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Expansion of CSD A7

I've started a discussion some time ago at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Expansion of A7 but I suppose the proper procedure would be to add it here to make a it formal policy proposal.

In short, my proposal is to expand CSD A7 to include non-notable groups of people as well as individuals. This would apply to bands, clubs, organizations, couples, families, and any other collections of individuals that do not assert their importance or significance. Discussion has been taking place on the talk page so please add your comments there, but I'll start the voting here. howcheng [ t • c • w • e ] 22:13, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. howcheng [ t • c • w • e ] 22:13, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Turnstep 22:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Groups of non-notable individuals are inhenently non-notable. Titoxd(?!?) 23:28, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Although I don't know how much load it will take off AfD, it's a good idea.--Sean|Black 23:30, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  5. That would simply be common sense. In particular bands appear very often on AFD. Radiant_>|< 00:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Sounds good as long as it's clear that this still only applies to groups with no remotely plausible assertion of notability (not simply non-notable ones, even if they fall somewhat below, e.g., WP:MUSIC). Also, for the polls are evil crowd, there's been lots of discussion. Now what's wrong with an informal poll to gauge the general consensus among many users? -- SCZenz 00:21, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support as per previous discussion. --Carnildo 00:58, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support. It's a very sensible proposal. PJM 17:19, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support. I'm not sure how useful this will really be — what vanity band article doesn't assert notability of one form or another? — but that's also why I don't think this extension would do any harm. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 23:34, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    I've seen a few band articles go by that don't even assert existance, much less any sort of notability. --Carnildo 00:12, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support. This has such widespread community support that I find it odd that some people are insisting on a vote, when merely reading the discussion would show which way the wind blows. But if you insist on counting heads, count mine. Nandesuka 00:16, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support. Protects Wikipedia from abuse. Susvolans ⇔ 16:59, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  12. A no-brainer. -Splashtalk 19:31, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support. -- Kjkolb 19:58, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support per Titoxd and Carnildo and because it might mean fewer articles in AfD.--Alhutch 00:35, 1 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support; logical extension of A7, which has been very successful. Though, I think consensus for this is clear enough that we don't really need a poll... --Aquillion 09:40, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Strong support, I nominate 5-6 bands per day for AFD and virtually none are kept. Stifle 00:32, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Obviously needed. Martin 00:42, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Strongest Support Ever In The Universe Heck, I already use CSD A7 for groups. karmafist 01:14, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Please! Ashibaka tock 04:47, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  20. Support. Blackcap (talk) (vandalfighters, take a look) 03:16, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Support Jamie 05:22, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Support - common sense abakharev 05:29, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Support. My support does not include politcal groups, not for profit organisations, and similar organisations. I think those types of groups should through the AfD process. Movementarian 04:51, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  24. Support. If breadth is a concern, I'd also support the inclusion of non-notable bands, of which there are approximately umpteen thousand added every day. But I support the broader proposal as well. | Klaw ¡digame! 05:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  25. Support - There's so much bandcruft and fangroupcruft these days that this makes perfect sense to me. --Cyde Weys talkcontribs 16:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  26. Strong support This seems like a logical extension of A7; why shouldn't groups and individuals be treated alike? Mike5904 23:12, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  27. Support obviously. --Victim of signature fascism 15:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  28. Support. It's always been a glaring gap in my opinion. Enochlau 00:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  29. Support - Obvious extension of A7. → Ξxtreme Unction {yakłblah} 19:43, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  30. Support. Admins will be smart enough to show discretion when a band or group has become notable. I'd recommend mentioning WP:MUSIC in the wording of the expansion. Harro5 22:45, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  31. Support —Locke Cole 02:11, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  32. Support - Saberwyn - The Zoids Expansion Project 21:09, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Poll is now closed.
Oppose
  1. Oppose. This proposal was rejected by the community originally, and is open to substantial abuse with no oversight. Trollderella 22:14, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose. This is too ad-hoc a way to go about changing such a major page Be cautious - SoM 00:24, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • How do you want it done? There's been discussion forever, and now a broader consensus is being requested on a very public page. Can you suggest something that would be less ad hoc, please? -- SCZenz 01:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose and I actually would rather CSD A7 was not a criterion. I have rescued the odd article from there, Roddy Llewellyn springs to mind, and lost the odd one to before I could rescue it. I wish people would spend more time just sourcing articles and bringing them to an encyclopedic quality rather than willy nilly deleting them because they can't even take the time to google the subject. Surely we haven't got half the articles we should have, and that should be a concern more pressing than worrying about articles we may not need. Steve block talk 20:37, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Oppose - Poorly thought out, and overly broad. This seems like an attempt to delete many things that would surivive an AFD. --Rob 17:38, 1 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    How so? Ashibaka tock 04:47, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    The word "groups" of people can mean pretty much anything. I think there's probably consensus for small musical bands, that have been saved by technical rules, and are guarenteed deletion via WP:MUSIC. But, the word "group" of individuals is awfully broad, and could been any organization of any size, of any time, of any degree of formal or legal status. Speedy deletion is only supposed to be designed to handle a subset of articles where's there's a well established consensus to delete. Also, if an article on an individual makes no notable claim, its unlikely there's such a claim to make, but its quite possible a larger well known group of people could be be famous, but the author fails to state they're famous explcitly, as some groups are so famous, one might think it goes without saying (e.g. a famous big city orchestra, a professional sports team, or an article about a famous charity that's attempt to be non-promotional is deemed as not making a notable claim). Oddly, this proposal favors ad-copy (which typically makes claims of notability) over NPOV works (which sticks to the facts, and doesn't boast). --Rob 03:23, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Oppose. Existing speedies are sufficient. -- JJay 04:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Please look at the talk page linked to above. There are a lot of useless articles (such as obvious band vanity) that have to suffer through AfD right now. Ashibaka tock 04:47, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm tired of the complete misinterpretation and misuse of existing speedies. We should be talking about rolling those back, not expansion. -- JJay 19:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Oppose as stated -- too broad. I would support a criteria for speedy deletion that: (1) had a new entry (rather than expanding A7) (2) applied only to bands, and (3) had specific objective criteria. For instance: "band has no records and otherwise obviously and clearly meets none of the criteria of WP:MUSIC." Reasons: Bands are 50%+ of the prolbem. On the talk page, most of the discussion is about bands. But your proposal includes all groups. Including just bands would alleviate half or more of the problem, and clear criteria could be used. Other groups are more problematical. This would be a more conservative and incremental approach. If it works, it could be expanded later to include all groups. Herostratus 05:12, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Oppose as stated. This proposal is too broad. A proposal that was limited to non-notable bands, or non-notable groups were all individuals are members of the same nuclear family, then I would be likely to support the proposal. --Allen3 talk 16:27, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Oppose as stated - Overly broadly phrased expansion to the most problematic CSD criterion (cf. Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#CSD A7 and collateral damage). I would support an expansion of A7 to cover bands, which comprise almost all of the potential to fast track obviously problematic speedies. But generally, A7 is really in need of more tightening up, not more expansion. --- Charles Stewart 17:00, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Oppose, I too think this is overly broad. More relevant than the failed 3-C band vanity proposal is proposal 5 about unremarkable clubs. Very often an article about a group of people not asserting notability can be merged. Sometimes it cannot and needs to be deleted, but a speedy rule here is in danger of causing collateral damage. I don't want a rule allowing an article to be speedied if there is a chance that AFD would let it be merged. I would support a separate rule for the narrower category of music bands, those groups alone take up a lot of space on AFD. Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:04, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Oppose. Much too broad. I think A7 is already being misapplied to the serious detriment of the encyclopedia. Allowing one editor to apply his or her own definition of notability to groups without detailed guidance (i.e., instruction creep) is an extremely bad idea. -- DS1953 talk 17:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Poll is now closed.
Polls are evil! (And can't we discuss this instead?)
  1. Kim Bruning 00:05, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Hey, I started the Polls are Evil page. Stop polling and start healthy discussion. -User:Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 00:10, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Funny, because I see a link to a discsussion in the first post in this thread.--Sean|Black 00:11, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Excellent, so you can continue doing that then. Kim Bruning 01:03, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Discussion has been going on since November 3. It seemed there was enough consensus on approving this. If you disagree, you could contribute to the discussion there. howcheng [ t &#149; c &#149; w &#149; e ] 16:53, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    Then it is approved. Go forth and implement! Kim Bruning 16:57, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    You got reverted, so apparently there was still opposition. Try discuss some more! Kim Bruning 05:20, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's 76% support after three weeks, in a high-visibility place and advertised in many others. Also, several of the oppose-voters object to the wording rather than the spirit. The proposal has obviously met consensus. I'll add it to WP:CSD now; if people have concerns about the wording, please discuss on the CSD talk page. Radiant_>|< 22:02, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Require registration (log-in) to edit

The problem: A lot of garbage on Wikipedia is inserted into articles by anonymous editors; the overwhelming bulk of blanking, graffiti, and other vandalism is by anonymous editors. In turn, an enormous amount of time is spent by responsible (almost always registered) editors in reverting stuff: this is totally unproductive time, better spent doing something else. And if I'm typical, something worse: after a while, we don't revert or fix minor errors; as a long-time contributor here, I used to revert all that stuff, but now usually don't — there's too much of it, it's discouraging, and I have better things to do, as do we all.

Now the problem is not usually very serious: it just makes Wikipedia look silly, a very iffy source of information (I almost never link to it from my own site), and wastes a lot of everybody's time. But sometimes it becomes something much worse: the current controversy over Wikipedia's article on John Seigenthaler Sr. (q.v., and the Talk page), in which the subject of the article discovered that for several months he'd been obliquely accused of having something to do with two assassinations, is not unique: see this section of the Talk page on John Seigenthaler. Mr. Seigenthaler has gone on national media, quite successfully putting Wikipedia in the same category as wacko Internet stuff, blogs, etc.: even if we are not concerned with libelling people (and one of these days some court is going to award damages), izzis the publicity Wikipedia wants?

The solution is simple. Require registration (log‑in) before you can edit. While there are a few anonymous editors who do contribute usefully, the overwhelming majority of them do not; conversely, there is very little vandalism by registered users. (Not talking about POV issues here, which can't usually be classified as vandalism.)

Registration is easy, free, spamfree. If a registered user is so foolish as to libel someone via Wikipedia, they can be held accountable; protected by the laws governing ISP's (see the Seigenthaler Talk page again) anonymous "users" cannot. Bill 13:24, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It would be nice to see statistics on what percentage of anon contribs are vandalism. Nonetheless, requiring all users to contribute would raise the entry barrier, and not only reduce the number of vandalisms, but also reduce the number of positive edits. And remember that many users who starts as anons eventually register - but if they were never allowed to be anons in the first place and had to register for their fist edit, would they?
Nonetheless I think it may be prudent to implement a feature 'protection from anons', allowing admins to protect certain commonly vandalised pages from anon edits. It might prove to be a panacea for Bush page dillema and similar high profile 'often-vandalised-by-anons' pages..--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:28, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I Support Bill's proposal, or at least something incorporating main parts of his recommendation. If the only problem was random vandalism, it could be lived with as the price of having an open wiki. But, we see in the Siegenthaler case and several others [1], really malicious and harmful behavior aimed at specific, living, individuals. I've also seen small companies [2] targeted by anonymous contributors.
Bill's proposal could be criticized from two points of view: First, it will not be positive proof against this kind of behavior, since it will remain very easy to get a practically anonymous user name; second, as Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus suggests, that it will deter new users unnecessarily. As for the second criticism, a compromise is possible along the following lines: permit anonymous users to edit most pages as they do now, but prevent them from creating new pages and from editing pages in certain categories, for example, articles about living people and existing businesses. I like this proposal, b/c it gives new users plenty of space to 'play' within WP and provides a further incentive to register while protecting against the more serious kind of defamation vandalism --FRS 16:04, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's been brought up many times: Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish anonymous users. --Interiot 16:05, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

True, Interiot, it is a perennial proposal, but that shouldn't prevent it being discussed afresh if that is what you're suggesting. Things move on, and people can change their views (as I have on this subject). --A bit iffy 17:36, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • The major problems with this suggestion are (a) your contention that the majority of anons do not contribute usefully is clearly false, based on what I've seen looking at recent changes; (b) your suggestion doesn't do anything to combat the problem that's motivating it: users who are willing to construct elaborate libel are likely also to be willing to take the time to register. While requiring registration might stop the people who randomly add "penis" to articles, it's not going to deal with the Seigenthaler situation. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:29, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like fights, but as for (a) you've inadvertently misrepresented what I said: not that the majority of anons vandalize, but that the majority of vandalism appears to be anons, which is a very different thing. As for (b), requiring registration will deter: it's not the slight time involved in registration, but the knowledge that registration requires their e-mail address, and registered users are thus trackable. This seems to be supported by the fairly clear fact that very little vandalism is by registered users. At any rate, my concern is not so much with the Seigenthaler and other similar messes, but with the day-to‑day parade of graffiti and blanking to be reverted. Bill 17:11, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Well, when I registered, the email address was optional. I think it still is. Even if we require it (raising the bar for participation significantly!), getting an anonymous one-off email-address is trivial. Thus we would make participation harder for not much gain. On the other hand, I would support a "protection from anonymous", analogous to the current complete protection. Such a feature could be used by an admin if necessary. It would also allow us to get some experience with this topic.--Stephan Schulz 21:51, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The observation that all but a minute fraction of vandalism comes from users who are not logged in is hard to deny to contributors who have accumulated a substantial Watchlist. Without rephrasing it in the form of its converse, that the majority of anons do not contribute usefully— which is not in any way the issue— I agree strongly with Bill Thayer, as a thoroughly anonymous—"Wetman"—contributor myself. Asking a would-be editor to log in first is a simple extra step that would slightly raise the bar, enough to discourage spur-of-the-moment "drive-by" spray-can graffiti, though indeed not enough to thwart any "POV" assertions or the constructing elaborate schemes of any kind, libellous ormerely zany. --Wetman 17:16, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
"While there are a few anonymous editors who do contribute usefully, the overwhelming majority of them do not" certainly seems to imply exactly what I said. Your claim there that the overwhelming majority of anons do not contribute usefully is false, though perhaps this isn't reflective of what you meant to say. Second, an email is not currently required to register an account, so your other point would also require some change to the user-login scheme. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:28, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Most unfortunately, Bill has not presented the case carefully enough. He shouldn't have said "While there are a few anonymous...", and he did get that e-mail thing wrong. However, I believe the case for allowing only registered users to edit is strong in that it will stop almost all vandalism, which takes up a silly amount of good editors' time. (Read more of my views on this at User:A_bit_iffy#Things I really hate about Wikipedia.) --A bit iffy 18:03, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Rereading self) Umm, yes, though I don't quite think it, I did get carried away towards the end of my yammering, and you guys read me better than I do. . . . On the e‑mail thing, I seem to remember having to provide an e‑mail address? Zat gone now? Anyway, my watchlist is about 65% tiny edits, spelling corrections, that kind of thing, often by robots, and almost all the rest is graffiti and blanking: possibly because by temperament I'm not interested in large topics, but track almost all factual articles on small places in Italy, minor Roman stuff, etc. It's a bit like all those soldiers who left their graffiti on the pyramids. Bill 19:09, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, an email address was never required. You could always specify it. I suspect you misremember. --Stephan Schulz 21:05, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I would support limiting new page creations to those who are logged in, perhaps even requiring them to build up a few edits first, like we already do for page moves. It's much harder to deal with bad articles than bad edits. The vast majority of new articles created by anonymous users, that I've seen, could be called "bad". However, bad doesn't mean vandalism. A lot of it is vandalism, but the articles that are CSD and AfD material unintentionally, combined with copyright violations puts the number of bad articles over good. On the other hand, I've seen a much better bad to good ratio for edits. However, this is just my experience and perception, which can be unreliable. It would be good to have some precise numbers about the problem.

Also, while the potential loss of good editors resulting from changes like this is a valid concern, there are consequences to accepting a higher level of bad articles. We may lose editors we already have when they get sick of dealing with the articles. A more significant consequence is the amount of time good editors waste deleting bad articles. How many good articles and edits are don't get made because they are busy nominating or voting them for deletion, or reporting them to copyright problems? I don't know which loss would be greater, but there are definitely consequences to doing nothing.

If we do make a change, we could limit it to a week or a month and collect information on whether it works and whether new editors are lost. -- Kjkolb 18:29, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that the issue of blocking anonymous IP's from editing has come up again and again shows how serious the issue is. Many Wikipedians, perhaps, would support the idea or would seriously consider it. I support the idea of blocking anon IP's. If this current discussion ends up nowhere again I expect that it will be brought up again. How many positive editors would be discouraged from editing by this policy? Well, if it is clearly specified that creating an account does not require disclosing any personal information whatsoever, I don't expect that many will be discouraged. Their User Name can even by a faux number sequence, similar to an IP address, if they like. Alexander 007 01:07, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If we assume that requiring people to make a username will deter those who would otherwise commit minor vandalism, we'd have to also assume that the extra effort will deter those who would otherwise perform minor positive edits -- spelling, punctuation, correcting dates, removing vandalism, etc., unless anyone has substantial reason to believe that destructive anons would be more deterred than constructive anons. I would expect the added demand to register an account to work both ways. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:17, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
How do you feel about the compromise suggested several paragraphs above: "permit anonymous users to edit most pages as they do now, but prevent them from creating new pages and from editing pages in certain categories, for example, articles about living people and existing businesses" My issue is not minor vandalism, but making defamation and invasion of privacy of real people & companies more difficult or risky for those who would use WP for that purpose --FRS 02:23, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think such a policy about new pages is necessary -- the new pages listing is fairly well patrolled (it's a lot easier to get a handle on than recent changes). Again, I wouldn't want to prevent anonymous users from editing pages in any category because the balance of their contributions is positive; the net effect of such a policy would be damage to Wikipedia. Finally, as I said above, anyone with a serious malicious intent is unlikely to be stopped by the <15 seconds it takes to make an account, so any policy about limiting the rights of anon users is very unlikely to control such serious, malicious editing. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:37, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree that the new pages listing is well patrolled. Those of us who edit Islam-related articles are dealing with one user who creates ten or more articles a day, a great many of them ending up on AfD. If someone were patrolling the new pages, someone else would catch abominations like Western scholars and Reports of unusual religious childbirths. Note: I have disagreed with Christopher Parham in the past re new article creation; he seems to me to believe that just about every new article can be salvaged if enough work is put into it. This seems to me to grotesquely over-estimate the number of responsible editors and the amount of time that they can dedicate to salvaging cruft. Zora 22:35, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I only mean that new pages is well-patrolled in the sense that articles that are created as minor vandalism are usually quickly removed, so we don't need to worry much about this sort of addition. Blocking anonymous users from contributing new articles is unlikely to prevent other sorts of 'bad' new articles, whatever the definition; forcing the creation of an account is not much of a barrier. Regarding your specific concerns, it's not clear what those patrolling new pages should do about the articles you link -- clearly they can't be deleted under our existing policy; what would you suggest patrollers do about them? Christopher Parham (talk) 23:14, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest that we need some software changes. One should be able to sort and track new pages by USER, without having to cut and paste new pages to an app on one's own computer and then sorting. We need stats on new article creation -- what's the usual number of new articles created per X edits? -- and a hard-coded limit on the number of new articles any one user can create in a week, or in a month, to be established relative to the average number of new articles. If new article creation were a finite rather than an infinite resource, editors might be more careful about creating breakout articles for one misspelled sentence. Zora 23:23, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Restricting non-logged in users from editing is a throughly counterproductive idea. The reason most vandalism comes from "anons" is that the people vandalizing don't have to log in. If we required logging in, most of them would. The supporters of this seem to be regularly confused as to what the intended target of such a restriction would be: at first, they often claim it would help with libel or other major damage to the 'pedia - when it is pointed out that such a policy would make the identification, fixing and tracking of such material harder, they switch to the argument that the policy would act as a speed-bump and stop trivial, minor vandalism. When it is pointed out that such vandalism is a minor problem already, and not worth a major policy change with many downsides (less minor good fixes, a great barrier to gradually getting involved with the wiki) they often switch back to a mid-range argument, ignoring the fact that both ends of the argument have been defeated. The reason the proposal keeps coming up is the natural human desire to find scapegoats - "it must be the anons; let's kill 'em!" is a simple and obvious response to the crap-flood which we are, in fact, facing. It is also thoroughly wrong; anon's are not a separate group from logged in users; we're all people; anon's are just people who wish to be less strongly affiliated with the site at this particular time. They are not a separate class that can be blocked as such. It's a bad idea, folks, and one we have rejected many, many times. Pardon the vehemence of my above comment (late at night). JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:36, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Other open source projects typically require providing a valid, verified e-mail address just to be part of the discussion lists; and require actual participation (sending patches that get incorporated into code) before becoming allowed to commit changes unsupervised. My wife (head of her department at a four year college) tells me that Wikipedia is being regarded by Internet savvy academics as an unreliable source, and some are requiring a second source whenever Wikipedia is used as a reference by students. I believe that we should require edits to be by Wiki users who have registed, including a verified active e-mail address.

I cannot see how requiring registration would identification or tracking of malicious or other bad material harder. Having the IP address only makes it much harder - ISPs will not respond to the question of who has an IP address on at a given point in time except to subpoenas and warrants. Having the e-mail address is great. I speak from experience, having had this as a job responsibility.

