User talk:DGG

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About: your eloquent summary of what does and does not improves this project

Hi DGG, or if I may be so bold, David,
You wrote at WP:AN/I Archive691: <block quote>There is more than one valid way of working here. Some people prefer to create only high quality articles, even though they may do very few of them. Some prefer to create many verifiable articles of clear notability even though they may not be of initially high quality. As this is a communal project, I think every individual person is fully entitled to do whichever they prefer, and the thing to do about people who prefer otherwise than oneself is to let them work their way, while you work yours. The only choice which is not productive is to argue about how to do it, rather than going ahead in the way that one finds suitable.</block quote> Many editors include a statement about their attitudes to editing on their user pages. I am not one of them, that is until I came across what you wrote. I would really like to include this on my user page. While I can add anything at all I like to my user page subject to WP:USER PAGE, I nevertheless ask for your permission to add the quote. OK with you? I'm fine if you decline this.
--Shirt58 (talk) 12:37, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Of course. DGG ( talk ) 21:04, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

May I have your input, please?

It appears that a couple users are trying to implement the restriction of new articles to autoconfirmed users from the recent RfC (please refer to this bugzilla thread). I'm not certain that everything is in place to start that restriction. The closing admin specifically mentioned a few conditions. <block quote>the discussion also showed consensus for making (unspecified) improvements to the Article Wizard and giving more attention to the Articles for Creation process.</block quote> and

Almost everyone who commented on it seems to think that the Article Wizard can and should be improved. There were also repeated concerns about making sure that the Articles for Creation process gets more attention so it does not become clogged and proposed articles get the improvements they need. Participants on both sides of the discussion agreed on these points.

As you wrote the key dissenting view, would you mind looking in to this situation and then providing your input to this conversation with the WMF staff? Thank you for your consideration. Cogitating (talk) 07:51, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I see your comment there and I agree with you, and will say as much, but I am also going to say that I do not think the WMF can or should prevent the community from doing something like this. I've consistently opposed their interference in our content beyond the minimum legal necessities, and I've opposed some of the policies resulting from it, such as the excessively stringent NFCC restrictions beyond the requirements of copyright law, and the adoption of a BLP policy that permits use to suppress unfavorable but well-sourced articles on significant subjects, and is potentially destructive of NPOV. I saw their attempt last year to impose a policy of restricting sexual images, which was only reduced to some degree of reason by a change in board membership. I see their willingness to encourage a mechanism within Wikipedia to facilitate outside censorship; again, the only thing which has kept this from being not just encouraged but required, was a change in board membership. This will be a recurrent issue. I oppose using them as a court of final appeal for issues within Wikipedia, and shall continue to do so. This far outweighs almost any individual issue. Even though we may decide wrong, at least letting the WP community decide gives freedom of action to the individual Wikipedias to have divergent policies, and thus allows experiment even in sensitive areas, which is the only way to prevent stagnation. IMO, this applies both to the board and to the programmers. I opposed the introduction by the programmers of a crude and unscientific system of article rating, and their willingness to expand it, without each time getting explicit consent of the community. It has nonetheless apparently been accepted by the community, and I am not sure it is worth the effort to involve myself in its improvement. I opposed their attempt to introduce a deficient version of vector as the default, similarly--at least then, so did much of the community, and we were at least able to get it improved significantly.

Yes, I consider the introduction of this feature a potential disaster. I expect to see the number of incoming editors fall precipitously even below its present unsatisfactory level, as soon as it is implemented, and possibly not recover even after the trial has stopped. The attraction of being able to make an article is one of the primary motivating factors for editing. It is however possible that I have misjudged, and the proven discouraging effect of the extremely negative comments that new editors encounter is even worse, and the decrease in this might counterbalance the negative effects of not being able to immediately start an article. The only effective thing I can do in this case is to try to persuade people to diminish the length of the trial, and try to find ways of working with new editors despite the constraints, and, perhaps, try to keep fewer promising articles from being rejected via the article creation process--at present, too many of the few people working there insist on a good quality, rather than just an acceptable article.

Sometimes a cause is lost. I opposed the use of BLP Prod, but it was adopted, and my experiences at prod patrol indicate it has had at most a trivial beneficial effect, as everything it properly deletes would and would have been deleted anyway. and a considerable negative one, as it leads to many deletions of articles on people who could have been sourced had anyone experienced here had the time & incentive to do it under a deadline--and it has not noticeably decreased the number of incoming unsourced BLP articles. I've given up on getting rid of it, even though it takes a good deal of my time to prevent whatever percentage of inappropriate deletions I manage, and thus has decreased my participation in other things, such as just this sort of policy discussion.

Sometimes opposition can be effective, as with patrolled changes. I certainly opposed it, and when it became clear it would be adopted supported those who successfully limited it to a trial and to a limited range of articles. The community , upon seeing among other things that those using it did not limit the trial to the intended purpose, ended up by rejecting it, at least in its present form. (The community asked the developers to improve it for another trial, and the developers, not unreasonably, were unwilling to do the amount of work involved if it was going to be to be rejected in the end, as they I think correctly foresaw it would be.) DGG ( talk ) 18:14, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

• Opinion needed: as you've been involved in the messy Avaya MfD's, do you think there's a better way to handle them? Like freezing the similar MfD's and link them to one general? I don't know. I'm just guessing, OR is the matter that each product needs to be viewed separately to see its individual notability? Thanks is advance... ~ AdvertAdam ^talk 20:04, 17 August 2011 (UTC

I'm sure I've seen you reference this essay

WP:TALKINGSOFASTNOBODYCANHEARYOU. Is my memory that faulty? I can't find it, and it's possible the syntax isn't precise. Did you use this a sort of irony? I seem to remember you used the link to represent bullying behaviors. I'm seeing one such user who seems to be wanting to turn the entire AfD process on its head by using such a technique. BusterD (talk) 11:48, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I have sometimes used pseudo-links like these as a statement for their own sake, without writing an actual essay. I remember saying something like this, but I can't find it. I think this one was TALKINGSOMUCH... -- but I can't find it either. As for the problem, I've commented pretty extensively at AN/I: [1], and will comment at the RfC also, But please don't confuse the reasonable message, with which I am in agreement -- that Deletion Policy is overbalanced towards deletion, and one step towards rebalancing it would be to require some version of WP:BEFORE -- with the unreasonable way it is being over-expressed. DGG ( talk ) 23:23, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, David. I was a debater in school before "talking so fast" became the current style. I feel anything which games the system deserves appropriate response in order to keep the system sound. I appreciate your valid concern about deletion procedures being over-weighted toward one outcome. Thanks for your valuable comments in those forums. Be well. BusterD (talk) 23:37, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, I had forgotten that context. And so was I,in college--a very valuable experience, especially in facilitating the sort of intercampus experiences only the athletic teams otherwise gave occasion for. But the stimulus is interesting: if I take a turn at NPP, the amount of junk turns me for a while into a deletionist before I catch myself and stop being so unfriendly to all the newcomers. If I take a look at AfD, the number of unwarranted nominations makes me want to give a similarly snappy and unjust response to all of them, with the less than rational thought that if I argue against all of them, maybe there's a chance the good ones will make it. Several good inclusionists have run into trouble here falling into such temptation. DGG ( talk ) 23:58, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

uw templates

FYI. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you and I with our combined experience could go a long way to help develop this. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:52, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Ping about Wikipedia talk:WikiProject user warnings/Testing

Hi! If you still have suggestions for any of the 9 listed as "in-progress" at WP:UWTEST, please drop a note on the talk page for that template. We're going to start the new test now and would rather not change the templates in the middle, but it's easy to do a new test or simply incorporate changes afterward, since all we need is a week or so of data. I'm interested to see what you'd like to do, because my feeling is "the shorter the better" on these warnings. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:21, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Guide to information sources

This seems a bit strange to me. The one reference that I can access does not even mention the term "Guide to information sources". Perhaps it should be moved or redirected to a more suitable article? --Crusio (talk) 06:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

it's an appropriate article; I'm not sure there is a really standard term. The one I used in teaching was guides to the literature. The most common beginning words of the titles of such books is however, A guide to information sources in (subject), In any case, it can be much expanded, and I will do so: I know of over a hundred, many in multiple editions. Perhaps it should be List of guides to information sources, because dozens of them are notable individually--there will be substantial reviews for most of them; or perhaps not, because there are some that should be included but may not be, and, more important, I don't immediately want to write all the articles. DGG ( talk ) 16:06, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Testing those alternate templates you made

Hey, just a heads up we prepared the user warnings you made. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject user warnings/Testing#Suggestions at the end. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:55, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:UWTEST members update

Hi, you're getting this message because you signed up to receive updates at WP:UWTEST, the task force on testing of user warnings and other notifications.

Here's what we're up to lately:

• Huggle: There are tests still running in Huggle of level 1 templates, including a new template written by DGG. A full list is available here
• SDPatrolBot: There is a new test running on the talk page messages of SDPatrolBot, which warns people who remove CSD templates. (Documentation of the test is here.)
• Twinkle: We've proposed a test of AFD and PROD notifications delivered via Twinkle, which has been positively received. (See: 1, 2) This test should start this week.
• Shared and dynamic IPs: Maryana's proposal to test the effect of regularly archiving shared/dynamic IP talk pages is in its final stages. There are also two relevant bot flag requests: 1, 2
• XLinkBot: the herders of XLinkBot have approved a test of its warning messages concerning external links. Test templates are being written and help is most welcome.

Thanks for your help and support, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 02:39, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

A tool for you!

Hi DGG! I've just come across one of your edits (or that you have been patrolling new pages), and noticed that you might appreciate some help with references.

I case you're not aware, you might consider using this tool – it makes your life a whole heap easier, by filling in complete citation templates for your links. All you do is install the script:

// Add [[WP:Reflinks]] launcher in the toolbox on left
addOnloadHook(function () {
 addPortletLink(
  "p-tb",     // toolbox portlet
  "http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/webreflinks.py/" + wgPageName 
   + "?client=script&citeweb=on&overwrite=&limit=30&lang=" + wgContentLanguage,
  "Reflinks"  // link label
)});

onto Special:MyPage/skin.js, then paste the bare URL between your <ref></ref> tabs, and you'll find a clickable link called Reflinks in your toolbox section of the page (probably in the left hand column). Then click that tool. It does all the rest of the work (provided that you remember to save the page! It doesn't work for everything (particularly often not for PDF documents), but for pretty much anything ending in "htm" or "html" (and with a title) it will do really, really well. You may consider taking on Category:Articles needing link rot cleanup. So long! --Sp33dyphil © • © 07:24, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Moonriddengirl's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

WP:UWTEST update

Hi DGG,

We're currently busy designing some new tests, and we need your feedback/input!

1. ImageTaggingBot - a bot that warns users who upload images but don't provide adequate source or license information (drafts here)
2. CorenSearchBot - a bot that warns users who copy-paste text from external websites or other Wikipedia articles (drafts here)

We also have a proposal to test new "accepted," "declined," and "on-hold" templates at Articles for Creation (drafts here). The discussion isn't closed yet, so please weigh in if you're interested.

Thanks for your help! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 01:25, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Scholar Indices and Impact

Could you perhaps have a look at this article and the remarks I made at this talk page and tell me what you think? Thanks! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 22:36, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

commented there. DGG ( talk ) 20:32, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Academy of Achievement

Hi there DGG, you were recently involved, briefly, on the discussion page about an organization called Academy of Achievement. Prior to November, it was much too promotional; at present, I think the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, as I've explained in a note on the article's discussion page—and as I see you warned in your previous note on the same page. I think I endorse your viewpoint that an EduCap article could be created to address its controversies, but the treatment it is given here represents a clear case of coatracking.

It's worth noting that I've been engaged by the Academy to help resolve the matter; in hopes of doing so efficiently, I've prepared a proposed replacement (in my user space here) that I hope presents an acceptable compromise, or a workable starting point. Hope you can join in discussion on that Talk page. Cheers, WWB Too (talk) 18:33, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm looking for your advice : Speedy / deletion on request

Hi, DGG. I came across a A7 speedy tag at James E. Wise, Jr. and declined it as the subject looked notable at a cursory glance. A7 makes no mention of notability and I don't understand why. Are we to ignore notability if the other conditions of A7 are met? I may be overlooking something basic, but I don't see the utility in deleting articles about notable subjects because the creator requests deletion. (In this specific instance it wasn't a request so much as it was acquiescence). Anyway, thanks for your time...I hope things are well with you. Tiderolls 05:23, 13 January 2012 (UTC) I considered posting this at WT:CSD but was sure the subject had, most likely been discussed there previously and I was too lazy to search the archives. Mea culpa.

1. The rule for speedy is that the article will be deleted in the subject shows no indication of importance of significance, which I think of as meaning that nobody in good faith who understood the purpose of Wikipedia would think there should be an article. Notability is more than this. Any subject that is notable will certainly be important or significant, while a great many things that may have some good-faith importance will still not be notable. When I first came here, I asked the same question you are asking, and suggested clarifying this by saying importance or significance or notability. The answer I was given by those of more experience is that it is better to avoid using the word "notable" entirely in defining A7, because it will inevitably lead to people asking an article be deleted because of no demonstration of notability, which is asking too much--only the community can decide notability, whether passively at WP:PROD or actively at AfD. Admins have views on this that are too diverse for them alone to be trusted, and notability can in many cases be pretty nebulous. But if something is totally insignificant, we pretty much all agree, and speedy A7 is therefore limited to the types of things we all normally agree on.
2. Personally, I think we should never have ever adopted the word "notability". It operationally has a meaning peculiar to us, what is called a "term of art", meaning only the question whether there should be a separate Wikipedia article; I think we should be deciding how much coverage to give the subjects that are of different grades of importance: varying from none at all, to a complex set of related articles. But people here like what might appear to be simple yes-no distinctions——but then they find themselves quarreling endlessly about everything anywhere near what they thought was a clear the borderline.
3. As for deletion by request of the author of the article, although Wikipedia contributions are licensed irrevocably, sometime people change their mind, and it is good practice to show understanding. If the reason is not immediately obvious to me, I ignore such requests or ask for a reason. Very often though it makes sense, and we don't want to embarrass people by a public discussion. Sometimes it's because the author realizes the difficulty of writing an adequate article, and doesn't want an inadequate one to stand. Sometimes, the author is not convinced it will hold up at AfD, and would rather avoid a very public process about it--our AfD process is apt to make a mountain out a a molehill. (In this case, guessing from the author's talk p., I think both reasons apply.)
4. As for the article in question, he's an author of multiple books that have been published by a reputable publisher and are fairly widely held in libraries-- see WorldCat Identities; if they have substantial reviews, he meets WP:AUTHOR. However, depending on the extent of the reviews, the books seem rather routine, and that publisher, while often publishing books of very high quality and significance, also sometimes publishes works of quite minor importance. If someone brought it to AfD, there are others things I'd think better worth the effort of defending. DGG ( talk ) 06:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PAGG stack

I've closed the AfD and redirected the article to The 4-Hour Body. You commented that there's a possibility for a content merge, feel free to go ahead now. Deryck C. 22:17, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll take a look after the blackout. DGG ( talk ) 01:21, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Internet service

I know you said back in December you were trying to get your Internet service worked out so you could restore User:Alden Loveshade/Anaphora Literary Press. Any luck with that? Alden Loveshade (talk) 06:05, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Update: new user warning test results available

Hi WP:UWTEST member, we wanted to share a quick update on the status of the project. Here's the skinny:

1. We're happy to say we have a new round of testing results available! Since there are tests on several Wikipedias, we're collecting all results at the project page on Meta. We've also now got some help from Wikimedia Foundation data analyst Ryan Faulkner, and should have more test results in the coming weeks.
2. Last but not least, check out the four tests currently running at the documentation page.

Thanks for your interest, and don't hesitate to drop by the talk page if you have a suggestion or question. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:17, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Primary sources

I'm finding more and more that newbies are misunderstanding about when primary sources are acceptable, or even if they are acceptable at all.

I started a look at some policy and guideline pages, but through typical over editing (such pages are typically edited/developed due to some current event or other), the primary sources explanations seem a bit watered down and too vague.

If you wouldn't mind, would you a.) help me find any and all pages relating to primary sources, and b.) would you be willing to help write a stand alone guideline concerning them, to better help editors understand usage and so forth? - jc37 02:09, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

There is no simple guideline. partly because there is no definition of "primary sources" that applies to all types of subjects, and party because the possible uses of them in Wikipedia are very various. Attempts to write one are what have generated the present state of confusion. Just a few example example: to a historian, a newspaper is a primary source, because it is used as the data about which histories are written. To us it is a secondary source, because it's an professionally written and edited responsible covering of the events. To a biologist, a journal reporting research is a primary journal, as distinct from a journal that published review articles, but the actual primary source is the lab notebook. A historian of science studies both it and the publications as primary sources for the history. The same source can be both primary and secondary: an appellate court decision is both: it's the primary source for the wording of the decision, but it's a secondary source, and a highly reliable one, for the facts of the case and the appropriate precedents. In literature, the primary source is the work being discussed; the secondary source is the discussion, but the discussion is a primary source for the thoughts of the scholar in an biography of the scholar. For a fictional work, the work itself is, though primary, the best source for the facts of the plot, because it is more detailed and accurate than anything that may be based on it; for interpretation of motives, if not obvious, a wecondary source discussing the work must be used--but there is not clear distinction about what is sufficiently obvious. The practical distinction for Wikipedia is that primary sources which cannot be used as such except as illustrations are those that require interpretation, because we do not do interpretation, which is original research. A textbook is often given as an example of a tertiary source, being based mostly on review articles; but advanced textbooks usually discuss the actual research article themselves to a considerable extent. And some textbooks, like Knuth's books on TeX and Metafont, are actually the primary sources, because the material presented there was never discussed previously and is of his own invention--unless one wishes to consider the program coe as the primary source.

In any given situation at Wikipedia , the guideline however written will always require interpretation, and the authoritative place for interpretation is WP:RSN--even though the individual interpretations may be contradict each other; just as the authoritative determination of notability is Deletion Reviews, even though different discussions may contradict each other. An encyclopedia is not a machine-written summary, but a work of creative human judgment about what to include, how to source it, and how to present it. The concept that we just repeat what the sources say in a proportionate way is overly simplistic: it helps teach beginners the principles, but does not actually decide any non-trivial cases. The examples which makes that clearest are the unfortunate widespread use of selective quotation and cherry-icking in controversial articles. I'll get things started by copying this into an essay. DGG ( talk ) 02:39, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Looks like a very good start.

Due to some of the issues you note, I think I'm going to ask a few others to also help. (User:Black Falcon in particular I have found is great when it comes to policy/guideline page creation/editing, as well.) - jc37 02:47, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I suspect there will not be complete agreement; but since RS is a guideline explaining the details of the fundamental policy WP:V, the practical course will be to indicate the accepted range of variation rather than try to find an actual single wording--attempts at that are usually either vague, or do not actually have the claimed consensus, because different people go on to interpret it their own way regardless of what gets written. (yes, I propose that as a general approach to writing guidelines) DGG ( talk ) 04:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Ever get around to copying this into an essay yet? : ) - jc37 14:53, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I have just seen your extremely helpful reply above and, as I was reading it, I thought it would be well worth making into an essay. I am glad you think so too! Coming from a scientific background I had no difficulty in understanding that WP "original research" was merely a term of wikispeak and that "verifiability" is such an odd word that it could have no obvious connotation. However, it took me a long time to realise that, when people were saying "primary", "secondary" or "tertiary", they were meaning something quite unlike anything I had understood. Thincat (talk) 19:35, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, I will try this weekend. But "verifiability" is a relatively straightforward concept: it means the material in the article must be able to be shown accurate by published sources. We have no way of judging what is really true , because we have no research capability, and few editors with the recognized professional standing to check submissions by academic standards. We therefore rely on outsiders to do that, in publications that have editorial supervision. Whether we "should have such editors and give them authority is a rather complicated question & I'm going to incorporate some material I wrote for Foundation-L about this problem. (My view, briefly, is that we should not do so, but rather go as far as we can the way we have been working. There is a need for an comprehensive freely available encyclopedia with proper scholarly editing, but I don't think our methods can produce one. If it is tried, it should be as a separate project, but the experience at Citizendium has been very discouraging. The most problematic questions are: who will pick the experts?, and , what if they disagree?. DGG ( talk ) 19:39, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

On newbies and deletion

Hey David. Just saw your comments on the Village Pump thread about AfD etc. and wanted to say:

1. Thank you for the thoughtful commentary
2. I agree with you about requiring more human communication. If you want to talk about actually making that happen, then let's talk. But in the meantime we're trying to slowly but surely improve those related notifications, and your feedback on the work so far would be welcome here (See "templates tested" for a look at the different messages).

We have some very clear recommendations for next tries at new notifications for both PROD and AFD, which we will be publishing in a more succinct list soon. (Notes are on Meta, if you're interested.)

Thanks again, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:38, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

yes, I'll get back there. But as you can see from the item just above,I do not have the luxury of being able to concentrate on any one thing here. sometimes everything appears equally important. And, as you can also see from the line it italics there, everything seems inter-related. We can't improve articles without more people. We can't get more people unless we fix our processes of working with articles. We can't stop to fix our processes when there are so many urgently needed specific actions such as the flood of promotionalism. So I try to work by turns everywhere. DGG ( talk ) 22:21, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, it's our unique chicken and egg problem. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:29, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

anyway.  Tonkie (talk) 20:55, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Remarks about an -imho- overactive NewPagePatroller

Hi DGG,
I saw that you were involved in a Speedy Deletion Nomination (SDN) on the article about Csongor István Nagy from User Lovehongkong. The SDN came from User:DreamFieldArts, and he had also nominated my article on the former CEO of ABN AMRO where he was the main driver for the sell-off of the bank to a consortium of banks: Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Fortis and Banco Santander. This sale was one of the additional reasons why both RBS as well as Fortis collapsed at the beginning of the Banking problems - leading to the current economic downturn in the US and Europe. Although DFA did remove the SDN when I started a discussion with him I do have problems with his attitude.

I really don't think he is the right person for NPPer. In my initial mail to him (or her - didn't check) I made the comment that Rijkman Groenink might not be known in the US and he directly reacts as stung by a wasp with: The fact that you believe everyone in America is a 13 year-old girl is depressing. None the less he is on the Netherlands Wikipedia because he has some importance to it, while on the English he has none. Even if he does, (I have been proven wrong) have some significance, it is not needed. Many people have done what he has, but aren't on Wikipedia

Another problem that I do have is that he deletes comments made on his Talk page (I had to search really good to find back the Deletion request Rijman Groenink version where he made above comment, and also came later with an explination why Kevin O'Leary is notable and Rijkman Groenink wouldn't be (Kevin O'Leary is also Shark in TV program Shark Tank (see THIS version of his Talk page) (also note the difference in the entire Talk page taking into account that there are only 2 hours between those two pages)).

According to himself he hardly ever uses the SDN process, but when you look at his contributions many SDN's can be seen. And his Talk page only consists of SDN comments (there aren't that many on his Talk page as he deleted older/completed discussion threads on his Talk page. (and worse: he removes text in current threads). There is also a formal Mediation request from User: Bill shannon in regards to DFA. (ah: you are in on that as well)

But what struck me the most was his 'its my job and it will never change' statement (not sure if it is still at his current talk page - but if not you can find it HERE (comment: That's my job, and it will never change. DreamFieldArts 13:39, 26 February 2012 (UTC))

After that point in time I also can be blamed for coming close to personal attack: although I do think that it must be clear that I'm exaggerating and being sarcastic; but I started to loose my patience and could hardly believe what I was reading.

I do refer to the 5 pillars of Wiki, and especially Assume Good Faith: and also with DFA I do assume that he is just doing his best but if he truly thinks that his role as NPPer is the same as a teacher who rips up a paper made by one of his students because it is crap I really don't think he is fit for the job. If my first article had been controlled by DFA I probably would have stopped contributing anything to Wiki ever again. He even tells that he has experienced the same thing, so he knows the feeling, and in the same sentence he says it his his job to 'rip up a paper' and say that it 'is crap'.

I do appreciate that DGG is not the nicest job in the world; but I do think that a NPPer should be very aware about 'new users' (I'm not in that catagory: but as he doesn't seem to do much research when he nominates a SD - other then on articles about persons to check if they had a TV show on top of their 'main' job....); so I can hardly imagine that he checks if the user who wrote the article he nominates for SD is a new user or not.

Could you as (far more) experienced Wikipedian give him some good guidelines and tips: as said, I do assume that DFA handles in good faith: but the way he is working now is really not healthy. Thanks a lot, Tonkie (talk) 20:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Ah: I see that you already contacted him and that he did extensively answered to your comments. Thanks :-)

While I was writing above letter to you I did see that you already contacted him on his role as NPPer but because above text was nearing completion I decided to post in

Thanks...

