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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, use the proposals section.

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


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communication = notification be phone [or even] eMail and at least Snailmail

why not ALERT a user that [at the worst] our 'TOPIC' is about to be deleted or [ the LEASTE] an important responce is in your Bit-Bucket ? ! ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by UNiRaC (talk • contribs)

Wait, what? Are you saying you want us to send you a postcard before AfDing "your" page? No. A talk page posting and maybe an e-mail is more than sufficient. --tjstrf talk 06:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But most of the time, users don't even get a notification on their talkpage when an article is AfD'd. Admins just use their arbitrary powers to delete anything they don't like. Walton monarchist89 10:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please (re)read WP:AGF - the view of most of us here, I believe, is that admins try their best (and usually succeed) in being objective about deletions.
Having said that, I do think that it could be a major improvement to have an automated system post a message on user talk pages (as is done, for example, with the Signpost), for, say, the person who created the article (but does NOT, as noted by someone else, own the article), and also post the same message on the talk pages of (say) the last ten editors (or, alternatively, anyone editing the page in the last 30 or 60 or 90 days). John Broughton | Talk 14:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There are huge numbers of editors who fix typos, refine categories and DAB wikilinks on pages they have not made major content changes on. No bot could distinguish them from actual content editors. I would think most of them would be, uh, less than thrilled to start getting their Talk pages filled with notices like this. Fan-1967 14:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Let's keep things simple. Users want their page in good condition : they respect our policy and they put the page in their watchlist. They may use RSS too - see VP:Tech. -- DLL .. T 18:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While a notification to primary contributors is nice and appreciated , no user is under any obligation to do so, because users don't own the pages they contribute to. ^demon[omg plz] 22:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I personally always leave a message on the talk page of the user most active (if he is not the creator) if i have left an AFD on his article. Generally most articles to be AFD's are very recent in creation, so the creator will still see the tag or his talk page message. And if not, there are always other users who seem to get the word around, esp. with wikiprojects watching all of their own articles. I personally think the system works well. From articles I have seen AFD'd or AFD'd myself, if the user wants to contest it he has always found out pretty quickly and added the hang on template. SGGH 11:29, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I especially commend this when it is a newbie, and more stronly when it is the first article. Note {{Firstarticle|Page name}} is available so one doesn't need to come up with text, but I personally try to add a detailed discussion of the reason that we want to delete certain kinds of articles. Sometimes the newbie still accuses me of being stupid and arbitrary (and usually mistakes me for an admin), but sometimes it helps. Robert A.West (Talk) 23:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Contacting users for academic surveys.

Should requests made to user_talk pages, article talk pages, and/or emailing editors be prohibited? Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Spam#Academic user surveys. -- Jeandré, 2006-12-17t10:36z

The best term to wrap up cities, towns, villages, etc.

I won't get into what's been happening with top-level U.S. state categories lately (as I don't want to treat this like a dispute), but I'd like to know what fellow Wikipedians think. Should we wrap up subcategories for cities, towns, villages, etc. into a top-level category for "settlements" or should we use something like "political subdivisions" or "administrative divisions". All of these connote certain things, but I just wanted to get others' opinions on this. Thanks! Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 17:45, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Settlements seems to be the best word to wrap up cities, towns, villages, etc. into one category, in my opinion. Political subdivisions and administrative divisions would seem to include only those locations that are politically recognized and would include things like counties, states, provinces, etc. On the other hand, Settlements limits the subcategories to concentrations of people and excludes counties, states, provinces, etc.--Bobblehead 18:53, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How about "populated areas"? User:Zoe|(talk) 23:58, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'll go ahead and say what I think is optimal, although I don't want to stop others' ideas from flowing. I'm thinking "community" or perhaps even "polity" (although, that's kind of a flighty word). A city and a county can both be communities. What sounds less absurd, the Louisville community, or the Louisville settlement? With counties: the Jefferson County community, or the Jefferson County settlement? I'm going by connotations here, and community has a more authentic ring to it. Even "populated area" sounds more authentic than settlement when looking at it this way. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 00:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Counties are effectively communities, like cities are communities. Not all space in any of these entities are full of residential space ("human habitations"), but also include commercial and industrial zoning, as well as farmland and even much unused land in many cases. "Community" would apply to everything beneath a region level. I think that normally in the Wikipedia we go with more inclusive categories. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 18:03, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, not according to Community, which specifically excludes cities, let along anything higher from the definition of community. WP reflects the commonly understood meaning and use of the term. Also see Category:Community and Category:Communities Hmains 21:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we need to find a better word than 'settlement'. That's the bottom line. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How about "localities"? Admittedly, that could include other local administrative units such as counties, or unpopulated areas, but it might be better than "settlements" (which does have a whiff of the frontier about it, to my ears at least). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I like "localities." It's also used by DMOZ, where categories are the be-all and end-all of the project and therefore category naming issues get a great deal more attention. -- Visviva 04:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"[T]he term 'locality' is used by the United States Board on Geographic Names to refer to the name of a place that is neither a legally incorporated or defined entity (like a township or city), nor a specific geographical feature such as a river or mountain." So there's that to contend with. Postdlf 05:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Postdlf, can you point me to where the U.S. Board on Geographic Names uses the term "locality"? I haven't been able to find it used anywhere on their site. They do use the term "locale", although I haven't come across a definition for it either. older ≠ wiser 13:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That doesn't seem like a problem to me: I assume that the USBGN uses "locality" for that because there isn't any other, more specific name for such places. All places are localities, so if you have a place that isn't a town, city, river, mountain or whatever, you can just call it a "locality". Merriam-Webster defines "locality" as:
  1. the fact or condition of having a location in space or time
  2. a particular place, situation, or location
and the Compact OED gives:
  1. an area or neighbourhood
  2. the position or site of something
Does that satisfy our purposes? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:23, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I like 'localities' a lot. It's much more contemporary in usage than 'settlements' and it can include cities, towns, counties, neighborhoods, etc. Also, while the USBGN point is well-taken, I also accept the broader definition, and we shouldn't be US-centric anyway. As far as 'settlements' is concerned, that should apply to settlements in the vain of non-permanent locations where humans settled; in other words, it would largely have a historical bent. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 01:09, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Two thoughts. One, I'm not sure what the problem with "settlements" is. It does have connotations of smallness or non-modernness or colonialism, but the United Nations Human Settlements Programme [1] seems to subsume all sizes of human habitats within its scope. Second, the term "locality" does not very well cover large areas. It strikes me as decidely odd to consider places like New York City or London as a "locality". This applies to non-urban areas as well, where some levels of local government encompass large swaths of sparsely populated areas that often include widely separated and distinct communities within them. I don't think either term works well with such entities. older ≠ wiser 04:14, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's true, but I think that "locality" fits New York or London somewhat better than "settlement" does. I agree that neither word is perfect, but I think "locality" has less baggage than "settlement". —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I'm slightly inclined towards "settlements" as the more inclusive term for populated places and thus less poor-fitting for large urban areas like NYC or London. I think it fits less well for those rather arbitrarily defined geographic subdivisions that do not correspond to human population centers. OTOH, "locality", to me, fits both types of areas poorly for two reasons, 1) locality has the connotation of a human-scale point in space, larger-scale places seem rather out of place described as "localities"; 2) there is nothing inherent in the term "locality" that implies a populated place -- a locality could be a rock or a crossroads. older ≠ wiser 13:09, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not married to the term 'locality'. I just would like to see a term that's inclusive and doesn't carry the connotative baggage that 'settlement' does. Also, we don't have to necessarily combine populated localities (cities, villages, etc.) with geographic subdivisions (counties, metro areas, etc.) -- it's not a bad thing to have these separated. I look to the moment when Wikipedia decided on the somewhat sterile, but baggage-free category naming "People of...". I think we need to do this again with "Settlements of...", renaming to something like "Populated localities of...". Sure, there will be some huge populated localities, such as New York, but I don't think we should let a few exceptions constrain the guideline we come up with. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, both terms, settlement and locality, have aspects that make them problematic as catch-all terms. Perhaps what you're going for is "populated places" (which I think is somewhat more generic and less narrow than "populated locality"). Regarding your comment about not needing to combine populated locatities from geographic subdivisions -- the problem is that the distinction is not always very clear. In many states, Towns and Townships were created as geographic subdivisions of the County. These entities often cover large geographic areas and can encompass multiple distinct communities. However, at the other extreme, these entities can become indistinguishable from cities. There is no clear line distinguishing them. If some townships are categorized as populated places (or localities or whatever), they logically would all have to be classified as such, even though some townships cover hundreds of square miles and have an extremely low population density. older ≠ wiser 17:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"Populated place" sounds workable. I don't know if it should matter whether a populated place has a particular density, as long as it's generally regarded as a populated place. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 22:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes baggage must be discarded for forward movement to happen. A quick google search of 'human settlement' seems to show that this 'is' a collective term for 'cities, towns, and the like'. Please check and also remember English dictionaries are not 'prescriptive', they are 'descriptive' and sometimes take time to catch up to actual usage. Thanks Hmains 02:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Check the archives for Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities, as I think this topic has been discussed and decided there. (SEWilco 04:17, 22 January 2007 (UTC))[reply]
I don't believe that wikiprojects have the authority to make decisions for the entirety of Wikipedia. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 22:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My mistake. Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements) has been discussing names of populated locations. (SEWilco 05:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC))[reply]
I place a much higher weight on connotation, obviously, and I think others are seeing this argument too. I would hope that nobody would marry themselves to a specific term, as changing over to a new one can be simply accomplished by a bot. Just because a word is defined a certain way doesn't make it the best word for our use. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 22:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For references, the United Nations Stastical Division uses "locality", which they define here and [2]. More details can be found in the actual Methodology documentation. --Polaron | Talk 06:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, the Canadian practice has generally been to use "communities" as the general parent, and then to group specific types of communities in the appropriate subcategories ("cities", "towns", "townships", "villages", etc.) A "community" that isn't incorporated as a municipality in and of itself, but is instead nested within a larger "community", would be either left directly in "communities", or subcategorized as "communities in (appropriate census division)". Again, not that the US has to use the same categorization scheme, but I offer it as food for thought nonetheless. Bearcat 22:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism

NPOV = mainstream only?

Not sure if this is the right place to post this... but we have two editors on the Kriss Donald article effectively claiming that NPOV=MPOV (mainstream point of view) and that only a mainstream adherent counts as a "prominent adherent" from the viewpoint of a news article (thus for instance, critical academics and even some mainstream journalists are excluded). The first user claims anything other than MPOV is "tiny minority" while the latter claims anything other than MPOV is "original research". I don't think this is Wikipedia policy, can't find either policy or precedent for it, and frankly the situation is past a joke - I'm well aware my edits required some work on style, removal of inadvertent weasel words etc., but this is different from claiming the kind of material I inserted (in particular, the actual sources I referred to) is inappropriate as such. It was things like: official trial defence reported in mainstream press, racial politics specialist writing in political magazine, BBC investigative journalist in special report, anti-racist group commenting on broader context.

Is there any chance an admin or someone familiar with NPOV disputes could have a look at this? If NPOV=MPOV really is Wikipedia policy then I'll bow out but I'm very concerned about what's going on. Please have a look at my edits, and my comments (on NPOV=MPOV and the summary of arguments), rather than just the latest version of the article.

-82.19.5.150 08:53, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They are trying to intimidate you hoping that you don't know the rules. In most cases, mainstream sources should make up the thrust of the main premise, but non-mainstream sources are fully acceptable everywhere else (eg, don't use a non-MPOV for as your primary source, but it can be used either to agree with it or to dispute it)

(user did not sign)

Yes, I figured NPOV=MPOV was a very dodgy reading of policy. I raised it here because third-party contributors have not always been very supportive of me, including one who embraced the NPOV=MPOV position and several others who ignored that dispute and picked up on other flaws in what I'd written. The talk has got bogged down in nit-picking so it's hard for someone coming fresh to it to figure out the exact stakes.

The user who claims NPOV=MPOV is also edit-warring (both vs me and others) and repeatedly reverts to blank the contested section. He's just started doing so again today. I'm not sure what to do because if I revert back he just blanks again, requesting third opinions has so far been unproductive, the user is refusing compromises etc. -Ldxar1 23:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What to do is to follow Wikipedia:Resolving disputes. Third opinions are a first step, then there is RfC and then mediation. If all those fail to get stop those who are disruptive editors, then the Arbitration Committee will deal with the issue. -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 19:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use question

I will admit that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the image policies. I write/de-stub a lot of articles about living composers. As everyone knows, it can be tough to find free images of living people who are not super famous and in every tabloid. If there is a publicity headshot of a composer on the website of s/his publisher, and that same publicity shot is reproduced across the net whenever you do an image search for him/her, is it within the fair use criteria to use that piture in and only in the article about the composer? Always yes, always no? Please advise! Thanks-Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 20:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe. Fair use is about as grey a grey area as you can find in copyright law, which is one reason we try to stay away from it. --Carnildo 20:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think fair use has gone too far. If you can produce an image of a person, then it shouldn't qualify a picture of the person as fair use. I would not doubt that emailing the publisher for a GDFL (CC or whatever) license on a image would get promptly declined. Then why should this "fair-use" be put into effect if it's essentially illegal and not wanted, especially on an encyclopedia that advocates being "free"? Now, eliminating all "fair-use" images may be ridiculous, not being able to include a needed historical picture impossible to be reproduced, but one can still make the argument that Wikipedia is still free and has no grounds to use the picture. There's a huge problem with this in actors and sports-people.
This is an area on Wikipedia I am displeased at. Not that Wikipedia would get sued, it's just that I don't think Wikipedia has correct permission to use many of these "fair use" images. And ignoring it or not reaching a consensus makes the problem even worse.++aviper2k7++ 21:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like a cumulative "no" to me. Here is a small dilemma: I am working on an article which I would sure love to improve to FA status (who wouldn't). However, no matter how well-written and comprehensive the article is, it seems nearly impossible, practically speaking, to get it to FA status if it is devoid of images, particularly an image of the subject. You may say "there's no rule saying FAs have to have images", but really, how many of them don't? I'm not really sure what to do.-Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 04:52, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Try to solicit permission for one of the few pictures that do exist. You probably won't get permission for the really nice headshots, but perhaps someone has a passable snapshot posted somewhere on the web (maybe on a photo sharing site like flickr). When you find one you like send an email to author asking them to release the picture under the GFDL or CC-by-sa. Explain it will be used in wikipedia, and that without their help wikipedia won't have an illustrated article. I have done this a few times, and I've found many photographers are excited to help out wikipedia without doing any real work. In fact, I've had a few jump at the chance to get their picture on wikipedia. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 08:54, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is an incorrect interpretation of fair use. First of all, valid fair use is never illegal, and doesn't require permission. Second, fair use does not require that it be impossible for you to produce the content on your own. Fair use content is unfree (and invalid fair use claims are illegal), so fair use should be avoided, but not to the extent you advocate. Superm401 - Talk 21:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fair use under United States copyright law doesn't require that it be impossible for a freely licensed alternative to be created, but the Wikipedia fair-use policy, which is intentionally stricter than U.S. copyright law, does require this. —Bkell (talk) 04:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ideally, however it's hard to say whether it's impossible to get a free version, or just difficult. Superm401 - Talk 06:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]


but the Wikipedia fair-use policy, which is intentionally stricter than U.S. copyright law, does require this.

There is a lot of discussion going on about the status of this policy on the talk page, by the way. — Omegatron 02:59, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why are we free?

If this is the wrong place to discuss this, forgive me, but I can't seem to find a better place.