Sock puppet claims might be a thing of the past. Wrolf 04:35, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Vetting new pages

What about a process in which new pages created by anonymous users are held in a special, non-publically viewable area? Pages living there would have to be approved by an admin (or perhaps by a logged-in user or something in between) before they were made visible to the world via the main namespace. Edits to existing articles would not be affected. This would still allow non-logged in users to create articles, but rob the effectiveness of their efforts: why create a Rob is soooo kool! page if you can't share it with your friends? The downside would be the amount of effort for admins to filter the pages, but that really depends on the number of admins available. Even allowing logged-in users to approve the pages would be a great help, as this would require quite a few steps for your random bored schoolkid to create a page. Conversely, if the "any logged in user" requirement is too low, and the admin requirement is too high, it could be something like "logged-in users who have existed for XXX days and/or have made at least XXX edits." Adjusting those XXXs should allow a large enough pool of willing people so that valid new-anon pages should be visible very shortly after their creation. Articles meeting CSD could be immediately removed by an admin. Turnstep 19:03, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • I support this idea. I started editing as an anon; most of my new articles were garbage, but then I got the hang of Wikipedia from doing wiki maintainance on existing articles. Jamie 05:28, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism to existing articles is a more serious problem than new articles

Creating bogus new articles is not good, but someone using wikipedia for research is highly unlikely to even notice a new article with a bogus title. Adding plausible but incorrect material to a biography of Cyrus Vance or Hillary Clinton is a much more serious problem, in terms of the inconvenience to readers, and the harm to wikipedia's reputation (IMHO). I support the proposal (to make users register "login" names on the theory that it will probably cut down vandalism a bit, at a minor cost, recognizing that it will do nothing to discourage the serious vandal. Morris 03:02, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also see existing articles vandalized more than new ones. I agree that we need to require only logged in users to contribute. Most of the vandalism I see is by ip's. But on the other hand see some by logged in users and when I check their contribs they will have only have registered quite recently (empty user and talk pages).--Dakota t e 20:56, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think forbidding edits by anonymous users is a very bad idea. While the number of constructive edits by anonymous users may not be that big, I think that most users start anonymously. After a while they are hooked and register (I know that this is true for me). If we disallow anonymous edits, we may well cut off (or at least reduce) the flow of new Wikipedians. --Stephan Schulz 21:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can tell, the majority of minor fixes to articles (things like spelling, punctuation, and grammar) are done by anons. These are spur-of-the-moment edits by people who are otherwise passive readers. By requiring them to create an account before fixing the problem, we make it much less likely that they'll bother with it. --Carnildo 22:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with Stephan - I would never have edited Wikipedia if there had been a policy against anonymous edits. At first, I didn't want to create an account because I was sure that I was just going to make this one edit... just fix this really egregious spelling error... just correct this totally off-base assertion... and so on. It took months of occasional editing before I was willing to create an account. - AdelaMae (talk - contribs) 03:13, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Every time anyone publishes an article we have to go through this. Not only would blocking anonymous edits drastically inhibit our growth, but it would have little effect on vandals. They would create throwaway accounts to vandalize with. They don't create accounts now only because they don't have to - if they did, they would. If you've seen some of the vandalism I have, you know that many of these people are not casual vandals, they work hard at it, and would happily jump over any hurdles we throw at them. Any attempt to prevent throwaway accounts, such as identity validation, would lead to other undesirable effects and further discourage legitimate users. At least now we can review changes by anons separately, and it helps us to catch a lot of vandalism. Give me anonymous edits, or give me death. Deco 00:15, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think the best way to prevent throwaway accounts is not to block them, but to make them less effective for malicious purposes. Let accounts that might be throwaway accounts show up in a manner similar to anonymous users on a filtered view of RC. Getting off the new&suspect users list would take a combination of time and constructive contributions - by the time that a user's gotten enough experience under their belt that they no longer stick out like a sore thumb on RC, they've either contributed enough that they feel that they have a reputation worth protecting, contributed enough that the value of their legitimate contributions outweighs the one or two shots at trying to vandalise that they are likely to get before someone blocks them, or just given up in frustration and gone elsewhere. Triona 10:32, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is this now policy? As I've noticed I cannot clean up categories today. If anyone can edit, that includes new page creation. You should change the notice on the main page. TO requires registration 132.205.45.148 19:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think this is a good idea, but it would probably be best to vet all changes, not just article creations. IMHO The criteria for when a change becomes vetted should be a function of the article's visibility (as a function of page views and links to the article - both extremely high profile pages and very low traffic pages can be considered "high-risk" - high profile pages because of their visiblility, low traffic ones because of greater risk that vandalism will go overlooked), the reputation of the person making the edit (as a function of time since account creation and non-malicious edits vs malicious edits), the reputation of those that have checked the edit, and the length of time since the edit was made. The "burden" for approval should gradually go down as time passes. In practical considerations, this should mean that anyone that's been here long enough or contributed enough to demonstrate that they are serious about being an asset to the community would have their edits clear the vetting process automatically or almost automatically, while changes from brand new accounts and anon users would wait just long enough to give someone the chance to look them over. Triona 09:58, 19 December 2005 (UTC) One way to look at the problem of vandalism is that we need to make sure that vandalism is ALWAYS harder than legitimate contributions - Making it easier to revert vandalism than it is to perform it is one way, requiring a sufficient contribution to the project that the would-be vandal actually contributes more than they destroy is another - if we can create a system that achieves that goal without turning off new contributors, the vandals will mostly go elsewhere, and the ones that stick around will have to invest more and more time to be effective. Triona 10:19, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

new policy against anonymous users creating articles

Who the hell came up with this ridiculous idea? This was done with no consensus at all! I swear that this just came out of thin air. What happened to "assume good faith" anyway? I strongly oppose to this change. I doubt that this will stop the nonsense articles. People will just replace existing articles with nonsense even more. And if people are really determined to create nonsense articles, having this new ugly restriction won't do anything to stop them. --Ixfd64 22:57, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, but Jimbo has assured everyone that it is only a test. If it doesn't work, or it meets with disapproval, it will go away. We'll see, I guess.--Sean|Black 23:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I also strongly object to his policy. I regularly patrol new articles and find that no more than half are vandalism. The rest are valuable suggestions for legitimate topics that we may never have come up with on our own. That said, perhaps 50% of new pages is a lot of pages for admins to delete, as few as there are of them, and ideally newbies should be starting out by minor editing and getting feedback on that, not creating brand new articles. I guess there are legitimate arguments on both sides. Deco 00:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Hear, hear! What makes Jimbo think that enough anons are not physically able to create well-crafted meaningful articles that it requires a full out ban, blocking out good anon article creators? And what makes him think that its worth throwing out the baby with the bathwater? So I take it National Pact shouldn't have even been started then, since we're now judging people by their IP addresses and user names now. --Bash 00:16, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • For what it's worth, I approved of this idea before I even heard Jimbo was considering it. I didn't think it was politically feasable, but always felt it would be a good idea. If Jimbo is going to force the community to swallow some bitter but good medicine, I'm all for it. --Improv 01:10, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll throw my voice in with those opposing; there's no reason for this policy. We are simply not being overwhelmed by the bad new pages created by anons, and if we were overwhelmed, the way to solve that is to improve our ability to sort and delete bad new articles, not to toss a blanket over an entire arbitrary class of new articles, both good and bad. There are many suggestions for new RC and NP patrol software that could improve the responsiveness of our vandal fighters without inhibiting constructive additions at all. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:37, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Where on Wikipedia was this policy change announced? Do we have to hear about major changes like this from the news? User:Zoe|(talk) 03:47, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It seems we either hear it from the news, or the news hears it from us, and gets an even more distorted version of it. Jimbo doesn't really have a way to share it with the site without sharing it with the world. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:50, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maybe we should view Jimbo's action as an experimental stimulus (see this email). It is a fairly meaningless policy change, but it may force the Wikipedia community to take stock of existing problems and make some other more important and needed changes. --JWSchmidt 04:08, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I noticed that talk pages can still be created by anons... As for requiring accounts, I'd probbaly discontinute contributions instead. The only reason I might have registered would be to access page moves, but it's not that big a deal. To require registration, won't stop determined vandals. Since I contribute on impulse, I won't contribute further, because it impedes my altruistic impulses. I can just read google news instead. 132.205.45.148 19:21, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • If anon users don't want to get accounts, that's their loss, not ours.--Alhutch 19:28, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think you've got it backwards... anonymous users make many good contributions. Kappa 19:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Now that you mention it, that was sort of a dumb thing that i wrote earlier. I wasn't thinking correctly. What i meant was that if an anon user really wants to create an article, they can just get an account and create the article. There's nothing preventing them from getting an account. It takes like 2 seconds and its free. If you want to write a new article, get an account. seems simple to me.--Alhutch 19:49, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • And i do agree with you Kappa that anonymous users make good contributions.--Alhutch 19:50, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Could an advocate of the position that users identified by IP addresses alone should be allowed to create pages cite some really good pages recently added by such users? patsw 19:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Filtered out of this, of course, are the many, many articles that were speedy-deleted shortly after being created. Anyone who has spent much time watching Special:Newpages can tell you that a large portion of the pages created are candidates for deletion. Check Special:Log/delete to get some idea. This deletion takes administrator time. CDC (talk) 22:28, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Naturally....the point was to provide examples of quality pages submitted by anons. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:10, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I tried to look at the new pages, but got tired after scrolling through about 6500 of them. I didn't have the patience to scroll through thousands of new articles get back to when we didn't require registration. While your point is well taken that some anonymous users contribute good articles, it is less than clear (and I submit, unlikely) that many anons that previously submitted "quality pages" will be deterred by registration. I support this new policy. Srcastic 03:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would like to state my objection to the new policy. If there's a discussion of this policy other than here, I'd appreciate it if someone could point it out to me--I do not do IRC, generally, so I missed this entirely. My first edit to Wikipedia was the creation of an article, Balachandra Rajan, because I noticed there wasn't one and thought there should be. It was easy, I got interested, and became a registered user. I suspect this is not all that uncommon. I would not have registered if I hadn't already realized how easy it was to create pages. Chick Bowen 22:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly support the new policy. Here's the reasons why from a previous discussion: I would support limiting new page creations to those who are logged in, perhaps even requiring them to build up a few edits first, like we already do for page moves. It's much harder to deal with bad articles than bad edits. The vast majority of new articles created by anonymous users, that I've seen, could be called "bad". However, bad doesn't mean vandalism. A lot of it is vandalism, but the articles that are CSD and AfD material unintentionally, combined with copyright violations puts the number of bad articles over good. On the other hand, I've seen a much better bad to good ratio for edits. However, this is just my experience and perception, which can be unreliable. It would be good to have some precise numbers about the problem.

Also, while the potential loss of good editors resulting from changes like this is a valid concern, there are consequences to accepting a higher level of bad articles. We may lose editors we already have when they get sick of dealing with the articles. A more significant consequence is the amount of time good editors waste deleting bad articles. How many good articles and edits are don't get made because they are busy nominating or voting them for deletion, or reporting them to copyright problems? I don't know which loss would be greater, but there are definitely consequences to doing nothing.

If we do make a change, we could limit it to a week or a month and collect information on whether it works and whether new editors are lost. -- Kjkolb 23:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • I am opposed to this policy change. It is my view that this will only make the job of new-page patrollers harder, because a page created by an IP user used to get extra scrutiny as a rule -- now pages by newly created users will not get that. (If Special:newpages could show the number of contributions of the contributor, that would help.) I also think thas will reduce the rate at which useful new volunteers enter the project, while doing little to slow vandalism. i also note that this makes it imposible for non-logged-in users to nominatge pages for deletion via WP:AFD since one must create a new (sub-)page as part of teh AfD process. The rules have always been than an anon user was allowed to make AfD nominations, this has effectively changed that rule as a byproduct. if this change is kept, pages in the AFD-space (or perhaps in the entire wikipedia spce) should not have this restriction applied, just as pages in the talk: space now are not restricted. DES (talk) 21:00, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with DES. I think this is a poor implementation of a reasonable idea -- helping new contributors learn how to edit before cluttering up article-space (say, by following a redlink or hacking their first url). We should NOT change the current minimum time to contribution, which is one of WP's greatest strengths. If I'm on a strange computer, and need to add info about a new topic, I should still be able to do it in 15s, not 150s -- creating a new account from scratch takes a good minute, as you have to find your way back to where you were before to keep editing.
Saying "sorry, we've prevented you from doing X" is a very negative way to start someone's experience of a site.
Instead, we could transparently redirect such edits to a section on "Articles for Creation", and thank the user afterwards, encouraging them to log in to create new articles directly in-place [and offering them links to good WP-introductions to get them properly hooked]. Now that would rock. +sj + 21:06, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I support the experimental policy change. And it should be clear to anyone who's read a newspaper—it turned up on my print copy of the Boston Globe yesterday—or performed a Google News search on "Wikipedia" lately--who made the experimental policy change and why. The scary part is that the reporters who wrote the news articles, and the public who reads them, probably don't understand just how little this policy does to prevent gross problems like the Seigenthaler issue. But it does something, and we'd better do something. The better Wikipedia gets, the more people trust it; the more people trust it, the angrier they are going to get at gross inaccuracies in it. Saying "you can fix it yourself" and "it's a work in progress" and "we never said you could trust it" are not going to be an acceptable answers forever. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:40, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

But they sure are acceptable for now. We are a work in progress. Any thinking that we're close to being in publishing quality is strongly misguided. We need hundreds of thousands of articles that far exceed our current FA standards to do that. We are a work in progress, which doesn't make us useless. People can use us to find links to primary and secondary sources and get informed there. We also give a good basic idea of great many subjects. But anyone using an often tertiary source like Wikipedia to check facts should be either told not to believe everything they read on the internet, or told to do their homework or job properly, as in the hillarious case of NYT reporters who need to be told not to use Wikipedia as a source for writing stories [3]). Shouldn't we be using them as a source, rather that the other way around?
We should stick to our guns and ignore what media says. Zocky 22:03, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly support measures, even experimental or draconian measures, to curb the creation of hoax articles, vandalism of existing articles, and I strongly feel (on the basis of my own WP experience) that wikicruft poses a critical problem which urgently requires amelioration. I have no illusion that hoaxes or vandalism of WP can be eliminated entirely, but this is not the point. My point is that experience--- at least, my experience--- suggests that wikicruft is displacing high quality content. (In fact, even displacing content plus stubs.) I believe that as a community we urgently need to recognize this, and to take steps to curb the growth of the problem, which should enable us to catch our breath and consider how to eliminate the huge amount of vapid nonsense, crackpottery, vanitycruft, and even carefully crafted hoaxes which has already crept in.
Some months ago I spent a Sunday carrying out an informal survey in which I attempted to vote on every AfD (I could only vote on perhaps 10%, as it turned out) and also tried to monitor the listed articles with the list of recent edits. I concluded that the majority of new articles on that day were obvious hoax articles, or obvious vanity articles, or otherwise obviously crufty articles. In addition, in the categories I watch closely (math and physics), something like 1-2% of new articles are cranky or less obvious hoax articles.
As another illustration of the magnitude of the problem, I have also been tracking Albert Einstein for months. This is one of the most visited physics-related articles in WP, to judge from the fact that it is vandalized several times per day. Yes, most of this vandalism is reverted, but is not the point. Check the history page of this article, note the timestamps, and do the math. Despite the allegation that an army of honest folk quickly revert vandalism to such articles, by my estimate a random user has a chance of finding this article in a vandalized state at any given moment which I find unacceptable (higher than say one chance in a thousand). Yes, this article is vandalized much more often than some little known stub, but again this would miss the point. Random users, schoolchildren, etc., who visit WP to learn about a topic are much more likely to visit the most popular articles, but unfortunately, popular articles are more often vandalized. Surely this has something to do with why (according a recent and highly informal CNN internet poll) 66% of those voting believe WP is unreliable. (Too bad, incidently, that Wikimedia presumably lacks the funds for a properly designed Harris Poll or something like that.)
In addition, the community should recognize that it is a huge waste of the valuable time of users of good faith to force them to either spend the time required to revert with sufficient care so frequently, or else to let a core article (in my fields of interest, anyway) become corrupted by vandalism of various kinds. IMO, users like myself should be free to create new content, rather than spending all our time in bootless attempts to protect the articles we have already written or rewritten from vandalism or other degradation (e.g. the insertion of irrelevant political rants by certain registed users, which I think has been another recurrent problem with Albert Einstein, even when I happen to agree with the political opinions expressed!).
Deco, I notice that we agree that about "half" of all WP edits seem to constitute vandalism, but clearly we disagree about whether half is too much. Also, I guess you would agree that rather more than half of anon edits constitute vandalism, hoaxes, or other edits which (we would probably agree) are destructive to the stated purpose/goals of WP. Yes, I do sometimes see legitimate edits by anons to the pages I watch, but by my count, the ratio is roughly 5% legitimate to 95% illegitimate edits for anons.)
These are only a few reasons why, based upon my own experience trying to create and maintain high quality articles (in math/physics), I am much more pessimistic than some others who have spoken up about how bad the cruft problem already is, and how important it is to curb anonymous edits. When I see comments like those above from Deco and C. Parham, I think they must be living in some alternate reality (rather, unreality), but perhaps they are simply watching a very different set of pages from the ones I am watching. I would like to see Jimbo &c. acknowledge (by policy changes, not just discussion) that some pages (such as Albert Einstein) need more protection than others.
I also feel that the rapid growth of WP has overwhelmed the current admin system, which simply has not scaled with sufficient grace to address the problem of administering such a huge and complex enterprise. In particular, I have doubts whether the current system supports experimental policy changes, because I have doubts whether there is an adequate system in place to track statistics and otherwise make a proper rational assessment of whether an given experimental policy change seems to be working well.
Banning all edits by anons is only one baby step toward ameliorating the wikicruft problem, but I strongly believe that this is an essential first step. I have the impression that the WP board is extremely reluctant to acknowledge certain regretable hard truths about human nature (or at least, the nature of some humans), but I strongly believe that it is only a matter of time before they will have take this step, however reluctantly. My point is that putting it off will only increase the pain, because WP will have been that much more degraded by the time Wikimedia gets serious about protecting high quality articles which have already been written (which in my view is the best way to encourage the creation of more high quality articles). Much better to do it now and allow those who fear it will somehow ruin the WP experience to learn better, while there is still sufficient ratio of signal/noise at WP to make it worth saving.
I would like to see (or learn of the prior existence of!) a convenient forum where registered users can discuss all these policy issues (and more) with a reasonable chance of being heard by those who are in a position to make changes.
But leaving aside the question of what policy issues still need to be addressed by further (perhaps provisional) policy changes, I have two immediate concerns about this particular new policy which echo points raised by others, including several who strongly disagree with me about the extent or seriousness of the wikicruft problem:
  • why did I learn about this new policy from a friend who read about it on CNN, rather than from the Wikipedia welcome page? Shouldn't major policy changes be announced in a prominent place at WP? Sean said "Jimbo has assured everyone..." --- Sean, where did you see this assurance, pray tell?! I have been editing WP for months, so I am surely no novice, yet I after several minutes I couldn't find the official announcement which presumably exists somewhere on WP!
  • Banning all edits by unregistered users is neccessary, but the new policy falls far short of even this tiny first baby step toward saving the WP from the rapid growth of wikicruft. The new policty strikes me as a pulsillanimous attempt to curb the creation of new hoax articles by anons, but its does nothing to begin to address the broader wikicruft problem, which I believe is already even more serious (and is rapidly growing even worse).
Where are such WP policy issues publically discussed? (Assuming they are publically discussed.) This page is too inconvenient a forum for user input, IMO.
By the way, Sj, can you please explain just why you would be logged onto "a strange computer" and have the need or ability to create a user account on such a machine? I hope you can provide some innocuous explanation; otherwise, some of us are apt to conclude that this comment speaks volumes about the moral standards of at least some users who badly desire to continue to edit the WP anonymously!
To end on a slightly more positive note: I presume that this change means that the WP board is at least discussing the issue of wikicruft and what to do about it, and if so I am glad to know that hoaxing and other wikicruft is at least on the radar screen. I hope the board will remember a bit of traditional WP advice to newbies: go ahead, make changes, be bold!---CH 01:05, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
CH, I for one appreciate what you are saying: losing time with people who are not here to help is a problem. But you seem to be missing an important issue – all we know for certain is that allowing anons to edit is a part of the process that works. We don't know whether it's essential, but we do know that similar projects that tried to get quality through limitation of access rather than through sheer numbers of editors have failed. Zocky 02:54, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if we start thinking like that we might well wind up saying that WP is a utopian social experiment and therefore is doomed to ultimately fail, simply because all previous utopian social experiments have ultimately failed. In fact, I have often parroted this slogan myself, and mostly believe what I squawk, although I try not to think about it :-/ So perhaps we are simply discussing which mode of pstittacide we prefer :-/ But seriously, I would like to postpone the inevitable (assuming WP be not the exception which proves the rule). Others who are not as pessimistic about the long term future of WP as I might still agree that realizing the goal of providing the world with a free, on-line, universal, and high-quality encyclopedia is incompatible with permitting the rapid growth of hoaxes, vanity articles, blatant factual inaccuracies, crackpottery and other cruft in the Wikipedia.
Just to be clear: from time to time I have been pleasantly surprised to see some helpful anon correct my often careless spelling in some article I have labored over, and I am sincerely grateful to those editors. So the claim that some anonymous edits are helpful is not in dispute, at least not by me. I do not even dispute that from time to time anons have started legitimate articles which have sometimes grown into good articles.
But as I see it, we are discussing making judicious tradeoffs, in which we may choose to give up the genuine benefits from good anon edits in order to protetct the WP from further degradation by bad anon edits. And my belief, or rather my wild surmise, is that the best way of ensuring the rapid creation of more high qualtity WP articles is in fact to demonstrate that we care about the articles and categories we already have, at least enough to preserve them from careless or intentional destruction.
As I see it, dealing with anons is only one facet of protecting the good material already in WP and promoting the goal of reversing the figures in that CNN poll which claims that about 2/3 of respondents believe that WP is not reliable. (I venture to guess that surveying journalists would show that 90% think WP is not reliable, but that many or most of them would probably anonymously :-/ admit to using WP as a source, which raises the issue of what I see as our broader social responsibility, as citizens of the world, to clean out our cruft.)
For example, on several occasions since I came to WP, I have watched with dismay as articles reach a state of which WP can be proud, but then are gradually dismantled by careless edits, sometimes from well-intentioned registered users who are too hasty or inexperienced to take care not to shove in new material any old place, but rather to to try find some place where it fits neatly, or barring that, rewriting nearby paragraphs in order to correct any damage done to the previous flow of ideas. A dangerously naive WP myth holds that (apparently by some previously unknown law of nature) articles can only improve monotonically in quality. As I see it, this is rather like saying that we need not worry about energy resources because the laws of thermodynamics are too depressing to take seriously! I suspect that the typical evolution of a WP article is more analogous to statistical-mechanical fluctuations in discussions of Zermelo's objection to Boltzmann's so-called H-theorem than to the proverbial free lunch. In social experiments, as in physics, if a claim seems to good to be true, it probably is.
But while by no means all bad or otherwise problematic edits are made by anons, it is nonetheless true that anons are as a group responsible for far more than their fair share of bad edits. And the table presented by Zocky below says more than I could say in a thousand words about why we must, however reluctantly, ban unregistered editors from the WP.
It has not escaped my notice, incidently, that part of my frustration with the claim that we must at all costs preserve the right to edit anonymously, is that I still find it difficult to understand why anyone would feel (apparently) that this right trumps all other considerations in promoting the stated goals of the WP. Some users hint that they believe that habitual anons are too shy to register even under a pseudonym. I can well understand why users might not wish to use their IRL identity here--- in fact, from my own experience I'd probably even recommend editing under a pseudonym (too late, in my case!)--- but while WP is not without security flaws, the Wikimedia privacy policy is easy to find and the registration process is fast and easy. So, I tend to wonder why some users seem to have a huge problem with establishing even this minimal level of responsibility for their actions here. Speaking as one deeply concerned about current trends in my own country (the U. S.), I find it hard to understand why people concerned about supression of dissent or whatever would fail to recognize that free speech does not entail free denial of responsibility for what you do and say in a public forum.
I'd like to see a kind of round table discussion of all these issues (I'd guess participants would have to start by agreeing upon some list of issues to discuss, heh), in hope that as a community we can make wise decisions of this difficult and painful nature. If nothing else, in such a forum perhaps someone who truly believes that the right to edit anonymously trumps all other considerations for the health of the WP can explain their reasoning to me. Indeed, we might all perhaps learn that addressing the thorny problem of suppressing wikicruft is even more difficult than we had each previously realized! ---CH 09:59, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
You may be overlooking an important factor, that is recruitement. People burn out or just go do other stuff in life. We need a constant influx of new good editors. Most of started as anons, and many of us would have never tried editting in the first place in registration was required. Zocky 12:26, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can see why Jimbo "had to do something" relating to the recent embarrassment, and it's actually something I was thinking of as a possible way of slightly discouraging the stream of ridiculous test or joke new articles. The downside is losing the signal that an IP address instead of a username gives of likely vandalism (still relevant in edits), but it's sneakier vandalism or hoaxes that are more problematic. It might be a possible help if anon edits were subject to validation before appearing, and if there was a way of monitoring new registered users closely until they'd shown trustworthiness. Another approach might be to emphasise the unreliability of Wikipedia as a positive virtue, a useful reminder to students to always double-check sources: it excels as an introduction to a subject, but not as the truth on tablets of stone. The best answer to vandalism must be more people checking articles and edits, and we do need to rethink RfA which has too often become a way of testing useful editors to destruction rather than encouraging trustworthy people to play more of a part in monitoring quality (check out the WP:GRFA debate). ....dave souza 22:08, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Zocky, Of course I agree that enlarging (not just maintaining) the community of active editors is essential to the continued growth of high quality content in WP. I suspect our only difference is this: I never edited anonymously before I became a registered user, but you did. I guess we both may have assumed that most other users are like ourselves. I'd like to see a survey of active WP editors to find out if an overwhelming majority agree with "I never would have started to edit the WP if registration had been required".
When I called for a public discussion here at WP in advance of major policy changes, I should have made it clear that I have in mind a "policy cyle" somewhat like this:
  • public discussion,
  • provisional implemention,
  • statistical study of logs, survey data, whatever seems useful,
  • assessment,
  • loop
One reason for careful public discussion before making changes is to avoid creating a situation where Wikimedia rapidly makes a chaotic sequence of possibly unannounced or at least insufficiently publicized WP policy changes, which would obviously be frustrating for everyone here. I said above that I much prefer spending time at WP creating new content to spending time on cruft patrol, and as you would guess, this implies that I don't want to have to (hypothetically) spend energy trying to track rapidfire WP policy changes in real time so that I can be confident that I am not violating any policies with any given edit.
I should also stress that when I mentioned public discussion in advance of policy changes above, I did not mean to imply that the WP Board, sysops, or admins, should be prevented from taking emergency measures as needed, since occasional unanticipated circumstances seem to be unavoidable in a huge social enterprise like WP (or in maintaining any large website). Of course, in a well-run website any emergency measures should be reversible or amendable once the dust clears.
I also want to add that while I am frustrated with what I see as a weak and tardy response by the Board to the growth of the Wikicruft and accountability issues, we must all remember that one of the most remarkable aspects of the WP is that it has been built almost entirely by volunteers and has a comparatively tiny staff and operating budget, so we do need to cut the staff some slack in that respect. I am disappointed when I see Jimmy repeat shibboleths which do not accord with my own experience at WP, but I was struck by the comments of a poster at news.com, who drew a distinction between truth and knowledge, saying that while truth may ultimately be subjective, knowledge is something which can be shared. I also feel that we must avoid getting bogged down in disputes over moral philosophy or espistemology and focus on practical measures we can take as a community, and sharing seems to me to reside at the core of the WP experience. That might be worth keeping in mind.
I see another issue lurking in the background of this controversy. I don't much care for the possibility that the board might be more responsive to individuals who threaten legal action than to those who prefer to resolve content disputes by talk page discussion and if neccessary an appeal for arbitration, but we all need to recognize that as a practical matter it wouldn't take very many lawsuits to exhaust the WP operating budget (even if they have pro bono lawyers "on retainer"), and as I understand it, there is a real possiblity that a single adverse legal ruling could shut down the entire enterprise in a heartbeat.
Some outraged Wikipedians have suggested that Siegenthaler should have simply edited his own bio and have done with it. I think that is an absurd suggestion: no-one should have to waste time in daily edit wars with some anonymous crank to correct blatant factual misinformation, certainly not when the misinformation insinuates involvement in pedophilia, terrorism or murder (probably the most inflammatory charges I can imagine in the modern world). But perhaps these users were merely trying to express the sharp distinction between technology and social mechanisms which are inexpensive and involve volunteer labor versus those which are expensive and involve highly paid professionals. One reason I think the admin system needs overhaul is that currently I think there are some technical problems which make it more difficult than need be the case for newbies to discover and grasp the distinction between "wikifriendly" ways of doing things (like resolving content disputes over allegations of factual inaccuracies) and "wikihostile" ways. Naturally, we should do everything we can to encourage wikifriendly modes of discourse and dispute resolution.
Beyond this, we probably need to try harder to help technically incompetent newbies learn our ways, or at least seek effective assistance from more experience/competent users if they are having trouble accomplishing some legitimate goal here (like correcting factual misinformation). This is a huge challenge, but one thing is clear: layout is a crucial component of ensuring that WP is easy to use effectively. For example, while Wikipedians like to say that in the event of a quarrel, the sequence of events can be readily reconstructed from the history page, it only takes one technical incompetent to render a history or talk page virtually unreadable--- and now it seems that history pages are limited to the previous 500 edits, which isn't enough in some cases. Also, edit histories are currently almost impossible to reconstruct if a page underwent several moves. These usability issues combine technical and policy elements; technical problems and possible solutions can be best explored by the sysops (i.e. developers, not admins). From time to time I have noticed them playing with various changes, not always with good results. I'd like to see a "developer's sandbox" where they can test describe the rationale for and given samples of proposed layout changes and get feedback from users. ---CH 23:09, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What's a user space page? Whatever it is, it doesn't sound good. Why would anybody want to ban anonymous users? They shouldn't because:

1)Some anonymous users contribute greatly.

2)Wikipedia is supposed to be the free encyclopedia.

3)There are many good articles started by anonymous users that may have not be created at all without them.

4)Logged in users vandalize just as much as anonymous users.

5)It is not a good first experience and would not encourage people to log in and use Wikipedia regularly.

6)People should have the right to choose whether to get a username or not. Wikipedia shouldn't force people to get a username to make articles.

7)When you ban out the anonymous users, you ban the good ones as well.

8)It doesn't take much work just to erase vandalized info.

Therefore, this policy should end! Or you could:

1) Whenever an anonymous user wants to make an article, they have to go here (or some other place) to debate whether they want it or not.

2)If an anonymous user vandalizes more than five times, ban that person from making articles.

These are better, but I rather have no policies at all. So, if you can, please get rid of the policies. If not, please do either number 1 or number 2. --anon

Sorry if this is a repeat, but look at what some clowns are now saying about the Wikipedia. It seems to me that Wikipedia should be the one to file a lawsuit against these mean-spirited pricks launching this crap against the Wikipedia. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 23:38, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Catalog of defamation incidents

Perhaps, in light of the recent fiasco concerning John Seigenthaler Sr., known attempts at using Wikipedia for defamation should be documented, perhaps in the Wikipedia namespace? I would limit such a list to significant character attacks which persist for some minimum duration--anonymous rants of "g30rg3 bu$h is an 33d10t!" which are reverted in minutes don't qualify. I just removed an (unsubstantiated, as far as I can tell) rape allegation from the article on Ahmad Rashad (alleged to have occured when he was a student at the University of Oregon), that has been there since October 2005. A quick search of google reveals nothing. Now, student-athletes commiting sex crimes and being protected by campus authorities is certainly not unheard of--but Wikipedia should not repeat such allegations without firm and verifiable evidence. (A bogus link, claiming to be evidence, was included in the article as well). --EngineerScotty 00:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Go for it. You may also want to pen some more guidelines such as the ones above. --Gurubrahma 06:49, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Such a page is now up at Wikipedia:List of known defamation incidents. 3 incidents (Seigenthaler, Jens Stoltenberg, and Rashad) are listed, as are a proposed set of rules. The rules are only proposals at this point. (The interesting question--how much time will elapse before the page is slapped with an AFD?) --EngineerScotty 23:03, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The current title perhaps suggests that legal action was taken in the cases listed, i.e. somebody sued for defamation. Is this at all true? Dmharvey 00:27, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
AFAIK, no. In some cases, the issues were discovered and reverted by Wikipedia editors; only two of the listed cases (the Norwegian PM and Seigenthaler) attracted any press attention. Seigenthaler would probably have a difficult time suing WP under US law (IANAL) due to the provisions of the CDA; don't know about the other case (where Norwegian law may come into play). One other interesting question (and maybe this page leads here): In the US at least, a common defense against libelous information which is published in error, rather than maliciously, is the publication of a retraction--for example, if the local newspaper mistakenly puts your photo next to a caption indicating "wanted for bank robbery"; and it was done in error, they can avoid liability by retracting the information upon notification of the error. --EngineerScotty 01:00, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
EngineerScotty, a retraction is not always enough to protect a defamer from successfully pressing legal action. If it were, then defamers could just keep defaming and retracting with impunity. This is especially so if a plaintif can prove the defendent acted with reckless disregard for the truth. An example of this, I believe, involves the current dispute I am having with Wiki administrators over the repeated publication of libelous statements by Wiki user Julio Siqueria. I have repeatedly complained, cited examples of his defamation, and asked that he be stopped from publishing any more libelous material on Wiki. Yet, just this morning, Siqueria published more defamation on Wikipedia. He falsely stated that I am under psychiatric care. (For those not familiar with libel law, falsely saying someone is mentally ill is considered defamation per se. No evidence of damage is necessary for defamation to be proven. Being under psychiatric care in some cases may disqualify people for certain jobs, for purchasing a gun, etc. As the Carter Center for Mental Health keeps pointing out, there is widespread discrimination against people with mental illness. Siqueira clearly sought to exploit this discrimination with his false and libelous accusation.) Although Wiki administrators were repeatedly warned, they have done nothing to stop Siqueira from using Wikipedia to defame others. In my opinion, this failure to act responsibly constitutes evidence of a reckless disregard for the truth. Askolnick 21:26, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
What some call "defamation" others call "information". Consider renaming. (SEWilco 00:29, 8 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]
Now that is a weasel statement: Defamation is of course information. But it's false information that causes injury to a person's (or corporation's) reputation. It is a tort under civil law. By the same argument, one could defend sexual offenders by saying, "what some call "rape," others call "having sex."Askolnick 21:26, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I question whether this is a good idea. It seems to encourage a certain type of vandal to make trouble, hoping to score an entry. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:47, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia edit form notice (re GFDL) considered harmful

This text was added recently to the edit form: By editing here, you agree to licence your contributions under the GFDL.

Until now the GFDL was applied to Wikipedia as a whole, and would be based on its compilation copyright. The only copyright requirement on individual contributions that I know of was the rule (once implicit, lately explicit) that they must not violate a copyright.

This new rule is much stronger. In order to place something under the GFDL, you must first own the copyright yourself. Which means that this change has taken away the right to contribute any material written by someone else, even if

  • it is in the public domain,
  • the copyright holder already allows unlimited copying,
  • the copyright holder already allows copying for the purposes that Wikipedia requires -- such as by having already placed the material under the GFDL!

You now cannot even contribute your own material if you have placed it in the public domain.

Now, Wikipedia includes considerable amounts of material that was in the public domain when contributed. Copyright-expired encyclopedia articles, US government photos, and so on. I do not believe anyone intended to shut off these sources of content; I think the intent was that people should not be able to impose any restrictions through copyright that the GFDL does not.

For myself, I want to be able to contribute new material of my own without being required to have a copyright on it. I also want to be able to upload existing public-domain material if I happen to find some that would be useful. And I cannot imagine that anyone really wants me not to do so.

In which case, this statement in the form needs to be changed. 66.96.28.244 04:40, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

IANAL, but poster is quite mistaken. We have always, *always* required materials posted here to be licensed under GFDL. That has never been not-true in the entire time I've been here. Also, you misunderstand the public domain completely. --Brion 06:35, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
IANAL, but I don't see how GFDL would prevent use of public domain material. It says that you cannot restrict the use of any material you copy from Wikipedia. Since you cannot restrict the use of material that is in the public domain anyway, I don't see what the problem is supposed to be. The only change I'm aware of since the first time I became involved in Wikipedia (2003) it that at the notice didn't use the phrase GFDL; it said you were agreeing to license your contributions under "the terms of the Wikipedia license" (which was, in fact, the GFDL.) The notice used to use stronger or plainer language than it does now, urging you not to contribute if you did not want your material to be widely and freely copied, or words to that effect. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It still says all that. There's an additional one-line message higher up as well, now. --Brion 02:22, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is the original poster. I decided to wait a couple of days before coming back to this, to allow time for considered responses.

First, IANAL either, but I certainly understand that public domain material is that with no copyright restrictions on it of any kind. GFDL, on the other hand, allows unlimited copying or modication provided that certain rules are followed. Clause 2 requires that all copies include a notice of the license; this is sometimes called a "viral condition" because of its "infectious" nature. Similarly, Clause 4 requires modified versions to be identified by a change of title, among other things.

Dpbsmith says that "Since you cannot restrict the use of material that is in the public domain anyway, I don't see what the problem is supposed to be." The problem is precisely that the GFDL does restrict its use, even though only in the small and well-intended ways that I've just mentioned. Therefore it requires the work to be under copyright, and a contributor cannot "agree" to place it under GFDL if it is not.

If, as Brion says, it was always the intent that each individual contribution, rather than the totality of contributed material, was to be licensed under GFDL, then I say that there was always a problem, which the new wording has simply called attention to.

The issue is not whether I want to allow my contribution to be widely and freely copied, or whether I object to the GFDL's intent; it is whether I have the authority to license my contribution under a particular license (one that does impose restrictions even if they are small ones) if it is in the public domain already. Simply, I do not.

Is my objection now clear?

It is entirely reasonable for a GFDL'd work (i.e. the entire Wikipedia) to contain public-domain material; it is not reasonable to ask for a single contribution to be GFDL'd if it is already in the public domain. So the resolution I would like to see would be to substitute something like this (which I believed was always the intent): "All Wikipedia content is released under the GFDL. Your contributions must not violate any copyright."

66.96.28.244 23:57, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying, but I'm still not sure I'm getting it. IANAL cubed, but my naive understanding of "public domain" is, "material you can do anything at all with", where "anything at all" is very broadly defined. In particular, "rereleasing under GFDL" is not disallowed as an example of "anything at all".
Ah. Perhaps I'm starting to see the objection, from the perspective of the end reader of the rereleased material. "You're placing restrictions on me via the GFDL," says that reader. "But you can't do that, I recognize this material, it's a verbatim copy from the public domain, I can do anything I want to with it, including not being bound by your so-called license."
And I think the answer (or at least part of it) is that people do this sort of thing all the time, and the legal system doesn't seem to mind. Media companies are constantly republishing PD information with their own, new copyright notices on it, either wrongly, or because they believe they have some claim on the novelty of their presentation. (And readers can either ignore the wrong/meaningless notice with impunity, or ignore the rereleased-but-copyrighted copy and go to the PD copy for all their copying needs.) Another example is Project Gutenberg, whose offerings all come with a monstrous legal disclaimer prepended, and though that disclaimer may not formally be a license or a copyright notice, my memory is that it sure acts like one. (And that disclaimer annoys the heck out of me, so I think I'm seeing more and more of your objection to Wikipedia's use of the GFDL.)
At any rate, I'm rambling here, and I'll stop now, though I realize I haven't answered the question, but perhaps my ramblings have further clarified the question so that someone else can.
Steve Summit (talk) 14:44, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Anon, the thing you apparently don't appreciate is that works may be simultaneously placed under multiple different licenses even if the terms of which are explicitly incompatible. You aren't making anything more restrictive by doing so as under conflicts the least restrictive terms compatible with a given use would necessarily apply. In fact, I could publish Hamlet by Dragons flight and there would be no problem sticking a big fat copyright notice on it, but I wouldn't be able to enforce any copyright claims that conflicted with the public domain content. In essence, the copyright statement is saying that any content which is original to you must be licensed under the GFDL and the fact that other content "must not violate any copyright" implies that any content which is not original to you must have at least as much freedom as the GFDL.

Maybe it is a little unfair to users to tell them that content if GFDL when in fact it could be found in the public domain and used as such, but surely you recognize that trying to state the least restrictive terms applicable to each given paragraph or passage would be an absurdly complicated task. In essence what we do is say that all content is compatible with the GFDL, so as long as you are following that, you should be okay. The fact that some cotnent is even more free is a bonus to the reader, but not something we are required to tell them. Dragons flight 15:31, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's not that it's unfair to readers; it's that it requires submitters to make a false declaration.
Let's change the analogy a bit. Suppose you come across a 17th century copy of Hamlet and decide that if you have this same edition republished, people will buy it. The content of your edition will be absolutely identical to the old one, so there is no question of your being able to meaningfully assert a claim of copyright. You might think of adding "©2005 Dragons flight" somewhere, just in case it would benefit you somehow, but you're sure it won't mean anything if you do, so you just photocopy the old pages and take them to the printer.
But to your surprise, he says, "I am a devout member of the Connochaetean Church, and my religion forbids me from publishing public-domain material. You can place it under an open license allowing unlimited copying if you want, but public domain is right out. You have to own the copyright on the manuscript yourself. If you don't, then take it to another printer. If you do, then you must sign here to promise me that you own it."
It would be unethical to sign that agreement.
It is similarly unethical to agree to place an individual contribution under GFDL when you know it is public domain: the GFDL belongs to the Connochaetean Church, and its functioning requires you to own the copyright.
Dragon flight wrote, "In essence, the copyright statement is saying that any content which is original to you must be licensed under the GFDL". But the actual agreement doesn't say "which is original to you"; it says "your contributions", whether they are original or not. That's what's wrong.
--66.96.28.244 08:40, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
No, you misunderstand, you do own the public domain (as does everyone else) and it would be perfectly ethical for me to sign such an agreement. I don't have the right to claim exclusive control over it be that is a seperate thing. When you provide a license with your work you are telling the world that as long as they do X they are allowed to do A, B, C with your work. I could write a license on my work that says you are allowed to copy Dragons flight's Hamlet provided you offer up your first born child to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. In so do I have made a binding obligation not to sue anyone who copies my book after engaging in human sacrifice to this chosen diety. The fact that I didn't have the right to sue anyway is irrelevant.
By agreeing to license your contributions under the GFDL you are relinquishing your rights to stop copying, etc. provided the other party follows the GFDL. You have agreed to be bound by this regardless of whether your content would otherwise have a defensible copyright.
You seem to view copyright as attaching to the work (a not unreasonable point of view given the prevalence of © on things), but it is really binding on people; it controls what actions you and others may or may not take. There is nothing deceitful or unethical about saying that you agree to license Hamlet under the GFDL than there would be in my promising not to turn into a fairy next Tuesday. In both cases the promise is moot, but Hamlet is in no way hurt or encumbered by my promise to treat it as a GFDL work. Dragons flight 09:14, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I still believe that the statement is wrongly worded and in order to reflect the intent it should be corrected as I suggested. But if everyone else still thinks it already does reflect the intent (and we all agree on what that is), then I have no further arguments to bring forward. So I'll just shut up about this now, consider myself governed by the intended meaning henceforth, and offer my thanks to those who took the time to answer. --66.96.28.244 04:28, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Did the Anon's suggested wording ever really get considered? For reference, it was "All Wikipedia content is released under the GFDL. Your contributions must not violate any copyright." Did anyone have specific objections? It's certainly a significantly different statement from the one that's there now -- which of them better suggests the real intent? Steve Summit (talk) 14:19, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of discussion about possible policy proposals at RfC

There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Roylee in which at some users expressed that existing policies/structures have proven insufficient for countering the systematic introduction of believable nonsense, as illustrated by one user. Things are currently in the discussion stage and any formed policy proposals that emerge would obviously come here, but I figured that a courtesy notice would be in order at this point. Further comments are of course welcome. - BanyanTree 17:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be a related proposal at WP:FN (redirects to Wikipedia:Footnotes), which is marked as a guideline but there hasn't been any consensus formed to adopt it that I can see (or perhaps guidelines are a bit like that). IMO some wider discussion of the implications of this would be a good thing. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check for some background to these proposals. Andrewa 19:22, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

WP:WSS/P

I don't understand the need to propose stubs when they could just be made, particularly when it's unclear who they're being proposed to. Do we have to propose articles before they're made? No, of course not. Until I get enough people to delete it, I'm going to WP:IAR in regards to WSS/P unless i'm unsure about a stub, and even then, I still might make it and if users don't like it, it'll be on WP:SFD soon enough. karmafist 23:34, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Did you actually read what was at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals? I don't follow it very closely, but it is not about proposing individual stub articles -- but rather about proposing stub types, stub categories, and stub templates. older≠wiser 23:45, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, Bkonrad, you misunderstood me. I'm talking about things that look like this {{Whatever-stub}}, not actual articles. karmafist 01:17, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Like I said, I don't follow it very closely--I suppose the idea is to encourage some sort of order to how stub templates are used. I don't think anyone can really prevent you from creating stub templates--like you say, templates that aren't liked will end up "on WP:SFD soon enough". older≠wiser 03:10, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah, I agree with you on that, I always more or less figured that page was something of a joke. Generally uncontroversial, easily revertible actions like making a template are exactly where WP:BOLD applies. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:15, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • No it isn't a joke. Many people will more or less automatically propose for deletion any stub type not created throught proper procedures. There are good reasons why stub types should go through this process. 1) It allows the central list of stub types to be kept properly up to date. 2) it helps make sure that stub types are properly created and formatted, since a stub type properly consists of a linked template and a category, and should have proper links to at least one article (defining or explaining the subject of the stub type) and a parent category. 3) It helps keep stub type naming consistant, and the ways in in which stub types are grouped consistant 4) it helps ensure that precendants in such matters are followed. 5) It generally asks for justification for a new stub type in the form of at least 50 exizting stubs or the likely prospect of at least that many that fit the proposed type. Please do NOT create new stub types without proposing them at WP:WSS/P first. DES (talk) 17:06, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree that making stubs is easily reversable, because sorting stubs is easy and fast, a stub category can have a few hundred articles in it in under an hour. but if that category is deleted, no one will want to go through all those articles and put them back into their proper stub category. Smmurphy(Talk) 17:26, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, if you actually look at WP:BOLD it only talks about being bold in improving articles. There is no mention of the creation or modification of templates, except in a section warning of things that need extreme caution rather than boldness. Grutness...wha? 14:16, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Seeing as how the entire purpose of stub-sorting is to make stub articles easily findable by those who wish to work in a particular subject area, and seeing as that's the only sense in which stub-sorting is even part of building and encyclopedia, and seeing as how that use of stub categories is basically undermined by inconsistency in the categorization of stubs; I can't see how it makes any sense to ignore WP:WSS/P. If you disagree with them, then you disagree with stub-sorting in the first place. Creating stub templates and categories chaotically will have no helpful effect; we'd be better off with one big {{stub}} category like before. How hard is it to find a reasonably close match on WP:WSS/ST? I sort stubs all the time, and I'm never at such a loss that I just have to create a new template and category to deal with the stubs I'm sorting. -GTBacchus(talk) 17:43, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Exactly as GTBacchus said. Expansion of stub articles is made much easier by having well thought out and sensible stub types for the templates. To Christopher Parham, how exactly is creating a misplaced stub template that could mess up a category of (for example) 200+ stub articles "uncontroversial"? There is a lot of work going on at WP:WSS to ensure stubs are sorted into relevant categories so that they can be expanded by people with the appropriate knowledge. I'd hardly call it a "joke", for the same reasons DES mentions above. It makes a lot more sense to have the proposal procedure, thus cutting out unnecessary sorting out of badly created or unneeded stub templates. Mushintalk 17:58, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As people before me have said in other words, the whole thought behind proposing a stub before creating it, is to prevent a wildgrowth of barely viable and irrelevant stub templates. In the past, we've had several users who went on template creation sprees. They created dozens of stub templates that went against every format and structure, and which had barely any articles. Some of them were edited and put to use, others were deleted via SFD. One of them even created a {{Hot Jewish Actress-stub}}, which if I recall was BJAODN'ed. That is what the proposal process is trying to prevent. It also helps us to know what other users are doing. Some are involved in sports-related articles, others in geographical or biographical articles. Knowing who is doing what helps us prevent doing things twice. It helps participants know what to focus on and what others are already focussing on. You basically say that if a stub type is reasonable, then why bother proposing it first, right? Let me answer that with a counter-question: if the stub type you want to see created is viable, serious and contributes to wikipedia, then what have you got to fear? We stub sorters are no cannibals ;) Other contributors might point to problems you may have overlooked, because four eyes see more than two, and twenty eyes see more than four. Aecis praatpaal 19:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. That's the whole reason for the proposal and debate process. You want a stub type? If you propose it, we'll happily sort out whether there are a reasonable enough number of stubs for a viable category, consider whether other names are more viable, work out whether there is any way to include related fields, check wheter it overlaps with other categories currently in use, and do the "heavy manual work" of creating the template and category (and ensuring it had a reasonable parent category) and transferring over any stubs to it from other overpopulated categories. We'll also add it to the canonical list of stub types and keep track of how full the category is so that we know if and when it needs to be split further. Compare that to the situation where a new stub type suddenly appears with no warning and no debate, potentially crosses other existing categories, is vaguely or ambiguously worded, has a redlinked category (or none at all), or has a potential population of three stub articles (which could be cleared in an hour by a conscientious editor). Consider also that that happens on average two or three times per day. Prior to putting some form of guidelines in place, it happened far more frequently, but now thankfully most editors involved in stubbing articles come to WP:WSS/P first (which is why the proposals page is now much longer than the discoveries page). The system works fine. It could be improved, sure - name one area of Wikipedia that couldn't. There's no such thing as a perfectly circular wheel, but smoothing it is a far better idea than reinventing it. And riding roughshod over the diligent work of the busiest wikiproject in the place isn't going to improve matters one iota. Grutness...wha? 14:16, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Karmafist, to me saying that stub templates should be proposed first is akin to saying that articles should be proposed first, and we simply don't have that implemented, as that's not really part of the core principles of Wikipedia. You shouldn't delete a stub template simply because it wasn't proposed following some arbitrary procedure, you should evaluate each stub that's created based on it's usefulness, and nothing else. Let's not come down on people simply because they don't follow your particular wishes, there's no guaranteeing someone will even visit that page to even notice that requirement, I first heard about it after I created a new stub and even helpfully added it in to the stub types listing. To me that just smacks of instruction creep. If you get a bad stub template that doesn't work, by all means delete it, and do what you have to do to make it work, but calling for approval for any new stub types is a bit ridiculous. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 17:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I see a difference between asking that new stub types be proposed and asking that new articles be proposed. A new article basically stands on its own; it might link to other articles and be linked from other articles, but it doesn't really affect the wiki around it. A stub type, on the other hand, comes with a category attached to it - there's a fair amount of background infrastructure that is significantly harder to undo than it is to, say, delete a nonsense article.
Another difference is this - if an article is missing, then there's a hole in the wikipedia, and it should be filled. If a stub type doesn't seem to be available - that's no big deal. Why is it ever so important to use a particular stub type that it becomes necessary to throw a wrench into a categorization system that a lot of people are working hard to keep organized? What loss if you have to use a more general stub-type than you like, pending discussion of a more specific type? Seriously, I would like to see that question answered by those who advocate ignoring WP:WSS. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Proposing and discussing stubs before creating them ensures a coordinated and structured progress of a categorization system. As I said above, a central "forum" means that we all know who is doing what, what the formatting and naming conventions are, how non-stub categories are doing things, etc. The goal of this project, like every other wikiproject, is to assist each other in improving this encyclopedia. And as I said as well: what is so bad about proposing stubs? Stub templates involve an infrastructure, so there needs to be some self-restraint on stub creations, to prevent wildgrowth and to keep the load on the servers as low as possible. We stub sorters are not evil, we are not trying to put anyone down in any meaning of the word. Our only goal is to improve Wikipedia. If contributors propose relevant and viable stubs, then they will be approved. Read the proposal archives if you don't believe me. And last but not least: out-of-process creations are never a reason to delete a stub. There are many stubs created out of process out there that are being used normally (you can find most of them on the discoveries page). It is a sidenote, in some cases perhaps a consideration, but it is irrelevant in the actual decision to delete. Aecis praatpaal 19:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with karmafist, it shouldn't be necessary to propose a new stub. Fromt he looks of the stub sorting project, it seems they've unilaterally decided to take control over a specific (and fundamental) part of Wikipedia. (I note that WP:SFD was created with a consensus of 12 editors (not that I think SFD is a bad idea, but it's alarming that something so fundamental seems to have been created with so few participants)). I'm curious how many people supported creating WP:WSS/P. —Locke Cole 20:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Only 12 people left comments about it, that is true. But consider this - the proposal was listed at CFD, TFD, and at all the necessary policy proposal pages for a couple of months prior to SFD going online. A large number of people would have known about it proposal, yet there were no comments against it. Surely if anyone had considered it a bad idea at the time, they would have spoken up. None did. Grutness...wha? 05:33, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"the stub people are basically trolls"