...for your contribution to the article NXIVM!Chrisrus (talk) 17:10, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Colonel Warden

Apologies if you are already aware, but I though you would like to know that Colonel Warden is the victim of a highly unjustified and unreasonable indefinite block. There is a discussion about this on the ANI board: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Colonel Warden.Rangoon11 (talk) 15:02, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

he's now been unblocked by another ed., with essentially unanimous agreement; it now remains to deal with the admin doing the block. I am a little puzzled, because much though I disagree with that admin both in detail and general approach to Wikipedia, this is much weirder on several levels than anything I recall from any admin: blatant involvement; incident 8 days old; block for a reason given in deprodding when any deprod reason is acceptable; block for the reason being false when it was both technically correct and totally justified; continuing lack of understanding that it was wrong; intention of the admin to continue to pursue the grievance against the editor; continuing violation of NPA even in the discussion. DGG ( talk ) 22:10, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes all very odd. And the endless comments about "deceit" on the ANI have merely served to confirm beyond any possible doubt that there is a highly personal aspect to all of this. The individual in question has obviously never heard, or at least heeded, the phrase "when you're in a hole, stop digging". Rangoon11 (talk) 00:32, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Please help out at the Paid Editor Help page

While not a huge backlog yet, we're getting to it on the Paid Editor Help page. The sections that need replies include Colin Digiaro, Guy Bavli, Strayer University, Stevens Institute of Technology, and a general backlog in the Request Edits category. If you could help in any of these sections (primarily the first four), I would be really grateful. This notification is going out to a number of Wikiproject Cooperation members in the hopes that we can clear out all of the noted sections. And feel free to respond to a section and help out even if someone else had already responded there. The more eyes we get on a specific request, the more sure we can be on the neutrality of implementing it. Thanks! Silverseren^C 03:25, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your help. We need more members to be involved on the Paid Editor Help page if we're ever going to get that process to work. Silverseren^C 01:20, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

New page patrolling; DreamFieldArts

As per your discussion with me at 01:29, on 9 March 2012 (UTC), you said, "I am giving you a two week ban, running through March 23, from new page patrol, from page moves without clear prior consensus, and from tagging articles for deletion except in cases of clear vandalism or copyvio." I took this very seriously, as I knew I was doing something extremely wrong. Knowing the only thing I could do was to just stop new page patrolling, as that seemed to be where the problem was diverting from. As I have read from some of your discussions^{1, 2, 3}, you say that I am doing much "better at my job," and Tonkie agreed with this statement, and I felt very complacent about it. Since I am becoming better at what I am doing on here, on 00:01, 23 March 2012 (UTC) I will reclaim my position as a new page patroller. Even though I am very avid about being able to be a new page patroller again, I know I need to be careful about what I do. Now for the first few days, I will patrol lightly, until I feel that by success rate is 95% or higher. Being a new page patroller on Wikipedia is a very important job, and should be taken seriously. With out new page patrollers, there would be havoc on here. (spam, hoaxs, etc.) If you believe that I have done one thing wrong, please do not hesitate to tell me, and to handle the situation appropriately. DreamFieldArts^Talk 21:57, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I really appreciate that you let me know, and I'll keep in touch with what you do. Remember that part of the job is to not miss the really major problems. Many promotional articles are in fact copyvios, and that's always a sound reason for deletion. A page marked as patrolled without sufficient checking is worse than not patrolling it. DGG ( talk ) 22:12, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Education Under Fire

Hi. Is it time to reconsider a stand alone article? See Baha'i_Institute_for_Higher_Education#Education_Under_Fire probably from the "Developing a response" section. EUF is by far the primary response but there have been others. Smkolins (talk) 12:09, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

why ask for trouble? DGG ( talk ) 02:22, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me there is an imbalance in the article - it's about BIHE yet a good half is about responding to the persecution about BIHE. And the content on the response is sufficient for it's own article. No? Smkolins (talk) 10:50, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

A.L.A. catalog

In case you didn't see this, a new article you might be interested in. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 11:06, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Stella Parton discography

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Strayer University

On Talk:Strayer University, you mentioned that you wanted to make some edits to the draft version created by Hamilton83 found at User:Hamilton83/my sandbox. Were you still planning to make those changes? Would you like some time to do that, or is it okay if I move over draft into mainspace? Qwyrxian (talk) 13:17, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll get there today. DGG ( talk ) 17:12, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Not yet ready--see my comments there. DGG ( talk ) 19:19, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Strayer University

DGG, I saw your note last week that you intended to return to the Strayer University draft this weekend: have you had a chance to look yet at my response to your questions on the Strayer University Talk page? I have made some updates to the draft based on your feedback. Let me know what you think. --Hamilton83 (talk) 17:19, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

tonight. DGG ( talk ) 18:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool updates

Hey all. My regular(ish) update on what's been happening with the new Article Feedback Tool.

New designs and office hours

Our awesome designers have been making some new logos for the feedback page :) Check out the oversighter view and the monitor view to get complete coverage; all opinions, comments and suggestions are welcome on the talkpage :).

We've also been working on the Abuse Filter plugin for the tool; this will basically be the same as the existing system, only applied to comments. Because of that, we're obviously going to need slightly different filters, because different things will need to be blocked :).

I'm pretty sure that's it; if I've missed anything or you have any additional queries, don't hesitate to contact me! Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:48, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

List of Golden Plate Awardees Article

Hi DGG. I received your message about recommending the Golden Plate list article for deletion. Please tell me what the G11 criterion is upon which you rely. Before posting the article, I researched Lists policies, which appeared consistent with this article. So I need to see specifically what you are referring to. ThanksCoaster92 (talk) 03:38, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I consider it promotional for the A of A. This is to some extent a holistic judgement, requiring looking at the overall effect of the article. Remember, I did not nominate it for speedy, but left it for the community. They will either agree with me, or they won't, and that will decide the issue. While we're talking about it , have you any COI with this organization? DGG ( talk ) 03:46, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Lists of self-publishing companies

Inan effort to improve sourcing in our articles, me and a couple other editors have created two lists of self-publishing companies:

• List of self-publishing companies in article space for notable self-publishing houses
• WP:List of self-publishing companies in Wikipedia space for notable and non-notable self-publishing houses

It's our hope that by maintaining such lists, it will be easier for editors to identify self-published books. In a discussion at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia reliability talk page, The Blade of the Northern Lights said that you and another editor know vanity publishers very well.[2] If you can provide any assistance with these two lists, it would be greatly appreciated. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:49, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

a very useful project--it makes sense to have both lists, & I will add to the WP list as I see them, I shall check them both; because these can be considered potentially derogatory listings, they must have good references. It may be necessary to qualify the statements in some cases. DGG ( talk ) 01:40, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Quest, that is an excellent idea; DGG, that is an excellent caveat. BTW, Cambridge Scholars Publishing wants to publish the proceedings of your last faculty meeting/conference/Jane Austen Book Club. You'll get a letter on really nice looking letterhead in the next week or two. Quest, this goes for you as well. And for everyone, really. Drmies (talk) 04:11, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

National Youth Strings Academy

COuld you look at the contributors to that article, and block or ask for name changes or protect or whatever? I'm plum out of time today but people editing the National Youth Strings Academy (NYSA) page with NYSA in their usernames seems like a problem. Note though, that i haven't looked closely enough to see if its good faith, bad result, or simply promotion. Also, if it's now good enough, feel free to take off my prod. TY. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:20, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't see they understand about usernames, so I tried to explain it to them--on the articvle talk p, & their individual ones also. There is currently no usable sources for notability in the article, but given the very distinguished sponsorship, it needs a further search. I'll look at it again tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 03:33, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Tropes in Agatha Christie's novels

Hi. Glad the article has been, for now, restored to its former glory. I was thinking about AFDing it as it was worthless as a stub. Unfortunately, while I read almost all her mysteries I don't have most of the actual paperbacks I bought or collected aeons ago. I do have a couple or so paperbacks and I'll do my best. Yours, Quis separabit? 16:55, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I finally found the old paperbacks; there were more than I thought. Is it ISBN#s and page numbers you're needing? Yours, Quis separabit? 20:07, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Self-publishing

Hi, we are still hoping you would make some suggestions on Talk:List_of_self-publishing_companies#evidence. Your help will be appreciated. History2007 (talk) 02:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

haven't forgotten: I will get there tomorrow or this weekend. DGG ( talk ) 05:19, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Stevens Institute of Technology page

Hi DGG, I saw that my original note on your talk page was archived, so I'm adding this to make sure it doesn't get lost from your radar as there is clearly a lot of incoming requests on your page! This is the link to the latest correspondence, ready for your review. Talk:Stevens Institute of Technology#Updating_page_along_guidelines_for_college_and_university_articles

Thank you! QueenCity11 (talk) 14:36, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

haven't forgotten: I will get there tomorrow or this weekend. DGG ( talk ) 05:18, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Great, thank you! QueenCity11 (talk) 21:51, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

"I haven't forgotten. I'll get there soon. DGG ( talk ) 19:18, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the update - very much appreciated! QueenCity11 (talk) 20:00, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I still haven't forgotten. Some discussions this last week were rather long to deal with, & I'm a little behind. DGG ( talk ) 03:48, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

No problem - I appreciate that you have been keeping me posted. Yesterday I spent some time updating dead reference links since Stevens switched over to a new website. Thank you again. QueenCity11 (talk) 13:15, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi DGG -- Just wanted to check if you have a sense of when you may be able to review. I am getting pressed for an update and want to report back with the latest. Thank you again! QueenCity11 (talk) 16:22, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I shall try to get to it this evening. DGG ( talk ) 16:25, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi - Just wanted to check if you think you'll be able to review soon. I appreciate all the help and guidance you have provided thus far. If you would prefer that I look for help from another editor at this point, that is fine - please just let me know. Thank you! QueenCity11 (talk) 11:55, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

A cute kitten for you sir!

Just wanna thank you sir for being unbiased and allowing my page (List of telenovelas of GMA Network) to exist. Again, thank you, sir and God bless:)

Doubledutch781 (talk) 02:40, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Boundary 2

Hi, could you perhaps have a look at this article? Some editors are trying to insert what I think is unsourced and unwarranted assertions, but perhaps I'm wrong. The journal is also included in many databases that, I think, would not include it if it weren't peer-reviewed, although I admit that the journal website doesn't say so explicitly. Your opinion would be welcome. Thanks! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 13:33, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

A Duke University Press humanities journal of extremely high reputation, from the most important US publisher of such journals. As it contains invited manuscripts only, it does not do peer review of submissions. I do not know to what degree the invited material is reviewed and edited--I imagine by the editors themselves, rather than invited peers of the authors. Humanities journals have various variant of editorial control, and this is a not uncommon method . The proper term I think is "Peer review or the equivalent editorial control" DGG ( talk ) 18:12, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

But what do you think of the remark "It is thus a closed, in-house journal. The interests and networks of the editorial board determine what ends up in the issue." that several editors insist on including? That sounds rather negative to me, but each time that I remove it, somebody puts it back. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 18:53, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, just stumbling across this string. How about: "Article selections and other content choices are made by the editorial board." This reminds me of COI issues where bias content needs to be corrected rather than omitted. User:Corporate Minion 03:16, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I know of no journal where "the interests and networks of the editorial board " or even just the editor in chief do not in considerable part determine the contents. The problem is that saying this so directly can easily be misinterpreted by those who have an overly simplistic view of the objectivity of academic journals & my preliminary thought is that King's wording is a good one. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Good point and good suggestion (thanks King!), I have made this change, let's hope it sticks. Thanks! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 16:45, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikimania

Hi DGG. I'm going to try to make it to your session at Wikimania. If Jimmy sticks around after the plenary session and isn't barraged I might see if I can get his feedback on what a paid editor would need to do to not just be tolerated, but seen as an asset to Wikipedia. The unconference would be a good time to meet up. At some point much further down the line I would like to get some form of independent review/assessment on our McKinsey efforts from an uninvolved editor, just to make sure we've all done a great job serving the reader. User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 17:49, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

There seems to be a trend

I'm not saying that you meant what you said, but there appears to be a trend. Northamerica basically said the same thing as you did at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gabriel Pizza which I didn't even nominate for deletion. Uncle G acted like I didn't follow WP:BEFORE at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neurathian bootstrap just because I didn't know that it had other names. Kvng said at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Compojure that I didn't consider merging the non-notable article even though I did. Haus said at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/E&BV Subdivision that he found sources in the same amount of time that it took me to nominate the article for deletion. I said that I don't think those sources show notability and another editor agreed with me. So annoying. SL93 (talk) 14:59, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I decide on the merits of an article by my own judgment. I then look at what other people said, to see if there is an argument that might convince me otherwise. Similarly, sometimes people who in a particular case think as I do use similar arguments as mine. (And why ever would I give an argument if I did not intend to convince others to agree with it?) Uncle G and I think alike for many articles, but not always, and I have differed from him at times in every possible direction. In that first article you mention my judgment was a little different from both of them. In the others I have not yet commented.

But both of us are of the opinion that some degree of consideration for the essential parts of WP:Before is part of WP:Deletion Policy. We've both been here long enough not to judge an article's possibilities on the basis of what is in the present version, and we both define "sourceable" as meaning able to be sourced, and "verifiable" as able to be verified. Both of us are know the limitations of the Googles well enough to be fairly sophisticated at searching them, & we are both aware there are other sources also. We don't expect others to be as thorough as we would--if everyone was, we'd have no need to even comment, because many articles would never get nominated for deletion. We do hope for a moderate degree of inventiveness & imagination, for most of the people here are rather good at those two mental characteristics. We do expect people will not try to judge notability in fields were they wouldn't be able to find sources if they existed.

Northamerica similarly, though he & I share the same view only sometimes, not all that often, and I have a good deal less experience and knowledge of his level of working. When multiple people say the same thing, they might even do so because it is the obviously correct answer.

Words like "substantial" in substantial coverage are not sharply true or false, and the interpretation depends on the circumstances. In fields or geographic areas where the press coverage of everyone of any degree of notability is extensive, it's reasonable to look for more substance than in those fields and places which attract much less attention. (I'm not sure how far Uncle G and Northamerica agree with me on that--I seem to feel much more strongly in requiring full coverage in some subject areas than they do.)

I see you say you follow WP:BEFORE--I am glad you accept that principle, and urge you to say explicitly what you have or have not searched, and what options you have considered. If I nominate or comment on an article & think that while merging or redirection might seem plausible they should not be so treated, I generally say so, and give the reason. DGG ( talk ) 16:25, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I will do that so people don't start assuming things. SL93 (talk) 19:40, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Metatextbook of Medicine‎‎

David, I should perhaps have noted this on the talk page, but there is something weird with the review in the Deutsches Ärtzeblatt: it is written by the person who set up this "metatextbook" (see bottom of the huge linked page). So I don't think that it is really a review and certainly not independent. Perhaps too complicated for CSD... Should I take it to AfD? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 16:29, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal to stop placeholder stubs being created without a sourced fact

Please comment.♦ Dr. Blofeld 06:33, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Hello

I'm looking forward to seeing you at Wikimania Takes Manhattan - I will also be in DC. --David Shankbone 03:57, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Geo Swan's article

The point is that this article is a textbook BLP1E, and Geo Swan has gotten flak specifically for having this type of article in userspace and in mainspace; regardless of whether it belongs in userspace or not, I'm not going to enable someone to restore an article when I would immediately send it to AFD. "If I did that, and the article stays in the same form, it will be very rapidly deleted, which is not what you desire" — and this article cannot help being in the form of a BLP1E unless Geo Swan find persistent coverage, of which I've heard nothing from him/her. Nyttend (talk) 12:11, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Looking at a later comment on your talk p., it appears there was a misunderstanding. Geo asked you to at least mail it to him, & he (and I) thought you were refusing to do that also. But you explained you had not noticed that part, & would mail it. I think that resolves the immediate issue.

More generally, I am not sure of the advice I gave above, which you quoted. It is my intention if the person insists further to restore the article and fix it myself. In fact, when I re-read the source this morning, I may do that even if not requested. (This is part of the general problem more often seen at BLP PROD: if there is an unsatisfactory article, and we know we can fix it by a careful sourcing or rewrite,rather than delete it, should we do so? I think what we should best do in such circumstances is to try as much as reasonable to get the ed to do it themselves, and that is what I was trying to do above.)

the more general issue, that we may not use our authority to delete under the speedy criteria or after an explicit consensus, to delete otherwise, remains. I admit I have violated it on rare occasions, in the spirit of IAR. But using IAR for a single-handed deletion is a very dangerous thing, and perhaps we should all stop doing it. Otherwise it is all too easy for someone to make a case that we are acting on our own prejudices and private interpretations, and perhaps sometimes they will be right.

Additionally, I would never refuse to restore an article if another admin or equally trusted user asked me. Perhaps I defer to other admins too much, or you too little. After all, I could have said, you are being unreasonable, and restored it myself. The definition of wheel warring permits it. (Perhaps we define it incorrectly, and it gives an undue 2nd mover advantage, but that's a very complicated question.) DGG ( talk ) 20:22, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

This is an interesting discussion between two respected colleagues. Please understand the importance of common ground. While mostly we simply observe, without comment, we generally benefit by considering the agreement you reach. Best regards to you both. My76Strat (talk) 00:23, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I think it goes without saying that most of the time admins will decide the same: if it were otherwise, we'd have immensely more conflict than now. There will also be a grey zone where doing a particular thing, is not clearly right or wrong. We say doubtful matters should involve the community, but then the question becomes which matters are doubtful enough to involve the community? In the boundary zone, the decisions are necessarily going to vary from one individual to another. This is beneficial, not harmful. An admin might choose to do only the utterly obvious, but the other matters need to be dealt with also. Discussing the items in the boundary zone is one of the ways by which consensus can change. DGG ( talk ) 00:45, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject NIH

Greetings DGG. I was looking at WikiProject NIH and it appears to be pretty inactive. Since you and one other are the only apparently active members I wanted to ask. Kumioko (talk) 01:58, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

the articles there certainly still need work: classic promotional institutional pages, in many cases, (much probably copied, and needs ref to the sources, though it US-PD) and overly brief summaries in others. Perhaps if its just the two of us we could simply divide them up. DGG ( talk ) 02:27, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I would certainly be glad to help out. I looked through some of them and your right theres definately some work to be done. I also noticed there seemed to be some that weren't tagged yet. I was also wondering if you think it would be ok if I did a couple things.

1. I would like to add the project to the Joint projects list of WPUS. The articles are already covered by both projects so it might help them a little and slightly increase the visibility of the NIH project.
2. I would like to expand the title on the template to spell out Institutes of Health. Of course I would leave the existing one as a redirect. I have had a couple folks ask me what it meant already (along with WikiProject SIA and AAA) so it might help a little.
3. There are several articles that aren't tagged yet that I would like to add to the project if you think that's ok. Kumioko (talk) 02:39, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

seems reasonable--just go ahead. I will look at some of the more extensive articles and do some trimming. (and some splitting--they include the bios of the Directors of the various institutes, but these people are sufficiently notable that they should be covered separately). I suggest you copy this discussion onto the talk p. of the project. I appreciate it very much that you're getting this re-started--I confess I had entirely forgotten that I meant to work on this. DGG ( talk ) 06:05, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I moved the template to {{WikiProject National Institutes of Health}} and updated the template example on the project page. I will add it to the WPUS Joint prokects list shortly. Kumioko (talk) 15:25, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Donald Tsang

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Ambassadors

Could you show me where it says ambassadors are automatically notable because. Bgwhite (talk) 07:40, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)I'll be interested in that ... I PRODded someone recently who was ambassador to several countries but didn't seem to pass WP:DIPLOMAT,which seems to say that being an ambassador per se is not enough for notability. He was unPRODded after more content was added, don't know whether it's the person you're concerned with or not (current Thai ambassador to US I seem to remember). PamD 11:54, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, found him, Chaiyong Satjipanon, and I see Bgwhite has been there recently too. PamD 12:04, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

All that is needed to remove a prod is a disagreement that it should be deleted without a community discussion. Prods are for deletions that nobody is expected to contest. The way I judge it, is that it's the highest level of the profession. If you want to go by GNG, I would not rule it out without looking for sources in the country the person is accredited to as well as that which he comes from. In the past we've made the distinction between ambassadors who are notable, and consuls, who are not usually. As always, the community will either agree with me, or not. DGG ( talk ) 16:12, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I deProded Chaiyong Satjipanon because being the ambassador to six nations, including the United States, would appear to be notable. I also found some Thai refs.

The one I did prod was an ambassador to Uganda and was a career civil servant. I highly respect DGG's opinions and have many written down as reference. However, deProdding with the edit summary saying "Ambassadors are notable" is misleading. Ambassadors are not automatically notable, especially where the majority of ambassadors for the U.S are political appointments who donated the most to a campaign. I have no problem with stating in the edit summary that you believe this person is notable, but don't say "Ambassadors are notable" as it sounds like Wikipedia policy. Bgwhite (talk) 00:15, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

What I say in an edit summary when I deprod is the reason i deprodded. it is not intended as a statement of policy. I consider ambassadors notable; I can't say consensus would support this 100% of the time, for consensus at AfD can depend on how carefully the matter is researched & argued—and on who happens to show up. I see no reason why an ambassador to the US should be more notable than an ambassador from the US -- or indeed any pair of countries. Checking, it seems about half the US ambassadors are career civil servants; the others are political or civic or business figures who are often even more notable for their outside careers. DGG ( talk ) 00:39, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Taxatio Ecclesiastica

Thought you might want to expand Taxatio Ecclesiastica.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

System of Systems Integration

DGG, I noticed that System of Systems Integration (talk · contribs) (the article creator) removed the prods you put on System of Systems Integration and Network Integration Evaluation, and thought you might like to know that I bundled them together and sent them over to AFD. Dori ☾Talk ⁘ Contribs☽ 04:42, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it will be better to discuss them together. I was perhaps too optimistic in thinking the prod would stick. New low in organizational gibberish. DGG ( talk ) 04:45, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

System of Systems Integration is cut and paste copy (down to the typo in "fi elding") of its cited source at http://www.bctmod.army.mil/SoSI/sosi.html. Possibly not copyvio as US army, but certainly plagiarism. PamD 07:21, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

certainly plagiarism, yes, but also certainly US-PD. Otherwise I would have simply speedy deleted it. I commend the US for its US-PD policy, but it does cause difficulties with material like this. Perhaps we should have a rule that copy of the official source for an organization whether or not PD & whether or not acceptable licensing permission is given is evidence of promotionalism sufficient for deletion. (As you can see, this sort of material is getting me rather frustrated.) DGG ( talk ) 07:54, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Possible misunderstanding

To clarify, it was said by implication that this book [3] is a reliable source that mentions The Body Electric. I think this book is clearly not reliable and thus has no bearing. My comment is not about The Body Electric itself. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:02, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The question is not whether the book is scientifically reliable; the question is whether the cite in it that the b.e. is a " time-honored classic" shows notability; reliable in this sense means editorially discriminating in some sensible manner between different books, and it does: it is one of the 2 listed. The book is independent, published by a division of Harpers and is in 300 libraries. I agree it is fringe science at best, but it's notable fringe science. DGG ( talk ) 18:08, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Talk:List of professional sports leagues

An interesting question has been raised that you might be interested in. Since you have participated in similar discussions and arguably more experience in this particular policy question, you might have some insight that would be helpful. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 21:49, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Malls

Since you're in the malls wikiproject, I'd like you to weigh in here. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 11:23, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool, Version 5

Hey all :)

Just a quick update on what we've been working on:

• The centralised feedback page is now live! Feel free to use it and all other feedback pages; there's no prohibition on playing around, dealing with the comments or letting others know about it, although the full release comes much later. Let me know if you find any bugs; we know it's a bit odd in Monobook, but that should be fixed in our deployment this week.
• On Thursday, 7th June we'll be holding an office hours session at 20:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office. We'll be discussing all the latest developments, as well as what's coming up next; hope to see you all there!
• Those of you who hand-coded feedback; I believe I contacted you all about t-shirts. If I didn't, drop me a line and I'll get it sorted out :).

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:53, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Nomination of Akhtaboot for deletion

Hi, you have nominated Akhtaboot article for deletion. We have previously worked together on improving the article so that it won't be deleted. Can you please let me know what I have done wrong and how can I improve it? --Article123456 (talk) 07:20, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

If there are any references from 2012, please add them. Then it's up to the community to make the decision DGG ( talk ) 18:02, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

As part of Akhtaboot's expansion, it has participated in many job fairs in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates in 2012:

• Tawdheef Abu Dhabi Job Fair - United Arab Emirates(If you look at the bottom of the page, Akhtaboot has been their online recruitment partner): http://www.tawdheef.ae/
• Al Sharjah National Career Exhibition - United Arab Emirates (If you look at the bottom of the page, Akhtaboot has been their online recruitment partner): http://www.nationalcareer.ae/
• College of Business Job Fair - Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: http://www.ameinfo.com/294402.html
• AUD job fair (please search for the word "Akhtaboot" in the article: http://www.aud.edu/student_services/career_fair.asp

Many universities also chose Akhtaboot to power the career's section of their website with Akhtaboot Microsite solution (a whitelabel of Akhtaboot.com:

• King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals: http://kfupm.akhtaboot.com , http://www.menafn.com/menafn/1093487940/Akhtaboot-Cares-Initiative-Partners-with-Middlesex-University-Dubai
• Middlesex University Dubai: http://mdx.akhtaboot.com
• British Uni in Dubai: http://buid.akhtaboot.com , http://www.albawaba.com/business/pr/akhtaboot-career-buid-427030

And many others, do you think the above can be included in the article and is it worthy enough?--Article123456 (talk) 13:21, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Add these to the article, and see what people think. DGG ( talk ) 19:06, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Pusat Tingkatan Enam Meragang

Two years ago our school relocated to a new campus. We are a government school located in Brunei (SE Asia). As the person in charge of IT and all things online at our school I temporarily created a new wiki page for our new campus - a new name and location etc. - Shortly after this it was deleted by you and the reason A7 was given. I've been a little busy lately but others have since asked me why we no longer have a wikipedia presence. I would like to complete our wiki page and maintain it as we did our old one. Please tell me what I need to do to get off the restricted list and back up and running. I cannot create a new site because our name is now held in limbo. Your help is appreciated. Our old page was [Tingkatan Enam Berakas] and our new name is [Tingkatan Enam Meragang].Cikgubrian (talk) 12:45, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

This was back in 2009. The best way to deal with this is to move the old article, update it, and give a cross reference, all of which I can do. . But I cannot do this unless I have some actual information . The article said merely "Scheduled to open in March 2009, PTEM will accommodate staff and students from Pusat Tingkatan Enam Berakas as they make way for a new secondary school to take over their campus in Lambak Kiri. As details are finalised and made available more information will be posted."

