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Deleting a section that was answered

User:Looie496 has deleted a section that was answered satisfactorily, albeit on the German Wikipedia. I don't agree that this was an appropriate course of action. I went looking for it in the archives and could only find it in the edit history. --Viennese Waltz 11:59, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't get it. If there had been a pointer to the item in the German Wikipedia it would be one thing, but how could this possibly have any value for anybody? Looie496 (talk) 13:57, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

It would have value if the OP could be persuaded to add the appropriate link, or if someone here who speaks German could find it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:00, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

The link is [1], but I don't think it's necessary to add the link in order for the section to survive. I just don't get why it was deleted, is all. There are many questions which get no replies but which are not deleted. The value of keeping it is, of course, that someone might look for it and find it in the archive. --Viennese Waltz 14:06, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

The question is harmless, and should be restored along with the link. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I restored it. I couldn't make out the inscription on that small image, and I was wondering about it myself. Deor (talk) 14:25, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I still don't get it. What's the value of finding a question in the archive if it has no answer? That's just a waste of the time spent searching, isn't it? Looie496 (talk) 14:17, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, obviously now it has the link to the German Wikipedia, so if anyone is interested they can follow that link. Even without the link it's still useful, as it tells people where to go to find the answer. More to the point, there are many questions on the RD with no answers at all. Are you going to go back and start deleting all of them? What would be achieved by deleting this one? --Viennese Waltz 14:27, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

The only situation where I delete questions (other than trolling, vandalism, banned editors, etc.) is where they have no answers and have been withdrawn by the OP -- e.g., a question followed shortly by "never mind, figured it out". What is achieved is a reduction of clutter. Looie496 (talk) 14:35, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Is there a shortage of disk space? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:08, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

If an OP withdraws a question in that way then it's OK for them to delete it. Otherwise, I don't think it's our business deleting such threads. --Viennese Waltz 15:14, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:32, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Me too. If someone searches the archive, finds a similar question and the OP says "Nevermind, I already have the answer" - then the person who does that search can contact the original questioner and ask them what they figured out. Even questions with no answers are useful in that they tell the new questioner that this is a difficult question that we were unable to answer. It's perfectly possible that someone asks a question and comes back after a week or more to see what we said - discovering that their question has somehow "vanished" is not a good thing! Wikipedia isn't short of disk space - and on a searchable archive on a digital medium, there is no real "clutter" problem. Deleting other people's posts is strongly deprecated. SteveBaker (talk) 13:20, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I repeat that I have only done this in cases where no answer has appeared, and the OP has explicitly stated that no answer is needed or wanted. Anyway, I still really don't get it. When I try to answer questions myself, often the first thing I do is to search the internet, and often I find forum posts where somebody has asked a similar question. In many cases the question is unanswered. I have never seen this as anything except a waste of my time. It seems to me that the philosophy being expressed here puts essentially zero value on the time of our readers and editors. Looie496 (talk) 15:06, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

How did your deleting it subtract from the amount of time you spent on it? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:34, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

It subtracted from the time a few thousand other ref desk viewers would have wasted reading it -- not to mention the time that would be wasted in the future by anybody who searches the archives for that topic. Looie496 (talk) 19:43, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Since it actually has an answer, I don't understand your logic about what "a few thousand" other editors might have done. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:13, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, it doesn't matter. You clearly don't have consensus to do this - and it's a dramatic change from normal RefDesk (and Wikipedia) practices to go around deleting other people's posts when they are not abusive or otherwise in violation of policy, so please don't do it anymore. SteveBaker (talk) 20:25, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

People who ask questions are not doing so for their personal benefit only; they are contributing to an archived database of questions which we or some successor institution will eventually figure out how to use effectively. Besides, there is nothing that seems to increase the odds of a wrongly or incompletely answered question more than a "resolved" tag. ;) Wnt (talk) 00:29, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs and Medeis

Alright, I know we've been here before, and quite frankly I have little hope of anything productive to come of this, but anyway: after several years of repetition of the same nonsense over and over, and after the latest wt:rd discussions, I hereby call for an indefinite ban of Users Baseball Bugs and Medeis from the reference desks. I'd even offer my admin bit to be the one who blocks them and face the inevitable backlash. In my view, they are a continuous and unavoidable net negative to the refdesks, and to Wikipedia as a whole. I could come up with uncountable diffs to prove my point, but I guess everyone who's been following WT:RD knows what I'm talking about - lots of unnecessary drama and tiny bits of worthwile contributions to set off all the drama. I hope I'm not the only one to say enough is enough - let's block the accounts of Medeis and Baseball Bugs to get the refdesks back on track and get rid of a whole lot of unnecessary drama.

We've had this discussion countless times before, and the consensus every time has been that things aren't that bad and that we should just continue as we've done before - so I expect a lot of dissenting voices against this proposal. Don't get me wrong, I'll certainly follow consensus even if it is to follow the status quo and let Medeis and BB continue - I can only ask you to weigh the net pogative of their contributions against the net negative and come to your own conclusions.

I, for one, would love to see the refdesk get back on its purpose of providing references and answering questions instead of being an inexhaustible font of drama upon drama - and quite frankly I believe the only way of achieving that goal is to get rid of the eternal drama queens once and for all. Yes, I know, we've been through all of that several times before, but seriously - how long do we have to stand by and watch the refdesk being turned into a continual clown show before someone finally decides to take some long-overdue action? How many of those pointless "Bugs and Medeis are right, and the rest of the world is stupid" discussions do we have to repeat over and over again before someone finally takes action?

So...what will it be? Continue to endure one trollfest after the other, or finally block the eternal trolls, and return the refdesk to what it's supposed to be? Not that I expect consensus to spring from this, the most probable outcome of my post is that we'll continue as before because we can't agree on anything, but seriously. Is there anyone who enjoys what the refdesks have become thanks to Bugs and Medeis? cue "banning is much too harsh" discussion in 1...2....3...right. We've been at this point countless times before, and I for one think it's more than overdue we took some drastic action) -- Ferkelparade π 01:08, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

• Sorry, I'm too busy researching answers to questions and providing quality references to contribute meaningfully to this discussion one way or the other. --Jayron32 01:11, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Concur, but like all the other times, nothing is going to happen, we'll just have to wait until they get bored of being useless and leave on their own. Or like Jayron says, just answer the questions properly and ignore them. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:24, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Ignore them? One of Medeis' favourite activities is hatting and/or deleting threads. That's hard to ignore. HiLo48 (talk) 03:29, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

100% support, this has gone on long enough from these editors, both of whom do a disservice to the project. --Viennese Waltz 13:43, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Much to my regret - B/Bugs and Ms medeis possess knowledge in numerous areas - I must support your move. Their knowledge I respect, their antics I detest. Servus aus Wien. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 14:34, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I ignore their constant conversations, but do wince every time one of them (more often Medeis) criticizes and belittles the questioners, which creates completely the wrong atmosphere. An agreement to stop doing that would be a good outcome. It's perfectly possible to ask for clarification in a neutral or even friendly way, to answer a question without being snide about the questioner's ability to find an answer on their own, or even to leave a question to others with expertise in the area. (I do not really know how these process things work, so can't give input on admin options.) 184.147.118.213 (talk) 20:59, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

The problem here is that their individual infractions tend to fall just short of anything directly actionable - it's the sum total of months and years of this low-level, borderline pain-in-the-assedness that makes them objectionable. Everyone crosses the line once in a while - we're only human - but this long trail of poor-behavior is what characterizes this trio. This is classic WP:DISRUPT behavior and it's certainly not acceptable:

"It is essential to recognize patterns of disruptive editing. Our edit warring policy already acknowledges that one act, by itself, may not violate policy, but when part of a series of acts that constitute a pattern does violate policy. Disruptive edits may not occur all in the course of one 24 hour period, and may not consist of the repetition of the same act. Nevertheless, a series of edits over time may form a pattern that seriously disrupts the project."

What I have suggested in the case of other disruptive individuals is to develop a hair-trigger approach. We issue appropriate "zero tolerance" warnings: If any subsequent post of any kind from these individuals (and I'd include WickWack in this trio) crosses the strict limits of Wikipedia and/or RefDesk policies by so much as a hair's breadth - then come down heavy with the full force of administrative powers. Not small stuff: I'm talking immediate year-long blocks. Because all three produce some useful content, I would hope that with the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, they'd be forced to carefully self-moderate their behavior down to a acceptable levels in order to avoid inadvertently straying over the line. But for this to work, it does require an admin on hand who is sufficiently familiar with the problem and the editors involved with the willingness to act decisively when an infraction occurs. SteveBaker (talk) 04:23, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

With all respect, if you spent more time at ANI you would know that solutions like that don't work. Regardless of where you draw the boundary, you get endless arguments about whether the boundary has been crossed. The only way to end those arguments is to indef the subject. Looie496 (talk) 16:56, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

This thread really is no place for jokes

Curiouser and Curiouser: I am surprised that Madame M (aka the μεδ Hatter) has not honoured us pesky clodhoppers by collapsing this very thread. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 11:58, 26 May 2013 (UTC) Ref-desk party with Alice, Basball Bugs and the μεδ Hatter. Cheshire Wiki-Cat Very clever and creative. However, you've somehow forgotten Wickwire, or whatever, who's the actual instigator of this latest skirmish, and who has since seemingly disappeared. Going with the Alice theme, that makes the Cheshire Cat an ideal metaphor for that user. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:39, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I honestly don't find BB that bad, even if I don't agree with his opinions sometimes. Medeis is often on topic, too, but has compulsively hatted lots of acceptable and even good questions. Neither of them is our classical troll, who's only disruptive and therefore deciding to ban him is a no-brainer. I just wish we had a robot analyzing Medies and un-hatting everything she hats (she's mostly wrong, so it won't be a loss). No banning for either of them. OsmanRF34 (talk) 16:44, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Edits such as this, just show how unproductive BB is. Any and all criticism is shrugged off as the fault of the OP for not asking the question correctly, or how some other editor is just as bad. I think "Double Standard" is a common excuse that he cites. He will storm off for a bit, then return to the same behavior. Anywhere else on this project, his edits would be quickly addressed. It seems that he has found that his trolling behavior finds the least resistance here at the RD. Looking back in his edit history, it is difficult to find a productive contribution to the encyclopedia, to include any well referenced help here that would help an editor in improving an article. If he was in a court of law, charged with improving WP, I doubt there would be much evidence found that could be used to convict him. 184.242.73.49 (talk) 17:34, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Don't make jokes like that - See what happens below?
I'm sure he has a Tom Lehrer lyric that can be used as a response. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:39, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Banning an imposing strict rules will backfire badly, what we need is to somehow get more people to ask interesting questions at our Ref Desks. The problems arise because there aren'st that may questions to answer here which leads to the people who have the most time availble to engage in lengthy debates.

I know from personal experience at Physicsforums that imposing strict rules and banning doesn't work, because the people who have to police the boards will in practice have to be involved. Complaints like "trolling" are always vague. I was actually indefinitely banned from physicsforums because my style of discussing physics was argued to be "trolling" by one Mod who didn't like that. It was no surprise to me that later their website became less prominent, Google has stopped linking to them, stackechange has taken their place. Count Iblis (talk) 18:10, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Speaking of getting more questions asked, it seems like there are a lot less questions here then there used to be (at least on the math and science desk, especially the math desk.) Is there an obvious reason for this?Phoenixia1177 (talk) 18:17, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I never go to the Math desk, so they can't pin that rap on me. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Joking continues

Of course it's your fault, B&B. You should be posting on the math desk, increasing the number of questions. OsmanRF34 (talk) 22:53, 26 May 2013 (UTC) Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that. OK, I might go there and ask a question about the famous Tom Lehrer book, Tropic of Calculus. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:59, 26 May 2013 (UTC) Internet tone is confusing, I can't tell if you actually thought I was implying you were that obvious cause. If you did, I didn't mean it that way; just curious in general.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 00:05, 27 May 2013 (UTC) @Phoenixia1177: Sorry collapsing your good faith edit too. --NorwegianBlue talk 00:42, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't say much, but I do read over all the refdesks and discussions on a very regular basis, so I figure I'd throw in my two cents. I have less of a comment, more of question/suggestion: would it be possible to designate reference desk specific powers to users that come here frequently? For example, users that have a good track record could be given the power to hat topics, or other such. Users that are disruptive with that could have that power removed/limited for a time period; further disruptive action could result in refdesk specific editing bans; or require that their contributions be approved by other members first (if wiki can't do this, maybe they have a special page they post on, then another user moves it into refdesk space.) I'm sure this sounds a bit drastic to implement, however, I've noticed that there are a handful of regulars that maintain this specific space, I don't think it would be the worst thing to make that a bit more official.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 18:15, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

WP:TBAN 77.101.52.130 (talk) 21:37, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

• It was I who hatted the three sections above. If we start inviting the two users who are being accused of disruptive activity to make a joke out of this thread, there are more than those two users here who should reconsider the wisdom of their edits. I support the suggestion that stronger action should be taken against experienced users who make the refdesk an embarrassment to the project. It may be necessary to define exact criteria, but the standards expected of experienced users should be high (no unpleasant comments to newcomers or anyone else for that matter, no name-calling or intentional username-mangling to a perceived comical effect, never having meta-discussions on the desk itself, not engaging in quarrelsome behaviour, if you don't have an informative reply, just shut up). A lifetime ban is a way too harsh action IMO, but maybe low-threshold 14-day blocks from the RD without warning might be a way to go? Or would this be such a departure from the rules elsewhere on the project that we'd end up in endless discussions about correct procedure? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 00:45, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Your axiom, "if you don't have an informative reply, just shut up", should be addressed to VW, as he has been known to come to the ref desk specifically to attack users and with admittedly no intention of trying to answer an OP's question.[2] He also enjoys attacking original posters in words that I would never use.[3][4] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:38, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Part of the problem are the questions asked. Realistic questions can be addressed. But unanswerable questions basically cannot. It seems to me a slew of inquirers have become skilled at posing questions that are partially addressable and partially frustrating to the functioning of the reference desks. In such circumstances, followup questions are called for. I rarely see these followup questions asked. Bus stop (talk) 01:55, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

.

I find all this discussion dissappointing. It's dissapointing because the Reference Desk IS going down hill. That's obvious if you compare Science Desk now with Science Desk a couple of years ago. But you won't solve it by banning/blocking users you don't like. In any case, Wickwack only seems to attack personally when he/she's been attacked personally. Wickwack does post when he/she thinks someone else has given an incorrect answer, but surely that can be tolerated? The OP can judge which answer he likes. It seems that some can't tolerate being shown wrong, and that unfortunately includes Steve Baker.

Rather than use the big stick of banning users, there is a better nicer way. One that will solve the problem, lead to an increase in the quality and quantity of both questions and answers, although it may causea temporary drop in answers. The top of each Reference Desk page should list the following rules/guidelines for answering questions, as well as the injunction against homework and medical opinios etc:-

• If you would like to answer a question, but are not knowlegable or qualified (qualified can mean being interested and therefore knowlegable in the subject), wait a while in case an expert in the subject answers. However, if after a reasonable period (eg a day) no expert answer, your imput is welcome.
• Especially if you are not qualified in the subject, check references before answering. Do not speculate or guess.
• Remember, your answer should be designed to help the person who asked the question, not to impress with your knowlege or erudition.
• Review your references and be sure you understand them and they do support what you write.

