User talk:DGG

                                       ARCHIVES

Barnstars, Awards, etc.

Reminders

Topical Archives:
Deletion & AfD,      Speedy & prod,        NPP & AfC,       COI & paid editors,      BLP,                              Bilateral relations
Notability,               Universities & academic people,       Schools,                       Academic journals,       Books & other publications
Sourcing                Fiction                                                In Popular Culture      Educational Program
Bias, intolerance, and prejudice

General Archives:

2006: Sept-Dec
2007: Jan-Feb , Mar-Apt , M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D 
2008: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2009: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2010: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2011: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2012: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2013: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2014: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2015: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2016: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2017: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2018: J, F, M , A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2019: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2020: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2021: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2022: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2023: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O

Do not add comments here; add new sections at the bottom, not the top

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

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

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

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

Draft:Rt Rana

Hello Dear DGG , I expanded it a bit and made it more respectable. What do you think about it ? I think it's quite close to wikipedia level. Rajuiu (talk) 15:31, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

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

items from 2015 and 2016 removed for archiving--a few will be replaced here

Your talk at 16 Years of Wikipedia

Heard your lightning talk just now. I support both the "Radical solutions to promotional paid editing" proposals you announced on notability and restrictions on anon editors around companies newer than 1999 foundation. Are there some written proposals to refer to? - Brianhe (talk) 20:43, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

there will be--one of the reasons I gave the talk was to get some feedback about just what to propose, and I am already getting some. Watch this space tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 20:55, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good. I will evangelize to the communities I'm part of, as soon as there's something to show them. - Brianhe (talk) 20:57, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

(talk page watcher)Hi, DGG! I'd like to hear that too. Link? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:07, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Video from the lightning talks is now available via Commons. DGG's lightning talk is the first one, proposal #1 is detailed at 2:15 and #2 at 3:00. - Brianhe (talk) 06:31, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Combative deletion rebuttals

In the past, most paid or other promotional editors, when their articles have been deleted, have simply gone away and tried again, generally under another username. For a while now, an increasing number of them have been adopting the practice of arguing. Many admins ignore them; my response unless they are ridiculous altogether is to explain why, sometimes in detail. If they are a good faith but promotional editor who simply has not realized, they usually understand, though it sometimes take a second round of explanation. . If they are professional paid editor with any sense, they realise they;re not going to get anywhere, and go away--and try again usually under another name. Zealots with a unpaid COI have very often continued to argue, sometimes indefinitely. The best thing for us to do here is the traditional remedy, to ignore them. Some paid editors are now doing the same, hoping to wear people down. The best technique here is to block them. If they show up for the same purpose again, they can and should be summarily blocked as behavioral meatpuppets--though we usually run a checkuser for possibly helpful additional information. The danger, as has become clear, is catching a good faith but imitative editor. There are only 3 solutions: accept promotionalism , be able to investigate who people actually are, or accept there will be occasional injustice. I will oppose the first as long as I work here, I will continue trying to change consensus to permit the second, and , alas, be forced to accept the third. .. . DGG ( talk ) 03:56, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

James Omura

...

It makes no difference how strongly you or I agree with the his political viewpoint. If we used WP to advocate our own beliefs, we'd end up the same as Conservapedia. You may possibly think that in the current political situation in the US and some other countries, all honest citizens should feel themselves called upon to undertake action, or at least write polemics. I would probably support this as a valid position, but the advocacy does not belong on WP. The role of WP in fighting actual or potential tyranny is now and always to write objective articles in purely dispassionate language. At WP we present the facts, trusting the readers to themselves draw the proper conclusions, not to tell the reader what conclusions they ought to draw.

To avoid misunderstanding, I think the WMF, as distinct from the encyclopedia, can appropriately play a political role in defense of its values, and I support its past and present actions and statements. And, also to avoid misunderstanding, there may indeed come a time when dispassionate reporting is hopeless, and direct opposition is the only possible course. But the two should not be confused. DGG ( talk ) 21:24, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ali Montazeri (WP:PROF)

Am interested in your thoughts on this AfD, and specifically on the issue I have raised. I have no idea how you are going to !vote on this, and am curious. Jytdog (talk) 19:44, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Lots of naive discussions of citations from others, but the actual analysis speaks for itself. You did of very good job of editing, btw. For someone of his importance I would have done if it needed, but its great to have such competent help. DGG ( talk ) 04:36, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words but all I did was clear away the most fetid of the promotionalism. The remaining directory entry ( i will not it an "article") is promotional; this person cannot have an actual WP article as there no sources from which to write one. The directory entry exists because someone is trying to promote this guy. So I have just polished a turd. It should not exist in WP per NOTDIRECTORY and PROMO.

I am going to try to raise N standards around WP. I am trying because a bunch of people seem to think we should and more importantly they undercut efforts to make meaningful changes by pointing to things like changing N.

But everybody has pet projects and is willing to fight to the death to protect notability guidelines and essays that allow fake "articles" to exist in WP, that are really directory entries or worse. The journals people do it, the academic people do it, the radio people do it, the music people do it, etc. It will be a waste of time, but I will try. So it goes. Jytdog (talk) 05:27, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I'm willing to go to some trouble to maintain proper standards of notability based upon objective evidence that shows someone is a leader in their field. WP:PROF is one of the very few guidelines we have that follows a rational approach to inclusion policy. I fell so strongly about objective guidelines that I support them even when I think them overly broad (as for sports) or much too narrow (as for politicians).

I can and will argue as I think appropriate & necessary using the GNG in either direction, but it's a totally useless intellectual activity that I think detracts from the encyclopedia . You may possibly have a case about directory entries (though we have about 2 million directory articles), ut I don't see how the article is PROMO. Anyway, looking at it from your direction, even so you're attacking articles that we do have in a field where we do not have anywhere near enough coverage--if you want to attack directory entries--why not do it a field where e have overcoverage. Or do you really think academics unimportant?

Of course we have information to write an article we have what's important about academics: their position and their published work. In each case that's third party information based on the university authorities and the editor of the journals and the citing authors. The decisions of peer reviewers and peer authors in the aggregate are much sounder basis for an article than the uninformed comments of journalists in most current day newspapers.

one of the differences in what I and most others do here, is that I'm willing to fight even for what other people consider important. Tolerating and supporting each other is the basis of a cooperative encyclopedia. There's real promotionalism in WP that's much more dangerous and compromising than even the original version of this article. You're losing perspective. DGG ( talk ) 05:58, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. I know that lots of people have identified various fields in WP that they think are particularly .... bad. Some people focus on where they believe there is lots of "paid editing", some people focus on where there is lots of COI, other people on various forms of POV or bias, systemic and otherwise. I know people think that what I care about is COI/paid editing. They are wrong but I let myself get trapped too often in that box.

My work is primarily about NPOV - ensuring that articles summarize high quality sources.

NPOV is what my entire Userpage is focused on, and has been focused on, for a long time. (it comes down to finding high quality sources and accurately summarizing them)

Lots of people have said we should address the paid editing problem at least in part (and in some quarters, primarily) by raising N standards.

I agree with that. It would solve lots of other problems too.

I don't understand -- at all -- how anybody can support raising N standards, and at the same time support any guideline that allows automatic green-lighting, even when we cannot actually write a WP article about something because there are not multiple independent sources with significant discussion of it. (In other words, it isn't possible to write an NPOV article about it)

I mean it - this completely baffles me and in my view comes down to special pleading. And each Wikiproject points to the special pleading that other Wikiprojects do. Which means we will never succeed in raising N standards for any field in WP.

If, on the other hand, Guy is correct and NOTDIRECTORY has been effectively abandoned, I need to rethink what a "WP article" is and my approach to NPOV.

But as it stands, in my view, the approach to N that allows PROF and JOURNALs and RADIO to create and keep directory entries, is what allows crap articles about business executives to exist.

(and what is promotional about the article about the guy who is subject of the AfD, is its very existence in WP. It was created as part of a promotional campaign, and upon examination it fails GNG and should not exist in WP at all. It is no different than artIcle about some business executive that gets created, gets looked at, and should get deleted.)

So what do people mean when they say "raise N standards"? How is it coherent and consistent? I really don't understand (obviously). Please explain how this makes sense to you. Please. Jytdog (talk) 22:05, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I should acknowledge that I made a mess of the discussion at PROF. I did that badly. Jytdog (talk) 23:00, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Btw, i just read your userpage, and see that your thoughts about GNG and N are completely different. Hm. Jytdog (talk) 06:11, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

yes, they are, and I've made no secret about it. Besides what I do on wiki, I've talked about this at many events. This has been my general approach for about 7 years now--the main difference from then is that 7 years ago the problem of using WP to advertise was not as widespread, and I was much more willing to rewrite such articles than I am now. Under current conditions, I'm very much more concerned about fighting promotional editing than about disagreements on the level or criteria of notability. DGG ( talk ) 04:43, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

But in making arguments in actual cases here I always give an argument based on the conventional rules. I will then sometimes supplement it with additional reasons. I use my own concepts in deciding which articles I'm going to argue about. I will not personally defend an article that clearly meets WP:N and which I do not think appropriate, though I iwll not oppose it unelss I can find some othe policy based reason. DGG ( talk ) 08:21, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Review some JzG deletions

Hi, JzG's talk page notice suggested contacting you for review of deletions. He also seems to be on a wikibreak. Please have a look at my query at User talk:JzG#Deletion of long-standing articles without review, which came about from a request at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion#Timeline of Facebook. Thanks. ~Anachronist (talk) 05:02, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

fwiw, those deletions stem from this ANI thread, Vipul's paid editing enterprise, where there have been some calls to delete company timeline articles created by the group under discussion there. Jytdog (talk) 05:33, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh and i just saw this: User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#A_Wikipedia_wide_new_policy_is_needed_to_ban_.22paid_for.22_editing. oy. Jytdog (talk) 05:37, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I would probably support a CSD criterion modeled after G5, for undeclared paid editing, but we do not currently have one, and using G11 for the purpose is stretching it very far. This is especially true when the actual article was probably not written as promotionalism or advocacy, but as a unfortunately misguided good faith approach to improving WP. JzG is very much around, and I do not intend to do this without notifying him, especially because I entirely respect and totally agree with his desire to rid WP of blatantly improper editing. I consider the speedies to be misjudgment, not absolute error. I will undelete them tomorrow unless there are arguments otherwise., and they can then be taken to AfD I fully understand why the deleting admin did this, and I totally sympathize with his views on this sort of editing. But G11 is really not the appropriate method. These need to be taken to Afd if they are to be deleted, because this is a disputed situation and requies explicit consensus. Speedy is not appropriate when the consensus will be debated, only when the deleting admin can be reasonably sure that the consensus would certainly support him. I do not think there's the case here. and the best course would be for JzG to do that himself. My own suggestion would instead be a merge, and therefore I will not personally take it to afd after it has been restored, for AfD is not needed to do a merge.. DGG ( talk ) 07:49, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

• So, first of all, I already proposed a speedy criterion for material created in violation of the terms of use, and it was rejected. Getting any kind of broad community consensus on what to do with paid advertorial is difficult, not least because there is a group of people who for whatever reason seek to make it impossible. Not all of these are associated with the Sangerites and their fawning over Kohs. Some have a genuine, if in my view misguided, belief, that Wikipedia's need for articles overwhelms the problems of people subverting Wikipedia for profit.

That's why I only removed a small number of articles. There are several medical timelines, for example, all paid for by the same pyramid scheme, which I did not touch.

The articles I did remove are promotional in intent and designed, in my view, purely for SEO. They are timelines of commercial entities, paid for by Vipul (who engages in SEO as well as his Wikipedia editing pyramid scheme), replete with numerous links to other commercial entities, several of which are owned by Vipul. And that's what pushes them over the line. Guy (Help!) 09:02, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

JzG, You may be right, but you shouldn't be making this decision by yourself, especially because there is disagreement about the nature of Vipul's motivations. Please undelete and send them to AfD. This particular case very much needs discussion, and preferably not just between the two of us. . As for the speedy criterion, the main problem I see is exactly what is presented here--the difficulty in determining motivations (and identity, usually, though not in this case). DGG ( talk ) 15:01, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

...

Touche!

Hi DGG, I just wanted to thank you for having a spirited but civil discussion at AfD. Your points are good, as I believe are mine. Your good demeanor is refreshing. I didn't want to clutter the AfD page up with this, but wanted to say "Thanks!" Jacona (talk) 02:26, 21 March 2017 (UTC) (re: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brandon Mendelson )

Indexing

Here, you say "About reusing drafts: the unlikelihood of anyone else reusing a draft is one of the faults of our current system. I think there are at most 4 people (including myself) who rescue old drafts. I generally only do them in my primary field of interest (academic faculty and related), but even so I have a very long list, and very rarely have time to do one. We do not even have a system where when someone starts an article, it shows whether there is a pre-existing draft on the topic. The default Wikipedia search does not pick them up, and even if set to Everything only finds them if spelled the same way. Kudpung, you know this system best--is there any reasonable solution?". Maybe INDEXing the drafts is the solution? Ethanbas ^(talk) 02:41, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

this has been proposed, and decisively rejected. Drafts contain unverified material, including copyvios and advertising nd possible BLP violations. The whole idea for drafts is that they are not yet ready to have a prominent position in external indexes. They do show up in our internal search, if one knows the title and specifies a customs search

the solution that has been suggested several times and could have been adopted years ago, is to categorize them in at least rough categories, so people could at least scan them. The objection has been raised that there are not people willing to do this manually, but there are two other methods: a simple weighted keyword approach, which, however inexact, is at least a start, and more recently an AI system. There has historically been a dichotomy--at least a perceived dichotomy--between the people who work with the WP infrastructure and the people who work with articles. DGG ( talk ) 02:52, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Bryan Caplan

You have an interest in professors, so this may be of interest to you: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bryan Caplan (2nd nomination) Ethanbas ^(talk) 20:17, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

It's interesting that Vipul did not mention he is associated with Caplan when he added so many primary-sourced references to Caplan's blogging into articles. Funny how that goes, eh? Guy (Help!) 00:03, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

JzG, there are two alternative approaches to COI problems: one is to simply judge the subject for notability in the usual way; the other, for which you have been arguing, is to judge the intent. I certainly understand the point of your way of doing it: I would support a rule that undeclared paid editing be deleted rather than fixed on the same principle as we delete articles from banned editors (otherwise the prohibition is toothless), and I would probably also support a rule that grossly COI articles also be deleted rather than fixed unless someone actually rewrites them, as we do for copyvio. There are also arguments against either proposition, and I think the strongest two are that usually we cannot tell, so it will remain toothless, and that is that paid editors can be persuaded to declare, and COI editors taught to write properly (though both seem to be quite rare occurrences).

But at present the community supports neither rule. I doubt we could get the necessary support to explicitly change either of them, and I am very reluctant to propose that until there is some chance ofsucceeding in the argument Another way to change the rule is to change what we actually do at AfD, because the rules here are what we actually do, rather than just what we say; this is the method youve been pursuing. I've been doing the same thing, but I am trying to concentrate on the individuals without significant notability, not clearly notable people like him DGG ( talk ) 04:03, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Comment

I just wanted to comment and say I really appreciate your User page. Thanks for writing that up because I have always felt the same way and couldn't say it better myself. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 04:00, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Talk page size

Wikipedia editing guild

Pardon, can I ask you to archive a bit more of this talk page? My browser is hanging when I try to post here. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:33, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

I keep intending to. thanks for reminding me. DGG ( talk ) 19:55, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Which browser and OS, Jo-Jo? Given a lengthy talk page here, with Safari on an iPad I have no problems reading or posting here. With Windows 10 and IE 11 attempting to go directly to a section from my watchlist hangs—but going to User talk:DGG works OK. Surely there should be a computer based solution. Fifty years ago (when I started programming) maybe no, but now? — Neonorange (Phil) 20:42, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

If I may butt in; I'm using Safari on iPhone, and when I first tried to load this page I got an error message saying something like "An error occurred. Attempting to reload page." I've never gotten that message before. This is quite possibly the most popular talk page on Wikipedia. Lizard (talk) 20:51, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

actually, it's slowing down even for me, with Safari and 16GB memory. It's my own fault, because I ambitiously set up a system of subject archives instead of doing like everyone else. I will make another try this weekend. DGG ( talk ) 21:23, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

The Windows 10 64-bit system and the 80 Mbit/sec Internet connection I use is way overkill for editing and browsing. Your talk page, as it is the moment of my sig time stamp, loads in less than a second when I go to User talk:DGG. When I go to a specific section of the page (from my watchlist) the browser busy pointer appears and after five minutes is still busy. I must reload Wikipedia in the browser to continue, as the page cannot be recovered. Computers should allow a person to be as productive as that person wishes, not the reverse. — — Neonorange (Phil) 00:02, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

the section editing for me works in just the opposite way--much faster. Anyway, expect some improvements here. DGG ( talk ) 02:26, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thank you for all you do to help keep Wikipedia collaborative. It's a thankless task, on the ANI board.auntieruth (talk) 14:55, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Notability and GNG

Summary, modified from my comment elsewhere,

The policy on whether we keep an article isn't WP:N. The policy is WP:NOT. The guideline WP:N is the explanation for how we decide on one part of that policy, NOT INDISCRIMINATE. An article might meet that, but fail other parts of NOT. If something is effectually promotion, it fails NOTADVOCACY, and that's enough to rule it out as encyclopedia content, because we do not advertise anything, no matter how notable. There's no justification for keeping advertising in Wikipedia any more than there is copyvio. Unless there is a NPOV version to revert to, or unless it is immediately fixed, it should be deleted, whether by speedy G11 or at AfD. It shouldn't be moved to draft or userified in the hope of improvement, as we might for something lacking in sources for notability but where there's a good chance of finding them. We wouldn't do that for copyvio. We wouldn't do that for BLP violations. Using WP for advertising is just as harmful. "fixable" applies in many circumstances, but not for any of these. DGG ( talk ) 20:27, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

HM. Hm. Set brain to churning with all kinds of things clicking. Two questions:

• Is that true, historically? I mean, was N created to flesh out NOT, explicitly?
• Is this widely seen as true in your view? (I have never heard of it or thought about it this way.... it makes total sense however) Jytdog (talk) 19:57, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

(1) See this very early version of WP:N from Sept 2006:

Based on several sections What Wikipedia Is Not, it is generally agreed that topics in most areas must have a certain notability in order to have an article in Wikipedia. Several guidelines have been created, or are under discussion, to indicate what is and is not notable by Radiant!. (but at that point several of the proposed specific guidelines had developed to approximately their present form, with varying degrees of acceptance). The first appearance of a GNG was in Nov, 2006. by UncleG

(2) This my understand of the necessary implications of WP:NOT. It is my interpretation, & I think reflects the trend of decisions at AfD. It is not universally accepted; the alternate interpretation is for keeping promotional articles even if borderline notable, if it is at all possible to fix the promotionalism. In choosing how to interpret, we should follow logic & consistency, but also practical considerations. My view is that accepting even temporarily promotionalism plays into the hands of paid editors and other spammers, and that such editing has the real potential to destroy the usefulness of WP as an encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 03:47, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I meant mostly the "this guideline fleshes out NOT" thing. Thanks for the history link! Jytdog (talk) 11:59, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

another restatement of notabilty SNG vs GNG

(my argument at a recent deletion review in popular music) Consistent practice at WP has been that meeting the SNG is enough in this field. Guidelines are what we do, not just what we say, and if there is conflict between the two, it's what we do that matters. WP is not run primarily by rules, but primarily by consensus--rules are attempts to codify the usual consensus, and are valid only to the extent the community in practice supports them. re ambiguous, The rule on charting has an enormous advantage: it produces unambiguous results. Except for the need to define just what charts it is that count, there's not much room for dispute and decisions can be easily made,. Following the GNG is another matter entirely:the specifications that coverage by ""reliable"", significant coverage, independent and secondary and in sufficient number, can be endlessly debated, and in all fields where we rely on the GNG they are endlessly debated-in most cases that reach AfD they can be plausibly debated in every direction, and people in practice pick what side to argue by some sort of global judgement about whether the article should belong in WP. Thus our hundred or so FaDs a day where the main discussion is the opportunity to show skill in quibbling, and the result depends on just which skilled quibblers appear at the discussion. I don't care about the individual results in this subject field, but I do care they our decisions be consistent and rational. The SNG does that--the GNG guarantees the opposite.

Perhaps it's odd that with some degree of reputation as a skilled quibbler, and years of experience quibbling on both sides of AfDs, I want to do away with those discussions. I've experience in a lot of unnecessary things, and I'd much rather use my skills at something substantial at RSN or the like, and in figuring how to fix articles. I came here because I thought I could use quite different skills in finding refs to fix articles, but I've never had a chance to use them much. Debating as we do it is just a game. Sourcing is real. DGG ( talk ) 22:32, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Eliyahu Leon Levi

Hi DGG, I noticed you struck the listing for Eliyahu Leon Levi at WP:AN/CXT No. 9 with the comment that it is in adequate English; but how's the translation? The quality of English in the article isn't really that important; any copyeditor can do that. What we are mostly concerned with, is the accuracy of the translation, as most of the pages in this list were script-generated due to a misconfig in ContentTranslation and are either pure MT, or MT+monolingual copyedit, so don't worry too much about the English quality.

If you can vouch for accuracy of articles translated from Hebrew, the following ones in the list could use your help, if you have the time: #106, 197, 1627, 1680, and 1907. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 02:04, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree that this is a questionable reach for me , as I do not read the language at all. I cannot vouch for accuracy; I can vouch for the English making sense and being consistent and the facts reported being likely. Like most bios, the article is extremely straightforward and leaves little to be misinterpreted. I know the cultural significance of what's reported, and it makes sense. I would not have looked at anything more complex or where I understood nothing of the subject. It's no worse that way than were it to have been written directly into the enWP using Hebrew sources, and certainly had it been an unacknowledged machine translation. The only reason these articles are any different is we know instead of guess that they used machine translation. So I shall ask a wikifriend to verify.

And I did likewise with a Chinese article on a straightforward political career. Again, it makes sense, but it is a language where machine translation to English is notable awful. It could be imaginary, but so could any article using Chinese sources. I'll ask for verification.

The other languages I've worked with I do know how to read at least somewhat, best for French and German. How well I can deal with them depends upon how simple they are. I've done translations in both from scratch, but I do not attempt deWP articles on history with their usual complicated German syntax--this is one case where it is easily possible to get mixed up. However, some types of articles are extremely formulaic. I'm most likely to run into an uncertainty regarding the equivalence of positions in different countries, tho as a librarian I know a lot of organizational equivalents. (There's a very nice large book A manual of European languages for librarians by CG Allen. Invaluable for the Soviet era in particular.) And if I come across anything I'm unsure about, or where I do not know the cultural equivalent, or where the original seems confused, I leave that part out. I see from the comments that other do similarly.

But this raises some more general questions. I was going to post on the project talk p.and I will in some more detail tomorrow:

How many of the articles I accept at NPP or AfC can I really vouch for the accuracy? That's an unrealistically high standard for any new page patroller--all we really check is basic verifiability. That a translation is not quite accurate is no worse than in the English from a non-native speaker is not quite accurate, or if the sources don't actually verify what they say they do, or are unavailable. The only time we really check an article in depth is when an article is challenged at AfD or analyzed for GA or FA. What we're looking for is basic correctness, not detail.

of the first 100 articles, we're accepting or redirecting almost all of them that are worth working on. Some that I could read perfectly well I am not marking for acceptance because I do not consider them worth the work, and I see others are deciding similarly. My intent is to rescue everything worth rescuing if I can do enough work. The project would be enormously simplifyied if we simply accepted translations from the Scandinavian languages. The machine translation does very well with them, because the syntax is almost identical. It also does well with straightforward German.(as distinct from the professional level German in their longer articles) In other languages , the most serious inaccuracy is the sequence of events because of the difference in tense use which are very often messed up by the machine translation, and the original is often a little unclear here also. But I'm particularly concerned the project did not screen out those articles that used the machine translation as a base, and then edited manually by the contributor or a good editor. There's no reason to assume they're incompetent.