This has bugging me for some time, and I can't really seem to understand it. Why do we strive so hard to make Wikipedia so completely free? I'm not talking about free to access, but free to take and use.

Why do we encourage derivative works such as how answers.com uses us when it will always be inferior to the actual article hosted on Wikipedia? Why can't we edit Wikipedia articles for Wikipedia? It seems stupid to not allow copyrighten images that we've obtained permission to use just because we can't let anyone else use them. It doesn't matter if someone mirrors the page, prints it in a book, or puts it on a CD. In the end, the online article will always be better, more up to date, and what people will actually use.

The goal may be to spread knowledge and information, but in reality it ends up stagnating it. How does having the same (but slightly inferior) information repeated accross a thousand other websites do anyone any good? I've actually come accross the problem of doing research on a subject, only to have difficulty finding original information because now everyone is too lazy to write their own summaries of a subject, as they can just use what Wikipedia has to say. Free information is bad, as it becomes the only information. Wikipedia is like the smart kid in class that lets everyone copy off of him, and now nobody else feels like doing their own homework anymore.

except it's not original research, wikipedia is just a compilation of info from other sources. So new work can still be done. Wikipedia just shares what is known.SpookyMulder 13:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's the ideal, but in my initial experience here, I've found that poorly referenced or uncited material used in some articles, often inaccurate, gets mirrored and repeated all across the web for long spans of time, so that later when the time comes to correct and improve an article, all the web hits seem to support the inaccurate original... it has "staked a claim" so to speak, and diseminated misinformation that's mirrored back in every search attempting to find more accurate data. An uncommon or improper word usage can become the most common word usage because so many people seem to turn to wikipedia as an authority on such matters. This of course, merely suggests that quality control in the early stages is more critical than some might think, and that crude research and arguments based on google hit counts are spurious.zadignose 19:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So aside from say, a teacher printing off a Wikipedia page to help teach class, how does being so free actually benefit anyone?--SeizureDog 10:30, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's part of an overarching ideal of the founders, the actual benefit is probably minimal. Read Copyleft.--tjstrf talk 10:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is an open content project, pure and simple. Many of us would not be here were that not the case. Why would I spend hundreds of hours of my time just to increase someone else's store of intellectual property? Even if that "someone" is a nonprofit foundation.
Re your wider point -- that free information is harmful -- I think the real problem is in accessibility rather than freeness. There are many proprietary sites that have a similar effect in specific fields; FishBase and AlgaeBase come to mind. Nobody wants to put the work into duplicating those sites' herculean efforts, not even on an open-content project such as Wikispecies. This is not really a huge problem, IMO; it's just part of the growth of human knowledge. -- Visviva 10:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree here. Having a free (even if a bit convoluted) license guarantees that the content will never die. If the Wikimedia Foundation does, someone can easily bring the project back to life. Moreover, the internet isn't even an option in some places, like Africa; making the project free lets people distribute it in whatever format they want. Several projects have made interesting uses of Wikipedia content offline. For example, there is a project to put article on iPods, and several CD projects. Also, some online forks of Wikipedia are interesting. Wikipedia can't satisfy everyone, so it's good that others can take our content for our own agenda. If you want to help Wikipedians enforce the GFDL, please see Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. On a related note to this, also see #Copyright below. Superm401 - Talk 21:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images on the main page (user experience)

The description page of images which appear on the main page should always contain a link to the English Wikipedia article the topic of the image so that when someone clicks on an image on the main page, they don't have to go back to click the link to the article about it. e.g. Image:Raccoon_(Procyon_lotor)_2.jpg does have a link, while Image:Playoffs_021_crop.jpg which currently appears on the main page has no link (currently) from the image description page to what it's about. I've been adding these links to wildlife-related images but it's quite frustrating that other sysops don't do it. It makes for a horrible user experience not having anywhere to go after blowing up an image of interest from the main page, and as the images descriptions are always locked, normal users cannot fix it. —Pengo talk · contribs 09:21, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Frustrating? A little I suppose. But really, how hard is it to hit backspace? --tjstrf talk 12:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good thing to remind people of, but if they miss it, you can always propose an edit on the talk page of the image with {{editprotected}}. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 12:31, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's a frustrating and confusing user experience straight off the main page, and it makes Wikipedia suck. Wikipedia might be a popular site, but disregard for user experience isn't going make anyone stick around. Making a link be policy would make Wikipedia suck less. Doing the "editprotected" thing is a good idea, except images don't appear on the main page that long, and users are already frustrated by the time a fix happens. —Pengo talk · contribs 03:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I actually totally agree here, it is really irritating and honestly doesn't benefit anybody.-Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 04:55, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Film Notability, and Notability in general

It seems we need a guideline to define notability for film articles. Currently, the guideline seems stalled out, but a few people are looking for input to get the process going again.

I have my own perspective, but limited experience in these matters. My first basic question is, "are the notability requirements on Wikipedia intentionally loose?" That is, is it preferred to have a largely open door policy that allows vast amounts of articles with little claim to notability, or is it preferred to set a high hurdle for articles to clear?

As it is, films generally get reviewed in multiple publications, which makes "multiple published works" apply to literally tens of thousands of films if we regard reviews as "non-trivial" and "reliable." The current films guideline seems to take this approach.

Other loose standards are permitted, including major studio releases of feature films, which again in itself allows tens of thousands of films, whether or not these can reasonably regarded as "notable." There is a clause allowing films released nationwide in a country (presumably this means commercial releases outside festivals), or on 200 screens worldwide (which is a hard hurdle to clear, but only denotes popularity, not notability).

I may be a lone voice in the wilderness, as many people seem to want a further loosening up of the standards before endorsing the guideline, whereas I think it needs very tough, strict standards, which I commented on here.

What's the general feeling on this? I'm I just being too much of a hard ass? Is simply having one's work flickered in front of the eyes of a few thousand people, a couple of whom hold pens in their hands, enough to ensure eternal notability? Can some kind of consensus be found?zadignose 15:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have any examples of film articles that you'd like a tightened notability guideline to exclude? Postdlf 16:11, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure if very strict criteria can be applied in films, but I am sure that Wikipedia:Notability (films) has to become reactivated. I have posted messages in various directions about it, but no one seems to be willing or able to tackle this problem. I know it would be very very hard to try to limit contributors. If notability for a film is simply that it has been screened or released in Home Video/DVD, we have a long and unsure way to go. Not very long ago, a WP Films member started adding endless lists of films from other countries. It took us quite an effort, including AfD's, to get them out of main namespace and into WP Films space. The result can be seen in the by-country lists here: WP Films/List of films without article, which I had originally started as a sub-project to deal with existing red-linked films (in filmographies and entered in various lists), some of which may be important, but not as critically important as films found in Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/List of notable films. The user has started filtering the "red" lists for notability (not sure by what exacly criteria) and an example of the results in main namespace can be seen here: List of Argentine films:1960s. I write all this to show to Village Pump that it is very hard to work without film notability guidelines. As project, we are nowhere close to defining them soon. We could surely use some expert help. Hoverfish Talk 16:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As for what should be excluded, I'm not sure. Is it fair to say "most of them?" Well, here are a few semi-randomly selected titles that we can discuss, regarding their notability:
And, yeah, I know I picked on troma films by including two of theirs.
I also know that one of the listed films was directed by Sean Penn, stars some famous actors, got some positive press, may even have been good, but it slipped between the cracks. There are a lot of such movies, and we have to evaluate how notable such films really are, whether or not we WANT them to be notable. So we have a spectrum of notability to discuss.zadignose 17:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Notability is a low bar to ensure that there's enough material for an article. We're here specifically to catch the things that may have slipped between the cracks. If it's gotten any significant press, positive or negative, that's secondary sources. We want those tens of thousands of articles, since WP:NOT paper, we can fit as many movie articles as you can throw at it. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:19, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Night Gyr is right here. WP:N in essence is really only to make sure an article meets WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV and WP:NOT. As long as a film has enough secondary material to write an article with, why not have an article? ColourBurst 03:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
According to WP:N#Rationale_for_requiring_a_level_of_notability, "In order to have a neutral article, a topic must be notable enough that the information about it will be from unbiased and unaffiliated sources; and that those interested in the article will not be exclusively partisan or fanatic editors." This at least suggests that notability is of value in itself, ensuring at least some degree of general interest. It is also stated that "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate directory of businesses, websites, persons, etc. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia." But if notability was really just a hurdle to ensure verifiability, then so long as a person's name, address, telephone number, and date of birth could be verified, there'd be no reasonable argument for excluding this information. Wikipedia would, indeed, become an indiscriminate collection of information if being true and verifiable were the only standards for inclusion. And to paraphrase the rationale presented above, we might want those tens of thousands of articles, since we can fit as many indiscriminate pieces of information into Wikipedia as you can throw at it. "Why not" have an article about my Uncle Pete?
I maintain that Wikipedia is, and should be interested in limiting it's articles to truly notable material. And I find that the standards for film are conspicuously absent.
Compare with the recently deleted article on the song 2 Much Booty (In Da Pants), which is definitely "verifiable," has been used in the soundrack of a "major motion picture," and has appeared on multiple music charts including Billboard's Top 100, but it was deleted for being insuficiently notable... because WP:NSONGS actually sets reasonably high standards of notability. Film could do this too. I suggest that it should. zadignose 06:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's a good reason we wouldn't have the sort of article you refer to, with name, phone number, address: WP:NOT#DIR. The kinds of sources you refer to fall into "trivial coverage," because they don't provide enough information for an encyclopedic article. We're WP:NOT an indiscriminate collection of information, we are an encyclopedia. Our only limitation is the availability of nontrivial information. Also, WP:NSONGS failed to gather consensus, because there is not that much support for higher standards of popularity. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:31, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But doesn't your designation of "trivial" information depend on some standard of "notability?" I know that it's been said that Wikipedia is NOT an indiscriminate collection of information, but it certainly resembles one. And the question should be raised, "why shouldn't it be an indiscriminate collection of information?" Without basic notability standards, the answer would have to be "it should be." Only if you really believe that non-notable articles should be excluded, for the sake of Wikipedia's overall quality, can you form any rational argument against the indiscriminate collection of information. And dare I say it? I think the main reason that a guideline like WP:NSONGS can't gather consensus is because most editors are too enamoured of their pet projects, favorite bands, and their role as indiscriminate collector of trivia to be willing to embrace a tough standard of notability. By and large, the editors want the bands, and films and songs they LIKE to be recorded here, without concern for the general quality of the encyclopedia. It's time to start making some tough judgments, or else stop the farce of claiming that we have standards.zadignose 06:48, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please read WP:NOT#PAPER, and understand that the existence of articles on topics that you don't think matter does you no harm, nor harm to the encyclopedia. Notability for wikipedia is not the same as notability anywhere else; it's not anyone's subjective standard, it's a basic line where we agree enough information is possible for an article, not that we agree the subject particularly matters on any scale. There's no harm in having articles about minor topics, if they're up to the same quality level as everything else. Only when quality is impossible should we delete. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 07:11, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've read it multiple times now, and apparently don't interpret it the same way that you do. I think that the fact that it says there is no limit on articles "other than verifiability and the other points presented on this page," combined with the initial paragraph's stated interest in "building a high-quality encyclopedia," the concept of "trivial information" that we've discussed above, and the guidelines on notability, all suggest that some verifiable material can be excluded for being non-notable, even if the possibility of writing a thorough article on the subject exists.zadignose 07:53, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Except that a person's name, telephone number, etc won't be enough to write an article from (see WP:STUB and WP:SD for a definition of what constitutes "enough context"), and if a person tries to pad the information somehow, in almost all cases s/he will pad it from their own knowledge of the subject or from primary sources, which is a violation of WP:NOR. ColourBurst 14:53, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So, is it correct to assume that according to Wikipedia policy every film that has been screened (or circulated in VHS/DVD) by a known distributor is eligible for an article? Hoverfish Talk 16:48, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
According to policy, yes, as long as it's verifiable. All notability standards are just guidelines. Kafziel Talk 16:55, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not fond of the designation "just" guidelines, though, as guidelines are actionable, and can have a significant influence on the shape of wikipedia. I'm not suggesting you meant it in any dismisive manner, of course, but I'd like to assert that by drafting a well thought out guideline, we can positively effect the quality of the encyclopedia's coverage of articles within the scope of films.zadignose 19:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm repeating here what I posted at the film project page, so forgive me, but I'd like to see some more opinions focused on this discussion. I've recently made significant edits to the guideline, and would like to solicit further discussion in the relevant talk page. I seem to have become the recent outspoken proponent of tougher guidelines, but I would like to seek reasonble compromise, and find some workable solutions. I think that my recent efforts at least demonstrate a sincere interest in drafting a sensible guideline that isn't "all inclusive," but might help improve the quality of our coverage of notable films. Thank you.zadignose 16:26, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dozens of links to a good site

Hello all. This morning I found that external links to the USGS had been posted to the articles of every state and territory of the USA in the course of a few hours by Spydrlink (Talk|contribs). I have witnessed previous cases where an editor posted dozens of links to useful, reputable sites- and they were all deleted as spam. Is there a real consensus on that though? I wanted to ask the user about this on his talk page, but I'm not even sure how to approach it since I'm not sure if he/she actually violated any policies. His last edit was to the USGS page itself, so perhaps it's a case of WP:COI? I don't know. Comments please! --Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 17:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a useful addition, and it's not as if it's a commercial site. USGS actually has a lot of interesting information. Fan-1967 17:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. The manner in which it was done was kind of spammish, but I wouldn't say it's really spam. The template {{{{Geolinks-US-streetscale}} performs a similar function but adds multiple links to commercial sites like Google and Yahoo, and it's perfectly acceptable. It's even expected. Kafziel Talk 17:48, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But should it be cluttering up the External links section if it's not referenced in the article yet? I can't say I care for it when somebody slaps a link up and doesn't add anything substantive to the article. To me it's like saying, "I'm too busy/important to actually write anything— here's a reference, go write something about it, flunky!", but maybe I'm taking too personally! Maybe a good idea would to be to have a "Potential references" section on the talk page.--Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 15:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • It's a gray area. But if you look at the person's edit history and see that they created an account five minutes before putting the link there, or if all their edits seem to revolve around the organization or product pointed to by the link, then its probably spam. --Infrangible 04:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Policy re: using "year in literature" linking.

I was planning on working through our articles on writers. I was going to use those 'year in literature links', eg 1939 in literature, but with a pipe, so that just the year appears, eg 1939.

I felt that this would be an especially useful thing to do for the year of publication of a writer's works, since clicking then brings up other works released that year. And if you use such links for dates of birth and death, clicking brings up other writers born/deceased in those years.

However, I figured I'd better check I was doing the right thing. I started out by looking at two literature featured articles; Samuel Beckett and Robert A. Heinlein. Neither of those articles seem to favour linking the years at all, let alone specifically.

I checked out the relevant bit of the style guide: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), but that doesn't seem to help on this point.

Any advice? I'm rather keen on my approach, but I'm made uncertain by looking at the Featured Articles. --bodnotbod 20:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I would try to formulate it in such a way that the link does not look like a bare year link. For example, "published in 1939." that way, it at least reduce the number of users trying to edit for MoS. I would still try to reduce them as much as possible, since most often, they are not needed in context. Circeus 17:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh dear. Because I feel it would be quite unwieldly to include "published in" every time, instead of the normal form of having the year in brackets (eg, after a book title). And a guy over at the literature portal says he too is adding 'in literature' to lots of author-related dates (birth, death, years of books). Anyone else have a view? Cos at the moment it's a split vote. --bodnotbod 23:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This sort of thing probably should be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) (and, just a quick glance, may in fact be, right now). If that doesn't resolve matters, you might try third opinion and RfC (see Wikipedia:Resolving disputes). -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 19:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

wiki import to wiki books can original artilce lacking sources be deleted?

