Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.
If you have a question about how to apply an existing policy or guideline, try the one of the many Wikipedia:Noticeboards.

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

« Archives, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193

Notability of academic journals

From time to time, an article on an academic journal is taken to AFD for lack of notability. More and more frequently, I am faced with arguments (explicitly or implicitly) calling for ignoring all rules, even if an article on a particular journal does not meet WP:GNG or WP:NJournals. The justification usually comes down to "Articles on scholarly journals should be presumed notable; we owe it to our readers to allow them to investigate the sources we are citing to document other WP articles." (Carrite at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Journal of Bengali Studies). This argument is also given by non-peer-reviewed magazines (for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Technologist (magazine)). I have given my opinion to the contrary at length at the AFD for the Journal of Bengali Studies, so I refrain from copying all that stuff here, but can do so if people think it is preferable. I would like to know whether the community at large here feels similar: should we include articles on all academic journals without exception? Should I stop wasting my time with lengthy (and repetitive) arguments about notability for journals? For years we have used WP:NJournals to good effect, but if we're going to go for IAR in these cases, that doesn't count for much. Opinions welcome! --Randykitty (talk) 17:38, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No we shouldn't. There are some journals that are reliable sources for our articles, but the source is a non-notable publication. That said, merging non-notable journals to the publisher of the journal (who is more likely going to be notable if they have many publications under their name) is a good solution. --MASEM (t) 17:40, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Journals lacking the most slender reed of notability should not be considered as having sufficient WP:WEIGHT to count as an RS NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:44, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Notability and reliability are two different things. Academic journals are rarely noted by mainstream press, and the journal systems lacks any significant amount of navel gazing to write about themselves. But being peer-reviewed journals with experts in their respective fields meet the basic fundamentals of WP:RS. --MASEM (t) 17:54, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

At WP:NJournals, some criteria have been developed that are less dependent on "navel gazing". I sympathize with Masem's point of view: if a journal does not even meet NJournals, I think it is quite likely not an RS either. --Randykitty (talk) 18:28, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You may have misread my point. The notability and the reliability of an academic journal are two , unconnected factors. A reliable journal can be non-notable, as long as it meets the basics of what we need for an RS: editorial control, and a history of fact-checking (in most cases for journals, peer-reviewing). Notability might help to identify how well the source may meet these elements if they are not spelled out by the source, but any self-respecting journal is going to make clear of its publishing guidelines. We do not require the source work to have an article on WP. --MASEM (t) 18:33, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am 100% fine with the existence of stub articles on academic or quasi-academic journals sourced to nothing more than themselves, per WP:IAR. You have the right to nominate, I have the right to defend. Carrite (talk) 18:02, 3 July 2014 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 18:03, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm absolutely not proposing to restrict your right to an opinion. I just want to have some clarification on what policy to apply. I have been spending a lot of time recently on AFDs where I was faced with a lot of opposition (and, frankly, also some abuse, but that is not the point here and I'm certainly not implying the abuse came from you; see for example Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Democracy & Nature) based on what I regard as non-policy based arguments. I'm getting tired of that, so I'd like to have this settled at least for the coming year or so. --Randykitty (talk) 18:26, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Proposal: WP:NJournals is modified to require that otherwise non-notable journals be cited 3 times in Wikipedia to establish notability." If increasing bureaucracy would make things more clear, then if all other tools for determining notability fail, we could push people who wish for there to be journal articles to at least prove that the journal is publishing content of use to the Wikimedia community. If any otherwise non-notable journal cannot meet this very low bar, then it is unlikely to be of use to this community.

Would a proposal like this resolve the problematic cases? I am presuming that bad journals and disinterested promotional editors would have trouble inserting facts from three journal articles in three Wikipedia articles. Like others have said, if some publication is good enough to regularly cite on Wikipedia, then it is useful for Wikipedia readers to have some information on the source. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:30, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure that changing NJournals matters in any official sense, in that it is only an essay. Likewise I don't see any need for VPP discussion on changing it. Playing along, however, it seems to be largely consistent with the practices of wp:WikiProject Academic Journals. I'd suggest that inability to find any bibliographic cataloguing data should be treated as a clear indication of both non-notability and non-reliability. We can't expect readers to find sources that we can't locate ourselves. A request on wp:RX that comes up dry after three months can be assumed to be unreasonably difficult for readers to find. LeadSongDog come howl! 20:34, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have always been opposed to IAR and Carrite's exposition is a great example of why. There are plenty of independent "newspapers" and other periodicals looking to give their screed the veneer of respectability. Bluerasberry's proposal would incentivize bad actors to plunk "facts" into various entries with an eye towards the springboard to their own article. Since notability is not temporary, the proposal is dead on arrival. I agree with NJournals as it currently reads and voted to delete Journal of Bengali Studies for that reason. While I like using Wikipedia to evaluate various periodicals as reliable sources, a dearth of reliable sources about a periodical render any article about same pretty worthless. I wholeheartedly agree with Masem in that an academic journal may itself be considered a reliable source although not notable. I get RandyKitty's point that an un-notable journal might not be reliable, but I would counter that unless a consensus at RSN says a particular book or author isn't reliable, it is often considered reliable even if it clearly fails WP:NBOOK. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:55, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder why this discussion has been conflating the isue of a journal's reliability as a source with that of its notability as an article subject at all. The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other; why would anybody think they do? The huge majority of perfectly fine academic quality publications are not notable in the sense of being potential article subjects (or else why stop at journals; is somebody planning to write an article on every scholarly monograph or Ph.D. dissertation that has been out in print with a decent publisher somewhere?). On the other hand, a journal might conceivably be highly "notable" (in Wikipedia terms) for being a notorious pseudo-scientific scam or something. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:10, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've participated in a number of academic journal discussions at AFD and agree that WP:GNG or WP:NJournals have been invaluable in helping to decide notability. In fact, I tend to ignore the rules and treat WP:NJournals as a sensible guideline rather than just a mere essay. I've never closed an AFD, but if I did, sensible arguments based on these would carry a lot of weight. But I also recognize there may be cases in which these may not apply and invoking IAR is warranted. For instance, major selective indices could have a systemic bias against non-English journals or those from the developing regions. Otherwise serious open access journals may be happy to be indexed in indices that some consider insufficiently selective. Sometimes dubious journals manage to get indexed in good indices for a time. In such cases, editors may invoke IAR and try to present an alternative argument for keep or delete, How well that flies depends on context and the strength of the argument. From what I have seen, IAR rarely works, but it can work and is a useful way to deal with exceptional cases. Unless AFD closers suddenly start consistently putting a lot more weight on IAR than WP:GNG or WP:NJournals based arguments, I cannot see how IAR is a threat to rational decision making about journals at AFD. --Mark viking (talk) 22:26, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Notability is a guideline not a hard policy and so there is plenty of wiggle-room to include topics such as journals. Readers may reasonably expect us to have an entry for any journal which is used as a source. If there isn't a lot to say about it that's fine. There is no requirement for our pages to be of any great length and so a perfunctory entry which provides the essential facts about such a journal is fine. Andrew (talk) 22:32, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrew Davidson:, this is exactly the kind of attitude that I am having problems with. The position seems reasonable, why not include every academic journal? In principle, I even agree with that. But in practice, I don't. Regrettably, there are journals that we really don't want to include, such as for example predatory journals. Unless these cause scandal that is covered in reliable sources, we would not be able to include a warning to readers that such a publication is a shady journal, because if there is no coverage, all that we can list in an article, as you say, are only the "essential facts" that the journal presents about itself on its own website. Unless you are proposing that WP editors start evaluating journals themselves to decide which new journals are predatory, and then delete articles on those journals based on their own opinion, I see no way around this problem but to have at least a minimum of requirements to establish notability of a journal. By necessity, we need third party sources for that, there is no escaping that fact. BTW, the problem is by no way limited to predatory journals. Each year dozens of journals get started online, now that it has become very easy for anybody to do so. Even when legitimate, many of those don't make it past a few issues, at most. Unless they are supported by a major publisher or academic institution, such journals often disappear without leaving a trace. If we would include articles on them the moment they produce an issue, we are later left with an article that cannot even be verified any more. How would you handle that? We simply must have objective criteria, independent of our own opinions. NJournals uses listing in selective databases for that. That does not, of course, constitute "in depth coverage" in the sense of GNG, but is a seal of approval from a professional organization/company. In practice, listing in just one selective database (not DOAJ or Google Scholar, for example) is taken as meeting NJournals. Everything that we subsequently write in the article, is based on information provided by the journal, which we trust because of that seal of approval by the database. So our current practice is already to have a low threshold for academic journals. I think it would be a very bad idea to completely do away with that threshold or replace it by our own, subjective, opinions. --Randykitty (talk) 10:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Let's talk a bit about those "essential facts". Most of those go into {{infobox journal}} parameters as simple factual data, about which even unscrupulous publishers have no reason to mislead readers. One fudgeworthy thing I see there is |impact=, and to mess with that is just foolish: it would be caught, and their advertisers would be pissed to find they'd been mislead. The other is |peer-reviewed=, which is usually omitted anyhow. It's the more elaborate text where primary content becomes a potential problem, particularly in describing scope or editorial policies. There are many reasons why users might come to an article about a journal, but I suggest that first and foremost among the reasons is that the user wants to locate a journal article they've seen cited (whether that be on or off-wiki). Although providing directory services is not strictly the purpose of wp, in the case of articles about journals doing so supports users in the verification of cited statements and in the long run supports the mission of the encyclopedia. For this reason we should prefer to have a minimalist data-only article over having no article at all. Note too that this is irrespective of the reliability of the journal. It is intrinsic to the way WP works that we enable readers to assess sources for themselves. Helping them find those sources is a key part of making WP useful, not to mention that it helps editors grow content and correct errors. LeadSongDog come howl! 15:14, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are you guys seriously proposing carving out "academic journals" as a new topic fiefdom of alleged "inherent notability", i.e. blanket allowance of articles for any journal independent of outside coverage (like schools or villages)? I thought we've all had enough of those. And I don't buy the argument about it serving the information needs of our readers related to citations in other articles. Why stop at journals? Using the same argument, you could propose having an article about any book that has ever been cited anywhere on the wiki. Or about any individual academic who ever authored one. Or, why not any website that's ever been used as a source? Of course, such a proposal would run directly counter against the well-established consensus of WP:PROF, WP:NBOOK, and WP:NWEB. So what's different about journals? Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:33, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) A reasonable solution I would think would be to have the publisher of such journals have pages (the journal might not be notable, but the publisher should be, otherwise we are getting into SPS territory here), and redirects for those non-notable journals to the publisher and a list of journals there, with even a table to support the datum proposed above. If a non-notable journal has a non-notable publisher, that starts to beg the question of the reliability - not completely, but it does start to raise questions if we can't connect anyone involved with the work or publisher to a known entity that we can even validate with reputation. But I do want it clear that there are hundreds of non-notable journals published by notable publishers (my experience from the more fundamental science/engineering works) and these are certainly fine as reliable sources. Note that I agree with FP that we don't want to have inherit notability for journals, because that would be a slippery slope across the board for any site that publishes information. --MASEM (t) 15:39, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you go that route, the publisher articles will become dominated by a long string of thousands of journal infoboxes - something that nobody wants - leading to outright deletion of that data. Outside of WP editors, nobody cares the least bit about our policy on the WP:N of articles, but every critical reader cares or should care about the sources they can use to WP:V statements. How can I make this clear? We don't need these articles to have N subjects, what we need is a place to put the data about the cited sources. Since even after all this time WP can't seem to get it's act together on doing that simple thing well, (don't get me started on our cacophony of citation 'standards') instead we need to cobble together a workable endrun. I would certainly have preferred that this be done properly on wikidata or a dedicated citation space, but for now, wp articlespace is what we have. It sucks, but for now it is the least-worst answer that serves the purpose. Show me a better alternative, and I'll happily say "move that crap outta here", but please don't try to tell me that N trumps V, 'cause that just doesn't cut it. These stub articles may not be pretty, but they serve a useful purpose.