Our role should be to screen out the ones that are incapably done, and not worth fixing. There are fewer than I anticipated--perhaps 25% not 50%. I also consider it our role to produce readable though not necessarily high quality English. I am not going to let something that can barely be deciphered pass no matter where I see it. How far it's worth fixing depends on how easy it is to fix, and its importance.

If this standard is not acceptable, I might challenge the entire project using the experience I now have as the basis. The goal of all we do there is, after all, to get articles worth keeping, not to reject all problematic ones out of hand. But in any case I do understand your advice, and will work more conservatively. DGG ( talk ) 04:31, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for this very thoughtful and detailed response. You raise a lot of interesting issues regarding translation, verifiability, accuracy, quality, and others that go beyond the narrow issue here that sparked the original comment. I hang out at WP:PNT and think about translation there and in other venues (both on, and off-wiki) and I've been thinking about how to better organize this in a way to improve the encyclopedia generally, and capitalize on all the talent and interested people we have here and assemble a group of those who are interested to discuss that. I know there's a WikiProject Translation, but for what I have in mind, I'm not sure if that's the right place for it, as I think this is something else, but anyway (sorry, I'm rambling; it's late!) let's keep in touch about this, if you would like to.

Back to the original topic: I understand your PoV, and in a pool of 3600 articles, it's not so important if one article more or less gets kept or not (with the exception that I hate to nuke ones that editors have worked long and hard on, unless policy really requires it) so if you want to restrike to keep this one it's fine by me, or tell me and I'll do it. Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 08:19, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

My confusion; no need to restrike E L Levi, it's still struck as you left it; I've been doing so many of these lately, can't remember which way is up! Mathglot (talk) 08:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Librarians -- especially academic librarians -- have the distinctive requirement to be able to deal with material about which they have only the scantiest knowledge--there were about 100 professional librarians at my university, and we were expected to be able to understand the requirements of about 1000 faculty, all of whom had a world-class specialized knowledge that we could not hope to match--even those of us who became librarians after a research career had only mastered one special field, not 10 of them. This is obviously a good background for working at WP. Publishers have a similar skill, and so do reporters. This included the need to work with a range of languages--some of the faculty had an extremely impressive range indeed, but still we collected in more languages than was presently represented. But librarians do not have to truly understand the details of a book in order to catalog it, just understand it well enough to figure out what it is about and the level of the analysis. I've taught librarians also, and though no one can actually teach these abilities, I did explain to my students that if they were to win the respect of faculty, they had to at least know how to pronounce properly the words of their various specialties. (Thus I can spell and pronounce chemical and biological names much better than I can ordinary English) The same is of course true of many non-academic fields--you have to at least know the talk. So I will boldly attempt anything unless I know by experience I will make a fool of myself.

There's a difference among the various WPs. deWP is known for insisting on a solid university level of German, and we don't expect anything more than high school level literacy. We deal more than any other WP with people who cannot really write the language, and within limits, we encourage them. Fortunately, we have a very wide range of language and other specialists, and there is very little we cannot find someone to deal with. (The problem in that in some fields and languages there are very few of them, and they may not be representative of the range of POVs) By experience, I've learned some fields where I can , and cannot, trust the available WPedians, both here and at their own language WPs. I am very reluctant to delete anything the de or fr WPs consider notable --but this does not hold at all for some of the other European language WPs.

Anyway, that's where I come from intellectually. I see you understand, and I appreciate it. DGG ( talk ) 09:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) David, that's an interesting analysis, thanks. I'd noticed that there are many of us librarians or retired librarians editing Wikipedia, and had thought it was connected with our urge to make knowledge accessible, along with an interest in cross-references etc, but you've reminded me of our professional ability to deal with sources of information in subjects we don't understand, and up to a point in languages we don't understand. One of my first tasks as a graduate trainee librarian, many years ago, was to catalogue and classify a couple of shelves-full of books in Macedonian, with some highschool knowledge of Russian and a Macedonian-English dictionary: they'd been donated from Skopje and the chap on whose office shelves they were waiting needed the space. I've set myself the challenge of creating an article for every editathon of WP:Women in Red, whether or not it's an area I know (or care!) much about: it's an interesting exercise! PamD 21:20, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

Thanks for reviewing my article. Yavarai (talk) 12:38, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

On this day, 10 years ago...

Wishing DGG a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Lepricavark (talk) 13:22, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Beer and bread fueling your labors. Hyperbolick (talk) 13:31, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Your user page

I was just looking at your user page and I must say, you have some interesting reading on there. Thank you for sharing! --TheSandDoctor (talk) 17:23, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

We've got a problem

OK. I looked at the famous February 2017 RFC on SCHOOLOUTCOMES, analyzed it some also did some thinking on my own dime. My full unfinished take is here, but don't click that link, it's long. In summary:

• FWIW WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES is indeed accurate. Of 35 randomly sampled the result was 34-1 Keep (or maybe 34-0, 29-1, 29-0 depending on how you count).
• FWIW there are valid reasons to cite WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES I think. 1) it's valid to say "this works, let's keep doing it", 2) it's valid to say "not this shit again, its a timesink, let's not do it" 3) the community has consistently expressed its opinion on the general question for 15 years, and that counts. 4) maybe others I didn't think of. It's a matter of opinion, but reasonable opinion that one can disagree with but not just blow off, I would say.
• Examining the February 2017 RFC, I found that the closers made a mistake -- a bad one. They said "Citing SCHOOLOUTCOME... has been rejected by the community", but that's not actually true; it wasn't (I'm pretty sure; I'm still working on analyzing this, and it will take some hours; but it appears so at this point).
• Therefore people are being given a bum steer, I would say. The poor admin over at the Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 May 10#DRV for Kent School is having do deal with a shitshorm, and its not his fault. He followed what is written: "Firstly, I think the new language at WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES is unequivocal: Secondary schools are not presumed to be notable simply because they exist"

This is a problem IMO.

I didn't say this in public, but I have dark suspicions about the people who closed the February 17 RfC. Be that as it may, we can at least say that they demonstrated lack of acuity and diligence. As someone who has closed a couple RfC where I took a week (not 40 full hours, but still), I was appalled to see statements like "many arguments didn't make sense and were ignored". Man, that is not how you adjudicate a hugely visible and important RfC! I mean at least don't say that out loud. If you're too busy do to it right don't do it.

The key point is that the closer said "Citing SCHOOLOUTCOME... has been rejected by the community", but that isn't true, apparently (still working on this, but pretty sure it is not true). Mendacity or... lacking acuity... doesn't matter. They used this (untrue ) statement to make or authorize significant changes to a couple of pages, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes and Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions.

My inclination is to roll back these changes and cite User:Herostratus/Understanding SCHOOLOUTCOMES as justification. Whether WP:BRD applies after three months, I don't know... doubt it. My inclination could also get me in a heap of trouble. I'd rather let jack do it. If I'm going to do it, I need cover. I have enough enemies already.

But it's important enough to not just shrug off IMO. As a matter of principle the whole affair frosts me, for one thing. Four guys supervoting on a highly visible RfC is toxic to community feeling. As a matter of practice, leaving this alone will probably result (after much wasteful drama, and admins being caught in the middle) with a blow to our coverage of high schools outside the first world.

So what to do next? Herostratus (talk) 01:55, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

What to do next is to vigorously defend all plausible articles, while letting the very weakest go. I'm willing to accept literally that "citing SA doesn't have consensus" Focus on the rest of the RfC, that in practice we do always keep them. Since nothing in that whole section of common outcomes is policy or even guideline, just advice. I wouldn't bother trying to upset or reconsider the RfC=, no matter how aelf-contradictory its conclusion. Policy & guidelines are important concepts in hierarchical organizations, but at WP, policy is what we do unless there's a very good reason otherwise, and a guideline is what we usually do., unless we decide not to. Usage makes the policies sand the guidelines. Even so , notability isn't even a policy, but a guideline for one part of the real policy, WP:NOT INDISCRIMINATE, and the so-called GNG is just one possible way to apply WP:N. We can use it if it helps. I don't thing it often does, because experience shows how easy it is to manipulate the details to get whatever result is desired. It's a way of arguing, not a useful guide. If I were more cynical, I'd support it, because it would serve my interests, as I have considerable skill and experience in arguments using it in both directions. NOT INDISCRIMINATE is an important and in my opinion necessary policy, but the details of how we choose to apply it it are what affects the results. Just don't cite it. Cite the facts, as you just did in the first sentence above: We always keep them, unless there are unusual circumstances. It's a convention justified by its utility. Remember, as WP idiosyncratically uses the term, "notability " says nothing about actual merit. It's a term of art, meaning only "worth keeping in the encyclopedia".I wish we had never started using it, but instead, said what we meant.

I cannot explain the existence of the current push against high schools. It has the effect of clogging up AfD and preventing proper consideration of the real problems here, which are promotionalism and fan support of the transiently popular. I hope that isn't the intent, but rather am misguided faith in ideological purity. WP is not the place for ideological purity. WP is driven by consensus, and the essence of consensus is compromise, not rigour. Those wh owant rigour wshould go elsewhere.

But consensus has a weakness--it an be defeated by zealots. The only defense is for sensible people to stay with their purpose, and argue each dispute as it comes up. At WP, success goes to the most persevering, Think of it as those who care the most, not those who are most stubborn. who are assumed to care the most. I was raised in a tradition of political activism, and what I was taught was: always appear at every opportunity. Let's see who has the real majority. Otherwise the minority of zealots rule, as they currently do in what I still think to be my country. DGG ( talk ) 07:35, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Subsequent note: I've pretty much given up on this issue; not that I think I was wrong, but a/ it's a little boring making the same argument repeatedly and b/ there are more serious problems here, like coi/UPE. DGG ( talk ) 06:35, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

American Jewish Anti-Bolshevism

Can you take a look at this please. I've prodded it because I'm sure it's an amalgam of chunks of text text copied from the one source that's used but I don't have the book. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:13, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Kudpung, did you notice there's a snippet view of the book on Google Books? It's not great but maybe good enough to scan for copyvio.

(later) Oops, maybe not - it's volume 1 and the article uses volume 2 or 3. Anyway here's the link [2]. - Bri (talk) 23:33, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Kudpng, it cannot simultaneously be OR and copyvio. And if it is not copyvio, then I do not see it as OR, but the summary of information based on a book with other sources used as well. The style, with the long quotations, and the manner of referencing, suggests that it's a term paper. The snippet view is useless, it's from a quotation in the book. I tried other phrases, only ones from the quotation bring up the book. I suspect it's in part a paraphrase., at least as far as organization goes. It covers a narrower scope than the current title; I moved it to American Jewish Anti-Bolshevism during the Russian Revolution. I think the way to proceed is to list it at Copyright problems DGG ( talk ) 00:47, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

contemporary artists articles still unassessed as keep

I've been avoiding these as likely lost causes but we may as well deal with whatever we've got. Not sure what the agenda is tomorrow for you but here are some of my current art articles, in addition to that one about the guy who cast bronzes. Oh and a librarian for you: Ana_Santos_Aramburo. And also Dolors_Lamarca

(talk page watcher) I don't know the background to this but had a look at a couple out of curiosity:

Faunesa_de_pie - looks as if Standing female faun and Kneeling female faun should get a mention in The Gates of Hell: lots of ghits for various versions of this sculpture. The Spanish wikipedia article is longer than this English stub.

Aurelio Gonzato - looks like an exact translation of the Italian wikipedia article. Don't see any sign of phallic device - but perhaps that's in some other context I don't know about. PamD 07:46, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

@PamD: First of all, pleased to meet you. And, you are right about phallic, thank you. I apparently looked at "metallic planes" way way way too fast. I still can't figure out what it did though, and he patented it? was it like a transformer? Became different things? Any thoughts welcome. Do you speak Italian? Meanwhile the context to this is that DGG told me on a different earlier talk page that he is going to an edit-a-thon at the Metropolitan museum tomorrow and it so happens that I have a bunch of art articles in this list of bad machine translations scheduled for deletion, except get this, some of them are fairly excellent articles... and then there is the stuff totally beyond my own horizons where I can't tell if it's too technical or too finnish, etc. So. what I have been doing is going down the list to make sure nobody tosses the astrophysics and cryptology articles, then I took some French under my wing, then nobody was doing Portuguese so....Please feel free to jump in. The key question is whether it would be easier to fix a given article or to start over. This is of course subjective but over a couple of iterations we have identified a lot stuff that is fine, other stuff not worth the headaches, or a whole lot more stuff somewhere in between, as with the articles above, where at least two editors appear to have machine translated museum catalogs or something possibly copyvio. And there are weirdnesses that often a sign of something wrong that someone made wronger trying to fix it. Anyway I have talked to DGG about some of these articles and hey if he is going to be at an editathon....if he potentially can enlist some editors at the editathon I thought I would share some of my bemusements. The Rodin piece is definitely worth an article but I am not sure I believe what this one says right now. Anyway, we have entire languages and fields of study that aren't being looked at much right now... we got Tang poets and Roman fortifications and WW2 missiles, origin of life, Chinese warlords, holocaust massacres in lithuania... need arabic, gujarati, chinese. Bulgarian and Portugese would also be very nice. Even if you only speak english you could still fish the Women in Red Articles out of there and that would help a bunch too. Elinruby (talk) 09:10, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Elinruby: Unfortunately i was too much involved in other thing at the museum editathon to work on any of this. I still would like to, and I will be going back there in a few weeks. There's a NYC chapter meeting Wednesday, and I will mention the project if there's time.

However , I do not think it essential to decide whether or not to keep these translated articles. The purpose of the verification is to see if the basic facts are correctly translated, and whether the article is either OK as is, or worth working on further. Some of the participants in this project are of the opinion that all machine translations are hopelessly unreliable, and I think they're wrong . Certainly they are almost always in need of some degree of rewriting (more or less, depending on the language=-the Scandinavian ones are usually very close, and the ones from the languages of India very rough indeed.) A few disastrous problems in meaning have been demonstrated, so they all do do need checking. The problems are not just linguistic but cultural--not knowing the corresponding titles or special meanings in other countries. An interesting example is the very different meaning someone in the US, Russia, or even England is likely to think of first for the term "Civil War"--or what someone in a particular country thinks is meant by "War of Independence", (Such problems turn up not only in machine translation, but manual translation by those whose knowledge of one of the two languages is inadequate , and even original writing by someone with inadequate command of English--or indeed even a native speaker working a a field where they do not know the specialist terminology. Our Wikipedia has had probably hundreds of thousands of such articles submitted, and probably a few thousand serious problems remain. Very few articles here have been meticulously checked against the sources by someone expert in the field, and this is why we say that nobody should use WP for serious research.

But those who are expert in both languages--a few of them quite specifically professional translators--want to use their professional standards , just as many of us want to have perfect English grammar in articles, or perfectly formatted citations. But WP is the encyclopedia written by amateurs, not experts. We want to be as good as we reasonably can, but the standard is not academic perfection.

the usual errors in machine translation can be dealt with by amateurs and the level of background knowledge necessary for this depends on the subject. I can translate basic geographical articles from a number of languages, but I don't think there's any for which I would be capable of doing justice to a complex philosophical or historical article. We do need our language experts, but not for everything. Anyone working with machine translations of, say, the Spanish WP, knows the likely errors in tense and gender--but also should know the somewhat lower standards of notability and citation in that WP, and the vagueness of some articles written there by those who may know the language, but not the subject. Even a WP of the very highest standards, such as the deWP, which I think in general quite superior to ours', uses general references in cases where we would insist on specifics (and in many instances I think they it is they who are right about that, not the enWP, but still we must add referencing to satisfy our own expectations, whatever we think of them.)

There's a sort of panic when people here come upon a set of particularly weak or problematic articles, leading to an over-hasty decision to delete all of them, such as attempt at the WP:AN to delete one particular editor's very brief but almost always accurate one or two sentence stubs about clearly notable scientists. The people advocating mass deletion can easily find a few conspicuously awful problems, but they're usually just a few % (there have been mass deletions that have been fully justified, such as a large group of articles on slime molds using obsolete taxonomy where most would have to be rewritten from scratch, or a group of geographical stubs using a incorrect procedure for getting material from a census. There's a saying here, better no article at all than a bad one. This is rational, if "bad" is used to mean awful in one sense or another. It is not rational if "bad" is used to mean inadequate. This is a place where inadequate article get fixed slowly over time. There are a great many editors here who want to improve a small part of an article , but not write an entire article. And an inadequate article on a place or non-living person can still give enough identification to help the user who knows nothing at all. DGG ( talk ) 13:25, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

@DGG: it's ok, I knew you might and the sorting process was actually somewhat helpful in itself. And Pam came by to look at a few for me so overall it was a win. I do have some specific questions about that list if you have a moment. But I'll mention first that yes, I agree with you, but nonetheless if wp is getting crap articles because a software tool allows someone to make them faster than they can be fixed, it might be an idea to improve the process so the articles need less fixing whether they come fast or slow. I do have some thoughts about that since I have been doing some of that cleaning for a long time, but for now I am just trying to get some articles adopted before we blow up the others and I start asking you what I need to do to get rid of X2. So, in the goal of getting some articles adopted let me come back to that lost for a moment. I made some posts on the talk page last night and would especially like to know what you think of the one about Tunis. I would also like to know what you suggest about the Olympic athletes and the 18th century mathematicians? Thanks for all you do. Elinruby (talk) 13:52, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

X2 was in my opinion a major error, and what we need to do is not delete the articles, but delete X2, and reject the approach to WP on which X2 is based. Given that we're stuck with it, as we are with all of our over-hasty ill-informed decisions based on inadequate evidence. There will be more--our manner of decision making is subject to such decisions unless they are immediately and vigorously opposed, and get widespread attention. Whether every verifiable Olympic athlete should be notable is an open question, but WP at this time treats them as such. If the original language source or the translation appears to verify, the article must be kept. The articles on 18th century mathematicians follow the same rules as later ones: if they held a major university appointment, or had notable disciples, or published important works, or have something named after them, they will meet WP:PROF.

Unfortunately, there are at least two other situations where I need to do similar rescue: the attempt at WP:AN to remove all the 1000 or so stubs by a particular contributor on the basis that 1% of them are inaccurate, and the attempt to delete G13 without looking at the drafts to see whether any are salvageable or even ready for mainspace. I feel overwhelmed to the extent that I am almost unable to work on any of them, and need to force myself to work here at all. DGG ( talk ) 17:06, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

I hear you I hear you Elinruby (talk) 03:37, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Userspace drafts

Hi there, DGG. I understand that you feel strongly that "We can and should delete drafts when there is no hope of an article", but you do realize that the outcome of last year's WP:CONSENSUS, reflected in WP:STALE, is something different, right? That WP:GNG do not apply in user- and draft- space and that neglect of a draft wasn't grounds for deletion, etc.... Do you think it might be better to change the policy, rather than going around it? Because that's how the SD requests look to me. I'm not being tendentious, either; just trying to have good faith dialogue. Newimpartial (talk) 06:07, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

I do not mention the GNG in these arguments; I agree it does not apply outside article space, and I have in fact argued that it should not apply. As for speedy, I have never listed a speedy for a draft or users space except for the reasons that are appropriate there, which include G11. It is true I think we should use G11 much more energetically. I remind you that while the RfCs said that G13 does not apply except in draft space, they did say that "For userspace drafts where notability is unlikely to be achieved, consensus is that they should not be kept indefinitely. However, the community did not arrive at a specified time duration." and, for userspace drafts, " They can be deleted, but it should be done on grounds different than solely the age of the draft or the period the draft has not been edited." Therefore, the outcome for individual items is subject to consensus at the MfD. That's always been the case for deletion process. The two fundamental principles involved are: WP is an encyclopedia , and IAR.

Simultaneous, I very strong disapprove of the use of G13 for improvable drafts, and most especially for drafts that are already good enough for article space but where inappropriately declined. We need to find a workable system for proper notification and working on them.It and everything else about AfC would be helped by clearing out the hopeless. DGG ( talk ) 06:20, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

OK; I can see where you're coming from. And I agree that MfD is the place to adjudicate these deletion requests. But that is why I have the problem I do with speedy G11s - it seems to me that many of them aren't G11 at all, but just wimpy early drafts; in cases where they really are WP:SPAM I have no problem seeing them deleted by consensus. But in my deletion review, you say that User:BucaFan3/Shy Kidx "would be a good Speedy anywhere" - but I don't see how it is WP:SPAM at all. It's just a baby article lol. Newimpartial (talk) 06:29, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

On a related note, can I just say that it is difficult for me to find you so insightful here <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Maureen_Seaton>, and not just because you agree with me :), but so cavalier about userspace deletion here <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2017_May_28>. I get whiplash. lol. Newimpartial (talk) 13:16, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

I have a high regard for keeping anything that might be a promising article, and a low tolerance for anything that's going to remain useless. Obviously, views on what falls into these categories will differ. G11 is a criterion which is not as obvious as it claims to be, but it's our best defense against those who would debase the encyclopedia. My priorities vary with time as our needs differ. Ten years ago it was critical to support broad inclusiveness, now to resist promotionalism. But I shall look again at the del rev. DGG ( talk ) 16:14, 28 May 2017 (UTC) and I did. your argument did have some merit. DGG ( talk ) 17:14, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

More generally, as with most guidelines and policies in WP, the meaning of the deletion criteria depends a great deal on how they are interpreted. The interpretation is done by the accumulated and sometimes changing consensus on the talk pages of the noticeboards and policy/guideline pages, and by the very variable decisions at individual instances. The result is sometimes a considerable gap between the formal wording and the effectual applications of it. Some things are interpreted very narrowly, some very broadly; some very strictly, and some very permissively.. Individual people's views differ, and the consensus is affect by which individuals show up at a given argument. Every one of us who participates in these arguments has a different view of it. That said, there are some constants: the clearest example is that BLP tends to be interpreted strictly and expansively (more broadly than I really think justified); copyvio also strictly (and again more broadly than I think necessary--we are much less permissive than US Law about fair use); most speedy criteria somewhat more broadly than they are written; WP:V is often disregarded unless someone protests,

The result, of course, is an encyclopedia full of inconsistencies, with consequent difficult for new users in figuring out just what is permitted. But this is inherent in the underlying working method of the encyclopedia -- we make our own rules, we make what exceptions we please, and there is no person or group that who can definitively settle disputes about content. The only reason this works is because of mutual tolerance, including the rule that admins must follow the consensus interpretation whether or not they like it. There is consequently a strong feeling against individuals who try too insistently to make a point overemphasizing any one thing--they disturb what little equilibrium we have. Working with deletion processes involves tolerating an especially large amount of ambiguity and stupid decisions. Those who want a more predictable environment, would do better to work on vandalism or copyvio. DGG ( talk ) 16:53, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

This discussion has been very cordial. Do you have any thoughts about my new ANI? Newimpartial (talk) 17:35, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Commented,. I think at this you will learn more by just watching some AFD discussion than by asking questions. watching is safe, but watch a good while before you start to comment there. The best course for you at the moment, however, is just to do something else for a while, like write or improve some articles. DGG ( talk ) 18:17, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I will be back editing and writing draft articles forthwith, but I won't put any new articles into userspace until I feel that I can stop looking over my shoulder for deletionists. You know, I lurked at MfD for about a week, on and off, without commenting, and really felt that I grasped the letter of the policies. Now I understand the letter plays into my own idiosyncrasies, and isn't the main thing that counts. But my reason for lurking in the first place? Fear of deletion lol. Newimpartial (talk) 18:26, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	Thanks for reviewing my newly created article and encouraging a new editor like me. Regards Yavarai (talk) 10:52, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

CVs

What is the preferred format to reference CVs? I would think external link rather than in line citation, but thought I would ask. Article in question is Robert R. Caldwell. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:50, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

I usually add both. It's both a RS for most purposes, and a proper external link. I also of course add an EL to their web page at the university, but often the CB is not linked from there. I consider the formal CV a much more authoritative source than the university website. The formal DV id sn officisal document, and people get hired on the basis of it. In 11 years here there has only been one case of a false (or even misleading) cv for an actual academic. (politicians are another matter). For the university website, department PR staff sometimes have a role in it. DGG ( talk ) 04:27, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

Thanks for reviewing my article about Sukhdev Rajbhar. Regards Yavarai (talk) 10:06, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

A quick note on patrolling

Hello! I saw your post here wishing that some kind of keyword sorting might be imposed upon unpatrolled pages to help us patrol pages in our realm of interest. I just wanted to leave a quick note here in case you missed the recent conversation at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Noticeboard where someone pointed out that you can use User:AlexNewArtBot to do exactly that. For example, here are the search results for the New Jersey keyword search. It'd be nice if this functionality was integrated into the NewPagesFeed interface, but in the meantime it definitely helps me to be more efficient with patrolling. Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 19:51, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

yes,I'm aware of that, and a simplified version oft he bot was more or less what I have in mind. . Unfortunately, very few workgroups aare actually active, and fewer actually use i; locating the results within the workgroups is not very efficient for anyone else, as most of us interested in deletion process have altogether too many workgroups to follow.. The bot needs to be used to provide a more systematic approach,with the material in one place.