These rules should be visible at the top of the Edit screen as well. Most of the debate and agro on Reference Desk comes because people post answers on subjects they are not familiar with - which invites criticism - which all too often invites back talk and descent into debates and personal attacks. The above rules won't stop trolls and idiots, but they will reduce the debate and agro, result in better quality answers (though perhaps less answers for a while), and the better quality answers, together with the reduced debate and agro will lead to an improved reputation of Reference Desk and:-

• Better quality questions
• More questions as the word gets around that it is worth asking
• More people, who know what they are talking about, coming on board and writing good well referenced answers.

What I have suggested here has been suggested before, and rejected. But what you are doing is not working. You need to try something different. Ratbone 120.145.154.146 (talk) 15:43, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Here's my take on this whole thing. Wikipedia is free and open to the public. If you want to participate in an encyclopedia that is not free and open to the public - perhaps because you're tired of putting up with how stupid the public is - you've come to the wrong place. If you're qualified at a cut above the rest, you can easily find other places to share knowledge. There are no shortages of closed and moderated intellectual communities - they're called universities and corporations - and you can join one, and prognosticate all you like about your topic of interest in those institutional forums, which are moderated and have a high barrier to entry. Silly people who waste time are forcibly ejected from those communities. On the other hand, if you see the inherent value of free, open, public content, you necessarily must put up with some noise from the plebiscite. Some people come to Wikipedia to waste their own (and other people's) time, and we're okay with that. My advice for the two categories of people with stakes in this discussion:

• To everybody who is being stupid: stop being stupid. This is an encyclopedia.
• To everybody complaining about other people being stupid: stop complaining. This is a free and public encyclopedia.

Nimur (talk) 16:34, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I doubt that you are right about "Silly people who waste time [and] are forcibly ejected from those communities." My experience is quite different, specially regarding universities. But, yes this is not the topic we are discussing here. OsmanRF34 (talk) 20:19, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Since Baseball Bugs has posted in this section but Medeis hasn't, I've invited her to do so. [5] 184.147.118.213 (talk) 17:34, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Since I have been invited to comment here, let me say that if good-faith hatting of problematic posts is a problem, an RfC for a new policy such as one specifying "no hatting without a nomination and a second" (i.e., no user could hat a thread that someone else has not already nominated for hatting) could always be implemented. μηδείς (talk) 19:33, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

There is no hatting problem in general. It's just you Medeis, who is kind of trigger-happy when it comes to it. OsmanRF34 (talk) 20:19, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I have tried to offer a real, objective, serious, enforceable and equal solution to an expressed concern. Forgive me if I refrain from further comment. μηδείς (talk) 20:39, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

This says a lot and the fact that Medeis will happily start discussions about which Blu-Ray movies are the best to watch while hatting other less trivial debates. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:58, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Had someone hatted that question I would simply have taken the issue to talk. As it was, someone provided this most excellent reference which I have used repeatedly. (AS for my still commenting, see below.) μηδείς (talk) 21:09, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

That's what Twitter or Facebook are for, not Wikipedia's Reference desks. It makes no difference that your abuse of the board resulted in a list of lovely movies for you to enjoy. It was still a waste of Wikipedia resources. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:15, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Libraries do in fact offer the service Medeis requested: it's called Reader's advisory. It's not outside the bounds of a reference desk at a public library. Mingmingla (talk) 21:34, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

(after edit conflict)Wikipedia is not a democracy and your suggestion, Medeis is flawed for several reasons: it unnecessarily invites debate when hatting is obvious and done competently by creditable editors. Its also an undue burden when hatting/deleting needs to be prompt and even socks or other incompetents can nominate and second a hatting. Which gets to the primary issue here which is the fact that a certain level of competence is required and expected. I've seen other decent editors who edited WP in good faith and yet get sanctioned and/or booted due to plain continued disruptive incompetence which seems to be the case here, thus I am considering joining others here in calling for either a restrictive sanction or an outright ban from these boards. --Modocc (talk) 21:02, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I apologize for posting again when I said I wouldn't, but this is an excellent example of the nomination/second procedure I suggested above. If it were policy everyone would follow it and should support it. μηδείς (talk) 21:09, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Yep, second that. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:16, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Let me see if I understand this. Medeis is proposing that we have a policy to regulate the behaviour of editors; and this would work because ... all policies are obviously followed to the letter by all people at all times. Obviously. Forgive my incredulity, but isn't the issue here that we already have a a whole swag of policies that go to the behaviour of editors, and that some of them are being flouted with such persistence by certain editors that it has been proposed they be expelled from the ref desks entirely? Why would these editors obey a new policy when they have a track record of ignoring existing ones, and ignoring feedback from the community about these breaches?

"I apologize for posting again when I said I wouldn't" - very nice. Well, how about "I apologize for being disruptive again when I said I wouldn't". -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 21:43, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not active enough on the Reference Desks to know whether these two users are as big a problem as this thread suggests. My impression from what I have gleaned is that their contributions are often a bit distracting, but that they also participate enough in actually answering the questions that throwing them off the page completely might be an overreaction. If that is the case, perhaps the appropriate solution for consideration is something like this:

For a period of six months, the participation of Baseball Bugs and Medeis on the reference desk pages is subject to the following restriction: They may post only to respond to a question by providing an answer or other information directly relevant information to the question. They are not to handle administrative aspects of the pages (e.g., hatting discussions), to make off-topic remarks, or to criticize the nature or content of the questions. Violation of these restrictions may be sanctioned by an uninvolved administrator by a broader topic-ban from the reference desks for an appropriate period of time. There is no restriction on Baseball Bugs' and Medeis' participation on the RD talkpages, although such a restriction may be proposed in the future if necessary. The continued need for these restrictions will be reevaluated after six months.

This might offer a somewhat amicable way out of the situation, retaining the useful aspects of these two editors' participation while mitigating the less useful aspects. In any event, there it is for what it's worth. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:28, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I know only too well how easy it is to treat the refdesks as if they were discussion fora. We all need to be more restrained. The whole idea of a refdesk regular is problematic. We should know when a question is beyond our reach, and just wait for a day to see if a really knowledgeable user turns up. Or maybe we should more readily refer OPs to WikiProjects. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:35, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Hooray! At least Judith can see some sense! It should be writen on the top of Reference Desk pages that non-expert contributors wait a day to see if an expert answer turns up. Nimur, as usual has made a good point (ie Wikipedia is free and open, so we should expect some stupidity). But don't loose sight of the basic issue - this discussion is too hung up on individuals. The basic issues is this: Reference Desk isn't working right - its going down hill. Questions are getting fewer, questions are getting sillier. The quality of answers is dropping. Reference Desk's (and Wikipedia's) reputation is getting tarnished. So if its not working, we need to fix it. That is, we need to create an environment where the issues discused here are less of a problem. It's a bit like a business manager seeing the difference between sacking workers who goof off, until nobody's left versus a manager who recognises and corrects a situation allowing and encouraging and supporting goofing off. People like Nimur and Jayron consistently give high quality answers when good questions in their fields of interest crop up. I bet they enjoy crafting their good answers. Do you want Reference Desk to continue getting worse and have no decent questions to answer? Ratbone 121.215.54.218 (talk) 00:56, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Define "expert". I have a highschool diploma and no college; however, I can answer a decent majority of the math and science questions posed here (I study obsessively). If I can adequately answer questions, I don't see why I should wait 24 hours to do so; and if that I can adequately answer questions qualifies me as expert enough in the subject, then "expert" isn't really measuring anything except how qualified people think they are, which may, actually, be worse.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 03:09, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we've never required any sort of academic qualifications here. The only necessary skill is in tracking down references. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 03:14, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

That is quite wrong. The Science Desk is continually a good demonstration that tracking down refrences is NOT sufficient. Many times I have seen asnwers that assert a certain thing, but the cited reference does not support it, or the reference is an outlier, known by those who work in the field to be wrong. An example of this on Science Desk today is a newspaper article cited as evidence that you can maliciously affect operation of an airliner by means of an app on an android phone. An expert in phone and radio technology would be very extremely suspicious, and in fact newspapers carried follow up articles 2 days later showing that it was a hoax. Ratbone 124.178.148.41 (talk) 04:14, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I said it's a necessary skill. I did not say it was a sufficient skill. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 07:18, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

And yet, in my opinion, very satisfying responses come from people who know what they are talking about too, sometimes even lacking references. I wouldn't want to miss the well-referenced, -summarized, -explained answers, provided by intelligent and didactically skilled generalists, but I wouldn't want to miss the completely unreferenced answers by people who not only know what they're talking about, but already knew before the question was asked. I wouldn't read too much into 121.215's use of the word "expert". One of the contributors 121.215 mentioned positively (and I agree with the assessment in both cases) is quite a bit of a generalist (in addition to sharing his "expertise" in certain fields). His answers are informed however, and driven by productive curiosity. I think 121.215 and Judith meant people without much experience or knowledge in the field leaping into the question with the first explanation/thought/comment they can come up with. Sadly, Nimur has a point. Yeah, there is no qualifying exam to be a volunteer at the reference desks, just like there's no qualifying exam to be Calvin's dad. ---Sluzzelin talk 03:40, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I know what you mean. Some answers, while totally unreferenced, are very good answers because they are written with the voice of authority, plausibility, experience and reason, and provide food for thought and possibly some ideas for further research. I would also never like to see these sorts of answers suppressed simply on the ground that they did not include any references. But that does not mean a free-for-all for all comers to impart their opinions, wild-assed guesses, sundry thoughts and pearls of personal wisdom. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 03:55, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I did not mean academic qualifications. Academic qualifications, on their own, have little relavence. "Qualified" in this context could well mean a hobby interest, or a bit of personal experience, depending on the question. ItsMeJudith had it pretty good: "We should know if a question is beyond our competence, and if it is, wait a while and see if a competent answer pops up." If it doesn't then go ahead and have a go. Sluzzelin has come up with a very good test: If you already knew the answer before the question appeared, you are "qualified". If not, you are not qualified. Asking people to apply Judith's and Sluzzelin's rules to themselves before posting answers should stop most of those who post "off the cuff" on all sorts of subjects causing debates and slanging matches due to their mostly well intentioned but also often incorrect answers. I never meant that unqualified (whatever that may mean) persons should never have a go at answering. I merely ask that they wait a bit before jumping in. Reference Desk by definition isn't urgent. Ratbone 124.178.148.41 (talk) 04:07, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying, I very much agree. That said, why would anyone answer a question if they didn't think they were qualified? Meaning: I tend to think people providing problem answers, probably, don't think that they are, or that they aren't qualified. To a certain degree, asking people to apply the criterion to themselves may not change much; if I'm willing to answer, but don't know the subject well, it's doubtful I know that I don't know. (I'm not trying to be contentious, I just have a lot of friends that fit the bill of what I'm describing)Phoenixia1177 (talk) 05:04, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

You might be right. A little knowlege can be dangerous. But in my experience, most people internally have a fairly accurate view of themselves. Mostly, a false sense of ability doesn't help you to survive in the real world too well. There are certain people who post answers on just about everything. I don't want to mention names, but I think they get fun out of posting whatever they dream up, even though they just might be genuinely trying to help. One or two just like the sound of their own words. Either way, I think that Sluzzelins' Rule will make enough of them think first before posting - provided that Judith's and Sluzzelin's Rules are on the top of the Reference Desk page, and the top of the Reference Desk Edit page, and not hidden away like a lot of WP policies. We've got to try something. Having all these discussions about banning people is not working, and as it is visible to the public with only a mouse-click, these constant discussions about bad behaviour and banning people is itself degrading Wikipedia's reputation, repelling good people and attracting the less good. Ratbone 120.145.76.52 (talk) 05:53, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I definitely agree that it would be a good rule to have posted prominently; I don't doubt that it will have a positive impact on many. I think another part of the problem is that there is too small a pool of questions and too small a pool of dedicated answerers. In other words, when there isn't anything pertinent to the desks' function going on, there's nothing to do here. A few years ago, I remember there being a load more mathematics questions being asked, and science/computing questions (I don't go to the others usually), there seemed enough topics to actually discuss that banter and in fighting was less prominent. Now, there seem to be far fewer question and, maybe it's just me, the depth of the questions being asked has, in general, deteriorated (not to say they aren't technical, just not as thought provoking/multifaceted). I'm beginning to rant, and my perceptions may be off, so I'll stop; especially as I have no solutions to offer.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 06:09, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

You are exactly right. Not the bit about stopping because of supposed ranting, I mean the rest of what you said. I think there is a certain level - above it and good questions and answers encourage more good questions and answers - below it and the pools of questions and answerers shrink as good folk are discouraged. Science Desk has clearly gone below that level. Ratbone 120.145.76.52 (talk) 06:14, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I sometimes get the feeling the existence of the ref desk isn't something widely known; outside of a link on the lower part of the main page, I don't see any reference to it. Couple that with the fact that most people are probably coming to wikipedia via google search, and I'd imagine that it's hard to get people coming here. Moreover, word of mouth only works if we are giving phenomenal answers; and people have little reason to come back after their own question is answered. Ultimately, supposing this is accurate, we not only need to find a way to limit the volume of bad experiences, but also amplify the utility of the desk as a tool. I somewhat wish we could expand upon the desk to include pages with moderated discourse on common subjects here, with references, that askers could also utilize (something like how good answers/discussions happen on the desk, but in response to areas of interest.) Honestly, any expansion that makes this place more useful and more user friendly would stand to increase the quality and volume of users (and, hence, decrease the negative behaviours), is there a way to achieve something along these lines? [I've derailed the topic, sorry. I also have no idea how to deindent, so if someone wants to, please do.]Phoenixia1177 (talk) 06:55, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually I, for one, think your points are extremely valid. I think there would be benefit in reviewing the work we do here, and the 'customer experience' that we deliver, in order to see if it can be improved at all. I think there's a valid discussion to be had, although I don't think here is the time or place. I'd rather not join the discussion on the merits or otherwise of users' behaviour, but maybe we can talk about this in a new section once this conversation dies down? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 08:47, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Once this dies down (I'm a bad judge of this...), then, anyone interested in this side discussion, please start a new topic on it. I definitely think it would be worth further discussion.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 08:55, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

...unindent like this (though I sometimes don't). New article creation has tapered from the peak rate of a few years ago; its approximately half of what was then, which means fewer questions. Poor answers sometimes leads to squabbles of course, but I doubt that poor answers (which involves many editors) has much to do with the proposed ban or sanctions of Bugs and Medeis! I do think though that misunderstandings regarding tone sometimes happen here simply due to the occasional differences in expressions, e.g. "being silly" is likely to be more offensive to some than to others depending on the emotive content one has been exposed to with it. Thus, it would best if we could avoid escalations such as this and be less combative, because it does not always matter what we say, but how we go about expressing ourselves, and that sometimes means reaching for reconciliation and avoiding the boomerangs with restraint. Modocc (talk) 09:46, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Recent specimen captured in the wild: [6] - Seriously, can we stop with the tangents and address the fact that there are people who routinely make unhelpful, misleading contributions to RD? AlexTiefling (talk) 07:13, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I pretty much always abstain from taking a position on these sorts of questions these days. I might make some incidental contributions while abstaining from the primary question. History shows we talk and talk and talk but it just peters out, exactly as has happened here. Ferkelparade went to quite some effort to make a case, and many others have contributed their views. Surely that level of effort deserves a definite outcome one way or the other, and not this ... nothingness. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 04:38, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Really, I came to the opposite conclusion. This should have been nothingness, and I'd not be disappointed to see it return there. --Jayron32 04:45, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, why do we permit these sorts of issues to be raised in the first place? Hot air only has a value if it results in some decision. That might be to take some sort of action, or to foreshadow some consequence if certain conditions are not adhered to, or to confirm the status quo, or whatever. But something, rather than nothing. Otherwise, everyone here has wasted their time. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 04:59, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

There are more likely to be problematic responses to problematic questions. For instance AlexTiefling above[7] points out a problematic response by Medeis. But if we look at the original question posed I think we find it is somewhat unanswerable. The question reads: "Is it fashionable for men to wear fanny packs?" Bus stop (talk) 05:41, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

And Medeis' answer was really just a convoluted way of saying "No". Could have been a lot clearer. That was a problematic question in more ways than one. In case any Americans reading this aren't aware, the word "fanny" in most of the Anglosphere has a very different meaning to that in the US. See the first paragraph of Fanny pack for an explanation. Non-Americans tend to titter and laugh when they hear the expression. Much silliness could probably have been avoided if my advice two sentences back had been added to the thread early on. (I just noticed that the caption of the first picture in Fanny pack is about a red fanny pack, with a forced line break after fanny, thereby seeming to emphasise a red fanny. Most unfortunate.) HiLo48 (talk) 05:57, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I thought the essential problem with the originally posed question was that it simply asked for opinions which necessarily vary among people. Bus stop (talk) 10:29, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I can just about guarantee to you that every non-American who read that thread thought about something different from a little pack to wear on a belt around one's waist.