I just asked this on Karmafist's talk page, but he removed it almost immediately, without anwsering. Can anyone else here (since this is where stubs are being discussed, I guess) enlighten me, pelase? I really don't know what he was on about.

Please explain what you meant by the stub people are basically trolls.". Thank you.

Andy Mabbett 20:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

He seems to think that we are trolls because some of his redirects to stub templates have been nominated for deletion. I don't see what trolling has to do with that, because the nominations are in good faith, are not vandalistic and are completely consistent with Wikipedia's deletion policy. He also disagrees with us on the merits of the WikiProject. It may be that he sees our defending the project as "inflammatory" or "disruptive" (from internet troll). Aecis praatpaal 19:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Aecis, if you think making it more difficult to make and put stubs on stub articles is defending the project, you definately have a strange definition of defense. I've learned, particularly from others on this thread, that the best way to get what you want is to just ignore what doesn't make sense and keep on plugging along in good faith (or like some people in the thread, appearing to be in good faith) until what you're ignoring eventually becomes irrelevant. I've probably added about 70 or so of the stubs proposed for deletion by the stub cruft regulars, pretty much at random because there are alot of stub articles having to do with New Hampshire, and I put them on there in rapid succession, there's no need to refer to some arbitrary list that has random guidelines decided in some dark room somewhere.

I was wrong to bother thinking about proposing deletion of any of the stub ownership projects, it's more productive to just help build an encyclopedia instead of stooping down to that level. karmafist 00:13, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How "good faith" are those stub creations if you deliberately ignore an established, well-thought out and respected procedure (judging from the many people who do propose stubs before creating them) on an important WikiProject that was created according to Wikipedia policy? How "good faith" are those contributions if you deliberately ignore the decisions of this community (I'm talking about Wikipedia, not about the WikiProject) and act as a stray bullet on a rampage? Aecis praatpaal 09:25, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Karmafist, may I point out WP:POINT to you? It explicitly says: "If you wish to change an existing procedure or guideline... do set up a discussion page and try to establish consensus; don't push the existing rule to its limits in attempt to prove it wrong, nor nominate the existing rule for deletion." Would you please keep that in mind, the next time you decide to ignore WP:WSS/P? Aecis praatpaal 23:59, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
WP:WSS/P reeks of m:instruction creep (choice quote: The fundamental fallacy of instruction creep is thinking that people read instructions.). Better to write a short, well-structured document describing "best practices", hope people read it, and maybe make a page where people can announce stubs, after the fact, and discuss them (similar to WP:WSS/D but without the implication that anything that's "discovered" must be bad). I'll also reiterate that, in the case of WP:SFD, 12 people created that. I don't know how many supported creating WP:WSS/P, but if it's at all close to the same 12 who created SFD, I don't think it has much legitimacy. —Locke Cole 09:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The WikiProject currently has 117 participants, many of whom are active participants. I don't know the numbers for other WikiProjects, but I don't think it's a bad score. Aecis praatpaal 10:01, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Further comment: One could alternatively accuse you of instruction creepism of WP:OWN (I won't go so far though). We also don't believe that any discovered stub "created out of process" is inherently bad. Look at the discovery page. Many of them are incorporated into the list of stub types. I'll see if I can provide you with any statistics during the weekend. Aecis praatpaal 11:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

agree, but it's still a bad idea: propose first It does feel silly to verify and check with everyone to propose a new stub if it's 'obvious' it's appropriate and needed. However, the process is there because it's important to give input and make people think about things they may not have considered. Furthermore, even though you (theoretically :) may always have good ideas for stubs, we can't have a whole bunch of hosers running around creating stubs at will. The process is a bit of a pain, but necessary.

I know I have common sense. I also acknowledge I do screw up sometimes. I suspect you know you have common sense as well. But some people are... not... so... um, blessed? --Kat 09:45, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think some cogent arguments in favor of cooperating with WP:WSS/P have been made here; particularly by User:EncycloPetey. Just thought I'd drop a link off here. -GTBacchus(talk) 10:15, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If a non-registered user attempts to create a new page, they now see a notice that begins as follows:

Page creation limited
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Wikipedia has restricted the ability for unregistered users to create new pages...

The problem here is that the user may not have been attempting to create a new page. They may just have tried to follow a link from an ordinary article -- either they didn't know what a red link means, or they were using a browser that didn't render it specially at all. (I often access wikipedia in monochrome through lynx, for example.) And it looks awfully unfriendly if someone is just trying to find out more about, oh, say, the Gas Belt (from the Indiana article), and here they get this page that's shouting about restrictions.

I think the notice should look something like this:

Article not found
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
We don't have an article called Gas Belt
But you can write it. As an unregistered user, you have two choices... (and then continue with something like the present notice).

See what I mean? Says the same thing, but much more friendly. 66.96.28.244 00:20, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good to me. Deco 00:28, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. -- Kjkolb 02:52, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Done. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:55, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! -- 66.96.28.244 07:15, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

And I see that someone has now further improved it. Better yet! -- 66.96.28.244 05:30, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

So Wikipedia's now going to start outing anonymous users?

"Jimmy Wales, who founded Wikipedia, said that the site would make more information about users available to make it easier to lodge complaints." User:Zoe|(talk) 00:21, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Or–possibly–Jimbo was referring to the recently-expanded pool of admins with CheckUser privileges. Perhaps the best place to ask Jimbo what he means might be at User talk:Jimbo Wales; it seems a tad reckless to jump from a one-line quote at the bottom of a news.com article to the headline on this page section.
Though Jimbo bears part of the blame for not always explaining new policies with the utmost clarity, do the rest of us always have to go off half-cocked every time he says something ambiguous to the media? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:57, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Or even when he's reported as saying something ambiguous?
The article doesn't say who this information will be provided to, and under what circumstances. It does, however, speak of Wikipedia suffering a blow to its credibility. However, the article later says the incident touched off a debate about the reliability of information on Wikipedia - and by extension the entire Internet (my emphasis).
This debate is a very good thing. Perhaps it will encourage people to actually learn about Wikipedia and other Internet sources before using them, so they won't be quite as naive as whoever wrote the lead paragraph of this story (probably not the same person who wrote the rest of the article, of course). If anyone's credibility is jeopardised by this article, it's the New York Times. Andrewa 10:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It would certainly help if Jimbo would start letting us know ahead of time what his new "experiments" are going to be before reporting them to the press. Zoe (216.234.130.130 16:25, 12 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]
Especially when they violate the spirit of wikicracy. I continue to be outraged that the community was left out of the decision, even if the decision was technically a good one. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 23:18, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Class Action

What's the best way to make the community aware of and prepare to defend against http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/ ?

Class actions are run by law firms who expect to collect a large sum of money, both for members of the class and for themselves. So they sue auto makers, drug companies, and airlines. You have to expect to recover millions of dollars for the whole business to be worthwhile.
The Wikimedia Foundation, by contrast, is essentially litigation-proof. It's got virtually no cash, no real assets, no income, no customers, no contracts, and no worthwhile intellectual property (individual contributors own the encyclopedia, collectively; the foundation owns none of it). Other than goodwill, its major assets are a farm of computers (for which, after expenses, you'd get very little money for) and the Wikipedia trademark and domain name.
Anyone suing Wikipedia will lose money doing so. For folks like Seigenthaler whose primary concern is getting libelous information removed, this might be worth it. But no lawyer is going to take this on contingency.
Note that the page has google ads. He just wants to surf the Siegenhaler wave, get on CNN, and rake in some nice adsense revenue. Ignore him. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:50, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If a spiteful person was willing to pay for the lawsuit, taking the domain name would be a huge lose to this effort, don't you think? Tedernst | talk 18:12, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Is the use of the Wikipedia logo a violation of copyright, or is it fair use? Guettarda 17:53, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to agree with Finlay McWalter here - I think this is just a joke or some way for someone to get some attention/money. I can't find a single legal argument that really holds water. They claim to represent epople who have lots money due to Wikipedia, and frankly, I don't see how the wikipedia foundationc an be sued for the claims of it's users. (This has been repeatedly decided by the courts - ISPs and BBS systems cannot be held accountable for user's comments). Also they want to change WP so that there is someone (or some entity) in charge that can take responsibility for WP content, and then hold that entity liable. They could conceivably do the first one, but the second goal is contingent on the first and therefore not really relevant till the first happens. --Bachrach44 18:16, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think its just a variation on the legal threat strategy. Like big business organisations they hope to get the change of behaviour they want by scaring the opposition. Normally this is done with a high powered lawyer, but since they don't have one they are trying to get public opinion to do the same. HOWEVER we should really be taking account the recently publicity that caused this. We should really be making sure that we are not publishing libel; not because we could be sued, but because libel is (be definition) inaccurate information, and we should be being careful to avoid it.
Thinking about it, this publicity could probably all have been avoided if there was a Wikipedia complaints procedure. Subjects of an article (or anyone else affected) could complain, and the offending information be temporarily removed pending verification. DJ Clayworth 18:47, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikipedia complaints procedure idea sounds very interesting. The real problem is, as you stated, inaccurate information getting on Wikipedia. However, if we can stop disputes from escalating, we should do it. -- Kjkolb 00:01, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like the the site is set up by QuakeAID (WHOIS tie-ins here), because they have long-standing complaints about Wikipedia's coverage of them [4]. --Interiot 19:41, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
OfficialWire published an article about untrue postings on Wikipedia, by Christian Wirth also known as RaDMan. Shortly after the devastating earthquake and tsunamis on December 26, 2004 in the Indian Ocean, Wirth took upon himself to wage a war against QuakeAID Foundation, Inc. Wirth's arsenal consisted of untrue, libelous writings that he and Wikipedia published as fact. All attempts, by QuakeAID's founder, to correct the untrue comments were re-edited, blocked or labelled as 'untrue' by a group of volunteers, who hold themselves untouchable and above the law.
QuakeAID has written once again to Jimbo Wales, demanding the untrue and libelous information be removed from Wikipedia, while a group of interested parties have joined together and plan to initiate legal proceedings against Wales and Wikipedia Foundation, Inc., and numerous others—the so-called anonymous 'volunteers'—who they believe should be held responsible for the content they publish. For more information, visit www.WikipediaClassAction.org.
Please sign your posts a little more clearly, User:Interiot. Andrewa 00:02, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps this observation may help your efforts: The site may possibly be making illegal use of the Wikipedia logo. --Nerd42 23:10, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Can we change our slogan from "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" to "Wikipedia: We are above the law"? The OfficialWire articles were written by the person who was trying to add the content to the article. So it's a normal edit war, but one has access to a shabby online newspaper. Also, the author of the Register articles seems to find the idea of Wikipedia offensive somehow. The New York Times had Jayson Blair, but no one called for the Times to be shut down. -- Kjkolb 00:01, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

<voice accent="really awful" mood="somewhat non-serious">Ha! Unitet states of Amerika. Te only pleis in the voold vheer people don't haf enouf knou-how tu klik the "Edit this page", but know the intrikate prosyedur of hau to start a laww-syut. Wye, te vide varied peepuls of Euroup, velkum Vikimedyia Faundesun, oupn aams, to aur soill, wye velkum yuu to vhat seems tu bi the last bastyn ov saniti in tis vorld.</voice> =) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 01:47, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This reinforces the need to emphasise that Wikipedia should not be taken as gospel, and while wiser minds have no doubt already considered this, it seems to me that a short statement under the globe logo could help, along these lines:
Anyone can edit Wikipedia and many have contributed to making it an extensive introduction to a huge range of topics. By its nature it is not definitive: always double check information.
Just my suggestion to reduce misunderstanding, misuse and misrepresentation of Wikipedia content. ...dave souza 09:37, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Have a look at the Disclaimer I wrote for my church's public wiki website. Much of the wording is directly applicable IMO; Wikipedia shouldn't take itself too seriously. On the other hand, I think the time for a refereed derivative either as part of English Wikipedia or as a separate WikiMedia project is at least approaching, and perhaps already overdue. See Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Notice of discussion about possible policy proposals at RfC for some current discussion along these lines. Andrewa 12:24, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the recommendation: I've gone to the Notice of discussion and added my tuppenceworth with some revisions to suit. ...dave souza 14:20, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Take a look at Wikipedia:General disclaimer. There is a link to this at the bottom of every page of Wikipedia (including editing pages), and has "Wikipedia makes no claim of validity" in gigantic small caps font. I don't think you can get any more obvious than that. --Deathphoenix 14:30, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, , but the intention is to draw this to the attention of people who aren't looking for the small print...dave souza 16:08, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever you do, don't ignore this. There have been over a dozen prominent personalities who have in the past 2 weeks threatened to sue Wikipedia over the content of their biographies. Whether this site is a hoax or not, it is being picked up by the media, and is emminently possible to really happen. I think that "hoax" is a bad way to describe it. Perhaps more like "pre-empting an obvious disaster" is a more accurate way to describe it. Wikipedia better hire a few lawyers over this one or else they'll be in deep doggy doo. Brandt's a good lawyer. Why not hire him? He beat google after all. Don't want him against you, that's for sure. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 13:50, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I know this may seem extreme, but I think it's a valid way to handle it:

  • Wikipedia itself, is an encyclopedia. It depends upon users to add valid information.
  • Users have a completely free hand to add such information as they see fit, and the quid pro quo is that they are expected and looked to be doing do in good faith, to build an encyclopedia.
  • Users who add information knowingly and maliciously (as opposed to mistakenly or because they thought it was appropriate) have added information not to help and build wikipedia, but to abuse the above privilege. They should not necessarily be immune for their action any more than a person who posts a libel on a forum. The forum might be -- but users themselves are responsible for their actions.
  • In the event that someone uses Wikipedia, to post material, which they knew was untrue or knew or should have known was not factual, then I really don't see why that user is not liable for it, same as any other user who uses the net to post malice or libel. Wiki policies (WP:NPOV) most clearly state thast only verifiable factual information is relevant anyhow.

I can see problems and concerns, but i think legally and morally, someone who uses Wikipedia not to build an encyclopedia, but visibly to libel someone (a very VERY small class of edits), shouldn't be able to hide behind "Oh I'm just contributing to an encyclopedia that says users can add anything, so I can write any lie I want here", and use that as a shield. If that was the way we handled libellous matters then I think we'd see the problem reduced. I'm not sure how one addresses it in a practical or policy manner, but I think the principle, that a user who posts libel shouldn't use WP as a shield and it's not really WP's issue to defend it, is sound. FT2 14:21, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wankers, fiddlers, fools and trolls

Even as the Seigenthaler scandal was breaking in hundreds of news reports across the world, arbcomm member and suspended (in effect, apparently disbarred) lawyer Fred Bauder voted to endorse the statement that my sourcing standards were "unrealistic," as in, "Why bother for accuracy? Any tabloid crud will do!" Here at the village pump, Zoe accused me of "whining."

Here's what the Register has to say today about Wikipedia's sourcing standards and credibility:

Calls for responsibility, we learn, in that unique strangulated prose style that is truly Wikipedia's legacy to the world -
"... often form a pejorative means of attacking political opponents. This habit of demanding behaviour aligned to one's own desires also occurs in other arenas: one expects "responsibility" from children, parents, spouses, colleagues and employees, meaning they should change their attitudes to suit the speaker."
From which the only thing missing is:
".... booooo big bad teecher - I'm not going to skool today. fuck you!!"
Which is terrific stuff.
Now a picture of the body behind the "Hive Mind" of "collective intelligence" begins to take shape.
He's 14, he's got acne, he's got a lot of problems with authority ... and he's got an encyclopedia on dar interweb.

Yep. Wikipedias vaunted Hive mind happens to behave like a clueless, irresponsible 14 year old boy. Wankers, fiddlers, fools and trolls. Also from that article:

Involvement in Wikipedia has taken its toll on a significant number of decent, fair minded people who with the most honorable intentions, have tried to alert the project to its social responsibilities and failed. Such voices could be heard on the Wikipedia mailing list, speaking up for quality. Wikipedia is losing good editors at an alarming rate, but who can blame them for leaving?

Hint: It's not all the bad publicity. Wyss 20:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


hmm...I see your point --Link 21:00, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please clarify and cite your assertion that The Register "has an editorial policy of bashing whenever they possibly can." Did you mean they only bash WP whenever they can or, like, everything in the world? Wyss 03:12, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The reg does have it out for WP: [5]. Jacoplane 03:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Anyway yeah, I know I'm whining like Zoe said and missing the whole pith of Wikipedia which isn't so much about writing an encyclopedia as it is a big Bomis traffic machine. Porn "Adult" content didn't work, a scholarly encyclopedia (Nupedia) didn't either but a global culture blog marketed as an encyclopedia and run like an online community has brought numbers and fame. Hmmm... what to do with it now...? Wyss 04:14, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is the 7th anti-Wikipedia screed from the Register essayist with a nagging hatred. We've stopped listening since the Pol Pot comparison. Lotsofissues 05:43, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you should start listening again. The writer may use over-the-top, unhelpful analogies but otherwise seems rather spot-on to me. WP has serious, systemic sourcing problems which (both in appearance and in fact) undermine credibility and reliability across its content. Wyss 13:24, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
We should ignore him. The writer is "over-the-top, unhelpful" because he wants to stir drama rather than encourage reform. He has found a shctick--bashing Wikipedia--that gets him slashdotted. I wouldn't bother furthering his career. Lotsofissues 18:28, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, anything to avoid addressing the issues raised in the article... anything to avoid editing an encyclopedia to academic standards... anything to justify coddling the trolls and fools... :) Wyss 03:53, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm having trouble with Wikipedia standards too. An admin blocked me recently for adding citation details, and I think that is also part of my ArbComm case (I think I won't find out until the Grand Inquisitor emits a pronouncement from the pulpit). (SEWilco 09:46, 13 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]

Wyss - pardon me if you've answered this (multiple times) before, but - Why don't you go and work on "editing an encyclopedia[based on Wikipedia] to academic standards"? Forks are good things - and if your's is better, I, for one, will be happy to say - Great! You were right! Now we have an even better free encylopedia! Otherwise, while you are free to rail and go on as much as you like, I'm somewhat at a loss as to what response you are hoping to get... JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:06, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

What the heck... After wading through the Register article linked above, here's the "the issues raised in the article" as best as I can identify them. Let the "avoiding" begin.... :-) JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:20, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

  1. "Wikipedia has made it more difficult for such detective work to be performed in the future, as the site now requires a 30 second log-in procedure to create an unvalidated user id, behind which libellers can shield their identity."
  2. "Wikipedia is indeed, as its supporters claim, a phenomenal source of pop culture trivia."
  3. "The public has a firm idea of what an "encyclopedia" is, and it's a place where information can generally be trusted,"
  4. "Wikipedia has sprung up to fill a temporary void. Copyright law exists in a permanent state of tension, and there's a latency between a new technology being invented and compensation mechanisms being agreed upon that spread that valuable, copyrighted material far and wide. / So I'm very privileged right now, as a member of the San Francisco public library, to be able to tap into expensive databases I couldn't otherwise afford. In ten years time, these "member's societies" will be the norm, and most of us won't even realize we're members. The good stuff will just come out of a computer network."
  5. "since nothing at all can be trusted, er, "definitively", then Wikipedia can't be trusted either. ... Everything you read is suspect! ... Only a paranoiac, or a mad person, can sustain this level of defensiveness for any length of time however, and to hear a putative "encyclopedia" making such a statement is odd, to say the least."
  6. "the word "publication" has become rather blurry. ... as soon as it hits print, the blurriness behind publication disappears, and Wikipedia The Book is seen for what it is, an evasiveness based on accident. And the lawsuits will begin in earnest."
  7. "If "publication" by an "encyclopedia" means anything, it means that you have to get those facts right. / More or less. Kinda."
  8. "Involvement in Wikipedia has taken its toll on a significant number of decent, fair minded people who with the most honorable intentions, have tried to alert the project to its social responsibilities and failed."


Ok, responding in order...