As an aside, consider too that we have many articles citing sources with variant journal titles such as PNAS, Proc Natl Acad Sci, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. We even have a rule saying we have to support the use of all the variant forms, depending on which was used first in an article. Without a target, the redirects are orphaned and deleted. Not that PNAS will suffer that fate, but that the stubby articles we're discussing will. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:50, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't have to be a string of infoboxes, it can be a single table, duplicating the primary fields of the infobox (of course, not publisher, you're on the article about them). And realistically, a person who is reading an article that is primarily sourced to journal articles (as those of our technical nature will be), they are going to know how to figure out the reputation of a journal if they need to know that information for their research. And these publisher articles can also serve to be targets for the redirects that you talk about, even using anchors to have the readers land on the right line. So these concerns are simply not there or are addressable as to make the "need" to have journals be inheriently notable unnecessary. --MASEM (t) 06:08, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note... in the case of the article on Journal of Bengali Studies, there is a serious case of COI that needs to be taken into account... the article was created (User:Tamalmou. It turns out that he is the founder of the Journal. Thus, there is an element of self-promotion behind the journal article. I will also draw your attention to the fact that the only other article to link to Journal of Bengali Studies article is the article on Bengali Studies (which was also created by User:Tamalmou)... where it is mentioned in order to support a claim, that Bengali Studies is itself a notable academic discipline (to quote from that article: "This field is considered to have been formally recognised within academia in recent times with the launch of the Journal of Bengali Studies in the year 2012 by Tamal Dasgupta who teaches at University of Delhi"). I will mention all of this at the AfD... it may make a difference. Blueboar (talk) 12:43, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Coi and a possible intention to influence Wikipeda in a pov fashion. Hopefully I'm wrong, but as they say they intend to settle one very controversial issue involving the birthplace of someon (Odisha vs Bengal) I'm concerned. Dougweller (talk) 15:35, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is why we have List of... articles. Journals not notable enough for their own articles, but with some credibility (i.e. not vanity publications), can be included in a "List of academic journals about foo". Consider also, creating entries for them in Wikidata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:16, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. This is a very workable solution. And redirects can be made since they are also cheap. --MASEM (t) 16:54, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree only partially. Yes, in theory this is fine. In practice, such lists tend to become huge spam magnets. Every new journal created somewhere on the web tries to get into these lists. The problem remains the same as with creating articles: which ones do we allow in a list and which ones not? At least with articles we have some info in the text to judge a journal's notability. In a list, we don't even have that. --Randykitty (talk) 22:59, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Notability only restricts article creation but does not limit article content, so yes, every single journal that is created could be on these lists without a problem. I would think we do need some other criteria in that these journals need to be better than a WP:SPS to be included, and I'm sure there's a few others but the lists are fine. --MASEM (t) 23:09, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"yes, every single journal that is created could be on these lists without a problem". Including any predatory journals? Also journals that disappear again without leaving a trace (they may be verifiable for a while, as long as their websites are active)? If no, who decides what is a predatory journal? Inclusion is fine in theory, but please also give a thought to how this would work out in practice. --Randykitty (talk) 18:24, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

the existing special notability consensus works fine for science and the "hard" social sciences, where there are good standards based on the existence of reliably selective indexes. Within this scope Randykitty and I have almost never disagreed, and the consensus has almost always supported our positions. It's in the humanities where there's a problem, because citation figures and indexing are much more diffuse and variable, and I have often taken a considerably more inclusive policy than my friend RK. I would in these areas extend the inclusion criterion to include without question any established journal published by a major academic publisher or university press, or the principal journal of any scientific society, or included in the principal index of the subject area, but not to exclude others if significance in the field can be determined. (this still leaves us the problem of non-academic journals--I have no such simple solution for them) I think this is wider than RK wants, and its lower than what I would ideally want, but I think its a viable compromise that would resolve most of the problems. I think this better decided on such a pragmatic basic than trying to find general principles--anyone experienced at WP could find general principles here to support almost anything. DGG ( talk ) 22:15, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

DGG is absolutely right that we almost always agree (in fact, I cannot immediately remember an instance where we didn't agree) on the sciences and the "hard" social sciences. The reason that I disagree with including any journal from a good publisher (whether commercial or academic) is that even these publishers start the occasional dud (I have listed a few on my user page), that fails after a short time. udually, this means that such journals did garnered no or almost no interest and I don't think that an artuicle on them is justified. When a journal just started, we cannot possible know whether it will survive or be one of these duds. So at the least I would amend his above rule with some time limit ("...and has existed for at least xx years"). My general problem is of course not with DGG, who knows what he is talking about. My problem is with journals that I don't think are notable, but where there is a bunch of "supporters" who vehemently argue that it is, on grounds that are not policy based at all, but get their way because they shout loud enough. (See this discussion, where I seem to have struck an ideological nerve). For this reason, I'd like to have criteria that are as clear as possible, because that will reduce valuable editor time wasted on unproductive discussions. --Randykitty (talk) 13:07, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"without exception": no. However I dont see any benefit in trying to define a policy or guideline for the borderline cases; that is what AFD is for: to discuss the specifics. And some AFD decisions may not always seem to be aligned with the guidelines or our expectations. That is normal, and corrects itself over time. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:58, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The vast majority of medical journals do not meet WP:GNG. Category:General medical journals is filled with non-notable journals. WP:NJournals is an essay. I dispute criterion 2: "The journal is frequently cited by other reliable sources." How to determine "frequently cited"? By impact factor?