I have my doubts as to whether or not the person posting the question was particularly mindful of the variations in meaning of the word "fanny" in various English-speaking cultures. Bus stop (talk) 14:35, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely, but that didn't stop it being a big issue with that thread. The vagaries of the English language are naturally a big issue for English Wikipedia. And we need better ways of dealing with them. The ignorance of editors doesn't prevent these issues from arising. In fact, it causes them. HiLo48 (talk) 21:32, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

We are all ignorant. Who is not ignorant of something? Bus stop (talk) 22:30, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Alright, for the record: I oppose voting anyone off the island here, on this talk page. There are other places where I'd find the discussion and possibly ensuing enforcement more appropriate. The main two reasons I have repeatedly held this position (last time it was Cuddlyable3, who has since been blocked from the entire Wikipedia, and I realize my position is a vulnerable one): A) We might in fact suffer from cabin fever and be too involved to make such a drastic decision; it is better suited for disinterested editors. Hardly anyone watches this page who doesn't also contribute to the desks. B) There is enough bickering and grudge-bearing going on as it is. I feel that the moment we set this precedent, we're in for more bad blood, here, not just on this talk page, but it will spill over on to the desks as well. I prefer the library atmosphere to feuds and threats.

That being said, hot air, Jack, can also have a cathartic function. Several proponents of this ban who normally don't go around policing anyone here (Ferkelparade rarely even contributes to this talk page) have expressed how fed up they are. Posting this was fine. If we're lucky, it might even help the two users reconsider some of their more irritating editing patterns.

Though I suggested considering other venues, I won't vote for banning either of the two editors elsewhere either. In fact I won't participate at all, because I don't care what happens, unless the annoying stuff ceases, in which case I'd probably add diffs and words of defense. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:40, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

The questions, and answers, on this desk have gotten increasingly less interesting over time. All forums have ups and downs, but it feels like it has been a continual slide for the last year or so. The amount of in-talk and dumb joking and rule-bickering has made the entire thing not very fun. It is one reason (among a few others) that for the most part I don't participate anymore (I check in once a week or so to see if anything has improved or changed for the better, and I glance at this talk page to see if others feel the same way). I wouldn't necessarily single these two users out among all, but I will say that they are the chief dumb joker and rule-bickerer of the bunch. There are others, to be sure. But the desk has more or less ceased to be a source of interesting questions, which I can't help but think is related to the fact that it is also become a rather stale place for answers as well. I have no hope whatsoever that either of these editors, much less the others who do similar things, will change their ways, because these particular habits seem to be their primary motivation for participating in the desk in the first place. Bugs is not a Ref Desk contributor who occasionally makes bad jokes — making bad jokes is clearly why he is here. Medeis is not a Ref Desk contributor who occasionally decides that her role is one of a traffic cop — she is here because she likes to act like a traffic cop. Such is my perception of them, anyway, from what little one can know about someone else based on their online scribblings. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:31, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

You've got my motivation wrong, but you might have a point in general: Maybe the ref desks should, in fact, be abolished, as proposed in that RfC or whatever to call it. At the time the ref desk started, Wikipedia was not necessarily widely known. Nowadays, google almost any topic and Wikipedia articles are liable to be near the top of the list. So maybe it really isn't needed anymore? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:47, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I am basing my understanding on your motivation from your actions. Take that for what it is worth. Consider that probably nobody on here knows you in real life — we are all basing what we think of you based on how you participate, and there are a tremendous number of people here who think your participation makes you appear like a schmuck. What you think your motivations are is actually an irrelevant part of whether or not you are perceived to be a schmuck. Being a schmuck on the Internet doesn't make you a schmuck in real life, of course. But it still strikes me as a rather pathetic thing to aspire to.

As for your other suggestion, I think "abolishing" it is an unnecessary move. When it ceases to be useful it will fade away like everything else on the Internet; it will effectively abolish itself. I don't think it is inevitable, but I think it's what's happening. I think the jokey, rule-obsessed, "let's just make up answers rather than referencing them," "let's write a small-text pun on every question no matter how serious," "let's derail every possible discussion", "let's worry more about whether sockpuppets are participating than actually answering questions", etc. etc. etc. approach to things has made it a very unproductive atmosphere for both new users as well as people who have productive knowledge to offer. When a resource becomes a playground for half a dozen people it ceases to be anything but trivial. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:42, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not asking for medical advice

I am asking a hypothetical, the other thing is that my actions (merely my knowledge) with regards to my treatment won't be influenced by any answers because I won't self-medicate, just ask my doctor more informed questions. Can't someone just ask about androgen insensitivity syndrome out of curiosity? 71.2.172.65 (talk) 23:34, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the topic. Many editors have removed your questions because of the way you asked them. The way you have asked your question implies one of three possible scenarios; you are asking for medical advice; you are asking for someone to do your homework; or you are just trying to waste time. None of these scenarios bodes in your favor. Nimur (talk) 23:38, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not wasting anybody's time. I'm not asking anyone to do my homework. I've asked homework questions on this board all the time, AFAIK if you put thought into your question and are stuck your question is valid. 71.2.172.65 (talk) 23:40, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually, so far all you have done is vandalize a Holocaust article, create a hassle for other editors and administrators, and post nonsense on the reference desk. It is not a very stunning contribution history. Nimur (talk) 23:43, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Um, I'm editing from the Holiday Inn wireless network. Please don't make baseless accusations. 71.2.172.65 (talk) 23:46, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

The OP is asking a very detailed homework question, which he needs to do the research on. Whatever the article has to say about it, is all Wikipedia has to say about it. There should be references, and the OP could follow those references and see what additional info he can find. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:45, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I am not male. I don't even look male atm, at worst androgynous. Also, I've asked very detailed chemistry questions here before, and gotten informed responses. What I hope to get responses is from informed medical students. 71.2.172.65 (talk) 23:48, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

You don't even know what my homework question is. For all you know I have to write a 3000-word essay on the topic. 71.2.172.65 (talk) 23:52, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you are asking for medical advice, but normally when we talk about putting thought into a homework question, we mean showing that you have put thought into the question, not just saying so. (Disclaimer: I wouldn't have any idea how to answer the question in any case.) Looie496 (talk) 23:54, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, you don't know what my question is. Hence I am asking about some info necessary for me to process to answer the question. My homework is to take the steps necessary SRS. 71.2.172.65 (talk) 23:56, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

How many of your previous chemistry questions were in the realm of medicine? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:52, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Plenty. Also according to my insurance company my problem isn't even a medical problem, it's a "cosmetic procedure" that they won't cover. So legally, it is a cosmetic problem. 71.2.172.65 (talk) 23:56, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

You need to see a professional. Which ain't us. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:58, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

In case you missed the memo, I already am being treated by an endocrinologist hence this is not a request for medical advice. Medical professionals do not answer questions out of scientific curiosity, they only answer questions that are medically necessary. Hence, endocrinologist for my treatment, Ref Desk for my scientific curiosity. Please restore my question. 71.2.172.65 (talk) 00:01, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

My endocrinologist doesn't consider a genetic / protein sequencing test for AIS necessary and ended the discussion. Thus, I can only speculate. Please tell me how AIS would affect MTF HRT. Thanks. 71.2.172.65 (talk) 00:05, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

You've been told multiple times by multiple users that your question is inappropriate for the ref desk. If your doctor is not giving you satisfactory answers, find a doctor who will. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:03, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

One major part of the OP's question is simply "how likely is it that a person at random will have mild androgen insensitivity syndrome", which is a perfectly valid thing for us to answer, and should be in the article. Unfortunately, I have not really gotten a solid number for this as arbitrarily defined, but that didn't stop me from finding some even more fascinating information on the topic - namely, that what I'd always assumed was a purely personal and subjective perception of two equally prevalent subsexes of men might actually have some physiological basis. It turns out that the androgen receptor contains a CAG trinucleotide repeat which can readily expand or contract over generations, and the length of the repeat actually does have real phenotypic effect on development [8]... and the number of repeats is about evenly split in a bimodal distribution ([9] figure 1). Now how cool is that! True, I don't know if anyone has done a study to see if you can tell by looking how many CAG repeats somebody has, but I'd put a bet on finding a minorly significant predictive effect. :) There is additional commentary which I will mostly avoid at the moment, save to say that I am not impressed with the "ethics" of doctors freely passing out as many pills to raise and lower testosterone as they can sell while not figuring out the patient's internal state or even being willing to answer questions - I don't think we on the refdesk have anything to be ashamed of by comparison no matter how much we answer. Wnt (talk) 12:22, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Underutilized

In agreement with comments by Phoenixia1177 above, it does seem true that the Ref Desk is underutilized, and that it would benefit both contributers/the project, and the world at large, if its existence were more widely known.

Perhaps there should be a link at the top of the front page, rather than at the bottom? A link on all article talk pages? Something else? μηδείς (talk) 03:01, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions.—Wavelength (talk) 03:05, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Are you suggesting this thread should be posted to Signpost? (The reason I asked is that I followed your link, and I see no mention of the ref desk at all.) My assumption was that a discussion between regulars would make more sense first, given their familiarity with the subproject. I suspect some contributors might be more productive with a higher task load than currently exists. That should please everyone. μηδείς (talk) 03:12, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

No. I am suggesting that The Signpost might discuss the Reference Desk and interview selected contributors, as it has done in the case of some WikiProjects. (See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Archives/WikiProject report.) If it does so, then "its existence" would probably become "more widely known".

—Wavelength (talk) 04:24, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Moving the link to the top of the front page should help to a certain extent. But I wouldn't expect too much. I often ask people I meet professionally and socially if they are aware of Wikipedia. Without exception, they always are, for one simple reason - if you google on something, if there is a Wikipedia article that matches the search phrase then it will be very near the top of the google list. And there most often is an article. They may click on it and look at the artcle, but they never get to see the front page. A banner on Reference Desk randomly appearing at the top of retreived articles would help a lot. However, I think that should not be done now, for a couple of reasons:-

• The Reference Desk (the Science Desk at any rate, I don't much look at the other desks) is going down hill. Poor questions, silly topic questions, poor quality answers, and far too much going off topic, and far far too much debate, & personal attacks. And in one mouse click readers can go to talk pages etc and see them clogged up with debates on who should be blocked. That presents a very poor image. Wikipedians should work on making Reference Desk work better, by the right guidance (eg Sluzzelin's and Judith's Rules as discused in sections above - there may be other ways), creating an environment that encourages contributors to do the right thing, reduces sounding off, thereby reducing the need for debates on topics, going off topic, and debates about who should be blocked. THEN, when we have improved Reference Desk, go ahead and advertise and promote its existence. That's Marketing 101 - get the product right first, otherwise you just get all the consumers regarding it as crap.
• A sudden increase in questions due to promotion/adverising now is the last thing we want. The pool of good answerers like Nimur and Jayron is just too small. Too many questions and they'll be swamped. That will lower Wikipedia's repution too. Fix the Reference Desk first, then the pool of answerers will naturally increase. Then, by all means promote it. I have sharply reduced my contributions. I am a university qualified professional (chartered) electrical engineer with decades of experience. Initially I supplied answers to (what to any electrical engineer are quite basic) questions on electrical theory and electrical safety provisions. Far too many times that has prompted refutations by people whose electrical education apparently stopped at junior high school science. And dickheads have posted personal attacks. So why should I bother - it's somewhat pointless. I bet other potential contributors feel much the same. Whatever good intentions may be, Reference Desk is not a place to ask good questions and get good answers - it is a place of debate.

Ratbone 121.215.41.49 (talk) 05:36, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not surprised that this IP is using foul language, which really belongs only on bathroom walls. Its trolling to rouse hostilities for they are socking and attacking others (see new thread regarding this below). --Modocc (talk) 16:44, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

We'd all be so much better off if we approached the next question as if we were new here and wanted to answer questions well. Would be great to have you contribute on those terms, and don't worry about the others. -- Scray (talk) 05:45, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Just clarifying one point, Ratbone. You say people arrive at articles via google but never see the main page. But then, when they're at the Science ref desk, they're only one mouse click away from the talk pages with all their debates etc. Readers are never more than one mouse click away from the main page either. Its link is right up there under the Wikipedia globe thing (in my skin at any rate). I'm doubtful that most people fairly new to Wikipedia would be more interested in behind the scenes chatter than in the main page and what it has to offer. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 09:45, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

You are confusing two different types of people and/or people doing two diffrent types of activity with different goals. The most common type is those who use Google to find out things. That may land them on a relavent Wikipedia article. They'll read the article, maybe it will satisfy them, maybe it won't and they'll then go to the next likely site listed by Google. In neither case do they have a need to click "Main page" which is at the top on the list at left on each article page. But if they do, they'll find out a bit about Wikipedia and that's good - and on the main page there's a lot of good impressive stuff right there or immediately accessible - should their eye go there. The person who ends up on Reference Desk is a much more curious and exploring type of person, a lot less common that the first type. The first type is focussed on satisfying a specific need and the second is maybe finding things by accident that might be useful for some undefined problem later. If from the Reference Desk he/she then goes to the Reference Desk talk page (1 click on a prominent tab right at the top) he/she is likely to be further browned off if not already browned off by the poor quality questions and poor quality answers, sidetracking, and debate. Ratbone 121.215.10.7 (talk) 10:42, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree 100% with what Ratbone said above. What originally brought me to regularly reading through the questions here was that a lot of the answers were springboards into new ways of thinking about subjects I was interested in: the math and science desks had very interesting points being expressed, and the computer board didn't just have "how do I get technology X to work" questions, but computer science questions, which were also fascinating. As of now: most of the math questions (the few there are) seem to be more of a "help me solve this specific problem", but they end up just being difficult/tedious calculation; Ratbone has covered the science desk; the computer desk has, essentially, become tech support. The major difficulty is that until we are able to show that these desks can do more, there will not be occasion to do more; so, operating as is, will, essentially, keep us operating as is. What follows are a couple of disjointed points, remarks.