Please provide some information on the talk page of the old article. Include the web site, etc., so I can verify. You also should provide references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases. Any language will do. I will deal with inserting it correctly. I gather the old pictures are no longer applicable, so you will need to upload one or two new ones with a free license. And see WP:COI and WP:OWN--anyone can edit the p., not just you. DGG ( talk ) 17:34, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations

		100000 Edits
		Congratulations on reaching 100000 edits. You have achieved a milestone that very few editors have been able to accomplish. The Wikipedia Community thanks you for your continuing efforts. Keep up the good work!

If you like you can add this userbox to your collection.

This user has been awarded with the 100000 Edits award.

```Buster Seven Talk 13:17, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

unfortunately, not as impressive as it might seem, considering that 10 or 20% of them are just to correct my own typos. DGG ( talk ) 03:43, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you!

For cleaning up City University of Seattle! Your editing expertise is much appreciated and respected by this lowly Huggle jockey. Cheers! Jim1138 (talk) 00:12, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I have just begun. DGG ( talk ) 03:43, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Nicely said...

Your comments in the AfD for Orville (cat). LadyofShalott 04:40, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

thanks. DGG ( talk ) 14:14, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

• I responded there with a question that is only partly rhetorical as it's really not clear to me what you're suggesting we do to decide such matters. You seem to be proposing that we restrict comment to editors who have some specific power of discernment but what does this mean in practise? Please elaborate. Warden (talk) 15:30, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I am undecided about that we should do in such matters in general. There can be no fixed boundaries for this, as it is not quantifiable. It has to be by the general judgment of the people who care here, which in practice gives great weight to the opposite extremes of sensationalism and snobbery. My only real concern is that we seem to have a bias to including disgusting events, and excluding political ones--by own bias is just the opposite. I'd accept the disgusting if we could get the political. I'd accept any lower level, in fact, if we could get the political. DGG ( talk ) 16:55, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

• There seem to be lots of articles about political campaigns, elections and demonstrations - what is currently excluded? I would like to see much of that content excluded or constrained as, by its nature, it tends to be too provisional. There not much point in covering a campaign in a speculative way when the eventual result will make much of the speculation worthless. The case of Orville seems different in that its nature seems quite settled and so we are able to write in a reasonably factual way. Its disgusting nature is a matter of style and taste and I fancy I could cover it in a suitably po-faced way. Note that it was I that started the article about The Great Cat Massacre. My tongue was firmly in my cheek but it still seems good to include such topics. Warden (talk) 09:51, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• I have always admired your great skill with these topics. People will always disagree about individual cases. To me, the GCM has clear very high notability because of the book, without any irony. I differentiate between history and current gossip. As for politics, tho it is not an exact analogy, I am thinking about the quite successful campaigns to remove articles related to Gitmo, and also articles about small splinter parties, left and right--not of trivial events in political campaigns, where I more or less agree with you about the tendency for overemphasis. DGG ( talk ) 23:56, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Notification of nomination for deletion of Night flight in the UK

This is to inform you that this article has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Night flight in the UK. - Ahunt (talk) 23:01, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Hundred Years' War Articles (four)

These articles have either NO references or very few. Much has gone completely unreferenced for YEARS. It looks like pure copyvio almost throughout the articles. Though tags have been placed on them, the tags are simply updated so they do not look as if the articles have been unreference for as long. Attempts to change material and/or add references based on citable material is vehemently fought by a few who, unfortunately do not use that same energy to comply with the guidelines. The template will, on a particular day have England the victor, on another, will have France the victor. Would you please look at these four articles? They need, I think, your unique expertise. Thank you. Hundred Years' War, Hundred Years' War (1337–1360), Hundred Years' War (1369–1389), Hundred Years' War (1415–1453).Mugginsx (talk) 16:24, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I am making some comments on the general article. My interpretation of the writing is that if the material was plagiarized, it was plagiarized from some rather dull textbooks, and probably outdated ones at that. DGG ( talk ) 18:21, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for commenting there. I did want to correct the idea that I was advocating using old sources and chronicles exclusively. I am well aware of the problems inherent in using those sources. I do think they should be mentioned within the format you recommended as does Norman F. Cantor, Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Tuchman and other well known authors. The fact is that the editors there have made absolutely no effort for years to use in-line citations and that is required on En-Wikipedia. Because I was and am presently committed to other articles and cannot spend the time on the Hundred Years War articles at this time, I thought perhaps I would give a suggestion for those resources on-line with the presumption that they knew what to do with them and how to use them. Another (minor) thing I wanted to correct was that I am a woman editor. Thankyou again. Mugginsx (talk) 11:25, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

commented again there. DGG ( talk ) 18:32, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Assistance with Bloomberg Law

Hi-there. Recently, I've been working to improve the Bloomberg Law article which currently lacks any citation or substantial information. I do some work for Bloomberg and don't want my conflict of interest to interfere with Wiki guidelines, so I have been in talks with Bearian about a draft of the article I proposed. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the bandwidth at this time to help implement that changes and recommended I talk with you. Would you mind taking a look and if seen as appropriate, implement the changes into the current article? My draft can be found here. I truly appreciate your help! --RivBitz (talk) 18:01, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Glad you asked. Your article is an improvement, though I would have used more of the existing comment and references. But it is promotional. You should replace most of the repeated mentions of the name with a phrase such as "the service' or "it". You use too much PR jargon, such as "real-time" and "all-inclusive predictable pricing model" You have an uncited, though certainly plausible, opinion about the motives of the company-- And it is not reasonable to end with a sentence praising the firm. You might in fact want to look for other opinions on that sponsorship--I would be surprised if someone didn't consider it a potential threat to a free resource, by making it dependent upon a commercial competitor. .

In the other direction, like the earlier article, it is insufficiently detailed. The service consists of a complex of components that needs fuller description--such as geographic and chronological scope. There is no information about financial results, or market share or penetrance. And it is usual to give some information about costs, though not of course detailed pricing. Is it in fact affordable for solo attorneys? Is it found in law schools? Are there academic rates? Is it intended ' exclusively for "lawyers and legal professionals." I am aware that comp-anies often consider some of this proprietary information, but the expectation of an encyclopedia is that it will provide whatever can be publicly sourced, and such things are probably mentioned in the articles about it. DGG ( talk ) 18:42, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi there, I've taken some time to work through the edits you gave me to the draft of Bloomberg Law. I tried to implement them all as you prescribed, but much of the proprietary information is not available through public source, so I was not able to add it. If you or anyone is able to find information to elaborate on these details such as academic rates, pricing details in public sources, I'd be happy to see them added. Let me know what you think of the new draft. Again, I really appreciate your help. User:RivBitz/Bloomberg_Law_Sandbox --RivBitz (talk) 19:01, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Was just checking in to see if you had a chance to read over the new version of the draft I shared. Thanks!--RivBitz (talk) 18:30, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Journal titles

Hi, I got a question about journal titles for Russian journals that don't have an English edition (or an "official" English title on their homepage or cover or anything like that). I'm not really sure how to answer this and your input would be appreciated. The editor (Solus Ipse) had translated the titles themselves and I somehow think that this may not be the right way to go. Thanks! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 07:49, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

There's a general rule here: if there is no common english title for a subject we use the one in the language of the subject. But in this case there I see there in fact is an English title. DGG ( talk ) 18:20, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Authority Control Integration

Hi, I've been researching the intersection of Wikipedia and Authority Control, and have just recently made a Village Pump Proposal to create a bot to expand the usage of a template. I've identified you as someone in the sphere of interest to this project and would appreciate your input at the Village Pump. Thanks, Maximiliankleinoclc (talk) 18:38, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

commented at User talk:Maximiliankleinoclc/Authority control integration DGG ( talk ) 19:15, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

AFT5 release coming up - help us design a banner!

Hey all :). First-off, thanks to everyone for all their help so far; we're coming up to a much wider deployment :). Starting at the end of this month, and scaling up until 3 July, AFT5 will begin appearing on 10 percent of articles. For this release we plan on sending out a CentralNotice that every editor will see - and for this, we need your help :). We've got plans, we know how long it's going to run for, where it's going to run...but not what it says. If you've got ideas for banners, give this page a read and submit your suggestion! Many thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

curiously enough, and rather to my surprise, at the last training session we held in NYC (for a group of junior college instructors), many of the participants were of the opinion that the presence of the article feedback request decreased the confidence they felt in the quality of Wikipedia. I am however not sure of which version they had in mind. DGG ( talk ) 00:04, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

CYGNSS

Hi DGG,

Thank you for reviewing my recent article stub with Nouniquenames. I've been trying to understand what the difference is between 3rd party coverage, and press releases. Could you point me to the Wikipedia guideline (if one exists) that explains this?

Thanks, DavidDavidch12 (talk) 02:35, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I provided about 7 sources over on Noun's Talk page. Looks like most of them just came out over the last couple days. User:King4057 13:26, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) WP:RS is the guideline on reliable sources. That is likely the best place to start. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 20:50, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Hundred Years' War

I have answered you on Talk:Hundred Years' War. Mugginsx (talk) 18:16, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the Stevens Institute of Technology

Was this ever completed? Silverseren<sup>C</sup> 21:20, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

It will be this weekend. I know I've said it before two or three times, but I'm feeling embarrassed enough to actually do it, instead of trying to learn something I haven't done before (last week, the new version of the New Pages list, this week, AfC.) DGG ( talk ) 21:28, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Hey, i've been procrastinating plenty myself. How long has it been since I helped out at PAIDHELP? I spent yesterday working on Man With A Mission and trying to decipher horribly machine translated Japanese news sources. So, yeah. But i've pledged to work through the PAIDHELP page today and get everything done. Silverseren<sup>C</sup> 21:43, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Neocleous's introduction to Cyprus law

Do you think this can be salvaged? The article is written by an SPA and is horribly spammy, but that could be fixed if the book is notable. Worldcat shows only one library holding, but Dennis Campbell, Introduction to Cyprus Law ISBN 9783902046215, which is presumably the "widely acclaimed" first edition referred to, is in 33 libraries. How would you assess it against WP:BK? JohnCD (talk) 17:01, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

For a book on the law system of a very small European nation, I would not expect to find much in WorldCat. And it fact, it seems the only comprehensive substantial English language book on the general subject listed there. Books dealing with particular branches, have 19, 6, 2, and 1 copies in WorldCat DGG ( talk ) 17:21, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your help

DGG, thanks for your help on the McKinsey & Company page. I laughed in the talk page when I read your comment, " "a 1993 Fortune profile" -- surely there's something more recent. " -- in fact the firm goes to great lengths indeed to hide compensation, so these figures and citations had to be carefully sleuthed. :) My[2011] (talk) | 20:04, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I sort of realized that, but someone should have commented in print on this in the last 20 years. I have seen similar situations here quite dificult to handle, because we can not editorially comment. If one knows that an article is well written and researched, missing information is significant; but for a WP article neither part of that can be assumed. DGG ( talk ) 21:40, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Personal life of Jennifer Lopez

Hey, could you do me a favor? Most of the information on Personal life of Jennifer Lopez, which was deleted a couple of days ago, was not present on the main article and I would like to restore it and userfy it into my userspace. Could you do that for me? I have no intentions in creating the article again, I just think some useful information may be put back into the main article. I'd really appreciate the help. Thanks. —Hahc21 03:53, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

It would be better if you asked BWilkins first--I suggest you tell him that you will keep it only for a week or two, and will get consensus for any additions. DGG ( talk ) 20:09, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Double AfD closures

Greetings DGG. Why are the following AfDs closed twice? [4][5][6]? Regards. – Kosm1fent 07:58, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

apparently I was working too late at night. I've removed my closes as redundant--and I note that I agreed completely with the other admin. DGG ( talk ) 17:43, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! :) – Kosm1fent 17:47, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Indexing of surnames beginning with "Mac" or "Mc"

Hi DGG, if you don't mind putting your librarian's hat on for a few minutes, I would welcome your thoughts at User talk:BrownHairedGirl#Mac.2FMc_curiosity, on the indexing of surnames beginning with "Mac" or "Mc". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:26, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Your comment at WT:RFA

I've been piled up at work, and just now catching up on an excellent discussion at WT:RFA – far better than the usual "the sky is falling, what are we to do".

I did want to quibble with one observation you made; I'll do it here because no one seems to expand on your thought, so I don't see much need to insert it into the thread. Plus I'll use it as a point of departure to make another point, which I may add to the thread, after I've finished reading it.

You remarked, "I typically decline about 1/3 of the Speedy deletions I see, but some admins close essentially everything, Either I or they must be doing it wrong." I say, "not necessarily". To make an extreme example, suppose there are 1000 xSDs, with 100 of them badly tagged. If some new admins poke around, and delete 700 "easy" ones, that leaves 300 left of which 1/3 ought to be declined. So it is possible both can be right. Now, I'm not saying that 100% closers are always right, but we'd have to check some of the close lists to be sure. Which brings me to my pother point. When I was a new admin, I half expected someone would be assigned to follow me around for some time, just to make sure I was understanding the rules correctly. Either that didn't happen, or they were very, very quiet. (I'm even more surprised it isn't SOP at OTRS, but that’s a different issue.) I think we should have a more formal review system for new admins. I know there's the ability to check with someone else, but I'd like to see something more formal.

Having made my point, I'm not sure it belongs on the thread at this time, because my suggestion isn't going to help the problems that are being discussed at the moment, so maybe I'll think some more on it, and formalize a proposal later. Maybe after getting some thoughts from people like you.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:26, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

You are quite correct--I was oversimplifying. Sensible new admins do only the ones that are totally obvious while they are starting--it must be very discouraging to have people revert your first admin actions, and I've seen that happen. And it is true that I will make a point of checking speedy nominations others have thought it wise to pass by, and AfDs that people don't seem to want to close; I know some others do just the same, which is how we keep long lags from developing. But I had in mind also a few long term admins who actually do decide almost all equivocal cases as delete. To expand on what you have said , in a direction of my own,

I have occasionally checked a new admins deletions if I think from the RfA there is likely to be some problems, and I suppose others do similarly. But I do not know if any people systematically reviews the admin logs the way people do new pages--if anyone does, I've noticed no sign of it. The only thing I've seen checked systematically is the very long-standing page protections. It might be a good thing to do. The AfD closes are very visible, the prods have been checked by several people before they get to the top of the list, but speedies and blocks and unblocka and protections and unprotections don't get looked at, unless someone suspects a problem. I have sometimes thought of doing it, but I have always stopped, because, to be frank about it, I don't want to see the errors. I can't pass over a clear error I do see, and I am fully aware that some admins use the tools beyond the proper limits. Some of these are my friends, & I can mention it to them from time to time quietly. But for obvious reasons most of the ones I would disagree with are by people I often disagree with, with whom relations are often not all that friendly. I don't want to spend all my time quarreling and navigating sticky situations; though I may get the errors corrected, it is not likely to improve mutual relations. (I am also aware that I too make both errors and borderline interpretations, & I suppose I even sometimes interpret things the way I would like them to be, & if I have any enemies here, I do not really want to encourage them to audit me with the utmost possible rigidity. I expect I could be able to very well support my interpretations, but as Samuel Johnson put it, nobody however conscious of their innocence wants to every day have to defend themselves on a capital charge before a jury.

When I started here, I wondered how a system with a thousand equally powerful admins who could all revert each other could possibly exist. I soon learnt the subtleties of wheel warring--there were some major arb com cases on it during my first year here which pretty much defined the limits. But more important, I also learned that even the more quarrelsome spirits here understood the virtues of mutual forbearance--and that even the most self-sufficient people do not really want to look publicly foolish. Our balance is I think over-inclined to protecting the guilty if they are popular enough, but it is not as bad as it could be, or as it often is in human societies. DGG ( talk ) 03:25, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

I smiled at your closing comment. I had the same, thought, although for the project as a whole, rather than just the admin function. I'm more recent to the project because, when I first heard about it, a few years before actually joining, I thought about the model and decided it couldn't possibly work. Oddly, I still feel that way, intellectually. If there were no such thing as Wikipedia, and I heard a proposal to create, my instinct is that it will fail miserably. I actually can't quite put my finger on why it hasn't failed.SPhilbrick(Talk) 12:52, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Dennis Brown/CSD

I know you didn't think it was necessary, but I did agree to it and will comply fully. In one month, I will be at 3 months and will have fulfilled my obligation, assuming my own criteria is met, that two admins sign off at that time (I would ask you and Boing! since you've been involved.) I have Sections 4, 5 and 6 ready to review, which should be easy and fast to do in the different format, where I give the opinion, then later on, I give the actual result below it. Only a cursory comment is required on each section if there aren't any errors noted. This assumes you have a little time (Boing has been tied). If you don't have the time, that is fine as well as this is a lower priority than your regular rounds, to be sure. It has been a burden, but a promise is a promise. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 15:48, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

done. DGG ( talk ) 00:16, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I noticed your two notes. I've left responses there. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 02:01, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Level one user warnings

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Level one user warnings. (This invitation sent because you signed up as a member of WP:UWTEST) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:19, 27 June 2012 (UTC)Template:Z48 Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:19, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

authority control

• Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Authority Control Integration

I'm surprised that you didn't comment. Uncle G (talk) 00:32, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

• • I had done so, at Wikipedia talk:Authority control integration proposal. I didn't think I was needed beyond that, though I did just now add my name at the just-started RfC, Wikipedia:Authority control integration proposal/RFC DGG ( talk ) 00:42, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia New York City Annual Meeting Sat Jun 30

Join us at Jefferson Market Library on Saturday starting at 1pm for our annual meeting and elections, details at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC!--Pharos (talk) 17:27, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

CSD film

I understand a film can not qualify for CSD, or a book or a school. It seems this area is grey because it is not about a film but instead the concept of a film. I don't see what the author can do in seven days that will change the fact the film is said to be scheduled for release in 2014. It seems a hoax could survive as long as the prankster fabled it around a book or a film, with a future release date no less. IMO StringdaBrokeda (talk) 23:02, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Even more than a film not qualifying for CSD, a concept for a film, or a concept of any sort, does not qualify for CSD--it's much too uncertain a thing to be unquestionable.. Nor does it qualify for an undoubted hoax, because an undoubted hoax is something that can be seen to be a hoax on the face of it. There have been enough disputes over the application of NOT CRYSTAL to keep that criterion out of CSD territory. If you really want to argue for this, draw up a proposal for WT:CSD, but I think you will find it difficult to word one that will unambiguously apply and not give false positives. And let's avoid WP:BEANS. I don't see that we need worry that something like this would survive, because 7 days will get rid of it. DGG ( talk ) 23:16, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

No I tend to agree with the clarification given. I simply needed the additional perspective. Thank you. StringdaBrokeda (talk) 23:34, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Materialscientist#Impact factors and infoboxes

David, could you perhaps give your opinion on this issue? Thanks! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 09:58, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

• I moved this down, perhaps you didn't see it... :-) --Guillaume2303 (talk) 07:52, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
  • I have now commented. DGG ( talk ) 16:59, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
    • Thanks!! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 20:36, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Q. E. the journal

Well here it is [7]]. Originally, I was intereted in the topic. Then I discovered that this journal is an English version of a Russian journal. I think journals like this are very intereting because there is a collaboration between publishers operating in different countries. In this case it is a collaboration between U.S., U.K., and Russian publishers. I'd say it is obviously an effort to disseminate the science available in a given country. In this case of course it is Russian science. But more than that it seems that maybe the science community in Russia is a close-knit community. For example, the editor in chief hails from the Lebedev Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Russian publisher is Turpion, a notable publisher in the science disciplines. In addition, this particular journal was founded by a Russian (Soviet) Nobel Prize laureate about 40 years ago. Also, two authors of the journal Physics Uspekhi (published by Turpion) are 2010 Nobel Prize winners (see web page] ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 03:33, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it could really be considered the English edition of the Russian journal, but rather the English translation' of the Russian journal. The entire responsibility for scientific content is in the hands of the Russian editorial board. Turpion is not a Russian company, but a UK company [8] formed in order to provide translated versions of Russian journals, or, more exactly,continue the English translations of Russian journals earlier translated by a number of different enterprises, commercial and non-commercial. These translations mostly began at the end of the 1950s and the early 60s (after Sputnik), when it was realized that Russian-language science in many fields in the physical sciences was fully competitive with science outside the USSR (and in some fields of applied mathematics arguably in advance), and the Soviet government had a policy of requiring all or most publications to be in Russian. They were of very great importance in the 60s, and published both by scientific societies, such as the AIP , and specialized branches of commercial publishers such as Consultants Bureau, I think independent at first but later an imprint of Plenum. Their importance gradually declined, both because it became more acceptable to publish in English and because the collapse of the USSR greatly impaired the financial condition of Russian science , but many are still published and in some fields still quite important.

I think the entry must be the Russian title--as with Physics Uspeki which is actually and correctly a redirect to Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, and the article should cover both the Russian original and the translation. DGG ( talk ) 20:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello

Hi, DGG. I was just wondering if you ever saw this. It's from June 1st, and it's been over a month, so I thought I'd check up on it. =) - Zhou Yu (talk) 02:31, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

CityU of Seattle

Hi DGG, thank you for your message on my page. Sorry that I have corrected the article about CityU befor I've read your advice. I appreciate that you insist on beeing neutral in the tone of an article. But when the Swiss authorities have accused the headmaster of the CityU of fraud than I am not sure how you could say what happened without using the appropriate expressions, in this case "allegations" and "fraud". The article is (as I have written) not about a subsidiary. So for a reader it is of minor interest to read something about the Swiss branch, but if you want to inform you about the reputation of something or someone, than it's quite intersting to read about allegations of fraud. And I have of course read the Wikipedia policies about neutrality. They say that while neutral terms are generally preferable, this must be balanced against clarity. And ok, I don't think that the expression "allegations of fraud" is per se not neutral, but even if that should be the case and the term is not neutral, in my opinion it's the most clear description of what happened. This is, not just a university program that became unstable.Please tell me what you think about that, kind regards, saintcyr. PS: I think it doesn't matter whether someone has a personal involvement with the issue he's describing as long as his point of view is candid and based on facts. I think some of the best articles here are written by people with a personal involvement with the issue they are describing. But though you seem to think otherwise I can assure you I have no personal involvement in the CityU. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saintcyr1 (talk • contribs) 22:51, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The matter must be included, but it can be done a little more subtly than you did it, as I shall demonstrate there. Among the techniques for doing this is use the word once in the article as a quotation; it need not be repeated. (And we'd need the quote not just in English translation, but in the original language used.) And it certainly must not be used in the section heading.: we do not make moral judgements, and through things are reported as there are, summaries must ber as absolutely neutral as possible. that goes for edit summaries also: loaded words should never be used there. And we consider the very word "allegations" to be non-neutral. And the entire section should be summarized, to avoid disproportionate weight. If negative information is reported disproportionately or loaded words used more than necessary, it gives the impression of holding a grudge, not of NPOV writing. It is my responsibility to prevent anyone from using Wikipedia for such a purpose, just as it is to prevent it being used to cover-up serious matters. DGG ( talk ) 23:09, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying your point of view, but I still disagree with you on that. So I have opened a discussion on the matter on the CityU talk page. Saintcyr1 (talk —Preceding undated comment added 04:46, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

DGG's a tenured and well-respected administrator with a reputation for even-handedness and an excellent grasp of our policies. You would save everyone's time if you just took his advice on how to present such a controversy without disputing it. Jclemens (talk) 05:12, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I've commenting further, on the article talk p., Talk:City University of Seattle. I've tried to explain the standard WP policy, and also my general approach to this particular type of problems. DGG ( talk ) 18:39, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

"What DGG says"

David, that was great. Thanks! Drmies (talk) 20:03, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

An academic

• Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Oktay Sinanoğlu
• Oktay Sinanoğlu (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

For you and your talk page watchers. Uncle G (talk) 11:23, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

• I can & will deal with this in the usual way, by writing a straightforward bio. I apologize for not getting to this earlier, but I still chasing all the threads here after being at Wikimania. Attendance there, as at any conference, inhibits for a short while the actual work at hand. It does, however, clarify many general matters. DGG ( talk ) 01:18, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Having more than one sentence would be good, and my offer on the noticeboard extends to your talk page stalkers too. [...] Uncle G (talk) 09:46, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
    • Just to clarify things, I intend to work on the article page, just as I have already corrected an error there. If you regard this as wrong, tell me, and I'll work on other topics. . I have never done article work on talk pages or told others to--I know it has become a frequent practice, but to me the spirit of Wikipedia is live editing. Those who can not be trusted to edit live should not be editing at all. DGG ( talk ) 15:45, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
      • I'm telling them that they aren't excluded if they want to help. Your talk page watchers cannot necessarily edit through full protection as you did. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 16:11, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
        • My misunderstanding. If nobody gets to it before me, I'll see what I can do. (Personally, some of the people you only warned I would have blocked, but it does no harm to wait until they continue. Another question: what's your opinion on revdel for many(most) of the existing edits? DGG ( talk ) 19:40, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
          • There are less problematic revisions in the history. This one may possibly have factual errors, but it isn't an attack piece. However, the very next edit is an editor in Istanbul reverting to a preferred version undoing two years' worth of edits including copyediting for correct English and insertion of source citations. As bobrayner noted on the BLP noticeboard, some of the problems in this article go back all of the way to the first revision. If you're willing to start from scratch, with none of the prior content used, as I suspect you are, I am happy to revision delete the whole history up to the 7 word stub under criterion #2 and exchange full protection for blocking of individuals. Let me know if the Istanbul IP addresses or Fightingagainstlies start edit warring with bad biographical content again. Uncle G (talk) 11:06, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Graduate Library School, University of Chicago, 1928-1989.