The essay subsequently indicates that any journal with an impact factor assigned by Journal Citation Reports "always qualifies under Criterion 1." The Journal Citation Reports website is not particularly user-friendly, but I found this page, which states that 10,800 journals are listed with impact factors. I would question whether journals such as "Victorian Poetry", "World Mycotoxin Journal" and "Cartography and Geographic Information Science" are genuinely notable enough to justify Wikipedia articles.

According to the website, Journal Citation Reports has a selection process, which aims to provide "comprehensive" but not all-inclusive coverage. However presence on a comprehensive listing does not necessarily make each individual journal notable enough for its own article in a general encyclopedia. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:36, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)Why? "Victorian Poetry", in a field I know something about (and perhaps you don't), certainly meets criterion 1. The other two I know nothing about, but that is nothing against them, as I have no interest in their subject areas. Johnbod (talk) 12:15, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Victorian Poetry is one of several journals published by West Virginia University. However I could not find any third party statements that give it more than a passing mention. Which reliable sources consider it to be influential?

Regarding your claim that it "certainly meets criterion 1", what exactly is its subject area anyway? Is its subject area actually Victorian poetry? With "World Mycotoxin Journal", is its subject area mycotoxins? (Actually, with appropriate clarification of "subject area", I think that criterion 1 is in line with WP:GNG.)

Johnbod, you know more about the subject of Victorian poetry than I do. I am not disputing the quality or reliability of the journal's content. I am disputing your claim that the journal is sufficiently notable to be worthy of its own article in Wikipedia. Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:26, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I repeat, it clearly meets criterion 1. Yes it is about Victorian poetry, and things a little around that, and I would say is the leading journal with that specialism, which is a decent-sized chunk of a major academic subject. As already pointed out, there is a catch 22 here as academic jornals don't spend much time praising their competitors, and nobody else cares much. That's why we have a special guideline. Johnbod (talk) 22:15, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a look at the website of Scopus, you'll see here that they include over 20,000 journals, so JCR is pretty selective. And Scopus, although more inclusionist than JCR, is selective, too: there are thousands (probably tens of thousands) more journals that are in neither database. --Randykitty (talk) 12:12, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Johnbod & Randykitty: to clarify your position, are you saying that the 10,800 journals listed at Journal Citation Reports each deserve their own Wikipedia article? Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:29, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's not going to fly. We have to make sure it is 100% clear that the verifyability and RS-ness of a source has zero to do with notability and having a stand-alone article. --MASEM (t) 15:56, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think that all journals included in the JCR are notable: they have been selected by a group of specialists (in part based on objective quantitative data: citation analysis) as the most influential journals in their area. In practice, both DGG and I have even accepted inclusion in Scopus as satisfying NJournals, although we both are starting to have some qualms about it becoming more and more inclusive. In any case, I don't know the latest estimates about how many academic journals are currently in existence (JournalSeek has currently >70,000 entries, but even that is probably a lower limit), but 10,000 (or even Scopus' 20,000) really is only the top of an iceberg (i.e., notable...) --Randykitty (talk) 16:13, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've no idea - what puzzles me is where your decisive views on "Victorian Poetry", "World Mycotoxin Journal" and "Cartography and Geographic Information Science" come from! 10,800 seems rather high, I'll admit. "Victorian Poetry" would I think be in the top 20-60 Eng Lit journals, though I'm not the list-making type (and see the library figures below). Johnbod (talk) 22:15, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For an encyclopedic article, we need to make sure that, in time, we can actually write a good article that meets V, NOR, NPOV. Just being listed in the JCR has no assurances that more sourcing about the journal will come about. Ergo, this logic does not work. --MASEM (t) 16:20, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(1) Victorian Poetry was an interesting example:, because WorldCat shows it is in 1328 libraries, and it's included in Project Muse, on of the key services we and all academic libraries depend on for academic content of current journals. I would say it is unquestionably notable.

(2)I join Randykitty and Johnbod in asserting that yes, every journal included in Journal Citation Reports is notable beyond question, and the need for discussion is only for the ones that are not. (The real difficulty is with journals of national interest, that are not effectively part of the general international scientific information system. In principle we should cover them, but it is very difficult to get reliable information on their individual importance) Why should it surprise anyone that there are 10,000 notable journals? To take an example from another field, in the single 2012 Olympics, there were 10,568 participants--every one of them is considered unquestionably notable. Thee were another 4302 in that single Paralymic's, and we consider each of them notable also.

(3) We can always write an NPOV article on a journal, because the objective facts are easily verifiable. They're all in WorldCat, and other catalogs, and they serves as a third party source to confirm the information on the publication. DGG ( talk ) 17:11, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But as an encyclopedia we want more than mere existence, we want to established "why" we've opted to document something and show its relevance to the world at large, with that reasoning backed by sources. Otherwise, there's billions of topics (starting with every living person in the more populated countries) we can verify existence but not relevance. For most academic journals, there's very little documented relevance to the real world that we can cite; I know personally in my own field that there's some journals that are more important than others but nearly all of them fail to have any real world importance that we can document. --MASEM (t) 17:26, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the "why" is that a journal included in JCR is a leading journal in its field. We can provide an independent reference to that from JCR. And besides the IF, we can give all kinds of other interesting factoids: when it was established, publication frequency, which databases include it, language used, who the editor-in-chief is and who was EIC in the past, etc. All this is neutral info that we can get from the journal's own website. If you have a look at the journal article writing guide, you'll see that we can make an article that is sourced and informative, albeit probably brief. I disagree that these journals have little relevance for the world at large, after all, it's where new knowledge usually is published first. Yes, the subject matter is sometimes arcane, but that's not a reason not to have articles on them. --Randykitty (talk) 19:23, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

From an encyclopedia POV, those other factoids don't help. They're great for WikiData (see below) but just putting out primary information doesn't help. --MASEM (t) 19:41, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

DGG, the journal's presence in 1,300 libraries is circumstantial evidence. This does not directly satisfy criterion 1 of WP:NJournal. It certainly does not satisfy WP:GNG.

Your analogy to Olympic athletes is a poor one. WP:ATHLETE states "If the article does meet the criteria set forth below, then it is likely that sufficient sources exist to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." The guideline indicates that Olympic athletes will (almost) always have suitable sources somewhere—which is what the GNG requires. (Incidentally, not all Paralympians are implicitly notable—only those who have won a medal, per WP:NOLYMPICS.) Tangentially related, there aren't 7 billion journals in the "population" of journals. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:59, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If one has a look at the talk page archives of WP:NJournals, the above discussion strongly resembles what happened when it was attempted to have NJournals accepted as a guideline instead of just an essay: some people argue that each and every academic journal should be included, others argue that they can only be included if they meet GNG. I think that the idea to get rid of all journal articles is just as bad as having them all. It would appear to me that NJournals is quite a good compromise between these two extreme positions, neither of which, IMHO, is likely to ever become the consensus position. --Randykitty (talk) 15:45, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Johnbod, since you ask, I looked at the Master Journal List. They divide the whole list into three categories: Arts & Humanities, Science, and Social Science. I looked through the lists and chose one obscurely named title from each category. Then I searched for evidence of notability for each journal.

You keep insisting that "Victorian Poetry" meets criterion 1, yet you have still not provided any evidence. Which reliable sources declare that it is influential in its subject area?

For what it's worth, I think that the three categories used by Journal Citation Reports are suitable for defining the "subject area" referred to in criterion 1. Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:44, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What seems to an outsider an "obscurely named title" isn't likely to produce very good results, is it? The The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet both sound pretty obscure. The former's article has to go back to 1977 for some independent praise singing, and as explained above, looking for "independent" sources saying nice things has all sorts of problems. For our purposes looking at library take up, citation indices, and similar quantative measures is more useful. Are you saying you think WP:NJournals means that a journal has to show it is "considered by reliable sources to be influential in" one of "Arts & Humanities, Science, and Social Science" as a whole ("its subject area")? I think that would be an unusual interpretation, which only a handful of journals would meet. Johnbod (talk) 12:55, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"What seems to an outsider an "obscurely named title" isn't likely to produce very good results, is it?" That's why I also searched for reliable sources that describe the journals—which is the GNG recommendation.

"Are you saying you think WP:NJournals means that a journal has to show it is "considered by reliable sources to be influential in" one of "Arts & Humanities, Science, and Social Science" as a whole ("its subject area")?" In the absence of a clear definition of "subject area", I think that is a reasonable interpretation of "subject area".