• Someone mentioned above that the refdesk is seeing less visitors for the same reason that wiki is seeing less new articles, but I disagree with that. After a certain critical number of articles, the number of new articles will decline since the topics left will be those that are most difficult to write and those that are more obscure, hence less users can create them. Moreover, after a certain critical point, there will be enough articles that the number of users to monitor those and maintain them will be large enough that many creators will be come maintainers. In other words, I don't think we should treat the decline in article creation as linked to the decline in the refdesks; meaning, we may very well be able to rectify the issue/s here.
• There are numerous places on the web where people ask questions, lots of questions; technical, deep, and otherwise. Thus, there is no lack of people with questions seeking quality answers; hence, since they are not asking here, there is some failure on the part of the refdesks. That failure may simply be lack of awareness that this place exists, peoples perception of wiki in general, bad past experiences, organization, anything else. But, I think it is hard to argue that there is a wider audience for these boards and that we can't do something to reach them.
• It is a fact of life that people will ask medical questions that have no place here. Personally, the arguments over what constitutes unanswerable and the hatting of them, makes the science desk look less inviting (again, my opinion; I find it jarring when it happens.) This will be controversial, but since we know the issue is going to perpetually come up, why don't we have a closely watched medical science board. Then, all of these questions will end up in one place; they will not distract from questions on quite different subject matters; it will be easier to separate answerable medscience questions from unanswerable ones if they are all localized; and we can put a more emphasized version of our policy on that board specifically.
• There are lots of people here who have skill sets that may be underutilized, but not because the lack of interest is out there. For example, I know a lot about foundational issues in mathematics, descriptive complexity, the theory of computation, and logic; however, I have little occasion to bring that knowledge here. I'm sure that the situation is the same for many others, even more so for others since there are people far more educated here than I. If we could find a platform to demonstrate that these deeper issues had a place here, I think it would draw people (there is no lack of people with vague thoughts on all sorts of things from quantum fields to Godel's theorems to what the Halting Problem says about knowledge.) The issue is how do we demonstrate that?
• Could we have a separate area of discourse dealing with questions/issues that those educated on them would have liked answered when they first learned of the subject? Example: there are a lot of people who are interested in the Many Worlds Interpretation of QM (and other interpretations) except, most people lack the background to even ask a decent question on the matter. Could we have a page linking from here that approached common queries to that subject as if they were legit questions posted on the science board? If we could do this for various broad subjects, I think it would not only help users have a better framework to ask questions from, but it would also provide something easy to reference when the subjects came up. This is most likely beyond the framework of what the refdesk is supposed to be, so I don't imagine it happening; however, maybe someone can distill something useful out of it that can be done.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 06:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure about having another board, but what I think would really help is a well organised list of previous questions and answers rather than just saying do a search. Possibly also article talk ages could have links to questions and answers relevant to them. This might also encourage people to give better answers knowing that the answer would be saved and classified properly.

As to the people who go around attacking people, yes I really do wish they would address the issue rather than the person. An option is to go for a system like slashdot for rating contributions but they seem to have just as many or more silly contributions as here.

I suppose there could be a link to the reference desks from the list on the left hand side on article pages but I think I would like to see some ideas that might actually improve the desks first. If we had answers classified properly google would probably start serving those as possibilities for some queries as well. Dmcq (talk) 10:47, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I really like the idea of articles linking to relevant questions and classifying things for google; how hard would these be to actually implement? Is it something users here could be a part of or would it need to be done by the folks who run/manage wiki itself?Phoenixia1177 (talk) 11:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I'd have editors doing it. It's the sort of thing WP:GNOMEs like doing. Dmcq (talk) 11:33, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Can someone define this lowering of quality? A random walk through the archives tells me not much has changed. Mingmingla (talk) 14:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I can only speak for myself, but, relative to a few years ago when I became active here, there does seem to be a bit more debate and more jokes that can be distracting or confusing. Imagine if you went to a physical ref desk in a library, and the staffers pretty much ignored you while heatedly debating the finer points of arcane theory, which they may or may not be qualified to do :)SemanticMantis (talk) 14:39, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the recent lack of traffic at the desks: Many (most?) students in the Anglosphere are on break for the summer, right? Even when it's not a "homework" question, many of our questions are obviously related to something that came up in class. So I expect to see a natural uptick in questions once more classes are in session in September...

As for improving the desks: I don't the state is that horrible, but we all have room for improvement. Some time back, an editor posted here, with the question "am I doing this right"? Several editors then looked at the recent answers given, and gave constructive feedback. So, I'd suggest that anyone who habitually answers more than a few questions a week partake in this process; it would help build our skills, and perhaps help us feel less debate-y and snarky with eachother. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:37, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

One big black eye is the tendency of some regulars to attack other regulars in front of the original poster, which can't help but make Wikipedia look bad. If someone says something that's factually incorrect, it should suffice to say "that's not correct". Any comments beyond that should either try to answer the OP's question correctly, or be brought to a talk page. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:54, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

• My idea was to draw readers with a banner on an article's talk page. But I agree with the argument above that this would end up overwhelming the desks at this point. In any case, the problem of silly questions and side discussions was something I thought more traffic might actually help. If one checks the contribution histories of RD users, it is apparent that a large number of our repeat questioners are single-purpose accounts. I don't know what combination of these are trolls, shy people in good faith, or regular contributors who like to generate material when times are slow. I suspect that when there are several good questions at a time on the desk, running-joke-type side discussions and single-purpose account generated questions will lessen as people's attention is on more substantive matters. μηδείς (talk) 17:02, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I said above that I was interested in a discussion on the future of the Ref Desk, so here goes. There have been a number of comments above that I think are particularly pertinent:

• "The Reference Desk (the Science Desk at any rate, I don't much look at the other desks) is going down hill. Poor questions, silly topic questions, poor quality answers, and far too much going off topic, and far far too much debate, & personal attacks." (Ratbone)
• "Can someone define this lowering of quality? A random walk through the archives tells me not much has changed." (Mingmingla)
• "I can only speak for myself, but, relative to a few years ago when I became active here, there does seem to be a bit more debate and more jokes that can be distracting or confusing." (SemanticMantis)

This discussion chimes with something I have been considering for a little while, and has been addressed tangentially in recent talkpage conversations here. There is a feeling that the 'quality' of the RefDesk is gradually declining, although to what extent (if indeed that is the case) this is true is debated. It seems to me that, although there are many excellent suggestions given above for solving the problem, if we are not sure what the problem is it will be difficult to tackle it.

Therefore, I would like to propose a short research project to be carried out on our archives. It should not be too difficult to categorise the volume and topics of questions, and we could probably also come up with some way to assess the 'quality' of questions and answers as well.

The aim of the project would be to produce statistics that would show how well used the desks have been, how relevant the questions are, and how well we answer them. Tracking these over time would allow us to see if, and in which areas, we should work on improvements.

Unless there are any strong objections, I would be happy to start to plan out such a project. However, I suspect that it would be much quicker, and of higher quality, if there were a few others working on it as well. So, any volunteers? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 17:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Cucumber Mike, please see Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 97#Discussions (good and bad) (January 2013).

—Wavelength (talk) 18:31, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I remember that discussion. I think part of the reason the idea didn't take off was that it was seen as reducing the RefDesk to the level of scoring 'points' for good answers. I'm proposing that we do a scientific analysis of the questions and answers in the archive for the purpose of improvement. The questions and answers could be anonymised before use in the analysis if it's felt that would help to remove personal bias. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 18:52, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Looking in the archives there were more than twenty questions being asked per day with regularity on the science board [10], and this significantly dropped during and after the fall (Northern Hemisphere) of 2008 with twenty or more posts to the board being more the exception than the rule [11]. Perhaps the quality of this board went downhill that fall or perhaps the decrease in visitors was due to something else such as less exposure on other pages making it harder for people to find these boards, or perhaps, and this seems just as likely, it happened simply because Wikipedia now has far more information than it did, thus users are satisfied with what they can now read about for themselves. Any or all of these are possible reasons. In addition, there are also plenty of amicable mathematicians watching the math board despite the sparsity of questions there, thus I don't quite see low volume being a problem or more volume helping, but I would certainly welcome more exposure, questions and volunteers since we have policies and procedures in place to handle significant problems (and we tend to be only as good as our last paychecks posts anyway). -Modocc (talk) 21:00, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

You would need to look at all the ref desks, as they grew from one to the six or so they have now. That is, some questions previously in science might have been split off elsewhere. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:13, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

All seven desks were present and active during 2008 and later, see my links to the May 2008 and May 2009 science board archives to see the difference. -Modocc (talk) 01:50, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

RD regular feedback?

The request above from SemanticMantis makes me wonder whether we begin to address the perceived decline in quality at the RD (discussed at great length above) through a voluntary peer review system. If done in a constructive manner, periodic review on a user's talk page might put them in mind of feedback when responding. I realize that problematic editors won't engage in such a process, but the rest of us could still benefit and might become less prone to getting drawn into counter-productive exchanges whether here or on the RD proper. Requests could be placed here (perhaps with a template) to invite feedback on a editor's talk page. The editor would be free to remove unconstructive (or all) feedback, if desired, but the exercise would give them some sense of how they're perceived (I, for one, don't have a clear sense of how I'm perceived - perhaps I don't worry about it as much as I should). -- Scray (talk) 18:40, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

It's helpful simply to tell people, "that's a great answer!" on the desk itself. That rarely seems to happen. μηδείς (talk) 19:02, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I have a lot more issues with the quality of the questions than the quality of the answers. Looie496 (talk) 20:36, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

We can't force people to ask better questions, but we can improve our answers so as to demonstrate we are capable of answering better questions. Mingmingla (talk) 23:00, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

• I doubt I'm alone in having watched a teacher turn a terrible (sometimes intentionally disruptive) question from a student into a great educational moment. I've seen this done from time to time on RD/S as well. -- Scray (talk) 03:01, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to see an example of an intentionally disruptive question that was turned into a great educational moment (for the questioner, not for the person who tried to answer it!). I've never seen that. Anyway, the real problem is not individual bad questions, it's the cases where somebody pops up who asks one frivolous question after another, day after day. Looie496 (talk) 03:25, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I have seen a more than a few attempts to turn a bad question into a great educational monent on Reference Desk. But, there is a fine line between that and going off on a tangent - only the most skilled can do it successfully. While I could see the good intent, it only encourages a culture of going of on tangents, sounding off, and having discussions. The culture on Reference Desk to have discussions not directly addressing the OP's question is now well established, and needs to be controlled. Reference Desk is vulnerable to trolls asking deliberately bad questions - I've seen a lot of troll-like questions that triggerred discussion going on for pages and pages. Great fun for trolls and the persons posting discussion I suppose. If done politely, it is more helpful to the OP to just explain why his question is not so good, and it provides less incentive to trolling. Ratbone 120.145.206.211 (talk) 07:28, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Scray and Medeis here. I posts responses/thanks when I ask questions, but I rarely respond in such a way to questions I didn't already participate in, despite often thinking "Wow, that was quite informative." I guess part of it is simply human nature: it's easier to articulate what's wrong with something than what's right with it. Part of it also is that it seems almost... out of place for that kind of thing, like "If it was wrong, I'd tell you, but it's not, so I won't say anything." But I suppose that's just the way it's been here for so long that I think of it as natural. Well, the carrot works at least as well as the stick, so I shall attempt to balance my criticisms with praise. Matt Deres (talk) 23:48, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Personally, my thinking is more in line with Looie496 (although my answers could use a ton of work, I don't argue that). But on the subject of providing good answers, could we put up a guideline/page that covers what exactly a good answer should be and, maybe, gives a few examples of great answers from the actual desks? If possible it could be linked from the welcome box at the top. I know that until I started reading through the talk pages, this wasn't 100% clear to me (the specifics of what exactly answers should be; obviously I know they should answer the question.) Just like any internet locale, this place has a culture and an expectation, I think it would make it easier to attract new people who might provide quality replies.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 03:58, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I've created a draft at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guide for answering questions. I think it is relatively complete, and covers just about every single possible eventuality, but other contributions and fixes are always welcome. --Jayron32 14:06, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, you know, if all we're allowed to do is provide links, I for one would have no interest in participating here, and I suspect that applies to just about everybody who does (including you). It's useless to set up a "perfect" system if the result is that nobody wants to use it. Looie496 (talk) 15:18, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Apparently when I said "other contributions and fixes are always welcome", that didn't make sense to you. What I meant by that was that other contributions and fixes are always welcome. I started a skeleton of an idea. If you want this, make it happen. If you don't, then don't. --Jayron32 18:59, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, your original version was a little snarky. I added an intro/overview. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:42, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I never took you for an irony-meister, Jayron, but you're right up there with the best (it ... covers just about every single possible eventuality). Lovely. Keep up the good work. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 22:23, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Honestly though, is there ever a time when we should provide answers to an OP where we cannot back up our answer with an authoritative source of some sort? I'm struggling to find one. I always try to direct the OP to at least a Wikipedia article or two, if not an off-site source for further reading. It is not an unreasonable standard that every answer should provide at least one quality reference. That's all I said, even if I was a bit snarky about it. Seriously: come up with a situation where it's OK to shoot from the hip, or answer questions based on vague remembrances and never try to provide references at all. --Jayron32 00:33, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I tried to cover that with "refs are always better". And I don't think anyone should shoot from the hip or vague remembrance. But there are times when I have knowledge of a topic, and want to share with the OP. I can easily pepper in wikilinks, but they don't necessarily have all the info that I gave. For instance I recently answered a question on plant care. I gave a good answer, based on years of experience. If I had been challenged for refs, I could have given some, but I was on break at work, and just wanted to get a good answer out. Not so much that I could not provide refs, just that I did not. The ref I would have just been a random book on plant care, but it's actually rather hard to use those books to make decisions; advice based on experience is much better. Another example where refs might not be strictly necessary is on the math desks, where proofs can be given that have no need to rest on any external authority. I don't want to get into a debate here, because I think we can both agree that "adding refs always makes answers better". However, many of us would strongly oppose a policy that said "you cannot answer unless you provide a ref". First, this would discourage many otherwise excellent answers, and second, it's trivial to game such a system without really adding any credence to the answer! Finally, I do look forward to developing that document with others, and maybe eventually linked to the front page. We can certainly come up with better advice than "must have refs full stop" SemanticMantis (talk) 19:03, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Like. Keep going with that. --Jayron32 20:16, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Me too. I've tweaketted it ozically. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 20:58, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Approving and implementing proposal

I suggested under 'Underutilised' above that if we had a good classified index of previous answers and had links in the talk pages of relevant articles it might help to improve the quality of answers and get them linked from google more. Is this the right place for proposals like that or should one go to WP:VPPR or WP:CBB for approving things like that and if passed how does one go about implementing changes like that? Is there yet another WP: about it all? I see just above another proposal for editor feedback, I'm getting the idea that proposals on this talk page won't progress far without something else happening. Dmcq (talk) 13:56, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea, re my own proposal above. I'd personally suggest that we just get down to work on the classification, and worry about where to link the answers later. Also, having a sample of the proposed classifications might help to gain support for approval when the time comes. I'm happy to offer up my talk page for discussions if any are needed. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 14:02, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh phooey, I was working on that and somehow completely forgot about it! I made a Lua script to output monthly archives like Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Lua/Science/January 2013. Plus I rigged it so you could put a tag <cat xxx> into the archives and have that come up in the output table. I should finish setting up the index page and figure out where I put my example categories, or make new ones... Wnt (talk) 17:18, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, that looks pretty good. Is there anything we can do to help? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 18:18, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually my categories were bugged - I think I just got them working. The hardest part to organizing the categories is that somebody has to go through the archive files for every single day and put {{Rdcat|some-category}} somewhere in the text of each question (I've been doing it at the top for the first three days in January). But it is also desirable for people to work out a consistent set of categories to use! I've been preferring very old fashioned categories: biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, engineering rather than materials science, life science, etc. I think it would be best to declare open season on one month - might as well be January 2013 which I have started - and have everyone involved look over the output list to spot any potential issues before going on to a broader dataset.