What I had in mind was either a collection of pages covering all, after the model of categorized AfD discussions, the articles , using the bot , or simply using the bot to add subject keywords to the new article list. I'll comment further. I apologize for not having had the time yesterday--but I've also found that sometimes just suggesting an idea and letting others develop it to be a very effective way of getting interest. DGG ( talk ) 00:12, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Do you think a tool that did something like this would be of any practical use? I haven't done any serious NPP myself for about a decade, and it was pretty rare back then for pages to hang around unreviewed long enough for someone to categorize them. —Cryptic 01:03, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

comment needed DGG ( talk ) 04:08, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

The New Page Patrol backlog

Your speech here was a masterpiece. A shame it was only on a user's talk page. Relax for 15 minutes and read WP:KNPP. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:16, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I will copy over a revised version somewhere. I think of it as a rough draft, and I was very tired when I did it. I has not followed the previous ANI stuff.

A cookie for you!

Thank you for editing with Black Lunch Table at Wiki Loves Pride! Heathart (talk) 02:35, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-06

Integrated Filters

• The team is moving full speed ahead on a follow-up project to the New Filters for Edit Review beta dubbed "Integrated Filters." The name refers to the fact that we are integrating the Recent Changes tools that currently remain in the old user interface (like Namespace and Tag filters), along with some tools and capabilities from Watchlist and elsewhere, into the new Recent Changes interface.
• You can get an overview of the Integrated Filters projects, and the general release strategy, on the description page of the project Phabricator board. Among the more interesting new capabilities:
  • Category filters: We'll be adding the ability to filter by category. This is a little tricky, since wiki categories often work in a somewhat counter-intuitive way, with the broadest categories returning the fewest results—because categories like "Science" or "Art" tend to contain not articles but other categories. So we're exploring solutions where a category search will crawl at least a layer or two down the category treat to, hopefully, bring back more useful results. [3]
  • User filters: We're adding the ability to filter by any username, similar to what's available already on the the User Contributions page. [4]

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• It is now possible to save your favorite filters sets by using bookmarks. [5]
• It is possible to filter only the last edits done on a page on the Recent Changes page. [6]

• A "Watchlisted pages" filter group now lets reviewers use Recent Changes, and all its tools, to patrol changes to pages they've Watchlisted. If you have any feedback about how useful this is nor isn't—especially given that we plan to add the new filtering interface to the Watchlist page — let us know.

08:41, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Opinion...

...

My caution about bands, record labels, fan pages, music, celebrity spin-offs, etc. can be summed up in this diff which resulted in a bit of a rollback'' but it's mainstream thinking nonetheless. ^{Atsme📞📧} 15:46, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I try to not get involved in fan areas. WP has always been very intensive in a few fields, and I think it best to leave them alone, on the basis that others may think the stuff I am interested in to be just as intrinsically unimportant. DGG ( talk ) 17:18, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I am deeply disturbed by your apparent admission of moral cowardice, DGG. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:40, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

If you mean I do not go around here looking for fights, I admit the charge. If you mean that I am prepared to admit that others' views on importance or anything else may be valid although different from my own, I think any other attitude arrogant. If you mean that I do not seek to eliminate articles on let's say wrestling or tv serial episodes or individual pop songs because I do not like the genre, I think my view coincides with the principles of WP. DGG ( talk ) 18:00, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Indian companies

I do not see Indian companies as likely to be non-notable. I do see them as relatively difficult to prove notability by the standards we use, because I consider articles on companies in Indian newspapers as very likely to be PR. I also see most articles on American companies or organizations of any sort in most newspapers as likely to be PR, and I have so argued when relevant. There are more Indian companies with promotional articles being submitted these days, in part because more American companies have learned not to try for articles here. But , as you observe, there are a great many that got into WP in earlier years, and we have not yet removed all of them.

In both cases, I judge by the content. If several articles repeat the same words, they're almost certainly copying it from the press release. If they interview the CEO, and let him say whatever he chooses about the origin and accomplishments of the company, they're an organ for his PR. If they use terms of praise without analysis, they're PR. If the overemphasize minor accomplishments, they're PR. NGOs and similar organizations are even worse in general, because they use cheaper and therefore less skilled press relations people.

But this is irrelevant in this instance. I did not go back to the original sources here, because I was not trying to evaluate the article and decide what I thought about it. I was evaluating the discussion, which is all I'm supposed to do. Unless the discussion looks really weird, I assume the arguments are made in good faith. (DGG)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	for the work and contribution. Light2021 (talk) 12:39, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

book chapters and notability

Based on my career talking to academics, publishers, and specialist librarians in all fields of knowledge, such chapters are in general not the equivalent, even in the humanities-- except in a few very specialized fields, or if the chapter is in something really important, and I consequently left one in. But I was exceptionally conservative in removing material--normally we do not even include any journal articles for people in fields where the notability and the academic advancement is primarily by published books, and even in the fields where articles are the most important forms of presentation we normally include only the two or three most cited--and there are some editors here who challenge even that. DGG

Handling socks

Hello DGG. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Colette Mazzucelli, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: Not unambiguously promotional. Thank you. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:20, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare , you are aware that almost all of these two articles were written by one or more now-banned undeclared paid editors and their multiple socks? DGG ( talk ) 05:22, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) As Colette Mazzucelli's article has been around since 2005, edited incrementally over the years, perhaps it should be reverted to the version of 22 March 2016 before the banned editor's major contributions, and their contributions hidden? PamD 07:21, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

(talk page watcher)On the other hand, perhaps the edit history of Oren Alexander suggests that perhaps there's another sockpuppet/paid editor to add to the list (it was created by an editor who has made no other edits before or since)? PamD 07:26, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

If that's the case, they should be tagged with G5. But when I reviewed them, I disagreed that they were so promotional as to be unsalvageable. GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:56, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) How would that work, GorillaWarfare? Criterion G5 is absolutely specific that "To qualify, the edit or article must have been made while the user was actually banned or blocked". We're just shooting ourselves in the foot here. We know that undeclared paid editing sockpuppet rings exist and that they need to be stopped, yet we can't organise ourselves enough to have any procedure for dealing with them. What's the way forward? Because I think it's time to look for one. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:05, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

And G11 is absolutely specific that it applies to pages that are "exclusively promotional and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to conform with Wikipedia:NOTFORPROMOTION". Perhaps you should start a discussion to amend the CSD criteria, if you think articles like these should qualify? Otherwise take them to AfD. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:42, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I agree with GorillaWarfare: I always thought that G11 was about the article's content, not who created it. {{db-g11}} does say in its current form. Adam9007 (talk) 17:50, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, actually so do I – G11 does indeed say those things. But I don't see how G5 could be any more likely to be accepted. Do you? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:24, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I think Doc James has discussed in the past (at some page I lurk at) trying to clarify G5. Currently it is very narrowly construed. For now, I think the best option is simply to keep pointing out in AfDs that WP:N has two components, and that promotion is a valid reason to delete something per WP:NOT, WP:DEL4, and per WP:DEL14. As someone who is a regular at the NPP conversations, I do think the Sheryl Nields AfD, and the controversy around Marcomgirl in general did a lot to raise the awareness of the issue of promotional editing even within a group that isn't keen on promotionalism to begin with. I continue to think the best way forward at this point is through the AfD process: it is sometimes flawed, but it is a way we can achieve a practical consensus over hundreds of cases rather than a drawn out RfC. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:37, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: No, I suggested it just based off of what DGG said above. I didn't look at the editors involved. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:12, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

just reminding people that "once an article is nominated for CSD, it can be deleted under any applicable criterion" DGG ( talk ) 21:19, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

OK. We're still just floundering round in circles here without a proper criterion or policy for dealing with TOU violations. Doc James has reverted to an earlier version of this particular page, as PamD suggested above. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:22, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

• Comment So the question how do we interpret "while the user was actually banned or blocked" in the G5 criteria? As I have said previously in this case User:Susana Hodge is not the master it is just the oldest account we have found to date. Just look at their first edit. They will have prior blocked accounts and just because we only get CU data for the last 3 months does not mean they do not exist. We can come to obvious conclusion and for these types of cases I occasionally do. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:49, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

The way forward is to hold to the principles, not to the often contradictory guidelines that have developed around them. To start with, WP is an encyclopedia in contrast to a medium for advocacy. The two are incompatible. The best practical approach to this is what I've been saying explicitly at AfDs, and what I've actually been doing for the last ten years: either immediately rewrite the article or delete it. Anyone who argues that an article can be fixed, needs to prove it by fixing it, not just by hoping somebody will eventually.

G11 is necessarily somewhat subjective, and two experienced people (such as GW and myself) can still differ in whether an article falls under it. That's why no admins delete G11 single-handed. I make 5% errors, let's say for argument's sake even 10% on the more difficult cases; let's say another more conservative admin makes 2%. Having both of us do it, gives 0.2%, 1 in 500 , which is an error rate as good as we can hope for.

But since it is to some extent subjective, we have to take into account everything that affects how we look on it, and that does include the purpose of writing, which can often be implied by who it is who has worked on it. I think it is a reasonable assumption that articles by paid editors will almost always be promotional , because that's what people pay for. (Not 100% of the time, so some will need a discussion.) I also think it a reasonable assumption that people caught socking will have been socking earlier, and likely to have been banned for it, even if we haven't spotted it. More generally, I think that the terms of use means that articles by undeclared paid editors have no justification for being in WP. In removing them, we should use all applicable processes (fairly and properly and transparently and with checks from those who disagree, as always; we can interpret, we shouldn't distort). DGG ( talk ) 21:19, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

AfC / Draft article copied into mainspace

Hallo David, Could you have a look at Joyce Stevens and Draft:Joyce Stevens? She seems clearly notable (Member of Order of Australia, subject of several articles and obits), and a lot of changes have been made since the draft was last rejected as "appears to read more like an advertisement " and as lacking sources.

The mainspace article appeared fully-formed today with edit summary "(Created new page entry for Joyce Stevens based on a draft made by another editor.) " That obviously isn't right - copying within Wikipedia without real acknowledgement to the editor who's done all the work. But I'm not sure what the protocol is when the copying is also bypassing the (horrible) AfC process. I hope you can do something to help! Thanks. (Incidentally, if the Submission Declined message of 28 June is from a template then the template needs to be fixed as it doesn't seem to make sense: "...should refer to a range of independent, reliable, published sources, not just to materials produced by the creator of the subject being discussed."??? If the subject being discussed is anything other than a fictional character, who's "the creator of the subject..."?) PamD 15:25, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

anyone can move a draft . Sometimes a move without using the AfCH process is necessary--I do it when the AfCH macro doesn't work, which for me is about half the time. But this was done by copypaste, which is almost never necessary, and we normally try to fix copypaste moves by redoing them properly. I will take care of that. For copying within WP we normally just correct the attribution; in this instance, doing the move properly will take care of that. She is clearly notable. The article does have a promotional done, but it seems to be based upon the tone of the tributes to her after her death, and seems fixable. I've revised the draft & moved it to mainspace.

the wording is the wording of the template. It obviously needs some adjustment. The AfC templates are in general terrible, but my efforts to try to get the fixed within the Afc process over the last few years have consistently failed--there has always been some excuse for not doing them. I will make another try at it. The real solution is to redo the entire AfC and NPP process, as Kudpung has been trying to do for several years. The problem is that it seems to require assistance from the WMF programmers, who have their own ideas about how we should do things. Some of the people involved have sometimes not been very willing to actually cooperate. At one point I was thinking of listing the AfC pages at MfD. In the past, before the RfC system was fully developed, that method was sometimes used effectively.

But for any system, we depend on the quality of the participants, & the quality of one of of the reviewers of this article is known to be a problem. I'm trying to deal with it without banning him from afc altogether.

and thanks for your further fix-up. As is obvious, I was trying to get this quickly to avoid confusion, but i see from the eds talk p. I wasn't quite quick enough. I left a comment there that I hope will be encouraging. DGG ( talk ) 22:54, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks - but you left your comment on my talk page accidentally, not her's! PamD 22:57, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

PamD, although it can't happen fast enough for me, I think we've achieved a lot (by Wikipedia standards) since I started the ball rolling in Esino a year ago. I am convinced that merging AfC and NPP is the way to go because with a few tweaks the Page Curation system software can easily do both tasks. This would be a 'soft' deprecation of AfC because the Drafts would appear as such in the feed and the AfC team would simply migrate to using a the NPP GUI. There are half a dozen other advantages that I won't go into here, although I have had to temporarily full protect the AfC user list again.

Due to the pressure I and now other editors have exerted recently, the WMF has now done volte-face on some of its ideology based arguments, now accepting a more pragmatic approach instead, which leads me to assume that when we ask for Curation to combine the relatively simple elements of the AfC helper script, the devs will probably do it. The only real resistance is from the AfC users who have no better argument than simply wanting to keep their independence. Once we have the results of the upcoming ACtrial, we'll know more because it directly affects both systems of new article quality control. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:24, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I haven't been involved in AfC for ages now (aside from just bouncing stuff in their direction when a creator gets upset that their company / band / friend / autobiography was deleted) - are there really individual fiefdoms? I've never been comfortable with the whole idea of AfC as a project in the first place, it's a process that complements NPP as one whole workflow for new topics (or if it doesn't, it should). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:21, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Articles about academics

In section '"Articles" about academics' in Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not you wrote an elaborated treatise on WP:NPROF. IMO it is quite useful. Why don't you put it in an essay? Staszek Lem (talk) 18:41, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I will work on it -- it needs some supplementation. DGG ( talk ) 23:34, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Touching base

Hi DGG: Just letting you know, despite some disagreements we have in AfD discussions, I never take matters personally, and view AfD discussion simply as what they are, a forum for debate about Wikipedia articles. My stance is typically to be as objective and fair as possible, to ensure the highest standards of accuracy. In part, this is a reason why I provide sources in AfD discussions, rather than simply stating "keep - meets gng" or "delete - fails N", etc. This serves to provide an accurate overview regarding a topic's potential notability, or lack thereof. Ultimately, I base my commentary at AfD upon research and facts, avoiding conjecture and subjective rationales. When I walk away from a debate, and when a discussion is eventually closed, I move on, with no hard feelings whatsoever at any time. I wanted to let you know this because the mode of communicating on Wikipedia via typing can be impersonal, whereby one's intentions are not always easy to express or convey.

After seeing you at AfD for some time now, I understand your stance about some company articles, that some of them are not needed in the encyclopedia. I have no problem with your stance, even though I don't always agree with it, but this is relative to each individual article for me, rather than as a macro-level philosophy. In other words, I assess each topic individually, per the merits of that particular topic relative to notability, whether or not an article is promotional, and if so, to what degree (e.g. fixable or a WP:G11 situation), etc. I am also aware that some news sources are derived from press releases, just so you know. You'd be surprised at how many news articles from my searches that I don't provide in AfD discussions, per obvious PR ties. I find myself continuously skipping over articles from internet searches that are not appropriate to establish notability. Sometimes, one has to go through ten or more Google search pages to find one or two usable sources. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:30, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Small differences (or even fairly large differences) in the notability standard do not greatly harm the basic usefulness and values of the encyclopedia. Almost any general position on notability can be justified. Most disputed articles can be reasonably argued in either direction, and the actual question is which articles are worth defending--and which are most in need of removing.

But with respect to promotionalism, any compromise here will tend to destroy not just the usefulness but the basic values of the encyclopedia; if we become a vehicle of promotional content we have no purpose--Google does it better. And there's no reason volunteers would be interested in doing for free what they might get paid for. The essential group of articles that should not be improved or defended are those that are of a basically promotional purpose--especially those likely to have been written by undeclared paid editors. The people who write such articles should if misguided volunteers be educated and if paid, removed from WP. The only possible exception is if an article is so essential that the encyclopedia would be defective without it, and if it would be much easier to rewrite than to start over. Even here I am undecided whether it would be always best to first delete the history and then eventually rewrite.

To the extent your work--however skillful-- is helping such articles remain, you are acting against the principles of WP. Your view undoubtedly differs, but I'm using my priviledge on my own talk p. to close the topic here. We've both plenty of opportunities to say it elsewhere, and neither of us is shy about using them. DGG ( talk ) 03:55, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. In closing, I'll just say that what is considered promotional is in the eye of the beholder. As an editor and WP:COMPANIES member, I pay close attention to maintaining neutral pov and prose when contributing to company-related articles. I'm definitely not here to promote anything. Regards, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 04:14, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

the actual last post on this thread: you are not editing for promotional purposes, but you are helping the people who are accomplish their goals of getting an article in wp. Even if the article at the end is not promotional, you are helping people editing against the terms of use not get their article deleted. And you are helping companies get an article who would not otherwise be noticed here. I consider such editing a danger to the encyclopedia, and I will try to diminish the effects when I can. DGG ( talk ) 14:50, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

MBE

Not trying to be a jerk, but doesn't an MBE satisfy WP:ANYBIO criterion #1? ☆ Bri (talk) 03:58, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

While MBEs are handed out as long-service awards to middle ranking civil servants, No. For other recipients like Olympic medallists, the MBE is a consequence of being notable rather than the cause of their notability. Cabayi (talk) 05:37, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

in more detail, I think we always recognize the rank of CBE (Commander) -- and higher-- as notable; there are according to Order of the British Empire only 6980 Commandeers. The next lower, the OBE (Officer) has 858 appointments each year; the MBE (Member) 1484 per year. MBE , at the bottom, we include in the article, but it doesn't contribute much to notability; OBE contributes to notability but doesn't amount to presumptive notability. DGG ( talk ) 09:17, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Greetings in Montreal

Hi DGG, thanks for coming to chat after the Undisclosed Paid Editing meetup yesterday. The person who had been sitting next to me was, I think, User:Rachel Helps (BYU). We didn't have our badges on so I didn't realize it was you. I've always admired your perspectives and I hope to see you again at the conference. Take care, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 13:45, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

by that time of day, many of us didn't. I'll be here all the way to the end--and if you don't see me otherwise, look for me at lunch. Today I'm also clear the end of the afternoon. DGG ( talk ) 14:25, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

I was there but I left early. I have circular glasses if that helps. It was an interesting discussion! Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 02:53, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Sorting by size of edit - not exactly, but maybe close enough?

In one of our many hallway discussions, you mentioned the desire to see edits sorted by size of edits. While you have copied the edit history into a spreadsheet to do this sort, that's pretty cumbersome. I wondered if the revision history statistics were sortable and it turns out they are. This isn't exactly what you wanted because it gives you the total added bytes by user as opposed to by individual edit but it might be close enough for you purposes.

Example: https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-articleinfo/?article=Eugene_Gu&project=en.wikipedia.org

The link doesn't seem to save the sorting but if you go down to the top editor section you can sort on "added (bytes)"--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:57, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it's a start. Thanks for the help. (Sorting in an external spreadsheet is for anything substantial a very cumbersome solution, it is a backup for missing features in many places, on and off WP.) DGG ( talk ) 05:47, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

A goat for you!

Thank you for looking out for people, not the software.

Bearian (talk) 16:34, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Seconded; we need more leaders like you who prioritize community, healthy and functional process, and integrity. Here's a basket of bedding for your new goat. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:47, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Essay on Userpage

I like your essay, but noticed one point about people not declining based on lack of inline citations. In the last 6 months there have been over 700 such AfC declines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:AfC_submissions_declined_as_needing_footnotes Can we eliminate that as a reason to decline? I believe AfC is far too tough to pass, forcing the new editor with a notable topic to fully develop and format it, when they are a newbie without the skills and maybe not the interest. Legacypac (talk) 05:49, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

all or almost all of them are BLPs, which really do need them to survive. It is our policy that they must be supplied. I can understand using it as a reason for these, if the only source is a very general one, or if most of the article seems to be unsourced entirely. Many of the ones where it is used wrongly are older ones--the list includes those where it was ever used as a reason to decline, not just the ones where it is latest reason. , Checking a few, most of them should just be given another reason, some should be removed entirely, and a very few accepted to mainspace. or removed entirely. I don't think we should remove the reason, but we should modify the wording to specify it applies to biBLPs only. Has anyone figured out where the text for the template is stored? It used to be hard-coded. DGG ( talk ) 21:12, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Here, I believe. jcc (tea and biscuits) 17:31, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

I shall be proposing an umber of changes, some to reduce hostile wording, a few to align with actual policy, and one additional category: nn-spam. DGG ( talk ) 20:44, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Good. Quite a few pages come through as Blank. I consider them test edits and nominate them for deletion G2. The Blank and Test reasons should reflect the idea they are tests and will be deleted. Shorter and less redundant wording would be great too. Legacypac (talk) 20:51, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

I suppose you mean removing redundant wording? Then we're talking about a complete rewrite almost from scratch. I can do that, but it might be better to fix a few obvious problems first. DGG ( talk ) 21:44, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

At least on the ones you are rewording. I'll look into these too. Legacypac (talk) 22:21, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Didn't realize you were still around good to see a username I recognize still after my self imposed wiki break.

Whispering 22:02, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

When does "affiliated" morph into "paid"?