I am interested in beginning a topic in wikipedia which has the same as an article that was successfully transwikied to wikibooks where it was appropriately renamed (by me)to reflect its non NPOV.

Can the Wikipedia article be deleted? I can't seem to rename it because it was moved yet it holds a general title.

It is also not sourced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_training

Tintina 05:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Remove the irrelevant content (with a good edit summary and possibly explanation on talk) and write encyclopedic content! I don't see how moving Dog training to Positive Only Dog Training is NPOV. It's completely reasonable that this article has a general title. It should incorporate all significant training methodologies eventually. Superm401 - Talk 08:33, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The POV exists throughout the text, that is why I renamed to reflect the POV it expresses. I entered talk comments with this explanation. It is written as a MPOV. The sourcing is problematic for this article. In the meantime the renaming is more accurate.

I want to reintroduce the topic from a broader perspective, including some history.

Essentially my question is: as the article has been transwikied to Wikibooks what happens to editing in Wikipedia under the original title? I'm looking for the simplest, cleanest way to treat the whole topic.

I was reluctant to continue in Wikipedia as I'm not clear about the transwiki to Wikibooks. Do the edits automatically end up in wikibooks?

Thank you. Tintina 16:38, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As described at m:Help:Transwiki, it seems pretty clear that it's a one-time transfer. Further edits to the Wikipedia article stay in that article; they don't also transfer. -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 02:34, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to lay this out more clearly article #1 titled Dog Training transW to Wikibooks and renamed (I did not transwiki-someone else did)Pos Only Dog Training (as that is what the article reflected.) Perhaps others have not worked on this over the same issue-I don't know. the original title Dog Training exists in wikipedia so cannot be transwikied again. If the wikipedia article is deleted will the title Dog Training become free to reuse? it seems there would be no point working on the wikipedia version if it cannot be transwikied into wikibooks and into the Dog Portal. It means working on two different formats of the same thing. As there is not a single source in the article I would like to delete it. editors have been absent for quite some time (months). If the existing wikipedia article is edited over it is orphaned in wikipedia unable to migrate to wikibooks UNLESS there is a way to change to the title or to reclaim it after deletion.

Tintina 03:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Query,talk page entrys demonstrating a solution/extra information about an article or subject ONLY by quoting widely known and definitively proved information in a linked context,Valid or not valid? 76.0.39.38 01:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)Iron Head76.0.39.38 01:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Celebrity endorsements

I'm in an edit war at Shilpa Shetty, with an editor who insists on restoring a para about her being hired to do advertising for a vodka company, which he names. He thinks that it's newsworthy, and a great honor for her, that she's been selected as a "brand ambassador" for this brand of vodka. I don't think it's notable at all; celebrities have been endorsing this and that, for pay, since the 19th century and perhaps earlier. I keep removing the booze ad, or cutting it down to one sentence with no mention of the brand (but with a link to a press release that does mention it), and he keeps restoring the para on vodka, with a long quote from the press release. He says that WP doesn't have any policy that prohibits mention of celebrity endorsements. I think it's covered by our "no commercial advertising" stance. If we allow celebrity endorsements to justify in-article ads for named companies, the camel has its nose under the tent.

The problem is that I know we don't accept advertising, or allow linkspam, but I can't find a policy on mentioning celebrity endorsements in an article. Do we need to make a policy? I'd suggest something like "we don't mention celebrity endorsements unless they become controversial enough to rate extensive coverage in the regular news media". For instance, if Prince Charles were to endorse a brand of tampon and a brouhaha ensued :) Zora 06:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I submit that Zora is misrepresenting the issue, and I have summed it up at the talk page. I have made no claims about its being "newsworthy" or a "great honour", please stop projecting false assumptions on my words. Zora has been engaging in wholesale content removal of the section in question, and I even rewrote it to satisfy her expectations of "what Wikipedia should be like", but to no avail as she keep removing content. For crying out loud it is not commercial advertising, it is just a section that describes Shetty's being selected as the "face" of a vodka company in a section that describes her associations with commercial and non-profit organisations. Like I say, I have discussed the matter in full at the talk page, that represents my stance on the matter. Ekantik talk 07:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"Brand ambassador" means she's being paid to appear in ads and it's not noteworthy in the least. I've been removing these "brand ambassador" bits from Bollywood actor/actress articles for years. Zora 08:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that she's being paid to appear in ads doesn't make something non-notable; she also presumably gets paid to appear in movies. Furthermore, the fact that you've been deleting this type of information for years does not mean that this type of info is not noteworthy. --The Way 22:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, everyone, I reviewed the article and the paragraph that mentions the brand in question. IMHO mentioning that she is a brand ambassador for several products is completely enough, because a) I think adding names and writing an entire paragraph about it is indirect advertisment and b) it's simply not noteworthy: Bollywood stars are brand ambassadors for many products, so why note them all? Mentioning that they are advertising products is completely enough. If we add this kind of information to all articles, Shahrukh Khan would have at least a dozen entries about beverages, soap, watches, cars etc. It's just too much. Best regards, --Plumcouch Talk2Me 21:33, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there ought to be any flat, inflexible rule one way or the other about including or deleting such mentions... it all depends on the context of a particular endorsement, and whether it's a notable fact given all the circumstances. Most common celebrity endorsements probably aren't sufficiently notable to mention, but there may be particular cases where they become notable due to some controversy surrounding them, or if the endorsement involves a record amount of money or involves a type of product or type of celebrity that hasn't previously been known for such endorsements; if it's big news for some reason, or an important stage in the history of a notable celebrity and/or product, then it may be suitable for mention -- like, if few had heard of the person or the product prior to the endorsement, but one or both became household names due to the commercials involved, then it might be notable. *Dan T.* 21:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'd sorta agree with Dan but ... the problem is that advertisers are pushing as hard as they can to get their products mentioned in the regular news (free advertising!) and sometimes "notability" for an advertisement can be briefly manufactured. Also, media like newspapers have been known to slant the news to please big advertisers, and things become "news" that are mere press-release hype. That's why I'd want notability to be defined conservatively. I don't want us to push whatever company can buy the most news. Zora 22:12, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Whether we like that endorsements come only to those who pay the most, those endorsements are notable facts for the endorsers. What products that people are paid to endorse says something about what demographics they are believed to appeal to, and what those endorsers are willing to endorse. Participating in advertising campaigns also contributes to those endorsers' notability; many people might know certain celebrities only from those ads.
On the other hand, sometimes those products or services are purely local and non-notable. I regularly saw Robert Vaughn in TV ads for a local law partnership when I lived in Columbus, OH, and I recently saw him in a very similar NYC ad; nothing would be added by specifying the names of those law offices, so "local personal injury lawyers" would be sufficiently descriptive. Postdlf 22:28, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a reason why listing endorsements made by a given celebrity on that celebrity's article is a problem. It doesn't constitute advertising since it's only stating facts. If it said something to the effect of "Celebrity X endorsed product Y because product Y is a great product" then that would need to go, but simply stating that "Celebrity X endorsed product Y in an advertising campaign" is fine as it's a relevant peice of information about that person's career. Of course, this should only get a passing mention; there shouldn't be a whole paragraph or section on it. A simple list of products endorsed is sufficient. --The Way 22:06, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, advertising campaigns themselves can be notable and deserve articles. The fact that a celebrity endorses a product is noteworthy enough for a passing mention in the article. Many celebrities make a substantial portion of their income this way. It's not advertising to state the fact that celebrity X endorses product Y as long as the language remains objective. We actually have an article on celebrity endorsement. Also, note that other celebrities do have sections on their endorsements, see Tiger Woods for an example. --The Way 22:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

With a million and half articles, of course there's lots of stuff that is bad. I'm arguing that mentioning endorsements, and in particular naming the company, is letting WP be used for advertising. I'd apply this across the board, to all the celebrity articles. The only exception should be for advertising that does become controversial or extremely notable. Zora 23:57, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While not supporting a blanket deletion of endorsement mentions, I do object to the term "brand ambassador", a PR-spin term. It's one thing to say that "X was paid an estimated $10 million during 2001-2005 to appear in advertisements for product/service Y"; it's quite another thing to use a term that many readers may easily misunderstand. Let's call a spade a spade. -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 03:04, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with John here, perhaps the term 'brand ambassador' isn't the most appropriate. However, simply listing products endorsed by a celebrity (and perhaps how much that celebrity was paid for the endorsement) is not advertising as it's not saying anything good (or bad) about the product itself, rather it is simply stating the fact that the celebrity is getting paid to be a part of some marketing campaign. Indeed, if anything it actually reflects poorly on the product. Not allowing this type of information in neutral language would amount to censorship and would serve to make it quite hard to have articles about advertising. --The Way 04:41, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have been away from Wikipedia because of connection problems at home. For me this is a complete non-issue because of the ridiculous arguments presented about "advertising". For the record, the term "brand ambassador" means nothing at all and is the term used in the source articles. It only means that the celebrity in question has been employed to be the "face" of Romanov Vodka, it is nothing at all about advertisement pushing or whatever the problem is about. It's like saying that Kate Moss is the face of Rimmel or Burberry (which is why they dropped her during that cocaine fiasco). If the term "brand ambassador" is quoted in the source to denote Shilpa Shetty's position, what's the problem with quoting the source on Wikipedia. If other editors (such as Zora, etc.) have a problem with this use of language then they are better advised to take their protests to the publications which used that term. In my view this is not a problem for Wikipedia. Ekantik talk 16:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I generally agree with The Way's views here; a celebrity's advertising campaigns do not have to be controversial to gain a mention in Wikipedia, but it is perfectly OK to mention their campaigns/endorsements as part of their career. For example, everyone knows that Michael Jackson's hair caught fire when he was filming for a Pepsi commercial. According to the No-Adverts Group, this should be rewritten in some vague way like: "Michael Jackson's hair caught fire when he was filming a commercial for a famous soft-drinks company." As you can see, it doesn't have quite the same effect as being succint. I can only shudder to think how many pages people have slaughtered in this way. The other issue is that, without trying to blow my own trumpet, I have been responsible for around 90% of the content of the article as it was in an extremely poor state before I started working on it. Just a couple of facts and an incomplete filmography. Thus, I was the one who ran around trying to find out reliable sources about the celebrity and rewrite the article so it is far improved now, including about this Romanov Vodka issue. I find that this whole issue of repeatedly deleting content (without even bothering to discuss it adequately on the talk page) shows disrespect to the contributions of other editors to Wikipedia, not to mention that non-existent policies have been quoted to justify such removal. Ekantik talk 17:06, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ekantik, you are trying to "own" the article and it IS in an extremely poor state because you do not allow anything to be subtracted, only added. WP is not a big heap 'o stuff. It would be possible to convey that she's been paid to work for a vodka company without devoting a whole gushing para to it. I proposed a version that covered the whole thing in one sentence, with a link to the press release. You restored the para with chunks of press release quote. We wouldn't be having this problem if you were willing to let the article be edited down. Instead, you're screaming "vandalism" and refusing to allow anything to be removed or summarized. Indeed, you posted a notice on my talk page warning me that I'd be blocked if I removed anything from the article. What's that but refusing to be edited?
I would be more willing to allow mentions of celebrity endorsements if they were brief and spare. Adding press release material IS advertising. Zora 02:47, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And yet it sounds just like someone else. Not to mention the crusade to remove advertising. Brand ambassador is an extremely common term in India, and it is notable when an actress is a brand ambassador.Bakaman 03:40, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Zora, please keep your claims of ownership to yourself. The fact that I have contributed that information for the article shows the fact that I worked hard to find and insert that information, and there is no reason why it cannot be included as per WP policies and this Village Pump discussion. Please, you were warned about content removal because you continually violate WP policy without providing an adequate rationale for your content removal, thus blanking content can be regarded as vandalism.
And please stop misrepresenting your actions. You unabashedly removed the entire content and only very recently tried to edit it "down" so that you could show something for this VP discussion. The fact is that when you're wrong, you're wrong. Accept it and move on, and please stop vandalising the page. I find it extremely amusing that you consider the article to be in a poor state considering how it looked before I started working on it. If you want to improve on it, why not add content instead of removiong content? Ekantik talk 16:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should remove all unsourced claims of endorsement from biographies of living people; see discussion here. Postdlf 16:18, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Except for the fact that it is sourced to a newspaper. I think that a newspaper report of a business event (the press conference announcing her being made the "face" of the campaign is as per WP:RS. Ekantik talk 16:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You need an unbiased source for both the fact itself and the importance (noteability or encyclopedic-ness) of the fact. A press release is pert of the advertizing campaign and is not a NPOV source for establishing the importance although it can usually be used to help establish the fact. But with only a press release we have no neutral wording available and get stuff like "endorsement" instead of "agreed to be paid to lie about this product" (sometimes a more accurate assessment). WAS 4.250 17:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's from a newspaper report, not a press release. I was under the impression that reports from prominent newspapers are relatively reliable? Isn't it notable when a celebrity becomes the "face" of a particular product? In my view this whole discussion is about how one editor is using WP as a crusade to remove "advertising" without any thought to what advertising actually is WP:NOT#Soap. There is nothing in WP policy about why a celebrity's endorsements cannot be mentioned, but I'm sure Zora will beg to differ. Ekantik talk 16:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image protocols

I wonder about the protocols regarding uploading images. In particular, I was reading a (motor vehicle) page tonight, and several images uploaded showed the user's personal vehicle in states of aftermarket upgrade. In addition, the comments attached indicate that the sole purpose of the upload was/is to use Wikipedia as a showcase - not the intention of the project, I believe. Any protocols for replacing with stock photos of the vehicle model, or would an addition be the best course? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by PKBear (talk • contribs) 07:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

If the photos are good and under a free license they are preferable to the manufacturer's photographs because they are under less (or even no) copyright regulation. Whether he's showcasing his car doesn't even come into the picture. --tjstrf talk 11:11, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On the other hand, a heavily riced Honda Civic isn't a good subject for illustrating the article Honda Civic. --Carnildo 23:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The chance that such an image will be able to pass as the standard for that model decreases with each subsequent view of that article. In other words, good Wikipedia editors would be careful to mention in the caption of the image that the car is "riced" or whatever, and if they forget, the next editor who sees it might change it, and if that editor doesn't notice anything fishy, the next editor to see it might change it, etc. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 09:28, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some cars (and the Civic is a sad example) are notable for how frequently they are 'riced'. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to show one decent picture of a severely riced Civic to illustrate that fact. I'd draw the line at one though. One photo to illustrate the concept - that's plenty - and it's assuming there is accompanying text explaining that Civic's in general are popular amongst people who do these kinds of things. I wouldn't want to see a photo of a riced Rolls Royce on that car's article - those cares are very seldom riced so the presence of such a photo would be misleading...but the Civic...yeah, sure. All other photos should be as representative of a shiney new Civic as possible. But don't let the riced photo be in the 'infobox' at the top of the page - and make very sure that you indicate in the photo caption that this is not standard equipment for that make and model year. In my Mini article there is a photo of the car converted to look like a giant Orange(!) - it's not stock - but it's an appropriate photo to back up the explanation of how these care were very well suited to that kind of radical surgery! But the car in the info-box is pretty much stock - that's what we must strive for. There is a tendancy for car nuts to put 'vanity' photos of their cars into the articles - but actually, that's not such a terrible thing. One photo of a car in stock condition - nicely taken - in front of a suitable background - that's fine. What do our readers care who owns the car? Half a dozen photos of the same car...Hell no! SteveBaker 03:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Balance

I've run into a dispute with another user over a section that is essentially recording criticism of an experiment and a rebuttal to that criticism. The other user says that the section is unbalanced because the criticism goes into more depth than the rebuttal so they have deleted the entire of the section (both criticism and rebuttal). They've done this 4 times (though outside of the 3RR time period), and I've repeatedly asked them to either tag the section as being disputed, or to expand the rebuttal themselves, but they have continued to delete it and have stated that it should be me who expands the rebuttal because it was me who wrote the criticism section.