Note that getting a month index is very simple - it takes the parameters from the page name, so if you go to a page that isn't done yet, like Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Lua/Humanities/January 2013, and enter {{#invoke:RDIndex|month}}, the index will automatically appear. I've avoided doing that for all the years just yet because it multiplies the overhead on the servers if I make a lot of edits to the module flailing around trying to kill a bug (like I just did...) Wnt (talk) 18:57, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

It is also possible to run the template with a category parameter so that ONLY pages in that category are returned, but I think limitations on script running time prevent you from doing much more than a month anyway (haven't tried recently though). More likely all this needs to get cut and pasted into an OpenOffice spreadsheet. Wnt (talk) 18:57, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes that's a good start to getting some thought about the matter. It certainly does look like categorization would be the main problem and requires a bit of thought. My first thought is to associate wikipedia categories with the questions. Finding any links from an article might be useful as they would point to related articles and previous questions of the same sort. I think we'd be better off with a page per category and make sure there is not too many entries on each page. This would help google figure out the topics and index them rather than them just being a mash mash, it would also help people on the reference desk point to a number of related questions an answers. Dmcq (talk) 22:36, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to implement this. There are so many categories in Wikipedia that I'd think there'd be an average of one question per category. I don't trust the overall organization of the category tree enough to extract supercategories from them - besides, I can't touch the categories with a Lua script - there's simply no way to access the data displayed by Category:X with it. I appreciate the idea of a page per category, but I'm afraid it will be necessary to compile it somewhat manually due to the limits on script time. (Which reminds me - I need to set a nowiki option in the script so that you can get source output from running each month with a category restriction, then paste them all together. Also that I need to write a /doc file! And then there are unit tests. Sigh... I'm afraid I put off doing all the dull parts, and now they want to catch up with me.) 22:52, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Come to think of it, I suppose it's not totally impossible - I could look up a mentioned article, look up the category at the end of it, access the category page (not the contents) to see what category it is in, etc. But I would break the 99 expensive parser functions count in much less than a month of data, I think. Wnt (talk) 01:01, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Is there a compelling reason why categories are really needed? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:14, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, the idea was that you assemble a bunch of questions about one topic, say biology, maybe subcategorize those in a few further divisions, and pretty soon, you're ready to lump all the related question sections together and then extract out a polished, professional FAQ quality answer, which can stand, beside various keywords, as a permanent resource on the topic. Eventually we want a database of all possible questions to follow up on our ideal Wikipedia as a database of all possible answers (nod to Douglas Adams) Wnt (talk) 00:26, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Minor update - the index page at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Lua is now started, and I've activated the monthly index for January 2013 for all the Refdesks. Wnt (talk) 00:56, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, the index looks great, Wnt, and I have no idea how to impliment or help with any of this, so just let me say it looks great! μηδείς (talk) 00:59, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Seconded. Thank you for the effort you've already put in to this. I'm planning to spend some time helping out, but probably not before Monday, when I should have time to sit down and work out what's going on. It certainly sounds boring enough for me to be interested though! :-)

A quick question/suggestion: Is it possible to further categorise the answers, especially with regard to 'quality' (if we can agree on what that is)? Maybe it could be done automatically - I see you can already extract the length, which is at least somewhat a measure of how many replies a question has, but maybe you could count the number of links (article links, external sources) that are provided? That might give us an idea how many sources are being provided in the answers. How possible is it to change things like this after the fact - should we do it now to save effort later or can we try it first and see how we go? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 09:42, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

The Lua-generated indexes are updated whenever the script or the source page changes. So if you go and add a category to any one of the archive pages, it will show up in the index. More to the point, if I follow up on your suggestion to index or number the links in a new field, that will show up. Now once I have an index page for all the months of all the desks, I'll feel a bit guilty about changing the script too often because all those pages have to be regenerated, which puts some load on the server, but still not as much as changing the most popular templates; the proper thing to do then would be sandboxed development, but the very concept fills me with fear and loathing. :) Anyway, probably better to tamper with it now. :) Wnt (talk) 18:00, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Community ban of Wickwack AKA Ratbone

Contributions from an IP[12] abused these boards with a personal attack [13] under Wickwack and made comments here as Ratbone. I suspected socking earlier for other reasons (such as their contributions to this thread[14]) and this confirms it. Any contributions from their IP range should be suspect and be removed and/or blocked when appropriate. --Modocc (talk) 15:16, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't see a personal attack, and the "Ratbone" moniker is attached to 120.145.203.206 on the page you link to, not 121.215.10.7. Anyways, WP:SPI is this way. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:26, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Wickwack is inviting a sock puppet investigation with his provocations, including the personal attack another editor removed yesterday. μηδείς (talk) 17:34, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm the editor that removed it after some fruitless discussion [15] -Modocc (talk) 18:12, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

So you are saying that Wickwack did not make "Derogatory comments about other contributors"? Did the recent IP not use the same multiple monikers and sock? Not to mention the earlier disruptions? The earlier IP[16] used the same monikers to sock with. I submit that the evidence is clear and compelling for a community ban of this user. -Modocc (talk) 17:41, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

This is a little complicated, because editors have a right to edit as IP users. And WW is voluntarily identifying himself. But there is enough disruptive behavior to raise the question why the user finds IP addresses and signing manually more convenient than a registered account under his desired name. The effect is to make it prohibitively difficult to track his behavior. The solution seems to be requiring he use a registered account subject to normal discipline or face the immediate blocking of all his IP addresses or both. I am not sure if admins have tools that will let them easily identify IP posts with the ww signature. μηδείς (talk) 18:18, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

This user, who's IPs geolocate to western Australia, has no right to sock and cause disruption. If we want to begin improving the boards, per all the other discussions, we had better start with stopping blatant policy violations and Wickwack has already made it clear in previous discussions he is unwilling to register. -Modocc (talk) 18:28, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, to make my position perfectly clear, I think an admin should put him on final warning for disruption, and advise him to register an account and cease the IP face dancing. If he registers an account and then misbehaves small normal blocks at first would be reasonable. If he doesn't register an account and continues to disrupt he should be hunted down and rooted out as an intentional troll. But a caveat is that we need diffs of actual disruptive behavior. The last thing we need is suggesting ser blocks based on intuition and feeling. I don't keep enemies lists (I don't see WW as an enemy, either) so someone else is going to have to make a list of his most grievous sins. The best case scenario is Wickwack registers and accepts the same discipline as everyone. PS, WW should be notified he's the subject of discussion--but how does one do that with an IP face dancer? μηδείς (talk) 18:43, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

There are two issues here: Whether Wickwack has misbehaved, and whether he engages in sock puppetry. I see no strong evidence to accuse Wickwack of sockpuppetry as Ratbone or vice versa. I also don't think Wickwack's lack of registration is any reason for suspicion. To the contrary, it is helpful that he at least uses a handle, unlike many IP contributors. Same goes for Ratbone. Remember when some IP came here accusing Baseball Bugs and StuRat of being socks of eachother? That was pretty funny to me. Like those two, Wickwack and Ratbone seem to have some similarities (e.g. I suspect they're both male Aussies of a certain age, and likely retired engineers), but there's no rule against having similar opinions and knowledge to another editor. It is true that the diff you posted shows some poor wording, and perhaps deserves chastisement. But banning seems a bit much (not to mention unenforceable). SemanticMantis (talk) 18:59, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Wickwack might benefit from taking a metal file to his tongue once in a while, but his contributions overall are a net plus; I've seen him answer questions. Wikipedia is too quick to turn a valid personal complaint into some Process. Wnt (talk) 19:08, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

(multiple ec) Doing a bit of untangling, it looks like Modocc's complaint has merit.

First off, there do appear to be threads in which editors signing as Wickwack and editors signing as Ratbone both participate and are mutually supportive.

• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2013 February 8#Forms of energy (noted by Modocc) involves heated debate between Wickwack, Gandalf61, and Modocc. At one point, Ratbone interjects a remark endorsing Wickwack's position (and referring to Wickwack in the third person several times) and deriding Gandalf61, saying in part "Gandalf61 is, at best, very confused, and at worst, just a troll. Wickwack says sound, light, waves etc are forms of energy. This is consistent with reality...". This thread also includes another IP editor siging as 'Keit' who again agrees with Wickwack. Wickwack, Ratbone, and Keit are all editing from the same ISP (Telstra), and all three sign their posts in the same manner (a plain-text name, followed by the standard IP address and date generated by four tildes).
• On this talk page, just above at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Baseball Bugs and Medeis (permalink), we again have Ratbone jumping in to defend Wickwack "In any case, Wickwack only seems to attack personally when he/she's been attacked personally. Wickwack does post when he/she thinks someone else has given an incorrect answer, but surely that can be tolerated?" when it was mentioned in passing that Wickwack might be sanctioned.

By themselves, those instances might be explained away as (admittedly rather implausible) coincidence. Damning, however, is that while editing from the IP address 121.215.10.7 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), Wickwack/Ratbone appears to have inadvertently slipped up, first editing this talk page and signing as Ratbone, then about half a day later, posting a rather mean-spirited comment on WP:RD/Sci while signing as Wickwack. Either he forgot to reset his router between posts, or Telstra left his IP static for a lot longer than usual.

If Wickwack/Ratbone just liked to use different names from time to time, it might be no more than a mildly-irritating eccentricity. Pretending to be two or more separate individuals to try to win arguments on the Ref Desk, or to try to protect himself from sanctions on this talk page rises to the level of misconduct. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:12, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

And here are a few more. A very quick search through the archives finds

• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2013 April 25#Why can't LCDs be made capable of displaying interlaced video?, where 'Keit' disagrees with SteveBaker; they go back and forth for a bit, and in a thread with no other participants to that point, 'Ratbone' suddenly shows up to announce "I agree with Keit..... One suspects that if Steve was actually a researcher in Philips Display and Television Group, then from the misinformed nonsense he wrote, he was probably in cabinet design or something."
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2013 March 5#Does drinking water right after a meal makes us fatter? is interesting, as it introduces another pseudonym: Floda. 'Wickwack' offers a response, Alterprise demurs, and then 'Floda' (another Telstra IP) pops in with "It would appear that Wickwack is correct..." before Wickwack returns to further agree with himself.
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2013 January 6#turning flourescent lights off and on features 'Wickwack', 'Floda', and 'Keit'. They don't appear to be up to no good, but it's just plain weird to run through three aliases just answering a question about fluorescent tubes.
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2013 January 18#Seismic morse code starts with responses by 'Ratbone' (among others); 'Ratbone' becomes increasingly vexed by disagreement with another IP. After three 'Ratbone' posts, 'Keit' appears to lend support: "Didn't you read anything that Ratbone and SteveBaker wrote? Information theory, as both have outlined, is a well established branch of science...". 'Ratbone' then returns to make another five or so comments in the discussion.

...and I'm losing interest in looking for more. If you do a Wikipedia-namespace search for pairwise combinations of Ratbone, Keit, Wickwack, and Floda, anyone can find dozens of Ref Desk pages where they show up together, often to offer mutual support and endorsement. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:03, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Good on ToaT. I have to say up until about 2 months ago I had always assumed they were the same person and weren't denying it. I never understood but ultimately didn't care about the different names before their signature. It was only 2 months or so ago I realised they were acting as if they were different people. Nil Einne (talk) 14:09, 1 June 2013 (UTC

• I have to agree with the comment that WW has made many good contributions. Nothing with having a registered account would prevent that from continuing, and I do not want anything other than a warning at this point. BUT, saying he is not a sock puppet, when he is by definition his own sock puppet is too much. There is absolutely no reason for a user to claim an identity but to refuse to register it. As far as we know, a bunch of trolls may be calling themselves Wickwack and posting under IP's while using that name. This sort of behavior is ipso facto gaming the system, and worthy of a block if it is not stopped. μηδείς (talk) 20:02, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I hate these imaginary expeditions. They rely on lack of imagination. Isn't it possible that there's a frat house with half a dozen people who click on a Wikipedia bookmark or follow the common browsing history? Or even just three roommates in an apartment, who sometimes browse using each other as an audience? Wnt (talk) 21:56, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

And they all conspired to game us, write on the same subjects and take the time and effort to type monikers each time too and not use the signature buttons? -Modocc (talk) 22:10, 30 May 2013 (UTC))

What sort of retired? professional engineering living in Perth lives in a frat house anyway? Nil Einne (talk) 14:12, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Sockpuppet Investigation of Wickwack -- Please Contribute.

I have opened an investigation here. SPI will want documentation of diffs and user: PLEASE add documentation to this page to support the case. μηδείς (talk) 22:12, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I started a discussion on how to notify the roaming IPs here [17] and apparently we can proceed by notifying the last known IP talkpages. --Modocc (talk) 22:19, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Wickwack/Ratbone/Keit/etc. monitors this page extensively, there shouldn't necessarily be any excuse that they are unaware of this current discussion. Also, there is not necessarily an obligation to notify SPI targets (unlike ANI and AN). --Jayron32 22:23, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

This gets into the can-of-worms neighborhood. Checkusers won't publicly comment on IP's, and given that this guy or guys are IP-hoppers, site-banning them might prove little more than symbolic. But if the checkuser determines that they are from a single source, maybe he'll have a trick or two up his sleave. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:49, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I realize this is problematic, which is exactly how the OP wants it. Rather than comment here, please comment at the investigation itself. μηδείς (talk) 22:53, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

And they closed it already. And you wonder why I seldom start SPI's. They are too often a waste of everyone's time. You put a lot of effort in, and the checkuser dismisses with a short comment and shuts it down, totally ignoring the issue that was raised ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:13, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Dammit. I advised someone only a day or so ago to just report another socking troll whenever they noticed them and to try and avoid getting worked up about them. And now I'm feeling annoyed by this one. Dmcq (talk) 23:08, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, what did you think would happen? Is there even a policy about signing more than one name before your IP number? Even if you want to delete him on sight, that's not a SPI, it's something else, AN or something. Wnt (talk) 00:20, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

The policy violation would be IF this is one guy pretending to be two or more guys, and consequently compromising a "voting" situation, for example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:23, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

• The issue is that SPI won't deal with this for the reasons that Bugs notes: We don't need a checkuser because behavioral evidence on this is pretty clear, thanks to the detective work above, and a checkuser won't be run because checkusers will not, by policy, materially connect an IP address to a live person. So there's really nothing for SPI to do, since we don't need a behavioral investigation (that's been done above) and checkuser will not help us anyways. The next step is to start a formal ban discussion at WP:AN. It is a bad idea to hold a ban discussion here and expect it to "stick"; ban discussions should at least bring in some uninvolved eyes; even if everyone except the RD regulars ignore the discussion at WP:AN, people outside of this corner of Wikipedia will have had the chance to see and comment on it, adding some legitimacy to the process of banning someone. I'm not saying that is what we should do here, merely noting that IF there was a desire to formally ban someone and log said ban at Wikipedia:Editing restrictions, we should do it by the book and hold the discussion at WP:AN, which by policy is the preferred location for banning discussions. If people really want this, I can draft the ban proposal, but I'm not going to move ahead unilaterally unless there's support for such a move. --Jayron32 00:28, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

