get community feedback on whether an editor's behavior violates existing policy is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. — Satori Son 21:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

As above this isn't the correct place for it, but as above THAT I have to aree with Kbdank71... what was rude or inaccurate about the message he left you? I know that accusing someone else of bad faith IS bad faith in itself, but.. your claims against him that you left here about his message seem to have been made in bad faith JayKeaton (talk) 22:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Obituary satisfy WP:N?

Does an obituary alone satisfy WP:N? I'm looking at Bunny Roger, where that's the only source mentioned. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 20:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

It depends on what type of obituary it is. Some obituaries are paid advertisements, which means they are essentially self-published and should not be used to establish notability. In other cases, the newspaper assigns someone to write an obituary of a famous person, and that would fall under the heading of reporting, so it would be considered a reliable source and could be used to establish notability. In this particular example, since there is a byline for the obit, I would assume it was written by a reporter. In that case, it can be used to establish notability. Karanacs (talk) 21:03, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Right - I think I understand that. But is a reliable source obituary sufficient to establish notability? Doesn't notability require "multiple independent sources"? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 21:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Notability, multiple sources are highly encouraged, but if the depth of coverage is sufficient, then a single non-paid (i.e., independent) obituary should be establish notability. Karanacs (talk) 21:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Nationality consensus

There is a - let's call it a debate - going on in J. K. Rowling about whether she should be listed as "English" or "British". A user has appealed to a "wiki-consensus" that English (or Scottish or whatever) should be used in ledes, rather than "British". Can someone point me to where this consensus is spelled out? It reads very oddly to me, like referring to someone as Californian, or British Columbian, or New South Welsh (?Walean ?sp) or Bavarian or ... you see what I mean. It is fine in the body of the article, but tends to bring up too many complexities to go in the lede. Rachel Pearce (talk) 21:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

England is a country. California is not. JayKeaton (talk) 22:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes but the Manual of Style for biographies (point 3 of the section on Opening paragraphs) says:

Nationality (In the normal case this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen or national, or was a citizen when the person became notable. Ethnicity should generally not be emphasized in the opening unless it is relevant to the subject's notability.)

Well no-one has English citizenship nor English nationality. However much one might wish otherwise... Just as no-one has Californian citizenship. Rachel Pearce (talk) 01:24, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that's wrong. US citizens resident in California are also citizens of California. See the US Constitution, 14th Amendment.

As for the debate, it seems to me that there are two possible policies that would make sense.

1. Leads should normally identify people in terms of independent countries in preference to their divisions -- that is, "UK author" or "British author" and not "English author" or "Scottish author". But the divisions should be mentioned if the person is notable for political, sports, or other activities specifically in relation to that division... which does not apply to Rowling.
2. Identify the person the way they would identify themselves.

[Note: "British" is used as an adjective for "UK" as well as for "Britain" or "Great Britain", and I meant it in that sense here.]

(A Canadian born in England) --207.176.159.90 (talk) 01:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)