Are there any specific policies that I can quote to them which say that disputed sections should be tagged rather than deleted, that balance is best resolved by strengthening the weaker side of the argument rather than deleting the strong side, or that if you think that something is unbalanced, you can't demand that the original author balance it themselves but instead should do it yourself?

(The factual accuracy and verifiability are not in dispute, only the balance between criticism and rebuttal).

perfectblue 13:58, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NPOV#Undue_weight? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:56, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And maybe WP:POINT - deleting valid content is disruptive. In general, Wikipedia:Resolving disputes lays out the process for content disputes, as you're probably aware; you can, if informal discussions fail, escalate this to (say) a request for third opinions. -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 02:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What do you do if the persons are anon and do not discuss? Tintina 02:41, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You follow Wikipedia:Resolving disputes. If he/she won't discuss and it's only the two of you, then for example, you use the third opinion approach. (What you really want is a couple more editors dealing with the specifics, not just speculating, as we're doing here.) -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 03:12, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Minority dispute of majority

I do not like conflict. However, I have noticed a number of disagreements here on WP where a Mediation or RfC is held, and overwhelming support for one position is expressed, but one or two people disagree. These dissenters then fight a rear guard action, reverting changes agreed to, subverting community consensus, driving away other editors, etc. I have witnessed this at black people. I have witnessed this at Singapore Changi Airport. I have recently been told by a dissenting editor that the other 25 editors that disagreed with him were "deranged". Of course, this might be correct, but how does one give much credence to one person who claims everyone else is wrong, in the face of all evidence to the contrary?--Filll 16:00, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You think you have it bad, you try working on a contentious article about the paranormal involving either urban myth or pseudoscience. You always get at least one really pedantic user who demands that people only use peer reviewed journals as sources, even though the odds of finding a peer review journal that deals with even the most notable urban myth etc is minimal.
perfectblue 16:20, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That can make it impossible. At least on the evolution and creationism articles that I work with, we have not had that problem (yet, as far as I know anyway). I am glad to cite the nonpeer-reviewed nonsense of creationists because I think it is dangerous to not know what the other side is thinking. I want the biggest pile of evidence of their position in their own words possible, because it is interesting and valuable and informative. And if one wants to argue against them, very often their own words and sources will end up hanging them. And I think the readers deserve to see the unvarnished evidence on all sides (of course the creationism situation is a bit more serious at least in the US and some Muslim countries where we might end up with making science illegal).--Filll 17:40, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Someone who disregards consensus in his/her continued editing is considered to be a disruptive editor. Per Wikipedia:Resolving disputes, a user who disregards consensus as established in RfCs and mediation can be taken to the Arbitration Committee, which has not at all been hesitant to wield its hammer. There is absolutely no need to tolerate a disruptive editor, though you do have to be a bit patient to let the process proceed. -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 03:06, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Featured Articles and Good Articles

Since the relation between those two categories is more or less hierarchical, wouldn't it be an applicable idea if articles defeatured for some reason would automatically acquire the status of a Good Article? That is, though they wouldn't satisfy the higher criteria of a FA, they would certainly satisfy those of a GA. This would leave more space in the GA nominations page for other articles to be considered, while at the same time the defeatured articles wouldn't suddenly find themselves outside, or too low in, the grading structure. —The Duke of Waltham 16:12, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would be wary of doing this: there are still some featured articles lurking about from the "brilliant prose" days, with huge citation deficiencies (see Tank, for instance). Given the GA assessment doesn't take too long to perform, then it's probably worth not making it automatic. Trebor 20:59, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't it be easier for the process to give defeatured articles priority in some way, though? —The Duke of Waltham 07:56, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Patrol the FAR pages, and when one gets de-featured, nominate it for GA, with the comment "recently lost FA status here". Patrol the GA pages, and when you see a recent FA, review it for GA status. You can't be both the nominator and reviewer, but being one will still speed the process along mightily. This is known as {{sofixit}}:
Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to change it. You can edit almost any article on Wikipedia by just following the Edit link at the top of the page. We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, because wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse. . AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Blanking User Talk Pages

I have recently become aware of a user who routinely blanks his own talk page. It doesn't appear that he is trying to hide something, such as warnings, but is rather just blanking everything left on the page without archiving it. Is there an official Wikipedia policy regarding this sort of action, and if so, is there a template regarding it? i haven't been able to find one, but I'd appreciate any insight. Chuck Norris' IQ can be expressed simply as a sideways eight. 16:21, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, as far as I am concerned, there's no official policy against a user blanking his own talk page. PeaceNT 16:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So there's no reason that that is illigitimate or controversial? It just seems to me that it defeats one of the purposes of talk pages, but if theres no policy, I'll just let it stand. Chuck Norris' IQ can be expressed simply as a sideways eight. 16:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Removing warnings immediately is frowned upon (see {{removewarn}}). Otherwise, there is no policy that says that user pages have to be archived. Many users remove comments once they have been addressed. The talk page history is a permanent record in any event. CMummert · talk 16:37, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't appear this user is trying to remove/hide any warnings, so I guess that answers my question. Chuck Norris' IQ can be expressed simply as a sideways eight. 18:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I do the same thing on my user talk page ... leaving a few posts that contain links to tags and policy pages etc. that I find usefull. Why? 1) I find it easier to see any new messages I get. 2) I find no reason to keep a long chain of outdated, now meaningless messages on my talk page once the exchange of messages is no longer relevant to anything I am doing. I know that if someone needs to retrieve a comment or an exchange (or if someone suspects that I am trying to hide something), they can always find everything I delete in the edit history anyway. So it's not "gone". No, the fact that someone blanks their user page or user talk page is not always an idication of "something to hide"... sometimes it's just the way they like to do things.Blueboar 19:00, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, that is my pet peeve about many users' talk pages. When I want to find an older topic, it is much faster to search archives (you have a handy like to the pages and you don't have to hunt as much) than to search history (which forces you to check every change).

That is why when I wanted to clear some of the clutter from my own page, I installed George Money's Auto-Archive system. It does all the work without requiring a bot. I never ask something of other users that I would not do myself.

Besides, I had some users delete conversations that weren't complete. They responded on my talk page and deleted the post from theirs. That left me with no way to reply other than to restore the post. Will (Talk - contribs) 19:40, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But the point is, there is no official policy against it, at least according to what everyone has said so far, so I have no way of compelling anyone to maintain an archive of their talk page if they don't choose to. Is there any reason this statement is incorrect? Chuck Norris' IQ can be expressed simply as a sideways eight. 19:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a pretty odd case of this. An editor made comments about me on her talk page, ones that were demonstrably false (that I reverted something, when the diffs show I didn't). When I asked for clarification or pointed out that it was false, she just deleted my response but left her comments. After a couple tries, I tried deleting her false statement but she just reverted that. It seems to me that if someone is going to make comments about me, particularly false ones, I should have the right to respond to those comments. Any suggestions on how to deal with this? --Milo H Minderbinder 20:26, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Summon an admin via WP:ANI. They either aren't being civil or they are making a personal attack on you. I would also considering adding a NPA warning template like {{npa2}}. Be sure to subst it. Will (Talk - contribs) 21:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Because of this example, and I'm sure others, it seems like it would be a good policy decision to instate a rule requiring a user to archive their talk page if they wish to clear it for ease of use or any other reason. This isn't tecnilogically difficult, and you can even install programs that do it for you automatically. It seems like that would defeat any issues like that above, as well as people trying to hide warnings. I know that the counter arguement is that the history preserves everything anyway, but it simply isn't efficient to search through. Any thoughts? Chuck Norris' IQ can be expressed simply as a sideways eight. 23:07, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's pretty much what I wrote above. So you have me all for it. Will (Talk - contribs) 23:13, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My idea though is more general, because this issue isn't just limited to personal attacks. My only worry is whether or not that policy could be broadcasted effectively to new users, and other issues regarding its implimentation and enforcement. Are there any admins in on this discusstion that can give some insight on this issue? Chuck Norris' IQ can be expressed simply as a sideways eight. 23:20, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:ARCHIVE explains the best way to achive a talk page and why. One possible solution however might involve an addition to the software (if anybody agrees I'll suggest it at bug reports. Essentially, it would mean a link that appears to the user concerned once a user talk page reaches (for example) 120 KB. Clicking the link would move the page to the next appropriate archive name (eg, Archive 3, Archive 4, etc per WP:ARCHIVE), add {{Talkarchive}} to the top and bottom of the page, update an archivebox (perhaps User talk:XYZ/Archivebox), clear the redirect on the main talk page and replace it with the transcluded archivebox. Nearly all the actions required for a full and proper archive in one click. Of course, those who (like me) have a header to their talk page would have to move it over manually, and any active conversations would need to be copied back over to the talk page manually, but it would hopefully mean a lower instance of newbies (and sometimes not-so-newbies) from simply blanking the page. It may even be possible for somebody to first write a script for it to trial it.
I think the idea is good, and might be good to implement eventually, but in the mean time, I suggest that we implement a general policy discouraging the blanking of one's own user talk page. It seems that there are three general categories of users within this topic. The first is well-intentioned newbies, who may clear their own talk page because they don't know any better, and it would be nice to stop that behavior for the purpose of keeping a record. The second is experienced Wikipedia users with a real reason to want their talkpage split into seperate archives, and it seems in general that they would know how to create a user sub-page to archive it, and if they didn't know, the information is easily obtainable. The third category is vandals, who want to clear their talkpage to hide warnings, etc. You say that you can just goo look at the history, but when you look at someone's talkpage for the first time, you don't immedietly click on the history, do you? It just seems to make sense to have it all stay in the same place, or in an archive if its genuinely necessary. Any opinions?

Chuck Norris' IQ can be expressed simply as a sideways eight. 00:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest again that 'Featured Articles' be semi-protected

Every time we get a new featured article it gets swamped by puerile little twits at school computers who thinks they're being clever, cute or funny. It's a long-known problem and I fail to understand why something hasn't been done about it. Semi-protect the article while it's on the front page and then revert it when it rolls over to something else. Anything on the front page is basically a standing target to these people. HalfShadow 19:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's an excellent idea. It conforms to the old adage, "Out of sight, out of mind." Odds are that as soon as an article passes on its featured status, no one else will bother to vandalize it. It seems that the mere fact that an article has reached featured status should be reason to protect it while its there. If dedicated Wikipedians want to edit it constructively, they can wait until after it isn't featured, because odds are, they won't forget about it like the vandals will. Chuck Norris' IQ can be expressed simply as a sideways eight. 19:52, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Most "dedicated Wikipedians" wouldn't be directly affected by semi-protection. Only new and unregistered users would be. As has been noted on countless occasions, this would be a terrible introduction to the site. (Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Here's today's featured article. You can't edit it.") —David Levy 20:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Semi-protection is explicitly not to be applied pre-emptively or to the day's featured article for an extended period (per the terms under which it was approved by the community). —David Levy 20:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:NOPRO for the current status (which is disputed) and discuss there. Trebor 20:53, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia talk:Main Page featured article protection for some of the commentary on the dispute. Frankly, I'm for at least sem-protection. Askari Mark (Talk) 21:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
[oops, my comment was under the wrong discussion. deleted it] Chuck Norris' IQ can be expressed simply as a sideways eight. 23:08, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'll see what I can do to restart the process; we're probably looking at asking for at least a show of hands, if not a formal RfC. Someone might want to ping User:Robdurbar; he's also been a driving force in this. -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 02:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User pages used as articles

There is a trend for non-notable footballers to set up their user pages as articles. An example is User:Jonesy702. Is there any policy on this, please? BlueValour 21:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt that user is that player. A look at the edit history (be sure to checkout the comments at the AFD!) shows he's got quite a bit of interest. The userpage is supposed to be about the user and/or Wikipedia. You could list this at WP:MFD per WP:USER. You say this is a trend? Can you point to some other examples? You could look at the edit histories to see if they really exist. It's possible for someone to create User:Blah even if user:Blah doesn't exist. This applies under WP:CSD. --MECU≈talk 22:03, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Another thought I had is he may be using this as a sandbox to get an article ready before "moving" it to article space. Looking at the end history it could be that way. You should ask the user first before MFD (though don't expect a nice reply). --MECU≈talk 22:04, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that there is any question that the user page, written in the style of a normal article, is about the user himself - is there some other reason why someone would set up a page for a nineteen-year-old football player who has played for two local clubs? Plus his brother has a similar page: User:Stew jones.
And yes, judging by the user's comments regarding an AfD of an article he authored, I would expect CAPITAL LETTERS and obscenities in response to any request that he should follow WP:USER.
This looks like a classic case to report to WP:PAIN, but of course that doesn't exist anymore. I think it's too minor for WP:AN/I, so maybe an MfD would be the most direct route to dealing with these two pages. Wikipedia is not MySpace.com -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 02:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Autobiographical content

I noted yesterday that Michael Wissot was all edited by a single purpose account that was almost certainly non-biased. I added an autobiography tag, which was then removed, and two new (I would assumed sockpuppet) SPA's arrived to make changes. The subject is probably notable, so I can't really AfD it, but I don't like the fact the the content is probably biased POV. --ArmadilloFromHellGateBridge 22:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would attempt to warn each user with a template listed on Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace like {{NPOV2}} or {{comment2}}. If needed, you could list the users on WP:SSP. Also note there is a template, {{Socksuspect}}, for marking accounts as possible socks. Will (Talk - contribs) 22:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've rewritten the article; I think it's pretty much NPOV now. Drop me a note if it starts moving in the POV direction, please. (It's on my watchlist, but so are a lot of other things.) -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 01:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Commercial links

I have seen a gradually increasing contamination of Desert hot springs with commercial links. I had suggested nicely a few times that they put their links only on Wikitravel; I even provided a link in the Exterior links section of the WP article, but they have just been polluting. I am torn but it really is unencyclopedic as near as I can tell. At least if they would write something interesting about themselves I could sort of justify it, but this is just abuse.--Filll 03:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article definitely reads like an advertisement. Listing a bunch of hotels that have recently been renovated does not seem like something encyclopeadic. I think you have to keep deleting this kind of junk - when challenged as to why you are doing it - there are plenty of guidelines for you to fall back on. Remember the 'three revert rule' though...don't break it. Foremost as always is to challenge the person to come up with suitable references to back up these facts. Secondly, the guidelines for external links specifically tell us not to link to commercial sites in this way. There really isn't much you can do to stop them from doing this. If the case is egregious enough, you could probably find an admin to come in and start blocking the offenders - but unless they are really quite insanely enthusiastic about fighting you on this, you can probably keep the article clean with relatively little effort. Good luck! SteveBaker 03:04, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

essentially contested concept -handling of BLP or LPB

I believe this is the core of maintaining a NPOV on Cesar Millan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesar_Millan

I have posted a link below, if you are reading and responding to this, you might the lower article first.