"I think that would be an unusual interpretation." Possibly. We would need some sort of survey to demonstrate that. It may be better if the author(s) of the essay clarified the intended meaning.

"...which only a handful of journals would meet." Indeed! Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:01, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidata alternative

John Vandenberg was talking about this at WikiProject Medicine and mentioned d:Wikidata:Periodicals task force. I see two concerns here:

Academic journals rarely meet any Wikipedia inclusion criteria, and therefore by standard rules ought not have Wikipedia articles
Other Wikipedia articles cite academic journals which are reliable sources but not notable for inclusion into Wikipedia. This means that if anyone wants more information about the reliable sources we use, they cannot find that information on Wikipedia.

I feel that Wikipedia would be best if somehow we were able to give people whatever information is available about the sources being cited in Wikimedia projects. LeadSongDog said "I would certainly have preferred that this be done properly on wikidata or a dedicated citation space, but for now, wp articlespace is what we have. It sucks, but for now it is the least-worst answer that serves the purpose. Show me a better alternative, and I'll happily say "move that crap outta here", but please don't try to tell me that N trumps V, 'cause that just doesn't cut it. These stub articles may not be pretty, but they serve a useful purpose." Pigsonthewing also said "Consider also, creating entries for them in Wikidata." Future Perfect at Sunrise, as you say, notability and inclusion are supposed to be related and you asked why people were arguing that non-notable articles were proposed for inclusion into Wikipedia. It is only because of giving people access to information about sources. I do not want that access lessened, but d:Wikidata:Periodicals task force may lead to a solution compliant with Wikipedia and meeting everyone's needs. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:54, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've dumped my thoughts on how citations should work, in future, here: User:Pigsonthewing/Citations - the future. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:06, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This might ring with your idea but a possible idea, like with WikiBooks when you link through an ISBN and get to a selection of links to review, that for journals, newspapers, websites, etc. we possibly have a database that include, at minimum, links direct to the source, Wikipedia articles about the source (if they exist), and other possible details. So that in references these can always be linked to something without necessarily having an en.wiki article about it. --MASEM (t) 15:54, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If it's decided that journals that won't pass WP:GNG but are whose reliability as sources can be verified are to be put in list articles, the lists don't necessarily have to be organized by topic. This would just start many new arguments about which journal should be on which list. It would make more sense for the list to be by publisher. For a few entries only, the list could be a table in the publisher's article, and for a large number of items a separate list could be made. If the section heading or list article title was something like "List of peer-reviewed academic journals published by X&Y Co.", that should exclude any publications by the same publisher that were unsuitable as sources. If each item on the list had to have either a Wikipedia article wikilink or one reference verifying that the journal was peer reviewed, that should eliminate unreliable publications. The fact that a journal may have published only a few issues and then was no longer published, and isn't very notable, should be immaterial to being on such a list. Comparing this to articles about musicians: There are many musicians who are not notable enough for their own articles, but are listed in the article about bands or orchestras in which they participate. Similarly, there are many musical compositions which are not notable enough for an article, but are listed in the article about the album in which they are included. Surely, if a not-yet-famous rap song or drummer can have a line in a Wikipedia article, a peer reviewed journal warrants a mention somewhere. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:18, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like a good idea, even alongside the other solutions proposed. It's also something that can be done immediately. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:47, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

not just a peer reviewed journal, but any published journal could justify a Wikidata entry. Similarly for every published book, and author. But I do not think we should be in any hurry to actually do it ourselves, as there are already excellent databases of such things., such as WorldCat, which can be used to populate the entries. Actually, I don;t even think there's a need for this, because the information is available in these and similar databases, and what we really need to develop is linking. If we redo the work ourselves, I think there is a real danger of ending up like OpenLibrary, with bibliographic information that librarians generally consider thoroughly unreliable. (it's a very good text repository, but not a good source of data.) We could probably even justify a listing for every scientific article, but the doi system already handles that., at least in principle, and is designed to permit indefinite expansion. DGG ( talk ) 17:19, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This looks like a promising direction. Would it be better to convert the permastubs about journals into soft (or hard) redirects to the wikidata entries when the stubs are otherwise null? LeadSongDog come howl! 04:51, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If this was implemented, I would grandfather existing stubs - let them be but if someone nominates them for deletion, we can then replace them. But new stubs after this has been put in place, those we'd speedy (following something like CSD#7, with no clear evidence of importance or notability) as to replace with this WikiData link. --MASEM (t) 05:19, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:QUOTE

Could the community please look into the situation where we have a unregistered IP deleting quotes from well over 250 articles, whilst having no intention whatsoever of transferring to Wikiquote. I personally believe that these mass actions are disruptive and not in the interests of the Encyclopedia. As I see it WP:QUOTE is not a policy, but a guideline and some quotes are relevant to the article. There is some discussion of this on Dennis Brown's Talk page. The attempted discussion on the IP's Talk page have been deleted almost as soon as they have been posted.

Community advice is appreciated. With thanks, David J Johnson (talk) 10:16, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it isn't even a guideline, it is an essay (I missed that at first). I would disagree with the premise of it, that you can't ever use "Quotes" sections in articles. There are a number of times when it would be totally appropriate and beneficial. Not all, but many, thus wholesale deletion of these sections should never be done simply out of the fact that an essay say so. Dennis Brown | 2¢ | WER 10:24, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Link to the IP's edits please? Can't find one either here or in Dennis's page. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:29, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - Link here: User talk:64.4.93.100
  - Ah, thanks, found it too in the meantime. Well, all I can say is, in the half-dozen or so random cases I briefly looked at, the removals seemed to be proper. Actually, pace Dennis, I personally find it quite hard to imagine any situation in which a bare list of quotations, not embedded in context and discussion and without a clearly documented policy of selection, would be beneficial to an encyclopedia article, so I'd say that as a general rule of thumb their removal is likely to be beneficial. If anybody thinks a specific quote or group of quotes is useful, by all means reinsert it, or better: integrate it in the text where it makes sense.
    I also don't buy the claim that this should not be done without transferring them to Wikiquote. I can't speak for the anon, but I personally happen to think that Wikiquote is a crap project with 90% crap content and negligible educational value, so if it was me, I would certainly never add anything there. You can't demand that somebody should volunteer to add crap to a heap of crap as a precondition to be allowed to remove crap elsewhere. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:44, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    - Agreed. I often come across quote being added out of context to biographies and articles that are vulnerable to nationalistic editing. Dougweller (talk) 10:50, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    - I'm not arguing that all quote sections make sense, and have said that many of the deletions were probably good ones. I'm arguing that "all quotes sections must be deleted" doesn't make sense and that some discretion should be had. When someone is wholesale deleting them at this rate, it demonstrates that they are seeking them out and deleting solely for the reason that they exist. That isn't good editing, that is a mission based on the point of view that all Quote sections must die. I don't see that policy supports removing them in this fashion. Dennis Brown | 2¢ | WER 15:08, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