Hi DGG. I've received no answer to my query to this user about potential paid editing on behalf of BrandTotal. However, she later stated at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dark marketing, that she is "affiliated" with the company in question. My strong impression from the nature of the edits and her previous usernames is that she is not simply "affiliated" but an employee of the company and may well work in the marketing department. The slick jargon in the article in its original form (especially the "Origins" section) is pure PR-speak. Before I pursue this with her, and as a question in general, if she were indeed an employee holding that position, does it count as "paid editing"? Judging from the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Paid-contribution disclosure, it seems a bit of a grey area. The article may well be deleted in which case I won't bother pursuing it, but it would be useful to know for the future. Paging also Doc James. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 15:39, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

User:Voceditenore If one's job at a company is marketing than ones work on WP with respect to that company is paid editing. I will block those in the marketing departments of companies who do not disclose based on the TOU. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:42, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Wow! That's fast service, Doc. Thanks. I'll keep that in mind for future encounters and for this case if the article is kept (unlikely) or moved back into draft space (possible). Best, Voceditenore (talk) 15:47, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I consider that it is also paid editing if it is part of a person's job, or assigned to a person as part of their employment, regardless of what the position is called; but with someone in the marketing dept it will always be assumed to be that person's job. DGG ( talk ) 23:52, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Question about references

Hi, DGG - with regards to a list of monuments and memorials, I have a few questions:

1. Statues: how does one verify whether or not a statue was created in honor of someone for a single notable event, or for their life's history or for service to their country, etc.? I realize the plaques should provide details of the memoriam but what if there's just a name? Is there a way to look up the dedication and if so, what references would one look up? Example: A statue of Sam Houston in the Statutory Hall in Austin, TX. The memorial honoring his birthplace says noted soldier and statesman, so would it be appropriate to use that memorial in an article titled Monuments and Memorials of the Battle of San Jacinto?
2. Naval ships: when a ship is christened and named in honor of a notable person, is there a reference to look up the reason the ship was named in that person's honor - such as a heroic deed, or a long career, etc.?
3. If a plaque, statue, national park, battleship, street, etc. is named after a notable person, shouldn't that memorial only be included in whatever WP list corresponds to the honor? For example, a memorial was constructed and named in honor of an Admiral who served courageously for 45 years in the US Navy. That memorial would properly be included in List of US Navy Admirals. But what if he also served 4 years in the Foreign Legion and no memorial was created in honor of his service there. Should that same memorial be included in Lists of Monuments and Memorials of the French Foreign Legion?
4. What if there is no plaque or other identifying feature on a statue that defines the honor and gives only the person's name - is there a way to look up why the statue memorialized him?
5. Would it be considered WP:OR to include a statue in a list article for a specific cause without verifying the honor was actually for that cause?
6. Should the statues, ships, memorials, monuments, etc. be cited to a RS to verify that it belongs in the respective list?

Thanks in advance, ^{Atsme📞📧} 05:07, 5 October 2017 (UTC) to respond

You were right

Your comments regarding paid editing are quite interesting - especially since I am applying for a WMF grant to fund a Wikimedian in Residence at Pitt. On the project grant page, an editor told me that I was asking for funding so that I would be be a 'paid' editor. I am still trying to figure out this point of view. I can see that creating content related to the University may be considered paid editing, but is creating content on user pages, talk pages, template pages, category pages and topics unrelated to the University considered paid editing? Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 18:50, 5 October 2017 (UTC) Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 18:50, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

it's a special form of paid editing which we usually consider benign,and is exempt from the usual rules unless it's abused. It can be abused--for example, by making references only or predominantly to university sources for material which is not unique there. There is no reason not to declare it as if it were ordinary paid editing, on both the article talk p and on your user p. Doing so has no down side. DGG ( talk ) 19:00, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	Thanks for all your work as an admin and an ArbCom member. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ Talk 20:41, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Request on 19:32:53, 16 October 2017 for assistance on AfC submission...

...

But let me ask you, why do you "need" an article? The only reason a person would need an article is in order to promote themselves or their activities--and that sort of promotion is not permitted in WP; it s a violation of our basic policy WP:NOTADVERTISING. I see nothing in the existing draft to indicate that the person isa major government official whp would generally be considered appropriate for an article.

I must also alert you that there are people who write articles in what they claim to be a professional manner, but almost all of them do not follow our terms of use because they do not disclose their conflict of interest, and most of them are in reality incapable of writing an acceptable non-promotional article. Either reason alone would be sufficient cause for the articles they submit to be immediately deleted as soon as they can be identified--we delete dozens of such articles every day. If you use such a service you need to determine that actually follow our terms of use. Any service that claims special access or permission or administrator assistance is not following our rules, because no administrator or person with special permissions is permitted to use those facilities for paid work at WP. And as if this were not bad enough, be aware that some services have the despicable practice of accepting payment and writing the article, but will then challenge the article using another name, and ask additional payment for defending it. DGG ( talk ) 00:50, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Sonne der Gerechtigkeit

Sonne der Gerechtigkeit, sun of justice in our time. I had some hopes that you wanted to restore the article history of the other hymn, bringing back the 2005 beginning and the history, no? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:13, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Steve Collins (nutritionist)

Alas, 2017-11-10T15:20:45‎ Atlantic306‎ . . (deprod- not an uncontroversial deletion as was approved at AFC). Surprised/not surprised this made it out of AfC. ack, -- Dlohcierekim (talk) 16:57, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, you can't win 'em all. Hopefully any negative trends as far as reviewing (or reviewers) goes can be reversed before we start accepting real junk. Primefac (talk) 17:10, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

We will never get things 100% correct at AfC any more than we do at NPP or AfD. But certainly the error rate at AfC remains higher than elsewhere, and the only way to improve it means following up editors who consistently make wrong decisions there to remind them of the standards. I have actually received negative criticism for checking up on people's accepts and declines, but I think people who concentrate of checking up are necessary at all decision points--and that is in fact the primary reason I gave when asking to be an admin. (One thing that can help is a quick screening of drafts the first day they are entered to remove obvious copyvio and promotionalism before they get any further. I've started doing this for G11, and I see others are also, especially for G12.) DGG ( talk ) 17:57, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Hear, hear! (The page in question went the way of all good spam.) If there is a tool/method to help me screen drafts the same day as they are entered, I would enjoy using it. And screening is needed to assure quality. -- Dlohcierekim (talk) 18:03, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

DGG, to continue on from a thread in another location (and to ping off your "higher error rate" comment) - is your comment based on statistics or just "I see a lot of AFC-accepted pages at AFD"? It seems like everyone except me (who is the one tracking all of these stats) thinks that AFC has this huge error rate in acceptances, and I cannot figure out why. I haven't run the numbers, so I cannot comment on how accurate we are as a group. Primefac (talk) 18:18, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

I haven't tried to collect figures for many years now, because there is too much ambiguity in what to measure. There are 3 ways to define error-- a/ a decision which is reversed at a later stage, b/ a decision which is hopelessly wrong, and c/ a decision which I think should have been otherwise. I usually mean by error a mix of criteria b & c, thinking of c as violating the consensus, not just disagreeing with what I think the consensus ought to be. There are also Type I and Type II errors--in this context, I think of a type I error as an incorrect rejection of an article, Type II as an incorrect acceptance. Going by impressions, I consider the rate of errors at AfD to be between 5 and 10 % in each direction. At NPP, probably about 10% incorrect acceptance and 5% incorrect rejection, as Speedy is applied very conservatively; At AfC. I think there's about 5 to 10% incorrect acceptance, and about 10 to 20% incorrect declines, as the unfortunate practice has been to decline for trivial reasons. The prevailing type of error there is the opposite of NPP, because NPP besides being conservative, are systematically reviewed by an admin. But no, I do not have numbers.

The real problem is not the error rate, but the disagreement on whether to fix or delete promotional articles. Before paid editing became so conspicuous, I always tried to err on the side of fixing, and now I do just the opposite. Bad articles are less of a danger than paid editing, which corrupts the entire process of building an encyclopedia, and trying to decrease it is a greater priority. DGG ( talk ) 19:17, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daffodils English School, Sanjaynagar

I'm interested in your take on this deletion discussion. You stated when endorsing the 'Keep' at deletion review that "All comments except one were keep". I don't believe that is accurate, since neither Cordless Larry, nor Pburka – nor I for that matter – made comments that could possibly be interpreted as "keep". In any case, I thought that AfD was decided on the strength of the arguments, not the number of votes.

You also claimed that "all the arguments were sufficiently policy based", and yet every single keep vote was a variation on the theme "the school exists therefore it's notable" or "we always have kept secondary schools in the past, so we should keep this one". Are you aware that the February 2017 RfC specifically discredited both of those arguments? In addition, the keep arguments were based on an earlier version of WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES which is not even a guideline, let alone policy. Even being charitable, WP:NPOSSIBLE is a guideline, not policy. And yet the 'delete' arguments were firmly based on policy: "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article about it." and "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources ... Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability." The article was written by a serial adspammer using only the school's own website to create the content. Since then, there has been found nothing more than the entries for the school in a couple of directories and a two brief sentences in The Hindu noting their exam results one year. That is nowhere near enough third-party sourcing to base an article on.

If you feel able to, I'd be interested on how you feel you can refute (i) the strength of argument where policy disagrees with an essay; (ii) the results of an RfC; and (iii) the policy requirements that all articles must be based on reliable, published secondary sources. --RexxS (talk) 18:31, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

(1)The effective policies and guidelines are the way we agree to interpret them, not what is written. What is written is not systematic, and there are many contradictions. Given these, and given also the differences in how people interpret, at any AfD except the most obvious it is possible to construct a decent argument in any direction. I think people generally make a global opinion on whether WP should or should not have the article, and then look for the appropriate arguments.

(2) The RfC, as I explained, did not say what you assert it said. It said there was no consensus to change the practice of keeping school articles. It also said there was no consensus that commonoutcomes was a sufficient argument. I do not know of any way to really harmonize these two conclusions, so confusion about them is not just understandable but inevitable.

(3) My view that we should continue the practice of keeping articles on secondary schools articles is simply an empirical compromise with not keeping primary school articles. It needs no other defense than being a workable way of avoiding spending most of our AfD energy on the the disagreements. The goal is to build an encyclopedia, and sometimes that means not focussing on issues that we cannot settle. The secondary reason is that some degree of consistency is a virtue, and back when I first came here and we did debate every primary and secondary school, the results were not much better than random. You will notice I am not arguing that either primary or secondary schools do or do not meet the standard of GNG--back when I did, the argument was that if we had sufficient access to local sources, we could show notability, but that the effort in obtaining them was not worth it in either case.

(4)It comes down to a choice--either accept the compromise or debate not just every secondary school in the world, but every primary school in the world also.

Further discussion should go elsewhere. But I don't really see the point of it--we are both going to repeat what what we have already said. We are not going to convince each other, and anyone coming to this question for the first time already has available many full arguments in each direction. DGG ( talk ) 19:17, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

I was interested in what you've said here and also what I found on your userpage about counting !votes in AfD discussions. Taken together you seem to be arguing that (for example) this AfD should have been closed as "keep" because more people !voted keep citing policy arguments than those who !voted delete. Whilst I kind-of see the logic of this position, it doesn't seem to be one shared by the majority of people who close AfD discussions. And I don't know how it would work in practice: surely it is then just a popularity contest. On the other hand, I think this whole idea of "consensus" is problematic. The vast majority of people who edit do not !vote or engage in these debates, so any RfC or AfD is (obviously) going to be a fight between those who turn up. When those parties get into a rut on how to decide between the merits of keep/delete, I can't see how there can ever be consensus. Simply saying that the consensus is that people disagree doesn't seem to adequately address the problem - particularly when closers seem to apply the supposed consensus in different ways. JMWt (talk) 09:33, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, people can judge consensus in different ways--it is to some extent subjective. But the rule is to go by the consensus of the policy-based arguments, and that is almost always followed, though there is also some subjectivity in judging what is a sufficiently policy-based argument. There is no way in any system to avoid personal judgment in decisions, except by strict vote counting , which we do in only special situations--elections for arb com, decisions by arb com, for example. DGG ( talk ) 13:45, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Noteable Faculty and Biomedical Engineering Page JHU

DGG, I am a little confused. Can I add references to Nitish Thakor page for example, and is it ok for me to update with more references the JHU BME page? I am currently the Director of Biomedical Engineering and wanted to do for BME what Stanford Computer Science has done and Oxford Computer Science, both have wiki pages and are demonstrating very coherent easy ways to have undergrads and high schoolers just find them easily through Wikipedia.

I dont think I have added anything to date that is not accurate. It isn't our business in the Academy to speak about things we don't have published. Anyway I appreciate reading your notes about "Noteable faculty"; that was very helpful. My criteria which was in error was National Academy. I think essentially it is suggesting the Associate Professors and Full Professors will all likely be noteable because all of them in our department have H-indices that are very high and many publications. Thank-you in advance. Mim.cis (talk) 03:29, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

You do have an obvious conflict of interest; according to common sense you are not the best person to evaluate the appropriateness and balance of the content in the articles about your own organization. According to our rules in WP:COI, you may only make suggestions of the article talkpage, except for fixing obvious errors or updating. Adding the references for the plain facts of Thakor's career is the sort of thing you can do directly; adding references for judgements about him, do on the talk page. ( Be careful about adding content--we give only a brief description of the research and list only the 2 or 3 most cited papers. We regard Research Career Development Awards and the like as grants, not awards, and we do not include them; we also do not include alumni awards from his university. There's no need to pad the CV--Fellow IEEE is sufficient proof of notability.

As for the Department article, I started by restoring some refs to the Department article from earlier versions of the article) Since member National Academy is notable, I found the proper way to add some additional names, even though the articles have not yet been written. However, the history section is still a little heavy with internal detail. It could use some copyediting for compactness. I'll give it a try if I can. You might note the extreme plainness of the other articles you mention.

when you proceed to write articles on the other faculty, do it in Draft Space using the WP:Article Wizard, Make sure you declare your conflict of interest. And I strongly recommend that you do them very cautiously, one at a time, starting from the most notable, and seeing if you run into opposition before you start the nest one.. In judging citations, the key factor is not the h factor by itself-- person A with 50 papers each with 50 citations has h=50; so does person B with 20 papers with 200 citations and 30 with 50, but only person B is likely to be notable. I give you advice to the best of my ability about what is acceptable, but I cannot make final judgments. Anyone who wishes can bring an article deletion request at WP:AFD , and the community consensus makes the decision. Do not be surprised if some people oppose.

I hope this helps. DGG ( talk ) 13:34, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

hello

It appears that most long term administrators do not share the same views that you do on treating new editors contributions with the same respect that you mention on your other personal page.

I was interested if there are other administrators like you? If so, who? Thank you in advance. I appreciate all your time and all you do. How can i give you an award? Moscowamerican (talk) 05:44, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Appreciation

I don't think I have adequately conveyed my appreciation for your patient explanations of 'how things work' around here. I have learned so much from you. Thank you and Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 06:56, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Your new talk page

When I drove by your talk page today, it reminded me of Miami after Hurricane Andrew—I didn't recognize the neighborhood.

My Internet situation is such that I've considered length here at this talk page a feature, not a bug. How do you feel about a Best of DDG archive? — User:Neonorange (Phil) 00:26, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

you will find these in the topical archives sections listed at the top. DGG ( talk ) 00:31, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Can we turn it into a podcast?Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 00:47, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Hear! Hear! — User:Neonorange (Phil) 07:21, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

AfC decline template

Hi there, I was mentioning to primefac that I felt the current templates we use for declining submissions could be made more pithy. Seemingly people aren't reading them, or, more likely, ignoring them; and I feel if they were either trimmed up, or made more specific (pointing to SNGs, for example) it may help. Either way, primefac mentioned you also have an interest in this, so I figured I'd reach out to get your thoughts. Thanks in advance. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 04:40, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes indeed, thanks for reminding me. I write write at least a sample in the next week or two. Not reading, because I know that when I receive obvious boilerplate that seems to contain material not directly helpful, I stop reading. Also not understanding, because only someone who actually knows how we judge articles could understand the significance of the advice--and only someone with experience here could understand the pages being referred to. And, to be sure, ignoring -- sometimes they don't care in the least about what we require--but I am not sure any change in wording can help that part. . DGG ( talk ) 06:37, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi again, with the holidays behind us I had a quick moment to take a stab at a template rewrite. It's just boilerplate, and I'd like more specific ones so we can point them to respective SNGs, but wanted to get your feedback to see if you feel it's going in the right direction. Thanks in advance. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 23:00, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Read your essay

You certainly are a good teacher thank you for working on the essay you recommended to me on my talk page. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 00:44, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Did you know we actually have rules about this stuff? They apply to you, too!

In regards to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Made to Stick, did you even do WP:BEFORE? I don't think you did. I get the impression that you just spitball decisions on articles to be whatever you think it should be. You might've made some reference to WP:NBOOK in your nomination. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:08, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

I didn't list it for problems with notability, but promotionalism. I didn't refer to NBOOK because that's not the basis of my nomination. In fact, I think it most likely is notable. If I thought it wasn't I would have said so. I did enough WP:BEFORE to confirm the notability. I am fully aware that I can not discuss the notability of a book without looking at least for library holdings, which are quite high--and having seen that, I assume that there are reviews also.

As you must know by now, I currently care much more about promotionalism than notability. I rarely send to afd any more if notability is the only concern, unless it's really clear. I send promotionalism that doesn't fall under G11. There are enough people dealing with notability , and in any case I consider lack of notability a less critical issue.

I make mistakes. By my estimate, somewhere around 2% of my AfD nominations are errors. (as distinct from those where the consensus disagrees with me) Criticize me when I make the errors--I want to try to reduce my error rate to 1%, and I need the criticism to do that. But not when you just assume I make an error without looking at what I actually said. DGG ( talk ) 00:37, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Ok, so this is the crux of the disagreement. Deletion is not cleanup. I would love to just go around deleting articles I don't like. We have a bunch of articles about minor athletes and movies no one saw and the articles remain because the subjects are notable. So it must be nice to ignore WP:N. I don't think you made a case for WP:DEL4 and it's your job as nominator to make that case. So my charge isn't that you made a mistake, but that your beliefs about deletion are wrong, hence my utter contempt for you as an editor. You are one ARBCOM candidate I definitely regret supporting in the past. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:48, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Jesus, dude... I think you're getting a bit snippy with your response here... :-/ ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 01:03, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

that's OK; I take comments like this for recognition that I'm getting somewhere. DGG ( talk ) 02:42, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

'A bit snippy' ? It's downright PA. Boomerang for troutman. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:45, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

@Kudpung: How is it a personal attack? I have seen AfD noms like what DGG has done considered "bad faith." I'm pointing out that Wikipedia actually has agreed-upon criteria for deletion and DGG seems to think himself above mere community consensus. I agree with Aristotle's adage: He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander. Anyone who purports to enforce and define the law has to obey the law. Contempt for guidelines and policies indicates unfitness for leadership, in my opinion. Clearly, I am in the minority in my views, which is sad. Chris Troutman (talk) 03:51, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Most actual disagreements involving policy are not about what it is, but how to apply it. Sometimes the consensus is pretty stupid, but each of us has a their own view about what that applies to. NOT ADVOCACY is basic policy, but the dividing line between which promotional articles to fix, and which to remove, is a matter of judgment, with a very wide range of plausible views. I do not have contempt for those who take a different view here than I, tho I certainly continue to oppose them as opportunity offers, and I certainly intend my arguments to affect the general consensus on interpretation. WP would not be much harmed by disagreements on whereto draw the line about notability  ; it could be destroyed by being used for advertising.

I don't see what ArbCom has to do with it; it is rarely concerned even indirectly with what articles get kept or deleted; there have been a few arb cases about deletion behavior, but they were before my time on the committee. If, hypothetically, there were a supreme board to decide what articles were kept, then people would appropriately vote for the members based on what they thought about deletion-related questions. Whether I'm an arb adds no weight to my !votes at AfD, and I don't see that it discourages people from disagreeing with them. It would be more relevant to ask my views about what constitutes a personal attack, for that arb com does have jurisdiction over.

If I had deleted the article as G11 single-handed without a second admin's confirmation, you might have at least an excuse for a question about my general judgment. But this is just a nomination for a discussion. As I tell beginners, if your view is considered right by the community, the article will not get deleted. DGG ( talk ) 05:19, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

"But this is just a nomination for a discussion. As I tell beginners, if your view is considered right by the community, the article will not get deleted." The problem is, this is simply not the case. All it takes is a nomination by a highly influential admin (you), and lack of participation (AfD is already a ghost town and has been for years as the noms pile up beyond anyone's ability to track), or participation from deletionists, non-neutral participants, or people with an axe to grind, for a notable article to be deleted simply because nobody, or insufficient people, bothered to do WP:BEFORE, or bothered to click the search links at the top of every AfD. The proper response to a promotional-sounding article is to (A) edit it, or (B) tag it with {{advert}}, {{cleanup}}, or similar tag. The proper response for an article whose citations appear to demonstrate insufficient WP:N is to do WP:BEFORE. It cannot be over-stressed that WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP. That's why we have cleanup tags. ...Softlavender (talk) 23:55, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Softlavendar, that is not how I see my experience at AfD. My record of success is not particularly high, partly because -- having no real need to have a perfect record as if I were running for an RfA, -- I can try to see where consensus currently lies by sometimes nominating what I suspect to be marginal cases; the way we work, there is no other way to find out except to try and see & then adjust expectations. I'm perfectly willing to withdraw a nomination or suggest an alternative, as I have done with the one that started this thread. I consider AfD misnamed--it should be seen as Articles for Discussion, and with the current variety of closures, that is more and more what it has become.

There are many regulars who have not the least hesitation in telling me that I'm wrong -- I think in fact some of them find it particularly satisfactory to be able to do so. Many beginners do also, and they can be sometimes correct as well. Of course, it is possible that I may be an adult gorilla who does not realize my own weight--I have never been all that good in judging what people think of me. .

Participation at AfD has been even lower in the past. But even as it is, it's the only process here for quality control that actually works. Again, I may be misperceiving this because I am overestimating how well it works because I have long enough experience there to know how to use it.

But here is the real situation: I am now much less concerned with notability than promotionalism.

I do intend to use whatever fair methods I can find to put an end to the practice of undeclared paid editing--and if possible, to convince the community to end all paid editing. The most effective method at my disposal is deletion. (SPI also helps, but I'm just not good at it and have to depend for that part on others). Variations in notability do not actually matter very much, but paid editing will destroy WP by reducing us to an advertising medium. Even if by some miracle we could get paid editing of decent quality, it would destroy WP by driving away the volunteers. That includes me--I will not work here if it stops being a volunteer project, any more than I would work here if it were censored, or if it did not have a free license. Those are the things about WP that are actually important to me.

Consequently, I no longer fully agree that "The proper response to a promotional-sounding article is to (A) edit it, or (B) tag it with {{advert}}, {{cleanup}}, or similar tag. " It remains the proper approach for an article from a good faith editor (GFE). For an article in violation of the TOU, the proper course is deletion. We could remove these from AfD--I will support a speedy criterion; I'd even support it also applying to draft space. (I recognize there are some problems here, because sometimes a GFE will not know better than to copy the style of one of the hundred thousands of promotional articles thinking that's what is actually wanted. The solution is to remove the bad examples--all of them, regardless of how long they've been here, just as we dealt with the unsourced BLPs. It will take a few years.) For good volunteer editors to try to fix such articles makes the matter worse: they're facilitating the undeclared paid editors, they're preventing a real solution, they're doing the work so the people who want to destroy our principles can earn the money. That's suicide, not altruism.