"essentially contested concept is one where there is widespread agreement on an abstract core notion itself (e.g., "fairness"), whilst there is endless argument about what might be the best instantiation, or realization of that notion.[4]

Some of the notability of this person revolves around this issue. (controversy) He is in a profession of diverse opinions. He has reached celebrity status.


Although I have internet articles that support that this is indeed the case, there is no published media that describes the issue itself. Controversy is not over a fundamental issue but how that issue should be treated or resolved. The scope of the discussion is a topic in itself and perhaps that is the best way to handle it..if I can think of a title..other than Dog Training (which has been transwikied to wikibooks, prematurely in my mind.)

Can I use internet articles that describe the controversy (essentially contested concept)as there is no other source material that does (that I know of)and I have been researching this for some time (years) prior to editing this article.

I'll provide a link to an overview which I feel reflects this accurately. http://www.puppywishes.com/1601-puppies/Cesar%20Millan%20Vs%20Jean%20Donaldson.html

I feel that any controversy around him should be explained and placed in its proper context. I attempted to do this but an anon user reverted and changed my edit.There is no current discussion other than my own comments.

I would like to proceed with cleaning up this article, but I'm not clear on how to handle it.

Thank you Tintina 05:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

there is no published media that describes the issue itself - then the controversy (issue) is NOT notable and anything you do to describe or summarize it is a violation of WP:NOR.
As to the larger issue of "cleaning up" the article, you should follow Wikipedia:Resolving disputes, which lays out the process, starting with informal discussions (talk page) and up through Arbitration Committee action. It's exceptionally rare, of course, for the latter to be needed. Please (a) follow Wikipedia policies and guidelines - for example, WP:RS with respect what sources are acceptable, and WP:NOR, and (b) abide by what the majority of other editors believe should be done (or not), because no single editor is infallible. -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 00:26, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese wikipedia

I don't know if I am at the right place to discuss this, so please redirect me if possible. This is with regards to the censorship of Wikipedia in China. With the alarming growth of Baidu Baike (seriously, Baidu ripped off and took unfair advantage of many Google and other internet trends and are profiting off of them as if it is their own), I am wondering if Wikipedia could take a similar stance to Google and agree to China's censorship demands on the Chinese version of Wikipedia. After all, with the entire Chinese population as an editors base within a year I can guarantee that the content on the Chinese Wikipedia will rival that of the English Wikipedia. I realize this is a great shift in Wikipedia's policies, and one that may require a lot of work, but in the end it is my belief that there is a lot more to gain. With the increasing influence of Wikipedia as a global knowledge base it is a shame to not have the vast majority of Chinese on board. By the end of this year China will have more internet users than any other country in the world, it will be a shame if the knowledge and shared experience of the vast majority of Chinese people are not able to enjoy the potential of Wiki because of a few of their government's policies. Personally I would say Wikipedia has more potential in the world's most populous nation by sacrificing the articles on Falun Gong and 1989 Tiananmen Protests than to uphold a rightful, but impractical moral standard. Colipon+(T) 05:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

NO, people complain enough about it being pro-PRC without it being censored. And this is the wrong place anyway, you need to go to meta. --tjstrf talk 05:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ethics aside, I think allowing these pages to be shown is likely to result in a ban of Wikipedia in its entirety in mainland China, which I think is a far greater loss. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 08:58, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, cowing to the authority of foreign totalitarian governments is a great plan. Are you aware of how much information is censored is some place on earth or other? If someone else wants to make a government-censored fork, then let them. It's not like it hurts us, we aren't making any money from them anyway. --tjstrf talk 09:11, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I believe you lost the sense and intention of my message, as I made no prescriptions as to what should be done. This is clearly something which should be considered in the making a decision about this issue. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 20:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
At the end of the day, I see no reason that China should be allowed to censor the rest of the world. If they want censorship in their own country, then that's their national right (as distasteful as I personally find it). The answer is simply to allow the Chinese to have and censor their own wikipedia. If the Chinese government then wants to block access to all other wiki's, that's their perogative. Crimsone 09:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]


I don't think any of you realize how systematically biased the Chinese Wikipedia has become when the vast majority of Chinese are not allowed their voice on very uncontroversial topics such as... say, Shanghai or Fujianese Cuisine, or historical figures like Confucius (non-controversial articles occupy over 99% of all Wikipedia articles). Moreover, it seems the Taiwanese topics on the site will soon exceed the number of mainland topics. Supporters of Taiwan independence use the Chinese Wikipedia as a method of voicing their nationalist rhetoric, something that would be shunned entirely on the English Wikipedia.
I have read Baidu Baike. In terms of quality and organization it falls short of Wikipedia by far even though it has 300,000 more articles. At this point you must see the Chinese Wikipedia as a Chinese organization, and all the mainland Chinese Wikipedians would rather see Wikipedia available for edit on issues that are not sensitive to the government, than to see it not available at all. When you take into the consideration of the situation faced by enthusiastic Chinese Wikipedians and look at the issue from their perspective, saying that "cowing to the authority of foreign totalitarian governments is a great plan" is purely ignorant, and goes under the assumption that Wikipedia is, and should remain, an predominantly American (or Western, if you prefer) organization, which goes against its founding values. We are but addressing a need to the Chinese Wikipedian community, not bowing towards the Chinese regime.

Thank you. -Colipon+(T) 18:09, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To suggest that I am ill-informed on the scope of censorship in China is somewhat incorrect. I'm quite well aware of it. Further, there is an ongoing debate with regards to Taiwan and independance deserving of an article in it's own right! Regardless of what the majority of people on the chinese mainland want, the Chinese government decides what's allowed and what's not. If the chinese people don't like what their government is saying (which would be quite understandable), it's up to the chinese people to do what they can and when they can, with the support of the various international campaign groups and, yes, even other nations (as they occasionally comment on the issue). It's no reason to censor Wikipedia. We don't do it for minors, and it shouldn't happen to satisfy the whims and desires of the chinese government either. Wikipedia is a worldwide organisation, which is why non-american countries have wikis of their own. EN Wiki IS a western wiki, in so far as the fact that it's greatest userbase lies in the western world, that it's primarily intended for native speakers of English, and it's based in the US.
The Chinese wikipedia community has a need only because of their governments whims and dictats. To satisfy that need is indeed to bow to the Chinese regime. The chinese government censors anything that reflects badly on it's own regime, anything that shows them acting in a questionable light, and anything that goes against or might create discourse on what they feel the Chinese nation should be and how people should be living. All sorts of things are sensetive to them. unfortunately, all of these things exist and are worthy of mentioning in an encyclopedic article - they are real. To censor any of it to satisfy the requirements of the Chinese regime would be against the founding principles of Wikipedia. Crimsone 18:30, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To do as suggested would be a complete submission to the Chinese regime. It would be an unpardonable compromise to the integrity of Wikipedia. It would also allow the arbitrary censorship of Chinese Language articles to extend beyond Chinese borders, to span the world. I'm also quite shocked at the casual use of phrases like "ethics aside...!" It's a nice idea to have a continued free exchange of information with the people of China, but if the Chinese government will not allow such a free exchange, then we can't them dictate the terms of a restricted exchange.zadignose 18:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the Chinese wikipedia should be censored. That was merely a consideration that would need to be taken into account. As you suggested, complying with this censorship would extend beyond Chinese borders and there are millions of Chinese-speaking individuals not living in China. I think it is our duty in this case to thumb our noses at this censorship by the Chinese government. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 05:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I will take this cause elsewhere. Thank you all for your responses. Colipon+(T) 05:19, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CSD:A7 as PROD

A discussion has started up at the talk page at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion about the possibility of a test run of switching CSD A7 to Prod. Please check the talk page for further discussion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My ideas on WP:NOTE, AfDs, speedy deletes

I'd like to propose a radical change, which I know will be ignored/dismissed by the majority of editors, as it would involve a fundamental restructuring of Wikipedia. However, hear me out. I think WP:NOTE should be abolished. I participate regularly in AfDs and newpage patrolling, and don't agree with the policy administered there. My plan is this:

  • Everything that verifiably exists in the world is notable enough to be covered, as long as it is adequately sourced.
  • The only articles that should be deleted are those that are incoherent, obvious hoaxes, spam, attack pages, or completely inaccurate - i.e. those already covered under WP:SPEEDY - as well as things patently made up in school one day, including books that have not been published and bands that have released no songs. (This links back to the concept of verifiable existence.)
  • Everything else, including every webcomic, every town councillor, every episode of every series, should be included. After all, Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and takes great pride in having over 1.5 million articles.
  • I'd like to see Wikipedia become an organised, referenced, searchable resource providing coverage of all human knowledge. (That is, all accurate and verifiable human knowledge.) The idea of 'notability', no matter how we try to formalise it, is inherently subjective. Walton monarchist89 21:14, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure it's WP:N you disagree with here; indeed, the first point is pretty similar to the notability definition at present. But your guidelines make no allowances for WP:NOT (except paper) - should we include dictionary definitions, for instance? Trebor 21:25, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, this proposal contradicts WP:NOT, which is policy, unless "adequately sourced" is interpreted to mean essentially what WP:NOTE says now. GRBerry 21:36, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What about random individuals, currently considered vanity articles? I can verify my own name and existence, would I be able to keep an article about myself? —Ashley Y 21:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Whenever this concept gets brought up, in one form or another, I always come back to the second point raised at WP:N#Rationale for requiring a level of notability: "* In order to have a neutral article, a topic must be notable enough that the information about it will be from unbiased and unaffiliated sources; and that those interested in the article will not be exclusively partisan or fanatic editors." In other words, notable subjects attract multiple editors; non-notable subjects tend to have only one. It is easy to delete an article on a non-notable subject. It is very difficult to review such an article and ensure that its content is genuinely sourced, verifiable and unbiased. The number of vanity conflict-of-interest articles under such a scheme would be so high that there is no way they could be monitored or reviewed. We do not have to worry that Bill Gates' employees will make Microsoft a fluff piece on the company, or that Roger Daltrey will fill The Who with unchallenged self-serving claims, because so many people watch and contribute to those articles. However, if the article is on Fred's Webhosting Service or Nick Norman and the N00bs, let's face it, the primary (only?) contributors will be Fred and Nick, and there are not enough reviewers to keep them honest. Fan-1967 22:00, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Based on your suggestion, someone could write an article on me. Unfortunately, it would be both inaccurate (the local newspaper blurb on my NMSQT performance has me down as going to the local high school, when in fact I was homeschooled) and incomplete (verifiable third-party sources on my activities end with my junior year of college, when I got an article published in a minor journal). --Carnildo 22:54, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Don't think you'll get much support for that, Ashley. For all reasons mentioned. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed policy on removing alleged trolling on talk pages

I would like to propose that "trolling" not be allowed as a justification for removing other people's comments from talk pages.

Different people differ about what constitutes trolling. An editor who takes action to revert "trolling" is implicitly asserting that his opinion speaks for the group. Often the original poster does not agree that his words are trolling. Often the editor who removes the "trolling" is already opposed to the original poster.

Thoughts? --Ideogram 01:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can go along with this to some degree. Removing comments by any established wikipedian is often counterproductive. however, the bulk of trolling comments removed are comments by IPs or highly disruptive single purpose accounts, who are adding 'Fuck your mama' to userpages. That obviously should be reverted on sight. But drawing up any policy that differentiates between a wikipedian removing comments from a userpage that he doesn't agree with as 'trolling', and outright vandalism from a real troll will impossible. We all know that there's a clear difference - but the boundary will be undefinable without hideous detail. This will inevitably end up in instruction creep and ruleslawyering. Best perhaps with a simple principle "assume good faith - particularly from normally good contributors - only deem something to be trolling if no other explanation is possible"--Docg 02:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the term "trolling" itself should not be used. I believe comments which are clearly vandalism or spam can be identified as such without regard for whether they are "trolling".
The most effective response to a genuine troll is to ignore him. I propose that anyone who believes someone else is trolling should simply comment, "I believe this is trolling and recommend everyone ignore it." Then others could signal their agreement or disagreement by actually ignoring or responding to the comment in question. --Ideogram 02:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Problem there: Many of the real and unmistakable trolls we get here (*coughconspiracytheoristidiotscough*) do need to be removed, and there is no justification other than that they are trolling. Leaving their comments risks them actually convincing someone of their lunacy. --tjstrf talk 02:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think removing comments to "protect the naive" is productive. (1) The comments are present in the history and reverting them actually gives them more prominence. (2) I don't believe in protecting the naive; I believe everyone is free to make their own judgements. (3) Real and persistent trolls need to be identified by community action (e.g. community blocks discussed on the admininstrators' noticeboards), not vigilanteism. --Ideogram 02:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it gives a 6000 character text dump any more prominence to revert it than it did when the guy posted it with an ALL CAPS HEADING and his latest YouAreTheAntiChrist username in the first place. Leaving vitriolic rants is far more harmful than removing them. You may have more of a point on article talk pages, but even then those are often used for things like unrelated campaigning, vaguely linked attack rants on other users, etc. Case in point: Talk:William Connolley, which gets assaulted quite regularly by people who are annoyed at User:William M. Connolley, the article's subject. --tjstrf talk 09:39, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am talking only of posts on talk pages. Mainspace pages exist to communicate verifiable facts; rants can always be removed on that basis. Talk pages exist for people to express their opinions and discuss them; removing someone else's post doesn't change the fact that it is their opinion. See the concrete example I post below. --Ideogram 22:41, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Many troll postings are extremely verbose, if we are not allowed to remove them then the talk page would soon become unreadable. Some trolling is extremely inflammatory and makes people's participation on the uncomfortable. I agree that in the most cases DFTT is the best defence. Alex Bakharev 03:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some articles that get a lot of trolling, like Talk:Gödel's incompleteness theorem, set up an "arguments" subpage of the talk page to move these comments to. Then the comments are not deleted, just moved to the "arguments" page. CMummert · talk 04:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(to Alex) You still have not offered a definition of "trolling" other than "I know it when I see it". This definition has been abused many times by hotheaded editors who feel their personal judgement justifies removal of comments they deem trolling. Many postings are extremely verbose, but we do not remove them. What is the "magic" trolling ingredient that justifies removal? There are many tactics that make participation uncomfortable, not least having your well-intentioned comments attacked as "trolling" and being removed.
"Trolling" has no defensible definition because it requires reading someone's mind. If you accuse someone of trolling you are de facto failing to assume good faith. By removing someone's comments you are saying those comments are worthless. These judgements need to be made by the community not a biased editor already involved in arguing with the person who is being called a troll. Frankly, "trolling" has become a one-size-fits-all club that hotheads use to beat up people they disagree with.
These editors equate "trolling" with "it makes me mad". I would think any rational observer would understand how this definition leads to abuse.
The onus of defining "trolling" should not be on me; I am advocating abandonment of the term altogether. People who defend the idea of individual editors being allowed to delete comments deemed "trolling" shouild be required to offer an objective definition of trolliing so that we can be sure these vigilantes are not just squelching opinions that they don't like. --Ideogram 04:16, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You are identifying a real problem - people removing good-faith posts which they deem 'trolling'. However, you are hitting it with a sledge hammer. Sure, we can't define trolling in any watertight way that won't have grey areas and subjectivity. Actually, exactly the same is true of vandalism. We can't read minds. Thus, we assume good faith. However, there is always a point where it is reasonable not to do so. 'Fuck your mama' is one 'You are gay' is probably another - but at that point, and beyond it we are into grey areas, where there is potential for disagreement, and even abuse. We need common sense here. But we do need to leave the option to remove obvious trolling. And no, we can't read minds, but there comes a point where we are entitled to judge intent by action, otherwise we disappear into some post-modern sludge of non-communicatability. This is not to protect the naive (that's a silly argument), but the best way to discourage a troll is to remove his voice. Vandals and trolls need to know that their posts have almost zero impact on wikipedia - we don't want to leave a stream of abuse or some aggressive rant lying around. If the recipient really want to see it, then it is in the edit history.--Docg 09:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I just say in my edit summary something like "Removing text - violation of Wikipedia:Talk page and WP:TPG". I can't remember the last time that someone objected to such a removal (but, admittedly, I rarely do this for talk pages of really contentious articles). If the editor reverts, adding the improper text back, then a second revert (removing the text again) with "See your user talk page" and a note to them about using talk pages only for discussing changes to articles should be the next steps.
I too very much dislike the term "trolling", even if there is an essay that tries to define it. Why not just keep the discussion to whether the posting complies with policy, as opposed to giving the troll user a label that he/she can argue about? -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 19:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Let's talk about a concrete example. in Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2006/Candidate statements/Questions for Paul August#Questions from Cyde Weys you will see mention of an edit war over whether a question constituted trolling or not. You can check the edit history for the details. This one went so far as wheel-warring. Ultimately Jimbo himself stepped in and asked everyone to calm down. How do you think this situation could have been avoided? --Ideogram 22:34, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The "troll" terminology frustrates me for several reasons. Firstly, it's all-too-often used as a blanket response, designed to circumvent actual discussion in favor of what is basically a personal attack. Legitimizing a form of personal attack is really bad form. Secondly, it defeats the purpose of discussion; why even have discussion if it can be silenced so quickly by troll accusations? I believe strongly that the discussion should hinge only on whether the post conforms to policy or not, as John said above.
Trolling is an unnecessary term as well. Obvious trolling is quite clearly prohibited; insults, personal attacks, etc. But those are all covered under WP:NPA. .V. -- (TalkEmail) 06:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone interested in this issue I would ask you to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:What is a troll. I have tried to edit this essay to discourage usage of the term and am being opposed by an editor who (not surprisingly) thinks I am a troll. --Ideogram 19:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

