Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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

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

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English spellings

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

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

TV/film articles and original research

On the Dancing With The Stars Season Five article, a couple of contributors have stated that reporting anything that occurs on the show's broadcast is considered "original research" unless it's been reported in the press, because we can't reference copyrighted online videos and can't cite a broadcast. In other words, a plot summary of a TV broadcast or film, or even a statement of fact - such as "Jennie Garth did a tango in episode three" - is considered original research unless you cite someone else's formal article (which, natch, cites the original broadcast or film). The trouble, IMO, is that this rule would reduce entertainment articles to irrelevance; you can't write about films and TV shows unless you can cite them directly. One contributor writes that he has no problem with this. Is that desired?3Tigers (talk) 03:37, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

For clarity, she is referring to this removal by me. I (talk) 03:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the added ref, I, although I'm also referring to overarching complaints about original research which have been at the top of the article for weeks before the story section was added. BTW, I'm a she. ;-) 3Tigers (talk) 04:02, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Amended accordingly. The original research is just one of the few problems with that section. Mainly, it is not relevant to the article to have notes like that. I (talk) 04:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

A televised broadcast is a published source. So long as the editor merely describes the events in the broadcast and does not make any analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about the events without additional secondary source, it is not original research. --Farix (Talk) 12:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

That's what I thought. I did a university thesis citing live theater performances and TV broadcasts using standard academic footnoting; I was surprised to hear Wiki's policies were substantially different, and now I know they're not. I think the real complaint was the drama/twists section, which listed the major plot twists over the course of the show. Some contributors regarded it as not factual. We discussed this on the talk page when debating whether to add a section about what distinguishes this show from a regular dance competition; I pointed out that excessive gushing could be edited out later, but the entire section got deleted.3Tigers (talk) 14:44, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, "drama and twists" for a reality TV show can be taken as highly OR, because what defines a significant drama or twist? Does the show come out and say it? -- if so, great, it can be added, but the bulk of the time, abd based on the edit pointed out above, pretty much all of that was OR. Furthermore, remember that WP is supposed to describe every plot detail; for most reality TV shows, going into the "drama" of an episode is generally not needed. --MASEM 14:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Masem, I'm pretty sure you missed out a very important not in the above, just before the link.  —SMALLJIM  17:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I definitely understand this; how much plot to reveal is the editorial bugaboo of TV/film articles. Of course, reality TV producers describe everything as a significant twist to try to generate interest ("Here's a dozen replays of Marie Osmond fainting!"), so that's a judgment call. The "no original research" thing struck me as being a little odd, which is why I queried.3Tigers (talk) 14:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

There should be no "Plot/Twist" sections in Dancing with the Stars (US season 5) without secondary sources. Suggestion that there are plots or twists to what is affectively a televised dance competition is original research because you are making an evaluative claim and would need secondary sources. In fact, no one should describe something as a "plot twist" without secondary sources as that would be an analytic, interpretive, and evaluative claim. --Farix (Talk) 16:38, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay. The section was an attempt to gather together the various comments and plot observations that contributors had scattered all over the board, due to the fact that the "personal dramas" angle is what makes this a big TV reality show, different from regular dance competitions. Based on other Wiki TV series templates, if this material were to remain, I think it would be better to pull it together in an episode table with brief synopses. And this thread should probably go back to the discussion page from the original article.3Tigers (talk) 23:09, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

How to deal with users of questionable mental stability

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New mental illness in established admins and editors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sirs:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is being done policy wise about this?

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

end of soapbox

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

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

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

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

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

Internet pharmacy may be copying user pages and representing them as members

I’m fully aware that posts on Wikipedia go into the public domain. Nevertheless, I’ve just discovered that http://www.prescriptiondrug-info.com, a site I have never visited before finding my information there in a Google search for another purpose, has taken my user page, in its entirety, and represents me as a member of their site. If it’s happened to me, it has probably happened to others, especially people that have posted on pharmacology. Is there any policy on the large-scale use of Wiki userpages?

http://www.prescriptiondrug-info.com/drug_information_online.asp?title=User:Hcberkowitz

Thanks

Howard (user hcberkowitz)

• Userpages are necessarily licensed under the GFDL. So they can be reprinted. Best is to add to the page if it bugs you. WilyD 19:39, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Just FYI they have rather indiscriminately ported all articles and userpages from wikipedia. Here I am. —Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 19:46, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

At the bottom of every page on the pharmacy's website it states "This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License)". So they are abiding by all terms.
It annoys me because it messes up wiki mark up, but it is perfectly legal. However, enabling copying is one of the most prominent features of GFDL, and while it has some disadvantages, the free nature of Wikipedia is one of my primary motives for contributing. Puchiko (Talk-email) 20:11, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh I know GFDL, and I noticed the disclaimer; it's just rather strange, that's all. I wonder what their motivation is. —Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 20:37, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Laziness. It's easier to copy everything than parse the database dump. WilyD 20:44, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Probably done in the hope to get higher Google ranking. It is frustrating if they end up selling cheap drugs, or related to some scam.YegLi (talk) 21:52, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Hehe, I hope they like my list of insults.[1] :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:51, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm on there, weird. Maybe I should make a subpage on why their website sucks. SashaCall 21:50, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

• Let's be clear about one thing. The GFDL is NOT Public domain. There are similarities, but the two are quite different. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

• The site is a known live mirror, i.e. it mirrors anything and everything on Wikipedia, fetching the current version of each page when it is requested. It even "mirrors" special pages, such as Recent Changes. -- AJR | Talk 22:10, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

And that update it fetches is instant, and current. -- Yellowdesk (talk) 03:20, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

• If I would add something like "Prescription Drug Info is a scam website trying to steal your money and murder your children. Don't buy from them, buy from <some competitor>." to my userpage, could they sue me? Olaus (talk) 22:20, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

• Unless the allegation is true, yes, it'd be libel. WilyD 22:24, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I am not really interested in waging a private war against some sleazy Viagra spammer, or whatever they are, but it seems like websites doing stuff like this leave themselves vulnerable to subversive campaigns from the users whose pages they copy. Olaus (talk) 00:33, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Overuse of "retrieved on" in citations?