While many of the deletions may detract very little from Wikipedia, some are of value and in some cases simply need moving around the article to provide better context. One of the issues here (and I raised the point at ANI before becoming aware of the discussion here) was that there is no way of knowing what of value is being deleted and what is worthless that deserves deletion. The editor appears to be simply deleting anything under the heading ==Quotations== without any thought. The edit summaries are useless and repetitive. I suspect that this might better be resolved at ANI rather than as a policy issue. The policy works reasonably well provided editors are thoughtful, considerate and have the greater value of Wikipedia in mind. Velella ^{Velella Talk} 11:13, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am not. As I already said I leave sections that provide value like at Yogi Berra. But most of these sections do not provide value here. 64.4.93.100 (talk) 13:10, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably you are using your own personal judgement to make that evaluation? How that that relate to the judgements of the very very many other Wikipedia editors who may have different opinions? That is what discussion and consensus is all about. Individual editors have taken the time and trouble to search out each and every quote that you have deleted, believing, in their opinion, that it added value. In many cases a quotation may not add value but it should only be deleted with a reasoned argument and not with a blind and blanket application of guidelines (not policy) with a cursory edit summary Velella ^{Velella Talk} 13:20, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you think more should be added there then you do that but I'm not going to add quotes without sources and there are barriers to adding quotes with sources. WP:NOT is policy and it says lists of quotes don't belong on Wikipedia and like I said it's not a blind and blanket application. 64.4.93.100 (talk) 13:25, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Quotations sections including randomly listed quotations are not all “heaps of crap.” There are as many articles offering valuable quotations in an informative manner at Wikipedia as there are articles with useless ones. One can loathe Wikiquote but it nonetheless exists and the same observation applies there as well (Italo Calvino quotations, for example, are worthwhile despite the still crude state of the article). I think it’s wrong to defend any mass deletion policy based on an overzealous application of the rules that borders on thoughtlessness. IP 64.4.93.100 has interpreted the rules and carried out edits accordingly. The question is whether his/her interpretations and actions are correct. If consensus agrees, so be it. But the bigger question should be, as Velella has wisely pointed out, whether or not edits are “thoughtful, considerate and have the greater value of Wikipedia in mind.” At present, IP 64.4.93.100’s edits are more disruptive than constructive. A reasonable proposal would be that he/she stop this disruption and await consensus. The fact that 64.* is still bulldozing his way through swathes of Wiki forest proves he’s not interested in discussing the matter (the reason why several editors consider these edits as “sophisticated vandalism”). One should also note that IP 64.4.93.100 is deleting entire sections of pertinent and captioned photos using WP:NOT and the statement at Wikipedia:NOTGALLERY: "Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files" to justify the deletions. But what exactly does that statement mean: that valuable captioned photos must be integrated within the article and not arranged within a section? And where it does it say that one has the right to continue deleting entire sections without a minimum of debate first? I agree, finally, with the fact that "there is no way of knowing what of value is being deleted and what is worthless that deserves deletion." So cut the excès de zèle and discuss first. --Jumbolino (talk) 12:47, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You are a very rude individual WP:CIVIL. When I tried to seek consensus on the article you did not respond. 64.4.93.100 (talk) 13:25, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop your manipulation of the facts: you never tried seeking consensus with me. Show me the proof that you tried BEFORE making your deletions. As Vellela has already noted, you simply delete using repetitive edit summaries in over 200 articles. Had you sought consensus, you would have waited at least a day before deleting to allow time for consensus to form. --Jumbolino (talk) 14:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I posted to the talk page of the Damian Pettigrew article on June 30 and took out the gallery on July 6. You didn't respond to the talk page post until July 7 and then only had continued WP:CIVIL violations. 64.4.93.100 (talk) 16:42, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

False. You posted your declaration and deleted minutes later on June 30 - which is consistent with your behaviour of 30 June. I reverted your edit (leaving a summary edit) which you then reverted in turn. Your edit was effaced within two hours by a Wiki Administrator when you were blocked for edit warring for 72 hours, and restored to my last version. Your Block log preserves all record of this. That you’ve chosen to forget the facts proves my point about manipulation. You have also deleted all comments on your Talk page as soon as they have been posted, which suggests no attempt on your part to seek consensus. Indeed, I suspect the idea of seeking consensus is simply a new ploy. Be that as it may, I have asked you to explain what Wikipedia:NOTGALLERY means for you so that we can debate it here and hopefully reach a conclusion. I'm still waiting. --Jumbolino (talk) 17:09, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No Wiki Administrator made changes to that article. I did post to the talk page on June 30. I did take out the gallery on July 6[1]. You did post to the talk page only on July 7 and made rude remarks. So nothing I said was false and much of what you said was. Plus you admitted I was right so maybe it's your "pride" that is hurt. 64.4.93.100 (talk) 17:16, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong. No Wiki Administrator made changes to the article but to its edit history: your edit (blanking quotations & gallery) was reverted and effaced due to your edit warring. Those are the facts, that is precisely what happened on 30 June and the way it works during 3RR, and you're welcome to take it higher. I also never once "admitted you were right" anywhere at Wikipedia. I have no idea what you're on about or what you're smoking but it's all good clean fun in the end. --Jumbolino (talk) 17:25, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You reverted the edit to that article, no one else made changes or changed the history and Wiki Administrators RESTORED my edits on other articles. You shouldn't try to lecture people on policy when you have no idea what you're on about. You also restored part of my edit when you read my talk page post about guidelines [2]. 64.4.93.100 (talk) 17:38, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

False. Proof of the Administrator edit is in your Block Log: useless pretending otherwise. And I definitely did not restore your edit. I chose to exercise logic based on the fact that quotations listed in the article were already posted at Wikiquote, and a template already present in the Wiki article. There was no need to clash over whether or not to keep various quotations or to transfer them. Any more gripes I can fill you in on? Still waiting for your definition of Wikipedia:NOTGALLERY. --Jumbolino (talk) 17:47, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was blocked but that doesn't mean my edits were reverted or effaced, you just don't understand policy or Administrator actions. But good you agree that logic supports my removal of the quotations. 64.4.93.100 (talk) 13:03, 14 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jumbolino: why don't you just pick out one or two examples of articles where 64.* has removed a quotation section, and specifically tell us why you think it should stay? Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:41, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What would that solve when my focus is on consensus regarding the rules so that we can all apply them without conflict? My line of argument (as I have amply stated) is on obtaining consensus first given a deletion policy that several editors consider disruptive. And to make my point as clear as possible: delete all you want provided it adheres to Wiki Guidelines and policies. But do it provided there's consensus to avoid personal interpretations of the rules. --Jumbolino (talk) 14:14, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be demanding somewhere above that people ought to discuss and await consensus in each individual case before deleting something. That is not how consensus-based editing works on Wikipedia. WP:BOLD applies. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:25, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's not what I'm asking, let alone demanding. Editor 64.* deletes sections (let us assume in good faith) but raises concerns among several editors about policy. The WP:BOLD business has already been applied. This has raised reservations and caused an incident of edit warring. So the situation is one in which editors excercised BOLD, edit warred, followed by more editors raising doubts about mass deletions. There are editors on this page who suggest applying consideration, thoughtfulness, and consensus-seeking given the situation of 64.* who may or may not be misinterpreting guidelines/policy. Why should the actions of 64.* be approved and the voices of editors with doubts be ignored? I, for one, want to know what Wikipedia:NOTGALLERY means exactly before risking an edit that may not be in accordance with definition. Using WP:BOLD, I could edit what I think is right but that (for me, at any rate) would be simply anything at all, resulting in editors reverting my edit or raising serious doubts about it. --Jumbolino (talk) 14:41, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Article Wizard creation category, possible mistake/bug

I recently created the article Generosity: An Enhancement, the usual way. Unbeknownst to be me, another editor had created a Draft for it a few days earlier. (This is not a coincidence, the other editor also created a redlink to the article which I followed up on.) He then added material from his draft, at which point the article became part of Category:Articles created via the Article Wizard. That strikes me as a little peculiar. His draft version is still present, now with a warning that the same name exists. I'm not sure how the article got in the category in the first place. I have no idea if this is a bug or a feature, so I'm guessing as to where to mention it. Choor monster (talk) 18:14, 10 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Choor monster, as a possible error in the Articles for Creation process, it probably should have gone on WT:AFC, the talk page for the AfC process. I marked the draft as "should be merged to the existing article". As of this post, the category is no longer on the article. APerson (talk!) 13:09, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Colour or Color?

Why don't we use "Colour". Without trying to diss or outrank either culture, might I point out considering it is the ENGLISH language then shouldn't we use the ENGLISH spelling? I appreciate this may have been discussed, however it is extremely confusing how the spelling of a few countries such as America is used instead of the spelling officially in the English dictionary. This is on the article Color Please review. Thank you --WARNER one (talk) 16:35, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please see WP:ENGVAR for when we use the US vs UK spelling when there are strong national ties. --MASEM (t) 16:39, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Color is an English spelling. —Farix (t | c) 22:20, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, America is an English country meaning that color is English.--67.68.162.111 (talk) 23:07, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Colour is also English. You both need to read the policy that Masem linked to as well as Comparison of American and British English. If an article is about an British person, place or thing - colour is used. If an American p,p or t - color is used. Respect for both countries spelling, dating etc. is a hallmark of editing at Wikipedia. Please try and observe this. MarnetteD|Talk 23:21, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think you need to reread my statement and pay particular attention to the article. —Farix (t | c) 12:51, 12 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Both spellings are English. Linguists tend to document the common use of a language as its "correct" use (see Linguistic description), because prescriptive grammar usually amounts to preaching one's sins as gospel. Over half of all English speakers are American. And as the largest dialect in American is the Southeastern, y'all need to start using y'all more often.

And from a prescriptivist perspective, colour is more in line with its French origins, but color its ultimate Latin origins. Traditio adorat Americae.