anonymous users an new articles

Could someone tell me why anonymous users are not allowed to create new articles? Doesn't this strongly hinder the accessibility of the projecy? /Lokal_Profil 02:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Simple. Without that feature, anon vandals would create spam pages faster you could blink. I figure at least 99% of all new pages would be spam or otherwise unneeded pages. As is, that number is probably still 40%. Will (Talk - contribs) 02:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, for the reasoning, you will be interested in John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy, specifically John_Seigenthaler_Sr._Wikipedia_biography_controversy#Wikimedia_Foundation_reaction. It was a black eye on the foundation, and anonymous editing still can only be done on some Wikipedia's (I can do it on es:, BTW.
As for accessibility, I personally think not at all. It is incredibly easy to register a username (one doesn't even have to give an email address; it takes like 20 seconds). Anonymous users can go to WP:AFC (incidentally, there you will see that most submissions by anons aren't good ones anyway; and this page has removed a lot of the vandalous submissions - at least, that's IMO).
Hope this explains everything. Patstuarttalk|edits 02:40, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to keep the new user warning templates semi-protected only

I have submitted a proposal that the new user warning templates at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace should remain semi-protected and not become permanently fully protected at some point. For those interested, please discuss at Wikipedia talk:High-risk templates#Proposal to keep new user messages semi-protected only. Thank you, Satori Son 03:16, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quoting the Bible

I'm having trouble finding a policy on quoting text from the Bible. In particular, I'm trying to clean up the articles about individual Psalms in the Bible. These are in category "Psalms", eg Psalm 51. Most of these articles include the full text of the Psalm in at least one version of the Bible, mostly English, with a few Hebrew ones too. Should the text of the Psalm appear as a big lump in the article -- isn't the article about the Psalm, rather than the Psalm itself. This would be the case for poetry, wouldn't it? If there's a policy I've missed, please point me to it. Once I start editing, rather than stand on toes, I would like to be able to point to a policy that says, "this is how we do it". Thanks in advance. Bernard S. Jansen 11:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't a policy as such. There was a lot arguments here. But generally the consensus was that large chunks of Bible passages belong on Wikisource, not Wikipedia. However, if short quotations help to make the article readable then fine (with a very short psalm, quoting the whole thing may make sense - but not Psalm 119). But we need to watch that the translation chosen doesn't prejudice a point of view - so if the translation is contentious then that needs flagged up, or more than one alternative used. Any top-down policy will not really work here, we need a pragmatic approach to what gives us the best, neutral, and readable article in each case.--Docg 11:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Re. "There isn't a policy as such", true, but there is a guideline: Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources (which also applies to non-copyrighted material);
Maybe also have a glance at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/KJV, which treated a related topic, and gives some indications w.r.t. how to organise articles on consecutive bible passages (follow community consensus), and which translations to use (don't always use the same source for translations), etc. --Francis Schonken 11:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, my point is pragmatism is best, and article quality is paramount. We don't want people uploading large chunks of primary texts - or running around chucking them on articles for their own sake, on the other hand if an article is discussing a short Bible passage and would be enhanced by quoting a bit, we don't want to preclude that with a top-down policy. Work out what's best on an article - if they is a debate go with the consensus. Don't batter people with rules either way.--Docg 12:29, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree... we do not need finite rules for this. I am not sure if every psalm needs to have the entire text quoted, but some might. For example, if there is disagreement among biblical scholars as to how to translate it, I would definitely like to see side by side charts showing the different translations. Blueboar 16:34, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Texts should be included in two cases. 1) Where the translation is contentious and differences significant - here we need to use sufficient translations to bring out the different views fairly. 2) Where the text being discussed is short and including in would be proportionate to the article. Some psalms are little more than 3 sentences - it would be silly not to quote them - we would do it with a non-Bible short poem or song. Other passages would be so long as to swamp the article - don't include them. Where we are including and the translation isn't contentions, it may be sufficient to just to choose one mainstream translation, and indicate any significant differences in a footnote. There's no point in including several translations which all basically say the same thing. Just be sensible. We don't want people using articles as a pretext for needlessly putting whole long chapters of the Bible onto Wikipedia - that's for Wikisource. But equally, we don't want people crusading to remove bible passages that clearly make a particular article more comprehensible. If everyone is sensible, then the silliness that took this matter to arbcom in the past can be avoided. The primary question is: what makes this particular article better?--Docg 17:36, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just a slight quote must be appreciated, like "Yeah though I walk through..... The Valley of Hell I shall fear no evil for thy Nikon and tripod they comfort me" ;=-- DLL .. T 20:04, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Non-standard capitalization for personal or stage names

There is an ongoing discussion, whether or not individual capitalizaion for personal names or stage names (like all-lowercase or other variations) should be carried over to Wikipedia, given that an explicit exception from Wikipedia:Proper names#Personal names does not exist, while on the other hand there is a related policy (Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks)) which in most cases suggest a conversion to standard English formatting.

The discussion sparked at Talk:Hide (musician), has since been carried over to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (capital letters) but also somewhat stagnated, so I decided to post here, in order to attract more input. - Cyrus XIII 21:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See also Talk:Bell_hooks#Casing_and_her_Possessive for a lengthy discussion on author and feminist bell hooks. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 00:04, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There was an old discussion on the WP:JAPAN talk page about song titles and names that pointed to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)/misc9#Capitalization of roman-letter names, etc., generated in Japan which intimates that as Japanese script does not have capital letters then any use or non-use is purely stylistic. As 'hide' is an English language stage-name I would imagine that the capitalisation differs with a variety of sources, unless it has been trademarked as 'hide' - Foxhill 00:53, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SMOKERS discussion.

A discussion on Laura Bush's/Barack Obama's smoking/attempts to quit smoking led me to begin an essay/potential guideline on the topic of including smoking within biographical articles. The participation of the editors here would be appreciated. Italiavivi 01:24, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed change to settlement naming convention

WikiProject Current Local City Time is proposing at their talk page that articles for prominent cities be moved to include subnational units. For example, Toronto would be moved to Toronto, Ontario. This would result in a de facto change to naming conventions for settlements, which provides (at least for Canada) that:

Places which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, such as Quebec City or Toronto, can have undisambiguated titles.

Your contribution to this discussion would be most welcome. -Joshuapaquin 05:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was bold: I closed the poll. That was clearly the wrong place and wrong method to discuss major changes to naming conventions as many editors noted. Angus McLellan (Talk) 20:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Notice on username transliterations

Just a note to say that I've made a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Username#Latin character transliterations to require transliterations on non-latin usernames for various reasons, spelled out in the post. Please discuss on that talk page. pschemp | talk 18:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting 3rd opinion on External Links

replacementdocs has tons of game documentation for all kinds of computers and consoles from the past 30 years. So I thought it would be worth sharing that site with Wikipedia visitors by adding an External Link under various classic computer and console articles to the associated file section at replacementdocs.

My thought was that this fit in line with many of the other External Links on the pages of these articles. For example, there is a External Link to the appropriate section of AtariAge on virtually all of the Atari articles (Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari Jaguar, etc).

As I was posting these links, User:Luna Santin blocked my IP and reverted my edits claiming it was spam. I make the argument that there is a lot of useful information on that site, and that some people wouldn't even know that an archive like that existed if it weren't linked from these general computer/console articles.

Any other opinions on the matter? Casimps1 21:38, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The companies still own the copyright on the manuals, so it's probably a violation of WP:EL. Sorry, but there's no way WP can link to that kind of site. ColourBurst 01:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Casimps - you neglected to mention (as you were told on your talk page) that User:Luna Santin posted several times to User talk:66.192.94.185, the IP you were using, about the problem - and that anonymous account never responded. At minimum you should have mentioned that here, and acknowledged your mistake, or you should not have mentioned Luna Santin at all. When you omit information, actions by other editors may appear to be unjustified when in fact they are not.
As for replacementdocs.com, the matter of legality may be a bit more nuanced than ColourBurst indicates, per this FAQ item; the site asserts that it does have permission from some publishers to have their manuals downloaded. Perhaps a note to the site owners saying that it would be helpful if such manuals were specifically identified? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:25, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the notes from Luna, I didn't mention them because the 3 times I was "contacted" were 3 User talk messages in the time frame of 6 minutes while I was in the process of editing documents. They weren't being ignored, I simply didn't see them. Add to that I had never so much as heard of a "User talk" page or how it worked. I admit my ignorance in Wikipedia's policy and workflow in general, but I only had good intentions when I added the single targeted link to each of a dozen or so articles, so I felt it absurd to apologize for attempting to enhance an encyclopedia based on user contributions.
Regarding the links, I feel that the copyright issue is even more of a gray area than either of you mention. First of all, replacementdocs only hosts game documentation, not the games themselves. This could fall under fair-use because the manual is a relatively insubstantial part of the total product (the game itself). Of course, this hasn't been proven in court yet, but the argument could definitely be made. Additionally, copyright law dictates that instructions cannot be copyrighted. Although the manuals encompass the instructions as well as the layout thereof and artwork, this still seems to be another argument for the site's validity.
But if everyone agrees that the copyright issue still makes replacementdocs a no-deal, then I believe that probably all links to AtariAge would have to be removed as well. There are links to AtariAge from virtually every article for an Atari console. They likewise host scans of copyrighted manuals.Casimps1 13:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WP:FAR and WP:GAR are the enemies of WP:The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit

Seriously. At the time of writing two articles that are having their GA status reviewed are The Beatles and Shakespeare; two of the most searched subjects on the internet! Two subjects that may well be the avenue by which a surfer will come into contact with this site... Well done, folks!! Anyone searching for these subjects will find that Wikipedia aren't sure that the article is actually any good. For those that look a little deeper, it appears that the efforts of new editors are detrimental to the standards that Wikipedia promotes. This may have the effect that new editors are discouraged, that the perception of Wikipedia is tarnished, and that the efforts of regular contributors are hindered by those editors who feel that style is everything and that content and context is irrelevant.

I agree that standards are good, and that the vast majority of articles are (or would be) improved by the strict application of same. It is just that a few are not, or perhaps more correctly are beyond the practice of academic due process. I like to call these articles "flagships", those topics that are likely to attract readers, excite interest in interacting within Wikipedia, encourage editing (no matter how clumsy) and generally bring people into the concept.

These few (very few!) should be exempt from the the usual visible checks and measures. Do not place templates on the talk page, recording the decline from FA class to GA to B grade, make WP:Peer review a condition before putting the article to review (to enable flaws to be addressed). Make it understood that a page that attracts possibly scores of edits, some from new editors or IP addresses, in a day is unlikely to ever be devoid of mistakes in both content or style.

It is in the nature of the beast, the popular article, the majority of it will be mostly right most of the time. An energetic article will constantly be updated, reviewed, corrected, tagged, cited, vandalised, reverted, rewritten, polished, split, added to, subtracted from and generally interacted with. Sometimes on a daily basis. To take an arbitary example of an article and say, "this is not to the standard by which it was once judged, and should have its status revoked" is stupid, pointless and insulting. It is made by editors who are (despite their commendable enthusiasm and diligence) stupid, rather pointless and liable to insult those contributors to major topics with their nitpicking and arrogant, superior attitudes. Perhaps my original premise was wrong; it is the editors who inhabit the FAR and GAR that are the enemy of the ethos of Wikipedia, in attempting to raise the standard they disavow the achievements and struggles of those who have spent time and effort in creating and expanding Wikipedia articles.


I suggest that the 20 (or perhaps 50) articles that aggregate the most edits (including vandalism, which suggest topicality and/or general familiarity if nothing else) over a year should be declared Flagship Articles, and not be subject to the petty referrals and overzealous Wiki policy police edits some other articles are subject. They should have an extra layer of protection from the misguided fools who prefer to concentrate on the placement of blank spaces before or after specific type of text, who will reduce a 10,000 character article into a question of consistency in the spelling of a couple of words. As in law, sometimes the argument that there is a case to answer needs to be made before the case is allowed to proceed.

If the flagship articles are not protected from the WikiZealots, then every FA or GA article will be arcane excercises in subjects that few will be engaged by and the very concept of The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit will be in trouble. LessHeard vanU 00:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone complains about the language I have used; this is the point I am making! You are avoiding the debate by concentrating about the style. Prove me wrong; show me that by removing marks of approval for an article is a good way of motivating editors and encouraging newcomers to contribute. Then make the argument that those articles which attract readers and ultimately new editors should be subject to that same process. Ignore the style and concentrate on the context! LessHeard vanU 01:02, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly agree with every single point that LessHeard vanU has made, at this precise moment in time, I feel like making no further contributions. Vera, Chuck & Dave GM 03:40, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
LessHeard vanU's comments are to be applauded. So many editors (WikiZealots) look at a page, leave a comment about what is wrong (usually something they could have easily corrected in the time it took to write their comment) and then move on. Their grievances take up more time than vandals, whose destructive edits can be reverted. Style is to be commended, but actual content is something that these editors do not take part in. andreasegde 04:49, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, when I personally suggest on a talk page that something is wrong instead of fixing it myself, it's because I'm seeking the opinion (or lack of it) of other editors working on a page before changing it. On a high traffic page this is a significant step in avoiding horribe edit wars and the likes where the current "residents" at an article may be defensive of the status quo. By discussing the problem, people can see why a change is needed and a consensus can be reached.