A couple of comments. I have no idea if WickWack, ratbone, etc, are one and the same. The experts on the technical side of things and the amateur psychologists here can try to work that out, but I need to highlight that Telstra, their service provider, is Australia's biggest telco, with millions of customers, and it's not the customers' fault that their IP addresses change all the time. That's what Telstra does. But it highlights a problem for our policy that editors don't have to register. That's a lovely policy when IP addresses tend to be fixed, but to my mind it becomes quite problematic when IP addresses change so frequently. It's much more difficult to have mature conversation when we don't know if a player with one IP address today is the same as someone with a different IP address yesterday. I wish we could force editors whose IP addresses frequently change to register. Now, another perspective. Like WickWack, I'm a mature aged Aussie with a sometimes brutal approach to the efforts of other editors whose work I don't respect. That's a trait that would be common to quite a lot of people of our demographic. We come from a different culture from the dominant demographic here on Wikipedia. It's one where it is sometimes said that we call a spade an effing shovel, and we don't suffer fools gladly. I know the nicer people here insist that we just have to conform with the majority, and I do my best, but many of you will know that it hasn't always worked. (And you can read more about my views on this problem on my User page if you wish.) So, how much of this is a witch-hunt against someone who is actually doing some great work here, but whose personal style happens to be different from that of the majority. Do remember that being in a minority doesn't make someone wrong. HiLo48 (talk) 00:36, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Being rude is being rude, whatever your culture is. I (and I'm sure we all) appreciate your efforts, HiLo48, but surely you know that tone is everything on the internet, and even little comments that would be ignored or even considered positive when spoken appear very different online. WickWack may offer good responses, but the surrounding comments can come across less than positively. Mingmingla (talk) 00:54, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

It should be noted that one can call a spade an effing shovel without insulting the shovel. Being plain spoken and direct is not related to being insulting or unpleasant. People often confuse the two, but not in the way that HiLo48 seems to be saying; often people are directly and deliberately belittling, insulting, and disrespectful of others and cover themselves by saying "Well, I'm just being honest!" Possibly, but honesty =/= rudeness. Those are unrelated constructs, and it's entirely possible to be fully honest and not rude at all. Not suffering fools does not mean making yourself one in the course of pointing out their foolishness. --Jayron32 01:19, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Nah, I don't think you've understood what I said, or meant. I'm currently working in a rather up-market school. There was just a discussion at our morning break which involved what many of us might call refreshing language, but some here would call abusive language. No euphemisms. It was blunt. Strong language was used. Language that would definitely not be approved by the niceness police here. A conclusion was reached. People will move on. Improvements will be made here based on that discussion. Now, I'm not asking that all here work that way, but you have to accept that not all cultures are the same as yours. Obviously some things that I see would amaze some of you. HiLo48 (talk) 01:32, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

It's curious, HiLo, how many of your co-workers, however blunt their language, use four different disguises, or more, as it fits them, while all claiming the same tax ID, yet refusing to fill in their job application, or show their driver's license? μηδείς (talk) 01:38, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

If that's a witty way of saying you wish these roaming IP editors would register, I agree 100%. HiLo48 (talk) 02:22, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually, more to the point, is how many of them involved in the heated discussion snuck out the back of the room, put on a fake mustache, and then showed up to the same discussion pretending to be a different person... --Jayron32 01:44, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't feel I'm a good enough psychologist to recognise the patterns you see. Not saying you're wrong. I just don't know. It's just not something I'd be all that confident of claiming. And your analysis is not concrete evidence, is it? HiLo48 (talk) 02:22, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Since this is a community decision, we need experienced uninvolved editors at AN to look into the documented evidence of misconduct. -Modocc (talk) 02:33, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

If I didn't think it was rude to report bodily functions, Jayron, I would respond <Snort!>, hehehe. μηδείς (talk) 01:51, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Let me try to be more helpful. I don't want to see Wickwack or his aliases banned, or even blocked. But I do want to see an end to the bad faith, and registering and using a user name would be a huge step toward that. In that case he should be treated with the same lenience all users would be treated with. But if he continues to edit as an IP user and engages in even borderline disruption he should be banned in all known incarnations. μηδείς (talk) 00:49, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

"Known" being the operative word there. It's not the same as "suspected". -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 01:09, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Jack, if you look at my SPI nomination you will see 12 different IP addresses all associated with posts signed by Wickwack that are archived to a single day in Feb of 2013. Those are not suspected addresses, those are known ones, and we can expect there are dozens more, better identified by ranges than number. μηδείς (talk) 01:29, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I really don't think the issue is changing IP addresses - there's no rule against that (even though it obscures the problematic behavior). TOAT, Jayron, and others have appropriately focused on the use of "identities" (Wickwack, Ratbone, Keit, etc) to appear to be multiple users then support one another - that's gaming is a clear violation of the spirit of our policies. -- Scray (talk) 02:00, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

What does TOAT mean? google gave no good answer. μηδείς (talk) 03:02, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Ten of All Trades. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 03:07, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

And in this case the changing IP addresses are not the editors' fault. It what that (bloody big in Australia) ISP does. HiLo48 (talk) 02:25, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I find the evidence of gaming (provided by TenOfAllTrades above) so compelling that I would support a ban. You're right, HiLo48 - a spade is an effing shovel. -- Scray (talk) 01:14, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

If ANI is correct, someone can copy my SPI report and post it there with the relevant changes. μηδείς (talk) 02:59, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

In case anyone is wondering if I will post it to wp:AN, I can't right now, because its late here and I won't have much time to spend on this tomorrow. I will support a ban should Jayron or anyone else report this. -Modocc (talk) 03:31, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)Since changing IP addresses aren't a problem per se, I don't think copying Medeis' SPI report would be helpful. A report like the one from TenOfAllTrades would be more relevant at WP:AN, in my opinion. -- Scray (talk) 03:34, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
  • But my report is simply Ten's cut and pasted with mention of 12 IP addresses using the wickwack signature manually added by the IP. μηδείς (talk) 03:59, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

• As several people said they would like to see this at WP:AN, I have done just that. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#WP:GAME violations at Ref Desks using multiple identities from multiple IP addresses. Feel free to contribute to the ban discussion however your conscience leads you. --Jayron32 04:16, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

This is a stupid question, but: can anyone support/oppose on the linked page? I ask because of the mention about it being for administrators when I clicked edit. (I don't know much about the management (guess that's the term) side of wiki or how it works).Phoenixia1177 (talk) 06:17, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Not a stupid question at all. Yes, anyone can support, oppose or just leave a comment. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 06:22, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

To mirror what Jack has said, the rule is at Wikipedia, if you are technically able to do something, you're allowed to do it. That is, the only thing admins are allowed to do that mere mortals non-administrators cannot do is use their tools (block someone, delete a page, protect a page). Participating in discussions, and expecting your voice to be heard and your opinion to be treated equally to every other person so participating, is an expectation of every user at Wikipedia. --Jayron32 11:54, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Hah! Now we have proof; I always knew Jayron was bigotted aginst mortals. μηδείς (talk) 16:17, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Jayron's point is well made, but in fact there are a few pages on Wikipedia where users are technically "able" to edits but are explicitly told not to. One example is Arbitration cases, where the pages are not protected in any way, yet users are told: "Please do not edit this page unless you are an Arbitrator or Clerk, or are making yourself a party to this case." That's an exception that proves the rule, however. Matt Deres (talk) 00:57, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but that prohibition applies equally to users that have the admin flag turned on as for those that don't. Thus, it is not an exception, because it does not treat admins differently. --Jayron32 16:43, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The rule that proves the exception. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:46, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I was commenting on your statement that "the rule is at Wikipedia, if you are technically able to do something, you're allowed to do it." That's true 99.99% of the time (for everyone, be they anons or oversighters); the ArbCom desk is one of the very few times that rule isn't followed. Matt Deres (talk) 20:27, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Topic ban enacted

Per [18], the proposal that "The user known by the aliases Wickwack, Ratbone, Keit, Floda, who edits from a dynamic IP address, is indefinitely banned from contributing to discussions at Wikipedia:Reference desk and Wikipedia talk:Reference desk and all subpages thereof. They are banned regardless of whichever alias they use, or even if they stop using aliases altogether, whether it be one of the above, or another, enforceable by reverting their contributions to the above discussion pages." is closed with consensus support, and "The duration of the topic-ban is indefinite, but may be appealed on this page after not less than six months from today." Per WP:BAN, this means this editor is not permitted to edit on these pages, "anyone is free to revert any edits made in defiance of a ban, without giving any further reason and without regard to the three-revert rule", others should not restore or respond to them, etc. DMacks (talk) 21:15, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Archiving the questions

I find myself commenting on questions that are visible on the reference desk but transcluded as archives as the bot sees fit. As I fully understand that the questions come and go, could it be possible to somehow keep open to comment those questions that are still visible on the page itself? I might very well be an idiot, but I would like to have a reason why this is so. --Pxos (talk) 01:30, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Note to self: keep off the back stage. --Pxos (talk) 01:35, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps I misunderstand you, but you can edit the ones that are archived, and your edits will be transcluded along with the other content in the archive as long as that one's being displayed on the RD. -- Scray (talk) 03:17, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes. It is not unusual for discussions to continue for a while after a given question has been archived. I think he's asking why we auto-archive after a fixed time, as opposed to other archives which only go off after they've been unedited for some minimum time. However, I think that could cause some logistical problems here, as the archives are grouped by date rather than by topic. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:08, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

So far as I know (and as I've treated it) the appearance of the archives on the main page is an invitation to edit, and it seems absurd to deter someone from adding answers to even long-closed questions. Wnt (talk) 08:13, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I feel like I'm missing something that is obvious to you - where's the deterrent? If the deterrent is the realization that one is editing an archive, that's hard to fix. -- Scray (talk) 15:01, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Usually, people are told not to edit Wikipedia archives (on talk pages and such) but clearly those rules don't apply here. The refdesk is just different from the rest of WP - really, it's a misplaced piece of Wikiversity. Wnt (talk) 23:17, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Like Pxos, I've occasionally constructed an answer only to have the bot archive the question (or I didn't notice it already had) and my answer might not be read because it wouldn't show up on the page's watchlist so the OP and others might not realize it was posted. I've learned to check the page(s) for late additions but all this trouble wouldn't be necessary if we simply archived when the dates are completely removed like other pages. --Modocc (talk) 15:35, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand the watchlist problem here. While I never use my watchlist, as I understand it, and a check of my watchlist seems to confirm, by default the watchlist will only show you the most recent edit to the page. Given how frequently the desks are edited at times, particularly science and humanities, unless you check your watchlist every 10 minutes or so, the chance you will see it when someone happens to edit some specific question (presuming they kept the subject in the edit summary) is not that high. There are various ways to customise the watchlist, e.g. hiding minor edits etc but I don't see how this helps much here. There is also the option to expand the watchlist in the editors preferences but I don't see how that helps as it just shows the name and just the subjects. Now there may be gadgets, which can further expand the watchlist perhaps to show something similar to the entire contrib history for the desk, but again considering the number of edits, I'm not sure that this is any more useful than simply checking out the question manually, in which cases whether or not it's been archived is largely moot provided it's still appearing on the main desk. (I guess if the gadget concentates edits with the same subject anchor.) The only real issue would seem to be if the question has been extensively replied to, in such cases even a glance at the contrib history or occasionally checking out your watchlist has a fair chance of seeing this if the question has yet been archived but obviously not if it has unless you either watchlisted or check out the contrib history of the specific archive. Does anyone here actual primarily use either their watchlist or the page contrib history to keep an eye on a specific questions? Nil Einne (talk) 23:20, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

RDS Meta-discussion

I moved the following, with a link pointed here, because this doesn't belong on RD/S. I don't disagree with Looie496's initial point, but the snowball effect was disruptive. -- Scray (talk) 01:08, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

You're also supposed to link to the original discussion when you do this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Biology. μηδείς (talk) 01:41, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

(***start of content moved from RD/S***)

This is exactly the sort of thing I meant when I said that the worst problem with the reference desks is the editors who ask nothing but one frivolous question after another. Looie496 (talk) 23:10, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Now, now, don't be frank. Titunsam probably won't appreciate his question being called frivolous. Would you appreciate it, Looie? There is a way of saying it, without 'saying' it. Plasmic Physics (talk) 23:36, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

How are we going to stop it without being frank? I'm all for being nice, but not at the cost of the abuse continuing indefinitely. Looie496 (talk) 23:44, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Start with giving the person advice on how to formulate a proper question, and why it would benefit them. If they obviously ignore your advice, then tell them that their question may be removed, if that is an appropriate course of action. Or if it suites you, don't bother with the question at all. That is what I would do. Plasmic Physics (talk) 23:53, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I have to admit, I don't like obnoxious obtusively, but that is different from naïve obtusively. Plasmic Physics (talk) 23:56, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

What do you do when you see a "contributer" with this edit history:

• 14:02, 2 June 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+58)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎Biology: new section)
• 14:39, 1 June 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+125)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎Biology: new section)
• 14:35, 31 May 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+82)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎Biology: new section)
• 08:42, 27 May 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+121)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎ELectrostatic Energy: new section)
• 13:46, 22 May 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+99)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Entertainment ‎ (→‎cricket: new section)
• 07:03, 22 May 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+75)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎Biology: new section)
• 07:06, 8 May 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+85)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎Arthritis: new section)
• 13:21, 28 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+134)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎biology: new section)
• 12:41, 28 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+107)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎biology: new section)
• 12:08, 28 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+119)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎biology: new section)
• 02:39, 26 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+86)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎physics: new section)
• 10:33, 24 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+55)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎medicine: new section)
• 14:09, 17 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+114)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎biology: new section)
• 14:25, 12 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+121)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎biology: new section)
• 14:25, 12 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+120)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎biology: new section)
• 14:28, 9 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+82)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎biology: new section)
• 13:19, 8 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+124)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎biology: new section)
• 13:19, 5 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+100)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎biology: new section)
• 13:22, 4 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+70)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎physics: new section)
• 15:13, 2 April 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+62)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (→‎chemistry: new section)
• 14:07, 31 March 2013 (diff | hist) . . (-96,355)‎ . . Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science ‎ (←Replaced content with 'give complete description of law of symmetry in solid stateμηδείς (talk) 00:15, 3 June 2013 (UTC)')

posting endless nonsense to the ref desks under identical headers and nothing else? μηδείς (talk) 00:16, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Exactly as I said above. Everyone deserves a chance to correct their behavior. Plasmic Physics (talk) 00:20, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

(***end of content moved from RD/S***) -- Scray (talk) 01:06, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

We've gone for quite a few days without these barrages of nonsense posts, and now a whole wave of them. I don't think most people pay any attention to user contributions, but when you see a one-purpose account like this is it quite obvious we are being gamed, and unless it is in people's faces we will get calls for tolerance of flat out trolling. There is no point in brining it here unless the user is going to be blocked as an obvious sock, in which case the thread could have just as easily been hatted. μηδείς (talk) 01:38, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

The user's most recent question was, "If a cat smells petrol ,what will happen?" Maybe the next question he asks, he should be told to explain what he meant in the previous question, if he expects any more questions to be addressed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:08, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Our top priority should be the mission, so whenever we get something that we can interpret as an interesting question, we should answer it and be happy. It doesn't matter who it is or why; we're not here to do somebody a favor that gives us a right to be offended when we are taken advantage of; we're here to create a public knowledge base, and our edits are driven by the inherent desirability of the goal. That leaves only a few of the other kind to worry about, those that seem pointless, which can then be ignored and/or deleted without loss as they would be for anyone else. In an encyclopedia anyone can edit, trying to track and "do something" about contributors is a tremendous waste of effort. Wnt (talk) 14:46, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

The ref desk alleges to be like a library ref desk. If you're working in a library, and someone asks you that cat/petrol question and then walks away, why should such a question be given any consideration at all? And if they come back and ask a new question, why shouldn't the librarian say, "First explain what your previous question means." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:30, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Frivolous questions interfere with the goal of creating a useful public knowledge base, by adding noise that makes it harder to detect the signal. Looie496 (talk) 16:04, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Wnt obviously being a lot wiser than the rest of us, maybe he can provide a useful answer to the question about cats smelling petrol. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:20, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, I can tell you that the right to do research to determine how cats smell gasoline (specifically) is the private property of Richard Axel et al.; see http://www.lens.org/lens/patent/US_2002_0064817_A1 . The sensitivity to gasoline odor, but not its desirability, was shown to be heritable in a human study [19] so knowing more about it in the cat might help to identify a candidate gene. Gasoline is one of the specific odors whose detection is severely impaired in Parkinson's disease (PMID 12707068) - I don't know if this is true in a cat model system.