WP:ENGVAR seems like a totally acceptable compromise. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:24, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Over half of all English speakers are American"? Tell that to the (East) Indians... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:10, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And I think he must be aware of it. See for instance [3] and [4]. He does seem to have a problem with America though given his edit summaries. Dougweller (talk) 16:14, 12 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There are even words within English that vary in spelling with no national demarcation - artefact vs artifact. Are you planning to lay down that one is OK and the other is not all right?— Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎Peridon (talk • contribs) 22:09, 12 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That has a strong "national demarcation" - "artefact" is not ok in American English, but is predominant in British English. Johnbod (talk) 23:59, 12 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And in my uneducated opinion, "gray" and "grey" are equivalent and without much national tie. Chris857 (talk) 03:58, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gray tends to be associated with American usage and grey with British, but you're right, both can be found in both varieties. (Then there's greyhound and Gray code, which are thus spelled no matter how you spell the color.) --Trovatore (talk) 05:31, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I understand and generally happily accept WP:ENGVAR, but the Color article is one I truly find quite hard to read, probably more than any other impacted by that policy. It grates so hard against some great English teaching I had in my youth. I suspect I'm not alone. I wish we had a better way of handling this sort of very blatant seeming spelling difference, rather than just deciding to use one variant completely at the expense of the other. (Yes, I know the alternatives are mentioned at the beginning, but that doesn't help me read what my brain keeps telling me are misspelt words.) HiLo48 (talk) 04:19, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but if we changed it to your preferred spelling, someone else would experience the same psychic pain that you are feeling. So there is no equitable way to fix this, because no solution presents a case where what you describe doesn't happen for a sizable number of English speakers. --Jayron32 04:33, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We'll, of course there is an answer: write both articles. We just don't think that is a price worth paying. Perhaps for a few high profile articles it might be, though. LeadSongDog come howl! 04:39, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

[AFter Edit conflict] That's obviously true Jayron. That's why I didn't ask for it to be changed to my preferred spelling. I said "I wish we had a better way..." Maybe there could be a very small subset of articles where the difference is as painful as this one is to those brainwashed into using the other spelling variant, where we create two versions. A user could switch between versions with the click of a very obvious button at the top of the page. As I said, I can usually cope, but this one reads like fingernails on a blackboard. Or should that say chalkboard? (See, that difference I can deal with!) HiLo48 (talk) 04:47, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And LeadSongDog and I have said almost the same thing there. HiLo48 (talk) 04:47, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why would two articles be a reasonable solution? Is the concept spelled color in North American varieties of English distinct and different from the concept spelled colour in Commonwealth varieties of English? If not, why do we need two different articles about the subject? Because a u or lack thereof bothers a small subset of people? --Jayron32 19:29, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling is a non-issue. Any English-speaker will know what is meant whether it's spelled color or colour. The real problem is where there is a difference of meaning e.g. tabled. In theory, it would be easy to avoid using phraseology that causes this sort of confusion. In practice, editors don't have it front of mind. See for example the opening of Québécois nation motion. DeCausa (talk) 21:09, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously everyone will understand.--Good afternoon (talk) 03:59, 14 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I hope that someday you will be able to complete your study of English, so that you might have the opportunity to read some works by American authors, as well as the fine works by those from the Commonwealth. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:33, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

From a technical perspective, i think its possible to make a string that shows depending on your ip location or wiki of origin. {{localspell|usa|color|rest|colour}} 16:52, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

The "{{localspell}}" idea given above would have far greater cost than benefit; it would make article source more difficult to edit, and would never be consistently applied anyway. A much better alternative—for the relative few to whom this issue is a big hairy deal—would be for someone to write some client-side Javascript code that dynamically swaps British and American spellings, one way or the other, for display in the browser. All that would be needed is a set of substitution rules (or a lookup table) to refer to. Users could then select a preference for British-to-American spelling conversion, American-to-British spelling conversion, or no conversion. — Jaydiem (talk) 01:01, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not really related but some words such as "Tongue" to "Tung" by Webster were not accepted as well by the public. Okay now for the related bit, as for the article I can argue the same thing about the usage of date, I am used to dates such as July 18, 2014 and not 18 July 2014, it took me awhile to get used to it here on Wikipedia that is all I can say. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 01:24, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unraveling a mystery - Prose and Lists

I was looking into how to properly cite a bulleted list and stumbled onto something of a mystery. Where did the current policy/guidelines for Lists and Prose come from? I started searching proposals and archives and could only find a smattering of random discussion but nothing conclusive. Much of the earliest discussion appears to have been lost (or at least I can't locate it/don't have access to it) due to the removal of sub-pages. What I have been able to piece together is rather interesting:

The first concrete list of wiki policy/guidelines is created, Use short sentences and lists is created a few days later to flush out the "Rules to Consider". These rules were accepted as guidelines in the early days of Wikipedia while proposals were being heard for the Manual of Style. That's when something strange started to happen. Several sections were replaced as a "minor" edit and completely re-written. This started a series of edits which were not formed by consensus but mostly done by a single user - by December the section was transformed and now included this gem. That one edit set the tone for much of what came after, despite its unfair comparison.

In 2004 Writing better articles came along. A good idea as an essay but people started merging the guidelines into it and redirecting without consulting anyone. In all 12 redirects were changed without consensus and even in direct violation of keep decision(s).

There wasn't much discussion about embedded lists after that, mostly stand-alone and by this point it was skewed by the non-consensus changes. It established an generally incorrect method of doing lists according to most style guides, it gave a false indication that WP:NOT applied to embedded lists.

The WP:NOT was eventually corrected, but unfortunately not before the language had become far more inflammatory. There was a chance that it would be caught with the 2007 Audit, but it was not to be as the two assigned to the job didn't edit again for several months and failed to address any embedded issues. In addition to these events bulleted lists was added, without consensus but within a style guide that was in fairly frequent use at the time, and conformed to the "Use short sentences and lists" and "Make only links relevant to the context" guidelines. In a slew of edits that were contradicted, reverted, resulted in a 3RR, and contradicted guidelines on the page he was editing; the Chicago Manual of Style inspired rules were replaced with completely arbitrary ones.

In all it only took the unilateral actions of 3-4 people to start an echo chamber effect and completely re-write many of the rules wiki was founded on. I propose we go back to those original documents, compare their intent to the policies/guidelines we have in effect now and adjust any which have become more WP:BURO than user-friendly. (Like needless pros & instead of simple short lists, balanced articles, etc) JMJimmy (talk) 13:28, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Without addressing the substance of your comments (yet), I'd just like to say thank you for performing this research. It should be copied somewhere permanent for future reference. — Scott • talk 15:58, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It was a lot of fun actually. I learned a lot. I just wish I could have found the conversations that led to the "Rules to Consider" - wikipedia-l mailing list didn't seem to contain anything substantive and the rest, mentioned in passing, seemed to indicate they were in /Talk /General sub-pages that no longer exist. JMJimmy (talk) 16:20, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've done a bit of that sort of research myself and I agree that it's fun (but then again my field is archives, so I'm biased). Recentism isn't just a problem for our articles - vast parts of our structural underpinnings are undocumented and only exist to be found by grubbing through old page revisions or looking at Nostalgia for ancient versions of pages. In other words, c2:OldRulesWithForgottenReasons. A lot of it is due to the transient nature of Wikipedia's editor population - go back far enough and you find, as in your examples, all sorts of changes made without explanation by people who are no longer around to tell us why. The closest I've seen anywhere to an attempt to rectify this history gap is Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Register, which is obviously for style matters only, and is woefully incomplete anyway. I think it's high time that a parallel effort was begun for guidelines and policies. If anyone would be interested in forming a working group to build a Policy Register, please get in touch. — Scott • talk 19:07, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a really good idea. I think it would be a great thing to do in conjunction with a gradual review of policy/guidelines and it's current effects compared to the historical intent. It'd be a massive undertaking either way. JMJimmy (talk) 20:23, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep in mind, WP's policies and guidelines aren't prescriptive but descriptive. If there was an issue when certain language was introduced if it really had consensus years ago, but now is readily accepted today, that probably means the guidelines/policies are reflecting practice, even if establishing that practice could have been considered a tainted process. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case here; most policy/guidelines additions that aren't done in good faith are usually caught and removed quickly. --MASEM (t) 01:55, 14 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CON is not assumed for polices/guidelines, regardless of good faith or time passed. JMJimmy (talk) 01:02, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Further detail, the redirect change linked above was made in response to Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_May_16#Category:Wikipedia_style_and_how-to, instead of simply applying the category changes he took it upon himself to do a bit more than that. At the time it was redirected it was flagged as a guideline, however, there were only 12 people watching the page at most so it went unnoticed. Then 5 months later the update to the manual of style goes unnoticed because, as long as no one looks too hard, it looks like a simple redirect bypass. I'm not saying this was intentional, far from it. Simply that it's easy to see how it would go unnoticed, especially given the user who made the changes (who was made an admin a couple months before the MoS change). JMJimmy (talk) 04:12, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus was assumed for policies and guidelines back in the day. We didn't formalize the WP:PROPOSAL process until the end of 2008. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:43, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have to locate it but I was reading something from Larry on the subject from back in 2001 JMJimmy (talk) 18:49, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To say that policy is descriptive, not prescriptive is 'ideally' correct, but false in practice. In reality, in most discussions people simply point at the policy or guideline, and use it as 'proof' of consensus, which is the exact opposite of what you have stated. It is quite rare for things to actually be debated on the merits of the actual issue at hand...pointing at some project page is usually seen as a 'trump' of whatever the argument is. This can lead directly to cases where a significant number of people, possibly enough to sway consensus, actually disagree with a 'rule' but are given the direct impression that it is not worth arguing because 'consensus' obviously disagrees. People need to be encouraged to simply use the policies and guidelines as a 'guide' to what consensus is currently 'assumed to be', not blindly cite them when it is obvious that a person is aware of the policy and disagrees with it, and to accept that a 'locally established' consensus can decide to IAR and do things differently, and their choice to do so can be used as evidence in a discussion on the policy/guideline talk page about changing it. A lot of the 'MOS drama' about things like CITEVAR and ENGVAR is simply a huge pile of BURO ignoring the simple principle: a group of editors involved with an issue can, by local consensus, choose to ignore any guideline. In some cases the 'site consensus' is really that there is no 'guideline' other than follow the consensus of the involved parties, but it's been exploded into thousands of words. In other cases, the guideline is used as a hammer to nail down good faith disagreement about what is 'best for the reader'. Revent^talk 02:07, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Translation clarification - crosslanguage coordination