Hi David, this article could use some help from you. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:32, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

It will get it, but not immediately. DGG ( talk ) 01:19, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

WP:CP question

Hi, I didn't get a chance to say hello at Wikimania, but I did attend your interesting talk.

However, I'm writing about a different issue; I'm trying to help clean up WP:CP. I see Richard F. Edlich is listed, as a result of an edit you made in May. However, you didn't identify the possible source. I ran it through User:CorenSearchBot/manual, which isn't definitive, but it passed. I agree with you that the article needs cleanup, but at the moment, I'm narrowly focused on copyvio issues, so wondering if you recall which section troubled you, so I could zero in on it.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 14:15, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Well for starters, see [9]. I suspect this is one of those annoying cases, where bits are lifted from a variety of sources. This may also be a likely candidate for other bits, but it's behind a pay wall. Voceditenore (talk) 16:03, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not yet seeing it. A Duplication Detector for the article, and the book turns up a couple four word phrases:

• cornstarch on medical gloves
• food and drug administration

but nothing longer. The word "potentiated " jumped out at me, but it isn't in the book. Maybe it is in the article behind the paywall. I'll see if I can get someone to check.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:57, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

As the result of talks with a number of paid editors at Wikimania, and exchanges of views with others working on the problem of promotionalism, I am increasingly paying attention to promotional editing. The entire article is written in the style of a press release, and that sort of thing is almost always copied or closely paraphrased from previous press releases. If not copyvio it needs almost as much rewriting as if it were, but finding copyvio is the convenient shortcut to deal with articles like this. Checking carefully the site of the university & affiliated organizations is a the way I usually go about it: much is often in non-googleable internal pages. But I think he is certainly notable, so it's worth some effort. I probably should have done it myself, but there is so much that the work needs to be distributed, What particularly struck me was such hyped phrases as "first physician to do gastroscopy at the University of Minnesota Hospitals." -- what would be notable, of course, would be "first physician to do gastroscopy" in the US. Or a instance where he was not the writer of the petition, but one of the 12 to sign a joint petition. The claims may be valid, or they may exaggerations. Such is the manner of press releases for physicians. The key reference, (1) refers to many of these as being collaborative efforts. I'll follow it up.

There's an interesting paradox. The easiest way for someone to get a good article is to have someone write a poor one, and have us fix it. DGG ( talk ) 19:48, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

  DGG ( talk ) 19:48, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm officially discouraged; no substantial overlap in may of the sources, but a fair amount with the one Voceditenore identified. And I agree with your paradox, one of my pet peeves is an editor who starts a piece of crap, then expects others to clean it up.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 20:01, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

What I am especially concerned by , are the paid editors who start a piece of crap which is nonetheless presumably the best they can do for the money and with their usually very limited experience, and then we volunteers rescue it. Especially if we entirely rewrite, they have been paid for bad work , but have caused us to do good unpaid work, often on something that might be technically notable , but would not otherwise have been covered. The only reason I am willing to work extensively on this is that he is quite notable, & we ought to cover him.

What you have found demonstrates the limit of the comparison approach to copyvio. I may not search further either--it needs so much rewriting that any copyvio will be removed in the process. I may get to it in the coming week. DGG ( talk ) 20:56, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Deletion review response thank you / Tutoring newbies on how to do online research

I left a thank you for your response — and unrelated question(s) — here. Another thing that maybe we agree on is the importance of knowing how to do research. I really like Wikipedia's Search Engine usage guidelines and tutorial, and have tried to link to them from Wikipedia:Article titles — because I think it's important to research usage when deciding the best article title, best category title, or the most appropriate term to use — but my attempts to link to this have been repeatedly reverted by people who think they own anything related to the MoS. Likewise, for the same reason, I have been unable to add links from Wikipedia:Article titles to the regional MoS guides. The article on category naming conventions also does not explain how to search existing categories or link to the above article on how to use search engines to research the best category title, either. Maybe you have some advice or ideas on this? LittleBen (talk) 13:51, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I discovered in my first year here that there were some parts of Wikipedia where despite my interest in the subject, for one or another reason I was unlikely to be very effective. Prominent among these were the MOS and categorization. I am a little concerned with article titles, and in that field, fundamentally I disagree with you -- I think the best article title should be the clearest and fairest, and counting ghits or the equivalent is usually irrelevant. And to the extent I understand categorization debates the problem there is often finding a sufficiently clear wording to encompass the desired set of article. I think the MOS is a little more rational than it was 4 years ago; if I were doing it, I'd limit to to pure matters of style, which does not include choice between article titles, just such matters as whether to use singular or plurals. But in questions like this , your opinion is as valid as mine, and there is no point in arguing the issue here--neither of us is "right". DGG ( talk ) 23:56, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

My main question was aimed at getting your opinion on "Tutoring newbies on how to do online research". You don't seem to have answered this, but maybe this is something that Kudpung is more interested in than you are. My comment on article titles was related to this: there seem to be many people creating new articles without adequately researching if there is an existing article on the subject already. Part of the problem is that Wikipedia Search, by default, only shows if there is an article title that is an exact match to the search term; it does not show if there is a category that matches the search term. If it did, it would be far easier to find related material. It is difficult to work out how to search categories. Terminology (e.g. article titles and category titles) is often inconsistent for this reason. Just one example: There are Web browser engine and List of web browser engines articles, but there are nine Comparison of layout engines (XXX) articles, and the category is Category:Layout engines. I don't understand your reference to counting ghits, and don't understand how my viewpoint disagrees with yours. LittleBen (talk) 02:25, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, I got another response on the Deletion review thread that pointed me to a discussion here that may interest you. LittleBen (talk) 02:23, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

I apologize for not covering everything. The WP search function is not the problem; if it does not find an article, it suggests searching for the term. Perhaps the page could be revised to suggest that first, rather than as an alternative to making an article. I think there has been some previous debate on whether it should initially search for the term rather than the article. I also have seen it said that by the standards of other search engines, it could use some sophistication. About 1/3 of people come here from Google etc., and though those search engines rank article titles at the top, they also include articles with the term anywhere. But the Google search engine is, deliberately, getting dumber and dumber; it is no longer possible to use the "+" character as an intersection, and Google Scholar has removed the limit to subject field possibility in advanced search.

Many apparently duplicate articles are created deliberately as a POV fork, others in the mistaken belief that WP includes essays on very specific term-paper type topics. Many are simply naive, as when someone submits a two sentence article on something where we have extensive coverage.

I think teaching people to search properly is a part of research, but the main result of its failure is not the duplicate articles, but the unreferenced articles. Way back when Google was new and exciting, we librarians used to impress the students by showing we could use it more effectively than they could. (The secret is partially cleverness and experience in selecting search terms, but mainly just persistence--something like 90% of users stop at the first page of results--I will if necessary scan through even a few thousand. I have found that people learn by experience better than didactic instruction, provided they are alert enough to pay attention to what experience shows them. Certainly we should do a better job teaching beginners, but the way I think works best is to show them one at a time how to do better. A person learns best when one individual person shows them how to fix their errors and misconceptions, and this is not done by templates. Besides Kudpung & myself, very few NPPatrollers or even admins take the trouble and patience. It's too much for a few people--we need everyone who is able to do it. We progress not by discussing how to work, but by working. DGG ( talk ) 03:38, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we progress not by discussing how to work, but by working. You seem to be better at that (more productive) than I am ;-) But sometimes it's more scalable if we offer others the opportunity of learning how to do the work (not specifically thinking of Tom Sawyer ;-). Thanks and best regards. LittleBen (talk) 04:23, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

I really appreciate your help and kind words about the edits going on at Bibi Aisha. I'd just gotten to that page on a Wikipedia ramble and knew it couldn't stand as it was. Anyway, it has been YEARS since I got involved in anything with Wikipedia in depth. You taking the time to give me an "atta girl/boy" has pushed me to get back at it under my actual username. Thanks so much. 98.94.58.75 (talk) 02:55, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

AFT5 newsletter

Hey again all :). So, some big news, some small news, some good news, some bad news!

On the "big news" front; we've now deployed AFT5 on to 10 percent of articles, This is pretty awesome :). On the "bad news", however, it looks like we're having to stop at 10 percent until around September - there are scaling issues that make it dangerous to deploy wider. Happily, our awesome features engineering team is looking into them as we speak, and I'm optimistic that the issues will be resolved.

For both "small" and "good" news; we've got another office hours session. This one is tomorrow, at 22:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office <sup>connect</sup> - I appreciate it's a bit late for Europeans, but I wanted to juggle it so US east coasters could attend if they wanted :). Hope to see you all there!

FYI

[10] As suggested. :) I think our next step is making sure that the code is correct, and then we can start implementing. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:48, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. It was suggested by several people at Wikimania that we quickly make similar changes in level 4 and 4im, and then consider whether to combine levels--that part would need an rfc. The easiest way to go now would probably be to go to three levels, by combining 2/3 , to avoid having to rewrite the level 1 warnings. DGG ( talk ) 21:54, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

COI+ certification proposal

I've thought of an idea that might break our current logjam with paid editing. I'd love your sincere feedback and opinion.

• WP:COI certification

Feel free to circulate this to anyone you think should know about it, but please recognize that it hasn't agreed upon by either PR organizations or WikiProjects or the wider community. It's also just a draft, so any/many changes can still be made. Thanks and cheers, Ocaasi EdwardsBot (talk) 15:00, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

I've commented there. I disagree with the key part of the approach. All editors should edit directly and take responsibility for their edits. Otherwise, the certification idea has some possibilities. DGG ( talk ) 19:22, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you for your help with the Stevens Institute of Technology article. Another editor came in at the end when you get tied up, but your feedback throughout was critical to the structuring of the page. I learned a lot about proper writing and editing from your feedback, and I really appreciate your help and guidance. QueenCity11 (talk) 21:15, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	For your ongoing work at deleting spam and resumes. Bearian (talk) 18:57, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Civility Barnstar
	For your comments at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User:Geo_Swan_and_AfDs. Bearian (talk) 00:20, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

City University of Seattle

This article has come up at OTRS and I'm trying to get a handle on its current state. I see that some sourced negative statements were removed (diff) and then some unsourced positive statements too. (diff). I trust that this article has gotten the attention it needed and is under watchful eyes, but could you help me to understand why it was appropriate to remove all of the negative content as well? I briefly looked at the [German] sources and 3 of them looked initially ok while 3 clearly did not. Just looking for a little guidance if you get a minute. Cheers! Ocaasi <sup>t | c</sup> 23:05, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I've neglected following up this one. I'll email you about it in a few minutes, as some of it is indeed on OTRS, and I need to give an opinion about individual motives. DGG ( talk ) 23:28, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

tomorrow, actually--it's a little complicated. DGG ( talk ) 09:17, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Message left in your future archive

Visiting your talk page just now and admiring the layout of your archive list, I was surprised to see that the archive for August 2013 had become a bluelink. That is because Ariiise (talk) has left a message there asking how to get at his declined AfC submission to edit it. I have answered him on his talk page (copyvio so can't restore, will email if required) and thought about restoring the pattern by deleting your Aug 13 archive, but will leave you to do that if you choose.

It's a defect of the AfC system that where a submission is rejected, tagged as copyvio and deleted, the submitter is given the standard template that says "If you would like to continue working on the submission, you can find it at <redlink>." Also, if the AfC template is the first item on a new talk page, it should be preceded by {{welcome}} or some similar welcome message. I will suggest that, if I can find the right place.

My reason for visiting your archive was to look again at this, as I am drafting an AfD for that article. I will write about that separately. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 09:31, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

It is indeed a defect, one that shows the hasty and inadequate programming of the system. Once I realized it, I have been manually changing the notice on the user talk pages I deal with to eliminate that nonsensical advice, and to say directly why the article was unacceptable. I have earlier today left a long comment dealing with this and other defects in the AfC system at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation. The responses, as best I can make out, seem to indicate the maintainers are aware of the problem and intend to fix it. I;m not so sure they are aware of the importance other problems. DGG ( talk ) 09:40, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Page Curation update

Hey all :). We've just deployed another set of features for Page Curation. They include flyouts from the icons in Special:NewPagesFeed, showing who reviewed an article and when, a listing of this in the "info" flyout, and a general re-jigging of the info flyout - we've also fixed the weird bug with page_titles_having_underscores_instead_of_spaces in messages sent to talkpages, and introduced CSD logging! As always, these features will need some work - but any feedback would be most welcome.==

the early CSD logging was interesting, because of the high proportion of errors, a much higher proportion that I normally spot at NPP. This may be just my impression, because it put all of them in one place. If so, it will be very useful in following up the errors to teach the patrollers. The key need is not necessarily to make patrol easier, but to make finding errors at patrol easier, because new patrollers generally need educating. Do you think it would be possibleto get a list of those who patrol for the first time? DGG ( talk ) 23:14, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

We did this a couple of years ago (and repeatedly monitored it ever since) and at that time it clearly demonstrated that a vast amount of new page patrolling is being carried out by very young and/or very new, inexperienced users. Although this appears to still be very much the case, the Foundation appears to have ruled this out as a possible cause for low quality patrolling. Special:NewPagesFeed is an excellent piece of software but it's not going to be a silver bullet. That said, this tool may help. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:07, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

remind me, where did the WMF publish the analysis of NPP you refer to? Perhaps they mean that a great deal of bad patrolling is done by more experienced people also--which is certainly true. But i've found it easier to teach the new people, who are usually very glad to learn. DGG ( talk ) 19:34, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Apologies for the late reply. I can't remember where the report was published. The survey was launched as a community project but Foundation adopted it and published the report. If I remember rightly (maybe wrongly), it appeared that the majority of patrollers were in their 40s, had PhDs, and had been on Wiki for at least 6 years - or something vaguely to that effect. Oliver can give you a link to the report because I believe he wrote it himself. Perhaps the responses were inaccurate, because those of us who had done over a year of research found that like all other maintenance areas, NPP was a magnet to new and/or younger users. It seems to have improved lately, but I'm only working from the prototype and not from the old yellow highlighted page. I assume those who are working from the beta are more clued up with page patrolling. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:48, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

==Speedy Deletion

This page should not be speedily deleted because... (the exception to A7 is educational institutions which it is; also other language schools are listed in wikipedia such as Mackdonald Language Academy which has no content at all other than "Mackdonald Language Academy is a language school in Kilkenny, Ireland." ACUPARI also have no references and there are many schools like that and I can provide other examples as well. Moreover, unlike some language school it is not an orphan such as EasyMandarin or such as Empik, Emanci Language Institute, Keary Portuguese School, etc. Hong Kong Institute of Languages has a box saying it is an orphan and this article appears to be written like an advertisement. Please help to improve it by rewriting promotional content from a neutral point of view, so I would also like to be able to list the school and if there is some problem fix the content so that it is a neutral point of view. I would like some time to be able to create references, etc so please restore my page so I can do that such as for example the school has participated with the Russian government in programs in Italy and also as taking part in other government programs in foreign countries, and the school was involved in implementing government programs in countries in Europe. The school also regularly participates in seminars and conferences and has won the Dante Alighieri prize, etc. user jeonjubibimbap(talk)

whether institutions called schools that are not actually degree-granting or certificate-granting schools can be speedy deleted by a7 is a matter of some difficulty. The problem is determining exactly the nature of the institution, because names do not always clearly define this. I have speedy-deleted tutoring institutes via a7; some few of them are notable, but if there's no indication of this, the assumption is fairly safe that they are not. Something called a "language school" can be of many different types--in most cases it's primarily a tutoring institute.

The article in question here was Ruslanguage. From the article, it offers ""Intensive, part time, evening and individual courses are offered as well as corporate language training. " I do not consider this a school in the sense of a7, and iI deleted it according. Were it a school that primarily ran group classes or offered a certificate I would instead have used Prod. . If you think you can show it's notable, write an article with some references in user space, and I will move it back to mainspace. DGG ( talk ) 23:08, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

And I thank you for listing the other problems you found. If they are as weak articles as you indicate, they won't be here much longer. DGG ( talk ) 23:16, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for responding to my questions. I will write an article with some references and include notable people in my user space. My intention for pointing out other articles was not to criticize them but merely to find a good language school that I could model my page after as I thought since those schools were already on wikipedia and some for quite a while, it meant they had acceptable pages. Thanks again for your help in what makes an acceptable article and I appreciate the time you spent on my article as well as the time you spent on wikipedia. Now that I've starting creating and modifying articles, etc. I am starting to understand a bit of all the hard work that goes on to make wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeonjubibimbap (talk • contribs) 06:29, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Library portal

I just accepted the AfC submission for the Library portal article now in mainspace. Since I noticed in the past that you're a librarian, posting this article here for your perusal, if you have the time or interest in checking it out, improving it, making any corrections, etc. Regards, Northamerica1000<sup>(talk)</sup> 05:17, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for referring this to me. As you realised, this required subject knowledge. It's a valid topic, but even after your cleanup, still needed extensive further editing for conciseness and removal or original research; there were obvious indications of the origin of this as an essay or term paper. I did one round; I will do another later. DGG ( talk ) 07:25, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for checking it out, and for the improvements. Northamerica1000<sup>(talk)</sup> 08:32, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Essay about Wikipedia

Hi DGG. I checked out your user page mini-essays - very interesting. Would you be available to talk about Wikipedia some time? I am writing about the philosophy and sociology of Wikipedia. 109.145.120.77 (talk) 07:22, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

certainly. Please make an account, activate yoiur email from preferences, and email me from the email user link in the toolbox on the right. DGG ( talk ) 15:00, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - I created the account and set up email. I will mail shortly. Hestiaea (talk) 15:14, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Iwill get back to you, probably next week. things are a little busy. DGG ( talk ) 19:31, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Bibliography of Encyclopedias

You are invited to join in a discussion at User talk:Dr. Blofeld#Bibliography of encyclopedias over my plans to develop a comprehensive set of bibliographies of encyclopedias and dictionaries by topic. I hope you see the potential of such a project and understand that while highly ambitious it will be drawn up gradually over time.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:58, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

PC

FYI. And FWIW, on a slightly different note regarding NPP, although I am not entirely in favour of creating a right for NPP, I fear that the question may become inevitable when the NewPagesFeed is finally released for general use and has been monitored for a while. The reviewer right (whatever that will be) could be a possible guideline, and might incorporate both if need arises. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:32, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

As I expect and hope & will try to get such an interpretation of PC that the reviewer right will be almost unused because almost nothing will be subject to PC, one could argue that it might as well serve some potentially useful purpose. I agree that if it is based on mainspace edits it might serve for both. But I think the priority is to get AfC and moves from user or other space into a single queue along with New pages. At the moment I'm working mainly on the afc part because the majority of advice being given people is inadequate, when not plain wrong. I think that proportionately more errors are made there than at NPP. DGG ( talk ) 13:17, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

That's possible. I don't work at AfC but the articles I come across through other lonks demonstrate that a lot are not being accurately closed and/or with inadequate advice to the creators. I dn't know what kind of a percentage this represents. AfC seems to me to be a necessary process but unnecessarily complicated; I could well envisage a single queue where unpublished IP creations could pass through the same interface as the New Page Feed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:29, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Page Curation newsletter

Hey DGG. This will be, if not our final newsletter, one of the final ones :). After months of churning away at this project, our final version (apart from a few tweaks and bugfixes) is now live. Changes between this and the last release include deletion tag logging, a centralised log, and fixes to things like edit summaries.

Hopefully you like what we've done with the place; suggestions for future work on it, complaints and bugs to the usual address :). We'll be holding a couple of office hours sessions, which I hope you'll all attend. Many thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:54, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Your thoughts

Hi.

Per my recent comments at user talk:Jimbo Wales, I'm considering starting a discussion to create a new Wikimedia Wiki solely for persons (BLPs). The basic definition would be that a person is included if they are/were a human being who was alive at some point upon the earth. This would also include categories and templates which specifically deal with persons.

Some things I've already considered:

• We'd need a follow up RfC to consider how to handle people of legend and/or antiquity.
• We'd need to define the difference between a group of individual persons and the group as an entity: e.g. Members of the Beatles. And the "entity" the Beatles.

What would you see as the negatives and positives of doing this? - jc37 00:02, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

---

there is no more reason for doing this for BLPs as for any other subject. If anything, there's less, because of the implication for fairness and undue weight & our other BLP considerations--and, carried to the extent you suggest, for privacy. (Though I suppose this could be alleviated by removing any article the subject objected to, or even requiring their consent--but this raises the problemsof NPOV, as subjects would only want to stay in if the article were favorable). I have supported a Wikipedia Two - an encyclopedia supplement where the standard of notability is much relaxed, but which will be different from Wikia by still requiring WP:Verifiability, and NPOV. It would include the lower levels of barely notable articles in Wikipedia, and the upper levels of a good deal of what we do not let in. But even notability would be relaxed, not eliminated. For people, since this is your example, it would include such as college athletes and political candidates and vice-presidents of notable companies. It would, in return, apply a higher standard for those in the main Wikipedia. DGG ( talk ) 00:14, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Motivations for doing this split aside, what would you see as the positive or negative effects if this was indeed implemented? - jc37 00:26, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

I thought it was clear from what I said. I used "reason" not to mean motivation but to mean rationale or justification. To expand, we did this , the negatives are so destructive that they overwhelm any positives: First, there is the opportunity for violations of privacy, undue emphasis on the negative, and unfairness--all of which can be counterbalanced only by abandoning NPOV and letting individuals approve their own articles. We would have either an attack site, or personal advertisements, not an encyclopedia. The justification for some standards of notability include having articles limited to what people are interested enough in to keep neutral. We have enough problems of this sort already, and extreme difficulty in handling them. We should not try to do what we cannot control. NPOV is more important than inclusiveness. The advantage for the existing encyclopedia would be having a place to put the barely notable, but there would be just as many arguments over whether people pass the line wherever it was located. The advantage for the world in general would be provision of information, counterbalanced by the fact that it would be unreliable. The additional argument is that there is no reason for doing this for people as distinct from other subjects--if we were to reduce the notability standard to zero it should be in another field where the loss of NPOV would not be as important to individuals. A much more rational approach is more realistic and more inclusive standards based on observable facts, not details of sourcing. And even for this, the limiting factor is RS and NPOV and V. Some think even our current standards so low they make these a danger; I don't agree that they have a general case, but they have had one in more than a few specific instances. DGG ( talk ) 01:22, 28 September 2012 (UTC) .

---

I think I may have miscommunicated something here. When I was speaking of the criteria, I meant criteria for what should be split from here, not what would be the criteria for inclusion of new information. Sorry for the confusion. Of course NPOV/V/NOR would apply. And also with BLP in place, the inclusion criteria of information would be at least as stringent as it is here on en.wp.

What I'm asking for are your thoughts on the effects of the split. Sorry for the confusion. - jc37 01:43, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes indeed, I totally misunderstood!

What you are suggesting is to remove BLPs from WP and move them to a co-ordinate project. I've read the relevant section of Jimbo's talk p., which is talking about the difficulty with admin and editor recruitment and retention. I do not see the connection with your proposal, and at that point you do not explain the suggested benefits. Myself, I see none at all. I don't even see the possibility of avoiding damage to individuals. I deal with school articles, where individuals can be damaged just as much on articles not avowedly about people. (and, as we know, therefore the special BLP guidelines apply to all articles whether or not primarily about an individual). and I deal with many promotional articles, where it;'s become routine for the PR editor to write an article about both the company and the person, sometimes with almost complete duplication of content. Remove the one on the person, and there is still the promotionalism. Or take articles on bands: though I do not work there, I know our current N:MUSIC rules says to cover the musician in the band article if they were only in one band, so with this as an example, I don't see the point about groups of people being any different from people. I can't say I see any specific harm, except the artificial split where people tend to look for both sorts of topic. I know I do, and I know that in working here i work on articles in the same way regardless of the type of subject. There is an advantage in having one big encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 03:01, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I've done a fair amount of reading of the reasons behind SUL, and I think we may see more splitting, not less. Right now, the goals are to clean up the other projects (there's a lot of left over messes at meta, for example). But once that is done....

See, the idea is that all the same-language projects should be more interconnected. After all, all it takes to wikilink to en.wiki is wp:.

All the rest of your concerns can easily be dealt with in the new project's own policies/guidelines.

As for blp information that's in articles, I think much of that is due to mergist/notability sentiments ("the person isn't notable of their own accord, so let's put the info in another article" aka BHTT/BTTH). And with a separate wiki, I think we'll see more of that there, than here. And of course we would still have WP:BLP here.

As you may have guessed, I've literally spent years thinking about this. But I am just one person. And I'm a firm believer in many eyes. the more people looking over something, the better : ) - jc37 04:20, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

The reasons for SUL are pretty obvious, to encourage people to work cross project. (It had the downside of preventing us from requiring roman alphabet usernames, but that's a relatively minor consideration.) The other en projects are a problem. I agree they should be more connected, but what they need most is to be of higher quality. I have never understood the reason for the distinction between Wikibooks and Wikiversity--and to be the intuitive meaning of the names is the opposite of the actual only: to me __university implies the project with the more advanced material. Wikinews needs a clearer role--it is more of a newsmagazine than a newspaper, because for actually breaking events, Wikipedia does it better because of our much higher participation. Wikiquote has a special niche, but there is nothing there which could not be integrated here. The distinction between Wiktionary and Wikipedia strikes me as artificial: words have meanings, and meanings are suitable subjects for articles--we should be able to write a valid article for every word in Wiktionary. Wikisource has a role, overlapping non-WMF projects, but it needs to be integrated with discussions of the works included. If anyone wants to combine any of these, I'll support it.