Nor do I fully agree with the essay Wikipedia:Deletion is not cleanup. The most effective way --sometimes the only way--to get an article cleaned up over opposition for fans or promotional editors is to list it for deletion. It shouldn't be the first step for an article by a good faith editor, but it works. clumsy as AfD is, the alternative is 3O, which rarely accomplishes anything, or RfC, which can be really messy. DGG ( talk ) 02:25, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Then, in my opinion, you are, or could be accused of, nominating in bad faith. If you feel or realize that a subject has notability, but are AfDing anyway, then you are nominating in bad faith as many people understand it. Unlike other XfDs, AfD is not "articles for discussion", as you have stated/implied above. It is "Articles for Deletion". By AfDing you are stating or implying that an article on the subject should not exist on Wikipedia. If you are too lazy to edit, and unwilling to tag articles (we also have the {{coi}} and {{undisclosed paid}} tags for the issues you address), but want to remove them entirely based on your subjective opinion of how they are written rather than the notability of the subject and the well-established thresholds of inclusion established by the community, not by a single person .... then you are, in essence, taking "the law" into your own hands. I understand why you are doing it, but it subverts a lot of the established community processes under which the encyclopedia operates. They may be inefficient, but they have been established by community consensus. Softlavender (talk) 02:49, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Softlavendar: WP:N is clear that simply meeting the GNG is not enough for inclusion. Failure of WP:NOT is grounds for failing WP:N, and that includes WP:PROMO. WP:DEL4 and WP:DEL14 also apply here: a notable subject that is promotional can and should be deleted from Wikipedia under existing policies and guidelines, including the notability guideline itself, even if it does not meet the strict G11 criterion. Your view is certainly a view that many in the community hold, but so is David's. The point of AfD is for the community to decide how to apply the principles of Wikipedia as expressed in our policies and guidelines to the case of a specific article. David is making good faith deletion nominations based on promotion. While the community might not always agree with him, it often does. Consensus is built organically through local discussions such as AfD, and the work David is doing here is important. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:57, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

"Essentially advertising" is an incredibly weak rationale for sending something to AfD. If he had said "I can find reliable sources for this, but there is so much promotional content, I think we're better off blowing it up and starting over, and as this isn't my topic of expertise, I'm not comfortable doing it, and I can't see anyone else coming forward" then I might be more understanding. If a brand new admin candidate did this, and somebody noticed, they'd get opposed and possibly their RfA would tank. So why should an existing admin get away with things a new candidate won't? You should agree with WP:NOTCLEANUP, as the deletion policy says "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page." Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:37, 28 November 2017 (UTC)C)

Ritchie333, "essentially advertising" is one of the basic reasons to remove an article. Of all the rationales at WP:NOT, NOT ADVOCACY is one of the most important, for it is the very basis of NPOV. (By comparison, NOT INDISCRIMINATE, the basis of Notability guidelines, is much less critical.) Articles that amount to advocacy must be removed, and the mere promise to fix it is just as inadequate as the mere promise to fix copyvio or BLP violation. How we do this fundamentally simple thing is of course complicated, and is adjusted to circumstances by changing the written rules and the interpretations--normally, the written rules lag by a considerable amount. The interpretation is whatever consensus has it--there is no other basis for deciding content in WP. It is reasonable of anyone here to try to influence the interpretation, and I knew from the start that my main purpose here was to do that. In some things I have been successful. I always realized success would come slowly, and I think in terms of years. Sometimes change come surprisingly quickly, and there has been a major change in the last year in the extent to which we reject promotionalism and its usual correlate of paid editing. Having already changed what we do, the rules will follow. My style is to let others write them, once I've gotten the change started.

Softlavender, "Nominating in bad faith" is a remarkable term to use for giving my opinion, and then asking the community to determine just where the present boundaries of consensus lie. I have never nominated without the intent and hope of getting something deleted because of WP:NOT. (or, sometimes, referring something where I think there's something wrong but in a field where I cannot decide to the community) Nominating in bad faith means nominating maliciously or to be a nuisance, or based on prejudice, or relying on spa or sock support, not merely having an opinion others disagree with. It can also include nominating repeatedly and persistently despite knowing that the consensus is firmly against one. I try not to do that, tho sometimes I make an error in moving more quickly than the circumstances turn out to warrant. More often I think I make an error by letting things slide, but both are inevitable in anyone doing a large amount of non-obvious work here.

If we are to trade charges, those who try to fix the work of promotional editors, especially promotional paid editors, could be considered complicit in helping them destroy WP. I don't go around accusing my opponents of doing that deliberately, though I do sometimes remind them that such will be the effect of what I consider their misguided work. Perhaps eventually they'll realize; I've changed myself, as I too did not realize the danger initially, and I hope the continuing revelations of the extent of promotional editing might affect them, as it did me.

one of the prerogatives of one's own talk page is the ability to have the last word in an exchange. There will be dozens of opportunities each day to continue elsewhere. DGG ( talk ) 06:07, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

fixing promotionalism (Restaurants)

...:But more generally, you raise an important point:

the problem of whether to remove somewhat promotional material from promotional articles before listing from AfD is a dilemma. I have come across articles that I try to improve, and then after sharply editing content, decide they are unsalvageable, and take them to afd. If I leave them in their improved but still inadequate state it doesn't give a fair impression of the promotional intent and overall promotional writing. If I return the contents, i am deliberately making the article worse than it needs to be. Since the promotional content can also contain material relevant to notability , this makes the dilemma even more difficult. (What I now usually do is leave it in the improved form and give a link to the original in the discussion).

As we know, there is a disagreement of how strictly to interpret NOT ADVERTISING, and on how bad a article has to be before it qualifies for G11 as requiring fundamental rewriting. My position here has changed over the years from considerable tolerance for anything vaguely notable--though I was always a bit hesitant about local interest material-- to an emphasis on removing promotionalism to discourage the usually paid promotional editing.

There is also a disagreement on the notability of these restaurants, and the promotionalism in them is normally from fans, not paid editors--and it is difficult to write about restaurants at all without sounding a little promotional. As far as WP guidelines go, anyone experienced at AfD could equally easily write a keep or a delete rationale for most of them, so it's basically a question of what extent of local detail we think WP should cover. I have sometimes been tempted to add every restaurant in Brooklyn that got a significant write-up in the NYT. If the current trend holds towards keeping such articles, I may do it yet. DGG ( talk ) 19:44, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

I understand your concerns. The problem is think is that sources such as Serious Eats or NYT are national notable sources which gives the subject notability, unfortunately these articles would generally be written in a way that praises the subject. I've noticed (not in this case) that some editors tend to remove sources and when sources such as Serious Eats are removed it could make the subject look vastly less notable, as a result the discussion could be skewed. Valoem ^{talk contrib} 16:14, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with Serious Eats, but I am a close reader of the NYT restaurant reviews. They cover, as would be expected, not every restaurant in the city, but those that are significant in some way: established favorites, currently popular or fashionable, new restaurants from well-known cooks or owners. This inevitably produces a bias towards places of some merit, but, everything considered, the reviews are generally critical, and by no means extremely laudatory. (The number and venom of bad reviews has varied over the years with their different critics).

More basically, essentially any article about any company or professional will have a promotional value. it's a maxim that all publicity is good, and having an article in WP has become regarded as a sign of importance. If we are going to cover anything in the current world, or that affects the current world, the articles will have some degree of promotional effect. This gives us a dangerous influence, about which we must take precautions. The efforts of the PR industry can only be countered by true NPOV editing, and it is absurd to expect any professional or organization to actually write or commission a true NPOV article about themselves. Therefore, we need to consider all coi editors as at least potentially destructive of our values, and, the world being as it is, they will be particularly dangerous when money is involved. The attempt at paid editinghas corrupted too many good editors here, and has attracted a remarkable number of incompetents. More and more, I think the only practical way forward is to remove them. DGG ( talk ) 01:33, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

consensus at AfDs

Hi DGG! I was reading some of the materials on your user page and it was useful for me to read them. I'. Specially, I would like to know if the materials of "with respect to consensus at AfDs" are induced to your mind by WP's policies and guidelines or it's just a personal interpretation of them? Btw, the paragraph starts with quotation mark but I could not find where it's closed. Regards. --Mhhossein ^talk 10:26, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Would you mind shedding light on this query? --Mhhossein ^talk 12:20, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

still to reply

An interesting thought experiment

Hi again, I was chatting with some folks about an idea that will likely never see the light of day, but I'd like your feedback on it. An outright ban of CORP articles in AfC for a 6 mo trial. I was joking about it initially, but the more I thought about it I'm curious what the outcome would be. If I had to guess, no one would notice other than paid editors. I can't think of people searching Google for "Bizco" and having an erosion of trust because Wikipedia doesn't have it. It also has a potential interesting side effect of preventing companies that haven't been around for more that six months, which is kind of an indirect SNG for CORP. Again, no chance of it being implemented, just thought getting your views on it would be insightful. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 00:50, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I had been thinking of something like that for companies formed after 1990 or thereabouts. There are of course other areas, such as their executives, and all the NGOs, and politicians, and the artists--all of who use paid editors almost as much. But it would be an interesting moratorium. DGG ( talk ) 01:12, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea, makes sense, and there is probably potential for it. Kind of lke an ACTRIAL experiment. Would need some careful thinking out though. @Drewmutt:. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:16, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Kudpung for your feedback, glad this seems more feasible than I initially thought. Any suggestions on next steps? Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 00:44, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Interesting idea: on the whole, it might be a net positive. We'd have to flesh out the specifics, obviously. The other thing is whether or not something like this could achieve consensus and how it would be enforced. A simple decline of all corps? a CSD X criteria? There are also conversations going on now at WT:CORP surrounding increasing the notability requirements for corporations that might be relevant here. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:44, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

The consensus bit seems the biggest obstacle, but I've been trying to rack my brain for any "cost" this would have to WP as a whole, and I can't come up with any. The only debate I could see (which I feel is a weak one) is driving paid editors to more nefarious methods of publishing. If nothing else, people concerned about the AfC backlog should be on board. I'd be fine with it simply being a decline template, something like, "Currently Wikipedia is undergoing a trial where new articles about corporations will not be accepted. Therefore your submission cannot be accepted at this time." Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 00:53, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Possible. OTOH, a new CSD would be unlkely. Getting new CSDs agreed is one of the most challenging aspects of Wikipedia. Everyone knows that I'm a firm proponent of a total ban on PE, Tony mentioned 'baby steps' somewhere not so long ago - this would be one of them. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:01, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

for the two X criteria used so far, they were so rough and ready that there were many exceptions needed; the same would be the case with this. A new general CSD category is not a good idea; it will be more practical to adjust wording on existing ones. (G5 for example) . Similarly for 1990+, I would do it not as a speedy, but as a modification of the SNG, and say specifically that it over=rides GNG. At some point we would really have to deal with the primary obstacle to increasing notability standards, the GNG/SNG comfusion. But I do not think there will be consensus for it at this point.

What there willl be consensus for, is increasing restrictions on paid editors. Proposed wording changes,

1) on WP:COI, lede para: from "Editors with a COI, including paid editors, are expected to disclose it " to "Editors with a COI, including paid editors, are required to disclose it "

2) WP:COI section 1.2, and throughout change all the "should" to must.

3) all new articles on commercial organizations founded after 1990 must go to AfC, and anyone encountering one should move it there. This includes articles by confirmed editors. DGG ( talk ) 02:26, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

• Support -- I would support; possibly with a caveat "for companies launched after X year" -- anyone wanting create an article on a historic company would be able to do so. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:29, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
• I do not support if it's a ban on entering articles, only if it's a requirement to use Draft space / What we need to remember, is that at present we may be in a state of emergency, but the situation is getting better, not worse, because we now do have general awareness of the problem among WPedians.My own preferred place to work remains with individual articles, not wording of policy. Over the years, it's the only way I've had any success. The rewording sometimes comes later, once opinion has been affected by individual articles. Everyone who cares needs to participate in NPP and AfD. DGG ( talk ) 02:41, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
  • David, I think you hit the nail on the head here (as usual). In my experience, progress on Wikipedia is only achieved by building local consensus first and establishing something as common practice and standards. What we need to do here is to make people aware of the crisis we are facing with promotional editing, and get the people to care to participate in the two processes that most directly affect it: AfD and NPP. RfCs only work if consensus is preexisting. We have come a long way on this even in the last year, but more progress is needed. That only can occur if people who care take the time to work in these areas. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:09, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

If this were taken up, how would it affect new articles about noncommercial corporations or associations? You could use Oregon Psilocybin Society, which I created, as an example. Would it have had to go through AfC? ☆ Bri (talk) 03:16, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

I won't characterise on Oregon Psilocybin Society right now because I haven't gone through all the sources, but at first blush it seems to have attracted enough attention for notability. However, non-profits are notorious for attempting to promote themselves through Wikipedia, and most of them are written by someone with a COI. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:36, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

I was thinking about this over the last couple days, and essentially what I came to is that "if having a Wikipedia article leads to an increase of money exchange, than it should be sent to AfC", which includes donations, so I'd vote, that yes Bri it would go to AfC. Not that it would have a problem getting approved, I just don't want to burden folks with determining if something is for/non-profit. Logically, that expands to BLPs as well, but I feel that CORP is a more pressing issue. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 23:36, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

• Support I think that's a very elegant solution to a non-elegant problem. I mildly feel that 1990 is a bit too far back, but I trust your judgement over my own. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 23:36, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

DGG thank-you for the thoughtful comment about /sandbox

I will try to incorporate the advice.

Can you give advice on the article on JHUBME. It is posted for being taken down due to conflict of interest. Can it be rescued. It is factual. Overexhuberant new Chairman trying to follow Stanford Computer Science and Oxford Computer Science both top ranked departments. Is it possible for editors like yourself to sharpen it up and remove individuals who are not noteable etc given the history is all documented and BME at JHU is largely considered to have created this modern field of BIomedical discovery. Thank-you in advance. Mim.cis (talk) 02:47, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

I can remove the Prod tag, but I expect it will then be nominated for a discussion at AfD, and the consensus there will decide. There are two considerations: promotionalism, and notability , and either reason is sufficient for deletion. I can help with the promotionalism--at the present time it's not particularly outrageous--more a matter of tone than anything specific, and I've made what I think to be the necessary adjustments. Notability is a more difficulty question. We have no good standards for academic departments. but most submitted articles on them have been deleted, and I've almost always agreed with the decision. It's very difficult to write one without promotionalism unless the department is actually world-famous, and that's my personal standard, and the standard I argue for. It's relatively easy to decide this in the more general and longstanding fields, like for example physics. It's harder in the more specialized and newer ones, ones, like Biomedical Engineering. I cannot predict how the discussion will go.

the problem is to provide third party documentation of your statement "largely considered to have created this modern field" and each individual statement ones in the article, especially the ones already questioned with citation need tags. I point out the USNWR rankings are considered of rather dubious reliability here, certainly not as a measure of research importance. We include them because the public uses them.

Unless you can find material to document the statements, I do not think that the article will pass AfD. If you can, it probably will. If you provide them on the article talk page and let me know here, I will remove the tag. Otherwise there is no real point in trying in keep it. DGG ( talk ) 05:01, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank-you very much. I looked at several things. First, I appreciate that noteworthy is not an absolute metric.

I wanted to just share some thoughts on possible noteworthy measures indicating that Biomedical Engineering as a discipline is significant and within the field JHU BME is noteworthy. (i) Currently we have 8 faculty over 60, 12 faculty with h-index greater than 50, and 19 over 40. While h-index is not an absolute measure of noteworthiness, Wikipedia says and I am quoting "an outtsanding scientist has an h-index of 40, and a truely unique individual an h-index of 60". For comparison, I looked at Duke, Stanford and GTech in this manner, none have as many. GTech and Stanford have 5 greater than 50.(ii) We have 5 listed members of any of the National Academies. According to Wikipedia "Election into the National Academies is one of the highest honors in the scientific field. (iii) The size of our discipline is significant and of the scale of the departments of Biomedical Engineering are similar to other outstanding program which have wiki pages. For example Georgia Tech, Duke, UCSD and JHU have 40 tenure line faculty in Biomedical Engineering. (iv) A noteworthy measure of the importance of our undergraduate program, the acceptance rate of 7.8% into JHU BME is currently more competitive than CalTech and MIT based on U.S. News and World Report.

If there are other measures that Wikipedia uses of noteworthiness we would be happy to address. We agree that any statements that you feel are inappropriate because of inadequate 3rd party referencing should be taken down. At the time of our founding in 1962 there were no other departments. We are currently looking for 3rd party referencing to that effect. It seems appropriate that the statement "Johns is credited as ..." can be taken down until we find further referencing. We are proper the proper reference from U.S. News concerning continual ranking. Mim.cis (talk) 17:06, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Notability for the purposes of wikipedia does not correspond to the way the word is used in the Real World--it can only be thought of as a term of art -- language used in a special way by those within a field. I am giving you advice about what will be needed to keep the article, which requires dealing with the artificial manner that is used here. I also have my own opinion, but the advice I give you is based on my experience of what actually happens, not what I think ought to happen.

Officially, the measure Wikipedia uses for determining notability is the WP:GNG, whether there are references providing substantial coverage from third-party independent reliable sources, not press releases or mere announcements. If you have such material the article will be kept, whether or not it would rationally make sense to have it in the encyclopedia. If you do not, it won't, again whether or not it would rationally make sense to have it in the encyclopedia. The key words to pay attention to are substantial, independent, and reliable. To the extent that it will help influence how people consider the references, the best way of making the case for your deprtment is to focus not on present quality however high it may be, but historical significance, where it may be unique. DGG ( talk ) 10:27, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank-you for these clarifications. I am slowly learning. I may have clunkily tried to remove the prod based on my understanding of correct procedure. I left comments on Bfpage talk since BFP was the individual who tagged it. I hope the page can stay up and be edited and improved. Thank-you in advance in whatever you decide.Mim.cis (talk) 21:51, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

G13 Error rate?

Hello DGG. I saw your comment at WT:CSD regarding error rates on G13 nominations, and I was wondering what kinds of errors you were referring to. Do you mean technical errors in not meeting G13 criteria (e.g. pages that actually have been edited within the last six months)? Or do you mean pages that are potentially worthwhile and ought to be allowed more time to work?--Mojo Hand (talk) 03:27, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

I mean results which are clearly wrong according to our current standards. and that includes- both the printed guidelines and the accepted standards of interpretation. No policy or guideline, however absolute it sounds, provides an automatic answer for all situations. Every administrative action at WP relies upon following consensus--in the case of deleting at speedy, the implied consensus of what other admins would reasonably do. If you examine WP:CSD, you will find each criteria has a qualifying word, such "credible" "unquestionably" "unsalvageable" "good faith" essentially", "implausible" and the like. There is a customary range of interpretations for all of these, and a variety of accepted exemptions or inclusions in practice that are not specifically written. My % does not however include items that do fall under the accepted interpretation, but where I wish it were otherwise. Nor does it include instances where another admin interpreted it differently than I, but both of us are within the usual range of interpretation. And it should be noted that for many of these, the standard practice changes with time in one direction or another. Almost always in WP, the written rules are revised only after the practice has changed. Furthermore, specific and general policies can contradict each other--for example, the details at CSD and the general rules at NOT are both policy, but can be harmonized in many different ways--some are within the accepted limits, some are stretching things, some are entirely unreasonable abut attempted nonetheless. Even more broadly, our fundamental WP:IAR could be interpreted to permit anything, but in practice is used also within limits.

You will notice I'm not directly addressing the point you have in mind, G13--this is a case where the standards have apparently been changing. I think it is now accepted that it does not apply to material that would just as it is pass AfC; it might possibly exempt also material that with reasonable improvements would meet AfC, but I wouldn't say that someone was wrong who thought otherwise.

for clarity, I should add: When I give people advice about an article, I try to make certain my advice follows very conservatively the clearly accepted standard--I would consider anything else irresponsible. When I argue for doing something, that's different, and I sometimes do argue for adjusting the interpretation — Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs) 07:18, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. I generally tread lightly with G13s and only deleted the easy and fairly obvious ones. So, I was curious about the thought process of those who look at the harder candidates.--Mojo Hand (talk) 15:51, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Inc profiles

Hi DGG, I'm writing regarding Articles_for_deletion/Lily_Jay. You mentioned that every Inc article may have to be checked in order to remove Inc profiles. I think there's no reason to be worried, as Inc Profiles are meant for companies to have their standalone business profiles like this [7] or [8], similar to Bloomberg company profiles. Having an Inc Verified profile for $30/year does not give them the ability to publish and contribute on the Inc magazine itself.

Taking that into account, I'm trying to understand for myself what exactly made you think that this [9] Inc article was published by an Inc Profile?

Moreover, why do you consider Gold Coast Bulletin and Inc Magazine as unreliable? Do they fall into the category of self-published articles or press releases?

Thank you.  ⚜ LithOldor ⚜  ^(T) 17:20, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Bloomberg profiles are not reliable for notability either, just for verifying the basic facts about the company or individual. As for Inc Profiles. , to quote from their web site "we independently confirm that businesses are operational, websites are functional, social media links and phone lines work, content is appropriate and no obvious red flags exist. Inc. Verified Profiles are meant to save purchasers a little time by showcasing businesses that are part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. They are not an endorsement of products or services, nor a guarantee of quality." If I open a grocery store, once I've got my social media set up, I'd be qualified. They could be used for the above facts, and nothing more--all other content in them is written by the firm or its PR agency.

You are correct that this is not a profile. It would be more accurately classed as a press release. The give-away was the author: "by Wanda Thibodeaux, Copywriter, TakingDictation.com", and the expected line at the bottom: "The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com." DGG ( talk ) 18:13, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diplomacy
	I appreciate your contributions regarding my topic ban as well as your thoughts on Arbitration Enforcement. --MONGO 13:35, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thank you for your contributions

CanadiaNinja (talk) 14:27, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

AfC and stuff

DGG, despite all the respect I have for you as an editor, I was somewhat surprised (and, to be honest, not too pleased) when at John Cabot University you moved a draft written by an employee over the previous content (some of which I had written). I had thought that we had similar views on the pernicious and destructive influence of corporate advertising on this beautiful project. But that is nothing to my amazement at your move of Galleria d'Arte Maggiore G.A.M. into article space. I couldn't see any way of dealing with that ill-written, ill-referenced promotional screed, almost certainly written by the gallery itself, other than complete removal – so that's what I did. I've written a couple of sentences, with refs, and sent it to AfD (you may have seen, I don't know); presumably you thought it notable, but I could find no evidence that it is. A plea: if a page is so bad that it will take longer to clean up than to write from scratch, please don't move it to mainspace; if you think the topic notable, why not create a stub on it yourself, and save other editors the time and trouble needed to sort out a mess?

I see that you've put a men-at-work sign on Leoncillo. Leonardi is indubitably notable, but that page is more or less unrescuable; there's also the possibility of translational copyvio (NB his wife Maria Zampa is called "Maria Paw" in our page, that's indiscriminate machine-translation from Italian – but from where?). There is plenty on him in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani alone, quite enough to write a proper page. I'm more than happy to contribute to that if you would like; I'd suggest removing the current content, probably in its entirety. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:51, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

John Cabot has continued to dissatisfy me, and you are correct that I need to take another look at it. I have a very long list of things to go back to. Doesn't everyone?

Galleria: of course I'm aware of the promotional nature, and I stopped several times to consider what I should be doing, and hadn't really decided. Nowadays I usually do not rewrite things as promotional as that. Earlier I did, but the sheer amount and nature of the promotionalism has tending to discourage me. (But even in removing promotional articles, I concentrate on those likely to be by paid editors, who are deliberately trying to subvert our principles, and not the more benign direct editing by the subject, which is usually much more transparent and very likely to be a misunderstanding of the way we work, rather than defiance.) I decided to do this one because I judged it to be clearly notable enough to be worth the trouble--and a little interesting in its possibiltiies. See the afd for further comment.

Leoncillo--my principle with these has been to improve it enough to 1/ see that they stay in WP for future improvement 2/ try to clarify the notability 3/ have them read like English, 4/ fix at least some of the broken internal links 5/make sure that references are at least copied over 5/ try to resolve any ambiguities or contradictions --or if necessary remove the obviously defective parts I've done this for the first part, and started the second. If you want to do the rest, please do; I'm somewhat literate in this field, but certainly not an expert,.