Hi all. Is it just me or is anyone else annoyed by the "retrieved on" dates some editors keep adding to their citations. More specifically, I know there's a reason we have that option in the cite templates, because something on the web can change at any time. But I see that more for use with, say, an organization's web page as a primary source. On the other hand, if the article being cited is a newspaper or journal that's published in a serialized format, and it's available on paper, who cares what day the editor read it on? Squidfryerchef (talk) 05:15, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

An organization might change its web site so the old information has moved or is no longer there. The date can help find the original info, and sometimes helps find the new location. (SEWilco (talk) 05:37, 17 November 2007 (UTC))

Even newspapers that have a print edition have been known to edit their web version of articles post publication. Dsmdgold (talk) 11:36, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Many news org websites such as BBC News and CNN update their pages regularly to fix errors or review an already covered story for instance original page with headline - current page with headline. Also there are hundreds of thousands of broken links in article references, the cite date helps up replace these with copies from the wayback machine and other archive stores.

I agree that the usage of 'retrieved on' is not relevant for journals and print media, as the issue number or publishing date is more important, but if the citation includes a link to a web edition of the source then we would still like to know which web version you were looking at to get the info. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 14:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

However, I'm pretty sure news sites with articles that expire also prevent sites like archive.org from archiving... I've tried to find archive.org copies of stories purged from news sites and archive.org says archiving wasn't allowed. --W.marsh 14:08, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

The retrieve date is still useful - assuming good faith and all, I can reconcile that the original article may be gone forever, or may be behind a pay window, but that the difference between the article publication date and the retrieve date is certainly within that window and thus likely a good source.--MASEM 14:23, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I am slightly annoyed by the wikilinking of the retrieved date though. Seems weird to wikilink that, as the date retrieved hold little relevance for the article. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:35, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

It allows for the date to be rendered per user preferences (see here). --MASEM 14:38, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I have to admit, I'm a little dim in setting my preferences, but I changed nothing so this is default behaviour for the template. It seems to go against the MOS, that says: Wikipedia has articles on days of the year, years, decades, centuries and millennia. Link to one of these pages only if it is likely to deepen readers' understanding of a topic. I don't think it will deepen the readers understanding of how I retrieved a link, or the articles subject. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:50, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

The wikilinking is done automatically via the various citation templates - you enter the raw date into the template and the template does the rest. Wikilinking it seems to be the only way to achieve the date conversion even if it goes against MOS. --MASEM 14:57, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

The very section you are quoting from MOS:DATE starts with the preference issue and supports it: "Full dates, and days and months, are normally autoformatted...This instructs the MediaWiki software to format the item according to the date preferences...". The language concerning "days of the year, years, decades, centuries and millennia", in the same section of that page, does not concern full dates: "days of the year"= [[January 1]]; "years"= [[1968]], [[1974]] etc.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:17, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Some more points: For wire services that update stories continuously, wouldn't it be more appropriate to cite the time of their update rather than the time we looked at it? For the case where a media organization moves its WWW archives, wouldn't it be more useful to have the date and page number so we can look it up in their archive search? Also, if we do need to look up a dead URL with no date in the Internet Archive, is it that much of a bother to look through the few times it might have been updated? ( And if the "retrieved on" date is for our benefit, isn't the edit history enough? ) Finally, I've only seen "retrieved on" used with things that are on the WWW for free. I never see people put "retrieved from paid-journal-subscription-service" in their articles; is there any reason why we only datestamp free URLs? Squidfryerchef (talk) 17:12, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

According to the rules of academic citation, it's needed for everything. I agree that this can look a little excessive. Unfortunately, i think we're stuck with it. If there's a source where time of day matters, yes the time should go in also as well as the date. And yes, for any media organization, the actual internal page number and other citation information for the formal edition is necessary.

In most cases it adds clutter to the reference list, and I'm often tempted to delete it. When we read a journal article, we're supposed to cite the journal article with ISSN, issue date or volume, and page number. The link is just there for convenience. For wire service stories we'd use their timestamp as part of the date. The only time this "downloaded on" business is necessary is for a web site that's only a web site and doesn't publish in a serialized format. Squidfryerchef (talk) 22:07, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Why don't we put this in the category "Editors do the oddest things" and move on? As long as editors include a date of a news or magazine article, separate from the retrieved on date, Wikipedia has what it needs. The retrieved on date is, arguably, unnecessary then, but a (re)education campaign for editors, on this subject, is not in any way a good use of time; nor is getting into fights with editors about their adding a field that is unnecessary but is an acceptable parameter. Yes, the extra date "clutters up" footnotes; when Wikipedia is so squeaky clean that this is the worst of our problems, then let's take it on. (Me, personally, I'm happy whenever an editor puts a footnote that has more than just a URL.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:26, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that the "retrieved on" citations are redundant because the page history lists when that reference was added; so if an editor added a reference to the Wall Street Journal, for instance, on July 11, 2007, we automatically know that the "retrieved on" date was July 11 or earlier. But if the page subsequently changes, then where is the verifiability of that reference? Sarsaparilla (talk) 19:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• For a contrary opinion, I have edited pages with more than a little controversy, or political pages, and the "retrieved on" information is useful for figuring out how old a dead link might be, and how useful the source is for citation. It took the "retrieved on" to understand that all yahoo.com Associated Press articles are no good after a week or so. This information is not clutter, and on an actively edited page, it is a lot of work to to track down a lot of references and when they were put in. Tracking down one reference is already a bit of work.
  -- Yellowdesk (talk) 03:27, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

How obvious is OBVIOUS?

WP:OBVIOUS: "State facts which may be obvious to you, but are not necessarily obvious to the reader."