The article review and grading process is the only form of "quality control" that wikipedia has. It's also the only outward looking indication of the quality of an article, or for that matter, an inward looking indication to editors of what kind of work an article needs. The peer review process is merely a way of getting input from uninvolved and usually experienced editors as to what an articles faults are. The GAR and FAR are much the same, but also look at whether an article continues to meet the criteria for those levels of grading. Quite imply, if the criteria for FA or GA aren't met, then the article isn't FA or GA, and needs work to bring it back to that standard. The reviews offer advice on how to go about doing just that. Crimsone 09:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't take this badly, Crimsone, but you have just explained something to us that we already know. Changing something that is blatantly wrong, like spelling mistakes, hyphens, gaps in the text etc., are not for discussion. Just repair them. Editors spend a lot of time going back and forth on talk pages about the most minimal of stylistic things, when they could be putting in content. andreasegde 10:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I personally cannot see why the most-viewed articles should be devoid of quality control, and be awarded GA or FA status "for life". These are the test cf credibility through whitch most people will judge the seriousness of Wikipedia; they should all strive for excellency, even more than average. Not to have a mechanism ensuring that is not really the best way to go in my opinion.
However, there seems to be growing consensus about one thing: Prose quality. It seems to me that prose is definitely the very last of our problems. We want good, informative, reliable content, in huge quantities. The "professional standards" that are required to pass criterion 1a of FAC are just way too subjective, and, for reason's sake, we are not professionnals! I feel like many people who put a lot of energy in an article in order to get it to FAC are a bit disheartened when they meet the copyediting gang there, whose word is law. Maybe we could have another classification, like PP for Professional Prose, that would be distinct from FAC?--SidiLemine 11:31, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the people commenting are professionals, actually. Featured articles are supposed to represent our best work, and prose is a factor in determining what is "best". Yes, prose is often the thing most overlooked, or left until everything else has been added, and that is why it is often raised at FAC. That's not to say that articles with worse prose are no good; it's just a reflection that FAs are meant to be the best of the best. Trebor 12:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

LessHeard vanU, could you please assume good faith? To call editors who are attempting to improve the encyclopaedia "stupid" and "rather pointless", and accuse them of having "nitpicking and arrogant, superior attitudes" is hardly being civil. Most articles which go through FAR and GAR are improved by the process, even if they are eventually demoted. Isn't that the most important thing, that the quality has been improved? Classifying articles into quality groups is useful and encouraging to editors who work hard on articles, but it is hardly the most important aspect of Wikipedia. And yes, when new editors come to FAs, most changes they make are not an improvement. While we shouldn't bite, we shouldn't allow them to degrade the quality either. Trebor 12:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Trebor (and others), the assumption of good faith is a possible archilles heel of Wikipedia. It limits discussion to a level of politeness where other people may not realise the passion that prompted a comment. I deliberately went against that in my comments, but only to demonstrate the strength of my feelings in the matter. I apologise to any person who feels personally targetted by my words. I do not apologise for using them to provoke a reaction.
In truth I think that those people who take the time and effort to review articles in both FAR and GAR are doing the best job that they are able, and their efforts should be applauded. I still maintain that the discipline rightfully demonstrated at those places sometimes works to the detriment of Wikipedia, in that articles may be too easily referred there; there could have been some notes on a talkpage, and that content and context are ignored for pretty minor infringements of style. I have seen articles passed with a cavaet, which is something I would encourage. Pass it (provisionally?) for content with comments about how it could be bettered in presentation.
The idea behind flagship article is that FA and GA status can be made irrelevant within days of passing. Major interest articles attract a great many edits, some malicious, some inept, some good but not to Wiki standards, and some fantastic. Those editors who adopt an article can be hard pressed just removing vandalism and poor contributions, rewriting and requesting citations, and may sometimes be overwhelmed. A flagship article is one where this is recognised, and the processes used for quality control are only applied after a good deal of consideration. It does not stop an article being reviewed, or make it easier to pass a nomination, it just perhaps does not allow a reflex fail/referall over matters that may make up a tiny fraction of the content.
In short, I believe that WP:TETACE has precedence over WP:FAR and WP:GAR and those who do (great) work over there should bear it in mind. Perhaps there is also an argument that a very small number of articles which attract a great many searches and edits should have an extra layer of protection of over zealous application of Wiki standards.LessHeard vanU 12:51, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Assume good faith doesn't limit conversation to politeness; WP:CIVIL does that. Good faith is acknowledging that even if you disagree with their actions, they are trying to improve the encyclopaedia. Insulting people, and generalising about their attitudes and motivation, doesn't make you point stronger; it's just more likely to get people's backs up. I'm still not sure what you want to change (or what WP:TETACE is); are you saying we should relax the quality requirements for articles that are more popular? Trebor 13:13, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
While WP:Civil certainly does moderate the language, assuming Good Faith possibly disallows a caustic appraisal of anothers efforts. This exchange, however, does illustrate my point that the discussion of the technicalities of the presentation can obscure the point that is being debated. Anyway, I apologised for the terms and tone used and explained that I was only shouting to elicit a greater response. FYI WP:TETACE is a conceit, just me not wishing to type out "The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit" every time. ;)
I would refer you to my last two paragraphs in my previous comment; not easier to pass but an acknowledgement that those processes may not always be appropriate for a very few articles in Wikipedia, and that another level of referral/review may be necessary before going to FAR/GAR. LessHeard vanU 13:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I totally didn't get the WP:TETACE bit. I'm not sure how another level of review would help really, apart from introducing more bureaucracy. Yes, the level of editing should be considered when making the review, but I don't think a whole new process is required. It would also bring new problems, when you try to consider which articles can be considered "flagship". Trebor 13:33, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
*Dan T.* below makes a very good criteria for Flagship status; the entry-point page which might be determined simply by hits. Mine was edits (which may more reflect zeal amongst fewer). If hits and edits can be counted try listing the top 100 of each, take all those which are in both listings and have the top 20 (or other arbitary quantity) made into Flagships. Amending policy for those so qualified would be the difficult task.
None of the above assumes you agree, of course; it is just how I see how it may be arrived at. LessHeard vanU 14:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if you wanted to do it on page views, here is the list of the top 100 (a both amusing and depressing read). I still don't think there's a need to amend policy, just to bear it in mind when reviewing articles. Trebor 16:59, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, at least the lads are in there! This would be the passive list, I suppose. It may well be that the sex related articles, and the political ones perhaps, are semi protected anyway as they are obvious targets for vandalism. I wonder how many have even tried for GA/FA? Perhaps mixing that list with the most active in respect of edits may be interesting? As WP does not censor content, there is no reason why sex related articles cannot be classed as Flagship's . As I commented, maybe only a couple dozen articles might qualify under the discussed criteria. LessHeard vanU 17:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC) (I'm now going to the Sealand article to see why it is so popular!)[reply]
There isn't any WP:TETACE page when I just checked now. Some might argue that the most popular pages that people arrive at by search are the ones where it's most important that high standards be maintained, since they're the face we present to the world. Others might argue that consistency is a virtue, so we should strive to, as best we can, maintain the same standards throughout the site, in articles both popular and unpopular. So there is plenty of room for good faith disagreement with your assertion that standards should be made and enforced in a more "relaxed" manner on popular entry-point pages. *Dan T.* 13:19, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would refer you to my reply to Trebor above re TETACE, and also

not easier to pass but an acknowledgement that those processes may not always be appropriate for a very few articles in Wikipedia, and that another level of referral/review may be necessary before going to FAR/GAR.

i.e. "semi protection" from reflex referral. Also the (provisional) passing of an article with cavaets, allowing an article which is otherwise FA/GA to get/keep the accolade while determining what needs to be done to ensure it is retained. "Entry-point page" is as valid a description of "Flagship Article" as is one which relies on edit count. LessHeard vanU 14:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The GA review of William Shakespeare is a mistake--it is a very good article and with a little work could be a featured article. The person who nominated the article for GA review was mistaken in his/her concerns, as evidenced by the fact that no one else has supported the removal. The article is also extremely stable and well referenced. While there is still room for improvement, any one whose first exposure to Wikipedia is the Shakespeare article is not getting a bum rush. I also agree with the previous comment about how too many editors pop onto a page, leave comments about what is wrong with the article, then don't stick around and actually help improve it. Shakespeare was on the Wikipedia:Article Creation and Improvement Drive a half year ago and even that wasn't enough to get other editors to pitch in and help. Anyway, this is a very good article which a core group of editors has worked on for a good while. Instead of bellyaching about how some high-profile articles should be better, how about actually helping to improve them?--Alabamaboy 15:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above is an example of what could be avoided; if there had been an intermediate stage where it was discussed whether a Flagship article (which the above might qualify as) did indeed qualify for review, and what may needed to keep it from listing, then the above editors concerns may have been addressed and the article not sent to GAR. LessHeard vanU 16:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Uhm, the review is that intermediate stage where its status is questioned. Why should things have to go through another hoop just to see if it needs to be reviewed? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Alabamaboy is not of the opinion that it need have got to this stage (however, he may be a little peeved that no notice of the referral to GAR was given at the article talkpage; a matter of procedure for the folk at WP:GAR perhaps). In respect of the above article, the comments made at GAR make it clear that the matters raised in the referral are to do with vandal reversions and one contentious inclusion that was from a Wikipedia source. An intermediate review may have discovered this before listing. LessHeard vanU 19:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. Wow. Setting a double standard like this will only deterioate the quality of the encyclopedia; this will encourage people to vandalize and do other crap to the article so it can hit the "top 100" most edited/viewed article and thus be "exempt" from having to mantain a certain standard of quality. The fact that all articles are subject to the same policies is what keeps the quality of the encyclopedia from going down. There are no exceptions. Many Featured articles promoted in 2003 and 2004 do not have any in-line citations and are generally of poor quality. It hurts Wikipedia more to say that Ridge Route is of the same quality that V for Vendetta (film) is when the former is clearly worse than the latter. Besides that, most readers do not visit the talk page, and the only indication of an FA is a little icon on the upper-right hand side of the screen. The GA logo was obliterated awhile back due to a lack of strong, formal procedure for GAs (anybody can promote GAs; FAs have to go through WP:FAC). My trust of the article comes if it has an accurate in-line citation or not, not whether it has been promoted to FA status or the rather arbitrary GA status. Hbdragon88 00:24, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here we go again... At most I am suggesting that a very, very few articles should be reviewed in the knowledge that a great deal of the deficiencies found at any one time are the result of many recent edits, and that the core of editors who have adopted the article will remove or improve them shortly. The same logic would be applied to the same articles that should they pass that they are likely to be edited from that standard (and back again) within a few days. It happens. Popular articles attract the good, the bad and the ugly every single day. In these instances only long standing problems need be addressed. This is not, however, how FAR/GAR works presently.
My proposed solution would to be to quantify the very few (less than 100, more than 19 is my thinking) articles as Flagship Articles which can be dealt with in one and/or two ways; firstly, a 'preview' of whether the problems are of sufficient seriousness to put to full review (after speaking to editors involved in the article), semi protecting them from kneejerk referral. Flagship Articles which are still considered to qualify for review should be treated the same as any other. Secondly, I have also suggested that any article (not just Flagship) can be passed (possibly provisionally) with a caveat that requires identified weaknesses (not sufficient of themselves individually for failure) to be addressed. This would mean less articles fail review, but the standards are maintained.
I have not pursued my suggestions that templates detailing the failure to obtain/keep accolades for such articles should be hidden or not promoted. It would create unnecessary work. I adhere to my original comment that the fine work by those in FAR and GAR does seem to work against the ethos of The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit. Nobody has even hinted that there is a decent counter argument. LessHeard vanU 00:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think this list is pretty interesting. It shows what our readers are really looking for. --Ideogram 02:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I had already peeked at the list provided by Ideogram... It doesn't really matter which subjects fell within the criteria as I am not looking to "protect" any one individual article, but how Wikipedia is perceived by readers, anonymous and new editors.
The predominance of articles of a sexual nature in the list perhaps illustrates my case quite well. How many of them are included as core topics? Of more interest is if Breasts and Sexual Positions are in the 1182 vital articles? As Wikipedia is not censored they should appear there, as they are obviously a major Entry Level Topic for a great many readers (unless number of hits does not count toward the criteria!). I would also suggest that they are also frequently the target of vandalism; some of it juvenile but also some of it malicious/POV orientated. Perhaps these would then qualify for Flagship Status, with an expectation that they should be part of a promotion drive to get them to GA status? I suspect that currently they are subject to repeated vandalism (if not semi-protected), have a small (dedicated, I also suspect) team of editors who try to maintain a minimal degree of encyclopedic standard and really could do with not having other members of the Wikicommunity reminding them of the required presentation of citations and the use of the em-dash rather than the en-dash.
If the sex orientated subjects do not appear in the Core Topics then the criteria needs looking at. That the Beatles aren't included also indicates that the Core topics criteria is not based around relevance to the Wiki reader, and I would then question the point of them (I simply don't what they are or how they made the grade; I may well be persuaded if I knew the facts). Since we are discussing the awarding and removing of grades which directly impinges of the readers experience of Wikipedia then it may even be irrelevant. The other manner of attempting to find relevance would be the quantity of edits, again over an extended period. Some articles must have cycles of edits, as the subject matter gains and loses exposure in the media, and some may have a brief spell as a hot topic before reverting to the usual number of edits. Some subjects like The Beatles and Shakespeare have either a regular level of frequency of edits or (as the Shakespeare editor commented) a regular cycle. In these cases the level of edits may not decline simply because the article reaches a Wiki defined standard, or falls from that standing. They are going to be frequentley edited consistently because that is the nature of the subject, many people think that there is information that needs including (or removing) or could be said better.
If an aggregate of most viewed and most edited articles ultimately does not include either the Beatles and Shakespeare then so be it. It simply means that there another 20 or 99 articles that might require a further level of referral and debate before taking to FAR/GAR. I think this would be of benefit to Wikipedia. LessHeard vanU 17:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that the most viewed articles should be the ones that are held to the highest standards. What would tarnish the image of Wikipedia is if these frequently-viewed articles were reviewed less stringently than others. Having more people viewing an article does mean more checks and balances, but it also means more vandalism, more well-meaning but ultimately harmful edits, and more small edits adding pieces of useful information that are nonetheless not well cited or well integrated into the article. You only have to look at articles that have had their day on the front page to see that scrutiny by the masses is a double-edged sword. There is a reason why featured articles tend to arrive at that state because of the devoted hard work of a small number of contributors. "Flagship" articles need extra vigilance, not less. MLilburne 21:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry but it just seems silly to suggest that GAR or FAR are "petty referrals". Also, I fail to understand what sort of catastrophic repercussions you think GAR can have on new editors. Let's see: new editor looks up the Beatles entry. New editor is so fascinated that he reads the talk page, finds the article is under Good article review and thinks "that's odd, I thought the article was really good." And if we're to believe your concerns new editor now thinks "jeez, I'm not going to participate in this project because the standards of quality are way too high". Come on... If anything, ensuring quality articles is going to bring us more quality editors. Wikipedia had the early reputation of a great place to find unreferenced, poorly organized and poorly written piles of info. Thanks in part to the GA and FA processes, it's emerging as a real alternative to paper and other commercial encyclopedias. I don't see how anything is to be gained by hiding these. Pascal.Tesson 22:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When can I call an idiot an idiot?

I understand the intent behind our policies NPA and CIVIL; we need to be able to discuss matters politely in order to work together. Unfortunately some people interpret those policies to mean that we must respect each other. Now, I am not the kind of person to give respect lightly; I believe respect has to be earned. It is also easy for me to be nice to someone who clearly respects me.