I'm translating several articles from English to Greek (context note: articles related to pseudoscience). Some questions that have come up:

Is it reasonable to attempt to "coordinate" articles in different languages - for example, when an addition to one wiki is rejected due to questionable sources, is it reasonable to remove it from the other wiki as well? Or to propose an edit to both wikis, and remove it from both if it's rejected on one? I can provide a more specific example to illustrate the point if necessary.
Do Arbitration Committee Decisions apply to all language wikis?
Are discussions and consensus decisions in one language relevant to a wiki in another language, or do we have to separately discuss the same thing in each community?

Basically, I'm thinking about keeping it simple, and having similarly structured articles for easier editing and verification, with less duplication of work and contradiction between different wikis. --Mg009 (talk) 21:09, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Quick replies:

It hasn't been tried much, but you're free to do so.
No.
No. However, most communities end up with fairly similar standards. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:38, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When a project encourages content forking

Bannered routes of U.S. Route 15#Remington business loop and Bannered routes of U.S. Route 29#Remington business loop both cover the exact same stretch of road (I rewrote the former to make this clearer). After my edits to the latter, directing readers to the former (and changing redirects to point to the former) were reverted, I took it to the WikiProject. As of now, consensus is that content forking in the form of copying entire sections from one list to the other is completely OK for the sake of "comprehensiveness". This is obviously BS, but trying to get others to agree is like leading horses to the desert. --NE2 23:28, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think what is happening here is accurately described as a "content fork"... We don't have two articles covering the same topic... We have two articles on distinct topics ... each with a very short section on the same sub-topic. This is appropriate since the two roads overlap each other at the Remington business loop. I see nothing wrong with each article repeating the same text to cover that bit of road. The rest of the two articles are very different. Blueboar (talk) 00:28, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The business loop is a pair of separate routes - US 15 Business and US 29 Business. The "bannered routes" lists are simply separate such routes plopped together because they'd be too short on their own (see Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Rockland County Scenario). --NE2 01:02, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

IP edit Twitter bots and possible semi-intentional trolling/outing

We've now seen Twitter accounts set up for CongressEdits and ParliamentEdits. And now there are similar accounts for the North Carolina General Assembly, the Australian Parliament, the Chilean Congress, the Irish Government and the French National Assembly—and there's plenty more. It's not just governments but also now the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). User:Edsu's software to do this is open source.

On the one hand, this is no bad thing for transparency. There have always been politicians (or their staffers) fluffing their biographies, removing their now uncomfortable views and scandals of yesteryear.

But how far is this going to go? As I said, there's now at least one of these accounts set up for a non-governmental organisation—PhRMA. The transparency case is far harder to make for non-governmental organisations. It'd be useful before people start creating loads of these to work out how they fit with Wikipedia policy. What happens when the Palestinian editors set up "@EvilIsraeliEdits", and then the pro-Israeli editors set up "@HamasFanEdits"? What happens when people start guessing at IP addresses and then using this kind of bot to try and out editors they dislike? This could easily become a platform for outing and off-wiki harassment. At the same time, there are people who legitimately want to run one of these bots to monitor specific industries or organisations—I've had discussions with people who have asked exactly where policy stands on this and I've ended up saying "well, it sort of depends on the whims of ArbCom and ANI". Any ideas on what guidance we could give to people contemplating setting up one of these bots? Where's the line here between transparency and being a jerk? —Tom Morris (talk) 08:20, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please explain how this could be/ lead to outing. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:21, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Collecting together and disseminating a list of IP address which are supposedly linked to a particular business, organization or person without any real confirmation, then blasting that out over Twitter seems like it could be harassment if it is incorrect. There are FOI requests which help us know that a particular IP address belongs to the Houses of Parliament, but for other stuff, there's a problem of inaccuracy. If I set up a Twitter bot called "@AndyMabbettSockEdits" and had it repost a few IPs I think belong to you, that's kind of outing/off-wiki harassment, even if it turns out to be inaccurate. Okay, in that case it's fairly obvious. But what if I set up "@IsraeliShillEdits" and started claiming that some IPs are pawns of the Israeli government? There's an attempt at outing a user as being an employee of a particular government or organization.

I don't ask this theoretically. There are people who have told me they want to set these bots up as a way to provide some kind of oversight of particular industries or organisations and they want to know where the line is—when does it become off-wiki harassment? —Tom Morris (talk) 13:30, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Setting up "@AndyMabbettSockEdits" my be harassment, certainly dishonest, even libellous, but it's not outing unless you post it here. However, none of the accounts in question are about people, but institutions. With that in mind, I asked you to "explain how this could be/ lead to outing". You have not done so. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:06, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My question here: what is actionable to us? {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 14:16, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Should we issue warnings to users for their username who have never edited?

Wikipedia talk:Username policy#Should we issue warnings to users for their username who have never edited?

Views sought ^ –xeno^talk 15:22, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

NHS hospital trusts

Does Wikipedia have a policy on NHS hospital trust articles? For Royal Berkshire Hospital there is one article for the hospital and the trust but for Royal United Hospital there is a separate article for Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust. Biscuittin (talk) 20:24, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If both are notable then they should have articles. In many of these cases, the notability of the hospital predates the existence of the trust. In the few cases where these might share an article, the article should bear the title of the main content which will almost always be the hospital. Also bear in mind that some trusts only have one hospital and other trusts multiple articles, so always having an 'extra' article can make sense for completness. So if you look at it it may be better to always have two articles for clarity in the various category trees and lists. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:04, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Biscuittin (talk) 14:50, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Opinions needed for an RfC

I just opened up an RfC over on Treats! available right here . Feel free to stop by and give your opinion. Kosh Vorlon 12:19, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bot creation of articles

The creation of articles by bot on other Wikipedias has been much in the news lately. However, this recent request by Fæ, for example, was talked out. As can be seen the objections were not to the creation of articles by bot per se, but to the creation of articles at a standard which is currently accepted if created by a human.