Based on this I started doing a bit of wikignoming by adding USA after Virginia to articles in Category:Registered Historic Places in Virginia (for instance this edit). I've done some 30 articles and have had a query about whether it is necessary. Now doing this seems to me to perfectly fit the example in WP:OBVIOUS and I do wonder if the average reader in, say India, knows where Virginia is. But I don't want to cause conflict, so before continuing I'm asking here for some more opinions. Thanks, Smalljim (talk) 11:41, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

On a tangent don't use [[USA]] use either [[United States|US]] or [[United States|U.S.]] depending on the result of the "dotting" discussion at WP:MoS or use United States. Rich Farmbrough, 13:03 18 November 2007 (GMT).

Noted, but I don't understand your objection to [[USA]]. It's short, commonly understood, and redirects to exactly the right place. --Smalljim (talk) 22:55, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

It's not "my objection to" it's simply an "arbitrary but well informed" choice. Rich Farmbrough, 10:06 28 November 2007 (GMT).

That seems like a very sensible bit of wikignoming. Context and clarity are important. Adrian M. H. 21:26, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Please don't do that. If someone is looking up "Berry Hill Plantation" they're going to know which country it's in. I'd ask the same for people editing articles local to India. The state name should be enough. Squidfryerchef (talk) 22:02, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that argument stands up. Many readers will not be looking up an article directly. What if our reader was researching agriculture, and came across the article from Category:Plantations? --Smalljim (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I always put the nation in an article; not everyone knows the state or county of a geographical area, so may use the country as a search parameter - i.e. London/United States (does anyone outside of the State know where London is in the USA). Primarily we are assisting search engines by including all relevant information. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:53, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I looked through your contributions. The specification of the country was, in my opinion, justified in all cases but one ("U.S. Route 17 in Virginia, USA" is overdoing it in my opinion). I'll remove it from the article soon, unless objections are raised.
Otherwise I agree that the country name should always be in an article about a place. Puchiko (Talk-email) 02:03, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Embarrassed grin. Of course that one's wrong! I'll remove it myself. Thanks for the comments. --Smalljim (talk) 09:02, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that the original policy is a bit overboard. That Ford Thunderbird is a link to an article that fully describes it seems sufficient to fill in the user. Isn't that the beauty of hyperlinks? Virginia also is but one click away from telling you that it is in the US. The extreme end of this is pasting the entire article in place of the hyperlink... why even begin down that road? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Heptazane (talk • contribs) 00:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

• Let me add my query that sparked this discussion and elaborate on it:

QUERY: I just wonder if it is really necessary to add USA to every article relating to Virginia and other American states. I don't know that this is what WP:OBVIOUS is supposed to deal with. Most articles on Devon and other counties in England don't tell us that the place is in the UK. Should they? I can understand people outside the USA not understanding the postal abbreviations for state names. Many Americans don't even understand them all. I admit that using MA instead of Massachusetts in the name of an article is more common than it should be. That is something that really needs to be corrected. clariosophic (talk) 02:27, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Postal abbreviations for state names are deprecated. Rich Farmbrough, 10:06 28 November 2007 (GMT).

Elaboration:

• If USA or the proper variant thereof should be added to every geographic place article in the US, then UK or the proper variant thereof should be added to every geographic place article in the UK. The main articles on England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland may state that they are in the UK, but very few if any subordinate articles do so. It seems to be assumed that everyone knows that England etc are in the UK and it's not necessary to tell the reader for instance that Devon is in the UK, only that it is in England.
• Time spent adding USA to place articles in the US could much better be spent eliminating the use of postal abbreviations for the states from article titles as well as the texts of articles. See Education in Framingham, MA and Government of Framingham, MA for examples. clariosophic (talk) 02:26, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the elaboration, clariosophic. Your first point addresses a separate question of "how obvious is obvious": would people who are likely to use WP know what and where England is without the clarifying UK? I think that they would - certainly more would than would know what and where Virginia is without the clarifying USA - but this is a different issue and I don't want to get sidetracked. // Your second point is a related issue that really reinforces my concern, which, in case I haven't made it clear, is about setting context and writing better articles generally, per WP:BETTER. I think these thought experiments in that guide are very useful, and with them in mind Government of Framingham, MA as it stands today is an awful article, isn't it? What would our reader from India make of that first para! // So, I think we agree that there are a lot of articles that need better context, though I still don't understand why you think I shouldn't be clarifying those Virginia articles. I'm sure you're not trying to tell me to spend my time here doing what you think is more important :) --Smalljim (talk) 11:20, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I was speaking rhetorically. I would never dream of telling another editor how to spend his or her time. Cheers. clariosophic (talk) 13:02, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh I knew that, hence the smiley. Are we in broad agreement? Will you object if I continue? --Smalljim (talk) 13:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

No objection. I would agree that adding United States is better than US or USA. clariosophic (talk) 19:51, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Copyright vs. Trademark

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

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

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

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

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

Pet names

• On a number of pet related articles I've seen, (Cat for instance) I've noticed that many have images have captions with the names of the actual pets. Does WP have any policy about this or relating to this? I just think it's a bit unencyclopedic to have actual names of pets in their images. Jedibob5 (talk) 23:39, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I've just looked through Cat and did not see any names in the captions. Anyways, while I don't think there are any policies of guidelines specifically prohibiting this, but it just makes sense to omit those from encyclopedic articles. - Rjd0060 (talk) 00:19, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The only names I found were names of breeds and they belong there. Can you give an example of what you call a pet name in cat? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:23, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Jedibob may be referring to some of the image names in http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Felis_silvestris_catus. Corvus cornix_talk 21:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, it wasn't Cat I was talking about. I don't know why I put that. It was some sort of Cat-related article, though. Jedibob5 (talk) 21:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

It was Bicolor cat, that's right. Don't know why I put just "Cat." Jedibob5 (talk) 21:14, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Traditional Knowledge Disclaimer

A user has raised an interesting point regarding the "traditional ownership" of knowledge, with the particular case of Aboriginal Australian place names, lore, and the like, and how it relates to the licence and general disclaimer of the site. I was hoping some Wikipedians with a better knowledge of legal matters would be able to have a look at [[2]], and offer a learned opinion on the matter. Lankiveil (talk) 02:40, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Please, it would also be appreciated if any Wikipedians with better knowledge of intellectual property matters might also look at the most recent discussion surrounding an edit request made to see 'traditional knowledge' inserted into the General Disclaimers current list of pre-existing intellectual property (somewhere between 'collective marks', 'design rights & 'personality rights'), here: Wikipedia_talk:General_disclaimer#Traditional Knowledge.