  1. True, if somewhat misstated. Only page creation has been limited to logged in users, not all editing. But every edit not made by a "anon" is one more edit that (unless the logged in user has effectively verified their identity (as many Wikipedians have, examples provided on request)) cannot be traced by IP without permission of a user with CheckUser access. This doesn't seem like an earth-shattering issue.
  2. This is a compliment. The only proper response is, "Why, thank you."
  3. Ok. Something like a real issue. Does Wikipedia make it's status as not-the-same-sort-of-thing-as-a-normal-encyclopedia sufficiently clear? Maybe, maybe not. The Reg article gives no specifics, or details. If someone wants to discuss this (or find the many past discussions on this), please do.
  4. Ah, wild speculation #1; The author of the Reg piece seems to believe that, in some vague way, "member's societies" will save us from the evils of relying of information sources put together by people helping other people. Ok. Details, please? And what does any of this have to do with Wikipedia? Even if one accepts his claim that "Wikipedia has sprung up to fill a temporary void", isn't it better that something exist to fill a void? I don't see how this is a criticism, exactly.
  5. The fun of over-generalization, wheee! "Don't trust anything absolutely" somehow got translated, in the author's head, into "Distrust everything completely". I hope most readers of this can see the error here. Straw-man, anyone?
  6. Ah, another interesting (if already often discussed) issue! Again, the author makes unjustified jumps, seeming to believe that only the entire current version of en.wikipedia could be published, rather than (as has already happened with the German Wikipedia) carefully selected, and very carefully checked, selections from the corpus are published. If someone would like to link to the many existing discussions of this, please do so.
  7. Repeat of #3. Same answer applies.
  8. Part of this is a true, and sad thing. Many excellent Wikipedians do burn out, and leave in anger or despair over the fate of the project. While this still is a pretty civil place, further methods for dealing with editor burnout would be great. As for the "social responsibilities", details (other than what's mentioned above), please? And, has the author met our regular trolls and nutcases? They have plenty of "social responsibilities" they think we need to address, mainly involving doing whatever they say...

And how were we "avoiding" the "issues" raised in the Register article, again? JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:43, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Wyss, the problems of Wikipedia are well known to every serious editor here. And yes, we need to do some things about them. People are trying, maybe you haven't noted. But you are telling us nothing new, you are just telling it many times (I've seen your "on what was to be my last day of checking my talkpage" piece in about five different places). Maybe you are not "whining", because your concerns are legitimate, but you sound bitter. Either you accept Wikipedia for the sad monster it is, and put your shoulder to the wheel to make it a little better, or you write it off, and do an academic fork. This is a serious alternative, and I've had serious discussions about such projects in the past. If the academic fork is GFDL, Wikipedia editors can import its work back into Wikipedia, and there could be a beneficient synergy between the two projects. But your academic fork will have to start small, because you'd need funding. Plus, you'd need to convince academic editors to use it. The joy of Wikipedia is that you can type 1473 or Bessarion or spinor and know the links will come up blue. Wikipedia 1.0 could be such a fork, there could be a select team of academics working on it, but the question will invariably arise, who will select such an "elite"? If you want full control of who's in and who's out, you'd need to do your own private fork, where you'll be a little Jimbo of your own, and just hope that the right people will accept your benevolent rule. dab (ᛏ) 10:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Qualifying articles with "(term)"

There are at least two articles that use "(term)" as a qualifier, not because of any need to disambiguate, but to emphasise that the article does not document the referent of the word or phrase, but the term itself:

  • Islamofascism (term) - Currently the subject of a WP:RM vote on whether to drop this qualifier. The argument against is that in its previous unqualified life no consensus on the articles content could be found, only by moving in this manner and insisting that only the usage of the term was to be covered was relative calm recovered;
  • American terrorism (term) - A consensus was found on the talk page for moving American Terror to this page, for similar reasons.

Potentially this device has the ability to defuse editor conflicts over what articles are about when articles are saddled with potentially inflammatory names. Equally, though, many editors find the qualifier redundant. I'd value feedback on the appropriatness of this name.

As a deliberately provocative suggestion, let me advance a possible rule: Articles that go by titles that cannot be neutrally applied to what that title referes to, should have the (term) qualifier". --- Charles Stewart 00:38, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Two things: first, from my reading of the associated talk page, it appears that at least some people involved in the move of American terrorism to American terrorism (term) regarded it as a disambiguation move, rather than an NPOV "disclaimer" move. There are two other articles with very similar titles to "American terrorism". So that leaves Islamofascism (term) as rather sui generis. But regardless, Charles's question is legit: should we use qualifiers such as "(term)" in the title of articles to serve as a disclaimer, even when no dismabiguation purpose is served by the qualifier? I think we would be opening up a serious can of worms. People would demanding "(term)" be appended to every disputed country name, every poli sci concept with which they disagreed, "term" article-move wars might spread like a wikicancer. But we seem to be setting this precedent on Islamofascism (term), because the article really has been much more stable with "(term)" in the title. Babajobu 00:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
There are a few pages that use the word slogan in a similar manner, such as Slogan: You're either with us, or against us and Slogan 'Jesus is Lord'. - SimonP 15:03, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that such a rule, or indeed this precedent, may be opening a can of worms. I'm not bothered by either of the examples Babajobu raises though: for country names we have the UN and ISO standards as credible authorities to prefer a given name, and with political science topics, if the dispute is with the concept itself, and not the name applied to the concept, the dispute will go to WP:AfD and not WP:RM, which is what happens now. I think this can of worms is much smaller than Babajobu fears. --- Charles Stewart 15:31, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I hope you're right. We can always point to certain arbiters of "official terms", the U.N., ISO, et cetera, but people could just as easily argue that these are simply top-down enforcers of arbitrary folk taxonomies. But anyway, maybe I'm overblowing the dangers, here. Babajobu 21:13, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


WRT SimonP's examples, I would want both to be qualified with "(slogan)" in preference to the formulation with "Slogan:" at the beginning, which suggests that there is a Slogan namespace spearate from the article namespace. I'll put these up for WP:RM. --- Charles Stewart 20:42, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Do not use a prefix with a colon. Do not use a parenthesized topic area unless it is to distinguish it from other existing articles describing the same term in different topic areas; IIRC, this is policy (see Wikipedia: Disambiguation). There's plenty of room in the article to explain if you're covering only a narrow meaning of the term, and it can be moved if necessary when a need for disambiguation later arises. Deco 01:18, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • While Wikipedia: Disambiguation explains how to use a disambiguating term in parens to avoid name conflict, nowhere does it say that such terms must never be used if no name conflict exists. I agree that this is usually a bad idea, but someimes it makes things much clearer. For example I often see articels titles soemthing like "Phrase (band)" even if there is no actual article about "Phrase" because the simple title "Phrase" whould mislead users who would not expect this to be an article about a band. A similar rationale could IMO apply here. DES (talk) 01:28, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

From academic assignments to Wikipedia articles

Often in my university classes, I've had to do quite a bit of background research on an academic topic, generally compiling information that is (gasp) not available on Wikipedia. This background research becomes part of an assignment, but I am left with the nagging feeling that all this work should benefit Wikipedia somehow as well.

I am quite aware that essays written for a class, on the whole, are not encyclopedia articles, particularly because they are expected to contain original research. But the parts that explain the background of the topic tend to be in a format that is completely suitable for Wikipedia. Those parts aren't original research, because they only involve compiling facts from existing sources, just like Wikipedia articles.

If I wanted to make a part of an essay that I submitted for credit into a Wikipedia article, how should I go about doing it? My greatest worry is that, sometime down the line, someone would observe that the content of my essay and the Wikipedia article were pretty much the same, they'd get the causality the wrong way, and I'd get accused of a serious case of plagiarism. It doesn't matter that if it came to an academic hearing, it would be comically short ("We have found that your essay duplicates content from an encyclopedia article." "Sir, I wrote that encyclopedia article.") -- even the slightest possibility of being accused of plagiarism is a risk that I won't touch with an eleven-foot pole.

So does anyone have any ideas? Do I put a note in the paper that I'm releasing it under the GFDL and plan to use its content in Wikipedia (risking funny looks from the professor)? Do I cite myself in the Wikipedia article (which seems too self-promotional)? Any other ideas for how this could work? rspeer 04:15, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As a college professor, I have a quick answer for you. Ask your professor first before doing this. If you do, then no one will accuse you of anything. If it were me, I wouldn't mind at all if I knew beforehand but I would be annoyed if I didn't. I hope that's helpful. Chick Bowen 05:05, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

One thing that might help would be to add a references section to any article you take from materials you write, and give yourself credit as the reference for the material from your paper. That way if your teachers or academic review board see it they will also see your name as the author. Kit 09:03, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You should definitely cite yourself, particularly if the paper is published online — otherwise not only might your school accuse you of plagiarism, but a vigilant Wikipedian may accuse you of copyright violation. If anyone accuses you of self-promotion or removes the citation you can just explain the situation, although I admit this is a difficult situation. As for suitability of format, don't worry too much about Original Research or NPOV — if you want to give us reams of raw material to play with, we'd be happy to fix it up. That's what Wikipedia is all about. Deco 09:30, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Often, though, your paper won't be something that can be cited in the article. In those instances, you could begin the article's talk page with a comment like, "My first draft of this article is taken from a class assignment I wrote... [give details]." Along with protecting you from an academic charge of plagiarism, this might help with plagiarism problems the other way, i.e., if a later editor happens upon a copy of your class paper somewhere and lists the Wikipedia article as a copyright violation, thinking it was plagiarized from the paper. JamesMLane 16:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Survey articles are both good topics for assignments, and a good content for WP. You are not obliged to tell your professor that you plan on putting content up here (you hold the copyright on your assignments), but it is probably wise to tell him/her. --- Charles Stewart 17:02, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've reused some short summary sections from my MSc dissertation in Freedom of information legislation. I made sure, though, not to put them up until after it was marked... Shimgray | talk | 17:05, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

At the end of my "ɹop"

In my mind, the second-biggest problem of Wikipedia (behind potential inaccuracy) is a failure to make articles accessible to a general audience. There is perhaps no worse example of this than the policy at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation) that only the International Phonetic Alphabet should be used to explain pronunciation, and that all other methods, such as spelling out "pro-nun-see-AE-shun", should be discouraged.

The IPA is undoubtedly the most-accurate form of representing pronunciation, especially when dealing with multiple languages. Its defenders point out that alternatives might not be understood by non-native speakers.

However, I would assume that very few people are used to using IPA. In the U.S., all dictionaries aimed at the general public use a system based on the "phonics" symbols taught to most children at age 6 or so. (For copyright reasons, no two dictionaries use exactly the same set of such symbols.) Only linguists and some language teachers in the U.S. use the IPA. I know IPA use is more widespread in other countries, but I doubt most people on the street in any country could tell you what all the symbols mean.

As a result, trying to understand how something should be pronounced can be quite frustrating. For example, the given pronunciation for Enver Hoxha is ɛnvɛɾ hɔʤa. Now, I have no idea how "ɛ" is supposed to be pronounced. I have to click on IPA and find the little symbol in a chart way down the page. I get to the page on the open-mid front unrounded vowel. The page explains that "ɛ" is pronounced like the "e" in "bed" as pronounced in "GA," that is, "General American." One down. Then I have to find "ɾ" on the IPA page. That links to alveolar tap. The description of the "alveolar tap" in English is not comprehensible to a non-expert, but I read that it's like the "r" in Spanish, which I understand. If I've downloaded the .ogg codec, I hear a guy saying "rah-ah-rah." I've now spent 5 minutes and can still only pronounce the first name. That's hardly how a reference site is supposed to work.

It would be helpful for quick-reference purposes to repeat the pronunciation in a way easier for the common reader to understand. For example, we could use both IPA and phonetic spelling: "IPA: ɛnvɛɾ hɔʤa. Approximate pronunciation: /en-ver haw-jah/, with rolled 'r.'" (The pronunciation given in the article doesn't say which syllable is stressed. If I've botched the pronunciation, that's a case in point as to the weakness of our current system.) This is what's done in the Illinois article, which says, "pronounced /ˌɪ.lɨˈnɔɪ̯/ or 'ill-i-NOY.'" Another option would be to use both IPA and a common American system, as in "en-ver haw-jä." But the official Wikipedia policy calls for the exclusive use of IPA.

I know I am not the only person who has a problem with this. Other people have complained on Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet. Matthew White's WikiWatch blog makes the same point. But unfortunately, the only people who appear to read Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation) are, for want of a better term, pronunciation geeks who seem to be too wedded to their craft to countenance any concession to ease of use. My concerns fell on deaf ears in that forum.

I suppose it is bad form to try to round up opponents of IPA exclusivity to take on its backers on the style guide talk page. So what can I do to have the concern addressed?

Mwalcoff 05:07, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree with your conclusions, and would also point out the limited browser support for the IPA, it is in bad taste to post a detailed argument about a very specific policy to a general forum. I suggest moving most of this back to the talk page and directing interested parties there. Deco 09:19, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies; I did not mean to break protocol. I was looking for advice on how I should deal with the situation on the page in question. I did not mean to take the argument here, although it looks like that cat is already out of the bag, unfortunately. Would it be appropriate to put out an RFC directing people to the appropriate talk page? -- Mwalcoff 23:32, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is this is an international project this like "pro-nun-see-AE-shun" have the problem that I may pronounce the internal bits differently to you. It would certainly appear that I pronunce pronunciation differently to you.Geni 13:42, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
America is not the only country in the world, and there is not a common American format if we wanted one. We would end up with ridiculously long coverage of all possible non-IPA forms if we included them all, and thus it's been decided to go IPA only. I think IPA-only is the right choice. --Improv 13:48, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with approximate pronunciations is that they are often open to multiple interpretations. For example, "ill-i-NOY" suggests to me that the second syllable is pronounced like "eye". Better pronunciations would perhaps be "illy-NOY" or "il-ih-NOI" or "il-in-NOY" or "ill-er-NOY"... Eugene van der Pijll 14:05, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I am at present too lazy to write this up at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals), but a perennial proposal it is. See Wikipedia:Simple pronunciation markup guide, the pages it links to, and especially the extensive arguments the talk pages contain. Executive summary: IPA may have problems, but the other proposals have even more problems, and only IPA's problems are solvable through education. JRM · Talk 17:56, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I sympathize with the original poster's complaint, because I'm an ignorant American who can't "read" IPA at a glance, but I think it's worth pointing out that (as far as I know) IPA is commonly used as the default pronunciation format in dictionaries in other countries, e.g. Britain and Germany. So while this may be a problem for most American readers, it is not such a problem for readers worldwide, and a suggestion to adopt a "common American system" might be viewed as rather parochial. Steve Summit (talk) 19:16, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It occurs to me that this would be a good application of a hypothetical user-settable or -customizable view filtering feature. Given that IPA is distinct from ASCII and nicely unambiguous, it would be relatively straightforward to transliterate it, on output, to something more to a particular user's liking (e.g. i → ee, ʌ → u, u → oo, ŋ → ng, ʃ → sh, θ → th, ɹ → r, j → y, e → ā, etc). (This would be very similar to the hypothetical way that the "directional" or "curly" quotes “ and ” -- which some people like and some people loathe -- could both be transliterated, at a loathing user's option, to the ordinary nondirectional ASCII " quote mark. Note that the inverse transliterations are next to impossible, which is why having the unambiguous forms in the database is vastly preferable.) Steve Summit (talk) 22:19, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessarily hypothetical; here's what a David Friedland says at Bug 224:
Overview of what it does: it supports the following new tags: <ipa> <ipa-en> <xsampa> <xsampa-en>. The <ipa> tag takes IPA Unicode input ... and returns 2 <span>s: one containing the IPA Unicode in all numeric entities, and the other containing the equivalent X-SAMPA. The <xsampa> tag takes X-SAMPA input and returns the same <span>s as <ipa>. The -en versions of the tags are identical, except they also return a third <span> containing the phonetics in a "simple English" phonetic format.
Unfortunately, he said that October 2004, so I don't know what happened to it after that. I agree that this would be a great feature. TotoBaggins 00:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Splendid! Thanks for pointing this out. Even if that particular attempt is moribund, I'm delighted to hear that someone has shown the idea to be at least somewhat feasible. I'm also (pleasantly) surprised at the existence of the explicit <ipa> tag, because just today I discovered that my memory was wrong, and that Unicode's IPA support is not as "distinct from ASCII" as I had remembered. (For example, there is no distinct IPA r character, so you can't simply replace all IPA r's in an article with, say, "rr" if you feel that would suggest the "flap" or "trill" better for, say, American readers, because you'd get all the r's. But if you've got the <ipa>...</> tags to only perform the transliteration between, you're fine.) Steve Summit (talk) 03:55, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Such a trasformation preference might solve the issue. In the meantime, while clearly the IPA is the only generally agreed and internationaly standard system for representing pronouncation, it is also clearly not familiar to most wikipedia users. There is also the issue of browser support. I use a very standard setup of IE 6, and I see most of the IPA symbols as unmdifferentiated squsre boxes, so i normally completely ignore any IPA information in any article. I would urge that less formal and less structured means of indicating pronciation be considered acceptable if presented along with the IPA symbology, althogh not if presnted instead of the IPA represntation. DES (talk) 22:47, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is just another example of how a dedicated group of peoplpe with specialist knowledge make decisions that just make no bloody sense at all for anything other than extreme niche academic publications. It's absolutely insane that we are "suppposed" to use a pronounciation system nobody understands except for those people who would already know how all the words are pronounced without the guide anyway. It's similarly insane that we are "supposed" to capitalize all animal names because a bunch of bird specialists capitalize the name of birds, or that we are "supposed" to use archaic Icelanic spellings for topics on Norse myths and so forth. These wahoos need to understand that we're writing for the public, not some specialist academic journl that not even academics bother to read. All our guidelines need to follow the guidelines used by real offline dictionaries and encyclopedias if we are to be taken seriously. One of the major flaws with Wikipedia is that it's so big and massive that only specialists vote on niche areas and so we get bizarre nonsensical guidelines. 01:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Or we could just ban everything not directly related to the USA, including non-US authors, visitors and so forth. Hell, who needs anything "International" anyway? It's just us snobby eurotrash garbage bins who bother with such things as IPA anyway - us, and nerdy academics in the US. Away with it all! Tailor WP to your average US trailer park! --TVPR 01:27, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Unlike your average UK housing estate, where an understanding and appreciation of IPA is delivered to residents with their mother's milk! Babajobu 02:20, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Good thing I don't go to an encyclopedia to know how to pronounce things, because my standard install of IE doesn't support the IPA symbols and they come out as squares.RJFJR 14:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
On which pages are you seeing IPA symbols misrepresented in IE? According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation), there's a template people are supposed to use when entering IPA text which is supposed to fix the IE display problem. Steve Summit (talk) 20:45, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia cannot indefinitely oblige people with broken browsers, or people unwilling to click on IPA to read up what they need to know. This is the sort of attitude we get on WP:RD a lot. Why do any work when we have the dorks interactively doing it for us. If you want to know the pronunciation of something, and WP gives it in IPA, and you don't know IPA, you can click on bleeding IPA and spend ten minutes there. You'll have got your answer, and you'll have learned something useful on top of that, and next time you'll see something in IPA, you may not have to look it up again. I'm sorry, but an encyclopedia simply isn't for people who are not into learning things. dab (ᛏ) 10:47, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
And I'll take the contrary view. IPA has a purpose and there's nothing wrong with using it, but the way people normally represent pronunciations in English text outside of a dictionary is to use English-like spellings for them. Yes, there are pitfalls: Americans who pronounce "cot" the same as "caught" and transcribe it "kawt", British people who speak nonrhotically and transcribe "Pilates" as "pill-are-teez" with a silent R, and the inability to distinguish the two sounds of "th". But most of the time it can be made to work right and is easier to understand. --Anonymous, 05:40 UTC, December 17, 2005
I agree, but the problem here is that the need for accessibility by average users is in tension with the need to be accurate and maintainable by the people who are doing the maintaining. The current IPA-only pronunciations may be less-than-perfectly-usable, but the alternatives would have serious drawbacks as well. Mandating IPA and "English-like spellings" would tend to double the workload (but see below); switching to "English-like spellings" and discarding IPA would drive away the expert editors who can give us the most accurate pronunciations (but who will only want to do so in IPA).
Fortunately, the very good news posted by TotoBaggins up above indicates a way we could have our cake and eat it too, by entering/maintaining only the technically-accurate IPA pronunciations, but automatically (mechanically, programmatically) displaying "English-like spellings" alongside. The code to do so has evidently been written and tested, but not (yet) released into the live Wikimedia software. I've written to David Friedland to ask him what the status of the new code is. Steve Summit (talk) 13:39, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
(I am not accustomed to being addressed by my real name on Wikipedia, but I will reply here thus, aware of the potential privacy consequences.) The particular solution described in the bug referenced above is decidedly moribund. There was a very small change to the main Wikipedia codebase which was require to implement this, and after being continually rebuffed by the developers to commit that change to the tree, I gave up. Several months later, outcry resulted in that change ultimately getting added to tree after Brion modified it dramatically, but I was left with too sour a taste in my mouth to want to bother working anymore on the project because I didn't have the stomach for going to battle for my feature. They did not see much demand or point to my project and IMHO regarded me as little more than a pest who was trying to get his "pet" project installed on Wikipedia.
If there is enough popular support for something like this, then we should petition the developers to support this kind of feature. At the same time, there should be a discussion of how the feature should work. I had to make several tradeoffs when developing what I did write, and perhaps doing it a different way would be better. If someone else wants to pick up where I left off, he or she is welcome to�—all the necessary files are posted to the bug [6]. Cheers! Nohat 20:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting news

Hi, Although I can see that massive events (Iraq war, etc) need their own wikipedia pages, does every newsworthy event deserve permenant listings here? I'd have thought the recent fire in Hertfordshire is a good example of something that won't be any interest to anybody after the initial fuss has died down, and so can be comfortably deleted after a few weeks. News is what wikinews is for, and I think it might be worth tightening the guidelines on what deserves a wikipedia page. Inebriatedonkey 15:48, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'd disagree. I'm not sure we can accurately predict what will be a notable event, and the Hertfordshire fire, like the Kings Cross fire and the Bradford City disaster and the Great Storm of 1987, seems to have the potential to become another landmark event in British folklore/history. I think the guidelines are okay as they are. Steve block talk 17:36, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Something that caused serious environmental problems, dominated the news for days, closed major motorways and caused the evacuation of 2000 people is encyclopedic. It would be embarassing not to have an article on it. violet/riga (t) 17:40, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, there's that as well. :) Steve block talk 17:52, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
A thought prompted by this - we have a lot of very good articles on such events... but they're very good for the time, and tend to lose a lot of readers quite quickly, before they're fully polished or the full story emerges. It might be worth working through everything on WP:NEWS a year ago, and checking the articles are suitably "retrospective" by now...


read through our Hurricane Katrina articles. It is posible to tell almost to the day when people lost interest.Geni 11:30, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Should photo contributors have their names on the main page?