The problem is when I run into a user who is both arrogant and an idiot. There is no way to work with, or even communicate with, such a person; they are too dumb to know what they are talking about and too full of themselves to learn from their mistakes. Generally I give up all hope of interacting productively with such a person and take pleasure in pointing out their stupidity.

I can't simply pretend such people don't exist. And if I wanted to grit my teeth and play politics with them I could get paid a whole lot of money in a real job. Is there any hope for me in Wikipedia? --Ideogram 07:31, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but not if you tell people that they're "idiots" (no matter how much pleasure you derive from belittling others). Instead, simply inform them that you've been unable to adequately communicate with them and don't care to continue trying. —David Levy 07:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Typically how I encounter such people is in the middle of a controversial argument that has already dragged on too long. I may be overestimating my abilities, but I sometimes feel that I can help focus the debate on important things by dismissing obviously stupid arguments before other participants get distracted by them.
I suppose I could simply shrug my shoulders and let those silly enough to get dragged into such arguments suffer. But for some reason I am irrationally attracted to conflict. --Ideogram 07:51, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ideogram, you are falling into their most basic trap. Have you ever thought that the .......... (insert word of choice here) might enjoy making you angry? Silly people like silly arguments. Please don't let them drag you in. Have fun. andreasegde 10:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
take pleasure in pointing out their stupidity.' - ummm, not good. Reasoning with someone who is either not very smart or is very passionate about something to the point of extreme POV is generally unproductive; it's best just to say "I find that argument unpersuasive" and see if other editors agree. If it's just you and the other editor, then Wikipedia:Third opinion is useful; if it's an editor and his/her buddy(s), then an RfC is probably needed.
You might also take such situations as a challenge to try to pull something constructive from the other person's arguments. My sense is that editors feel agrieved when some argument or point of view is totally ignored in an article, and a sentence that says "claimed" or "critics have said" can appease them, without ruining the article.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, don't get caught in the trap of arguing over wording in an article like ("A and B mean that C often occurs"). That appears to be a logical statement that could be debated and resolved on a talk page; in fact, it's a statement that should be sourced like other controversial assertions and facts, and should not be defended on talk pages as "simply logical". Just keep saying "that needs to be sourced or it needs to be removed"; at some point they'll realize that you're not going to engage in a debate over the matter, and that they either have to put up or shut up. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:11, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Simple, never. Calling someone an idiot isn't civil, no matter how you spin it. Don't do it; you're still free to ignore him, though. Superm401 - Talk 20:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]


With one's superior skills it is often easier to shrink a fool to the size of a cockroach and make him dance in a teaspoon. A neutral description of the other's rhetorical techniques is effective. Addressing other readers of your post rather than the fool directly may be more effective. And always coat your venom with honey. --Wetman 21:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Never, never, never call someone an idiot. It's about the most jabbing insult you can make on Wikipedia, and chances are high you'll have an extremely heated edit war on your hands. Don't do it. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 21:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all for your replies. You have given me much to think about. --Ideogram 22:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I find the approach recommended in Romans 12:20 quite effective (even if one is not religious); one of Napoleon's dicta also is helpful. Raymond Arritt 20:23, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indefinite blocks and comunity bans.

There's currently discussion on the relationship between use of indefinite blocks and community bans at Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#Indefinite_Blocks. --Barberio 21:11, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Public domain images

If i upload an image, if its published before 1923 or something related do i need a source present? Nareklm 03:02, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You should explain where the image came from, so it can be verified that it is genuinely in the public domain. See Wikipedia:Public domain for more information. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 03:14, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When an article is finished...

Can an article ever be considered complete, and if so, would restriction in editing be considered to ensure that an article doesn't reach a peak and then decline due to sneaky vandalism/sabotage etc? Of course if someone has something to add to a "completed" article, a suitabley ranked Wikipedian could be trusted to implement the addition. I just think it would be nice, once an article is decidedly finished, to not have to spend resources keeping it in good shape and to concentrate on something else. --Seans Potato Business 04:59, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Such a thing has been proposed by Jimbo, but the discussion on it is still ongoing, and it's certainly not implemented. --Golbez 05:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would support the idea that, at some point, an article could have a "DONE" stamp placed on it (with a permanent lock, which would be removed by request: for example, if new information becomes available on the subject and the article needed updating). However, that is not the policy at the moment. It is sad that excellent articles, once they achieve a level of perfection where we can say they are "done", need constant monitoring to prevent vandalism, but that is the way things work right now. Blueboar 15:43, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Golbez, do you know where the discussion is taking place? --Seans Potato Business 20:14, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Even excellent articles can still be improved, and there would need to be some mechanism that was not overly burdensome for an editor to propose further improvements to a "done" article. Robert A.West (Talk) 20:25, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Reviewed article version and Article validation feature give some overview, although there isn't a lot of ongoing discussion at the moment. It's a MediaWiki feature currently in development, and the plan last I heard was to test it out on the German Wikipedia once it was ready to go live. If you're interested in this and other "behind-the-scenes" things, a good thing to do would be to join the mailing lists, where a lot of such discussion takes place. You'll probably also find more discussion if you dredge through the archives of some of the major lists, such as foundation-l, wikipedia-l, and wikiEN-l. --Slowking Man 20:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have written a new essay

The essay I have written is called: Wikipedia:Essays are not policy. I have written in as an attempt to explain what essays are and are not, and how to respond to those who use them and you don't agree with the essay. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this one of a large number of essays that belong in a category I'd name Category:Wikipedia essays that automutilate because of circular reasoning. I'm serious about that category, we do have a large number of verbose essays, whose only reason for verbosity is hiding self-contradiction. Then I'd treat the essays in that category in the same way as trivia sections per the description at Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections#Guidance: the not self-contradictory contentions of such essays should probably be merged with existing guidance (if that isn't already the case...), the rest should be removed.
Applying that to Wikipedia:Essays are not policy: this essay shoots at its own argument: if essays are not policy, then this essay certainly isn't and its content can be neglected, a truism, a triviality that doesn't need a separate page. FYI, relations between policies, guidelines and essays are explained at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc. - if you want to change the approach explained there, there's always Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines to explain your arguments, which would be largely preferred over authoring a self-contradictory essay. --Francis Schonken 12:02, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with Francis on this one. This essay duplicates the content of [[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc.. By the way, that's one of the problems with the multiple essays floating all around: many of them are re-hashing things which are already part of established policies and guidelines and as such they create confusion when they're trying to eliminate it. Pascal.Tesson 16:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Modifying when dates of birth should be listed for biographies of living people

I have opened up a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#Proposal_to_alter_the_criteria_for_listing_dates_of_birth concerning altering and clarifying when dates of birth for biographies of living people should be used. New voices to the discussion would be helpful. Thanks. Cowman109Talk 16:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pre-emptive semi-protection

I am aware that pre-emptive protection or semi-protection is currently against Wikipedia policy. I would like to propose that, with apprpriate safeguards, this policy be changed under certain circumstances.

The article Auschwitz concentration camp is a major article, although not a featured one, and deals with a subject having, for many people, a very highly emotional content. It also, for some reason, is a major target for vandalism. I have seen it hit, on occasion, four or five times a day, nearly always by non-account-holders, and at least one hit per day is expected. The edits are, of course, mindless and/or childish and/or obscene and/or offensive, and must cause very significant distress to editors whose families were caught up in the Holocaust.

Devolve the decision to a bureaucrat, or a steward, or Jimbo himself if you like, but I would like there to be a procedure in place whereby pages of this type, vandalised in a way which causes emotional distress to other editors, can be permanently semi-protected. --Anthony.bradbury 17:30, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I think this is reasonable. Of course, "appropriate safeguards" and "certain circumstances" are the keywords here and both would have to be explicited more formally before I wholly support such a change. Articles which, by nature, are the subject of extremely offensive vandalism (Nigger is another example that comes to mind) would benefit from such a measure. Vandalism is of course quickly reverted but every now and then some user will see the Auschwitz page replaced by "Jews burn" and the damage done is probably much greater than when a user wants to read on George Bush and sees it replaced by "I hope this guy dies". Pascal.Tesson 17:44, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you - that is exactly my point. I did not take the liberty of stipulating which safeguards or circumstances were appropriate; it seemed to me that, if the principle were approved, then these factors may emerge in the discussion. If you look back in the article's edit history you will find edits which are much more upsetting than the example which User:Pascal.Tesson quotes.--Anthony.bradbury 17:52, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

explaining copyrights and WP:CV

What is the best article to link on when trying to explain about WP:CV to new editors? Soemthing nice, simple and concise (or at least, something they'll read so I don't have to summarize it all on their talk page). RJFJR 23:24, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting

While this may seem to be a semantic point, I think the Wikimedia Foundation should adopt the CE/BCE format for date rather than AD/BC. My main basis is to preserve NPOV (religious overtones would seem to have no place in a date format).

I also feel that there should be a markup method for metric/Imperial conversion. Any measurement could be submitted with the tag and based on the user's preference the appropriate measurement would be given priority (with the other following it in parentheses). Again, a minor quibble, but something which would be relatively simple to institute and would/should make the content more appropriate for it's audience. 167.1.143.100 18:29, 28 January 2007

I like those ideas! − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 23:44, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is a textbook case where enforcement of a style is not only undesirable, but patetly harmful to the encyclopedia. Any attempt to enforce a specific date style would lead to the same problems attempts at enforcing a given spelling style cause.Circeus 23:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree on the first point. I can live with a fairly common practice for BC/BCE, which is to use whichever date seems more appropriate for the subject matter, and omit the label entirely for AD-only articles-- for instance, the Solomon article is measured in BCE, whereas Augustus is in BC/AD and William the Conquerer and 1066 just use the years without designation (see WP:MOSNUM). (Bizarrely, Jesus uses both labels for reasons that make no sense to me whatsoever, as is the case with all good compromises.) However, I continue to believe that BC/AD has about as much religious significance in 2007 as Thursday, the day of Thor, and that BCE is a pointless affectation. I recognize that it is a fashionable and increasingly common affectation; I just think it's silly. There's no real reason to modify the current manual of style.
With regard to the unit conversion, I don't think it makes a big difference if there is one or not in most articles. (For instance, Orson Welles was 72" tall; the article doesn't suffer for not having that translated into meters.) More information can never hurt, though, and sometimes it will be handy. DCB4W 00:28, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, to clarify, the guideline proposal to limit BC/AD to Christianity related articles failed. The issue of "appropriate" appears to be made on an article by article basis by the involved editors. I think that is how it should be. DCB4W 00:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Partially owned images on user pages

I am a contributor to and an editor of The Technique. In developing its wiki entry, I uploaded Image:The Technique 12-01-2006.jpg, and placed that image in a "gallery" on my userpage. Given that I therefore own partial copyright of the picture, do I have rights to use it on my userpage? Does it make any difference that the "use" in question is a thumbnail? See additional discussion on my talk page: User talk:Disavian#Fair use images aren't allowed in user pages. Thank you. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 01:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's a weird one. Frankly, assuming you're one of the owners, it isn't a fair use at all-- it's the copyright holder using the image as he sees fit. We're picky about fair use, because we a) care at least somewhat about what happens downstream of our creations, and b) we don't want to get sued (for a use to be fair it has to be for a "fair use" purpose, and decoration of one's web page isn't ordinarily one). You're licensing it to yourself for your use here, so that solves problem b) and problem a) is weird, because user pages aren't part of the encyclopedia. So the policy issue is one of first impression.
When I say we care at least somewhat about what happens downstream, I mean that we do allow some content that isn't free, permanently. We like to have as much free as possible, because creating an unrestricted free source of information is one of our policy goals. We do allow restricted content-- e.g. fair use-- when necessary, because we sometimes need it to make this particular wiki useful, even if downstream users who have a different purpose might have to cull out some fair use images if their usage of the image wouldn't be "fair." There's currently a vigorous and occasionally bitter debate about whether we should go ahead and delete fair use content that could be replaced, or if we should wait until the replacement has been made or found before replacing it.
Personally, I'm in the "leave fair use content on the wiki until free replacements can be found" camp, because I see creation of Wikipedia as a useful entity as our primary goal, and the other issue as an important secondary goal. (I realize that not everyone holds that opinion, but that's where I stand.)
Your use may raise policy problems above and beyond the copyright law. Your use of the image on the newspaper's entry is fine-- perfect example of fair use. You as the owner of the image would be exempt from fair use requirements, so you can decorate whatever you want with the image. However, Wikipedia is hosting the image, and it's odd that only one Wikipedia editor is authorized to use it the way you're using it.
Are you sure you're the owner, though? Isn't the Technique itself the owner of its content and representations thereof? I don't think the managing editor of the Post owns the front page. If you're not the owner of the content, I don't think it matters that you actually made the image, any more than taking a screenshot from Heroes (TV series) conveys rights over the image to the photographer. I think we need to be sure of the answer to that before we even address the hard question. DCB4W 02:39, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As an aside, I'm with you in the "wait until a replacement can be found" camp. Legally, the Editor in Chief holds the full copyright to the issue (and therefore, any derivatives). Therefore, I was planning to ask her to release rights to that image the next time I saw her. I consider my copyright over the picture to be somewhat limited, given that I'm only a contributing editor. Let me ask the hard questions, now that you know who technically owns the copyright:
  • If I was the Editor in Chief, would I be able to use the image on my userpage?
  • If I authored one of the articles on that image, would I be able to use the image on my userpage?
Given that information, we might be able to conclude on the final question:
  • If I helped create that image, even though I do not hold the primary copyright, would I be able to use the image on my userpage?
Hope that helps. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 05:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FYI: My concern is how does Disavian prove he is a copyright owner? Without, isn't the entire discussion mute? Will (Talk - contribs) 06:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AfD: second nomination rules?

Funday PawPet Show survived Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Funday pawpet show. Now there's a second AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Funday PawPet Show, but shouldn't it have "(second nomination)" in the URL? --EarthFurst 07:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's only a disambig concern as far as I know, for cases when an article retains its original title in between noms. The nominator notes the previous debate. In this case, the altered title allows for a unique identifier for both debates. – Someguy0830 (T | C) 08:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User Talk Page

What is policy regarding deletion of comments in a persons userpage talk space. I was under the impression that you should only ever archive old comments, and deletion was, if not disallowed, heavily frowned on. An anonymous user User talk:203.87.64.214, repeatidly deletes all the comments on his page. Including comments made by me in a current dispute. Several editors have told him that you shouldn't delete comments on a talk page (though only one was regarding his own talk page) and I believe the intention is to make it appear on first glances that he's just a newbie even though by his edit history he's been here since February. Or make it appear that he's never been involved in a conflict of interests. Jacobshaven3 11:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that deletion is frowned upon, but on a user page is not quite a blocking-level offense. You can, of course, revert his deletions.--Anthony.bradbury 12:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if it is acceptable to retrospectively, from the talk page history, construct a chronological listing of the posts made to a talk page, then post that to an archive subpage. Even if that is later blanked, the actual chronology will be more easily visible in the page history of that archive subpage, rather than someone having to wade through lots of blankings and disconnects between comments. You would still record each blanking of the talk page with a little note, like "this section blanked on 2 January 2007 at 02:45 UTC by...". Then the pattern of behaviour is far more obvious, and people can judge - oh, that blanking was of a vandal's comments, and this blanking was of an over-zealous admin, and this appear to be a bad-faith blanking of a reasonable comment that seems to have been ignored, and so on. Not a scarlet letter, but more making it easier to actually see what has been happening in cases like this. Of course, you'd have to trust the person reconstructing this 'single-view' history of the talk page. Carcharoth 12:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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