But I still do not see the basic reason why you should want to separate the information on people: you have not yet given anything which I would consider a reason or an advantage. If we start doing that, perhaps we should separate the information on places, and the information of works of art, and the information on products, and the information on companies, and on sports, and on chemicals, and biological organisms, and medicine, & so on until we have an encyclopedia of only very general articles on very general topics -- which I suppose would amount to an encyclopedia on philosophy. I don't see a reason. It defies the very concept of an encyclopedia, to encompass all of knowledge.

---

(edit conflict)As a pure coincidence, schools, colleges, bios (especially the sport ones that are allowed to be 'notable' based on a single listing on a club website, where notable academics have to fight for their existence on Wikipedia), and rappers, are the bane of my work here too. My private thought for a long time has been that all those one-line, one-ref sport bios should be split off to a WikiSport site. Corporate spam masquerading as articles also makes me furious, especially when it written by paid-for PR people or even our own editors. We as volunteers should not be providing fee help for adverts.

However, such splits will never happen, and there is no technical argument for them. Moreover, keeping everything in one place will at least help ensure that whatever criteria we do have are upheld and maintained by a diversity of experienced editors and admins. What needs to be done are three things:

• Bring the different BLP notability standards into alignment.
• Insist that NPP is wholly carried out by suitably experienced editors.
• Provide a proper landing page for newly registered users that clearly and concisely tells them what we want or can accept here. Unfortunately, the Article creation Work Flow that was promised by the Foundation over a year ago has been shelved as being of little priority. The last news several weeks ago was that it is being 'revisited'. I can't really understand why such as project is of such low priority because it would largely resolve all these issues in one sweep - including editor retention..

The problem is that once the Foundation adopts (or even usurps) a community driven project, although the volunteers are allowed to voice their opinions, they have very little real say in how the program advances. This is particularly true with the issues surrounding the NewPagesFeed, and the community's NPP Survey that was designed to shed some light on the actual quality of page patrolling. Among the tens of thousands of regular editors are many competent professional computer programmers, and it does not help community relations when the Foundation claims, as it did yesterday, that the only 'proper' devs are those who are salaried by the WMF. IMHO, those paid individuals might well be highly skilled coders, but they may have very little actual experience of editing and policies and knowledge of the true needs of both editors and readers. We've seen this with all the fuss, time, and funds dedicated to AfT - the results of which have not in any way contributed to an improvement in the current issues. All it does is feed the minds of the stats obsessed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:03, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

I have my own wishlist also. It is different from yours, though there are some overlaps. At this point, I'm concerned more about process than content. I would enforce WP:NPA as the first step: we need good people who combine writing and subject ability with the qualities necessary to work in our cooperative environment--the place for even the most knowledgable people if they want to work otherwise is elsewhere. . I would require notifying people of things that affect their work. I would require explanations. I would require personal messages, not templates. I would require if I could some way of showing that someone read an article before commenting on it. and, as something actually feasible, I would devote WMF funding to making all available sources available to Wikipedia editors in all languages, as the most critical use of their surpluses. (& as a practical matter, if the WMF won't do it--as I doubt they will, for they seem indifferent or unaware of the method of Wikipedia, which is to have sourced encyclopedic content--I intend to help raise the money elsewhere) Most radically, I would ban promotional editors even at the cost of giving up anonymity, for I se no other practical way for continuing to enforce NPOV. As that's not very likely, I'd instead enforce higher standards on the articles they are most likely to write about, standards that few of those currently here have any likelihood of meeting. And I'd no longer fix their articles, but treat them like we do copyvio & work of banned editors, as things to be done over by someone else.

In terms of content, most of the things I would improve coverage on are those in which I am interested, and most I would restrict those I do not care about. I can give good reasons, but such an exact match makes me aware of my need to examine my motivations. I would start, as I've often said, by discarding the GNG as obsolete, being suited only to the state of the internet 10 years ago & the limited research abilities of most of then active Wikipedians. I would then as much as possible establish abstract quantifiable standards. I've said enough elsewhere of what I would like them to be, but I'd accept almost everything as better than a process where the actual distinction depends upon quibbles of what we want to consider a RS.

Ideally, I'd rework the concept of "article" into re-assemblable chunks of information, thus eliminating the concept of notability entirely, for there would be no distinction between articles and subarticles. We have not yet realized the possibilities provided by our being hypertext, not paper. I'd see us expand into a fully semantic wiki, with multiple displayable versions (the problem here is that this requires a manner of writing that few here have mastered).

And I'd hold at all costs to our principles, such as freedom from censorship, and verifiability, and covering all of human knowledge. I wouldn't compromise these, any more than I would compromise the ultimate purpose of an educated public. I'd encourage derivatives, including peer-reviewed expert derivatives--I'd refound Citizendium the way it should have been done, as an expertly reviewed revision of Wikipedia articles. I see WP not as an end in itself, but a demonstration for what can be done by free culture. As the truly fundamental concept, I believe in developing human freedom and capabilities. DGG ( talk ) 08:14, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

and now it's time to go to bed again, but I'm glad I woke up to respond to this. I'm human, and if I do more, it will have to be tomorrow. ` DGG ( talk ) 08:14, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Google scholar anomality

Hi DGG. In a past deletion debate one year ago which I found mightily suspicious (the submitter and the very last voter turned out to be single purpose-accounts in hindsight) you argued from your professional experience that worldcat holdings of about 100 and 2-3 reviews two years after publication would be normal. I took a look again and Duchesne's 2011 book "The uniqueness of Western civilization" has risen since from 60 to 160 university holdings and, according to his homepage, received 10 reviews by now (leaving out his reply to Elvin and amazon). I noticed Brill has published a paperback version this year, so they seem to consider the book a sales success. However, on Google Scholar the book still is listed as cited by none, even though many of the reviews can be retrieved via its database. Frankly, I cannot make sense of this. Do you have any idea and do you think his WP bio has reached the threshold of notability by now? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 10:26, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

GS citations are erratic, and their standards change, and nobody knows what they are. In the humanities, citations of a book are slow to develop as compared to journals. First, the book will only be cited by those at libraries who have the book, while a few of his articles are in widely held journals. Second, there is the time factor: a 2011 book will show up in a library about 2 - 12 months after publication, a journal shows up immediately after publication. And in the humanities, if someone reading a work decides to use it in an article, they would typically write the article in the next 2 - 12 months , and it would take in the humanities somewhere from 9 to 24 months before it was published. If the citation was to be in a book, of course it would take at least double that time at each stage and sometimes much longer.

Additionally, his writings are from a definite pov, not widely popular at present in the academic world. A very few people will write using his work to support theirs; more will use it as something to refute. But the key qy. is whether he is well known enough that anyone would want to specifically write to refute him, or whether they will just include him among the other theorists they are refuting the next time they write on the general subject. .

As for actual notability , you will have noticed that at the AfD I made no keep or delete comment. I limited myself to critiquing the bad arguments,particularly those from BG. I consider it borderline by my own standard for notability as an academic: whether a person is a full professor at a research university or of equivalent quality. The usual requirement for getting there in the humanities is at least two books from major scholarly presses. Brill is in most fields a minor press, except for near eastern studies, religion, and related subjects; and UNB is a good but not superlative university. Of his journal articles, some of them are in important journals--but most are in a few journals of a rather specialized nature. The publications list should have included only peer reviewed journal articles, not book chapters. What also influenced me is that the article was written in the typical way to make slightly important subjects look more so: material on the importance of his student work, on the importance of his advisors, of those he has debated with, of those who replied to him, What influences me now much more is that too much of the article is a close paraphrase of his web page, which I carelessly did not think to look at during the discussion. if I had, I would said delete.

If you want to try it again, rewrite it from scratch. But I do not think there is enough new information; even if BG stays away from WP the result might be the same, and another delete decision will make it much harder in the future. What is needed is another book--it would be much safer. DGG ( talk ) 18:29, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your opinion. Best Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:02, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

COI and notability

At a current AfD, I made a suggestio [11]n that I would like to expand here:

A year ago my usual position on promotional articles about subjects of borderline notability was that I would want to accept the article, and then rewrite it to remove the irrelevant material, emphasize (or sometimes add) whatever was really important,& keep only the good references. I have come to feel differently. The reason is my increasing sense of desperation from working at AfC and NPP. When it was a trickle, we could deal with it, but not now. The greatly increased use of Wikipedia for PR, is of course due to the public perception of Wikipedia's significance. I don't see how we can avoid being a target, but we can alter our response.

I can not justify it by the formal WP rules, but the article on a person or firm of borderline notability that is here only as a result of a PR effort does not arouse my sympathies, and I judge it somewhat more strictly. I think many of us do. I now do pay attention to the origin and motivation of the article, & I also pay attention to the quality of the PR work--when it a great effort to magnify things, it increases my degree of skepticism. How we interpret our rules will always depend on common sense, otherwise known as IAR, and perhaps that informal interpretation is the best guide when the situation is otherwise ambiguous. We could think of it as self-defense. Because of the nature of the work I do here, I've thought about this for some months, and I've figured out how to express my feeling in an actual proposal:

I suggest a formal guideline that articles written with COI must show clear and unambiguous notability . (Because we cannot always tell whether something is PR, it would necessarily apply to those jobs of PR so poorly done that we could tell; this is most of them, and even forcing an improvement in quality would be of considerable help to the encyclopedia) I can see how it would be abused, by leading to an increased use of I Think It's Notable/Not Notable as an argument. I can see how it would be misused to delete articles by good-faith contributors who are merely copying what they think the correct style here. I can see the danger in discarding articles that are merely poorly written--unlike some other WPs that can require quality writing, we have an important role for editors with an imperfect knowledge of our language. We'd probably need some subtler wording, and it would fortunately all depend in practice on what people think at AfD, not the views of a single administrator. I've heard it suggested we counter promotionalism by omitting BLPs, and articles about companies & organizations, which is a throwing out the essential content along with the junk. More realistically, I've heard it suggested that we omit non-famous BLPs & companies & organizations. Mine is a lesser move in the same direction.

Opinions and suggested modification requested before I actually propose it. DGG ( talk ) 20:33, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

• I agree. A recent DRV (Bianca Jade) made me formulate the thought that one way to meet the flood of PR is to be much tougher-minded about the words significant and independent in the GNG; but I agree that, if the definitions can be got right, a higher formal notability standard for PR-driven efforts is desirable. I presume you are thinking of the AfD level: should there be a higher A7 bar for PR entries, as well? JohnCD (talk) 23:03, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it was that one which started me thinking. I think for a change like this, it would be better to trust the community than individual administrators, since it's a matter of interpretation. . Since the community has gradually been using higher standards for these promotional articles at AfD, this will give a smooth transition. Perhaps the real value of my suggested change is to make it easier to explain and support the decisions that are already being made. At CSD, we already have G11, which gives a good deal of flexibility. (And in deciding whether to use G11, I do take into account to some degree the likelihood of rewriting into an article that would pass AfD--certainly I myself am not going to go to the trouble of rewriting one unless I'm very sure it will!) And opinion at WT:CSD has always been against linking A7 to "notability"--I questioned that when I first came here, but people with more experienced explained to me how any connection would cause confusion and erratic single-handed deletions. DGG ( talk ) 23:17, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

I was thinking deleting blatant spam on notable subjects is quite easy to justify using our policies:

WP:NOT > WP:V > WP:GNG

No?

It's a little offensive to have double-standards for COIs. I should therefor tell companies they should not disclose to avoid such targeting. Corporate 19:44, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

We delete blatant spam wherever we find it, though when we find it, it was generally inserted by people with a COI, whether or not a commercial COI. Fans can have COI as much as paid staff, and for some products or enterprises there are many fans, sometimes more unreasonable than any PR agent. We have always interpreted promotion to include all forms of advocacy. To apply a stronger standard of notability for article mostly made for promotional purposes seems a rational intersection of two standards, not a double standard. Both notability and promotional nature have degrees, so for those articles where both are a little questionable in both regards, I think it reasonable to consider the questionability as additive. I'd say the people most likely to object will be the ones engaged in the lower levels of commercial promotion, who will no longer have customers except from those organization of clear notability. I'd further say that an attempt to hide COI is not regarded as ameliorating the matter.. I continue to suggest we regard it as very strongly aggravating it, along with other indications of bad faith editing.

The general principles of WP:NOT are so general that most of the other policies and guidelines are there to interpret it. The various illustrative examples on that page have varying levels of status. Some have become firm policy, some are advice, some are explicitly just links to guidelines. WP:NOT doesn't take precedence over WP:V--it's the other way round. In the content policy box at the top of WP:NOT, the "core policies" are NPOV, NOR, and V. NOT is among the "other content policies", along with Article titles, BLP, and Image policy.

My views on the GNG are well known--I consider it an obsolete part of the Notability guideline whose use ought to be restricted to situations where we can't find anything that actually pertains to the notability of the subject. Others think it the true basic part of the Notability guideline. What I think is universally agreed is that it is in practice what we generally use. DGG ( talk ) 06:50, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I was referring to this: "I suggest a formal guideline that articles written with COI must show clear and unambiguous notability." Maybe it wasn't intended that way, but it reads like something that singles-out/targets COIs, validating the rhetoric PRs are using to justify astroturfing and censorship. Corporate 22:13, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Certainly it singles out COI; that is exactly the purpose, and what I said in the paragraph above. It singles out COI whether it's by paid editors, or by people associated with the subject, or by fans of the subject or something associated with it, or by advocates of the cause associated with the subject. It does not specifically affect writing by paid editors any more than the other forms of COI. And it's directed towards the writing, not the editors; the wording is deliberate "written with COI" not "written by COI editors". You're assuming that the only form of COI is that by PR professionals. That's the most prevalent kind, but it's the easiest to deal with. People working for money are more rational than people working with an emotional commitment: when we make it not worth their while, they stop.

there's an alternative wording: written in a promotional manner. But the difficulty here is that this does not make a clear gradation: manner can just be a poor choice of words, or the idea that even a dispassionate but unskilled editor might have that they have to use adjectives of importance in order to make the notability clear to us. There's another alternative meaning, writing for the purpose of promotion. The problem here is that any writing , no matter how dispassionate, about a subject of any practical current significance will inherently promote the subject to a considerable extent, assuming it isn't written in order to abuse it.

But I want to emphasise that to some extent it is in fact about editors, and just as we regard the use of sockpuppets as likely to indicate bad faith editing, I would very strongly support regarding concealment of any explicit conflict of interest as similarly indicative. This would certainly meet your objections that we are unintentionally inducing editors to not declare themselves. More radically, if it comes down to a matter of our basic principle of NPOV being compromised by our basic principle of permitting anonymous editing, I would favor a change to restrict anonymous editing, and dealing with good faith needs to edit anonymously by permitting confidential disclosure, just as we do for those who must use open proxies. DGG ( talk ) 06:50, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

There is a certain degree of practicality, but I think many are offended by the idea of targeting the editors instead of the edits. I would suggest the articles be deleted under WP:NOT instead of WP:COI. Disclosure is one indication of an ABF situation, but it is too difficult to measure an editor's integrity. Instead, the best way to measure a COI that has a chance here is whether they are willing to read and follow instructions. COIs that are asked to disclose and do not demonstrate this well enough. Corporate 00:47, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

CM, I think you have hit on a very good solution to the problem of disclosure: failure to disclose when asked should be treated as a failure to follow our rules. Unfortunately, at present, nobody is actually required to do so. I would support requiring it More, I have always supported requiring it. I am perfectly prepared to ask every likely editor whether or not they have a COI. But since nobody is ever required to identify themselves, and this interpretation of our rules against Outing is unlikely to change, this creates some rather absurd situations when someone is asked to disclose whether or not they have COI. If someone denies it, how do we prove it. Many PR editors when asked have simply denied it, even in the face of obvious incongruities, and nobody can prove them wrong, unless a sockpuppet investigation is justified and gives a match with a known corporate site. DGG ( talk ) 06:50, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

In my Talk page patrolling, I came across an opportunity to potentially test out my argument,[12] but in actuality, I think I ended up in a very similar place as your original argument that I so opposed. The problem being that, in this case, WP:NOT was not so applicable, because it wasn't advert. Corporate 15:05, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

sources

One thing that came up to me was the prevalence of start-ups in Mountain View, CA having their own page while much larger companies with less online notability are assumed to have less notability. Online visibility certainly makes it easier for verifiability, but even today the internet is not the almighty resources and shouldn't be the determining factor in notability. Also, companies for which editors go around looking for each article which mentions the name/site and have to stitch them up so the same sentence can have eight references is in my opinion just looking for perception of notability. Cantaloupe2 (talk) 22:24, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

There is a true localization of major innovative companies in a number of geographic areas. But it is also true that local chambers of commerce and similar organizations have created unduly promotional articles for firms in their region, and people associated with universities have done so for firms funded in part by the university, or exploiting inventions made there, or even just those made by alumni. And see above for the problem of whether to focus on promotional editors, or on promotional writing. In practice, once a clear example is uncovered here, it has proven very productive to take a look at all articles associated by subject, geography, and even more productive to look for those by the same editor, whether by user name or by common characteristics.

The problem of equal weight to non-online resources is always going to be with us, because it is associated with the presence of amateur editors, and editors who--amateur or not--think in on line terms. The only likely imnprovment will be getting more resources freely available on the internet. The extreme example is various religious organizations in some countries, which simply don't bother using it, for whom notability is as much a matter of word of mouth as even print sources, let alone those online.

There is often not a strong correlation between our notability requirements and whether a subject is actually "notable." I recently told a commercial bakery (a household name according to my wife) that they don't meet Wikipedia's notability requirements. But so long as WP:V is a policy, I'm not sure anything can be done.

Our coverage of topics therefore adopts a similar bias as the convenience and availability of sourcing. However, it's not unlike our many bias'. We have 100+ articles on Linux, but 1 sentence on Vagisil, because most editors are more interested in writing about the former than the latter. Our coverage of consumer companies is much better than B2B, because consumers write articles - CEOs don't.

On the contrary, PRs do not have to scrounge for sources, because as a matter of course, they almost always have coverage reports collected already for internal purposes. Offering transparency into these reports to make it easier to cover them is one of the best things COIs can do and properly sourcing content because one is motivated to make the content stick is a good thing.

On the other hand, many COIs will add sources that do not even mention the company to make the article appear sourced or use sources in other misleading ways.

Corporate 00:08, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Great stuff on your user page! I've never really seen another user go so in-depth into his philosophies and thoughts on WP as yours does. :)

Arjun G. Menon (talk · mail) 11:50, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge

Could you have a look at the discussion here and tell me what you think the proper title should be? I was pretty much convinced that I was right, until this editor brought up the Microsoft argument. So now I don't know any more... Although, if it's a stone rule that we should put the company name in front of the product name, would that also mean that Nature would have to become Nature Publishing Group Nature? :-) Seriously, your informed opinion is welcome. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:44, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Academic Journals are sui generis . I think WP naming conventions tend to lack rationality. I rarely engage in these debates because I disagree with some of the fundamental rules, like never disambiguating names until there is a conflict. DGG ( talk ) 01:37, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

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Page Curation newsletter - closing up!

Hey all :).

We're (very shortly) closing down this development cycle for Page Curation. It's genuinely been a pleasure to talk with you all and build software that is so close to my own heart, and also so effective. The current backlog is 9 days, and I've never seen it that low before.

However! Closing up shop does not mean not making any improvements. First-off, this is your last chance to give us a poke about unresolved bugs or report new ones on the talkpage. If something's going wrong, we want to know about it :). Second, we'll hopefully be taking another pass over the software next year. If you've got ideas for features Page Curation doesn't currently have, stick them here.

Again, it's been an honour. Thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:59, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library

I assume you already know about The Wikipedia Library effort, but given your interest in getting editors access to these resources, I wanted to make sure you've seen this. Brianwc (talk) 21:29, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Unrelated

By the way, there's complex issue of COI and COATRACK at Retail loss prevention (see history and talk page.) Maybe you care to take a look at that too. Tijfo098 (talk) 22:16, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

yes indeed; a classic conflict of an industry white-washer and a consumer pov pusher. The whole thing needs to be redone; a small amount of the text in the various versions will be helpful. DGG ( talk ) 03:29, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Hey David! This barnstar isn't for anything specific, it's just to say that I appreciate your hard work, thoughtful approach, and consistent sincerity all over Wikipedia in general, and with the education program in particular. Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:28, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Just so you know...

Regarding this, when the tag was applied the page was pretty much a straight copy from the source, with a few phrases changed out, and had been pretty much for its entire history. User:Rjensen deserves a Barnstar (which I will give him presently) for completely rewriting the article, which is of course an even better solution than deletion. Since your edit comment implied that the tag was improperly placed, I just wanted to assure you that it wasn't at the time I placed it, its just that intervening work made it so. Again, you did the right thing in declining the deletion request at the time you did, and Rjensen did some awesome work here, I just wanted to make sure you didn't think that I was tagging articles for deletion without carefully checking them. I had, it is just that the state of the article changed drastically from when I tagged it. The ideal result, altogether, if you ask me. --Jayron32 13:03, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

thanks for letting me know. My apologies. I've run into this before, and I should be more careful checking the history. But when the article is improved, the tag should really have been removed also. I think some people do not realize that anyone can remove a speedy except the guy who first submitted the article)--some people think it takes an admin. Quite the opposite--since anyone can do it, it makes excellent practice for people who wqnt to become admins to build up a record of good decisions. DGG ( talk ) 17:54, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Hey, this entire sequence got me thinking about some stuff, and I started a thread at WP:VPP that you may find interesting or have some insight on. Penny for your thoughts... --Jayron32 18:59, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Robert Peernock

Ten months ago you declined a prod on this article. I am not disagreeing with your prod however I, stumbling upon the article, found it to have been since its origins based not on the BLP itself but as an article of undue weight that subscribes the man involved as a whistle blower and victim of conspiracy. These are the claims of Peernock himself from his own website, http://www.freerobertpeernock.com, when the reality is that he is a man who was convicted of murdering his wife and attempting to murder his daughters that has claimed they were framed. No one would, neutrally, rate him as a whistleblower or activist. The only whistle he has blown is that there is a conspiracy involving the prosecution, the judge, the jury, his own attorney, his daughter and a "judge's accomplice" who he claims murdered his wife for the judges benefit.

I am rather rusty with procedure, having been absent from wikipedia for a while due to real life situations, but I was hoping you could give some guidance on what to do in this article. It is tilted from its very beginning and I'm not too sure the notability of the book outweighs the individual himself. Many many convicted murderers claim of a far reaching conspiracy, wikipedia should not be a part of their whitewashing. –– Lid<sup>(Talk)</sup> 04:56, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Looking more carefully than I did at first, I agree with you that the article should be deleted. What convinced me is checking the book about him, which was what I based my keep on: it is in only 41 libraries. Checking the author, he's a moderately notable minor crime writer with 5 books, his best known ones are in 600 & 400 libraries, so there will surely be reviews to show his notability. This offers a quick solution without the need for afd; I can easily do it tomorrow: writing a short article about the author, anthony Flacco, and list his books. This article can then be redirected there, which will at least give some identifying information here if anyone looks him up. OK? DGG ( talk ) 05:10, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure a redirect would be appropriate, Peernock's life and biography is in no way tied to the life of Anthony Flacco. A redirect would not make much sense as those searching for Peernock, if there are any, are unlikely to be searching for the life of an author who subsequently wrote about the case. Also here's a link I forgot to include previously http://articles.latimes.com/1991-10-24/local/me-242_1_man-convicted-of-killing-wife –– Lid<sup>(Talk)</sup> 06:16, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

To follow up will you be doing what you have suggested as an option? –– Lid<sup>(Talk)</sup> 07:05, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Journal of Population Economics and Les Halpin

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Rumi's Kimia

Hello DGG, I removed your prod from the above article as it has previously been listed at articles for deletion. Thank you. Rotten regard Softnow 19:56,

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For you extra work on Lutsk National Technical University, rather than just deleting it. Mdann52 (talk) 15:22, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

This is not a newsletter

This is just a tribute.

Anyway. You're getting this note because you've participated in discussion and/or asked for updates to either the Article Feedback Tool or Page Curation. This isn't about either of those things, I'm afraid ;p. We've recently started working on yet another project: Echo, a notifications system to augment the watchlist. There's not much information at the moment, because we're still working out the scope and the concepts, but if you're interested in further updates you can sign up here.

In addition, we'll be holding an office hours session at 21:00 UTC on Wednesday, 14 November in #wikimedia-office - hope to see you all there :). I appreciate it's an annoying time for non-Europeans: if you're interested in chatting about the project but can't make it, give me a shout and I can set up another session if there's enough interest in one particular timezone or a skype call if there isn't. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:54, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

AFT5 newsletter

Hey all :). A couple of quick updates (one small, one large)

First, we're continuing to work on some ways to increase the quality of feedback and make it easier to eliminate and deal with non-useful feedback: hopefully I'll have more news for you on this soon :).

Second, we're looking at ways to increase the actual number of users patrolling and take off some of the workload from you lot. Part of this is increasing the prominence of the feedback page, which we're going to try to do with a link at the top of each article to the relevant page. This should be deployed on Tuesday (touch wood!) and we'll be closely monitoring what happens. Let me know if you have any questions or issues :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:29, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Discussion about copyvio detection at WikiProject articles for creation (on my talk page)

Hi DGG. I'm interested in obtaining your input at a discussion occurring at my talk page at: Advice on recently edited article: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Christopher J. Howell. Please respond at your convenience, and thank you for your consideration. Northamerica1000<sup>(talk)</sup> 14:51, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