Please contribute to the debate here: Wikipedia_talk:Picture_of_the_day#Please:_let.27s_discuss_refraining_from_crediting_names Borisblue 23:34, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

General Length of Articles

Situation: Long articles that cover many aspects of a subject. These are difficult to cite in other articles. It almost requires 'sub-links'. My memory of reading the entire home encyclopedia as a child was that entries were generally short. Is there a general policy of fragmentation for better internal linking? My ideal would be to have short, focused articles with many internal links, but this might be more 'linked' to our general 'social purpose', whatever that might be. :) --Zeizmic 00:17, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Unfortunately there is a culture of merging short convenient articles into long unwieldy ones. I believe it's linked to a dislike of "stubs". Kappa 02:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • We have sublinks. I use them all the time. For example, Array#Advantages_and_disadvantages. I even use them in redirects sometimes. Watch out though, because they will be blue even if the section does not exist, and you must use underscores, not spaces (punctuation acts funny too). However, we do have consensus on some nonmandatory suggestions regarding article length (Wikipedia:Article size). It is typical on Wikipedia to break up really long articles — for example, Greece has History of Greece, Greek food, and so on. Deco 03:12, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Linking to sections works very poorly, as the the section names are likely to be changed by somebody else, and there's the section links no longer work properly (renames of articles are handled well, due to redirects). It's impossible to even check what links to a specific section, so somebody changing a section name has no idea of the side effects of their action. Sadly, breaking up into manageable smaller articles isn't generally an option, as inevitably the newly created spin-off article will be AFD'd for not being sufficiently "notable" on its on. The spin-off article's AFD will result in a re-merge, or possibly even a full deletion. Wikipedia has a pecular notion that every topic is worthy of exactly one page (as an article is essentially a page of varying length). Somehow other content management systems allow for multi-page articles, but we can't. You can cram the silliest most insignficant item on an already huge article (just think of the all the sections that are actually labelled "Trivia"), without controversy, but if you spin-off a logical chunk into a separate article, it will face AFD (if it's about a person it might even face a speedy). --Rob 03:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Regarding the poor behaviour of section linking in the face of updates, these are very good points that I feel are inadequately addressed by the current technology. However, I think the current practice of creating self-contained pages on each topic instead of having multi-page articles is an excellent way of encouraging proper breakup of articles. The Wikipedia software actually supports subpages using "/", and I believe they were used on Nupedia, but it has long been our policy to not use them because a flat, interlinked article space turned out to work better. You can read all about the history of subpages at Wikipedia:Subpages and linked articles on meta. Deco 03:45, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Using a new template to avert an edit war

There was recently an edit war at Economic fascism, due to the outcome of a vote for deletion. In the vote, no consensus was reached, with 12 voters opting to delete, 11 to keep, and 5 to merge or redirect. Following the end of the vote, several editors, including myself, User:Mihnea Tudoreanu, and User:172, redirected the article on the basis that it was a POV fork and there was no consensus to keep it. User:RJII strenuously objected and reverted all of these changes. I'm using a new {{Ambiguous redirect}} template in order to attempt to rectify this. It will be seen as the main Economic fascism page and contains links to both Economic fascism/Article and Economic fascism/Redirect. This should help to end the edit war. If this works well, it may be helpful for other disputed situations. Firebug 04:16, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • This seems like a fairly silly template; why are you creating a subpage simply for a redirect? Why not just have a note at the top saying some editors want to turn it into a redirect to some title and to see talk? Christopher Parham (talk) 07:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Because doing it the way you suggest essentially makes the redirect a "second best" option. This is one of the reasons the old Template:Twoversions was deleted - because, despite the disclaimer, it basically told the other side to sit down and shut up. With Template:Ambiguous redirect, each side gets equal billing. Redirect and article are presented as equally valid options, each requiring exactly the same amount of work to access. Firebug 09:03, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't see why the example I gave above doesn't do the same with far less work and confusion; the entire content of both the article and the redirect (a link to another article) would appear on the page at once. How does this make the redirect a "second-best option"? Christopher Parham (talk) 16:22, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I oppose such a template on the basis that it would be confusing for a person who logs on to Wikipedia to read an article and not necessarily edit it. --Gurubrahma 10:03, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think it should be worked out somehow instead. For this situation, since the AfD failed, I would just leave it as an article and mention that most historians and economists don't use the term (assuming they don't) and other problems with the idea of economic facism. I don't think a template will help for these situations, as people will argue over the template being placed on the page. Also, people may add it to any redirect they don't like without commenting in the edit summary or on the talk page, just like how many "POV" tags are added to articles (mostly by veteran editors and admins). Often the editors haven't edited the article before and don't edit the article after placing the tag. -- Kjkolb 10:54, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

WP:V citations

What is the WP China naming policy

Can someone direct me to the policy that WP has (if any exists) on what the naming/text should be like for China related articles. I stumbled upon List_of_railways_in_China and it looks like there is a few editors having a fight over whether a mention should be made of HK in that article (for me, I explicitly mention HK to avoid any doubt). But I am a bit worried I might be treading against some policy here (and a bit scared of this Huiawei guy). Pointers anyone???? novacatz 16:37, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Try Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese)#Political NPOV --BadSeed 17:55, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What is/can/should be done about people aggressively promoting their own websites and employer's products and websites?

Most of User:GreenReaper's edits (contribs-500) seem to be intended to promote their WikiCities websites[7], [8], [9] [10] and/or their employer[11], including inexact disamb pages[12] (especially given that according to google, "desktop pet" is a common generic term, of which the Stardock version (released yesterday) is but one of many?), but are otherwise completely legit. I think allowing someone to use Wikipedia for personal financial gain is a bad precedent to set, and counter to the spirit of Wikipedia, but I don't know of any written policy that it violates. Ideas? Comments? 24.17.48.241 17:41, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The relevant policy is at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a propaganda machine. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:08, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Where there is a clear basis for my actions: Advertising. Articles about companies and products are fine if they are written in an objective and unbiased style. This has always been my objective. GreenReaper 03:37, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
And Wikipedia:Spam and frequently Wikipedia:External links... These actions are pretty clear cut and an abuse of this project. If you need help undoing his damage, or think a more strong warning is in order, let us know. DreamGuy 02:07, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there! A fellow contributor dropped me a link to here - I'm surprised you guys didn't yourself. :-) I disagree with your position, but let me explain a bit first:
It's true that a large proportion of my edits on Wikipedia are to do with Stardock. A large proportion of my work life revolves around it, too. However, probably only 1/10th of my wiki contributions are on Wikipedia - the vast majority are at the wikis I founded, Creatures Wiki and WikiFur, both of which have been featured on Wikicities (Creatures was the first featured, and WikiFur is currently featured).
Wikicities is run directly by Wikia, the for-profit "sister company" of the Wikimedia Foundation founded by Jimmy Wales. It is operated on a day-to-day basis by Angela Beesley (User:Angela). All money from ad revenue on the side goes to them. I do not believe they actually make a significant amount from it yet (that is, not enough to even cover costs), but I could be wrong. I am certainly not making a penny from it. No profit goes to me. When I link them, I am interested in increasing the usefulness of articles on both sites by linking to related information.
In fact, I created WikiFur specifically because certain groups on Wikipedia felt that some articles related to the furry fandom were unencyclopediac. As a result, we have created these on another website, and naturally we have our own versions of the articles mentioned above that have remained on Wikipeida - if they were considered important enough for here, they are definitely important enough for us! Where this is the case, and where WikiFur has more or unique information about the topic (because, for example, we have biographical information on the people involved that would be deleted here), I have inserted wikilinks to our articles for those interested in learning more. We also link back to Wikipedia in such cases - in the cases where there is more information at Wikipedia, we tend to link to Wikipedia and not back to ourselves.
According to Google Analytics, Wikipedia is the source of around 10% of our visitors - so obviously people are actually clicking on those links. Moreover, they view an average of five pages after the initial page. Does this not suggest that it is useful to them? I view WikiFur as providing somewhere where people from the fandom can create articles without annoying everyone here who wants to make a general encycloepdia - now, consider, if they cannot find WikiFur, will they not just keep starting articles here? :-)
As for my company, I think Stardock's programs are useful, and I do not see the harm in making such articles. Most of these articles were not started while I was in Stardock's employ, I might add - I started working at the company on July 8th, whereas I have used their programs for the last 5 years (which is why I consider myself one of the best people to write about them). I like to think that the articles I write are of use to the people who come across them, particularly the Object Desktop page and Stardock itself, both of which contain extensive history which is hard to find elsewhere. I have not and do not have any intention of aggressively spamming external links to Stardock into other pages, nor do I feel I have been abusing internal links. Generally only one or two pages are appropriate to link to new pages, and so that's what I do. I invite you to inspect my edits and judge for yourself as to their worth.
Relating to the specific article mentioned - I was more than aware that desktop pet was a generic term. That was why I created it as a disambiguation page, and created the Desktop Pet (Stardock) article for the one I wrote instead, to encourage other additions of desktop pets (and linked it to digital pet, which they might have meant).
But, to sum up - are these articles and links not useful? Do they not provide relevant information to people in an appropriate manner? Are they badly written, or phrased in a biased tone (if so, why not go ahead and correct them? :-). In short, what's the harm? If you have problems with a particular page, I would suggest you discuss them with me either in talk or on the specific page's talk page. I do watch pages I created, so I will be sure to reply and work with you to improve the page. GreenReaper 03:12, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I see no basic problem with the Wikia cross-links, they seem relevant, topical, and reasonably placed in the See Also sections of the articles I looked at. I do think you should tread lightly with respect to Stardock however. As an employee it may be hard for you to hold on to neutrality, and there is a direct profit motive for advertising. For example, you created a template with spaces for the entire Stardock product line, would uninvolved editors regard all those products as encyclopedic? Wikipedia:Autobiography discourages editors from writing about the organizations they are directly connected with. I would suggest you should limit your work in this area to improving those Stardock related articles that already exist and not try to add new articles or introduce Stardock material into additional articles as such actions are likely to be percieved as spamming, even if you do have the best of intentions. Dragons flight 04:55, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The template is a story in itself — in fact, I created it on the advice of another, as it seemed to them to be a better way to organize the Stardock-related articles than to rely on links in the lead section, which were rather spammy. As you can see from the template, I refrained from adding information on many Stardock products, because I myself felt most of them to be less-deserving of wikification at that time — I included them mostly for completeness, and for future use if deemed appropriate by myself or others.
The Desktop Pet was added because I knew a lot about it and because there were already various articles about other digital pets, but I accept in retrospect that it may have been ill-advised to add it so soon. I still think it's a reasonable article — and a reasonable title, as that is its official name — but I accept others might judge it differently (others: go look for yourselves :-).
I think that perception of my intent is ultimately less important than the actual content of the articles, which is why I've tried to make them ones I would want to see written about any products, trying to avoid puff phrases and include relevant criticism. I'm a geek - I hate those articles that sound like press releases, too! However, I am more than willing to bear the above comments in mind when editing on Wikipedia. I will in particular be careful to ensure that any links from other articles truly improve the original article and aren't there as a means to get more traffic to the Stardock-related pages. My objective is a good article that can be a source of information for other articles, not an ad driving traffic to Stardock; we already have all the traffic we need, anyway, as virtually everyone seems to wants something different from Windows XP's garish blue skin. *grins*
As for new articles: I don't have any that I intend to add now, but I might want to in the future . . . though probably not one day after initial release. I still believe that I'm one of the most qualified editors in resepect to writing them. Is there perhaps some mechanism whereby I can submit Stardock-related articles for review by others, before or after posting? I have always disliked the view that those closely involved with a subject are undesirable as editors, as it discourages people who really are experts on a topic from contributing. After all, anyone can review my information for NPOV (and I encourage them to!), but only I can add it. GreenReaper 05:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I see no problem with you editing Stardock articles as long as you stay neutral. A good example here is the Podcast article. This article was edited by a number of people who were mentioned in the article. It only became an issue when Adam Curry started making NPOV edits. As far as I can tell, GreenReaper has made reasonable edits, and the template is fine. Jacoplane 05:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I actually have a major problem with cross-links to Wikifur... The guy himself admits that the entire site was created because he didn;t like the Wikipedia articles and then wants the wikipedia articles to link to his new version... this is about as clear cut an example of WP:FORK violation as there is. Furthermore, he admits that a huge percentage of his traffic is from the Wikipedia link, s he clearly has self-promotional goals as well. To allow the link there would just mean we'd be encouraging anyone with any view that can't get consensus on any article to go off and write their own and link to it. This is clearly bad policy. And the Stardock thing is definitely a no no. DreamGuy 08:30, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are misrepresenting what I said. WP:FORK is irrelevant, as it is about complete or significant forks using Wikipedia content. Wikipedia:Content forking comes closer to what you're suggesting, but again, it's not really our objective — we use the NPOV policy as well, because it encourages discussion of all sides of an issue. Instead, WikiFur is a place for articles about topics that simply would not be permitted here because they are of local interest to the furry community - things such as biographies of normal members of the furry fandom that would rightly be deleted from Wikipedia, as they are not of general interest or notability, but which are of interest to us. These kind of "local interest" articles form the bulk of our pages, and if you surf the site I think that's fairly clear. It's something like a transwiki-type process, although we don't actually intend to move articles, but provide a place where they can be created and remain.
Rarely (currently ~80 pages of 2427), we do copy existing pages from Wikipedia. Our policy is that if you want to do that you should be willing to immediately add some furry-specific content. When we do copy existing pages, they get WikiFur:Template:Wikipedia put on them for proper attribution. WikiFur is a GFDL site and we welcome copies of our content to Wikipedia as well, where considered appropriate by Wikipedia editors. I have personally deleted several pages on WikiFur that just copied Wikipedia, changing the internal links to those articles to go to Wikipedia instead. Really, the only case I'd be truly happy with that sort of copying would be where the original/main author of the Wikipedia article is a member of the furry community and specifies that they think it's fine to have it at WikiFur too (or add it themselves).
Regardless, these make a relatively small proportion of those articles I link. More commonly, I link articles that are directly related to the Wikipedia article and have been independently created and have significant additional or differing information to the Wikipedia article. For example: Yerf and WikiFur:Yerf, FurryMUCK and WikiFur:FurryMUCK, and especially Babyfur and WikiFur:Babyfur. I would submit that many Wikipedia editors would consider those articles of inappropriate detail/length/tone to be on Wikipedia . . . and yet that they are of use to those that do want more information, and contain links to even more relevant information, such as biographies of the founders. This is what I mean when I say that WikiFur contains articles that could not have been created on Wikipedia — they simply would not have the large body of extra furry fandom information to draw on, because that information is not of general interest. The issue for these is not consensus on content, but consensus on notability. I would submit that the "perfect article" on these furry-related topic cannot exist on Wikipedia, because they require information on people and topics that are not welcome as articles within Wikipedia.
As for the traffic . . . 10% is indeed significant — and we certainly welcome the visitors, as they tend to be those interested in the same objectives as we are — but I'd hardly call it huge. Heck, we get over 1/4 that from just a few articles on Uncyclopedia. :-) We're talking less than 100 visitors/day from Wikipedia, and we give just as many back; probably more, considering almost every articles has some reference to Wikipedia on it, even if it's just a place name or the name of a prominent person outside the fandom. Most of our hits come from personal references on LiveJournal and google hits from random content (typically not the pages linked from Wikipedia), which is how it should be. GreenReaper 17:07, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
So.... we've determined that not only are you a spammer, but that you are unrepetent and long-winded about it.... greattttt.
"I would submit that the "perfect article" on these furry-related topic cannot exist on Wikipedia, because they require information on people and topics that are not welcome as articles within Wikipedia." I would submit that you are clearly a POV pusher unwilling to accept concensus and thus created your own competing project and expect us to drive traffic to you.
I repeat what I said earlier.... this actions are clearly against several major Wikipedia policies and any of your edits doing those kind of behaviors need to be stopped. DreamGuy 17:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
We tolerate links to Memory Alpha, Star Wars Wiki, and a number of similar projects that incorporate content judged not suitable for Wikipedia. Even things like Wiktionary and Wikinews more or less fall in that class. What distinction do you see here? Dragons flight 17:23, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, the links are fine, but they should go under the External links section rather than the See also section, which is more for links within the wikipedia community (in which wiktionary falls). The links are not commercial, and while they are linking to another secondary source, their project's mandate is similar enough to ours that I don't think it's an issue. --Improv 17:39, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The main reason I have tended to put them in See also is that I do feel we are in the same community. As I've said before, the main reason WikiFur's articles are on WikiFur in the first place rather than Wikipedia is that they weren't deemed suitable for this site, just as quotes, dictionary definitions and huge amounts of Star Wars trivia were moved off it. Wikicities are still community projects under the GFDL - they're simply dedicated to particular topics (Wikispecies could easily have been a wikicity, for example). I think the reason they're not in the Foundation is that people are more willing to donate towards projects of interest to a large general audience than to smaller communities, and this lack of revenue is why the ads are there, instead. Note that Wikicities did promote the Wikimedia fundraising drives (at WikiFur we also put it in our sitenotice).
Over at Wikicities, we tend to view Wikipedia (and other wikicities - they are technically separate sites) as just other parts of one big wiki community. Most of the successful wikicities are run by people who have also contributed significantly to Wikipedia and other projects. Wikipedia is simply "the general reference wikicity", and so we link to it and to each other in See also as we're used to doing here. I'm pretty sure I've also seen links to MeatballWiki and WikiWikiWeb in that format (that's where I got the idea to do them in the first place).
I continue to believe that they and other wiki links should be in See also, as I think that more closely matches the category of link, but if others really think that they should go in External links I'd be willing to go along with that. GreenReaper 00:28, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I do believe that they belong in the "External links" section rather than the "See also" section. Courtland 01:35, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm unrepentant because I honestly believe I'm doing the right thing for the community! :-) Put simply, you will have to convince myself and others that it's not, and I do not think you will be able to do that.
It's been said before that sometimes the best way to add to a wiki is to remove something from it. I feel safe in saying that meticulously detailed information about the furry fandom (or Star Wars, or Neopets, or whatever) over a certain level is disliked by a significant proportion of Wikipedia editors. That is why articles without sufficient notability are removed from Wikipedia, and why others are trimmed down to remove "unimportant" information. I don't necessarily agree with this, but that is how things are.
However, this information obviously is of interest to some people, otherwise WikiFur would not have been the success that it is today. Therefore, if it's not going to be in Wikipedia, it should at least be linked from Wikipedia so that these people can find it when they look for it. This is a compromise that everyone seems willing to live with - separate communities get to expand without restrictions, and Wikipedia gets to reap the rewards of a more managable article base and fewer conflicts over importance (always a contentious term), while retaining the ability to link to more details on topics that do have articles here.
Ultimately, I think it's important to consider why such policies are made: To prevent people artificially inflating the importance of their personal websites. But we are not. The information presented on WikiFur and on other wikicities is highly relevant and of interest to the reader. Wikicities are community sites founded on similar ideals, and are not intended to make a profit for those creating them. Linking to the articles adds rather than detracts from the utility of Wikipedia as a general-purpose encyclopedia. It gives our users a better experience, just as it does when wikicities link to Wikipedia, and that is the prime objective of Wikipedia policy. GreenReaper 00:28, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I would hope that by your phrasing you're not stating that you will ignore consensus if you are personally not convinced. It is important that, no matter how you interpret goals of the projects, you not violate policies of any of the wikis that you regularly deal with. No matter how the wikicities people view wikipedia, they are expected to act within the spirit and abide by consensus of Wikipedians while editing here. --16:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Of course not. That would be stupid! I can't ignore consensus on the wikis I founded myself, let alone Wikipedia. :-)
I do believe that this is an area which is not fully covered by the policies — which is perfectly understandable, as Wikicities is only a year old and few of its wikis have reached maturity yet — but that if the spirit of the policies is examined, I'm doing the right thing. I think that several Wikicities contain many quality articles that are of use to the people reading the Wikipedia articles, and so should be linked from them. My aim is to convince you of that, too, which is why I've gone into my reasoning in such detail. GreenReaper 17:49, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Posting emailed content disputes

Hi all, I have a policy/guideline/principle question.

In attempting to settle a content dispute (which included charges of Libel), I rewrote an article to what I still feel is quite close to NPOV. In response, one of the disputants (a primary source) emailed me directly, criticizing my technical errors, attacking my presumptions from lack of detail, and other semantic issues.

Seeing as how WP is an open and collaborative project, and as they say "democracies die behind closed doors", I posted the content of this email, full of content complaints as well as a threat of negative publicity, with my responses to the Talk page for the article (currently under protection).

The disputant then responded, upset that I'd posted his email, primarily because his opponents in the matter saw the email and lambasted it on their own web site.

In your opinions... Did I violate policy, guideline, or principle? Or did I do right in upholding the open and collaborative nature of Wikipedia and its content?

Regards, Keith D. Tyler 19:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Technically you should've had the author's permission before publishing it anywhere in wikipedia (including publication on a talk page), so I'd advise you to remove (in fact it should be permanently removed with an admin's revert, so that it even doesn't show up when browsing the "history" of that page).
If you'd have summarized the objections sent to you in your own words, it would've been less a problem.
If there are publications on the topic, look for the reliable ones, and use them for references.
Since the author is a wikipedian, he can decide for himself what he writes on that talk page, and what he doesn't. You can always invite him to participate in that talk under his wiki-identity.
This has nothing to do with wikipedia's openness, only with the degree of openness with which that author wishes to participate in wikipedia (or not). That's his choice, you can't force him. There might be all sorts of reasons why he didn't publish some of the content of that e-mail in wikipedia himself, it's not for you to judge on such reasons. --Francis Schonken 21:19, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I assume by the "technically" you refer to the copyright issues. Personally I generally feel that posting an email adressed to me to a public forum, with detailed commentary (pont by point responses) is in all probability Fair use, which disposes of the legal issues. If the email did not explicitly request confidentially, (particualrly if it was sent in response to a public discussion) and if there were no obviously confidential matters included (as there do not seem to have been in the matter quoted in the links above) I do not feel it is unethical to do so in proper cases. DES (talk) 21:26, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • On dear old venerable Usenet, it is considered RUDE to post private emails. Paraphrase yes, quote no. I suggest that the reasons behind that policy apply here, and that the policy should be observed here. Zora 21:31, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I know that, having been a regular USENET poster long before i came here. I disagereed with that, or at lest with the absolute way soem people took the convention. There are reasons for thinkign twice before postign other people's email, but there are IMO well defiend cases where they don't apply. Specifically I feel that email which is 1) in response to a public discussion; 2) a commentary on that discussion; 3) does not contain any plausibly confidential matter; and 4) does not explicitly ask for confidentiallity ought to be fair game. But that is a matter of civility, not of policy, in any case. DES (talk) 21:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, one of the other issues was that the author of the mail was reporting on original research (apparently not published elswhere), which was not usable for wikipedia anyway. So I'd still recommend the "hard revert", but I'm not a sysop. If the author now decides it wasn't meant for publication in this way, it would be best for wikipedia to withdraw it. Permanently. Just politeness - the author of that mail is a wikipedian too. All this: As far as I can see. And no more than: In My Opinion. I'm not a sysop. --Francis Schonken 21:33, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • The WP:NOR policy does not apply nearly as strictly to talk pages (where the email was posted) as it does to article pages, IMO. As I understand it, the author of the email conducted research, a report of which ahs been publsihed. The email was givign additional detail clarifing and expandign on the publsihed report, not reporting on new and upublished research. If that is correct (and i may well be mistaken I only read the relevant talk page once) then the content of the email would IMO be a proepr source to use in clarifing what the research did and did not do. In any case, lots of stuff that is not a good basis for adjusting articel content is psoted to talk pages, and it is rarely if ever deleted from the history for that reason. DES (talk) 21:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • No DES, you are mistaken. I was providing Keith Tyler with original information not previously published. I was trying to bring his attention to the many errors of fact and interpretation that he added to the article, but I didn't want to publicly embarrass him. That wish obviously is now moot. Some of the information that he published in Wiki was information that I was and am considering for a future article. That fact that he did this won't prevent me from doing so, but nevertheless, that conduct was clearly wrong. I'm going against my decision not to contribute anymore to Wikipedia by writing this, but I wanted to correct the record as to why I complained to Keith about his publishing my email without even asking me. I am not at all troubled that he made public my opinion of what I think is very bad editing. But I am troubled that a Wiki editor would violate rules of netiquette as well as copyright law by publishing email without permission. By U.S. law, the copyright of letters, including those sent through the Internet, belongs to the author.Askolnick 22:45, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, anyway, it's no longer my problem. I notified of the issue on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Posting emailed content disputes I think the people reading that will be wiser in knowing what to do next than I am. --Francis Schonken 22:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My opinion is that if there was somehting said in email, it is a private conversation, and both parties should agree to having it taken to the Wiki. However, this is just my opinion, so I make sure to explicitly state that all emails to and from me should remain confidential. It seems to have worked so far. --LV (Dark Mark) 22:54, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