The edit request appears to have been declined because 2X Wikipedia administrators are uncertain and doubt that 'traditional knowledge' is a sufficiently, legally enforcible form of pre-existing intellectual property against which GFDL users need to be forewarned. I believe the 2X administrators are mistaken (particularly on a world-wide scale), but I think I need, and would greatly appreciate some assistance from greater authority or any other/alternative suggestions/ advice from fellow Wikipedians?

As a final 'policy' proposal/ proposition arising from the above .. I for one can see no harm in increasing the coverage of the General Disclaimer, and therefore wish to propose a broader "when in doubt, include edit" policy for administrators editing disclaimers, so preventing admistrators from adopting overly narrow, overly conservative "when in doubt, decline edit" block on forewarning users of the possible liabilities and vulnerabilities of relying on GFDL without addition checking?? Bruceanthro (talk) 03:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect it looks a nonsense. There's already too much mess with copyright paranoia and, for good or bad, hardly any legal frame supports this kind of "knowledge ownership". In my humble opinion, knowledge can't be owned, at most kept secret. Once it's not secret anymore... it's public domain.

Anyhow, I'd like if you who support this kind of "traditional copyright/patent" would illustrate what the heck are you talking about with examples. You really seem to be talking about some very interesting secret knowledge, I would love to know more about. --Sugaar (talk) 06:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

That's pretty humorous - is it supposed to be? The notion of knowledge being owned in a legal sense by people as a birthright on account of their cultural heritage is diametrically opposed to American ideals of equality, free speech, freedom of information, scholarship, pursuit of truth, etc. However, as a matter of cultural sensitivity it is often best not to pry into deeply cherished secret knowledge simply for entertainment or curiosity value, personal fame, book sales, scholarship, etc. We have taboos in majority western culture too, just different things perhaps. There's no legal prohibition in the US and Wikipedia is uncensored, so it has to be a matter of discretion and good taste. Why repeat something if you know it is offensive to the people involved? I think there should be a higher standard for inclusion - it has to be really important. But that's up to each editor, nothing we can really put into policy. Wikidemo (talk) 13:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

When I read this I thought it was related to the Maroi/Lego incident described here: [3]. (Of course it involves a completely separate culture, even though the Maori live in approximately the same part of the world). It's easy to make fun of this, but I think there is some valid concern here. Just imagine a world in the process of globalisation, in which the dominent culture has been developed in Australia and New Zealand. Now an Australian company gets hold of an old book (Ovid) of the European culture that has been in decline ever since the first colonizers arrived from the East Islands, and they trademark most of the words in it for their products: "Jupiter", "Venus", "Hercules", "Perseus", "Icarus", ... I would certainly want to stop them. The reason why this hasn't happened with western culture is that our laws have grown in our culture. – Whether this kind of thing can be stopped with a legal disclaimer on Wikipedia is, of course, a matter for legal experts. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:38, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I've looked into the discussion, & I'm unclear exactly what these "native intellectual property rights" are that extend beyond what is covered by such concepts as "trade secrets", "trademark", & so forth. Is there something in Australian law that explains this concept? If not, then why do we need this statement? -- llywrch (talk) 19:26, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I've now done a little homework!. Article 31 of the United Nations Declaration_on_the_Rights_of_Indigenous_Peoples proclaims the following regarding indigenous intellectual property-

"Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions"

Countries likely to us the english Wikipedia, with statues/legislation protecting indigenous intellectual property of this kind include (but is not limited to): Nigeria (Copyright Act 1990), Central African Republic (Ordinance No. 85-002 on Copyright (Central African Republic)) and Ghana (Copy Right Act 2005 )

Relevant court law in Australia include

Milpurrurru v Indofurn Pty Ltd (1995), with courts recognising the 'cultural harm' indigenous plaintiff's suffered as a consequence of misuse of their designs on carpets, awarding damages, and implying communal ownership of indigenous designs;

Foster v Mountford (1976), where the court granted indigenous plaintiffs an injunction to prevent the sale of a book written by an anthropologist (Mountford) containing confidential information given to the author in confidence.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation maintains a database of existing codes, guides, policies, protocols and standard agreements relating to the recording, digitization and dissemination of intangible cultural heritage, with an emphasis on intellectual property .. [4].

In the end, though, all that was asked for of Wikipedia administrators, was to insert the words 'traditional knowledge' into an existing list comprised of things like "collective marks" and, yes, "personality rights" (still not sure what these are?). I have since suggested there is sufficient rationale for such a small edit of the general disclaimer, of the kind requested, and because there can be no harm (?) and there is no real reason not to make this edit .. then let Wikipedia community be more encompassing, and less narrow.