Biology has no respect for vanity. The things it is too embarrassing to talk about, whatever is too trivial to think about - these are exactly the things which, by design, can ultimately kill people or save their lives. Wnt (talk) 22:33, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to post that information under that question in the ref desk, if you have not already done so. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:58, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm with Looie496 et al here. Plasmic Physics claims we should try to teach the OP how to ask questions. Except that multiple people have told the person not to give homework questions including on their talk page User talk:Titunsam and in the questions themselves including explanations of the problems with their questions yet they're still doing it [20] and [21]. Far simpler then that, I've asked (perhaps others as well) them to do a very easy thing to do. Provide a more descriptive title. I even have an example Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2013 April 17#biology. English may not be the first language, but if they can formulate the questions as they have done so, they could surely give a better title then the continuous 'biology' with the occasional 'physics' etc. In fact they even did so once or twice. Nil Einne (talk) 23:23, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

This question hardly qualifies as homework. I don't find it plausible that a mentor would normally ask such a vague question, and expect a valid response. Plasmic Physics (talk) 23:10, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

What's 'this question'. I posted two examples of recent apparent homework questions, long after multiple commentators queried their posting of apparent homework questions. The question about petrol may not be homework, but I never suggested it was nor that all their questions were, simply that a number of them appear to be, and they've been asked lots of times not to do it but persist in doing so (along with not posting more useful headings). And what 'mentor'? The homework questions they appear to be asking seem to be the sort of thing more likely coming from a teacher, lecturer, tutor or someone similar rather than a 'mentor'. Nil Einne (talk) 15:05, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

This thread is about a particular question, and those like it, being asked by a particular user. So, please excuse me for assuming that you were continuing the same thread. I was using the term 'mentor' in the general sense, as to include the range of person, which you listed. Plasmic Physics (talk) 22:54, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by 'those like it', I would personally consider those homework questions like the examples I gave as being 'like it'. But regardless, this thread is clearly about the editor involved and not just the subset of the editors questions you consider like the one which started it. If it was just about the questions you consider like the one which started it, apparently excluding the homework questions, there would not be a long contributions list posted by μηδείς. Nor would Looie496 have said 'who ask nothing but one frivolous question after another' (and other comments about frivolous questions), to which you replied to. Nor would μηδείς have said 'posting endless nonsense to the ref desks under identical headers and nothing else', to which again you replied to. Nor would Baseball bugs have said 'The user's most recent question was....'. And all the others posts clearly referring to the contributors contribution history which of course include the homework questions like the recent examples I have.

In any case, even if I was the first person to raise the issue of said contributors general contribution history which as I stated includes their tendency to post homework questions and the same subject headings (the later of which seems to have also been raised by μηδείς when they said 'identical headers') after multiple requests not to do so; I don't see how my comments above could be confused to only be referring to the subset of the editors questions you think like the recent question since I never referred to the question in particular, but instead gave specific examples of the behaviour I was referring to.

But anyway, back to the question. Now that you finally understand that me and others were in fact referring to the editors other contributions as well and not just the subset you consider 'like it', can you kindly explain why you believe we can 'Start with giving the person advice on how to formulate a proper question, and why it would benefit them' when we have already done so several times, and for far more simpler things and the editor still has not taken this on board? Could you also explain how many more chances you would propose we give under your policy of 'Everyone deserves a chance to correct their behavior'? And where do you draw the line between 'obnoxious obtusively' and 'naïve obtusively'? Because in case it still isn't clear, I'm saying that based on the evidence we have, this editors already crossed all those lines and doesn't seem to be willing or able to take onboard any suggestions for reform, even simple ones. (Note that I'm not saying that we need to consider blocking them or banning them from asking questions. Simply that the others had a good point about the clear problems with this editors contrib history, and that the editor is not some sort of ultra confused newbie who's never been told better as you seemed to be implying.)

P.S. I wouldn't call many of those people mentors, particularly not the ones giving some of the the questions we've seen, but that's a bit beside the point.

Nil Einne (talk) 23:57, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Looie496 called the particular question, "frivolous". Before you explicitly introduced the concept of a homework question, we were discussing Titunsam's habit of asking "frivolous" questions. Homework questions may indeed be a subset of frivolous questions, but you focused specifically on that subset instead of the parent set of "frivolous" questions, which is why I answered your homework post in the first place. My policy is not indicative of the next steps that I recommend, only the chronological order of steps. There is no need to repeat the first steps. Plasmic Physics (talk) 00:39, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Regarding link formatting

I'd just like to leave a note about a format problem that comes up frequently -- the use of <ref> on the Reference desks. That's almost never the right thing to do, because the structure of these pages does not allow for a {{Reflist}} at the bottom. In many cases the best solution is simply to remove the <ref> and </ref>, leaving a bare link such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-wiHALV-Ck. The advantage is that such a link is easy to use, and a user knows where the link is going to lead. Source citations that are formatted using <ref> can be handled the same way (by removing the <ref> and </ref>), leaving the actual contents of the reference visible to the reader. If a resulting external link is too long or awkward, then the best solution is to use something like "<nowiki>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-wiHALV-Ck this youtube video]". Looie496 (talk) 16:01, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I would go further and say that if anyone is foolish enough to post a "ref" link on a ref desk, someone should convert it back to a bare link. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:18, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

It is my opinion that editing another's comments to replace a <ref> with a regular link is acceptable - per Talk Page guidelines on editing other's comments, this counts as a "format fix" or a "syntax fix." It is best if the editor who makes the fix also leaves a comment indicating the change. Nimur (talk) 16:21, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. It's also something that doesn't happen very often. But when it does, it can be a nuisance. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:27, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I've used <ref> in my answers, since often the references I find are from library databases, and don't have direct links. When I've done so, I've included the {{reflist}} as a part of my answer. I was not aware that this was causing problems although in retrospect I can see how it would. I can certainly stop doing this and come up with some other way of providing the references within the answer. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 20:48, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

It's quite easy: do exactly what you were doing, but just leave out the <ref> and </ref>. It works fine. Looie496 (talk) 22:25, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I've seen the reflist solution work, even for multiple reflists, but sooner or later someone forgets. My solution is to use ^{[ ]}. Wnt (talk) 05:33, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Refdesk Reform RFC

opened about a minute ago, see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Refdesk reform RFC. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:18, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Off topic question

What is the immediate temptation to answer and comment on this request "Ages" for debate and opinion rather than hatting the whole question" Please look at the last 500 edits by this user. μηδείς (talk) 01:15, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I looked through some (albeit not all) of that original poster's last 500 contributions), but fail to see the problem. Do you have an specific diffs or could you explain how those last 500 edits might be problematic?

I do disagree that the question was requesting debate or our opininon, and interpreted it as asking for what psychologists etc might have written on this topic. That's how I would approach it anyway. The solution to the problem of us giving our own opinions and speculations, and then debating them, is to stop doing this, not to hat or remove questions that could easily be addressed with reference to studies, papers, books, reports, etc. (In other words, I agree with SemanticMantis's approach here). ---Sluzzelin talk 02:10, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

So, disregarding the user's editing pattern of 50 comments a day on talk pages and half a dozen edits otherwise, assuming good faith means we should make up according to Semantic Manti what we think the OP is asking and answer that only after hatting the thread has been suggested? In any case, your bottom line is that if someone answers this with anything other than a reference to a book or paper you support hatting it? μηδείς (talk) 02:48, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

No. First of all I actually read some of the comments on talk pages, and the ones I read mostly involve co-operative editing and improving the project. Moreover, no I don't think we need to "make up" anything, though of course we do need to interpret (most) questions to a certain degree. I interpreted this one as a genuine request for possible explanations of what the original poster sees as widespread seemingly irrational behavior. And finally, no, my bottom line is not that I support hatting if someone answers with anything other than a reference to a book or paper. I actually don't like hatting at all. ---Sluzzelin talk 03:11, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't see a major problem here. My interpretation of the question is the same as the one that led to the answer given regarding puppy love. Perfectly answerable with a reference, and it was. As for an editing pattern restricted to mostly talk pages? I rarely edit mainspace. I'm pretty sure that doesn't render my questions suspect. All that said, bringing the complaint here is a good start, Medeis. We might not agree with your sentiment in the case, but it goes a long way to solve the 'problems' we've allegedly been having: you're bringing it up for debate rather than hatting all willingly. Mingmingla (talk) 06:20, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I answered the question (and am in ongoing discussion with the OP) because it's unclear to me that our OP has considered all aspects of the problem. In a sense, the question needs to be backed up one step. First, our OP needs to be sure that these crushes are indeed age-based. I'm not sure that they are. Until we're clear that the correct question has been asked, we're not in a position to decide whether it may reasonably be answered. It's surely premature to "hat" it - and in any case, under what RefDesk or Wikipedia rule would we drop it?

I echo what Minmingla says - it's good that we're able to discuss it here before jumping in with a snap judgement. This isn't like a medical/legal question where there might be an urgency to closing the thread. SteveBaker (talk) 20:12, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I see nothing inappropriate in the question. Itsmejudith (talk) 06:01, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

RFC on changing the "no medical advice policy"

In the current RFC started by Beeblebrox, new questions have been raised about our no medical advice policy. I think it would be good to start a RFC specifically about this issue. But before we do this, we should discuss the positions of the regulars here and the arguments for and against these positions. What is more important than just stating an opinion for whatever rules you want to have, is the motivation for these rules. So, if we didn't have any rules to begin with, why would you want to have these rules, what problems do the rules solve etc.? Count Iblis (talk) 18:52, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

This is a wikipedia-wide policy, not a ref desk rule. See wikipedia:NOT, Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer, Wikipedia:Legal disclaimer. μηδείς (talk) 19:02, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)For me, the prohibition on medical/legal advice is about not providing people with information that could have dire consequences if we were wrong. I believe that these sorts of questions represent a different level of risk than other questions, like how to fix your car, or other such things, despite superficial similarities between medical/legal advice questions and other advice questions, and this distinction is enough to make me uncomfortable with allowing them to be answered by unidentified volunteers. Our only advice should be "find someone who is qualified to answer the question." Again, while we can word questions similarly, "There's oil leaking out of the bottom of my car, what could it be?" represents a very different sort of question than "There's blood leaking out of my anus, what could it be?" The second question is of the type we should not answer, while I have no problem with the first, specifically because the qualitative difference in the risk to life and limb if we are wrong. The difference is enough, in my opinion, to ban the asking and answering of questions of that type. Post edit conflict addendum: and as Medeis notes, this sort of RFC needs to involve the entire encyclopedia (as everything at the Ref Desks does all the time, since we are an integral part of the encyclopedia) because the policy is a Wikipedia-wide policy and prohibits the use of Wikipedia to give advice in all manners, not just the reference desks. --Jayron32 19:04, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

When the question is clearly asking for medical advice, there is no issue: we tell them to go get advice from an appropriate professional. But the real problems come when editors disagree (usually violently and at nauseous length) on whether an OP is asking for medical advice, or simply seeking information that just happens to be of a medical nature. And that often comes down to semantics; precise word choices used by OPs; volunteers' different understanding of why the OP would want to know such a thing, and so on. For some volunteers, a question may be regarded as simple academic curiosity, but for others, it's "obviously" for the OP to diagnose (and possibly treat) themselves. This is where we need to place our focus: Determining when a question is seeking medical advice, and when not. And how to sort this out in each case without an undignified ego-squabble in front of them. There's a wider question here: How to sort out ANY issue without an undignified ego-squabble in front of the OP. But let's leave that for another day. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 19:59, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I disagree. Those sort of "edge cases" create problems for any policy, but that doesn't mean the policy is invalid, just that we need to accept a certain level of disagreement on the edge cases, but it is till important to have a core policy that everyone follows for the obvious cases. The real crux of the problem is that we have editors who want to answer a question like "There's blood leaking out of my anus, what could it be?" with "You have hyperanaleakageosis. Take three aspirin every four hours, and you will be fine in three days". That is, people like Wnt see nothing wrong with providing that answer to that question, and we need to reaffirm that that is NOT ok. Questions like "What are the symptoms of hyperanaleakegosis, and what are the treatments?" are going to provoke some debate (though that debate could be ameliorated if we ask why the person is asking. If they say "I have to write a paper about it for my pathology class, and I can't find a lot of information" then we have a different way to go then "I was reading about it on WebMD and think I have it and want to know what I should do". But the existance of the hard, edge cases will never go away. It doesn't mean we get rid of what is a very important policy because we have a hard question once in a while. --Jayron32 20:06, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

If you read my opening sentence again, you'll see I agree about how to deal with unambiguous requests for medical advice. Nowhere have I suggested getting rid of our No Medical Advice policy. It's the interpretation of how it's applied in individual cases that creates most of the heat. What we need is more light. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 21:34, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I know. That's not the part of your post that I disagreed with. --Jayron32 23:55, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

You've completely lost me now. You talked about "... that doesn't mean the policy is invalid, just that we need to accept a certain level of disagreement ... it is [s]till important to have a core policy that everyone follows ... It doesn't mean we get rid of what is a very important policy because we have a hard question once in a while". Nobody ever suggested we get rid of the policy, least of all me. So, what part of my post were you disagreeing with? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 04:22, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The part where you claim that efforts need to be spent solving the unsolvable problem. My disagreement is that there is no way to solve the problem of the edge cases except by talking it out every time. You expressed a need to solve that problem, and I disagree in the sense that I don't think that that problem is solvable, and efforts spent in that direction aren't going to get us far. --Jayron32 03:55, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

To be clear, I am not suggesting or defending we say "Take" in the imperative. We are not here to give orders! We are not here to give advice in the plain English sense of urging people to do things or not to do things. But we should have every right to say "I took three aspirin for four days, and it was OK." Or "This journal article says 59% of people took aspirin for four days." Wnt (talk) 23:59, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