IANAL, but I thought it was established that, like the writer of a letter, the writer of an email retains copyright in it. You don't get to publish someone else'e work just because they emailed it to you, unless they include a GFDL licence (with a c). I believe that, somewhere, User:Angela has a copyrights page in which she explicitly releases her emails to Wikien-l into the public domian, the implication being that hers is the right so to do. If this is the case, then one should not post them on Wiki without the authors' licensing (with an s) under the GFDL. -Splashtalk 23:03, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Emails are indeed copyrighted by their authors, but posting one with a point by point resposne is at least arguiably "critical commentary" sufficient to satisfy a claim of Fair use, as i mentioned above. There can also be claims about implicit permisison in particular cirumstances, but those will not survive an explicit request form the author, in general. Of course, given that an email msg gernally has zero commercial value, a copyright infrigment suit would probably never be filed, and might be dismissed as frivilous if it were, but that does not decrease the theoretical and moral rights of the author, it merely means they are unlikely to be legally enforced. DES (talk) 23:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, as I said above, I'd rather solve this with politeness than with slapping semi-amateurish legal advise on each other's head. Askolnik is a wikipedia contributor, and I see no reason in scaring him away. Keith is a contributor, and I see no reason to scare him away either. If Askolnik asks to remove, and if Keith sees that permanently delete the contested e-mail's content from that talk page is no threat to the openness of the Wikipedia community (well, do you, Keith?), there's only an admin to be found prepared to do the job. Are there still any other problems I overlooked? --Francis Schonken 23:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • With all due respect Francis, you missed the boat. Removing the email would in no way be a remedy. This is part of the problem many members of the Wiki community don't seen ti grasp: You cannot unring a bell. That email has now been copied in toto to Museum of Hoaxes and other web sites. And I had hoped to make my point clear: I was not objecting to the release of any information in the email. I was objecting to the editor's violation of my rights and his awful netiquette in publishing my copyrighted material without consent or even warning me. And scare me away it certainly does, because I think this is symptomatic of Wiki's worsening problems. Editing is being done by people who don't have a clue what their doing. And the belief that that shouldn't matter, because the Wiki community will eventually unring misrung bells, is clearly nonsense. Rung bells can never be unrung.Askolnick 17:50, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, I don't object to permanent removal. Although, it is worth noting the sender has not actually ever asked that it be removed. I may be in violation of rarely-exercised netiquette, but at the same time, the sender was in violation of multiple sensible requests to use the talk page as the most appropriate route to getting the article improved. - Keith D. Tyler 21:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I'm concerned if you send an email the polite thing to do is to at least ask you before posting unless of course it's a personal attack or a legal threat or something then there are exceptions to that but etiquette is the only thing that I can see holding people back from posting emails sent regarding Wikipedia issues. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 02:19, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. If the person wanted everyone to see the content, he could have posted it to a talk page instead. I don't think there's a need to explicitly ask that it not be posted to prevent the receiver from doing so (a need as far as etiquette is concerned, not necessarily legally). However, if the editor is using email improperly, like threatening or harassing another editor, it might warrant the disclosure of the contents. -- Kjkolb 04:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, there was a threat of media action. Not quite the same thing as legal action, perhaps, but fairly intimidating in light of recent WP media coverage. The contributor never explained why he chose private email for a matter that was specifically being dealt with publicly. - Keith D. Tyler 21:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
O.K. That does it. I gave Keith Tyler the benefit of the doubt about his intentions and wrote to him privately with a heads up about the errors in his disasterous editing before I publicly critized his many errors and misleading statements. But now he has the chutzpah to claim, "The contributor never explained why he chose private email for a matter that was specifically being dealt with publicly." First of all, I clearly did. I told him that I was no longer going try to correct the false and misleading content of the Natasha Demkina article because I realized it was hopeless. He simply ignored most of the information I provided and rewrote Julio Siqueira's disinformation to make it sound more NPOV (to Siqueira's great delight - you should hear him squealing with delight on the Museum of Hoaxes board about how the Wiki editor sees things his way). Second, there's no reason that I had to explain. Publishing someone's private email online is a clear violation of netiquette -- and if it involves publishing the email in an "encylopedia," then it's also a violation of copyright. What is so outrageous is that this Wiki editor has yet to apologize to me or the the Wiki community. Instead, he keeps trying to justify his actions with weasel words -- such as stating above that he "may have violated rarely-recognized netiquett" (Never mind that most of th people in this thread recognize it quite well!). And then he offers the insanely lame excuse that I had "violated" his "multiple sensible requests to use the talk page as the most appropriate route to getting the article improved," and somehow that justifies his violation of netiquette and copyright law.
I had given up trying to use the talk page to get the article improved because of his incompetence, as well as his failure to do anything to stop Siqueira from using it to repeatedly libel me. In my opinion, Keith Tyler should be the poster child for everything that is wrong with Wikipedia: Refusal to recognize that there should be standards of accuracy; arrogance; an obsession with including all views at the expense of truthfullness, and what many people are most complaining about, gross and reckless disregard for the rights and feelings of others. Just think, he STILL hasn't apologized to the Wiki community or to me. The way he's defending himself, I think he wants an apology from us. Askolnick 01:36, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, if you had the feeling I was missing the boat. I was trying to make you both talk on a normal level again. In all what you say I see only one *practical* point (I mean, in the sense of what wikipedians can do to unblock the situation), that is that you suggest it would be best that Keith apologises. I second that. That would be the best next step, as far as I can see - not continue the high-strung legal talk.
I want to modify my statement about not wanting to lose neither Keith nor Askolnick as contributor to the wikipedia encyclopedia. That modification is inspired by the recent publication in Nature, about which I read yesterday [13]. In a side-box Jimbo Wales comments on attracting scientists to contribute to Wikipedia. William Connolley (a climate researcher at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge) is mentioned. Jimbo's comment ends with

"Connolley has done such amazing work and has had to deal with a fair amount of nonsense."

I want to apologise if I contributed in similar nonsense. Anyway, my modified statement would be something in the sense of not wanting to lose neither Keith nor Askolnick as wikipedia contributors, *especially* not the more scientifically orientated one of the two (which would be Askolnick, as far as I can see) - as researchers on peckish topics already often have to deal with a "fair amount of nonsense" in this encyclopedia, which doesn't help it forward.
Further, still a suggestion to Askolnick: going to e-mail was probably not the best course of action in this case (I know, it's easy to tell afterwards) - in the end we're all "condemned" to this kind of talk and negotiation pages to find stable solutions for improvements of the encyclopedia. So, no, I don't think the Natasha Demkina article is an "irreparable" case. This mentioning of the problems on a Village pump page (and on WP:AN/I) maybe drew the attention of some more people interested in the topic (alas, I'm not), so that there's maybe a possibility of getting out of the two-against-one situation on the Natasha Demkina talk page. --Francis Schonken 08:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Francis, I appreciate your opinion and statements, even if I don't completely agree with some of them. First, your concluding sentence shows a fundamental difference in the current Wiki philosophy and in the philosophy of most scientists. The closest approximation of truth is not achieved through democratic process. Science is not democratic. All people may be created equal, but ideas are not. Some kinds of information are more valuable than others, some more truthful, (and some even more unlawful, such as false statements that damage the reputation of others, especially when spoken, published, or broadcast with reckless disregard for the truth). In science, truths are not tentatively arrived at by taking a vote. They're arrived at by choosing the best current explanation that is supported with the greatest weight of evidence. The Nature article aside, if Wikipedia becomes known as a fertile place for pseudoscientists and other anti-science kooks to take their "Schoolboard" battles to, you can forget about scientists diverting time needed to write grant applications in order to contribute here. It adds nothing to their CV and will not advance their careers. And they have enough trouble fighting post-modernist faculty in their own institution. Most scientists realize that they cannot and perhaps should not participate in debates with people who intentionally mislead and deceive in front of an audience that doesn't seem to mind being deceived. First, you usually won't win, and second, it gives the appearance that the theory of evolution and Intelligent Design are scientific theories that need to be taught. Next up to be challenged? The germ theory by "experts" who believe in demon posession (a growing number). Neuroscience-trashing by Scientologist researchers like Tom Cruise? Everybody getting the picture?
Francis, I went to email after I decided no longer to contribute to Wiki as an editor, or to take part in the discussion where I continue to be defamed. I didn't want to contribute any more, but out of appreciation for his efforts (which I thought were at least honest - not so sure about that now), I wrote to thank him and give him a heads up about some very serious mistakes that I plan to come down on in other forums. Had I known what a mess that act of charity would cause I, you know, I would still do it.
As for Keith apologizing, it would have been a pound of cure even yesterday, but forcing one out of him now would be meaningless. He clearly sees no reason to apologize -- and that is an offense far greater than his lapse of netiquette (and disrespect for my copyright).
As for avoiding high strung legal talk, sorry. You may not see it, but there is a big, ugly, smelly, elephant in the Wiki room and not talking about him won't make go away. His name is Defamation and he's not just sniffing for peanuts. By continuing to ignore the problem, Wiki is creating a compelling case that its policies include a "reckless disregard for the truth" -- which is one of the necessary "legs" that must be established in any successful U.S. defamation suit against public figures. Now do we all see the elephant?Askolnick 14:19, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'll second the comments that taking private email and posting it to a public forum is, in general, a bad idea. People say things differently in private email than they would in public forums, and they have a legitimate complaint when their choice in that matter is usurped. If you're in a dispute with someone, you want to always take the moral high road, so you don't want to give your opponent any legitimate grounds to criticize your actions. Thus, the private email must remain private. Steve Summit (talk) 04:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think the person who posted the e-mail did so in good faith. However, the very fact that the e-mail was used instead of the talk page in the first place should have been taken as an indication that privacy was an issue (whether for the sender or receiver). For this reason it would be prudent to seek permission. However, I simultaneously agree with the notion that all detailed discussion regarding a page should be contained to that article's talk page whenever possible, for the sake of organization and history, and so a concerted effort should be made to obtain this permission. Deco 04:43, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I would agree that it both breaks copyright and policy in Wikipedia:Civility. If you were already having a discussion on a talk page and somebody emails you, it's safe to assume the contents of the email are not for the talk page. I think DES is wrong in claiming fair use, since I don't believe a response to the email counts as critical commentary. Could one reprint the complete text of a novel and justify it as fair use by interspersing commentary on the text throughout? Steve block talk 22:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I feel that it serves a public good to keep these discussions out in the open. It would be too easy for private intimidation to become the norm if people did not feel free to do this. I am not a lawyer, and cannot comment on the legal issues involved in posting the email, but I would similarly post an email without a thought. I suppose I might imagine saying something about fair use or similar if the person sued, but I seriously doubt someone could successfully sue over such a thing (although again IANAL). --Improv 16:04, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Branching Topics

Sometimes discussions in the Village Pump can go from small to long and long-lived. Is there any consensus on when a discussion should be branched off Village Pump and given its own Wikipedia namespace page? — Ambush Commander(Talk) 21:03, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, it shouldn't. We generally create namespace pages only for matters that either are:
  • the subject of a serious policy proposal that has already gained support and is seeking to be enacted, or
  • necessitate long-term maintenance or reference of some sort.
That said, you can create pages for anything you like - just watch out for the MFDers. :-) Deco 04:47, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 20:41, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Probably Wikipedia:Centralized discussion would be the best place for long/large discussions... (Just a guess) JesseW, the juggling janitor 11:04, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Category redirects, revisited

Previous discussion

(copied from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive):

  • I've come upon this: Category:Animal liberation. It's a redirect to Category:Animal liberation movement, and so it shows up itself as empty and orphaned. Is this kind of category redirect a standard practice, or is it something that should be handled in some other way? -- User
    • Redirected categories are strongly discouraged, see Wikipedia:Categorization#Redirected categories. In some cases, categories have been "soft redirected" using {{Categoryredirect}}, which is not much different from "see instead", but has a little better message (and is easier for bots to find). -- User
      • Until category redirects actually work, they should be replaced by a "This category should be empty, all articles should be in Category:Foo" type message.. -- User

Revisited

I have done some work on this myself, and reviewed the Bug trackers. The following problems from my experience & Bug #100 have been resolved. I use Category:Danish_sport_shooters as an example. Redirect Category refers to the "old/unused" category, Target Category refers to the "new/in use" category.

Issues Resolved

  • Redirect doesn't work Bug
    • Resolved. Attempting to access "Category:Danish_shooters" will redirect to "Category:Danish_sport_shooters".
  • Redirect Category added to the Target Category Bug
    • Resolved - the Redirect Category is not listed on the Target Category.
  • Articles added to the Redirect Category instead of the Target Category
    • If there are no articles pointing to the Redirect Category, this will not be an issue. If there are still articles pointing to the Redirect Category, they will need to be recategorized first.

Remaining Issue

  • There is one remaining issue I discovered with category redirects. This occurred with Category:Firefly_planets, that was in use. There was another category, Category:Firefly_Planets (note the capitalization) that was empty. Attempting to do a #REDIRECT did not work in this case.

Summary

  • A person looking for "Danish_shooters" may not know that while that category is empty, the articles that they are looking for are under the more current "Danish_sport_shooters", so a redirect would be useful here.
  • A person looking for "Firefly_Planets" may not know that while that category is empty, the articles that they are looking for are under the more current "Firefly_planets", so a speedy deletion would be needed here.

Talkback

Let me know what you think here. Sct72 05:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The basic issues described in Template_talk:Categoryredirect still remain. That is, the redirecting category will show up as empty, and users may put articles in it without them ever being seen or the error being realized. By contrast {{categoryredirect}} puts the redirecting article in a category (for redirects) and has an associated bot that automatically moves incorecctly-placed articles. It's also made clear to users that they're looking at the wrong category to put articles in, where a conventional redirect wouldn't. It's not a bug issue so much as a redirects-still-don't-do-what-you'd-expect issue. -- SCZenz 06:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
A little more on this - consider the case where a user adds an article to a redirected category. From looking at the article there would be no way to tell anything is even remotely odd. However, if you click on the category link from the article you'll end up at the target category (which is OK) but the article you were just at won't show up in the list of articles in this category (!). IMO, the only acceptable way to implement this would be for redirected categories to act more like aliases and show identical content under different names (either name showing the union of the articles added to each). Assuming this all works, now undo such a redirect or redirect a target. Even precisely defining what should happen in all the relevant cases is not easy, let alone implementing it. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:28, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Should empty categories (like Category:British_Shooters ) be added to WP:CFD?
    No, just edit any article that refers to such a category to refer to the real category. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  2. From Template_talk:Categoryredirect -
    "Q: If Category A redirects to Category B and User C puts Article D into Category A, then Article D won't show up on Category B like it should!
    A: This is an issue being solved by the MediaWiki development team, and it may account for the fact that category redirects do not work yet. As a result, category redirects are to be used lightly for the time being."

Political candidates

Is there any official policy or consensus on articles for political candidates? Someone has been poking around the Don Sherwood article adding in a few bits of support for Chris Carney, who is challenging the incumbent U.S. representative fron Pennsylvania in 2006. It's an election year, so I figure some people will be inflating the Carney article, and adding potshots to the Sherwood article.

Politically, I don't care for either candidate. But I'd like to keep things clean on both sides. -- Name Not Needed 14:39, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if there's anything specific to political candidates, but Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a propaganda machine clearly applies. Political POV (in any direction) should be avoided. Wikipedia has articles for most incumbents, so adding an article for a candidate seems only fair. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Policy needed to alert Wikipedia if a rogue admin. is being considered here

I recently became aware of an alledged rogue and suspected troll admin.[14][15] at wikinews trying to take up an adminship at wiktionary [16]. The wikitionary community had no clue as to the alledged rogue's past behavior at wikinews.(please see [17] item 3.) Is it possible to design a policy where applicants for administrator positions here are required to disclose their user names at other wiki projects? Methodology 14:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, honestly. Can you refrain from taking your vendetta aginst Amgine across all of Wikimedia? Not everyone likes what he does, no, but if he's a troll I'll eat my hat. (It's a very large hat.) FWIW, I think there are enough cross-project contributors around these parts that such a measure would not be necessary even if proposed under less dubious circumstances. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:56, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for credentialed contributor

In reading an article at nature.com about Wikipedia ([18] nature.com article), I thought of the idea of getting more academics and experts involved in the contribution process. My thought was to create a new user level where with a little work on the part of admins, we can hopefully increase the participation by experts. The process of becoming a credentialed contributor would be done in the completely opposite fashion of everything at Wikipedia. Instead of people being able to sign up for this level of access, it would be something which the user is contacted by Wikipedia admins. Starting with current contributors who are acknowledged as experts in their field, a referral system would be used so that credentialed contributors could recommend additional people to contact as a potential credentialed contributor. Additionally, users could request credentialed contributor access by providing documentation which would provide verification of their expertise. They would then be asked to submit their resume, or automatically given permissions based on a set number of referrals by credentialed contributors (i.e. - if 5 credentialed contributors recommended Albert Einstein, then he would automatically receive credentialed contributor status if he wanted it). One limitation on the scope of the access granted to the credentialed contributor could be that it would be limited to a specific subject matter (i.e. - Albert Einstein would receive credentialed contributor access to the Math/Physics section of Wikipedia articles and everywhere else he would be a normal user). The benefit of being a credentialed contributor would be that any modification or entry that a credentialed contributor made would be unalterable by basic users. A change to what a credentialed contributor could be suggested, but it would have to be approved by a user with higher access (credentialed contributor, admin, etc.). Additional privileges and rights could be assigned to a credentialed contributor.

Thoughts?

-- csundar 12:21 (EST), December 15, 2005

I won't comment on the wisdom of your proposal, but the technical aspects need to be hashed out more. How does one "lock" a five word edit and how would the software know that that specific word was "locked" and thus uneditable? — Ambush Commander(Talk) 20:38, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
This is more question to Wikimedia developers. Such feature would need software support implemented first. Pavel Vozenilek 20:43, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it probably should get some community support first. Personally, I don't think it's a good idea, but I'd have to think about it before shooting it down to the ground. I can, however, point out the immediate implementation problems. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 21:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I actually really like the idea of people being "credentialed contributor"s, but not to the extent of locking their edits, because no matter how technically correct a passage is, there's usually improvement in terms of grammar or style (which Albert Einstein is probably not an expert on). What privilages would the credentialed contributors then have? I have no idea! but it'd be shiny and exciting!!! TastemyHouse Breathe, Breathe in the air 09:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Libel on talk pages?

So, what do we do about accusations of libel on talk pages? - Keith D. Tyler 21:42, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's been my impression from some recent discussions on wikien-l that if it's a ranty screed unsupported by any kind of facts (or assertions of fact from a source we'd consider reliable) it should probably be refactored or removed. · Katefan0(scribble)/mrp 21:45, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not everything can be verifialbe from "reputable sources"

[Hoo boy! If this isn't a fine example of a major problem with the Wiki philosophy, then nothing is. Elvarg edits out my ironic criticism (saying it's "trolling"), while leaving the misspelling. And that's the point I was making: Too many in the Wiki community are more tolerant of errors and falsehoods than they are of criticism.]Askolnick 19:38, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • If you see spelling mistakes, you should fix them yourself, or at least politey point them out, rather than making witty comments about them. Besides, the talk pages is about the ideas people convey, not knitpicking out minor things like spelling. Making fun of other people's errors instead of helping to deal with them, and looking for minor unimportant things shove in other people's faces, is as trolling as it gets. Elvarg 21:22, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability for background.

Discussion is currently going on at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#Not_everything_can_be_verifyalbe_from_.22reputable_sources.22 , please participate. Elvarg 22:22, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • In that case, the primary source of the game itself is reliable source (primary source) when it comes to statements made about the game itself. So if the game itself says that's the name of the boss (or the accompanying manual does, etc.), that is a reliable source for that piece of information. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:57, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • yes, "reputable" is relative to the subject. You don't go looking for Pokemon character names in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. dab (ᛏ) 10:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sometimes official sources conflict. Ganon is a notable such case. In these cases just following your favourite official source is not okay, and you should probably discuss the conflict. Deco 18:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • What's important is to state the source. The reader can judge its reliability. In cases where a source is obviously non-neutral, it is not inappropriate to make a comment to that effect, provided of course that the comment is neutral and, if necessary, sourced. For example, in a discussion of whether chocolate is healthy, it would be perfectly reasonable to cite Harvard researcher Norman Hollenberg to the effect that it contains flavanoids which may reduce high blood pressure, and equally reasonable to note in the citation that Hollenberg's studies have been funded by the American Cocoa Institute and by Mars, Inc. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've suggested on the talk page that we make a distinction between reputability, which is fairly broad in scope, and being authoritative, which is narrow in scope but is entirely reliable. --- Charles Stewart 19:21, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What about stuff that approaches the bounds of original reserach. See The Gates. There is nothing (IMHO) very controversial there, but much of the text of the article is based on the writers of the article observing the installation of the art work. Morris 21:39, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

General consensus reached on semi-protection policy

Any input on where we go from here is appreciated at Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy 98 to 4 consensus on the latest proposal. Pretty solid. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 04:21, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

long or short scale

Is there any policy for usage of long or short scale? For example in Voyager 1#Distance travelled it says 14.2 billion kilometers, I interpret it as 14200000000000 km, not as 14200000000 km →AzaToth 19:25, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The preference is for scientific or engineering notation. Voyager 1 travelled 14.2×109 kilometers (engineering notation) or 1.42×1010 kilometers (scientific notation). --Carnildo 21:23, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Enginering notation? have never heard about it. But if it's specified as 'billion', how much is it then? →AzaToth 21:26, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Engineering notation is scientific notation where the exponent is limited to being a multiple of three. As for short scale vs long scale, the Manual of Style doesn't specify, but it's usually short scale. --Carnildo 23:37, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't it depends who wrote it if it's in long or short scale? →AzaToth 15:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I put a question about WP:3RR on the talk page there, but it hasn't gotten much notice so I'm bringing the issue here.

Copyvio policy says to revert copyrighted text in an article to a version without it, but three revert policy excludes only vandalism and vandalism policy doesn't classify copyright violations as vandalism. So it seems like, as the policy currently stands, you should revert copyright violations on sight... but if you do so to the same text four times in 24 hours you should be blocked.

Should we classify copyright violations as vandalism or otherwise exclude them from three revert? This isn't just an idle question - an admin was blocked in relation to this sort of reversion and the situation has now blossomed into an RfC, in part fueled by different opinions of whether reversions of copyright violations should be exempt from 3RR. --CBD ☎ ✉ 23:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It seems logical to exempt reversion of copyright violations from the 3RR policy as a good revision to policy if it is clearly a matter of consensus that the material in question is in violation of copyright. Gray-zone material which status with respect to copyright is not well established or in dispute should not be exempted. I'm not sure how large that gray-zone is but I think it would be best to err on the side of openness and inclusion rather than exclusion and fear of legal retaliation. Courtland 01:47, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
IMHO restorators of copyvio materials (in the clear cut cases), should be blocked on the spot abakharev 05:38, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Anon Edit on Disputed Pages

I know I'm going to get a lot of heat for this one after gleaning the 'Anon New Page Creation' argument. I support that policy, by the way.

I think it would be a good idea to block anons from editing disputed articles because:

  • Their edits are often inconsiderate of the history of the argument
  • They often edit without explaining on the talk page
  • They aren't open about their personal biases [eg. bio on userpage] but are willing to edit articles that are trying to remove bias
  • Someone conscientious enough to actually research, reference outside sources and check the history and talk of an article before making a significant edit more than likely already has an account, and if they're that committed to the article then they won't mind getting one.

Honestly, an account is free, doesn't take more than a minute to create and doesn't violate your privacy. LambaJan 03:48, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Causality is the wrong way around here. People with accounts generally make better edits because more dedicated editors create accounts. If you restrict anons they'll just make the same changes with throwaway accounts and become more difficult to detect. And if you think the additional trouble will deter them, you haven't seen how persistent they can be. Deco 06:27, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I can appreciate that. Though you can understand that I would appreciate a solution even more. :-\ LambaJan 07:53, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

CSD images - new proposal

The relevant discussion is taking place at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#CSD_I6_-_A_new_proposal. It has been proposed to formalise an arrangement used already in practice. Please continue the discussion there. --Gurubrahma 14:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bayesian filtering - maybe an option?