Hans Adler (talk) comments were understanding and useful. Perhaps there may be one or more administrators who may be similarly understanding and perhaps agreeable to (re)editing the disclaimer, or alternative measure (perhaps a notice regarding indigenous content on relevant articles?) Bruceanthro (talk) 21:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedians by contact information

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

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

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

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

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

Veropedia Watchlist Advertising

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Geographical question

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

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

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

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

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

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

WP:PIPE

What do other editors think are the pros and cons of changing existing simple links of the form [[article title here]] to piped links of the form [[Article title here|article title here]]? A recent example is this edit. It doesn't break any links or change anything from the point of view of passing readers, but it makes the wiki markup harder to read while editing, particularly for visually impaired editors, and more complicated to edit, especially for newbies, and is more verbose. Is it an improvement? I'd like to hear other editors' opinions, and see if there is a consensus. I can't find any policy, guideline, or previous discussion that discusses whether it is or is not appropriate to use piped links like that. I think it would be useful to have clear guidance on this issue. I originally posted this question here (please continue the conversation here for ease-of-reference). Thanks, - Neparis (talk) 20:55, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

If all you're doing is capping the first letter just to have it capped, it's a silly edit. It doesn't need to be capped in the brackets; article still goes to Article (leave the cursor over it and you'll see it in the hover text, as well as in the activity area of your browser window). EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:00, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree. By the way, the example edit was by another editor, not by me! Thanks for your comments. - Neparis (talk) 22:21, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

It's an extremely trivial edit and completely unnecessary, so it should be avoided. I suggest that you contact the editor in question if he or she does this regularly. --Farix (Talk) 21:51, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's how I felt about it. I've seen a lot of the same sort of edits recently by other editors. If the consensus here is against such usage of piped links, I think it ought to be covered in a policy or guideline such as WP:PIPE. Neparis (talk) 22:21, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Thought I'd seen this stated directly, at the same place where it talks about not doing [[noun|nouns]], because [[noun]]s does the same thing. Can't find either. In any case, I can't imagine why an editor would defend a practice that (a) takes longer to create/type and (b) is likely to confuse most editors, who don't - for obvious reasons - follow it. Particularly since there is absolutely no advantages whatsoever. (I hope someone isn't saying "Well, I'm going to keep doing that because I'm used to it", since that would be disruptive editing.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:36, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, it seems there is a consensus developing against abusing piped links in this way. It would be useful to be able to refer editors to a specific part of a policy or guideline against the practice. Would anybody object if I were to propose wording to this effect to go in WP:PIPE? Neparis (talk) 23:36, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Relatedly, is there a consensus view on editors changing piped links that go to redirects, such as DMSA, to piped links that go directly to an article? such as DMSA A recent example is [ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mercury_poisoning&diff=prev&oldid=173396284#Acrodynia_epidemic here]. Neparis (talk) 23:36, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, bad example; the article exists only with lower-case first letter. I'll dig out another one. Neparis (talk) 23:40, 24 November 2007 (UTC) Recent examples of this sort of editing of links: [5]][6][7][8] - Neparis (talk) 15:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

There is already a guideline on this. Tra (Talk) 00:34, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. It seems very clear that editors should not change links to redirects that are not broken, save for the two exceptions of (1) links to redirects in series templates, and (2) hints that are misleading. However, after a quick search, I just found an edit that doesn't appear at first glance to fit either of these exceptions. Any thoughts on why this edit that changed a link to a redirect that is not broken is not against WP:R? - Neparis (talk) 15:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

(undent) I'm guessing that popups is set to "Automatically fix links to bypass redirects and disambiguation pages" (an optional parameter). But I suggest asking the editor, BrownHairedGirl, directly; we can speculate endlessly, otherwise. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I had moved the relevant article from Spanish Congress of Deputies to Congress of Deputies (Spain), because its title is "Congress of Deputies" (or more precisely "Congress of the Deputies"), and had fixed a bundle of double redirects which that caused. Maybe I canonicalised more of the links than was essential, but I don't see any harm done, and unlike the examples which kicked off this discussion, the link was piped both before and after.

There is one situation where I will try to never bypass a redirect, and that's where the redirect indicates a possible new articles (e.g. if "battle of the big toe" redirected to "war of the bodily extremities"). Otherwise, when tidying up after a page move (as I was doing in this case) I try to standardise the links on one page. Possibly a waste of my time, but no harm in this case to either readers or other editors. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:47, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Descriptive plot summaries and primary sources

There has been a debate on Talk:Million Dollar Baby about whether the film can be used as a primary source in writing a descriptive plot summary of the film so long as the summary does not make any analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims. One editor is suggesting that because there are no reliable secondary sources cited in the plot summary, it is entirely original research, and we cannot trust that the editor who wrote the summary actually saw the film. He even went so far as to remove the citation to the movie that I placed from the plot summary because I didn't write the summary. Your comments are welcomed. --Farix (Talk) 21:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Summery? Let's not get all wintry here. :-) (I've corrected the spellings). Primary sources can be used to verify simple facts. Secondary sources are needed for anything with a hint of interpretation or opinion. Mostly, it depends on the example. In this case, a short plot summary can indeed be verified by watching the film. Summarising is what encyclopedias are all about. When done properly, there shouldn't be a problem. A balance needs to be struck between editors parroting what others wrote, and editors having some freedom to summarise in their own words. Carcharoth (talk) 02:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with assuming that a raw plot summary being assumed to be cited to the work itself. However, that doesn't mean that there are a lot of good plot summaries in Wikipedia articles (many are longer than the work itself :) ... ), however in principle this seems fine by me. Any analysis, opinion, explanation, etc. needs sources, but to say "Person X did Action Y..." etc etc does not need to have secondary sources, IMHO. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 03:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

My comment? I am increasingly frustrated with these extremist interpretations of "No original research" -- one editor's strawman argument far too often is shown to be another editor's received truth. Sometimes I wonder if WP:DISRUPT could be used against them -- or would I then be shooting myself in the foot? -- llywrch (talk) 19:45, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Policy for discussion of policy policy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alternative idea: Post on talk page first, then implement

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

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

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

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

Images to the Commons?

I've encountered an editor who has been tagging contentless image description pages, thus "creating" them ([9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16]), even for Commons media that are not even used on WP (1,2,3,4).