People have different approaches to things like this. Mine is that I try to rescue what can be rescued quickly. I'm much faster and copyediting and rewriting than writing from scratch. When I came here, I initially thought what I would do is work on bringing articles in my field(s) to a high quality and writing what was missing, but I very quickly found I enjoyed more trying to rescue the possible and remove the impossible. So I never in 11 years here have actually worked on trying to bring an article to the best I could do with it. Maybe I will someday, but for now I plan to keep going, and I regret the current immediate need to concentrate more on removing promotionalism than rescuing notability--it's relatively rare I can even do as much as I did here.

I'm aware of the possibility of translational copyvio. There surely was some here, and of course its a machine translation as shown by many indications. Therefore I tried to reorganize as well as correcting to avoid too close a paraphrase. And, as I said, other approaches are welcome--and necessary. I don't really think it helpful to deprecate complementary approaches. DGG ( talk ) 05:11, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Public library anon editing and account creation versus rangeblocks

Hi, I have a question about anon editing from public libraries in general and NYPL in particular.

Background: The purpose is for awareness and for workarounds at our Cascadia Wikimedians events where e.g. King County Library System seems to be blocked more often than not. I went to my local branch today and verified it is currently in this state (206.188.32.0/19 rangeblocked, I think) for a system with 700,000 members and ~2 million in its service area.

Just a bit earlier today, I saw a contrib from a NYPL anon and was a bit surprised as I thought they were usually rangeblocked too.

The questions for you: Is NYPL usually or just sometimes blocked? Do rangeblocks pose a problem for you at public events such as editathons? Is the workaround simply to have an account creator at the editathon? ☆ Bri (talk) 05:30, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Addendum: If you didn't know, KCLS and NYPL vie for busiest system in the U.S. [10] We pulled ahead in 2010 or 2011 but are now back at #2. ☆ Bri (talk) 06:21, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Bri, could you please check: I do not find it on our lists of blocked sites. The usual block prevents only anonymous editors. If you are blocked again when you edit with your username, please email me a copy of the message you receive.

At NYC we have about 10 or 12 admins (+ 1 crat + 2 arbs), and are able to deal with this sort of thing. Cascadia seems to have very few. (more about that on your user page). Otherwise, there are various methods available, but first I want to see what the situation is. DGG ( talk ) 06:22, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I emailed the IP block message to you for checking. ☆ Bri (talk) 06:25, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Teenage notability

If my memory serves, is it not customary to not include BLPs for single event notability for children (teens included), including National Spelling Bee winners, National Science Fair winners, National teenage beauty contest winners, and so forth? ^{Atsme📞📧} 21:29, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

List_of_Scripps_National_Spelling_Bee_champions has a few linked bios, but generally not only for the win. Interesting, a search for "Ananya Vinay" turns up a heck of a lot more substantial RS coverage (major news outlets) than "Sophia Dominguez-Heithoff" does (social media accounts, youtube, pageant and fan sites). Legacypac (talk) 21:58, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

[11] - not sure where this link goes, but it broke the section title so I'll add it here. ^{Atsme📞📧} 23:01, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree with you that WP should not cover them, but there have recently been at AfD keep decisions for a surprising number of bio of young people who have had some press coverage for accomplishments which would not have made them notable had they been adults. I am therefore somewhat reluctant to bring AfDs for the people listed in the table. We would need a rule similar to that for sports, where only adult competitions indicate notability--but those who believe in the unthinking application of the GNG without considering the subject field would probably oppose that also.

Of the spelling bee champions, the only one who I consider clearly notable as an adult is L. E. Sissman, who became an unquestionably notable writer. Frank Neuhauser as winner of the first bee might be another exception. The other with articles had at most minor roles in the very notable film Akeelah and the Bee about the spelling bee. (Of course others without articles might prove to be notable also.) DGG ( talk ) 02:45, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

School AfDs

What we feared is happening, users are now trawling school articles looking for ones to delete. You can tell these rampant deletionists this: Thank you for patrolling new pages. As a New Page Reviewer, you are expected to know our deletion policies inside out. Please see: WP:ATD-R and please note that this is a policy, not a mere guideline. Thanks. Change the wording if they are not NPR rights holders. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:35, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

It's also just a suggestion (may have a title that would make a useful redirect, emphasis added). You're obviously welcome to ask users to curtail their "rampant" nominations (if they're doing so) but to require them to abide by a suggestion in a policy is a bit much. Primefac (talk) 17:57, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

And for what it's worth, the "you" was referring to Kudpung but I have a bad habit of using the royal "you" for general instances anyway. Primefac (talk) 17:59, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

• The policy that we should redirect rather than delete if a suitable target is available is one of the most ignored parts of deletion policy, almost as much ignored as the part that says for subjects that might be notable with no significant information, a combination article can be preferable. I'm not really sure that any of the section on alternatives to deletion is actually followed enough to make it an accepted policy. I prefer to use policy vs guideline arguments for only the most basic policies, such as NOT ADVERTISING. DGG ( talk ) 20:30, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@Primefac:, who's talking about 'requiring'? Just pointing to a policy is not the same as handing out orders. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:48, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

I often word it as "suggest" . or, "you might also want to consider" in giving advice, especially when it's a question of trying to tell people they should be doing something differently. Even so, it is sometimes seen as a little aggressive. Sometimes it is helpful to simply correct it, and see if they get the idea. DGG ( talk ) 00:36, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you

		The Civility Barnstar
		Hello DGG. I give you this barnstar for your comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Eagle Airlines destinations [12], which was just awesome and keeps the spirit of Wikipedia alive. Thank you.--Jetstreamer Talk 13:03, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Equinix

Hi, the notability is clear. But what we currently have is a very promotional article, mainly written by an undeclared paid editor. If that can stand, I'm very unclear how we are not just providing a platform for their paid advertising. KJP1 (talk) 23:55, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

KJP1, as you know, I very rarely do this sort of revision nowadays, as I feel very strongly about such editing. But it is quite simple here to remove the worst of the promotion, leaving in only the factual material. The company will thus have paid for the work involved in the factual update and the work involved in the promotionalism. But they will discover that they paid for the promotionalism in vain, and the COI editor, could not deliver what he no doubt promised. Since he now knows enough to declare, I think he will know enough not to do this sort of editing again. And if clients wish to pay him to update financial results and facility locations, this is the most innocuous form of paid editing.

I would not have done this had it taken any significant amount of work, or if the firm had not in fact been the market leader in an important field of general interest here. I probably would not have done it had it ben a new article, but not all the prior work was promotional . Normally in such a case it is better to revert back to the last non-promtional version, but in this instance that would have also removed the factual updates. When I do engage in this work, I try to make it as easy for myself as possible.

General principles usually have exceptions. Even my own general principles. DGG ( talk ) 00:26, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Understood. But this place does get depressing sometimes. What it aimed to be, and what it could be, compared to what it actually often is. All the best. KJP1 (talk) 00:32, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Actually, it's getting better. Ten years ago when I joined, even just 5 years ago, it would have accepted that sort of content. You are of course right that we need to keep working, because it still is far short of the goal. DGG ( talk ) 00:58, 3 March 2018 (UTC)v

WTR discussion follow-up

Dear DGG, we actually had quite a discussion about COI editing at my talk page. What I said was that when you follow the rules and fully comply, you actually suffer from what Melcous labeled as "more heavily scrutinized" (moderation). My view is that the current practice of such super-scrutinized editing of paid articles strongly discourages paid editors from following the process, pushes them to the grey area and also makes the life of paid-editing fighters more difficult as the volume of such edits and practices increase.

It also frustrates clients who are persuaded to follow the rules. One case where I had a greatly frustrated client was The National Memo case where the article has been rolled back 3 times and currently exists in a highly castrated form (more like a stub now). I had to return part of the payment and apologize. Had these edits been made from the single-purpose account, they'd most likely stayed. At the same time we have a lot of articles where large parts of the text go completely unreferenced and it is perfectly OK. Please don't remind me about WP:OSE, I think we both know what I am talking about.

I also noticed that around 70% of articles about lawyers and law firms were created from WP:SPAs (not necessarily through the AfC). This is an area where the demand is high and commercial interest is very obvious (lawyers earn big money). Editors probably understand that they won't be able to publish such articles the official way simply because people hate lawyers and Wikipedia editors hate paid edits. So the demand is here and shortcuts are pretty obvious. This practice also gives paid editors 1-2 week period to get their payment before the article gets deleted (if that happens). I've also seen some of the articles for the potential clients where they decided not to work with me and go for such shortcuts. All of them were made from single-purpose accounts.

Having said that I want to highlight that I truly understand some of these paid editing "watchdogs" and know that they want to make the project better. I only noticed that these edits rarely add value to the article, they are almost always just in "delete, delete, delete" mode (Melcous is a nice exception from this rule - they actually re-write the text and try to preserve content that has some value). So instead of fighting large amounts of quite clear undeclared edits, moderators spend their time on editing "easy targets" doing it easy way. One possible solution could be inviting some "inclusionists" for the improvement or having a broader discussion about such articles before editing. Hope it helps. -- Bbarmadillo (talk) 21:10, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm advocating dealing with the SPAs, especially the sock SPAs, rather than relaxing the attitude. Blocking open proxies and VPNs would be an excellent first step. While it sometimes seems counterproductive to bother the disclosed PEs more than the undisclosed ones, disclosing cannot be a carte blanche to write promotional stuff. Bbarmadillo, you might want to correct the quote above. It misrepresents what I said a little. NPP != AfC. Thanks. Rentier (talk) 02:16, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Rentier removing your quote to avoid the confusion. To clarify, obviously paid entries should comply with Wikipedia guidelines - just like unpaid ones. -- Bbarmadillo (talk) 07:03, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Along the lines of what has been said by Rentier: From my perspective, the solution is to more vigorously remove the articles by the obviously undeclared paid editors, and to raise the standards for all articles. There is ongoing progress here: We are in the process of tightening up our reliable source requirements for organizations, and a strict interpretation of them deal with at least the lower third. We are once more considering an increase in the number of edits to get confirmed status, (Unfortunately but necessarily, ACTRIAL will be entering the test phase where new editors can edit in mainspace, and this will cause a move of the problems from AfC to NewPages.) We are also considering ways to facilitate people reporting instances of paid editing, or approaches to their business by undeclared paid editors.

Even so, the problem of dealing with the hundreds of thousands of press releases masquerading as articles submitted in earlier years when standards were lower and people were less vigilant is a very difficult one, but not hopeless. We did manage to source or remove about 80,000 unsourced BLPs in a year back in 2010; we could probably screen all organization and corporate articles in 2 or 3 years starting with the oldest if there were more people interested in doing this.

The problem with even declared paid editing is NPOV. Some other declared paid editors have told me that their clients are reluctant to accept NPOV articles: they want advertisements. This has been confirmed by recent examples on-wiki, and by the nature of the arguments and many afds. It's also my experience that for those writing both paid and volunteer articles, the volunteer articles are better. It should be possible for us to find a way for paid editors to do more work in providing information for people writing articles. For example, we've been trying for many years with little success to persuade companies to provide freely licensed pictures of their notable products. But what is also needed is more volunteers interested in working on business topics.

Ultimately, I do not expect the measures I've mentioned or anything else now in view will completely solve the problem. They will help it. I'm going to make a guess that it will reduce the problem for incoming articles to half the present. Unfortunately, that will probably be matched by an increase in such articles for even smaller businesses. and for some currently under-represent countries.

The only way to solve the problem completely is to eliminate paid editing. The only way to eliminate paid editing is to require some sort of secure confidential identification for at least some types of articles. That would be a major change in the basic principle of Wikipedia, and would not currently be supported. Perhaps it will never be feasible to even discuss it in the future, because of the need to preserve privacy at least here external pressure. DGG ( talk ) 18:44, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

An interesting follow-up to our discussion here. -- Bbarmadillo (talk) 15:55, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Obits...

When nothing but obits are cited, (some of which are in national RS) is that acceptable for notability of a recently deceased person who was a local social justice advocate 20 years ago? Just needing a gage for future reference. ^{Atsme📞📧} 02:22, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

It depends on the source. I trust full editorial obits in the NYT (after 1896) and the London Times. I am unsure about any other paper in those two countries for recent years, however reliable they may be for other purposes. There are other papers I trust for various parts of the 18th thru early 20th centuries. There are presumably equivalent ones in other countries, but I am less familiar with their standards.

An increasingly common problem with all newspapers, including the NYT, (and some National biographies) is their coverage of representative people, rather than important people, for obits and otherwise. This has not yet infected the NYT obit section.

Another problem is the focus of the NYT in the early 20th century upon high society figures (& this tends to affect more the wedding coverage), but that's what people paid attention to back them. I'm not sure how to handle that aspect. DGG ( talk ) 03:31, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

TY... ^{Atsme📞📧} 04:15, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Fair use of abstracts

The older catalogues I've seen reproduce abstracts freely, and so do many modern catalogues and publishers. But I've heard, unreliably, claims that abstracts can't be used under fair use, although I can't find any source for that online. Does Wikimedia have a policy on this? Could we store an abstract of a copyrighted work in Wikidata? HLHJ (talk) 03:58, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

I am uncertain whether using them in WP would be considered fair use in US law, but they are indeed often used as if they were; use in WP in particular might well be considered sufficiently transformative. However, actual Wikipedia policy is very much more restrictive. Under the current enWP rules for free content in the English Wikipedia, WP:NFCC, I cannot see how they would be permissible for use in an enWP article.

All projects are bound by the general WMF copyright policy--the enWP policy is a permitted exemption under that policy. I do not know whether Wikidata has considered a corresponding policy exemption--it would obviously have to be different than that of enWP and tailored to their particular purposes, and I cannot even guess whether the foundation would consider it acceptable . DGG ( talk ) 04:53, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

In the interim I did find one mention of abstract fair use online; here, scroll down to section 5.

I can't imagine they could be used in the article text; I was thinking of using them purely as a resource for searching for references in the bibliographic database being created on Wikidata, Wikidata:Wikidata:WikiProject Source MetaData (which many expect to eventually become its own project, like Wikisource or Wikiquote). My own private bibliographic database mostly contains abstracts, because it makes it much easier to find the reference I need to cite.

Wikidata appears not to have copyright policy exemptions.[13] So it looks to me like this is something to discuss later as a possible exemption for a bibliographic database project, if I've understood correctly.

Thank you very much for your help, you made it much easier for me to figure out what I needed to know. HLHJ (talk) 15:27, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Hey look, a barnstar for you!

		The Art+Feminism Barnstar
		Thank you for your support for Art+Feminism!
		this WikiAward was given to DGG by Theredproject (talk) on 00:20, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2018).

Guideline and policy news

• The notability guideline for organizations and companies has been substantially rewritten following the closure of this request for comment. Among the changes, the guideline more clearly defines the sourcing requirements needed for organizations and companies to be considered notable.
• The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team has released the Interaction Timeline. This shows a chronologic history for two users on pages where they have both made edits, which may be helpful in identifying sockpuppetry and investigating editing disputes.

---

Amazing dissection of article sourcing at AfD

I thought this was an impressive analysis by user:Mduvekot - I've never seen this much effort put into an AfD before, and I wanted to share it.[[14]] TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:26, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

It's amazing, and impressive. So impressive that one can forget the individual data points are false binaries. I've discussed it in a little more detail at WP:Articles for deletion/Alexander Friedmann-Hahn. As the method is very likely to be used again, I'll try to give yet a fuller analysis. If not at this afd, at another. DGG ( talk ) 05:30, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

curators and gallerists

On 4 April 2018 in an AfD for Jan Allen, you wrote: "Admittedly, curators are difficult to document unless they had published works that would qualify as NAUTHOR or NPROF,, but important curators do just that. The minor publications shown here do not." A few day later, in an AfD on ALexander-Friedmann-Hahn, you wrote: "We have no workable standards for gallerists. It is not just a business in the ordinary sense, but one of the auxiliary professions that facilitate the fine arts. Considering their significance in that professional network, I think we should be very liberal here; I would say the same about similar auxiliary professions in other fields, such as music and science. It's the nature of such professions to be overshadowed by the artists etc. they serve, and I've always thought we should interpret the GNG standards in line with the nature of available sources in the field." Earlier, you had commented in an AfD about Casey Caplan "I continue to disagree that the mere fact the art shows take place at a particular art gallery make either of them notable."

Can you help me understand that apparent discrepancy between those statements? Vexations (talk) 11:08, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I am still working it out, to be honest. There was a sentence that I wrote for the last AfD "This is somewhat different from my earlier position."; I in the end omitted it to avoid confusion; I see I should have left it in. In trying to figure out what to do, I will deliberately try to make a case for various positions to seewhat convinces me or others. AfD needs to experiment a little before it settles down -- premature guidelines are often a lasting error.

The increasing number of articles (and discussions) on fine arts, partly the result of Art+Feminism and related projects are showing our need for clearer standards. This is especially important because in advising new editors, we need to be able to tell them what is or is not likely to be accepted. That after all is rthe real need--not to decide what we would like to accept, but to guide contributors. Ifthe situation is unstable, as it is now, there's no good way to guide them. I have learned deal with it in editathons etc by telling them to play absolutely safe or their first article. The role of an advisor is to be conservative..

Some particular points:

Galleries vs Gallerists. This is a problem with many similar professions where the business is essentially dependent upon the expertise or reputation of an individual. Rarely is it appropriate to make an article for both unless there's some really special distinction. If it'smulti-generational or a partnership, the choice is easy: the gallery/firm/etc. If the individual has a reputation beyond the particular gallery , then it's easy also--in other words, if he meets WP:PROF as an expert, or WP:AUTHOR. If unsure, I tend to go with the person because its easier to write bio articles.

notability for the shows or the artist because of the gallery There may be some galleries whose selectivity can indicate the artist showing there is notable. It would take some degree of agreement between experts about which they are, and it would be nice if we could find actual sources for this instead of our judgment.

notability for the gallery because of who shows there. This shouldn't be a matter of our judgment--it should take sources.

Sources for notability. There are books about the profession of selling artworks, which do not have the possible bias ofbeing about individual galleries, which would ake good sources. I know more about 19th c. UK, but there should be something available for later periods also.

substantial . We need to stop using mentions as being adequate sources. We've done this in many circumstances before to show notability of clubs etc. There should by now be better sources available. DGG ( talk ) 06:52, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Appreciate the effort. Let's say that the roster of artists they represent contributes to notability if most or all of their artists are notable. Sprüth/Magers for example, represents Kenneth Anger, Keith Arnatt Estate, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Bernd & Hilla Becher, John Bock, Alighiero Boetti, George Condo, Walter Dahn, Hanne Darboven, Thomas Demand, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Thea Djordjadze, Robert Elfgen, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Lizzie Fitch, Ryan Trecartin, Sylvie Fleury, Llyn Foulkes, Cyprien Gaillard, Andreas Gursky, Jenny Holzer, Gary Hume, Robert Irwin (artist), Donald Judd, de:Axel Kasseböhmer, Craig Kauffman, Karen Kilimnik, Astrid Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Kraftwerk, Barbara Kruger, David Lamelas, Louise Lawler, David Maljkovic, Anthony McCall, Robert Morris (artist), de:Reinhard Mucha, Jean-luc Mylayne, David Ostrowski, Otto Piene, Michail Pirgelis, Nina Pohl, Stephen Prina, Pamela Rosenkranz, Sterling Ruby, Thomas Ruff, Ed Ruscha, Analia Saban, Gerda Scheepers, Thomas Scheibitz, de:Frances Scholz, Andreas Schulze, Cindy Sherman, Stephen Shore, Alexandre Singh, Frank Stella, Robert Therrien, Ryan Trecartin, Rosemarie Trockel, Kaari Upson, Marcel van Eeden, John Waters, Andro Wekua, Andrea Zittel, so that seems pretty clear. (Note that Sprüth/Magers have been messing with their page, their website has been blacklisted etc. It was probably the intern, but I don't trust 'em) Now lets look at the roster of another gallery, Galerie Friedmann-Hahn: Josef Fischnaller, Giovanni Castell, Thomas Kaemmerer, Markus Fräger, Edite Grinberga, Anders Gjennestad, Sasa Makarová, Daniel Ludwig (artist), David FeBland, Christian Grosskopf, Anne Leone, Laura Nieto, olf Ohst, Mirko Schallenberg, Guido Sieber, Marc Sparfel, Marc Taschowsky, Donald Vaccino, Maximilian Verhas, Mia Florentine Weiss. Note that that the first in the second list is a highly promotional article by an SPA and the second notable artist has an article that was written by the same editor who wrote the article about the gallery. There's more tp say about that editor, but I'm trying not to poison the well. If you compare these two, it should be obvious that Sprüth/Magers is a blue-chip gallery that deals with artists whose works are in the most important museum collections and that F-H is in the words of a German editor a "third-rate gallery", or as I would put it more generously works in the lower-to-mid price range of the market. What objective criteria can we use in a notability discussion to make that distinction? WP:PROF works well; can we do something similar for creative professions?

company executives

As I understand it, our practice is to only include below the ceo for a really major company (e.g., there are some executives at companies like Alphabet who even have separate articles). The general approach I think should be parallel to WP:EINSTEIN. When you see it elsewhere, it is likely to be the results of promotional editing--it would be fair to say that at least half our articles on companies are unsatisfactory , because standards in the past were lower and very few reliable editors really paid attention to this field except for some areas of special interest like computers and automobiles.

a little more generally, the infobox guidelines and listings of permissible fields were particular loose in earlier years, but people are now paying infoboxes much more attention, and some of them are already been cleaned up a little.

Looked at in a different way, there is a difference between what one can get away with and what is best practice. When I give advice, I always give the safest and most conservative advice. Anything else would be unfair to people who do as I suggest and might be challenged. And it is important to recognize that the effective standards are considerable higher for paid editing. Whether this is right or wrong may be open to question, but at the moment, that's the way people look at it.

DGG ( talk ) 16:58, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

arbs and content

... my being in arb com has nothing at all to do with content disputes. Skill in content building is not one of the things considered in elections, arb com has no direct authority over content, and arb com will not directly intervene in content disputes until they become so heated that conduct is also involved.

The reason I am sometimes asked to review content problems is because I participate widely at AfD and similar discussions, and therefore know in many fields not just the guidelines but the actual present consensus. I can therefore try to give advice that reflects not my own opinion on what ought to be in WP, but what will or will not in practice be accepted.

It seems to me that we have articles about individual episodes on many major shows. Whether we ideally should or not, we do. The question is whether Westworld is a sufficiently major show. Considering how sources like the NYT discuss each episode not only in advance but afterwards, I think it is. If anyone wants to try afd, they can, but I think AfD will give a result of keep. In fact, I was surprised to see that we don't already have articles on the most important characters, because we do have them on some similar shows. DGG ( talk ) 16:57, 30 April 2018 (UTC)\

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brigham D. Madsen

Also see--> William J. Hamblin

When considering academic authors, by what rough measures do you, as an editor, decide whether his or her work has: been cited/reviewed enough? received prestigious enough of awards? &c &c--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 00:36, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

I use two standards.

Awards is relatively straightforward: the highest national or international level in the field.

Publications:

1. the level of work which would qualify for full professorship or at least tenure at a research university of the very highest standing. In the traditional humanities that is usually two books by a major academic publisher. For sciences, it goes by citations, and it varies by subject.