The Bayesian filters on the Thunderbird email client are amazingly good at sorting out spam from good posts. Is it possible that Wiki could use a similar technique to decide whether a page modification is vandalism or valid content adjustment?

If changes that bona-fide admins delete or revert were flagged as 'spam' and changes that remain in place for days or weeks without being touched were flagged as 'good' - then the filter would theoretically learn the kinds of things that vandals say when they trash a page. Because this is content-based, it does not require that we know who the vandals are - or how they got here - only that the content they contributed was in the 'style' of a typical vandal. Even if a new vandal with a different writing style came along, he/she would rapidly and inadvertently train the filter to recognise subsequent changes in similar style.

This sounds like it would come up with a lot of dangerous 'false positives' - but practical experience with Thunderbird and spam suggest that this is not the case.

Perhaps this kind of control could be mixed in with other measures of vandalism probability (age of account, number of other accounts created from the same IP, number of accepted edits, etc) to push the probability of vandalism way down. --Steve Baker 17:41, 17 December 2005 (CST)

while I can think of a number of posible filters I suspect it would require a fair bit of processing power.Geni 23:54, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It wouldn't work, because there's no similiarity. An email spammer must get their message delivered to millions in order for it to be read by thousands, and "sucker" a few, in order to make much money; and its hard for software to make each of the individual emails look different from the rest. It's not worth the spammers time to customize a single email (after all, if they wrote individual emails, they wouldn't be spammers). However, with vandalism/link-spam its not necessary to make huge numbers of bad edits, but just a few, in places where huge numbers of readers will see them. If one vandal/spam article is deleted, the creator can examine the reasons for the deletion, and re-adjust their strategy accordingly. Each and every article they make is a new unique creation, that's (potentially) "better" then the last. Finally, this approach ignores the fact the worst types of vandalism involve articles that look superficially like legitimate articles, sound entirely plausible, but are in fact hoaxes. As long as artificial intelligence remains artificial, I wouldn't bother. --Rob 00:05, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just because it wouldn't work against a dedicated expert doesn't mean it won't work against bored kids and typical lazy spammers. 00:10, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
You would mostly be looking to hit background vandalism rather than our more skilled vandles.Geni 01:27, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

BC/AD versus BCE/CE

Currently, the MoS has this to say about notation of eras in the Gregorian calendar:

Both the BCE/CE era names and the BC/AD era names are acceptable, but be consistent within an article. Normally you should use plain numbers for years in the Common Era, but when events span the start of the Common Era, use AD or CE for the date at the end of the range (note that AD precedes the date and CE follows it). For example, [[1 BC]]–[[1|AD 1]] or [[1 BCE]]–[[1|1 CE]].

I don't think this is satisfactory, as it seems to lead to edit wars between those who feel strongly about the appropriateness of each system. [19] [20] I got lightly involved with this issue in a couple of articles before deciding that it might be more productive to change the MoS than to try to put out many small fires. At this point, the edit warring is going on, and people are getting 3RR blocks, which eventually leads to the side that's better at gaming the rules "winning", which isn't really NPOV.

I suggest adding a sentence to the above paragraph acknowledging that the controversy exists and setting up a guideline along the lines of: "make it consistent, then leave it alone," in order to avoid unproductive edit wars. More specifically, a given article should only use one system for indicating eras, and editors should not change the era notation in an article that is already consistent. In specific cases, if there is some kind of consensus on the article's talk page to use one particular system or another, then that would trump this general guideline, of course. Perhaps by amending the MoS, we could force the issue out of the edit summaries and onto the talk pages, where it belongs. Opinions? -GTBacchus(talk) 01:14, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thank you GT for inviting me to speak hear. From what I understand if an article was started using CE and it consistently used BCE and CE then it should stay that way. And the same with BC and AD I think that is fine. Although I think that the whole recently invented, compared to AD and BC, CE and BCE is rather obscure and less well known and rather pointless, if an article was started that way I'm not going to change it. I think it is silly to use these "new" initials when every encyclopedia I have consulted in this matter uses BC and AD. Wikipedia does not even have date pages for BCE and CE they are just redirects to the BC and AD date pages.

I further am totally perplexed as to why the most commonly accepted dating system, the most widely used and the one that has been in exsistance for over a thousand years in Western Civilization is considered point of view by several Wikipedians. Suddenly, after a 1000 years a few Wikipedians judge that this dating system is POV! I'm perplexed. Someone suggested it is because it skirts with Christianity and that people opposed to Christianity don't want to use something that was derived from the Christian religion no matter how seperated or accepted BC and AD is. If that is the case I can't believe that anyone would support such a miopic and biased view. What next revert back to the Julian calender? Randomly assign the beginning of the new era 47 years before the supposed birth year of Christ so that it won't have any ties to Christianity?! Religion hadn't even come into the situation for me, but apparently others prejudices are what is causing problems.

BC and AD is the accepted dating system. This is not my opinion it is a fact. I don't see anny need to change the current Wikipedia policy leave the dating as original started in the article that should make both parties happy. I'm not the problem causer here despite what has been said about me. Every history book I own uses BC and AD. Michael Grant the famous Roman scholar uses them and that good enough for me.

Please let the policy stand for the consistency of dating from when the article was first created. Why is that a problem. Just follow the rules. I haven't tried changing articles that were created in CBE or CE to BC and AD even though I think CE and CBE are silly so why are these other people all fired up about removing the accepted system. Let this be the end of it! Dwain 02:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

another edit conflictThe same people who are currently being blocked over this pointless revert war will almost certianly ignore any descion made by other people, and will simply keep edit warring, for instance, after the second time one such person was blocked for this, he decided instead to edit war over miles vs kilometers, because he had been prohibited from BCE vs BC edit wars on penalty of block, it has nothing to do with content, some people are just trolls--Aolanaonwaswronglyaccused 01:53, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Edit conflict. I brought up the same topic here. --Elliskev 01:49, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • My concern with this is that it's going to lead to a complete edit war over every article that is currently split between AD and CE. The POV warriors on both sides are going to rush to find articles to make "consistent" and spark 15,000 brushfires around the Wiki. My thoughts are that NO date system should be changed and that it should be up to each contributor to choose which system he or she wishes to use when making an addition. Under NO circumstances should anyone's personal choice of system be disputed or reverted, and this should be a blockable offense from both sides. If I want to add a section with BC in it, that should be fine. If I want to add a section using CE, that should be fine too. It is hardly confusing to use both, and it would stop the edit warring in its tracks. FCYTravis 10:39, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the BC and AD system are much more common than BCE/CE, and I wholeheartedly admit that I never use BCE/CE in everyday life. However, I believe that wikipedia shouldn't always simply go by this. After all, this is not the simple wikipedia. As regards to the issue at hand: the terms "Before Christ" and "Anno Domini" have a christian connotation. As such, I believe they are strongly linked to christianity and to the christian parts of the world (or parts with a distinctly christian identity or history, since many parts of northern and western Europe are rapidly secularizing). There are many areas that are not covered by this. One would be ancient Greece, which was an explicitly pagan society. I believe it is inappropriate to use the BC/AD system in an encyclopedia article about e.g. Xenophon, Sophocles or Euripides. I believe an encyclopedia should, in such cases, use BCE/CE. Aecis praatpaal 10:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC) PS. It has been suggested at Wikipedia Talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Eras that a preference setting for BCE/CE or BC/AD be created. If it is technically possible, this suggestion has my full support.[reply]

I suggest centralizing this discussion at Wikipedia Talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Eras. Wikipedia talk:Eras. I'll reply to you there, Aecis. -GTBacchus(talk) 10:49, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Limited license for Images

Wikipedia:Restricted image licenses is a proposal to accept a slightly more limited license for images, one which migjht be accpetable to many content creators/copyright oners whoa re not willing to release images under the GFDL. Your commetns and views are welcome. DES (talk) 04:56, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Dangerous precedent at ArbCom

I would like to call your attention to a development at an ongoing ArbCom case, that will set a precedent which could affect all Wikipedians. Fred Bauder has proposed that I be penalized for criticizing the fairness of the proposed decision as it applies to other affected parties [21]. Please note that there were no findings of fact against me; this is a case involving numerous parties, and my involvement was peripheral. I could have kept my mouth shut, and gone on editing with no penalty. However, I found the conduct of the ArbCom in this case to be outrageous, and felt that I should say so in the manner of J'accuse. Others felt the same (see Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/Proposed_decision and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Nobs01 and others/Workshop.) If you are uncomfortable with a precedent being set, that Wikipedians can be penalized merely for criticizing a decision of the ArbCom, the time to speak out would be now.--HK 15:41, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • That is, indeed, quite horrifying. I've commented there and asked for an explanation. rspeer 21:58, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • note the passaGE and the apparent lack of insight into any role his own behavior played in the creation and aggravation of the problems which gave rise to this case which makes it sound rather less draconic. Check the background and justification of this (I haven't) before you cry tyrranny. dab (ᛏ) 22:13, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • That makes it sound more draconian to me - "it's not because you disagreed with us, it's because you disagreed with us and you were wrong, as determined by us". It still seems that he wouldn't be put on probation if he had stayed silent instead of criticizing the ArbCom, because there were no findings of fact against him. rspeer 22:45, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • HK, I note that you are listed as a 'party' (actually 'Nominal Defendant') on the arbitration and there is text on the evidence page purporting to cite 'misdeeds' on your part. As I understand the situation it seems like the ArbCom was basically giving you a pass until your subsequent actions suggested to them that you (along with others who received identically worded probation notices) intended to continue behaviour that they considered disruptive. I have no idea as to the merits of any of this evidence or such an impression of your actions, but those seem to be the ArbCom's grounds for their action... as opposed to 'merely because you criticized their decision'. Your position seems to be the equivalent of saying, 'that judge only ruled against me because I yelled at him and called his conduct outrageous'... hostile behaviour towards the ArbCom certainly could result in biasing them against you, but is also in and of itself evidence of disruption and lack of good judgement. --CBD ☎ ✉ 22:39, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It is true that I was listed as a party. There was quite a conglomeration of editors similarly listed, and the only thing they had in common was that at one time or another they had been involved in edit conflicts with User:Cberlet. In my case, the complaint was limited to three article content disputes from June and December of 2004 [22]; I pointed out that this was a rather flimsy basis for a complaint, and evidently the ArbCom agreed, because there was no finding of fact that referenced me. Regarding the proposed decision, I submit that the strenuous complaints by myself, User:Sam Spade, and User:Rangerdude are well-founded and deserving of scrutiny by the community (the case is fairly complex, as there are may editors and types of alleged misconduct involved.) However, I wouldn't think it appropriate to bring those complaints to the Village pump policy section -- it is the precedent being set, in effect a new policy, that I believe should be discussed on this page: that editors may be sanctioned for speaking out against what they perceive as outrageous conduct by the ArbCom. --HK 03:18, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Fred Bauder also wanted me to shut up and has been abusing ArbCom powers against me also, in a farce of a case where policy and evidence are blithely ignored. "He quits making a big fuss and so do we." [23] I urge fairness and restraint through Wikipedia:User Bill of Rights. (SEWilco 06:29, 19 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]
I have taken a look at Wikipedia:User Bill of Rights and I strongly support it. I would urge members of the community to take a look at what has been going on at ArbCom and find appropriate ways of bringing it to the attention of other Wikipedians -- I don't think that this kind of behavior will continue if there is sufficient public scrutiny and discussion. --HK 15:45, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


  • Anybody listed as a party in an arbitration matter is subject to sanction by the ArbCom. This is how things have always worked and how they worked while I was an ArbCom member. --mav 17:40, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • What I'm worried about is the precedent that "expressing discontent" with ArbCom is a reason for sanction. HK and Sam Spade should be sanctioned for something they did, not for their opinion of ArbCom. I don't care if the outcome of the case is the same, if the remedies get better reasons behind them. rspeer 19:09, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I have not read the case. However, "expressing discontent" with ArbCom should, in my view, be an absolutely protected right. Now, one can be perhaps penalized for the manner of that expression ... sabotaging user pages, vandalism, etc. should not be protected under the rubric of "expressing discontent". However, the content of the such sentiments must be an absolutely protected right regardless of whether the editor is under review by ArbCom or not. Again, I don't know the details of this specific case; but the general principle should be absolute. Derex 19:20, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • From what I can gather, the ArbCom was ruling that certain behaviour was dirsuptive. Parties to the arbitration then argued that this was unjustified and that they had every right to engage in the 'disruptive' behaviour - and did so on the talk page for the proposed decision. I'd be with you 100% that just disagreeing with an ArbCom decision should be protected - a couple weeks back the ArbCom found that a user had been driven off Wikipedia by harassment. I didn't agree with that finding given that the user was, in fact, still here, and did not seem to me to have been particularly harassed. Disagreement is fine. However, claims of bias, claims of 'outrageous conduct', and continuation of the arguments and attitudes the ArbCom was ruling against is more than just disagreement. I'm not a big fan of this whole concept of 'punishment' on Wikipedia in general, but a distinction needs to be made between responses of; 'I respectfully disagree', 'Your decision is outrageous and I will continue to fight for my right to violate it', and 'You #@#%#$% idjits cannot stop me'. --CBD ☎ ✉ 19:54, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It is true that the ArbCom was ruling that certain behavior was disruptive. However, that behavior was someone else's, not mine. The proposed ruling penalizes me solely for expressing dissatisfaction with how others were penalized (or not penalized, in the case of User:Cberlet. One of the main bones of contention was a double standard in the ArbCom's treatment of similar misdeeds by different personalities.) --HK 21:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The case was originaly brought as "Nobs01 and others acting in concert", alleging a conspiracy led by nobs who "work as team regarding LaRouche". Nobs01 opening statement alleged this 'conspiracy' was a "provably false", made in bad faith to affect Committee action, and may be an applicable abuse of dispute resolution processes [24]. Nobs01 made no less than three motions to separate the cases, [25][26][27], or publish a finding of fact regarding User:Cberlet's charge regarding a 'conspiracy'. The name of the case has been changed [28], however (a) no finding of fact has been made (b) the abuse of using baseless allegations by User:Cberlet to affect Committee action has proved extremely effective to obscure facts, issues, and evidence presented in the case. On 26 November, Mr. Bauder declared regarding a finding, "The fact that with the exception of Hershelkrustofsky and Cognition, discrete remedies are proposed for each user..." [29]. Now wholesale guilt by association is proposed as a remedy [30], despite the fact Nobs01 did not participate in any recusal requests, and openly declared [31] he AGF with the Committee while awaiting findings.
Nobs01 has not expressed any personal dissatisfaction regarding decisions reached in the case toward himself. Nobs pleaded guilty to a breaching experiment [32], and may harbor misgivings about the entire process, but nobs doesn't have the final say on any of that. Still somewhat of a newbie after 10 months, nobs only comment now is, User:Sam Spade is a candidate against User:Fred Bauder in an election. Fred Bauder has opted to tag Sam Spade with a guilt by association smear User:Cberlet affected through a blatant abuse of proceess. Let the voters decide. nobs 17:05, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. I'm just an idiot and I don't know how the wikigods work.

High-risk templates

There is currently a proposal to protect all high-risk templates. See Wikipedia:High-risk templates. --bainer (talk) 23:26, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Don't stuff beans up your nose

I'm interested in getting WP:BEANS raised to guideline status. What level of consensus would be needed for this? Firebug 05:54, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't want to be a guideline. It's just sage advice written in a humourous, memorable way. We don't need it as a guideline, and it won't work as one. Imagine the ArbCom trying to determine if an editor should be on BEANS-parole. -Splashtalk 05:58, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Announcing the reawakwening of Wikipedia:Eras

Hi. Due in large part to recent edit wars over the traditional BC/AD notation versus the less common but arguably more NPOV BCE/CE notation, some Wikipedians have decided that the current guideline in MoS doesn't sufficiently address the problem. Indeed, many Wikipedians assume and quote guidelines on the matter that do not in fact exist, at least not explicitly. Some refer to what has been said in ArbCom on the matter, but ArbCom decisions are not policy, and if some there is some principle at work in the ArbCom decision that is a sound one, it probably deserves being written into the guidelines somewhere.

Since this problem clearly hasn't just gone away, Wikipedia:Eras is stirring again. Please drop by, read the newly revamped projet page, and discuss your opinions on the project talk page. Thanks! -GTBacchus(talk) 06:10, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Possible expansion of WP:CSD, R2

WP:CSD R2 provides for speedy deletion of redirects that point into User space from the main article space. Is there some reason why we couldn't/shouldn't expand this to cover all redirects pointing into user space that emerge from other namespaces? → Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 18:18, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any, then? I can't see a reason why not, other than having to stage a ridiculous vote. [[Sam Korn]] 18:33, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? → Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 11:57, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Solution to Vandalism?

Hello,

Perhaps this has already been suggested, but I didn't find it so I might as well offer it.

I think most of us will agree that some edits are better than others whether in terms of factuality, grammar, spelling, or vandalism. Therefore, I suggest a mechanism to try and address this issue.

Imagine a system of ratings, whereby a user's edits are graded by their peers. With such a system, you could configure your view into Wiki to show the latest post on an article for which the poster's rating exceeds some threshold choosen by the viewer. In this way, you would presumeablely be shielded from vandalism since I imagine any such posts are either anonymous or by a user with a low rating in this proposed system. You might combine the rating a person receives on their posts together with the number of edits they have made to produce a more reliable number. That is a person with only one excellent post would not rate as high as a person with 100 posts that average good by their peers. It might make sense to weight the system such that users with high rankings count more in their opinion of others to avoid robotic vandalism where the robot creates many accounts that rank themselves high.

This might allow us to keep the ability of non-registered users of creating new articles, as such articles would probably be filtered out by the default settings a viewer would normally use.

What do others think?

Thanks.

WilliamKF 01:42, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with that solution is that most vandals, such as myself, are unconcerned with our reputations, and pretty much carry out most of our vandalism within 20 or 30 minutes of our first edits, we generally expect to be blocked before the end of that period of time, making such a safeguard, useless, the only exception are the long term troll, and pagemove vandal, both are a sorry bunch, who will devote many days, weeks, years to skillfully crafting an identity, only to blow everyone out of the water by going on a vandalism spree, of course the plus side to pagemove vandalism is that it always gets blamed on willy, so you're pretty much off the hook, ideally a well prepared vandal has at least 11 standby user names, should the need arise, now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to create template:penis and insert it on as many user pages as I can find--Ropo 02:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to see why we need help in fighting vandalism, you just saw exhibit A. He announces he's going to do this. And then over the next 15 minutes, he did exactly what he said he was going to do and no one caught him until I noticed that he had hit John Kerry. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 02:25, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Untrue - I spotted him on the VP and went straight to block the standby user names he mentioned, joined by Titoxd and Pathoschild. W00T! Check out the Ipblocklist, I hit the jackpot! Radiant_>|< 02:41, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


But I fail to see how this would not deal with so-called vandalism? Vandals could continue their pranks to their heart's desire, and other users could see the content they desire. Why you could even imagine that a person's rating varies by the viewer akin to the movie rating system as seen on netflix. A person who likes to see vandalized pages might rank vandals highly and thus see those kinds of edits and block out what to another person is a good edit. For that matter, one could view as vandalism what another views as a good edit. Users could tailor their view to meet their desires. In this way we would avoid one groups so called objective view of what is good from being imposed upon the rest. Each so called group getting their own view of each page. WilliamKF 02:43, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Because there's no such thing as "posts" on a wiki. --Brion 03:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
But there are revisions, and you could select the latest revision with a predicted rating that exceeds a threshold you set. Editors would work from latest, viewers need not. WilliamKF

Notability

What is the status of notability on Wikipedia? Does something or someone have to be notable in order to be included here? Wikipedia:Notability says "[t]here is currently no official policy on notability". However, WP:CSD permits the deletion of "non-notable biography". Isn't this contradictory? What is the official position? JoaoRicardotalk 02:24, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • WP:CSD is correct. Precedent on our deletion pages gives a strong indication that articles on unremarkable subjects can be and are deleted. Of course what exactly constitutes notability is the subject on much debate (which is what Wikipedia:Notability refers to). See Template:IncGuide for details. Radiant_>|< 02:43, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:GNAA deletion policy

I've come up with a proposal that is designed to balance the need for review of failed AFDs with the desire for finality. Please see the above page and comment. Firebug 03:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Information about Religion, Christianity forbidden?

I've gotten a severe problem with Zoe over the Wahine Volleyball article. With only one warning, Zoe is threatening to ban me over stating that the Wahine Volleyball team players are mostly Christians due to the nature of the playing scheduel. Can I get some clarification if it's not allowed to mention information about players beliefs? Or was Zoe way out of line in impossing the no Christinaity limitataion?--Masssiveego 06:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Is it particularly relevant to understanding the team that they are mostly Christian? Depending on where a team is, there's a good chance it's mostly Christian purely by nature of the population pool it draws from. Can you provide sources to demonstrate the claim that they are mostly Christian? If not, it might be difficult to justify putting what's essentially speculation into an article. In the general case, I don't think information about religion is forbidden on Wikipedia -- this is one of the better places to get information, being an encyclopedia. Religion isn't, however, relevant to every article. --Improv 15:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Only one warning? I've been warning you since you first put the article up. Your edit is constantly being deleted, and not just by me. And why did you feel the need to bring this here instead of discussing it with me? Zoe (216.234.130.130 18:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]

Please note on my talk page.

Warning number one.

"Please don't reinsert the religious bigotry into the Wahine Volleyball article again. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:10, 10 December 2005 (UTC)"

I reword the edits to state the reason, why this Christianity is prevelant in this team. Just because an edit is deleted, has no signficance in itself, it does not mean it's wrong, I just have to either prove my facts better as there is always the possiblity of human error overlooking the merit of my edits.

Final Warning.. This is your last warning. The next time you vandalize a page, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. User:Zoe|(talk) 04:08, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I consider final warning to be different from first warning, and I read the policy is 3 warnings for vandalism. First warning has no wording of Vandalism, the "final warning" does. The first warning in my interpretation was to say, a requirement for a more NPOV, not a warning that this was vandalism. For zoe To automatically recieve a final vandalism warning was a surprise, a shock, and a problem as I cannot safetly edit the article after that. However I agree I failed to support my facts strongly enough, Ashley Watanabe is a strong Christian, as is virtually the Volleyball team. They ALL are on local television news all the time, in way way or another praising Jesus for their victories. This was the same for the team for the last 5 years as far as I can tell. All 100% christians. This is a significant fact in my opinion that says it's almost an requirement to be Christian to be on this team. The problem is I'm having the problem finding the articles that states exactly that for the last 5 years. However I do have single articles that state Christian beliefs from single players time to time, such as Ashley Watanabe, Susie Boogaard, and Victoria Prince directly attesting to a christian belief, of that they "accepted Jesus". I'm just having a problem going player by player when somebody deleted my bio sheet that I was working on that would had the player by player religous beliefs stated toward the media. However if I'm wrong for putting that kind of information in the article, I would like to know where the policy is and where I can read about it to avoid future mistakes of putting in "bad" information, such as Christianity. --Masssiveego 19:38, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is no policy. If I had thought your edits were egregiously bad enough, I would have blocked you the first time. But you seem to be more interested in arguing that somehow being Christian makes you a better volleyball player, intead of explaining why you think it's important to know that the team's members are Christians. What does somebody in a non-religious setting having "accepted Jesus" have to do with anything? It's gratuitous. I'll repeat -- put it back in without some sort of context in which the information is necessary, and you will be blocked. Zoe (216.234.130.130 21:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]
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