I was under the impression that we were attempting to move all free images to the Commons, and CSD:I8 "includes empty (i.e., no content) image description pages for Commons images", yet the logical conclusion of creating duplicate image description pages and image categories is an unwieldy mirror of the Commons, which would simply increase the amount of pages needing to be maintained on En WP. What do you all think? Tewfik^Talk 01:51, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Commons was created exactly so image-related stuff should move there, and all this work being done to categorize images on en should be diverted to help commons (and by this help all Wikimedia projects rather than just the English Wikipedia). I've talked to the editor before and it seems that he isn't satisfied with the current multilingual category support on commons (and neither am i) but lack of a software solution isn't a reason to waste time on something. Either way, the categories on commons are in English so en.wp users should have no problems using them (and WP categories are supposed to be linked to commons categories for the benefit of wikipedia users). Yonatan ^talk 01:54, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

en copies should be deleted. β^_command 01:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

If you create a local image description of a image hosted on Commons then both the local page and the Commons page are displayed. This is entirely appropriate for tags like {{FeaturedPicture}}, where there is en-specific information in addition to the Commons description. Whether en images should also have categories and other less en-specific info, has been a source of contention. Personally, I think we should categorize images locally, since Commons categories are not visible at all here, and being well-organized contributes to making the best possible encyclopedia. (Not to mention that we have many images that don't appear on Commons, and Commons has a variety of images that aren't encyclopedic in character.) However, I understand why some people dislike such duplication of effort. Last time I saw a discussion like this (and unfortunately I don't remember where), I think the best "consensus" was that such categorization wasn't harmful enough to actively delete, but also not useful enough to actively encourage. Dragons flight (talk) 02:27, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I am somehwat concerned by the indiscriminate moving of maps and graphs to commons. Many of my maps have suffered that fate, even if they are not (most of them) mute maps but have significative text in English. Additionally in few cases, creator attribution has been altered in the process (and in a couple of cases the deletion of history may have been perjudicial for the current version, after some excessive edition).

Some people is not aware that material at Commons should be language-neutral and I'm bored of finding maps (my speciality) in many different languages sitting there as if they would be usable in any Wikipedia, independent of language. Worse: many of these maps in other languages actually illustrate many en.Wikipedia articles.

The logical thing is to make a linguistically adptated map or even a mute version (with legend off-image) for commons, not to move every single Wikipedia image to commons indiscriminately. --Sugaar (talk) 08:57, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Please show me the commons guideline that says that material there "should be language-neutral". --Golbez (talk) 23:51, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Content at commons needn't be language-neutral. There are many Wikimedia projects besides Wikipedias, the English Wiktionary should be able to use these maps you made (in English) if they can, and in order to do that, the maps need to be on commons. Commons has many maps in Hebrew, for example, so there should be no problem with English. Regarding attribution, you should let the users who transferred the images to commons what they did wrong so they can do it better next time. Just because some users aren't copying pictures properly doesn't mean they shouldn't be (and that's besides the point being raised here anyway, you can't prevent your images from being copied to commons although you can prevent them from being deleted on here once copied to commons, even though that's pointless). The point being discussed here is whether commons images should be categorized on en and the answer to that, is no (with the exception of the en featured pics). Yonatan ^talk 12:19, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Historical maps??? A dictionary describes things like "sardine", "yellowish" or "innaction". I am not involved with Wikitionary but I doubt it talks about Chalcolithic Europe, Bronze Age Iberia or the Kingdom of Pamplona under Sancho the Great. It doesn't because it's a dictionary, not a encyclopedia, hence these maps are irrelevant.

What should be in commons are neutral images such as a photos but most maps and graphs are better re-created for each project, according to its language. It's absurd to reach out for commons for a map in Hebrew that most people can't read: logically it should be in the Hebrew language Wikipedia. --Sugaar (talk) 17:03, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I disagree strongly, Commons is for all free images, not just language-neutral ones. My maps are all on commons and I'm very happy with that arrangement. Also, Sugaar, there's more to Wikimedia than Wiktionary. What if someone created a history Wikibook? Please calm down. --Golbez (talk) 23:51, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that Sugaar's ultimate point/problem is that images are being transwikied, which is fine, but they are free to be modified on commons without Sugaar really seeing it or being a part of discussion. This is a part of the licensing agreement that is legal and valid BUT the user would rather have local hosting. In other words if a user would prefer an image to remain on en.wiki as well as commons, would there be a problem with that? Keegan^talk 07:19, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

No, there is no problem with that but that's not what this discussion is about anyway. Okay, fine, not Wiktionary then but Wikiversity, Wikibooks or Wikisource, there are many projects other than the English Wikipedia that can use things such as maps in English. Yonatan ^talk 13:31, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The majority of fiction is non-notable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Template suppression

Since this has to do with the guideline WP:SPOILER and its recent rewrite, I have posted this here. I have left a comment (diff) on the guideline WP:SPOILER (timestamp 13:12, 26 November 2007) about template suppression that I think the entire Wikipedia community needs to be aware of. Thanks. --Pixelface (talk) 13:23, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Keep money awards out of Wikipedia

I would like to propose a policy that bans real money financial award constests and campaigns (such as Wikipedia:The Core Contest) to Wikipedians. It offends me greatly that money is being brought into the mix - AND that such a contest is being advertised on my watchlist! We have plenty of ways to thank users for their work here. We have 1000s of editors working hard, not for money, but for the hope to create something useful and dynamic.

Real money creates a very different incentive. Real money means a mega-millionaire could reward a particular POV. Keep real money incentives out of Wikipedia. Kingturtle (talk) 15:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• If you don't like it, you don't have to participate in it.--WaltCip (talk) 15:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

As a FYI, the same user has also opened up a discussion (thankfully with fewer capital letters) on the contest page at Wikipedia_talk:The_Core_Contest#This_contest_offends_me. Whether it be here or there it would probably be more beneficial to have the discussion in one place Agne^Cheese/^Wine 15:25, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Money rewards are fine, I just wish they did not advertise it at the top of every page. 1 != 2 16:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Should probably try and keep this on the talk page for the contest, but it isn't at the top of every page. It is only on your watchlist, unless you click "Dismiss", then it isn't even there. You may be confusing it with the fundraising bar for Wikimedia, but thats entirely separate. - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: I don't think the existence of any contest is going to ever trump policies that govern article content such as WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:NOR etc. The existence of these policies refutes KingTurtle's assertion that: Real money means a mega-millionaire could reward a particular POV. There is nothing stopping mega-millionaires from doing this without the existence of contests, but our policies that govern content are equipped to handle the possibility in my opinion. IvoShandor (talk) 17:19, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