2. Comparison with others in the field., especially those with such positions.

Books, as such: being the leading or one of the leading books in the subject, as judged primarily by library holdings (and to some extent by citations--allowing for the very long time lag.) DGG ( talk ) 06:37, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Moving a Draft to Mainspace for Purpose of Deletion

You may ignore this post if you choose, but User:Legacypac suggested that I ask you. User:Legacypac has frequently, in discussions at Miscellany for Deletion, said that if a draft is not deleted in draft space, it should be moved to article space where it can be nominated for one of the A criteria for speedy deletion or Articles for Deletion. At least, that is what I think they are saying. I haven't actually seen them do that, and maybe there is ancient history that I don't understand. I think that moving a draft to article space that one thinks should be deleted is a terrible idea, and that the place for a page of questionable merit is draft space. In any case, I just tried to ask Legacypac, again, about these statements, this time with regard to Draft:Kopparapu Duo Poets, and was asked to ask you, with the comment that Legacypac thinks that I am trying to get them sanctioned. (At least I think they were implying that I and others are trying to get them sanctioned.) I know that I am not trying to get Legacypac sanctioned, but am asking them to explain a position that they repeatedly express that I am unable to understand or agree with. So: Do you think that sometimes drafts should be promoted, or moved from draft space to article space, in order to open up a mainspace deletion discussion? What is your view? I am not asking what Legacypac thinks. Only Legacypac can explain, and after their unfortunate short-term de-reviewing, they are in a bad mood. If you explain, thank you. If you disagree, thank you for explaining. If you would prefer not to discuss this issue, I will let it drop. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:26, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

How to deal with unsatisfactory AfC drafts is somewhat disputed. My opinion on the current situation is that the general mechanism for removing them is of course MfD. If there is dissatisfaction with a particular MfD decision, there's Deletion Review. If there's a feeling that MfD discussions in general are unreliable, then like any WP process, the remedy is to encourage more participation. If there's a view that additional deletion reasons are needed, then that can be discussed also. The situation is confused enough without being provocative.

There are some instances where it makes sense to take a questionable draft to mainspace and discuss it in an AfD. The standard for acceptance of a draft is officially that it is likely to pass AfD (though I and almost everyone else now considers "likely" to be somewhere in the range of 66 to 90%, not a bare 51%). But such numbers give a false impression of precision: decisions at AfD are inconsistent and unpredictable. In borderline cases, it may be impossible to really give a prediction, and the only way to find out may be to take it there and see. I've done it myself in some cases where there seemed no consistent practice, or an unusual question. But just doing it to get the content deleted is not a good idea.

If a contributor objects to a particular reviewers interpretation, they can submit it again for someone else to review (no reviewer should insist on being the only person to handle a particular AfC--though some contributors seem to think we do that ). And of course if someone insists on taking their chances and it isn't a speedy candidate, the simplest thing to do is to let them try. A delete at AfD will discourage improper re-creation. There are many good articles that were deleted that shouldn't have been, and many foolish ones that shouldn't have been allowed to stay--it is rarely productive to spend too much individual of community energy in arguing about a single article. DGG ( talk ) 06:03, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

More AFC Thoughts

You wrote: "If a contributor objects to a particular reviewers interpretation, they can submit it again for someone else to review (no reviewer should insist on being the only person to handle a particular AfC--though some contributors seem to think we do that)." I agree, but will comment. First, I and some other reviewers do not like to see a draft resubmitted without addressing the comments of the reviewer. If a contributor disagrees, they have semi-automatic options to discuss on the reviewer's talk page or to discuss at the AFC help desk, or can accept the advice to discuss at the Teahouse. If I see a draft resubmitted as is or essentially as is without addressing the comments, and without an explanation of why it is being resubmitted, I will not only decline but caution the contributor. Some contributors will resubmit over and over again without material changes (which often winds up at MFD - I would like to be able to report this as a conduct issue). Second, what do you mean about some contributors think we do that? I know that some contributors expect that a reviewer will follow a draft through the review process. I try to be diplomatic with them and get other reviewers to comment. Third, I don't know of any reviewer who insists on being the only person to handle a particular draft. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:42, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure DGG means some authors think a reviewer follows a draft all the way through multiple reviews. I'm not aware of any reviewer that tries to do that. The decline templates (wrongly) encourage discussion on the reviewer's talk so I understand where that idea comes from. See Draft talk:Ciera Rogers for an example where I think a move to mainspace and a test at AfD is in order. This user is not going to take AfC no for an answer and the topic - a social media personality - is one of those grey areas where it could go either way. Legacypac (talk) 02:47, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, many new contributors think that the same reviewer follow a draft all the way through, and it is natural that they think this way, because most of the world works in that fashion, especially when it's a matter of following up on suggested revisions, not outright rejection. In fact, OTRS at Wikipedia works that way: for email inquiries and complaints and requests for pages, the same OTRS agent follows the entire case unless they unlock it. The OTRS agents are by and large more experienced than the AfC reviewers, and make fewer mistakes. But I have seen the same sort of bad advice in both places, and the standard OTRS messages are even more nonspecific and unhelpful than the AfC ones.

And I have also seen reviewers try to keep a AfC case resubmissions returned to them. I haven't seen any absolutely insist, but I have seen it encouraged; and it is easily possible to watchlist a draft--there are many instances of successive reviews by the same person.

When a review is completely wrong, and the submitter is experienced enough to know that, it can make sense to resubmit unchanged, though anyone with some degree of subtlety will make at least some changes. I have however certainly seen people resubmit impossibly unacceptable material unchanged, on the hope that the next time they will get some reviewer careless enough to accept it--and they sometimes see their hope fulfilled.

Ideally, we when we encounter a previous bad review, we would follow it up with the reviewer. This is fairly easy to do with beginners at it, but much harder with those who have experience and have been doing it wrong consistently. I do sometimes, and try to word it as a suggestion. Sometimes, it makes a difference; sometimes I get ignored or challenged. As with similar situations at CSD or OTRS. I am very reluctant to really take issue with anyone whom I know to be stubborn, and even more reluctant to follow to the conclusion. I could easily spend all my time here on this, and although it might help WP, it would not help my own mental equilibrium. If it were a regular system of review or audit, it would be less personal. DGG ( talk ) 04:13, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

I see bad decline reviews - I just override them and note up the talkpage. I have yet to see a strong enough pattern of bad declines to start a serious discussion. I assume most of us watchlist draft we touch anyway which will bring reviewers back to the page sometimes. Legacypac (talk) 04:20, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Obits..

Do you think an obituary in reputable newspapers like Telegraph et al is an auto-indicator of encyclopedic notability, in the event no other significant covg. about the subject could be discovered?~ Winged Blades^Godric 05:23, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

User:Winged Blades of Godric - That would depend on the newspaper's obituary policy. Some newspapers, including the Washington Post, which is considered a newspaper of record, have a policy that they will publish a true news obituary for any long-term resident of the area of the newspaper. (A long paid death notice that reads like an obituary is a different matter, but your question has to do with true obituaries under the byline of one of the obituary staff reporters.) Therefore a news obituary in the Washington Post is not in itself an indicator of encyclopedic notability. Other newspapers have mileage that may vary. Does that fail to answer your question? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:33, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

For the New York Times it is a clear determinant of notability at least for 1896+. I'm told this is true for the London Times also. I am insufficiently familiar with the Telegraph. The distinctions Robert McC gives above about paid obits is important to keep in mind in all cases. DGG ( talk ) 23:46, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

IMO a full obituary in a broadsheet paper (UK: Times, FT, Observer, Telegraph, Grauniad) is normally a non-trivial reliable independent source, so counts towards WP:GNG. Paid obits, not so much. Guy (Help!) 00:10, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but the distinction is that the NYT and the Times are so reliable as to be sufficient by themselves without needing other sources. As for the others, as I said, I'm not familiar enough to know if they fall in this category. And for the US, a local paper regardless of format is I think usually not reliable for notability, and I think there is no clear level above that where a clear division can be drawn. To some extent I judge by the nature of the obit. DGG ( talk ) 04:26, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

• Sometimes. Yes for Obits published by universities. It probably depends on the author. The obit should make a claim of notability if it is being used as a claim of notability. Newspapers obits are paid, so take with salt. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:59, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• Comment, replying to User:SmokeyJoe and following up to my comment and that of DGG: There may be three types of death reports in a newspaper, and one should be mindful of the distinctions. The first is a news obituary, which is written by a reporter, and is not paid for. Different newspapers have different policies on who qualifies for these. A news obituary in The Times or the NYT is an indication of notability. A news obituary, written by the obit writer, in the Washington Post is not necessarily an indication of notability. The second is a conventional paid death notice, normally placed by the undertaker. These are no indication of notability. The third is a hybrid, a paid death story, written like an obituary, but paid for by family. These can be mistaken for news obituaries, but they are not, and are not indications of notability. True obits are not paid for; they are written by staff, and they may or may not indicate notability; but true obits and hybrids can be confused, and require careful reading. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:12, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Well put, I agree. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:14, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

And I agree also. I think RMC's are exactly the right criteria. DGG ( talk )

(advice on articles on academics)

speaking generally.

(1) In reviewing this article, what I noticed first was the obviously incorrect name of the department; this sort of error is a warning signal to look at the original sources myself. This led me to the apparent vagueness and over-expansiveness of the claims; that's a common indication of careless promotional writing. PR staff, even in academic institutions, tend not to be concerned with getting that sort of detail correct. Because of this, in the absence of a formal CV it can be quite difficult to verify the details. This does not necessarily indicate an actual conflict of interest, because PR writing so pervades the world that many beginners here tend to fall into a similar style.

(2) All of the descriptions of a person in their lecture announcements and the like sre normally written by their publicity team or copied from their own statements. They never have third-party authority, no matter where reprinted. The extremely close similarity of them all demonstrates their common origin.

(3) There is an unfortunate tendency in Wikipedia to try to document statements by cherry-picking quotations that happen to use the word or phrase. References have to be used in context.

(4) There is a frequent tendency in Wikipedia to emphasise the current interests of a person as they themselves describe them--they not unreasonably want to write about what they are currently interested in. But WP is an encyclopedia , and must treat their career as a whole. Sometimes what fascinates a person in their later career is not what the major real contribution is. Sometimes it is otherwise. Here it seems to be a mixture: their recent "neuroscience" work is too trivial to mention, but the current high administrative position in the Church of England is probably of greater importance than their earlier authorship and consulting.

(5) In dealing with an author, it is often helpful to organize the description of their work around their successive major books.

As advice, to learn about notability, observe and participate at AfD. To lean about sources, keep up with the WP:RSN, the reliable sources noticeboard. The BLP Noticeboard is helpful also, but it mainly deal with particualrly contentious articles,not how to deal with routine material. DGG ( talk ) 06:36, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks Sir... for explaining to me about the page for the late Ali Banat Farid999111 (talk) 15:58, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Student drafts

...

Our practices about drafts in general are quite unsettled at this time--I think everyone involved knows the system is confusing, over-complicated, cumbersome, much too slow, and unsatisfactory in almost every respect. It is effective neither at getting usable material into mainspace, nor keeping unacceptable material out of Wikipedia. Everyone centrally involved has a different idea of how to fix it, and some of them are trying out their ideas at cross purposes.

The only guaranteed safe way at present for a student to proceed at this point is to do the development outside Wikipedia. Personally, I think we should be able to do better: one of the basic concepts of Wikipedia is that it should itself be a place for people to develop articles. I hope to be able to make better suggestions in a few weeks. DGG ( talk ) 22:17, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Wikiprojects (was Fifth Wall ventures)

Wikiprojects are groups of all WPedians interested in a topic, and are not restricted to those expert in the topic. They have no independent authority, and have only as much autonomy as the community as a whole is willing to give them. To what extent they can set standards in their area depends upon the extent to which the community as a whole through its actions at afd supports them. This varies by project. A few specialized projects -- some small, some large -- have great respect in the community, but even they can lose that respect if the rest of us decide not to follow their lead.

Experienced editors likewise. In particular standards change, and in the field of articles about business, the standards have changed to the extent that the change is shown not just by practice but a far-reaching change in the basic relevant guideline, NCORP, and its wide acceptance at AfD. In any particular field, there are sometimes a few currently dominant editors, but they can lose their dominance quickly if their views no longer find acceptance. And among those most active, there will usually be some who try to maintain the current status, and some who seek to change it.

I show different sides in different situations, and try to keep them apart: when making a decision I strictly follow the current consensus; when giving others advice, I try to give the safest advice possible; when arguing for my views, I often try to lead the community a little. DGG ( talk ) 22:19, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

reply to a paid contributor

For [my article] I am only hoping for fairness and NPOV from editors who take the time to review all the relevant sources. emark came after a specific matter in question had been decided contrary the editor's position. Any mistakes in judgment are my own, as the company has only asked the article be fair. They're leaving it to me to decide how to best accomplish that.-....

Fair" tends to mean, "a fair statement of my POV". Our rule is neutral, as judged by those with no stake in the matter, not a negotiated compromise between NPOV and a subject's position. I appreciate the difficulties our policy must present for you, which is one of the reasons we should consider abolishing paid editing. DGG ( talk ) 07:45, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Notability for departments within universities?

If you have a moment, may I please trouble you for an opinion on where/how the notability bar is set for pages for individual departments within universities? I see "expected outcomes" suggests they are generally not considered notable unless they have made significant contributions to their field but I'm wondering how this is assessed: at NPP I came across this one for Texas Tech's philosophy department essentially made of a few thin sources (several campus student paper refs since added), two sentences of prose and a list of redlinks to people who mainly don't seem (at cursory review) to be notable. When I redirected (Texas Tech's main page already has a content fork for "academics" with plenty of room to expand), the page creator reverted saying "Please afd". So that I might have a better index on such things--does AfD seem appropriate to you or would you let it be?

An additional reason I wanted to ask you (beyond your particular expertise in universities) is that I share your concern for clogging up AfD with school matters when there's so much commercial promo to be dealt with, and the latter so much more detrimental to the encyclopedia--but then, this one felt like promo to me (and no doubt universities and departments, especially in the US, have strong economic incentives to seek opportunities for promotion.) So I wasn't sure.

Thanks much for any thoughts. Innisfree987 (talk) 21:53, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Ah, it seems I will find out at AfD! Though will of course continue to be very glad for your thoughts in whatever venue, especially as I think about how I should balance such entries with other AfD concerns going forward. Thanks. Innisfree987 (talk) 22:58, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Possibly these pages are created in good faith by ex-students or academics, but universities are big business these days, so in my view articles like these could also be seen as a form of advertising. I agree that there may be bigger priorities on Wikipedia, but this author seems to be blatantly refusing to improve the article or prove notability. Sionk (talk) 23:06, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)2 The bar should be set pretty high on these, but for example the English department at Cambridge (with F.R. Leavis etc) has had almost as much written about it as the Wars of the Roses. Some departments have been very influential in the development of an entire subject area, but most deserve at best a section in the uni's article. Johnbod (talk) 02:34, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

I consider the appropriate standard to be world-famous within the discipline, either currently or historically. This could also be worded, as about the 5 or 10 best known in the discipline, on a world-wide basis. There is a possible narrower standard, famous enough for outsiders to know about it. There are in my opinion a few universities where some or even most of the departments do meet this qualification, and a few dozen others that will have one or two such departments. They are rarely a matter of general interest significant enough for an encyclopedia. Regardless of the possible promotional intent, the articles usually are indistinguishable from the department web pages, which are characteristically written to attract the interest of prospective graduate students. I don;t think the 1pm has much to do with the rise of big business influence--the academic world from its medieval origins to the present has been in large part dependent on reputation, because a department becomes famous by attracting students and faculty that will make it famous.

As is usual at WP, most of the departments that need articles do not have them, while most of the articles we do have are not appropriate, I've always meant to work on the ones that are needed. I fully share Innisfree987's concern about clutter; WP does need more coverage of the academic world, but this is best done thru a biographical approach, increased attention to particularly notable books, and the NPOV presentation of academic tendencies.

(As limitations, I can judge best for the US, and sometimes the UK, and I may not be aware of developments in the last 10 or 15 years.) To give an example of my standards, in library science there have been only two, both defunct: Chicago and Columbia. In ornithology, there's one US department more famous than any other: Cornell, both now and historically. In a very large & influential field like Physics, there might be over a dozen.

There are beginning to be a few truely reliable sources: institutional history by outside scholars. Student newspapers and alumni publications are never reliable for this, nor are isolated statements of excellence without context. In most cases, it has to go by documentation of the ranking and inference from the faculty and alumni. Because of the need to show influence, they will mostly be found in the oldest and most famous research universities. As a caveat, a single famous personality is not enough to make a department famous. DGG ( talk ) 04:01, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

No, indeed. A good test might be (for historical ones) whether sources talk of a "Fooish school" - see Vienna School for examples - apart from music, we have 4 articles on groups essentially based at university departments. Also Cambridge School (intellectual history) etc. Johnbod (talk) 04:10, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes quite--had a similar thought about the Chicago School being an unimpeachable claim of notability for those department, but wondered where we drew the line afterward (since by contrast we are quite liberal with secondary schools--appropriately, in my mind.) But unlike secondary schools, which if outside a public school system will have no place in the encyclopedia if deleted, departments can always be covered on their college's page until a content fork is truly required. So nothing is lost if one holds the line a bit more closely. Innisfree987 (talk) 05:15, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks so much DGG for these thoughts; very clarifying. True indeed about academia always running on reputation (and incentive to promote thus nothing new). I think this case just particularly smelled off to me because the original links were touting the master's program in particular, and in a field where a doctorate is the standard terminal degree, master's programs are typically less a source of intellectual capital than just ... regular capital.

Agree very much that scholarly institutional histories are the best means of validating significance; and conveniently also serve wiki-notability standard's other purpose, i.e. to identify not only the most important subjects but the ones for which we have sufficient independent sources to write something balanced and fully realized without resorting to original research. Perhaps if I run out things to write for fun (!), I'll dig into my collection of those materials. But yes meanwhile I think I'll carry on with biographies and sometimes books; I'm not sure how many academic departments I really feel excited enough about to want to work up a summary of their institutional history. Probably just the ones I like to imagine I've done in an alternate universe (so... just HistCon, really.)

Thanks again! Innisfree987 (talk) 05:15, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Wiki-cookie

Having a party tonight and sharing a cookie with you for your help over the years

.

I hit twenty four thousand edits tonight and became a senior editor on Wikipedia. Thank for your help over the years. -O.R.^Comms 03:57, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

your opinion please...

I just drafted a very short essay on civility, User:Geo Swan/Pick one. If you have time, I'd appreciate your opinion. Your talk page readers are invited to comment too, at User talk:Geo Swan/Pick one.

I think you are a prime example of someone in the first quadrant, of User:Geo Swan/Pick one#Four quadrants

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 22:27, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Heads up - userfied something else

Back in this MfD about a month or so ago (Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Pseudo-Richard/Antisemitic canards related to money, banking and finance) I userfied the main article under deletion under your userspace (User:DGG/Jewish stereotypes in banking and finance). It was recently pointed out to me that there was a second bundled article, which I have now userfied to you as well at User:DGG/History of Jews in American banking. If you don't want that one, let me know and I'll undo myself. Cheers! ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:07, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Please leave them both, so I can work on them. But I'm going to do the Role of Jews on the American film industry first--because this topic is absolutely genuine; Jews did dominate Hollywood during the studio system, whereas they never dominated banking and finance. That antisemites decried the Jewish dominance of the American film industry is undeniable, butt the phenomenon was real. Jews tried in response to anti-semitism to hide this somewhat during the 20s and 30s (and even a little later), but that's part of real history also. It's characteristic of prejudice that the prejudiced group tends to disparage their victims for their real roles and characteristics, as well as the imaginary. DGG ( talk ) 21:23, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

If there's anyone I trust to do a balanced article on this kind of topic, it's definitely you. Will definitely be interesting to see once it's done. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:56, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

... in fiction

• While I'm here, please note that List of giant animals in fiction has been nominated again. In the previous discussion, you said that "I am frankly a little exasperated at people coming here with things they say cannot be sourced, when they haven't found the obvious ones in even the Google. WP: BEFORE should be an absolute requirement...". Matters have not improved as editors not only don't search themselves; they don't acknowledge good sources when they are presented. This looks like a case of WP:IDHT to me... Andrew D. (talk) 08:22, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

I will defend essentially any ... in fiction article that has content. I think that's the sort of thing that WP can do very well, and that this sort of content is in fact the subject of serious study. As for sourcing, you are also s librarian, so you know the general rule that most people will not look beyond those free sources found on the first page of Google. I have never known anyone other than a librarian or a patent attorney actually do a comprehensive search all the way through Google, . Perhaps 10% of people here will use library resources-- even if they can get them free through their library on the internet . As for printed books, the main people who use them here are subject enthusiasts who have their own collections. DGG ( talk ) 20:48, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Gender and Research

David, usually we take inclusion in Scopus as a sign of notability. However, in this case Scopus says that the journal was indexed "from 2016 to 2017" (which I generously interpreted as "indexed in 2016 and 2017", although it could very well mean that it was included from Jan 1 2016 to Jan 1 2017). If the journal would currently be indexed, this would read "from 2016 to present". So it was only 1 or 2 years and Scopus and has since been delisted. It was PRODed earlier today (not by me) and I assume that you'll want to dePROD because it is published by the Czech Academy of Sciences. Regardless of that, what do you think about Scopus? If this were some obscure (but honest) publisher, would you take the listing in those 2 years as a sign of notability or not? (We don't have this issue with ISI, because their Master Journal List only lists journals that are currently indexed, not journals that at some point in the past have been indexed.) Thanks! Best, --Randykitty (talk) 14:01, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

When Scopus was first published, I reviewed it at some length in the professional literature ("Comparative Reviews of Scopus and Web of Science." with Louise Deis:

The Charleston Advisor (Nov 2005) 7 (2) 5-20; my current link for this is broke--I will locate another) . and supplemented my review approximately biannually as it improved. The deliberate intent of Scopus was to cover the scholarly literature more broadly than ISI, including considerably more material on the social sciences, and somewhat more third world material. ISI responded to it by broadening its own coverage, Scopus did similarly, and the 2 have been continuing this ever since. There is a difference--ISI stratified its product, Scopus has kept a single database.

With respect to its coverage for this journal, Scopus has covered through the latest published issue, 2017 no.2. (there are 2 issues/year). It says it has listed 16 items, which from the Journal's table of contents is the total of all substantive articles published in those two issues, so it has covered the entire year. Looking at the journal's archive, until 2016, this journal published almost entirely material by Czech authors; mostly dealing with Czech-related subjects, and almost entirely written in Czech, often without even an English abstract . Considering the Scopus coverage criteria [15], it would not possibly have met them in those years. The journal is now apparently trying for a broader audience. According to the Scopus title list [16] , coverage is ongoing. I do not know why the Scopus previews link said otherwise. Their documentation is not known for consistency. It would be premature to say discontinued until there are 2018 published issues Scopus does not cover , or it appears on the (very interesting ) Scopus discontinued list  : [17] Or, of course, if there are no 2018 issues after another year or so. Since they are publishing each issue as a special topic issue, it's hard to predict publication dates.

In general, as you know, I take a much broader view of journal notability than you. This one may be borderline. DGG ( talk ) 21:03, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks David, for that detailed analysis. I missed that there was simply no 2018 issue yet to index. Given that it is indexed by Scopus, I'm going to dePROD it. As for my more restrictive stand on journal notability: I try to maintain clear objective criteria, it is often difficult enough to get people to accept to keep journals that clearly meet NJournals... --Randykitty (talk) 04:13, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Wednesday Salon Introduction

I'd very much like to meet you tonight. Vyeh (talk) 20:45, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Vyeh, Ditto. I will probably be there at the NYC meetup by about 6:40. DGG ( talk ) 21:05, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

nursing bios

Thanks for the encouragement, DGG. I'm slowly working on a number of BLPs in nursing as well as science diplomacy and related fields. I appreciate your edits; thanks! Vothlee (talk) 05:09, 17 September 2018 (UTC) Vothlee

NPR Newsletter No.13 18 September 2018

The New Page Feed currently has 2700 unreviewed articles, up from just 500 at the start of July. For a while we were falling behind by an average of about 40 articles per day, but we have stabilised more recently. Please review some articles from the back of the queue if you can (Sort by: 'Oldest' at Special:NewPagesFeed), as we are very close to having articles older than one month.