re: Leonid Raikhman

Not sure, but I looked over the art on pl wiki, and I am not 100% convinced of notability. Certainly should get a proper AfD, however, at the very least. --<sub>Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here</sub> 06:21, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

If you translate, I can use the refs to show notability. Lt Gen in any army is notable, and the corresponding ranks in the NKVD also. He engaged in various actions political oppression as a tool of the party till the WWII, and the took a leaning role in Katyn, about which there has been the usual argument over just how leading a role--one of the books seems to refer to his organizing -- which apparently made his name in the NKVD, for he went on to the destruction of other ethnic minorities before & after the was. I gather from a Google "translation" of the Polish he was a Jew, and one of those arrested at the time of the Doctor's Plot, which was of course aborted by the death of Stalin; freed soon afterwards, but soon rearrested possibly as being implicated in Beria's methods. See also the part about his wife--this was a famous NKVD success. DGG ( talk ) 12:22, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I did some c/e and now I agree he is notable, which the stub implies (general, recipient of awards). In the future, please share such requests for assistance to WT:POLAND, which may generate more attention than on my talk page (our project is actually active :) ). --<sub>Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here</sub> 18:34, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

You have a point, but when I know some individual who could do something well, I tend to ask them. DGG ( talk ) 19:09, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I'll probably end up doing it from WT:POLAND anyway, but your post would help to make the page look more alive. --<sub>Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here</sub> 21:03, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

AfC copyvio detection relative to adminship consideration

After consideration, contributors to WikiProject Articles for creation should have fair warning about copyvio detection relative to consideration for adminship, so I've posted a comment there regarding this matter. If you're interested in providing any opinion regarding this matter, please feel free at any time to comment at my talk page, or at the above-linked discussion. Should the AfC process be started over from scratch, as you suggested on my talk page? Northamerica1000<sup>(talk)</sup> 17:14, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

well, not exactly from scratch. We can use the knowledge we've gained. The principal information is that all new articles coming into WP ,. whether directly submitted, submitted thru an afc process, or through move of userspace pages to mainspace, must flow through one common process. 6 months ago I would have hesitated to suggest NP, but the excellent work done of developing WP:NPP and the page curation process makes this a practical suggestion. I was just as dubious about NPP at first as I was about AfC, and all I can say is that skepticism shouldn't discourage experiment, because some will work out. Our editing environment is unique, so we have little precedents. (Someone is very likely to say there is no way to get the moves or the afc moves into NPP, but they just mean they haven't done it. or haven't figured out how. Programmers are not magicians, but they should be up to this.) DGG ( talk ) 00:05, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Jacob School of Biotechnology and Bioengineering and possible merge

I notied that you had placed a redirect on this article which had been reverted. To encourage resolution via Talk, I've added a Merge suggestion and opened it as a topic on the previous redirect target. AllyD (talk) 17:23, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Talk:British Studies Seminar, University of Texas at Austin

Could you provide a subject template (we have the place template) for this article? --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Tomorrow's Company→User:Sladen/Tomorrow's Company

Hello DGG, could you undelete Tomorrow's Company to my userspace so that I can have a look over it. I just spent a couple of months working with a photographer to release File:Richard-Brown-Eurostar-and-Mark-Goyder-Tomorrows-Company.jpg under a suitable licence; the left-hand half of which I've used as File:Richard-Brown-Eurostar.jpg for the Richard Brown (transport) article; I had a mental note to also add the right-hand half to the Tomorrow's Company article (now deleted in the interim). —Sladen (talk) 10:03, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

moved. Check also earlier versions--I undeleted the entire history. I'll mention that a key problem with the article is the unsourced claims of being exceptionally important. The sources in the article, as said at the AfD are either self published or the speeches of their founder or mere mentions. Their web page calls them a "global think tank"; such sources as I can find call them a consultancy. I suspect they might perhaps be best characterized as an advocacy organization. Their claimed connection with the RSA seems to be that they were originally inspired by a talk there by a distinguished person. The section of "membership" is link spam. See also the article on Corporate Responsibility Group which I am thinking of sending to AfD. DGG ( talk ) 16:46, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

• nod*. Concur; I'll have a dig around at a future point, and if I can't fix it I'll probably come back you to unmove and redelete it. Ta! Sladen (talk) 20:13, 8 December 2012 (UTC)—

UMI Dissertations Abstract

Hi DGG!

Would you help me with a UMI Dissertations Abstract query, please?

Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Ask, here or by email, but it may be a day or two until I can respond to it. DGG ( talk ) 15:41, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Ralph Patt

I would like help with locating the Ph.D. university, advisor, and title of Ralph Oliver Patt's dissertation. Ralph Patt returned to university (after 20 years!) to earn a Ph.D. in geology beginning in 1975. He had been employed as a Broadway/broadcast/studio guitarist in New York City from 1960-1975, so that CUNY or SUNY might have been likely universities.

He was later working at a Western research institute and wrote about Las Vegas's hydrology, in a frequently cited report:

• Patt, Ralph O. (1978). Las Vegas Valley water budget: Relationship of distribution, consumptive use, and recharge of shallow water. Vol. 1. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Robert S. Kerr Environmental Research Laboratory. pp. 1–61. Retrieved 27 November 2012. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Another query: He apparently helped to edit this book:

• Russell, George (1959). The Lydian chromatic concept of tonal organization for improvisation. Concept Publishing Co. pp. 1–50. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

I'd like to find a page number and the acknowledgement. Now, that fact relies on weak sources.

Thanks! Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:08, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Pagestalkers, especially librarians, are welcome to help. :) Kiefer.Wolfowitz 14:02, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I cannot find the PhD thesis in the Proquest Dissertations ; nor is his thesis listed in WorldCat, from which i conclude that it may not have actually been a phd. What is the evidence that it was?. Geologists working on field or environmental work do not necessarily have advanced academic training at that level. you any evidence that it was?

Here's the link to the bibliography of his works on WorldCat: this will include separately published reports, but not journal articles. [13] ;

fwiw, here's the list of what WorldCat has for what he published as a musician [14]. Russell's Lydian chromatic... is at NYPL=--I will be there monday and look for it and tell you if there's a mention of him. DGG ( talk ) 19:55, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

The article by Petersen has a statement that Patt enrolled in graduate school in 1975 to earn a Ph.D., but it does not state that he completed it. He seems to have evolved from rather descriptive work c. 1976 to mathematical and statistical modelling of hydrological phenomena. Perhaps he had enough work that was interesting that he did not want the Ph.D.... I could not find anything at the U-Nevada libraries.

Ah, DGG, your sentence about Russell's book brought a tear of profound & simple happiness to my left eye. :.D The page number would be great! :)

Patt was active in jazz-guitarist newsgroups until 2007, when he stated that he need not be around when somebody completed a large project, but wished him well. One of these has a discussion of Russell, which Patt modestly acknowledges. One of them (after his death) has a grateful description of Patt at the Research Institute, as a good guy to the grad & other students.

Writing about Patt, I feel like the cowboy narrator of The Big Lewbowski commenting on The Dude—taking comfort that he's out there, and maybe just maybe The Dude's example gives hope to all of us sinners. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:13, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:13, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm currently Wikipedian in Residence at New York Public Library of the Performing Arts; I'll see what I can find there about him. The book is still in copyright so I cannot copy it; check the worldcat listing to see if its in a library to which you have access. DGG ( talk ) 20:18, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Great!

FYI

• Slater, Neil; LaRocco, Dave; Negri, Joe; Patt, Ralph; Ryan, Rodger (1989). "Streaming audio index: Audio clips". Like Someone in Love. Ralph Patt's Jazz Web Page, Ralphpatt.com. Retrieved 16 December 2012. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); External link in |work= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Patt, Ralph (2002). "Streaming audio index: Audio clips". For George Russell. Ralph Patt's Jazz Web Page, Ralphpatt.com. Retrieved 16 December 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); External link in |work= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:26, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Re: Center for Economic and Policy Research (PRODded, now AFD)

The name happens to denote the most respected think tank in the UK and a research institute at Stanford University. The first hit I saw at Google Scholar or Books noted the reader's being puzzled at a CERP working paper being written by a political economist from the only Marxist department in the UK, before he realized that it was a US CERP. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:58, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

My copyright violation on an article talk page

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Message added -- Trevj (talk) 11:24, 29 November 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Reply

Hi DGG, thanks and respect for all the good work you do. I replied to your comment on Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Another_loophole_on_the_misuse_of_db-G6_theme. Absolutely not in any way intended as criticism, problem with the system not with good admins. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:30, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Goes to the Movies in NYC this Saturday Dec 1

Wikipedia Goes to the Movies in NYC

You are invited to Wikipedia Goes to the Movies in NYC, an editathon, Wikipedia meet-up and workshops focused on film and the performing arts that will be held on Saturday, December 1, 2012, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (at Lincoln Center), as part of the Wikipedia Loves Libraries events being held across the USA.

All are welcome, sign up on the wiki and at meetup.com!--Pharos (talk) 07:00, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Rising above the mediocre

What you said here was very interesting. "I do not think a community editing project where anyone can edit will ever rise above mediocre quality. Our goal should be to not come below it--above is unreachable. The greater the degree of summarization, the more skilled the writing must be. Even among the scholarly societies, many more are capable of specialized writing than of general introductions."

I would agree personally with that. Summarising a comprehensive subject is difficult, as it involves both a comprehensive knowledge of the subject itself (rare), and good communication skills (less rare, but not frequent). But it surprised me you say that because you seem to be one of the main defenders of the Wikipedia 'ideology', i.e. the idea of 'epistemic egalitarianism', the idea that a 17 year old has as much to contribute as a professor etc. Do you see any conflict between the view you expressed above, and your belief or faith in Wikipedia? Interesting Hestiaea (talk) 08:26, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it by such monumental terms as "faith and belief"; my hope and expectation for Wikipedia is that it will be a good and useful general encyclopedia. Some aspects of it are already very good, and can be excellent: comprehensive scope, up-to-date coverage. Some will be very good, and are quite good already: accuracy, referencing and cross-linking. Some will I hope become good, though they have problems at present: freedom from advertising and bias. Some will never rise above mediocre: the quality of the writing, including their detailed style. Some of all this is characteristic of a large scale community project: comprehensiveness, timeliness, lack or bias, linking. Some are special features of the people gathered here and they way they work: objectivity , accuracy, referencing.

The intention was for WP to be at the level of the average college student. Many 17 year olds are at that level, some considerably younger in fields with no special academic pre-requisites. Certainly the high school and junior high school Wpedians I have known in Wp circles have been working at a mature level. I learned this freedom from agist bias from my parents, who treated their children as rational beings who would learn more if given the opportunity. Here, we give them that chance. Children should be treated as adults as soon as they're ready, when it does not risk their safety. This is a very safe place, compared to others on the web. And it does not affect our own safety, because when there are errors, there are thousands of people to fix them.

As I said elsewhere, there still remains the need for an encyclopedia of higher academic quality. Most high school students would not be able to participate significantly, but neither would most adults. And a great many of those with advanced subject degrees I have known in my career would not have the necessary skill at comprehensive comprehensible writing. Scholars too need to be edited, and complicated works do best with skilled organization. It can be more efficient to have questions settled by editorial ukase. But not always: as you know, I joined WP and Citizendium at the same time, resolved to go with the one that made more progress. DGG ( talk ) 16:18, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! BTW I wasn't aware of your involvement with Citizendium.

I don't altogether agree with your comment about academic quality. I don't think articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy would be suitable for WP. What is needed is well-summarised and well-explained articles on difficult or general subjects that would be accessible to anyone of high school age (15-18) and above. The Wikipedia article on Being and the corresponding SEP article [15] are both unreadable but for different reasons. The WP article, as you will appreciate, is a rambling dog's breakfast of uncited original research (plus some glaring factual errors). The SEP article looks pretty accurate to me but just goes off into the clouds ("Anti-Meinongian First-Order View") once it gets going. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is better for a general audience but is incomplete. Hestiaea (talk) 09:15, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Expert attention requested

At User talk:Dr. Blofeld#archive.org I mentioned that I am in the process of beginning the work to upload some of the old, now public domain, articles from the Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics to WikiSource, at least partially because I think, in at least a lot of cases, the content of some of the articles in wikipedia we would have on older subjects about whom the scholarly opinion may not have changed much in the intervening time might well benefit from having such a good, reliable, academic source on their subjects very easily available. In fact, I was thinking of maybe proposing to Blofeld that one way to help get some content together on some of the major topics we don't have articles on yet is for, maybe, me to upload old articles to WikiSource, and then he, with his astonishing productivity, maybe check some of the more recent reference and other works on the subject (I think he has both the free Highbeam Research and Questia accounts given out earlier), and, between the older and newer sources, we could get together at least fairly solid "starter" articles on a lot of those topics. One thing that might be useful there, though, would be to know which if any of these older PD reference sources would be most useful in such an effort. I think you are probably the best person we might have to answer that question, if you see fit probably Dr. Blofeld's talk page. John Carter (talk) 17:18, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

• There is no subject whatsoever, about which there may not have been very significant additional information in 70 years, or about which scholarly opinion will not have substantially changed in 70 years. I would very strongly oppose moving any content on major topics here unless (1). The specific portion moved was indicated in the article so we could tell the old material from later additions. and (2) A competent search had been made to see what revisions were warranted. (Unlike some other encyclopedia, there is no current edition to make for an easy check.) This is not going to be easy if done properly. It would make more work to do this than to write from scratch--it could more appropriately be a list of article that need writing. If Dr. B wants to take this on, I am sure he will do it well, but if I were doing it I would rewrite, not merely supplement.

I regard our earlier use of the old EB and Catholic E. ,to have been reckless. We have spent 10 years cleaning those articles up, and it's not yet finished. Yes it's better to have some information than no information, but that's only the case if "some" means incomplete, not if it means wrong or misleading. On the other hand, I must admit that our use of the old DNB has been fairly successful. It clearly separated facts from opinion, and, especially in the articles about the earlier historical figures, relies very usefully upon direct quotation of the sources. Even for this source, naïve use of it simply copies, and does not remove what nowadays we would consider fluff.

More generally, there are, as you say, a great many such works. There may possibly be some fields where matters are stationary enough, but I cannot immediately think of any. In art and music even basic attributions change. In descriptive biology, even frequently used scientific names change. There are similar works to the DNB for other countries, but I have never analyzed them. Having all these encyclopedias available is and will be a wonderful resource--but in general they require interpretation and knowledge of context. DGG ( talk ) 22:57, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I actually don't myself disagree with you about searching for updates in general. I guess I should say that the few I thought might not have received a lot of large changes would be things like (because I deal with religion a lot) the thinking of Thomas Aquinas or Augustine of Hippo, which have been analyzed to the point of absurdity for centuries, and about which there haven't been much in the way of recent discoveries. And I might not have stressed hard enough that I although think that Blofeld, or myself, would also consult the databanks like Highbeam and Questia which will generally have some of the more recent reference sources, like the Eliade/Jones Encyclopedia of Religion to review the Hastings against. I think both he and I have both of them. Regarding the qualifications you cited, I think that if either he or I did anything like this, we could probably arrange the citations in the article to address your point 1, and the search of databanks for more recent material would probably address point 2. I know, for instance, the Hastings article on Ægean religion (I am truly beginning to hate that "*Sheehy, Eugene P., ed. (1986). Guide to Reference Books (Tenth ed.). Chicago and London: American Library Association. ISBN 0-8389-0390-8. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |trans_title= and |month= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)

" character BTW) says that their main goddess could be thought of as being Rhea, when more recent research would probably indicate that Leto would be the more likely candidate, and probably doesn't even make that jump to any sort of conclusion at all.

I myself am probably going to try to "fill out" the existing missing articles in the Eliade/Jones EoR more or less on the basis of a mining of the Hastings and itself, emphasizing the latter over the former. But, yeah, in general, I think you are probably right. I probably should have thought it through a bit more. John Carter (talk) 23:45, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Analogously, the material in the old DNB could certainly be used to supplement articles, by someone who could do it with some confidence that the part being used is uncontroversial. Additionally, substantial parts beyond the accepted fair use limits here could be quoted. (I think almost anything short of a full article would be legal fair use, & if I were making the rules, I would permit using anything legal, but the consensus wants to be more restrictive. Using out-of-copyright sources removes that problem.)

I've realized another reason why using the old encyclopedia article by themselves --even by an expert who is sure that the interpretation is still correct--is misleading. Doing this does not make clear to the reader that the earlier interpretations are still considered correct--only a current source can do this. DGG ( talk ) 01:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Good points, although I suppose if we were to eventually develop some of the articles on reference sources, and I'm thinking many of them meet our content guidelines, we might have articles on them which say that their content is still very highly regarded and accurate for some specific topics. I am in the process of getting together some sources for content on Aegean religion and some of the "Ages of the world" subjects, because those are the ones which have separate articles in both the Jones EoR and the old Hastings. If I do create them or develop them, it would almost certainly be based on at least both of those sources, and probably any other major current reference sources I can find on the databanks. John Carter (talk) 01:56, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, certainly, but only an expert (not necessarily a professional academic--many amateurs are equally skillful) in the subject will know enough to do it right, and I certainly do not mean to discourage you. In summarizing current sources, a lower degree of subject knowledge is needed, because the sources can be more consistently relied on. I regard old sources very highly, so highly that I own a *print* 1911 EB & 1907 Catholic encyclopedia, But that an encyclopedia is generally reliable doesn't say anything about a specific article. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia is very reliable within its limits.

BTW, you mentioned Sheehy (1986). I have it & most of the older editions also, & they show nicely the changes over time. What was reliable in 1986 may not be reliable in 2013, and the online Guide to Reference is the reliable source for current views of quality. DGG ( talk ) 02:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Good points. And thanks for the hint to the online Guide to Reference. I am actually right now only really using the Sheehy book because it is one I have available to me, and it does seem to have come out right around the time of what seems to have been a marked proliferation in the production of specialist encyclopedias and similar reference sources, the mid 1980s. The various databanks I have access to have a frankly huge number of reviews in various academic and professional publications about such works, and the material there is probably sufficient to indicate which sources published since then are out there, and possibly provide a better indicator of where they are most and least reliable. I actually have already downloaded a mess of them to my e-mail, and as my limited time allows, I hope to create articles on the more important of them. But I chose the admittedly outdated book because it can possibly be used to help establish notability of some of those older sources, and allow for us to have some ideas regarding what is still considered good in them. A few of the articles on Buddhism in the old Hastings ERE were said in reviews of the more recent Eliade EoR to have been the best articles ever written on their individual subjects, including those in the Eliade EoR, and my hope is that when and if I get the time to read and write them all the articles on those works include mention of similar highly regarded articles in those earlier works. Personally, I think that at this point maybe one of the more important things we might be able to do is make it easier for editors to know which articles we do and don't have, and where sources for them can be found, and reference books, even the old ones, are probably among the best things available to help do that. John Carter (talk) 16:55, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

No need to apologize. I'm the one who should apologize, because I've been meaning for several years to add everything from GtoR. I do not have it routinely available from home either, and the main library I work at these days, NYPL, unbelievably does not have it. But i can still go down to NYU or Princeton and use it--they have both the online and the printed multi-vol version, and ideally both should be added. I agree the older vols. are usable, and that was notable then is notable now. But if you use them, you'll also need to check about newer eds of the print, and especially about online availability, which is of course much greater at present than it was earlier . However, I'm not clear about "what articles we do and don't have"--surely finding that is easy enough--I think you mean, what sources we have not yet exploited, and I'd be glad to find a way for this. The best I can devise is to use a template for adding the references to a particular source, which will automatically make a category--which can then be given on the article on that source. I think i'll do a batch. I can figure out how get them usable for the various ref formats, but as I prefer plain footnotes, I'll do that; others can add options if they care to. Project for February. DGG ( talk ) 02:59, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Sunil Erevelles

I left a comment here but instead of you chancing on the AfD I figured I'd bring it to your attention, since you were involved in the original one two years ago and I know you are very knowledgeable about these types of bios. I feel that maybe that article is just badly written and sourced, but I'm not sure. Thanks! §FreeRangeFrog 22:06, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I replied to your query at my talk page.Truth or consequences-2 (talk) 23:26, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Boundary 2

I'd appreciate if you could have a look at the last few edits made to this article. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 17:04, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest?!?

You wrote:

BTW, I notice that you have written a series of articles on various Canadian and other technological companies of marginal notability , some of which have been deleted. I therefore must remind you of our provisions on WP:Conflict of Interest. DGG ( talk ) 09:40, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I am well aware of WP:Conflict of Interest, but what has that to go with anything? Regarding any deleted articles, could you please be more specific? I am unsure what you refer to. TIA. Enquire (talk) 02:57, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Advise on company name titles

Would you point me towards something that addresses proper company name formatting for Wikipedia article? For example, if the company is called xyz, LLC, or ABC Corporation, what is the proper way to name them for the article title? Why is "Sony Corporation" titled "Sony" but "Apple Inc." is titled "Apple Inc." ?? Cantaloupe2 (talk) 00:12, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

The guideline is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies). In short, we use the name without the Inc, (etc) unless needed to distinguish it from some other title or to clarify that the subject is a company. Sony is an invented name with almost no other meaning except the company and its derivative. (see Sony (disambiguation)). Apple, however, has another meaning, on e which was originally at least even more important:Apple, the fruit. If a choice is still needed, we pick whatever name is the most common in general use, if the name is in general use. We make a redirect from all likely alternates. Not that we are actually consistent: I consider Cisco Systems and Polaroid Corporation to be errors. DGG ( talk ) 00:57, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avaya 1100 series IP phones.
Message added 09:16, 8 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

VQuakr (talk) 09:16, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Help clean Cal Poly Pomona

Hi, DGG

I noticed that you are involved in cleaning Cal Poly. I think these pages need to be deleted or merged. I need your input.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronco_Pep_Band (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cal_Poly_Pomona_presidents (merge with List of Cal Poly Pomona people) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Poly_Universities_Rose_Float (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronco_Student_Center (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_Marine_Institute (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Poly_Post (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Poly_Pomona_Broncos (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Poly_Pomona_Broncos_men%27s_basketball (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Poly_Pomona_University_Library (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLA_Building (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._K._Kellogg_Arabian_Horse_Center (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Poly_Universities_Rose_Float (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Polytechnic_University,_Pomona_academics#Agriculture_.288.29 (delete/merge)

Thanks, --Fredthecleaner (talk) 20:29, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

the way this sort of situation should be handled is to start at the bottom, with the least notable . I've nominated the one of the Rose Float for deletion; the list of presidents should be merged to the main article--it's appropriate content there, and all the successive presidents are notable & should have articles. At the opposite end, the article for their athletic teams is a perfectly justifiable split, similar to what is done routinely for such universities. Whether articles on individual teams should be merged into depends on their significance. Since the basketball team won a NCAA championship in 2010 there's a case for it--I'd need to see how other such teams are handled. The various centers need looking at, but we'd ordinarily mention these in the main article, and redirect/merge, not delete. The CLA building might be notable. The student center building should be merged to the student association, but I'm not sure the combination is notable: there is little content. I cannot see why on earth you included the agriculture section of their academics article--it's already properly merged. The question is whether that entire article should be merged into the main article as a section. Articles on bands and libraries and newspapers are acceptable when they are indpedently significant; that is probably not the case here, but they should be merged/redirected, not deleted. According to :[WP:Deletion policy]], deletion is the last resort. Wanting to delete rather than merge seems quite inappropriate. (Sometimes there is a problem of not getting consensus to merge, and the practical solution can be an AfD, though that's not formally what it should be for.) DGG ( talk ) 23:48, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Not that it affects the note, but that is sockpuppet I blocked. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 01:53, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

so I noticed after I wrote it when I went to his talk p to warn him that the strange mix of including articles that should surely be deleted, and those that should not, indicated a possible negative conflict of interest. As I've said at I think it was an/i, during many of the discussions involving this college and NYU-Poly, despite the article proliferation and recriminations on both sides, some of the material is usable, and some is not. If I can get a day clear from immediate fire-fighting, I'm going to do all the necessary merges. DGG ( talk ) 01:58, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

On a completely unrelated note: since getting the bit I've been working hard on my content creation,improving on what was noted as a weaknesses at RfA. I've 20+ new articles, which is more than the last 6 years combined. 1950s' American automobile culture is my latest and best so far. Of course I had a tremendous amount of help, but thought you might like to know I've not forgotten why we are here. I expect to aim for GA and FA with this article in time, my first for both. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 02:09, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Article For Creation: Christopher Matthew

Could you take a look at the new changes. Thanks

Istook Live! requests again

Hi again, DGG. I wasn't sure if you'd see this if I replied in my original message, as it's now in your archives, so I hope you don't mind I made a new section.

You mentioned that you thought all the edits I requested had been made: Polmandc made the edit on the Heritage article and fixed the issues with formatting on Ernest Istook's article that I mentioned, but the addition to Heritage Action for America hasn't yet been made. Also, for Ernest Istook's article I've requested the addition of a more recent photo and source to support the new radio show (the existing source in the article refers to other radio shows he hosted, before Istook Live!). If you can make these edits, that would be great. Thanks! Thurmant (talk) 20:02, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

this weekend, if nobody gets to it sooner. DGG ( talk ) 19:50, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Just to let you know

You have been mentioned at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avaya Application Server 5300 Ottawahitech (talk) 14:49, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

And mentioned very rightly. These are examples of the series of deletions trying to remove all coverage of the products of the Ayaya corporation, a $5 billion annual revenue telecom firm split from Lucent. If they were done being brought by experienced editors here, I would have though it hostility towards this company, a type of vandalism that has been rather frequently seen, and is now being engaged in mutually by sockpuppets from two universities on opposite coasts of the US. Rather, I think it an obviously good faith attempt to alter the content policies of Wikipedia, which of course anyone has the right to try. Bringing AfDs is an accepted method for trying to see what the degree of support is likely to be. (Personally, I would have brought fewer at a slower pace, but this is not so blatantly unreasonable as some deletion sprees.)