• I see nothing wrong with it. Any "mega-millionaire" can pay people to push any pov he likes, even now. Our defense against this isn't by existing somehow outside of the real world, our defense is policy combined with block buttons. There is no difference between paid pov-pushers and unpaid pov-pushers. Obviously, we shouldn't allow contests on Wikipedia that reward policy violations. Offering money for writing good articles within policy is a Good Thing. People are still free to write good articles without being paid. This is precisely analogous to the Free Software movement. Companies can pay programmers to develop Linux kernel patches. They cannot force Torvalds to accept them into the codebase. It's the same here. Microsoft can pay Seamus Heaney to submit brilliant prose in praise of their products if they like. They cannot prevent us from deleting it again if we judge it to violate npov policy. dab (&#55304;&#56435;) 17:42, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The most serious threat of POV-pushing is not someone with deep pockets. After all, even highly-motivated salaried employees take the occasional day off. It is the people with a Message (aka "The Truth") who are the most serious threat, & they often work for less money than Wikipedia pays its Admins. (Yes, I mean they'll pay money to further their Message.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:12, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

• I agree with dab. In the world of Open Source Software, you often see companies sponsoring bounties (rewards) for programmers to add specific functionality to free software projects that, if added, would benefit everyone using the software. I see nothing wrong with that. In addition, if Wikipedia were to set up a committee to vet any award proposals first, then that would go a long way to keeping the special interests out. Besides, what could possibly be wrong with sponsoring an award for an article like Squamata? --Jwinius (talk) 18:18, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

If a title is screamed, you know it's a bad suggestion :) -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 18:02, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposed notability guideline for schools

FYI - Discussion taking place for a proposed notability guideline relating to schools. See Wikipedia:School and discuss it on the associated talk page. Thanks, Rjd0060 (talk) 17:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Transwiki to Wiktionary - when is it appropriate?

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

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

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

Index lists

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

The lists are generally one of 3 types:

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

Index lists: the problems and options

Scope

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

(there are a lot more than 40 lists of lists - they number in the hundreds. See [18], [19], and [20]    -TT) —Preceding comment was added at 20:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced

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

Wiki-project-like

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

Disambiguation-like

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

Portal-like

• Should they become portal-subpages, like Portal:Energy/Explore and Portal:Science/Categories and Main topics are?
  • Don't forget dozens of "type #3" pages in the format Portal:Philosophy/Lists or Portal:Food/Food lists [21] – why should some of these "type #3" lists be in "Portal" namespace, while other portals have them only in main namespace? Wouldn't it be better to have them all in the same namespace, striving for a uniform treatment of "/lists" subpages across portals?
  • There is concern that subpages of portals would not be linkable directly from articles, and hence languish unseen? (see this thread for details)
    • Unjustified concern: linking practice is established, see {{Portal}} ("This template is used to link an article to its related portal") – see also below, suggestions under "A new namespace?" caption.
• The primary indexes (Portal:List of overviews, Portal:Lists of topics, Portal:Lists of basic topics, Portal:List of glossaries) were recently moved from mainspace to portal-space. This move is contested by The Transhumanist, and is still being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Contents#Contents pages, and lists of lists.
  • (note: discussion seems to have stalled there in the mean while)
• "Portal:" namespace seems very suited for navigation purposes, per the description at Wikipedia:namespace#Portal: "The portal namespace (prefix Portal:) is for reader-oriented portals that help readers find and browse through articles related to a specific subject. It also may contain links to encourage readers to contribute to relevant WikiProjects" (bolding added)

Background

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

Notes

Index lists: discussion

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

Summarizing my thoughts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Default-setting searches would no longer find lists that have been moved out of the main namespace. The default setting of the search box should be changed to include the portal namespace. Portals need more exposure anyways, and it makes no sense that they are not included in search results by default. Moving lists to portal space would effectively bury them with respect to users who rely primarily upon searches to navigate Wikipedia. The Transhumanist    20:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with The Transhumanist here. I would like to see the portal namespace included in the default search, or at least a debate started about this. Where would be the right place to talk about getting the default search behaviour changed? Carcharoth (talk) 21:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
    • WP:VPR. What happens next depends on what is required to change the settings. The power users at WP:VPT would know what must be done. The Transhumanist (talk) 21:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discussion from WP:RM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(End of section moved from WP:RM)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reliable sources guideline proposal

There has been discussion on Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources regarding what to do with the page. One group of editors wanted to redirect the page to WP:V#Sources. But sentiment has been expressed by some on the talk page that it's not a good idea to eliminate the guideline page. That would also leave Wikipedia:Reliable source examples and Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard out there without a parent page. Reliable sources is such a critical concept for Wikipedia, that it is important to have a guideline page for it. Instead of redirecting the page or making it a disambiguation page, I propose revamping the WP:RS guideline page.

• Some concerns regarding WP:RS include having "Duplicate descriptions" of what reliable sources are. That could be handled by transcluding the exact wording from WP:V#Reliable sources. No divergent wording.
• The WP:RS guideline use to be more useful when it had some examples and guidance on specific types of sources (e.g. blogs, wikis, YouTube). There is a section on Wikipedia:Reliable source examples that has "Questions about the reliability of specific sources", which provide that very useful guidance. I suggest merging those questions (but not the rest of the examples page) back onto the guideline page. The rest of the examples page is poorly written and not that useful, and perhaps not needed anymore.
• Include "aspects of reliability" (scholarship, extremist sources, self-published sources, claims of consensus) that is currently on the reliable sources guideline page.
• Lastly, the guideline page can provide a link to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard where people can ask more questions. That page has fairly high volume of traffic.