You shouldn't be able to dodge the spirit of sound policy by circumlocution.--Jayron32 01:29, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with "circumlocution". There is a real difference between telling someone that the local lottery includes $2, $5, and $10 winners with a certain frequency, or saying you got a $2 winner once, and claiming to know what ticket he has lying next to his keyboard. Wnt (talk) 12:51, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The lottery thing is a bogus comparison. And as far as reporting what you did to fix your headache, it's both original research and irrelevant, because you have no way to know what's ailing the OP. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:38, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The chief criticism of the "not providing people with information that could have dire consequences" theory is that this isn't actually how our policy is presently written. To quote, Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice: "Any reader may and should remove questions that appear to be soliciting medical, legal or other professional advice, or answers that give the impression of providing such." That says nothing about dire consequences. As written, quite trivial questions like "what is the penalty for filing my taxes two days late?" or "does it make a difference if I floss only once a day rather than twice a day?" are considered the same as medical emergencies. At the same time, a question like "How are pipe bombs made?" doesn't seem to be prohibited by any written rule we have here. We could write a guideline that begins with: "Don't answer questions if your response might have severe real world consequences", and then have subsections like: "Handling requests for medical advice", "Handling requests for legal advice", etc. However, at the moment though, the prohibitions are designed to be categorical rather than expressing a more general principle. That may be fine. Maybe we want to have categorical prohibitions. But it is not accurate to suggest that the guidelines we use here are generally implemented based on a consideration of consequences. Dragons flight (talk) 20:36, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Now, you're asking different questions here, or speaking to different issues. Iblis asked for our arguments why we needed such policies, NOT the wording of the policies themselves. I also don't believe we should put reasons like this in the policy. We should just say "Nope, we don't do that" in the policy page itself, and I'm fine with that too. But this discussion isn't about the wording of the policy, it is about the reason why we think the policy is necessary. Two completely different ideas here. --Jayron32 20:40, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Our existing policy is sound. The fact that there are disagreements over its application in borderline cases does not negate that; virtually any frequently applied policy has borderline cases. The fact that arguments over what is or is not medical advice is not a fault of the policy; it is a fault of the culture on this page, which could use one or two firm-handed administrators to help bring such arguments to a closure. Unless there is a very specific question which is of importance and as to whcih there is significant difference of opinion, I perceive no need for an RFC on this policy, and given the risk that it would become a time-sink, would prefer not to see one. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:16, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Interesting that I cannot readily recall the last time an admin qua admin intervened in anything on the Ref Desks. (I don't visit the Math or Computing Desks, but I somehow doubt they are hotbeds of bad behaviour that involves calling down the mighty hammers of block and ban.) In thinking about it, I may rememberUser:Rockpocket banning someone over disputes with User:Clio the Muse, but that was perhaps two or three years ago -a lifetime on the Internet. Mostly, we police ourselves, usually by way of long-winded screeds, until everyone is bored and drifts off. Bielle (talk) 20:31, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

It does happen. I have, in the past, blocked sock accounts and IP addresses of well known refdesk trolls (Timothyhere and Light Current spring to mind), and there is currently a discussion at WP:AN in need of closure that looks to enact a topic ban against a recently discovered troll (hint to any uninvolved admin reading this; that discussion needs a closer. Not that I'm looking at you Brad. Nope, not at all). However, I don't see this as a bad thing, or as out of the ordinary. Instead, we always assume good faith, even on the part of people we disagree with, even vehemently, and we look to discuss and talk rather than bully and enforce arbitrary rules. As in, exactly how all of Wikipedia should work. We block and ban when necessary to stop deliberate disruption, we talk and work by consensus in cases of good-faith disagreements. I don't see that as one iota different from the rest of Wikipedia. --Jayron32 20:37, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I actually closed that discussion a few minutes ago, before seeing Jayron32's last comment just now. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:04, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Alike minds have great thoughts. --Jayron32 21:11, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

(ec x 2)Any fiddling with the Legal or Medical disclaimer and prohibitions would, imho, require a review and agreement by the WMF's legal experts. This is one of the few instances where the letter of the law trumps consensus (similar to the ban on libel or child porn). Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:17, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

In the RFC above, here's what I posted, though I know I could have posted it more tactfully: "[I]t just stupid and reckless to offer any medical advice to any person sight unseen, no matter how confident you are that they give you their symptoms truthfully and honestly. You don't know them, you don't know their history. Hell, you can't even see them." To me, that's why we should ban medical advice. That said, offering medical information is just fine: plenty or questions are answerable, and not all doctors have the time to give more thorough details. That's a role we can fill. Other people pointed out that we have no problem posting other potentially stupid and dangerous advice. That's a problem, too, and one I have no idea how to solve, kind of like a rat poison argument we had last year. It's a tough spot, but as Dodger67 pointed out, it's really one for the lawyers, consensus or not. Mingmingla (talk) 21:30, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

There's some confusion here. First, nobody's suggesting to change the site disclaimer, which is meant to be the legal protection. Next, we're not even really arguing over the right to give what in plain English you would call "medical advice", i.e. you should take this, get that tested, etc. The Refdesk is not for any kind of advice, that's policy too, the difference is, for other topics people take that to mean what it says and no more. The problem is that the fanatics against 'medical advice' take that to mean giving any information at all. I mean, it is (literally, presently) controversial that if somebody asks whether in general a malignant lump is always cancerous, you point them to malignancy. And if the OP admitted to having the condition, then they would say we can't answer a question we would otherwise be able to answer. All this is contrary to longstanding things like "Kainaw's criterion" that used to keep them in check, to some extent. I want us to be able to tell people what we know about a condition, provided we acknowledge we don't know it about their condition. To tell them what conditions we can think of that might cause a symptom, provided we don't claim we know one of them causes their symptom. To be able to refer them to lists of ongoing clinical trials, without telling them they ought to join one. To talk about research on drugs and herbs that might help something, without saying we know that's the right thing for them. In short, to not pretend to be doctors, but not pretend to be ignorant of biology either. Because there's a whole lot of interesting new information coming out all the time, and odds are, neither you nor your doctor know about it, and you should have the right to follow up on it and investigate and decide for yourself based on all the data you can scrounge up from any source, even us. Wnt (talk) 23:56, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

AS you are putting it now, Wnt, I agree with you 100%. Mingmingla (talk) 00:10, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Wnt often makes this "information" argument. It fails. The reason it fails is that regardless of what symptom an editor might post, no one here really knows what's going on with that editor, and no one here has examined the user in person. So the "information" argument is false - we have NO information that we can give to an editor with a symptom - except for the standard statement, "if you're concerned, then see a professional". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:47, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Here's where it gets crazy: I agree with you here, too, Bugs. Wnt is outline a policy he doesn't follow himself. I agree with his policy as he outlines, but I don't agree with his own application of it. Mingmingla (talk) 15:26, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with that. I'm not sure which part of what I say you don't understand, but I believe I have been consistent. Wnt (talk) 23:15, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with your disagreement of his agreement. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:36, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Now I don't know how I agree with. Probably not Mingmingla. Mingmingla (talk) 03:30, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, no one knows. Which is why the editor has, or certainly should have, the right to be pointed at potentially relevant sources of information. Wnt (talk) 05:30, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

You have no "potentially relevant" sources of information for someone you have not personally examined. The ONLY option is to direct the OP to a professional. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:36, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

• "To tell them what conditions we can think of that might cause a symptom..." - that sounds like differential diagnosis so if someone is asking in a way that suggests that it's anything other than a general question it's problematic. "To talk about research on drugs and herbs that might help something..." - here I would be quite concerned if this were construed to mean we'd answer "some people have found rutabaga extract helpful" when someone asks about prostate problems (if a general question, sticking to the same rules that apply to articles would make sense, so unless the herbal remedy is cited in a reliable secondary source it is questionable). Diagnosis and therapy should not be discussed on the RefDesk unless it's a general request for information. The legalities of giving medical advice are complex (and vary from state to state, whether you construe "state" to mean one of 50 or a nation-state); for the sake of WP we can't hew too close to the precipice. Frustrating folks is less problematic than jeopardizing the project. -- Scray (talk) 03:27, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

This 'jeopardy' is ridiculous. All over the Internet there are quacks pushing the most blatant falsehoods with the flimsiest legal cover. Everybody sees these sites day in and day out searching for anything. How can you even pretend that we "jeopardize the project"? Wnt (talk) 05:30, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The widespread presence of quackery on the internet does not justify Wikipedia likewise lowering itself. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:31, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

• Dragons Flight is correct as to what current policy is and how it's set--and that it forbids all pretense at professional or licensed advice. NewYorkBrad is correct that a lack of committed admin oversight strictly enforcing these rules is the problem. The current "I find this interesting, listen to me roar" culture is a joke, a bad joke that will eventually backfire on the desks or the project or both. μηδείς (talk) 03:39, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

It's called the Internet. People talk on it. They even exchange information. Moan all you want, but it's about time we learn not to listen. Wnt (talk) 05:30, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

You have no valid information to present to any user asking about a symptom. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:31, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Woof woof erm oh dear sorry I've rather given the game away. Anyway we should be careful not to give any sort of advice that should only be given by a professional and stop other people giving the impression that we do anything like that. Having articles describing things is about the farthest we should go and readers can find that by searching if they're desperate to get advice from Wikipedia. We should not get into the market for peddling the stuff, just have it presented with our usual caveats n articles. People seem too ready to accept things as definitive when given by individuals in an assertive manner rather than the erms and ums we have in the articles. Dmcq (talk) 09:48, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

If OPs want online advice before consulting a professional, we can send them to NIH and/or NHS Direct. If after looking at those two sites, and existing WP articles they want more help, then they really do have to bite the bullet and make that appointment. How could we possibly serve them better? Itsmejudith (talk) 23:49, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

No medical or legal advice is a project wide policy that cant be addressed here if any change is expected - that said. Perhaps we should have a system were we simply direct readers with questions to a proper location over deleting the questions as mentioned above. I am not sure what location (website) that could be - perhaps something like this. I would assume that "free advice" is why people come here. Lets not waste everyone time debate what can and cant be answered and/or deleting that may cause an edit war. Lets recommend a solid course of action for all medical and legal questions - that is in my opinion.... guide our readers to a suitable reputable FREE site for real advice.Moxy (talk) 23:53, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

All advice is against Refdesk guidelines. We answer all kinds of questions without giving advice. The extremists indeed want you to bite the bullet and make the appointment, because their objection is based on medical ethics, and medical ethics is precisely equal to medical profit. Those who can't afford the cost (whether in the literal sense or in the more common sense of not having $100 to throw away every time they have some silly question about some minor ache, discoloration, tingling etc.) - well, we count their bodies in blood sacrifice to Moloch; as may be the souls of those who willingly surrender their right to freedom of inquiry to profit. Wnt (talk) 03:56, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

We already know, Wnt, that you hold this odd political opinion that all doctors are frauds and that it is your duty to ensure that you get allowed to provide free medical advice to all comers at the reference desk so as to stop people from having to go to a trained physician, whom you see to be charlatans. This is patently ridiculous, though you are allowed to believe that if it brings you joy to believe it, the medical advice policy needs to exist to stop you acting on your beliefs. No one wants to stop you from believing anything you wish, but your actions must conform to Wikipedia's established policy, and we aren't going to change our policy because of your singular vendetta against the entire medical profession. --Jayron32 04:08, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not the one who started this. If the "medical profession" were content to allow myself and others on a public education project tell each other what we know about medical conditions, I'd see no reason to complain about them here. If we were even going by the status quo from a few years previous, Kainaw's criterion, there would be few opportunities for argument. They can go on day in and day out demanding more and more obstructive policies, and it's never held against them - but if I try to hold a line for any time, I have people telling me it's a "vendetta". Wnt (talk) 04:39, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Wnt, can you give an example of a question and answer (that you can invent, doesn't have to be based on something that has been posted on the Ref Desk) that according to (your interpretation of) Kainaw's criterion should be allowed but which isn't allowed at present. I'm particularly interested in an example that stays very far away from obvious boundaries between providing a diagnosis and not. What is of interest here is the boundary between the areas where different people here agree and disagree. Count Iblis (talk) 12:14, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Folling from a suggestion by Itsmejudith above about NHS Direct, possibly what we could have instead of a single line saying we don't provide advice is a page per type of professional advice that we can direct them to. This would give the appropriate advice per country like in the UK to consult NHS Direct or ring for an ambulanc eor get an appointment with a doctor fo medical advice. We'd have to be rather careful what we said there but we could probably duplicate some basic advice already available in the countries. For legal advice we col;d direct to different things like citizens advice or lawyers for instance. Dmcq (talk) 12:35, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Alright, checking the last archive - here we could have said we don't give legal advice, but linked to news articles, legal reviews, ongoing cases etc. so long as we didn't pretend they were a representative or complete assortment of data. (Not that this would have helped his case, mind you, since there's nothing we could do to make the physician prescribe more Fentanyl, and indeed, if we were giving advice we might have pointed him to medical marijuana, but a question is a question, and "are medical contracts legally binding?" is just the kind of question any reasonable encyclopedia should be able to answer. The previous archive contains one harder to track down, and [22] which is ambiguous - we aren't qualified to make a referral for a specific case, but we could deliver more data on what specialties of physicians most frequently treat lupus. this one, as people pointed out, was not a medical question at all. this one is hard to argue with on the face of it because we didn't have sufficient data. However, if we had a proctologist deal with that overgrown acacia so firmly planted in our policy orifice, we might have looked on the questioner compassionately and said, "we can't tell you why you're sick, but if you can remember any specific medical terms the doctor used we'll be happy to help you find out more information about them..." etc. These are typical cases - I could go back further and cherry-pick for the more obnoxious ones, but why spend the time when the usual is like this? Wnt (talk) 15:39, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Missing diff on Misc Desk

At 8:25 on 8 June on the thread titled "Wikipedia page appears to have been hacked...." I posted: "Elbert or L. Ron?".

Someone has replied with: "Wow, surprised I never heard of Elbert Hubbard. What a fascinating story!"

But there's no diff to show who the editor was or when it was posted. It was not there as at 14:18 on 8 June, but by the next edit at 14:24, it was there. But it was not added during that latter edit because it does not appear in the diff. It seems to have snuck in under the radar.

Does this sort of thing happen often? What causes it, and can the edit in question be nailed down somehow? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 00:34, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

It seems to have been added directly to the archive:[23] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:55, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

That's what happens when you edit items that are more than a few days old. They still show up on the main page, but you are actually editing an archive page. Looie496 (talk) 01:58, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

(ec)Come to think of it, isn't that how it normally works when you edit the transcluded portion? Like if I edit something that's older than the cutoff point, it updates the archive rather than the main ref desk page. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:59, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Yep. I just tested the theory here:[24] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:01, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks all. Wow, the little things one learns even after almost 10 years of lurking around here.

If I can put on my Jim Hacker hat: What else don't I know that I need to be aware of? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 03:15, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

We can answer that, but first you need to list everything you do know. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:39, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, let's see now ..... Nothing comes to mind right now. I'll get back to you on that. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 04:27, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Why is there a difference I cannot see? (version of 22:55, 8 June 2013).

—Wavelength (talk) 03:27, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

• THE EDIT WAS MINE (god voice, not yelling). Jack's comment was indeed great. I have no idea why there's no diff. I checked my contributions and could find no record of it or any edit at that time. μηδείς (talk) 03:42, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
  • The diff occurred on the archive rather than the active page. And another one appeared on the archive when you added your signature. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:36, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Medeis. I suspected it was your good self, but I wanted to be sure. I am actually very surprised indeed that Elbert Hubbard hadn't crossed your path before. But then, the stuff I don't know that you do would probably fill an encyclopedia. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 04:27, 9 June 2013 (UTC)