The apparent goal would seem to remove WP coverage of all major physical products and product lines by major companies, or , that failing, reduce not just products but lines of business to single lines on a list, leaving but one article for the entire company and everything it does. Alternately, the goal might be to remove all information ultimately deriving from a company, which amounts to almost the same thing. conceivably its rigid adherence to the misunderstood letter-of-the law about the GNG, as if it were a fundamental invariable policy like Not Censored, rather than its actual state as a very general guideline with many exceptions; and ignoring the purpose of notability guidelines, which is to rationally sort out what is worth an encyclopedia article.

I do not normally support individual product articles except for very notable products; most should be merged into combination articles on the product line- but merged in a way to preserve, not destroy, the information. The article about every commercial and noncommercial organization, or every creative person, or every political and religious concept, serves in some extent to promote it by providing accurate information about it. We have enough problem with the true advertising and promotionalism for all of these, promotionalism which magnifies importance, while providing a minimum of actual information. All relevant WP policy and guidelines are designed to permit and indeed encourage neutral description.

I look forward to WP not just to reversing all previous deletions and over-merges of these products, but the much harder & longer job of writing them for the hundreds of thousands of products in all fields of commerce and technology for which we need articles . Our model is Diderot and D'alemberts Encyclopedie, famous in the eighteenth century and still in ours for the detailed description and illustrations of technology of the period--and the long continued detailed coverage of technology in succeeding encyclopedias.

I am here hours a day trying to remove promotionalism from the encyclopedia, and instruct writers with possible COI how to do it properly. There's an enormous amount of it. Mistaken interpretations like this do not help--they use time and effort that would is critically needed for removing the real junk, and in writing good articles. I'm no inclusionist about spam--I've deleted about 5,000 spam articles about products and organizations. DGG ( talk ) 20:13, 11 December 2012 (UTC

• @DGG, you are doing a great service to Wikipedia, thank you!

It is not easy to determine what this drive to eliminate what is mostly Nortel articles is motivated by. But, to me at least, it is becoming rather clear that it is not all in good faith. How else do you explain the fact that even though I have brought up, time and again, that Nortel is a defunct company, the same people who magically appear in all these deletion discussions keep voting Delete because of spam, do not seem to understand that a defunct company by definition is not in the promotionalism category? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:10, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

True, it does sound absurd, but promotionalism is a very broad concept--the company has successors, who manufacture similar products. And there is probably even a market for used ones. Hobbyists could still write an article on, say, the Apple I in a promotional manner, because they so much like it. The reason these articles are not spam is because they are informative not promotional--the true question, which is open to good-faith argument, is how much detail belongs in the encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 20:19, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

thoughts?

I'd be rather interested in your thoughts about this. By email if preferred: no need for you to wade in to that page if you'd rather not do so. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 07:15, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

US/CAn Edu Program Working Group

DGG, annotated the membership list accordingly. I don't know how Phase II is going to play out yet, but my intent is to transfer the Working Group documents that comprised the Phase I Final Proposal over to the the Education Wiki space once it is submitted to the WMF next week. How we document and make transparent any Phase II activity is still TBD. --Mike Cline (talk) 06:33, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

wherever they should be , they never should have been in your user space. If you intend to keep they confidential, they need to be off wiki; if not, where people would naturally look for them. It gave the impression that it is your private project, or that you are trying secrecy by obscurity. DGG ( talk ) 14:53, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Critique of Michael Pollack

DGG,

I discussed the matter of the article with the closing administrator at User_talk:Spartaz#DGG and he recommended that I ask you if you are interested in doing an in-depth critique of the article User:WhisperToMe/Michael Pollack. What I need is a critique of the "weight" aspects of the article based on the number of sources that discuss each aspect. In User:WhisperToMe/Talk:Michael Pollack I made an attempt to chronicle the weight of each section based upon the sources that discuss each section (if you prefer I'll post the material directly here). After doing this work, I did chop some things from two of the sections (early life and hobbies) that seemed to have fewer sources than the others.

One user did suggest that I look for criticism of Pollack; I would be happy to add that to the article, but I had not been able to find criticism of him. Perhaps the main "negative" aspect was how Colonial House turned out, and how there were lies in the 1980s about where Pollack lived. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:50, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I am concerned that I may have already reached the point of over-involvment. I know that this can happen when someone tries to maintain a position, and I am not immune. Therefore, I had intended not to comment again no matter what you might have done further--I was expecting a non-consensus. But I realize that given what Spartaz said, this sort of leaves you in limbo. So I will look at it further, but give me a few days or a week--I need a break from it. DGG ( talk ) 03:30, 17 December 2012 (UTC) .

Thank you very much :) I'll be happy to work on other articles for a few days. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:37, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David A. Schauer

Good arguments. Bearian (talk) 17:53, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Comments on article

Hi DGG, I saw you added some comments to an article that I created - Ali Malkawi - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Malkawi. I tried to make edits to remedy the issues you pointed out and I added some text to the page's talk section. Since I didn't hear anything back, I thought I would try talking to you directly here. Do you have any pointers or suggestions for edits, or are the edits I have made sufficient to address the issues? Thank you. Energy22 (talk) 20:47, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar

For being one of my WikiRoleModels. I have been watching your edits for a very long time, and without getting too touchy-feely, I thought it was time to let you know that. Many times when I have been frustrated or faced with a hard decision, I have had the thought "WWDGGD?"...so thank you for that. You've been there for me even when you weren't aware of it. Be well, DGG. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 23:52, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Delete Request - Please read

Status and Advice I am unsure why you asked to delete this article. The above tag that dates from over a year ago was never valid--as a member of a national (or provincial) legislature, he is notable enough for an article in Wikipedia. We try to be as complete as possible here, so , as reviewing administrator, I declined to do the deletion . If you have questions, please ask me on my user talk page. DGG ( talk ) 18:53, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi In regards to the request, you have denied the deletion.

the deletion is requested because there is another page simillar to the one i requested to delete

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K.C.Veeramani. please delete this.

can see the below exist already.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._C._Veeramani — Preceding unsigned comment added by Proshob (talk • contribs) 19:06, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Re: Advice

Not sure if I should post this here or on my talk page (so I added it to both) - Thank you for the offer to help. I compiled the information from several sources which are listed in the references, I think the main info came from here: The faculty profile: http://www.design.upenn.edu/people/malkawi_ali-m The board profile: http://www.gord.qa/index.php?page=board-of-directors I added quotes over sections that would have been exact copy/paste – such as the mission/goals statements/descriptions, etc. (such as www.design.upenn.edu/facilities/resources-school).

Both the center and QSAS articles had previously been published (not by me) and on Wikipedia for a few years before I created the Ali Malkawi article. I updated the other pages with current information such as links to articles that were current since there were postings about lack of sources/link rot (since I found them while I was creating the Malkawi page). Would I be able to add additional links to sources for any of these articles in the future? I would like to understand how to post in a way that does not create a conflict/appears promotional.

Regarding the center page, it had been up for a while, published by another user. The merge had been discussed on the talk page. I think it should have it’s own page. From what I understand, it functions as a separate entity – with different goals, objectives, mission, members, projects, offices, events, than the school of architecture. I did find a lot of independent sources listed under “T.C. Chan Centre” that could be added. Just trying to understand why it would be difficult to defend--in the past I have read Wikipedia articles about other departments or centers within large universities that have their own pages. I think that this center has coverage and has work that is notable for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is new to me—still learning. Thanks. Energy22 (talk) 15:01, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this is the place to ask, because busy people are more likely to see it on their own talk p.

The two questions are separate: should an article be deleted, and will an article be deleted. WP is not known for consistency, is erratic about following precedent, and will sometimes make exceptions to most rules if people really want to. I have to give you realistic and safe advice, based upon my experience about what will probably happen. (I have my own views, but though I can tell you what they are, I would be misleading you if i told you to rely on them. I do not get to make the decisions; no one person does.) So, on the basis of my experience here, I think that in practice almost all articles on research institutes or centers within a single department have been deleted or at best merged; they usually get kept when they are particularly notable free standing centers within a university. (Ones you may see around otherwise are sometimes there because there is some special justification, but sometimes because there was an erratic or biased conclusion to an argument, or even that they've escaped notice)

The technical guideline is WP:N, and more particularly WP:ORG; the key question according to the guidelines is usually whether there is substantial enough coverage and whether it is independent & not based on press releases. The decision for keeping or deleting is usually based primarily of the nature and quality of the sources, with only subsidiary consideration of the actual merits of the subject. (I think it should be the other way around, but I know I am in the minority--and if I am in a situation where I am the one to judge, I judge according to the general consensus.) Apart from the sources, there is a general tendency to not make articles for subordinate structures within a larger administrative unit: It took quite a while to establish that such entities as medical or law schools in a university should have separate articles; we have also been able to justify most well known separate journalism and architecture schools; we have not done nearly so well with most colleges of education or business. (This undoubtedly reflects the biases of the average editor here, but such is the state of things.)

I work a lot on these subjects,and I for years have tried to persuade the community to include as full a coverage of higher education as possible. I personally think it best to confine my efforts to the college level, and only the most famous departments, trying to be sure that at least these ones are covered. For research centers such as TCChan, I will support only the strongest. I consider this one borderline. There's no point arguing it here; when I bring it to AfD, and I will do so if I do not get agreement to merge it. The community will discuss it there, and some one else will decide what is the consensus. On the other hand, I think I will be able to say that the QSAS program is independently notable because of its wide adoption, & has good sources to show it.

To give you some idea of the arguments you will have to meet, for the center I will argue that almost all the coverage is internal to the university, or based on student papers, which cover all university events indiscriminately, or is based upon Press releases; and that the importance is based upon sponsoring one meeting of a symposium, publishing one journal, and having engaged in one important international project which should get its own article--and that everything else is local. I urge you to try to find enough good sources to meet these objections, and if you do, the article will be kept.

I should also have mentioned the page PennPraxis, added by a different editor a long time ago "the clinical arm of the School of Design" is in my opinion the least defensible of all: The descriptive half of it should go in the main article, but it is already mentioned there in one sentence, which is probably the appropriate length--its an integral part of the program. The casino material might go in the articles on SugarHouse Casino and Foxwoods Casino Philadelphia, if it is even significant there. Those who have written the current versions of the articles didn't seem to think so. This one I shall certainly redirect to the school unless you can find more material , preferably up to date material, The procedure if you disagree would be to revert my move, and then it can be discussed. DGG ( talk ) 20:37, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

CSD

Hey DGG. I saw you deleted Management & Science University. I just wanted to let you know that a separate page, Management and science university, is still in existence. This page is the same as the one that was already CSD'd. Ishdarian 05:42, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

thanks. I deleted it also. I am not sure if it was meant to evade deletion. I'm not salting, because I think there might be a stub version to restore. I will check on that tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 05:55, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

You have mail!

Hello, DGG. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Regarding a t-shirt nomination :) Jalexander--WMF 22:01, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

2013

File:Happy New Year 2013.jpg		Have an enjoyable New Year!
		Hello DGG: Thanks for all of your contributions to Wikipedia, and have a happy and enjoyable New Year! Cheers, Northamerica1000(talk) 15:16, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

About: Deleting Articles for creation/MindMatrix

Hello David,

Please reinstate the article, as I don't have that version in a word doc. I directly edited on Wiki. I will work on the required changes and try again.

Thanks again for the prompt and detailed reply. It shed a lot of light on the issue.

Pittsburghprincess (talk) 07:43, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Older message

Hello David,

This is in regards to deletion of my submission about my company. I did receive a note that it was rejected owing to copyright infringement and I was in talks with that editor to find out where and why was a copyright infringement since the site was referenced and I am the official content writer for the company. I was about to work on fixing it post holidays. Today,I noticed that you have deleted the page and I was really surprised and sad to lose all content. Could you tell me why it was deleted AFTER being reject anyway? Also, why was it a copyright infringement, when I have the rights to my website content (I am the content writer for my company) and even though I never used any text verbatim?

I need to get the page up ASAP. Please Help!!!

Happy new year...by the way!

Thanks!

Pittsburghprincess (talk) 11:09, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I can understand your frustration after working on this for such a long period, and receiving so many routine notices that do not actually explain the specific problems, but refer instead to some over-complication guideline pages. However, I work here predominantly with this sort of article, and I will explain it to you:

WP strictly respects copyright; we do not keep copyvio in any part of Wikipedia. If an Article for Creation is rejected for copyvio, it must be removed altogether. Close paraphrase is considered copyvio. To avoid it, it is necessary to change not just the words, but the arrangement into sentences and the sequence of ideas.

However, if you own the material, it is possible for you to release it to us under a free license, but you must follow exactly the procedure at WP:Copyvio and WP:Donating copyrighted materials; be aware that these licenses give everyone in the world an irrevocable license to reuse and alter the material, even for commercial purposes.

Normally such content is promotional, being written for the web site, sand would need to be drastically rewritten, so there is no point in donating it. Your material, on the other hand, seems straightforward, and it would be possible to improve it sufficiently by normal editing, This would include

removing all the social networking sites from the external links--your own webpage is sufficient.

removing the list of companies to whom you supply products--this is considered promotional name-dropping

not using WP pages as references--we instead use them as internal links.

avoid jargon, such as "solutions"

organize the article so it has a lead paragraph A single sentence is sufficient.

pricing information is better not included; you link to a comparison article that gives prices, but such tables are a better place for it. It is better to use such words, as pricing depends on the size of the company, and is comparable to that of [[Demand generation software|similar software]]. Inote that all of the other articles listed there need some degree of improvement, and I am about to deal with the worst of them.

Wikipedia articles must show notability by references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases, but very few of your references are independent. The ones from Yahoo News and optimum online, for example, are reprinted there from PRWeb, a site that, as the name indicates, is dedicated to publishing press releases, and one of the references is directly from PRWeb. The sellmorenow site, although calling itself a review, seems to have reprinted your web site and similar material unchanged. You seem to have only one that seems clearly independent, from the Post-Gazette on Sept 28, 2003; I am not sure about the undated PGH Tech news article: it seems to refer to a product that you no longer provide, and it seems to be a local informal publication whose reliability may be doubted. So there is potential for an article if you can find another good reference.

If you want, I am willing to restore it, and tag it appropriately pending permission, but you'd still have to fix the problems, so I my advice is that you will find it easier doing it over. DGG ( talk ) 03:03, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Celebration and Mini-Conference in NYC Saturday Feb 23

Doing the "Open Space" thing at one of our earlier NYC Wiki-Conferences.

You are invited to celebrate Wikipedia Day and the 12th anniversary (!) of the founding of the site at Wikipedia Day NYC on Saturday February 23, 2013 at New York University; sign up for Wikipedia Day NYC here, or at bit.ly/wikidaynyu. Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues!

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience!--Pharos (talk) 01:43, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

NABJ hall of fame

Good call there, thanks.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 02:39, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Seeking your opinion

I recently ran across this AfD and I'm looking for your opinion. From what I can tell, there have been a few articles written about the person regarding their death at the age of 108. I feel like I've seen similar AfDs brought up throughout the years but don't remember their common outcome and couldn't find any mention of age-related AfDs at WP:OUTCOMES. Looking through old AfDs about centenarians and lists of centenarians, the outcome seems to be mixed. I think WP:ONEEVENT applies but I don't feel strongly about that. I've generally found that you are able to focus on the real intention of this encyclopedia which in this case, is probably all that we have to fall back on (unless I've missed something). Again, I'm looking for your opinion. I don't know how to ask without looking as though I'm canvassing. I don't care what you !vote for, if you decide to !vote. I'm just looking for an opinion that may differ from my own. OlYeller21<sup>Talktome</sup> 05:17, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

there is no common outcome, except that the article is usually deleted if the sources are not particularly convincing. I do not think the community has a consensus; even just for myself, I do not have a consistent personal opinion. As I do not know what to say in any given case, you're hardly canvassing; if I judged, I would judge by my own impression of the merts at the time. In borderline cases, if there is something you want to do or not do, with enough experience one can find a rule or interpretation to include or delete it. In the Talmud, a student asks. why does are the rejected minority views included in detail, as well as the settled law, which is what a Rabbi has to know? There are, as usual there, several answers, but I like best is so that if sometime it shall seem necessary to make a special case to avoid a disastrously unreasonable result, there will be a precedent. (There is another answer I think might apply here more often: so that we can show our love for God's Law by arguing about it.)

The wording of ONE EVENT is capable of being applied narrowly or broadly depending upon the result that is desired. if someone is the oldest person in wherever at 106, and lives another year, is that two events? What age is so notable that it it in the category of historic records that are of general significance? I would object to anyone adding an article for the oldest living graduate of their high school. and we're not Believe it or not, that includes anything that can be made into a record by using sufficient odd or restrictive conditions. But where it's unusual enough that people might reasonably look in an encyclopedia, we should include it. The reader interest should be the rule in addition to the sources. It will still be a matter of judgment, but it's at least judging a relevant parameter. DGG ( talk ) 06:09, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Rankin and Taylor

Dave - Thanks for your comments on Rankin & Taylor. I left a reply on the page. Teachingaway (talk) 19:19, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I will respond in some detail later. But meanwhile let me say that the presence of articles on non-notable firms is an indication we should remove them, not add to them, and that the presence of inadequately cited articles is not a reason to continue the practice. Many of our articles of firms of even great notability are indeed very inadequately cited--our practices in the past were very sloppy. Perhaps you might look to my specific points and fix the article a little, and I will look at it again tonight or tomorrow. Even if i do not think it sufficient, I am generally willing to move it into mainspace if you insist & it's reasonably close or borderline, and have a community decision at afd. But if you are going to do that,it helps to have the very strongest article possible; the purpose of AfC is to try to get articles improved enough first that they don't then get deleted. DGG ( talk ) 19:45, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Good advice. Sounds fair. Looking forward to any improvements you can suggest. Teachingaway (talk) 20:34, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I spent some time editing the language according to your suggestions (at least, I attempted to do so). I also added further references supporting each statement the article makes. In addition to the 14 NY Times articles, there are now 20 other articles from sources like the NY Law Journal, the New York Post, USA Today, Village Voice, Bloomberg, and New York Magazine. Some mention the name of the firm just once, but all discuss the firm's work in detail.

Its not a firm of international superstars, but it is a firm that regularly litigates newsworthy cases. And the firm is certainly famous among NYC bicyclists (an admittedly narrow demographic, but its my demographic). The next time Rankin & Taylor makes the paper, I think some readers might like to have a centralized repository of their previous work. Teachingaway (talk) 01:03, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

There are just three more things needed. First, do not repeat the name of the firm so frequently. Use "The firm" or "They" almost always. Second, when they are on of the firms on a case, give the names of the other firms also. Third, try to group the individual items into a few coherent paragraphs. I'll then fix up any details this weekend. DGG ( talk ) 02:25, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I made some further edits and improvements according to your suggestions. 1. "Rankin & Taylor" to "the firm" was easy. 2. Adding names of the other firms - I've started to add the names of other firms, and I believe I can dig up a few more in the next couple days. 3. Grouping items into paragraphs is more complicated, but I've taken some steps in that direction.

Again, thanks for your help. Teachingaway (talk) 22:50, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I will take a look in a day or two, and move it to mainspace if it seems reasonably OK to me. That of course doesn't prevent anyone else form sending it to AfD if they think appropriate. DGG ( talk ) 23:44, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Dave - I understand you're busy and may not have time to get back to everyone. But if you have a free moment, I'd love to get your opinion on the revised Rankin and Taylor page. No rush (I'll shoot you another reminder if I don't hear back in a week or two). Teachingaway (talk) 02:54, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Stone marimba

Hello DGG. I noticed your interest in this article in its revision history. Here's an addition I made to it:

"A stone marimba housed at the Musée de l'Homme is possibly the oldest-known musical instrument on the planet."

This is quite an assertion of topic significance and importance. Northamerica1000<sup>(talk)</sup> 04:36, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

yes, it takes care of the suggestion that these were all minor recent inventions. As usual, people here would rather argue than do some research. That's of course pretty much true for the world in general, but it it's the opposite approach to that needed to make an encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 05:48, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I've suggested in the past that WP:BEFORE should be emphasized more or possibly made mandatory, particularly for source searching. Every time I've brought it up, the notion has been nixed in one way or another. I recall one editor stating that it will never be made mandatory. While there are many topics that are quite worthy of deletion, some are not. Check out this discussion I initiated back in February 2012: Checks and Balances in the Articles for Deletion nomination Process (you're mentioned there). I've noticed significant improvement lately at AfD in which nominations are more accurate relative to topic/article suitability for Wikipedia. This is part of the reason I resigned from ARS back in early November 2012, along with tiring of being typecasted and stereotyped per membership in one WikiProject, a desire to simplify my presence on Wikipedia, and other reasons. At my relatively recent RfA, I was criticized at times based upon membership in ARS and for performing ARS types of editing, and when I resigned, some then opposed adminship because I resigned. Thus, regarding adminship relative to ARS, involvement in the project is a lose/lose prospect. At any rate, hopefully this trend of increased reliability in AfD nominations continues. Northamerica1000<sup>(talk)</sup> 07:28, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure you know you are preaching to the choir. For at least the last 5 years I've urged that Before be mandatory when it applies. I think this could be best done by making it automatic as part of a required dialog. It is not likely to happen any time soon. We have made some improvements: there's a general acceptance that merge closes can be enforced (but we still have to get it accepted that there has to be a substantial merge unless otherwise specified) , there's an increasing number of types of articles where criteria other than the GNG can be used not just as an additional factor but an alternative--including now geographic places, there's a general refusal to close as delete when there is no substantial participation in the discussion, there's usually agreement that the GNG must be modified in situations of cultural bias, and, most important, there's a de facto practice of not permitting over rapid re-nominations. There's a general acceptance of compromise not just for schools but for fiction and for several types of athletic notability. There's less of a bias against academic topics. On the other hand, there is no acceptance that losing candidates of major parties in national elections are notable, there is not yet acceptance of a compromise on merge not delete for product articles, there is strong prejudice against many topics that some people think unimportant, and an even stronger prejudice against people or organizations connected with fringe movements, there's an absurd overuse of One Event in not just BLPs but all types of articles on current topics, and the GNG is not recognized yet as being an outworn stopgap (acceptance of this is the way to solve the BEFORE problem--if we were dependent more upon objective factors of notability related to the subject not the sources, it would be less critically important)

Some of this is the realization that our main problem now is not people wanting to write articles on topics of no importance. Our main problems now are plagiarism/copyvio and promotionalism. for plagiarism/copyvio, There is not really agreement on what type of paraphrase is acceptable, but there is better detection of the blatant cases of direct copying. For promotionalism, I think there's agreement that we need to tighten and enforce our standards Myself, I am much more willing to delete completely rather than rewrite if a promotional article is of borderline importance, especially if the editor shows obvious COI , most especially the COI of a paid editor. DGG ( talk ) 16:04, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey now, this is quite the treatise. I'm all for merges when appropriate except when they're used to restrict content, such as when content is supposedly merged and then a redirect occurs, but in actuality no merge of sourced/verified content occurs and the process simply results in a redirect. Yes, people can be very subjective regarding topic notability, and oftentimes will base notability on what they feel is notable, rather than basing it upon the availability of reliable sources about a topic. There will probably never be a full-blown resolution to this, because it's part of human nature to be subjective. People have varying beliefs and values, which are interchangeable and can affect one-another. For example, if one believes that a particular topic is not notable, (even when it actually is, per various notability guidelines), they then may value it less. I sometimes like to point out how Wikipedia has an article for almost every episode of The Simpsons, Futurama, etc., yet continues to have significant gaps in the coverage of scientific topics. This is due in part to the influence of mass media upon people's values and beliefs. Sometimes people place a higher value on topics that are easily available and that they enjoy, such as television shows. Sometimes people develop greater values toward things that are broadcast toward them, such as TV shows, songs, etc. I have no problem with this, of course, it's just how it is oftentimes.

Copyright is law, so of course it's of the utmost importance for copyright violations to not occur anywhere in Wikipedia. After lots of research, I've significantly improved my abilities to detect copyvios; it's a shame to be scolded for not detecting the copyvio of another editor when working at AfC, while the editor that actually performed the copyvio isn't even notified about it by the scolder. This deters people from contributing at AfC. I now utilize many additional various checks in addition to the ones I was already performing in hopes to find all of them, but of course, they will unfortunately sometimes slip through, even if hundreds of checks are performed.

Promotionalism is unfortunate, but likely to continuously occur ad infinitum, because many companies want a page on Wikipedia, and it's in their interest for the information to reflect positively upon their entity. It's important for information about companies and products to be presented objectively, including any negatives/criticisms, etc., and the information should be non-promotional. I recently created the new WikiProject Brands, which encompasses all articles in the Brands, Products by brand and Brand management categories, and their sub-categories. Check it out, and please consider joining! After reading your treatise above, I just expanded the project's goals on its main page to include "Maintaining objectivity and neutral point-of-view in brand-related articles." Northamerica1000<sup>(talk)</sup> 06:20, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) In my view, this is an important statement: "it's in their interest for the information to reflect positively upon their entity"

I try to convince companies it's in their interest to have a neutral page. The better Wikipedia equips me to say this genuinely (and for it to actually be true) the more equipped I am to do a good job by Wikipedia.