To see how this suggestion could work, see User:Aude/Reliable_sources. Discussion is at Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources#Guideline_page_-_proposal. --Aude (talk) 16:05, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Destroying consensus

There is a discussion started about addressing those who would take entrenched positions and act in ways to block consensus. Notices have also been posted on related behavioral policies and guidelines soliciting participation. Wikipedia talk:Disruptive editing#Blocking consensus. Input and opinions welcomed. Vassyana (talk) 21:10, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Whitewash actions on Talk:Ruud Lubbers

This may be interesting and surprising...:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia:Private correspondence

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

Capitalizing "The" in reference to Denominations/Organizations

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

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

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

NoMoreLinks Notice

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

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

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

The notice is disturbing for three reasons:

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

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

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

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

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

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

I BOLDly changed it to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Searching

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

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

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

How do we measure due weight?

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

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

Rampant "Private" Checkuser Usage

What is referred to generally as "Private" Checkuser requests are being regularly processed (often without the targeted Users' knowledge) off-site(e.g. via IRC conversation or email) rather than through WP:RFCU. Therefore, the User might not ever know Checkuser was used and would be unable to assess whether his privacy had been violated(through an unwarranted Checkuser check for example).Thus, the User would not be able to exercise his right for a privacy review with the Checkuser Ombudsman Commission since he wouldn't know that Checkuser had been used. The community at large should be made aware of, and accept or reject this practice of "private" Checkuser requests. There should also be notification to new Users that this could happen at any time when they open a Wikipedia account as shown here. There is an ongoing RFC on this subject here but it should be discussed at this broader community location as well, I think. Mentoring07 12:31, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

• The vast majority of checkuser requests are, and always have been, performed quietly and without a request at RFCU. Frivolous requests are routinely rejected through these back-channels, and no more information is given than would be given at RFCU. Why is this a problem? Guy (Help!) 18:14, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
• Not quite...since I was blocked by Durova, in error, and then again, in error by "FloNight" as if she had checkuser status, when she clearly did not, I concur with the statement above.(by Mentoring07) You, JzG, blocked Once and Forever with no evidence and then I was blocked as a sock of Once and Forever. The evidence I presented at Durova's Arbcom. hearing is proof that "Flonight" did not have checkuser status but claimed to have "access" to same. This is not ending here, right? Songgarden 70.253.99.219 18:42, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
  • FloNight is a member of the ArbCom. Don't they all have checkuser privilege? Corvus cornix_talk 21:35, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

    She does have checkuser privilege. Tra (Talk) 21:40, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

There is no requirement that a check user request be made publicly, nor should their be. Discretion is essential in many applications of check user. 1 != 2 18:47, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

How many places is this going to be posted? WP:AN is a pretty high-traffic noticeboard and starting an RFC just brings in more people. I would suggest all discussion be conducted on the AN thread to avoid splitting the discussion. Mr.Z-man 19:03, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

.........and we now know how well Durova did her sleuthing and got it right all the time, right? Not. I may be one of the ones that has fallen through the cracks, but rest assured my trail is going to stay very warm for a long time. I have watched this process for the last couple of years and the players are very much the same at nearly every turn.

I sing the body electric...Songgarden 67.86.68.208 19:01, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if the issue is so much that the requests are made sub rosa, I think it is that there is no ability to audit the use of the checkuser tool under such circumstances, something that conceivably is required under our privacy policy. Some method of logging the requests with name of person requesting, reason for request, whether or not the checkuser was actually done, and the result should be developed whether the checkuser is done through RFCU or other channels. And I would suggest that the only acceptable non-public way of requesting checkuser should be through the checkuser-en-l list, never a request to an individual checkuser outside of proper channels. I am pretty sure our checkusers behave in an ethical way, but there is some definite value to the Foundation and to the checkusers as a group to be able to demonstrate that processes are in place and are faithfully followed to ensure the privacy policy is followed. This is one place where IAR doesn't cut it. On the other hand, I will remind everyone that an RFA was recently derailed because of what appeared to be an unauthorized checkuser request; as far as I can see, the checkuser involved (whose privileges were actually with another project) still has this particular bit. Risker 19:13, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Check user actions are logged. You cannot see them because you need special access to see them, this is needed to maintain privacy. My understanding is that all checkusers can see the logs of each other and that certain office folks have the ability to look as well. Not sure about the technical details though.

If you meant a log of the person who requested the check, then I don't think that is something that needs to be revealed as the check users themselves are wholly responsible for their uses of the tool. 1 != 2 19:19, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't disagree that the overwhelming burden is on the checkuser him or herself. Nonetheless, the Foundation has a fiduciary duty to demonstrate that its publicly stated privacy policy is being followed. Without auditable information, there is no way for them to do so. Frankly, every checkuser ought to be keeping such records themselves, as there may be personal legal impacts for them as well as on the Foundation if there is an allegation of improper use of private information. (Q: So you did a checkuser four months ago on User:[exact name unimportant], why did you do it? A: Darned if I remember...) Privacy legislation is in some ways light years ahead and much more settled than a lot of the other legal issues that affect the Foundation, directly or indirectly. Having an auditable record available is of great value. Risker 22:48, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Then that would be a problem for the person who did the check improperly. meta:CheckUser policy seems pretty clear that the checks are logged. meta:Help:CheckUser says

In the reason field, type in the reason you are accessing the confidential data. Try to succinctly summarise the situation (for example, "cross-wiki spam"); this will be logged and may be needed by the Ombudsman commission.

A Reagan act isn't going to get a check user very far if they are investigated, is it? Angus McLellan (Talk) 16:51, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Arbcom?

I received an email from a Steward suggesting "Arbcom" would be an appropriate way to address this issue. I am not acquainted at all with the Arbcom process. What do others think? Mentoring07 16:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)(original nominator of this topic)

Conflict of interest with Wikia links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uncivil comments

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

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

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

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

Freecycling is not fair

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

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

WP:CSD

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

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

Ads sometimes appropriate source??

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

DYK

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

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

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

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

linking to hate groups

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

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

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

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

photographs of minors

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

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

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

Community Bans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Profanity

Should there be some policy as to what profanities you can and can't use? I personally do not appreciate reading the f-word while doing my research, and would like to at least see it as f***.