While I would not propose the unregulated mass creation of short stubs by bot, I believe it would enhance the progress of this project towards it's goal of making human knowledge freely available, if we were to have a policy which allowed for the creation of articles by bot, where there is a distinct set of subjects, about which a useful amount of information is available, as was the case in the above-mentioned example (which proposed "start class articles rather than stubs"). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:53, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Powertrain

Template:Powertrain contained some trade names and I have added some more. There are still more I could add but it is beginning to look crowded. Should trade names be put in a separate template? Biscuittin (talk) 14:55, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Limits on article creation

Has there ever been a proposal to limit the creation of articles about current events? Say, for example, requiring a one-week gap period after the event before creating such an article? Instead, one would encourage the creation of a draft. I do think that recentism has been on the up here. I'm not sure what can be done. I really do not appreciate, however, the way Wikipedia articles about current events get used as news aggregators in the first week of their existence. It is antithetical to our basis as an encyclopaedia. This particular comment by myself is in direct response to the mess that is Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. I haven't edited that article, as it is outside my interest area, but I have been working heavily on other Ukraine-related articles since the start of the unrest there. Working in this area has really concerned me about the abuse of our grounding principles. RGloucester — ☎ 05:25, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:NEVENT as well as WP:NOT#NEWS. The short answer is that we do ask people to wait for events to be notable before creating articles - sometimes that will be immediate apparent (as in the case of a commercial airliner crashing (regardless of cause), and making the article then and there is correct; other times, the event may not be easily notable and could take some time for its effects to ripple through. That said, our past approaches to articles created on immediately-developing news topics has been praised before, so it's just a matter of making sure the collaboration of editors is there and having admin eyes on articles to deal with problematic editors. I doubt we can ever have a ban on creation of articles of current events otherwise. —MASEM (t) 05:38, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should until a week after the event gains notability. No one respects WP:NOTNEWS, that I've seen, when it comes to current events articles. The aeroplane crash article that I referenced has been protected, praise God, but only after a mob of editors came in concerned about the article being "outdated". RGloucester — ☎ 16:18, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The protection has nothing to do with disputes regarding notability so that's irrelevant here. Also, notnews covers routine news coverage not every event the news happens to cover. Nowhere does it say that current events can't be notable. I don't see creation of article about a notable current event as even remotely being a case of disrespect, merely a case where people disagree with the suggestion that notnews prevents any coverage of current events.--67.68.162.111 (talk) 05:05, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Paid editing and the perception of promotion

(This is a duplicate of a post at Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest. The Village Pump may be a more appropriate forum.)

Wikimedia's Terms of Use were updated on 16 June 2014 and included, in Section 14, a prohibition on paid contributions without disclosure. The opening section of the FAQ page notes: "Some contributors do receive payment for their edits. These contributors improve the overall quality of the projects when they edit with a neutral point of view ... On the other hand, paid advocacy editing - i.e. paid editing of articles to promote companies, products, and services - is strongly discouraged or banned on most, if not all, the projects."

An ANI complaint has been started over a series of edits I carried out at A2 milk—an article that was a low-quality stub. I was paid a fee to edit the article to improve it, and have posted a disclosure notice at my user page. The intention was not to promote the product and at that ANI I have described the context in which I began. I am now accused by several editors of trying to inject a promotional tone, although the editor who lodged the ANI, User:Stalwart111, has since agreed[5] "the article is not now promotional" — an achievement reached fairly rapidly through the normal collaboration process and mainly due to the intervention of User:WhatamIdoing. (Once he left it all turned to shit).

So here's my difficulty: I have honestly attempted to work within the rules on paid editing. Though I don't attempt to promote A2 milk, other editors have seen this as an issue of Paid advocacy, public relations, and marketing. The ANI has now led to a proposal against me for a topic ban on A2 milk. Given the long-standing antipathy towards paid editing, it strikes me that any kind of paid editing, however well intended and though within the Terms of Use, could be interpreted as paid advocacy, PR and marketing. Those taking the high moral ground will always assert that someone in my position is driven by a requirement or agenda to promote, which in a discussion board where the hounds are baying for blood, is a position rather hard to fight.

In short, the rules may allow paid editing, but the community may not. If that's the case, why have the rule? Is there in fact a need for a better forum than ANI in which to examine claims of paid advocacy? I'd appreciate some thoughts. BlackCab (TALK) 06:24, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's a serious issue, and so it is appropriate be at AN/I. There is no need for another board.Forbidden User (talk) 08:40, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In 20 words or less, please restate each question you have in a numbered list. It may be that ANI is the place to discuss part; and somewhere else to discuss another part. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:06, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

links to TimaticWeb

We seem to have a lot of visa information articles and most of them have references to Timatic. These references are often unformatted, inline external links to long URLs on timaticweb.com that can essentially be replaced with the {{Timatic}} template. I first thought of this as purely a technical issue - it's better to format these references, and to reduce a crapload of copy&paste across the encyclopedia. However, after seeing various combinations of the links, and visiting the general website, it seems like we might be using a trivial technical backdoor to access a database that is supposed to be off limits to arbitrary lookups, and is instead meant for use by airline websites - they have an elaborate charging model where each transaction through this backdoor actually has a monetary value assigned to it (!). Nevertheless, this issue has existed for at least 4 years or so. The link that we send people to doesn't have an explicit terms of use statement saying "you should not be here", but it can be implied from the context (see Template talk:Timatic). I wonder if this is the time to start removing these links just in case, in order to make sure we prevent any possible liability for us or for our readers who click on the links. Thoughts anyone? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:34, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't read the whole terms of service but whatever they wrote inside cannot prevent us from using it as a reference. Asides from this probably being raw data that by definition is not eligible for copyright protection we are also not copy/pasting any content anyway so I don't see the problem. We only use it as a reference and I've never heard that anyone can forbid you to do that. The fact that it's a commercial service doesn't mean it can't be a valid reference, published books are also commercial and are sold for real money and you can't read them unless you pay for them (maybe a better example would be a newspaper) yet that doesn't mean we can't use books as a reference or that writing inside a book "This book cannot be used as a reference" would be of any significance. That still of course does not mean you can copy/paste from it. As for clicks causing an airline to pay for that, I am pretty sure anything that gets them billed is password protected. Just think about it, a hacker could write a script that would send several million such requests to Timatic on behalf of an airline, and what, an airline would suddenly be left with a multi-million dollar bill? I doubt it. I think there is a difference between raw data here available to everyone and the expanded Timatic client that airlines use on their counters and which can't be accessed by us, hence the missing "you should not be here" statement on pages we are using as a reference. Also common sense tells me something about the fact that these links have been used for years on Wikipedia if you check through article histories.--Twofortnights (talk) 11:45, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I didn't make one thing clear - I'd never suggest that we remove all references to Timatic. But I have to find it odd that the "Delta business to customer" (right?) account stopped working after a while. Maybe they noticed that we're racking up the bill, and changed it. Obviously it would be silly and pointless for an airline to go out and sue Wikipedia and/or all the people who click on those links. But it could still provide for a less than amusing interaction with an airline's legal team. We just don't need the liability. If we can go by with just using the meta data, we should probably do that. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:16, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes but we need more than a presumption that this was the case. I think we should contact Delta and see if their Timatic service was really terminated because of Wikipedia because to me it sounds far fetched and so far based only on your understanding of things which could be wrong. I personally think that if this was the case Delta would have changed access information or would have at least sent us a message, it really doesn't sound like a company of that size would entirely drop the Timatic service for such trivial reasons - [6]. I would say reasons are probably simpler, if I had to bet I would say they thought that the US Department of State website provides more user-friendly explanations that can't confuse readers like the technical Timatic response that's not so easy to read for a first time visitor and also the "Visa required. Except for" can probably confuse many readers. For anyone else they can use the SkyTeam Timatic.--Twofortnights (talk) 12:37, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I actually also don't think they ever dropped it - but they could have easily had it changed to another "user" and "subuser" parameters, and trivially hide the new ones from end-users. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:54, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No the web based client was available on their website, now that page links readers to see what the State Department has to say - [7]. IATA provides paper based Timatic, maybe Delta is using that now. It's all guessing though, one would have to contact them and see what happened exactly.--Twofortnights (talk) 21:34, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Btw someone not involved in these articles might ask a perfectly natural question "why not use a different source". And here is the answer. A huge problem is that many countries don't publish their visa policies anywhere else at all so the only place where you can find it is Timatic as they still do notify IATA of changes (though even then many are slow to send them a notification). Sure, western countries mostly update their web pages and notify IATA immediately however so many don't. I have analyzed it and here is what I came up with specifically. Egypt, Bangladesh, Gambia have seriously conflicting information between various official webpages. Some countries have dubious information on specific issues such as the length of stay, for an example South Korea. Malaysian immigration website page on visa policy, the only relevant page there is, mentions countries that no longer exist, some of which ceased to exist even before the internet came to be. Some countries simply put up false information like Iran. For many countries it is unclear what the visa policy is all about as in original language it might mention that some countries have a simplified visa procedure while in English it might talk about visa on arrival, like Nicaragua or Kyrgyzstan. Some countries like China have very complicated visa policy that is not found in one place anywhere else. Conditions for visa on arrival by some countries is not explained, like Guyana, Nauru, Senegal. Some countries are trying to be creative with online visa systems but are apparently not capable of doing that properly - Rwanda, Myanmar and Nigeria come to mind. Some countries make grand announcements about adopting complete change of their visa policies only not to explain those changes properly anywhere like Congo or Syria have done. Of course not even Timatic is always up to date, island nations like Marshall Islands or Barbados are very slow even to notify IATA.--Twofortnights (talk) 16:42, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]