For us to spend our time cleaning up after spammers is sometimes an improvement to that specific page, but encourages bad behavior and is a negative overall. CorporateM (Talk) 14:54, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Whether to clean is always a dilemma, but it the article is basically strong enough to pass AfD, there's no alternative. If we started rejecting articles for fixable promotionalism alone , we'd end up rejecting the work of too many well-intentioned amateurs. ::::What I really want to do is to teach the spammers how to do it properly, but many refuse to learn, or are too fixed in the way to be capable of learning, and in any case it takes much more time and effort than simply rewriting it myself. After trying to tell them the things to avoid, I've tried also specifying some specific things as examples to make it clearer-- but then only those things get fixed, not the other examples of the same thing; I've more lately been trying the device of also fixing part of the article as an example--but the usual result has been that the other half doesn't get fixed adequately. I have bee asked to look at many articles multiple times without substantial improvement, and the same can be seen at AfC , or at resubmission after speedy or AfD . I see no solution if we continue our present basic rules. Either we must abandon NPOV, or change the principle that anyone can edit. The first step is to require registration, and the second is to require identification, with an escape mechanism for doing this privately for those it a situation where they can not edit freely. The alternative is become a web directory,and letting some other group of people start an encyclopedia with standards for quality. DGG ( talk ) 16:56, 7 January 2013 (UTC) .

That is probably a better attitude (convert rather than push away). You are gracious for spending your time teaching, even to those that may be less thankful. I am disappointed PRs do not show the same enthusiasm to do excellent work here as we do in other aspects of our work. CorporateM (Talk) 21:34, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker): Reverting to the original section heading ... I've proposed a merge of Stone marimba into Lithophone as I can't see a difference between the two subjects! (And added a mention of the Musical Stones at Ruskin's home Brantwood while I was there). PamD 19:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I will check some better sources for musical instruments at NYPL-Performing Arts when I'm there as Wikipedian in Residence on Thursday and see what is and is not considered to fall under that description,and whether there is specific information to justify discussing the various instruments in that class separately. (I see there is plenty of information for the Musical Stones, but unfortunately essentially all of that extensive article turns out to be a copyvio from their web site, and I've marked it for deletion as such. ) It's notable enough to be worth a rewrite from the information there, and if anyone wants the additional references listed, I can send them. DGG ( talk ) 19:19, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Just to avoid confusion: there are two sets of Musical Stones in Cumbria. The Musical Stones of Skiddaw at Keswick Museum (about which the copyvio article was created), and the "21st century version of Ruskin’s slate lithophone" at Brantwood! PamD 22:41, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

And indeed Grove Music Online's "Lithophone" article says "Some of the most remarkable lithophones in existence are to be found in the English Lake District.", and it appears that Keswick Museum has, or has had, more than one set. Might have a go at the article some time. PamD 23:04, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

If you think you can fix it - I'll lay off. BO | Talk 17:06, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Efficiency, Reform and Growth

Hi DGG, thanks for your editorial comments on my article on Efficiency, Reform and Growth - I just wanted to ask your advice on what to do next. Before writing the article, I did do my best to try and avoid COI problems as much as possible - and started a discussion of this on Teahouse under Notability and Conflict of Interest. I realise now that I should have mentioned this on the talk page of the article - sorry - I'm not very Wikipedia experienced as yet! As I mentioned there, I really just wanted to get a page going, and to help by providing some content, but was keen to get the input of other editors to trim the article down and make it as neutral as possible. That was the reason for submitting through AFC rather than simply publishing - I expected the article to come back with some editorial comments I could work on, like those you provided on my talk page. As the main editorial comments I got before submitting to AFC only related to secondary sources, that was mainly what I focussed on editing. Would it be possible for me to edit down the page following your advice for reconsideration? Or to offer it up to other editors to change as they think appropriate? Thanks for your help.

Also - as regards my user name, I thought it would be better to have an open afflilation, so as not to cover up any COI issues - I had hoped that the name fell under the usernames that contain a company or group name but are clearly intended to denote an individual person as I added an individual number - such as in the WidgetFan87 example. I can see that it's not a particularly clear name, however - could I ask what you might suggest there as well? Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by CabOffice01 (talk • contribs) 11:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

the relevant rules are WP:COI. and WP:User. I'll give you my opinion on what the consensus is about how we interpret them, but as you realise, there is no individual here entitled to set policy or judge individual cases.

First, the username part, because that is the easier to deal with: (I see the notice I left said I was going to block the name, but that was a form notice--I did not actually do it.) You are correct that the name does not technically violate the username policy, but it does in essence. When you have a username that relates in any to the name of your organization, you imply that you are editing officially, and have a superior right to edit the page. But that is not the way WP works--all editors are considered equal--and your contributions like those of any editor must be justified by sources. I'm sure you do not intend to give such impression, just as you say, but that's why we have the rule. Thus it is much better to choose another name. On that user page, you should disclose your conflict of interest in general terms. There is no rule that requires you to give your real name or exact position at any time. If you hold an official position, it is probably better that you do not do so. Personally, I think a government agency ought to be especially careful, even more than a private firm--it is so very easy to misinterpret.

As for conflict of interest: Our policies have a notorious ambiguity--we say you should not edit with a conflict of interest, but we do not prohibit it. There has been considerable discussion about this here for many years, as the archives of the COI talk page WT:COI will indicate. To abbreviate tens of thousands of words to one paragraph, there is no consensus whether we should prohibit it. There have been very positive statements that we do prohibit it, including some from our Founder, but such a rule has never been adopted. I think the critical objection is that if we had such a rule we would be unable to actually enforce it. Unless we were to actually adopt a policy of requiring real names, which is in opposition to one of our most basic principles, it would just drive people to greater attempts to disguise the COI. Unlike some parts of what we politely call the Real World, we are a very practically-minded group of people, and we try not to attempt the impossible.

The problem with COI is that experience has shown that while it is not impossible to write a suitable page with a conflict of interest or as a paid press agent, it is relatively more difficult: the writer is automatically thinking in terms of what the subject wishes to communicate to the public, whereas an uninvolved person will think in terms of what the public might wish to know. On your talk page, The process of AfC was devised primarily not to deal with COI, but to deal with inexperienced editors in general. It is not all that well adapted to COI, but it is probably the best method we have at present. The first attempt of a totally inexperienced editor writing as an amateur is likely to be a failure to show proper sourcing, which is easily correctable if the subject is notable, and the incomplete article does no harm if it stays around for a considerable time while the editor works on it (though even then we shall almost certainly adopt some reasonable limit to remove the very old submissions that are not being worked on). But the first attempt of a COI editor is all too likely to be a pure advertisement or promotion, often to the extent that it would require complete rewriting. There is no purpose in working from such a beginning, and the feeling is that such material does serious harm even if allowed in drafts. We were not so stringent in the past, but the increasing prominence of WP--which of course is what we have all striven for and are proud to have achieved--has an inevitable but unfortunate side effect: Not only does it attract promotion, but it encourages the view of those associated with a firm or organization or cause that a page here is an essential part of their publicity, and something to which they are entitled.

I previous gave you some guidance about the specific problems.Judging whether a draft is hopelessly promotional is not an exact science, and each of us administrators uses our experience--it my case, the experience of someone who has worked for six years now primarily trying to rescue whatever unsatisfactory new articles are capable of rescue. (I will sometime chose to do the complete rewrite necessary for an article that would otherwise be deleted, but I can only do about 5 a week at most, and there are perhaps 200 times that number that must otherwise be deleted. There are relatively few of us who even try, because most people understandably prefer to work on the topics which actually interest them personally.)

I previously indicated to you on your talk page some of the problems. I think you would do better to start from scratch. I'll make some suggestions on your talk p. DGG ( talk ) 03:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank very much for your advice. I can see your point about the username, and am happy to change it. Sorry - it was intended in a spirit of openness rather than to boost the authenticity of my edits, but I can see it would be better to so as you suggest!

As regards the page, I see the COI problem with Wikipedia. I'm more than happy to trim the content right down, and just put a basic outline stub article up, just to save a few redlinks and add some basic information. It can then be left up to other people to decide whether it is of enough interest to expand it any further. Would that be an appropriate approach? If you could give me some advice on what would be best on my user page, as you suggest, that would be great. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by CabOffice01 (talk • contribs) 15:44, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Tour of Consumer Reports' laboratories

Wow! Laboratory tour!

On Tuesday January 15 at 3pm Wikipedians are invited to join a tour of laboratories at Consumer Reports in Yonkers. If you would like to attend please RSVP at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/January 2013. If you have questions feel free to ask on that page or contact me on my talk page or by my office phone at 914.378.2684. Thank you. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:54, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Your lightning talk at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wikipedia Day Feb 23

Please add your lightning talk on the Library for the Performing Arts residence experience here: Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wikipedia Day#Lightning Talks!--Pharos (talk) 20:29, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Robbie Bullough deletion

In your opinion, why do you think that Robbie Bullough should be deleted? Thanks. Ashbeckjonathan. Ashbeckjonathan 21:12, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

as I said before, because he is merely a reporter for a college tv station, which is not a position I consider notable. If I were to analyze in more detail... I could find even worse problems. Looking at the final sentence I see "Bullough hopes to eventually move on from BYUtv and get hired at ESPN, CBS, FOX, or another major sports broadcasting group, but until another company takes interest in him, he is happy to call games for BYUtv and happy that his family back home in Indiana can see him. The first part of that sentence, which I put in italics, is an equivalent to the phrase "not yet notable" . the sentence viewed as a whole and especially the last part, which I underlined, is promotionalism, with the personal sort of appeal characteristic of bad press releases: it is of no interest to an encyclopedia whether his family home in Indiana can see him. Removing the sentence won't solve the problem: when he does become notable, an article on him would need to be completely rewritten from scratch.

But if you are asking why this sort of thing bothers me, and why I do not just ignore it, while it's true I tend to pass over borderline notability, but not when blended with promotionalism: WP can no longer ignore promotionalism, which is threatening to be destructive to the encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 01:24, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Ananda Marga Caryacarya (Parts 1, 2, and 3) - deletion talk

Sorry DGG I've just added on this article an official source that states: "the Ananda Marga religion includes a governance system (Ananda Marga Pracaraka Samgha or AMPS) which is set out in a sacred text called Carya Carya". The point in the deletion talk of this article was that these books are considered "sacred texts" or something very important for this spiritual movement and that is what this official document exactly states. I think that this document should be sufficient to show the adherence at the WP criteria notability at least on one ground: (3) "The book has been considered by reliable sources to have made a significant contribution to a notable motion picture, or other art form, or event or political or religious movement". What do you think? Thanks--Cornelius383 (talk) 00:51, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

DGG, you may find a little more context on the fringe theories noticeboard. bobrayner (talk) 02:21, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

thanks for the link; I noticed there were suddenly quite of number of these sub-articles at issue--the contents of the Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar navbox is a good indication of the extent. I hope we can find a middle ground of rational merging. DGG ( talk ) 03:07, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Deletion review

I was a bit suprised at your comments on the deletion review. Don't worry, I'm not offended or anything, in fact I thought you had a good point or two in there, but I got the distinct feeling from your comments that you felt I was not experienced enough to be trusted to close a discussion, even a difficult one. Was that your intent? Do you really think a Delete could have come out of that consensus? I guess what I'm saying is that I get the feeling that my close would have been perfectly acceptable, if I were an admin, and if that's true, it's a terrible thing to say about the system. The mop isn't supposed to be anything special. There are admins with FAR less experience than I have, and yet, it seems as if they had closed the discussion there would have been zero resistance. That is not how Wikipedia is supposed to be. Do you feel that there is any bias against NACs? I've never wanted to be an admin, but I'm beginning to think I should go for it just so that my closes aren't second-guessed every time I do one. It's very weird. I'm Identified, trusted with all sorts of responsibilities, including account creation, and yet it's as if i can't be trusted to close the occasional discussion. it's very perplexing to me. :) --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 04:34, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

It is very hard to recognize one's own limits, and the only way I know mine is when people tell me I've got them wrong. Normally, I do not persistently defend a decision of mine that is seriously contested, but explain it once, and let others make their own judgment and say what they need to. The point wasn't just the technicality of being an admin; adminship is supposed to be based upon consistently right judgment, which is not just based on time, but the knowledge & recognition of what are important issues. There are many I stay away from myself, because I know they're about unresolved issues to which I haven't paid enough attention to judge properly. I think one of the factors on brining it Del Rev was the number of disputes on your closes. Account creation is much less sensitive than disputed AfDs, which, next to disputed blocks, are the hardest routine decisions anyone has to do here. DGG ( talk ) 06:21, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, DGG, for that. I think I understand your comment on the Deletion review better. I liked the way it was closed, he took a very middle ground (I'll have to leave him a nice note about that while I'm thinking about it). There is no doubt in my mind that were I an admin, these things would be going easier. In otherwords, there DOES seem to be something special about the mop, which is a shame because there isn't supposed to be. I can remember when Wikipedia wasn't like this. Oh well, I guess all things change (Hopefully for the better!) I've never wanted to be an admin, and don't really want to be one now, but sometimes it looks like the only way to do some of the work that needs to be done. Anyway, thanks for lending an ear and sorry if I got a little "ranty". I really appreciate your advice and input on this. Be well. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 21:52, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Re: unsourced BLPs at AfC

I see, I was looking for something like this. I'll better write the custom message from now that "This article of a living person needs addition citations..." What do you suggest? --Tito Dutta (talk) 03:51, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the AfC system is very crudely set up for its important role, and we need to be aware of the limitations I almost always use custom message. The prebuilt ones are much too general--even the reasons for non-notability confuse the lack of adequate sources, for which the right advice is to find some, with the extreme unliklhood of there being any such sources, for which the best advice is to stop trying. . I wish they were editable, but they aren't unless you go to the actual page and change it afterwards. The way it is set up, once someone uses the BLP reason, I can't figure out how to remove the speedy without reverting the entire edit. DGG ( talk ) 04:03, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

That's helpful, when I first started AFC reviewing (most probably yesterday or the day before.. not a lot experience), I prepared this and saved in my draft box

Draft

Thanks for submitting this article to WP:AFC, but I don't think it is ready now. The concerns are mentioned below: DELETE THIS LINE AND WRITE POINTS. After solving these issue, you can re-submit the article. If you are facing trouble to find sources for your article, this might be helpful: {{Find sources|{{subst:SUBPAGENAME}}}} If you have question or comment or if you need help, you can ask here, or ping (contact) me at my talk page. That's all for now. Good wishes.

Almost in no time I found those "Thanks for the submission.. you can re-submit" these are already covered in the preset templates. I'll try to add few more drafts in my "Wikimpedia draft folder" --Tito Dutta (talk) 04:46, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

You seem to understand what is needed. Myself, I have some standard text that I keep as TextExpander macros and edit to fit the circumstances. If the editor is clearly trying in good faith, I try to say something that pertains to the specific article in question: New users complain about our form notices. No matter how polite the wording, everyone recognizes boiler-plate when they see it, and everyone objects when they are on the receiving end of it. We usually manage to give submissions an unusual degree of individual attention for such a large project, and we ought to show it. Messages are taken in a much better spirit and are much more likely to lead to either improvement or withdrawal if they show this specific attention. Most people here will explain in detail if asked; it is better to explain beforehand, but it takes so much more work that is not always rewarded, that some degree of formulaic presentation does encourage doing it. DGG ( talk ) 15:22, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Excellent points! A user sent me 5 emails today (part of conversation) though I asked to post at my talk page. My initial experience in AFC has been a fairly happy one. But, I feel I may face another trouble in future for the following reason: (please give your suggestions if possible)

At least in 2 articles of my 7-8 reviews, I copyedited in those article (adding citations, removing below standard references, adding citations as inline, rewrite/wording etc) to make the article ready. An example will be good idea I think, please check this.

I generally add "reviewing" /"on hold" tag and add a comment "This review will take time, I am copyediting this article" which you can see in the above example too.

You have told: Messages are taken in a much better spirit and are much more likely to lead to either improvement or withdrawal if they show this specific attention.. Questions are 1) as a reviewer can I make necessary changes in a submission? 2) (little bit complicated) if I make changes in a submission, can I review the article still (a) I can not, since I am reviewing my own edits b)Obviously I can, before starting editing, I added the template "reviewing", so, my those edits were part of the review and I can't leave the article now! --Tito Dutta (talk) 20:18, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Another example related to the two questions I have asked above, here I needed to rewrite/copyedit the whole article, restructure, add JSTOR etc citations to prepare the article! --Tito Dutta (talk) 23:56, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Reviewing is no different from editing; the reviewer has no special authority or limitations beyond what any editor has. Think of it as simply help being given to an inexperienced editor. Nobody owns an article at any stage of its existence. Before we used AfC, and still continuing as an alternative, articles can be developed in user space; in order to avoid unnecessary conflicts, it is the practice that one editor doesn't nterfere with what someone else chooses to do in their own user space unless one is asked, or there is good reason--but nonetheless, even user space isn't actually private. The point of AfC is that by contrast it is explicitly public. Anyone may edit an AfC article; anyone may approve it or decline it. Any editor can ignore a lack of approval and move their article to main space, if they are autoconfirmed, a very minimal bar.

When I accept on an AfC article, I often improve it, wither while still at AfC , or after I have accepted it. I will do this if the:re's something I can fix better than I can explain how to fix it, or if it's something obvious and easy, or if it's meant as an indication of where further improvement is desirable, though not required. When I decline to accept one, I often improve it also, as a guide to the editor, or just in order to make it readable. None of this is a conflict of interest. any number of people can work on any article.

Where conflict of interest can come in is only when someone acts as an administrator, or if someone makes a NAC at an AfD discussion. But even here, I may very well work on an article, and even approve it, and only then realize it is copyvio--but in such cases I would normally mark it for deletion, and let some other admin delete it. Or if I remove spam from an article, and the editor insists on reinserting it. Again, if extreme I would list it for G11 and let another admin decide, or take it to AfD. analogously, if the new editor objects to my declining an article, I will sometimes say, if you want to go ahead and take your chances, you have a right to do so; I will move it into mainspace for you and then nominate it for AfD. I think nobody has ever taken me up on it.

The only considerations in improving articles is whether it is worth the effort, whether it is better to do it yourself or instruct or ask someone else to do it, and whether what you do is actually an improvement. It is exactly the same for AfC as for anywhere else in WP. No good faith improvement on an article in a situation like this is a conflict of interest. We are here to write decent articles and help others to do so. Remember WP:BRD and the policy on which it is based, WP:IAR; they can be abused , but in this sort of situations, they give a warrant for proceeding. DGG ( talk ) 05:05, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

BTW, I did some further rewriting myself just now on the Invention of Art article. We do not cite JStor, we cite the journal in which the article was published--JStor is just a distributor. PW also is a journal and should be cited with cite journal, not cite web. and the article contained an excessive amount of copypaste from the publishers web page. DGG ( talk ) 06:15, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Talking on the JSTOR point.. asking about citing JSOTR.. I generally download, read and in the web click on "view citation" and copy paste information from there! For example this article Can you tell me, how can I get the exact URL of the journal article? About named ref, I often forget/can not understand the short ref names like "Chicago1218" "TOI2012" etc :-( that's why I sometimes write the full title as ref name, so that I can easily pick it from "named ref" list!

Can you please review your "delete" vote here? I started a fresh copy to at the talk page! Don't know what happened then!--Tito Dutta (talk) 06:34, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Alright, I can understand the JSTOR question now, URL JSTOR, but publisher etc the main journal! --Tito Dutta (talk) 06:55, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Dragonlance novels

There is a mass merge proposal of about 40 articles at Talk:List of Dragonlance novels. If you can find any good sources for any of these, please help! BOZ (talk) 04:48, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

A starbarn for you!

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		Superb maintenance of your own talk page archives! Tito Dutta (talk) 05:17, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassadors update

Hi! You're getting this message because you are or have been a Wikipedia Ambassador. A new term is beginning for the United States and Canada Education Programs, and I wanted to give you an update on some important new information if you're interested in continuing your work this term as a Wikipedia Ambassador.

You may have heard a reference to a transition the education program is going through. This is the last term that the Wikimedia Foundation will directly run the U.S. and Canada programs; beginning in June, a proposed thematic organization is likely to take over organizing the program. You can read more about the proposal here.

Another major change in the program will take effect immediately. Beginning this term, a new MediaWiki education extension will replace all course pages and Ambassador lists. (See Wikipedia:Course pages and Help:Education Program extension for more details.) Included in the extension are online volunteer and campus volunteer user rights, which let you create and edit course pages and sign up as an ambassador for a particular course.

If you would like to continue serving as a Wikipedia Ambassador — even if you do not support a class this term — you must create an ambassador profile. If you're no longer interested in being a Wikipedia Ambassador, you don't need to do anything.

Please do these steps as soon as possible

First, you need the relevant user rights for Online and/or Campus Ambassadors. (If you are an admin, you can grant the rights yourself, for you as well as other ambassadors.) Just post your rights request here, and we'll get you set up as quickly as possible.

Once you've got the ambassador rights, please set up at a Campus and/or Online Ambassador profile. You can do so at:

• Special:CampusAmbassadorProfile
• Special:OnlineAmbassadorProfile

Going forward, the lists of Ambassadors at Special:CampusAmbassadors and Special:OnlineAmbassadors will be the official roster of who is an active Ambassador. If you would like to be an Ambassador but not ready to serve this term, you can un-check the option in your profile to publicly list it (which will remove your profile from the list).

After that, you can sign on to support courses. The list of courses will be at Special:Courses. (By default, this lists "Current" courses, but you can change the Status filter to "Planned" to see courses for this term that haven't reached their listed start date yet.)

As this is the first term we have used the extension, we know there will be some bugs, and we know the feature set is not as rich as it could be. (A big wave of improvements is already in the pipeline. And if you know MediaWiki and could help with code review, we'd love to have your help!) Please reach out to me (Sage Ross) with any complaints, bug reports, and feature suggestions. The basic features of the extension are documented at Wikipedia:Course pages, and you can see a tutorial for setting up and using them here.

Communication and keeping up to date

In the past, the Education Program has had a pretty fragmented set of communication channels. We're trying to fix that. These are the recommended places to discuss and stay up-to-date on the education program:

1. The education noticeboard has become the main on-wiki location for discussion of the Education Program. You can post there about broad education program issues as well as issues with individual courses.
2. The Ambassadors Announce email list is a very low-traffic announcements list of important information all Ambassadors need to be aware of. We encourage all Ambassadors (and other interested Wikipedians) to subscribe to the list; follow the instructions on the link to add your email address.
3. If you use IRC regularly, or need to try to reach someone immediately, the #wikipedia-en-ambassadors <sup>connect</sup> IRC channel is the place to find me and fellow Ambassadors.

Ambassador training and resources

We now have an online training for Ambassadors, which is intended to be both an orientation about the Wikipedia Ambassador role for newcomers and the manual for how to do the role. (There are parallel trainings for students and for educators as well.)

Please go through the training if you feel like you need a refresher on how a typical class is supposed to go and where the Ambassadors fit in, or if you want to review and help improve it. If there's something you'd like to see added, or other suggestions you have for it, feel free to edit the training and/or leave feedback. A primer on setting up and using course pages is included in the educators' training.

The Resources page of the training is the main place for Ambassador-related resources. If there's something you think is important as a resource that's not on there, please add it.

Finally, whether or not you work with any classes this term, I encourage you to post entries to the Trophy Case whenever you see excellent work from students or if you have great examples from past semesters. And, as always, let students (and other editors!) know when they do things well; a little WikiLove goes a long way!

--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Limo Ride

Movie info page for Limo Ride flagged as "advertising", though it matched numerous other film pages in both content and style. Speedy deletion took just over an hour. I would like to re-draft the page, if this is permissible.

How to delete a Articles for Creation talk page

How do you delete a AfC (Articles for Creation) talk page? --Starship9000 (talk) 19:46, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Help?

You have tagged my page for speedy deletion Worthington City Schools Distinguished Alumni is the page. I am the owner of http://jenijeni.tripod.com and am the author of the text in question. If you look at the talk page for WCS Distinguished Alumni, you will see that I have already filed this information with WP and was told to post the OTRS notice on the talk page. Could you please remove the speedy deletion tag or tell me how I may contest it?? Thank you, Jennifer Bynes, aka Jeni Bynes, aka Jenijeni, aka jenibynes. 02:21, 15 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jenibynes (talk • contribs)

Not exactly. The way we deal with these situations is exceptionally and outrageously complicated, and it is perfectly reasonable that you should have gotten confused. It was tagged by another editor for deletion; you sent the email, but it has not yet been acted on. I therefore stopped the deletion, and replaced the visible contents of the page with the standard message saying that it should not be deleted until the matter was resolved. The original contents is visible in the page history for now, and when the ORTSteam that works on these places the required permission certification on the talk page, they will restore the contents from the history.

However, I explained to you on the talk page why I think this contents cannot possibly make a Wikipedia article in the current form. Many of the individuals do not meet our standards for notability, and the ones that do are covered or should be covered in individual articles--we do not use combination articles of this nature. You can add some of the material from that page to the individual pages or use them to make new pages--include the OTRS number that they will place on the present page on the talk pages where you add the material.

But there are two remaining problems: first, the material on their careers has to be sourced by references to references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases. Your page, or the school's page, does not do this: newspaper or magazine articles or the like are needed. Second, did you yourself personally write the material on that web page, or did you take it from another source, such as the schools's web site or other material? If you did, you do not own it and cannot give the permission. All in all, it would probably be better to simply use the material for information on the people--but remember, neither your web page nor what the school may have published is a suitable reference for it. You might want to take at look at WP:BIO and the pages to which it refers. DGG ( talk ) 02:38, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Midhunappilli Shiva Temple

I see you declined the speedy A3 on the basis that "(contains content: give name , location and religion . Needs more.)". I thought that "Midhunappilli Shiva Temple is a Shiva temple located at Midhunappilli in Kerala." was pretty much a rephrasing of the article title, though I suppose "Kerala" perhaps raises it above that bar.

It's one of a mass of stubs produced by a young editor whose aim is to create 100 articles, rather than anything else: see Talk:Wandoor_Siva_Temple. I've come across a lot of them while stub-sorting. He is currently celebrating his first anniversary as an editor but I doubt that he's added a single point with a reliable source. PamD 09:00, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 15

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Opinion of criticism section removal at Extra Credits

Hi, could you take a look at my removal of the criticism section of Extra Credits? IP's keep reinstating it. I have explained on the talkpage why I re-removed the section and I'd appreciate it if you could give me your opinion on the matter. Jarkeld.alt (Talk) 11:35, 15 January 2013 (UTC)