Other

• A new summary page of reliable sources has been created; Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources, which summarizes existing RfCs or RSN discussions about regularly used sources.

Moving to Draft and Page Mover

• Some unsuitable new articles can be best reviewed by moving them to the draft space, but reviewers need to do this carefully and sparingly. It is most useful for topics that look like they might have promise, but where the article as written would be unlikely to survive AfD. If the article can be easily fixed, or if the only issue is a lack of sourcing that is easily accessible, tagging or adding sources yourself is preferable. If sources do not appear to be available and the topic does not appear to be notable, tagging for deletion is preferable (PROD/AfD/CSD as appropriate). See additional guidance at WP:DRAFTIFY.
• If the user moves the draft back to mainspace, or recreates it in mainspace, please do not re-draftify the article (although swapping it to maintain the page history may be advisable in the case of copy-paste moves). AfC is optional except for editors with a clear conflict of interest.
• Articles that have been created in contravention of our paid-editing-requirements or written from a blatant NPOV perspective, or by authors with a clear COI might also be draftified at discretion.
• The best tool for draftification is User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js^(info). Kindly adapt the text in the dialogue-pop-up as necessary (the default can also be changed like this). Note that if you do not have the Page Mover userright, the redirect from main will be automatically tagged as CSD R2, but in some cases it might be better to make this a redirect to a different page instead.
• The Page Mover userright can be useful for New Page Reviewers; occasionally page swapping is needed during NPR activities, and it helps avoid excessive R2 nominations which must be processed by admins. Note that the Page Mover userright has higher requirements than the NPR userright, and is generally given to users active at Requested Moves. Only reviewers who are very experienced and are also very active reviewers are likely to be granted it solely for NPP activities.

• Other useful scripts for New Page Reviewing:
• User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deletionFinder.js: Creates links next to the title of each page which show up if it has been previously deleted or nominated for deletion.

NPP

...

Fram, it seems we are two of the very few people who use NPP to check on autoconfirmed editors. I use the old list interface to scan quickly for anomalies, but I only get to it every week or so for a little while. DGG ( talk ) 17:07, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Same here, I only see a fraction of the new pages, but I look at them without prejudice wrt autoconfirmed, reviewed, ... Of course, there are editor+topic combinations I don't bother reviewing (e.g. Lugnuts creating a List-A cricketer article, these can be reasonably be assumed to be factual and notable (according to our very loose criteria)), but otherwise I have seen too many "accepted" editors creating problematic articles (copyvio, hoaxes, ...). And with ACTrial permanently implemented, we have a bit more time to look at these instead of the endless crapfest we had before! Fram (talk) 06:44, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

faculty bios ...

More generally, it would appear that a number of other articles on faculty at the USC Dept of Gerontology have been written by publicists. I am going to assume that these were people in the position before you, but if they are still active, please alert them to the need to declare.

Even more generally, looking at the category for USC faculty, it appears that an unusual number of them have similarly been written by PR staff in a consistent manner. Other universities do this also, but the proportion of such articles from USC is unusually high. If you should happen to know your colleagues who are doing this, please make them aware of our requirements. DGG ( talk ) 01:28, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE and other AfD advice

Please remember to do WP:BEFORE background research before nominating articles for deletion. I've seen many of your AfD noms fail–they could've easily been avoided had more research been done. I've made similar mistakes in the past and it's easy to correct them. I've rarely seen you mention in your nominations that you did one, while there are sometimes a dozen articles extra on the subject that may make it pass WP:GNG or other notability guidelines.

This link shows that you nominate many articles for deletion and it's good that many are successful, but bad that so many aren't.

This is just a friendly message with advice... no worries here. I know that you are an experienced editor here and have respect from the community due to your activity here and I appreciate it a ton, but there are basic errors I've seen you make and I'm just pointing them out.

Always happy to help.
Redditaddict69 ^{(talk) (contribs)} 23:54, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I know not everyone understands what my purposes are in deletion discussions. Although some questions involved in determining notability or promotionalism are cut-and-dried, other aspects remain uncertain. And even for our accepted rules, the boundaries between the acceptable and the not acceptable are almost always fuzzy. I have for many years chosen to involve myself with the undecided and the fuzzy. This necessarily implies my nominations do not always suceed--if they always did, I would not have successfully identified the disputable cases.

Additionally, consensus can change, and I have definite ideas on which directions I would like it to change. My method of working is to carefully try to see and affect the views people have here. I try to do this cautiously, and not be over-persistent on any one point; but I continue to advocate for them from time to time as occasion offers; and I do not concentrate too hard on any one issue, because I have several of them in mind. The only way to see if an argument is more likely to convince people than in the past, is by trying.

Further, I have some basic principles that others may not share. For example, I consider avoiding promotionalism far more important than deciding borderline notability. I like simple ways of deciding that do not rely on the variable interpretation of nebulous terms. And, just as long as we maintain verifiability, I consider sourcing much less important than importance as judged within the subject. As you must be aware, the people taking interest in any one discussion vary. If a discussion should happen to attract people who dislike the way I look at things, the result will not go my way. I consider this the necessary consequence of deciding questions the way WP does, by the consensus of those who are for the moment interested.

I never look at my the statistics of afds I nominate or participate in. Anyone can get a perfect record by only doing the obvious, as it is necessary when a candidate at RfA. I do not even watchlist the discussions. I do keep track of ones that I want to return to--either in a few months, when there may be a more representative set of participants, or in a year, as consensus begins to change, or in 5 years, when it has done so, or in 10, when we mature into a better realization of our responsibilities.

I do not argue to win individual decisions; I argue to change opinions more generally. ( This means I will often lose, but that does not bother me, as long as we are making progress in what I consider the right direction, or as a last resort, just keep things from getting even more wrong-headed) Any topic it would really bother me emotionally to lose, I do not engage with on Wikipedia. And I make mistakes. When I do, I say so. Very few other people do that, and I have never been able to understand it.

In particular, since you mention it, I sometimes do use guesswork about whether there will or will not be sources. I think I'm pretty good at it, but I am not perfect. (very few people are, see the AfD for John J. Kerrigan. or Richard Ziser . ) I do not think this particularly wrong, because I do not give opinions about what I want kept or deleted primarily on the basis of sourcing, though I try to also argue in the conventional way for those who insist on it. No one has the right to expect that I will argue as they would like me to. All that anyone has the right to expect of me, is that I go by the established consensus in making administrative decisions.

And, to get down to issues, our most recent disagreement is Christopher Bergland. Frankly, I consider the article unencyclopedic, regardless of details of sourcing, unless it is actually of really general interest. It's the sort of coverage we should minimize. The policy here is NOT INDISCRIMINATE., which is the true foundation of all inclusion guidelines. DGG ( talk ) 03:50, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

as usual, a well reasoned and cogent response from DGG. Wikikit stalker - meowr! Coolabahapple (talk) 06:20, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

• Interesting discussion. We sometimes vote at the same AfD, and I take note of what you say. I find it interesting you don't base your votes primarily on sourcing, which is my primary basis of voting, except that I will vote for a WP:TNT on articles so poorly written (or WP:PROMO) that I don't want the general public to see them in that state.

I think I might share your view, which I believe is that we have too many articles about unnotable athletes. I find it incredible that we have the WP:NOLYMPICS rule that anyone who ever participated in any Olympics is automatically notable. That seems a glaring and unreasonable exception to our rules, and I cannot understand how on earth we have such a rule. Some of these athletes have zero secondary sources, but we still have an article? I am curious if you have any thoughts on that issue and how that rule came into being. --David Tornheim (talk) 08:09, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

1) I think the rule came into being to avoid the tens of thousands of debates that would have occurred otherwise. Including non-notable people does very little harm, provided that what we say can be verified and that there is nothing that might violate BLP. Engaging in extensive afd debates when it doesn't matter does do harm, for it impairs our ability to focus on the important issues. I wish we had many more fixed rules for what we would ordinarily cover/not cover. I would support them even if I did not altogether agree with them, because it simplifies our procedures. (In fact, I would usually support them even if I totally disagreed. Consensus only works if we put up with each other. )

2) There are a number of areas where I think we have too many articles. I think that everyone has this opinion, except that the areas they think over-covered differ. This is a communal enterprise, and I think we can only proceed without conflict by letting other people have their harmless over-coverage in their areas of interest, provided it does not interfere with what we individually consider proper coverage in our own areas of interest. For example, I will gladly accept the athlete in exchange for accepting an article on each species of organisms. Everyone's examples will differ here. But the only way to get an encyclopedia the way I would want it would be to make it myself. As this is impossible, compromise is necessary. Consensus only works if we put up with each other. DGG ( talk ) 17:55, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I can't agree with you that declaring certain topics or people notable simply to reduce time spent at AfD is a good idea, but I do respect the idea that having simple reasonable metrics can make complex decisions simpler. (For example, I would like a database that makes it easy to lookup particular sources and our overall assessment of their reliability, including past discussions.) If we have more articles, then that means more maintenance of those articles for accuracy. When I hit random article, it far too frequently goes to some obscure athlete, often someone in the Olympics with virtually zero WP:SECONDARY. This seems a bit unfair to other topics and people, like say movie stars and film directors who have to reach a far higher bar with WP:NARTIST. My feeling is that WP:NOLYMPICS means we are effectively promoting the Olympics by disproportionately waiving notability rules for Olympians while doing the opposite for other fields. It's a bit strange given the demographics of our editors.

Being an inclusionist, I tend not to worry about "over-coverage", as long as there is WP:RS that underpins the text. But given that we have long-standing rules of the minimum requirement for an article, I do believe we should apply them uniformly. If the standard is *multiple* independent secondary sources, I am frustrated that Olympians get a free pass, but others do not. --David Tornheim (talk) 06:29, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

If we're talking about athletes, I do not see how the coverage of Olympics in WP has a significant promotional effect in comparison to their already achieved status, nor does it affect the career of individual athletes--they either win, or they don't. I'm much more concerned in this connection with some other fields of endeavor. DGG ( talk ) 06:42, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm not talking about the individual athletes, I'm talking about our articles promoting the Olympics, which has become a huge industry. By having articles on numerous people simply because they participated in this event, it sends the message that the event is *extremely* important. The Olympics is a billion dollar business. See their marketing materials here. See also [18][19][20][21]. (I take note that our article Olympic Games seems to give fairly limited coverage of profits, revenues, and advertising mentioned in those articles I easily pulled up in this Google search.) --David Tornheim (talk) 07:42, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Organization advocacy

The simplest rule to follow is that it looks like it would make an effective web page on your site, it will not do here. Your web page says what you would like people to know about your organization--an encyclopedia article says what ordinary people would want to do. This includes the general outlines of your work, but not why the problems it tries to deal with are important. It shouldn't include a list of minor projects, and for those projects that are worth mentioning, it shouldn't describe why the work is important, just say what was done. ( for an example, section 4.1 should not include the second sentence. ) It shouldn't include minor awards; for the awards worth mentioning, it shouldn't cite the vague terms customary in the award announcement. It has to give the source of each reference without people having to look it up. It shouldn't cite press releases, it shouldn't include material such as material derived only from the organization, such as the Guidestar statement that ""this report represents Direct Relief's responses". It should eliminate adjectives of praise or importance. 9792 this]. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:30, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

High standards

I strongly support articles for all notable academics. In particular, I have from my first years of WP strongly supported articles for academics in fields that have traditionally been ones where the majority of the people were women. 10 years ago there was explicitly worded opposition to covering people in such fields--I think the records of earlier afds will show I took a leading role in trying to get them included--we still have a long way to go in some of these fields-- there are a great many women who meet the standards for WP:PROF that need articles written, and I support the organized efforts to write them.

But: " the standards for the 21st century and the late 20th century academics are the same for all genders and ethnic groups and nationalities. I recognize there is still a considerable degree of gender and other discrimination in the academic world, but an encyclopedia has to go by accomplishments, not by what there might be if the world were better. (In earlier centuries, when opportunities for women were extremely limited, I certainly support taking account of this in the expectations for accomplishment). Saying we should accept anything less than the same standard is like saying good enough, for a woman, the traditional patriarchal condescending way of thinking. I sometimes see that others still think that way; it is one of the insidious effect of prejudice that those discriminated against and their supporters have also had their own thinking influenced; that's part of the mechanism by which prejudice continues.

. DGG ( talk ) 23:51, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Nice words. .... Your notions and reaction are completely contrary to your flowery prose. Sorry you do not convince. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 17:44, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

as I said a long time ago, I am not so unrealistic as to argue to convince my opponents. I argue to convince those who might see the discussion. There are only two options, one is that the same standards apply, and the other is the perpetuation of prejudice. DGG ( talk ) 21:08, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, actually I want to be convinced. FYI I am involved in linking papers to authors. I do add genders to the info so that it makes clear the extend the gender gap is involved in co-authors. GerardM (talk) 08:03, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Looking at your excellent recent work, I am not sure what we might be quarreling about. The main difference is that for scientists I focus more of demonstrable scientific accomplishment as measured by publication, and you focus a little more on press coverage.of human interest aspects. Myself, I do still distrust press coverage of " human interest"; I think it has the same lack of relevance to notability for scientists as it does it other fields--and if the scientist is notable by WP:PROF, trying to add human interest tends to detract from it. This is I consider to be based upon my feeling thta human interest inevitably always leads to promotionalism  ; but it is also possible to see it as representing a somewhat cold-blooded or distant attitude to people, or a fear of sentimentality. .

But if you mean that we still disagree on the relative weight to give underrepresented groups, there need be no practical dispute, if those wishing to cover the underrepresented groups do as I have always recommended, start with the most notable by unambiguous and accepted criteria. There are thousands of such articles to write; after we've done them, it will be time to discuss the middle range,for the middle range, the borderline notable, will always be borderline no matter where we draw the border. DGG ( talk ) 09:03, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

The biggest difference between you and me is that you insist on being the arbiter who decides who deserves to be seen as a notable scientist. I don't. When I start with a scientist who "is in the news / on Twitter", I seek out their authority control data and only when they have an ORCID identifier they get the full treatment. Meaning that I import their papers, their co-authors and link it all. These people may come to me as recipients of awards as well. What I find is people who have been deleted because ... no clue really when I note people like with this gentleman who was deleted never mind the prestigious awards that were bestowed on him previously. Oh yes, those awards were Finnish..

When you insist on doing the most prestigious scientist first, you expect that there is a list or something that makes it easy for you to allow them to exist. Such a list does not exist and if anything it is not static. A women gets the Nobel Prize, her algorith gives us a peek at a black hole upsetting any scheme we might come up with. I reject your notions where the news does not play a role in who gets attention. Your notions fail because we are not in the business of writing a magnus opum on scientists, we are writing an encyclopedia. We write it for a public who expect to find those scientists who are notably present in the news. When you are right and a bit of cold water is to be dropped on the relevance of a scientist, it must be in the article if we are to do any good. In what I do, I serve a public. I understand the limitations of what I can achieve and exposing thousand of scientists many with hundreds even thousands of papers is not the same as me proposing articles like for Professor Lawn who is one of the foremost experts on neonatology and makes a big impact on child mortality. Yes, she has an article and I am grateful.

When I read your arguments, they are about you. What motivates you. Consequently your arguments do not translate in a way that allows others to consistently emulate your actions. Your arguments are not even universally accepted, they are rejected by many. So my question to you is how can your POV be made objective and workable. As it is, it makes you and your opinions contentious. Given the good work that you do, that is not what we want. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 05:23, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

You are right, my arguments are explaining the way I look at things. That's because I view our decisions of notability as primarily subjective--decisions based on individual values and understandings of what WP should be like. Understanding the different ways people look at a problem is in such cases the way to go forward. Myself, I do have a definite understanding of what is meant by academic notability in the RW, And I think WP should follow it. It has everything to do with accomplishments , and nothing to do with outside sources. (I have similar views in other fields, but I am not there an expert in just what the field considers notability to the extent I am in the area where I have spent all of my career, and I therefore do not argue them in quite as positive a manner.)

I altogether understand your view that we need to provide information about those things that are rightly or otherwise in the news, and that people will come to WP to find information on. (That's the basis of my continuing effort to cover pseudoscience) I think your statement on that above is one of the clearest such statements, and I think what you say is a perfectly valid consideration.,Buy when we cover people this way, we need to cover them accurately. Covering them accurately means stating the limited nature of their actual scientific work, and those article I have seen rarely do that. They instead pretend that the person is notable as a scientist, and attempt to convince the reader of that .That was in fact the basis for my ill-starred attempt to write a rational article on Phelps. She's never been notable as a scientist, but rather as a figure that ORNL wants to publicize to pretend they are giving opportunities to minorities.

We have to cover the world as it is, but we also have to maintain objective standards, There are some areas where this is impossible, such as some areas of entertainment, and I simply don't work there.

I'm continuing this discussion not exactly to convince each other, but in the hope we can better understand each other's way of looking at things, and to some extent, take them into account. In other words, I am fully convinced my way of looking at these problems is basically correct, but I know it does not encompass all reasonable considerations: It's basically correct, not completely correct,. DGG ( talk ) 08:49, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Again I have some points to make. First, some scientists are not necessarily known for their science but for other aspects than just their published record. Even with scientists known for their published work, we do not make it easy on our public. We do show the ORCiD in the Source Control template but we do not show their "Scholia", it is more informative. A precedent for something similar is the inclusion of "Worldcat". As you mention "pseudoscience", you will agree that this is beside the point, the subject is diversity in Wikipedia for scientists.

The biggest beef I have with your POV is "authority". You tell me, the world that you know best and are to be trusted in this. As long as this trust is unchallenged no problem. However, your authority is challenged and what I find is that you indicate that it is subjective, you use words like "pseudo science" in this conversation and even though I know you mean it as a sidestep it comes across as a challenge to the legitimacy of the people who gain attention thanks to the "women in red" et al efforts.

The problem is that your foothold on authority is challenged for instance in this Finnish gentleman with existing awards, who has an award conferred on him by a American diabetes organisation. Diabetes is very much in the news thanks to the outrageous prizes charged by US companies for insulin. We need to cover this ground extensively. This is just another article deleted for the wrong reasons. What I find is many white US males with really poor articles who are not challenged and it becomes then all too easy to dismiss your POV as biased. That is my problem. What I ask of you is to make your criteria more objective and that these criteria are evenly applied. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 05:45, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Question on Notability / AfD -- secondary sources based on a press release

I'd like your opinion on whether we consider a topic or person notable if they have multiple independent WP:SECONDARY WP:RS on them, but it is easy to see that the secondary sources (with by-lines of journalists working for the periodicals) were based mostly or almost entirely on the same press release. I can see an argument for and against such a person/topic being notable. I'm not familiar with any guidelines about this. What is your opinion? --David Tornheim (talk) 18:47, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

If secondary sources are based on a press release they do not cou nt for notability . They never did, and this has been clairfied by NCORP. If two or more secondary sources have essentially the same cotnent, they either arecopying each other, or a copying the same PR source, or at least are based on it, and even if the original cannot be identified, it's proof of unreliability. I and others have made this argument of many hundreds of afds , and it's never been refuted.

the real problem is that in some fields, unless the subject is truly famous, all available sources are to some extent based on press releases. We haven't fully realized this yet, except in the most obvious examples, like films in some countries. The job of a good press agent consists of getting apparently reliable sources to carry their material. I'm no sure that this can be dealt with by the GNG--either we have to greatly truncate our coverage in many important fields, or we have to base notability on some other criterion. (It has sometimes been said that the fact that secondary sources choose to reprint one particular organization's press releases shows that that organization is notable -- but most industry sources try to accommodate as many firms in the industry as possible, and beyond there it's based mainly on contacts, the most important part of the background necessary to be a good press agent. What it shows is the importance of the particular press agent, and PR people use these placements as their credentials, just as people trying to write paid editing for WP are expected to give references to their other articles ). DGG ( talk ) 03:21, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for directing me to WP:NCORP and for the full explanation. Regarding this rule in WP:NCORP:

Examples of dependent coverage that is not sufficient to establish notability:

• press releases, press kits, or similar public relations materials
• any material which is substantially based on such press releases even if published by independent sources (churnalism),...

You are saying that this also applies to people or topics, in addition to orgs? --David Tornheim (talk) 11:29, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

NCORP is not a new guideline--everything there there is basically the GNG sourcing requirements, specialized for companies. The requirement that sources for notability be sources providing substantial coverage from third-party independent reliable sources, not press releases or mere announcements is standard. Companies are such an issue these days that it was necessary to reiterate the rule , with examples. People are a slightly different problem, because of the SNGs. Except for WP:PROF, which is an alternative to the GNG, we have never consistently decided the relationship between them and the SNG. My own position in most cases is that they too should in general be seen as replacements, but that has never really had consensus. I have suggested that often it be handled by interpreting "presumed" in its legal meaning, if it meets that requirements in the SNG, it is notable unless it can be clearly shown otherwise, and it can not be clearly shown otherwise without a comprehensive search in all reasonably likely sources, which is beyond the resources of most people here--and even with the necessary library resources smd languages and skill, it is normally beyond the time available.

But everything I say above is just how I think the guidelines we use can best be interpreted to give what we consider a reasonable result. We most of the time actually use them to justify our views about what an encyclopedia like WP ought to cover, although many people claim not to not realize it. The effective guidelines are made by our decisions. That's why I usually say something like, "it has been our consistent practice that ...." If I argue to change a guideline, it is on the basis that our decisions have changed and the guideline needs to keep up with it. DGG ( talk ) 04:04, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks from NPP

		The New Page Patroller's Barnstar
		Thanks for your recent work reviewing new articles. Foreign biography articles are often particularly difficult (at least for me), and I saw quite a few of these among your reviews. Thanks and keep up the good work. Cheers, — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 15:28, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Page Deletion of....

1. You are the obvious sockpuppet of another editor, who was indefinitely blocked for adding advertising material with a promotional username--using an open proxy in both instances. , It has returned without explaining the connection, and have continued to add material which was essentially advertising; this account too has been blocked.

2.The material was added to mainspace despite the conflict of interest, with edits designed to evade our rules requiring use of draft space for new articles by new editors.

3.The material consisted of long sections of advocacy explaining the underlying problems, a long overpersonal account of how the two inventors devised the scheme and their own individual merits, & direct advertising claims about the security and other benefits. This is appropriate for the firm's web page, not an encyclopedia

4.It was sourced almost entirely to the firms own website, PR sites, mere listings, mere announcements of funding, and similar. (Tho some are in Chinese, the online translations make it obvious that everything is copied from their own press releases.)

You are, however, quite correct in your statement that we proceed to remove material of this nature as rapidly as we possibly can.

DGG ( talk ) 04:32, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

An amazingly detailed explanation for a spammer. They were on my talkpage too because I CSD tagged the page. Legacypac (talk) 17:39, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

much of it is very similar to what I've said hundreds of times, so it takes just a few minutes -- and it's here for other people to see it.

I find that an explanation of how I know they're a spammer tends to lower the chance that they'll come back, or try to protest further. .

And I know from comments made to me here and elsewhere that an explanation that makes it clear that I've actually read the article and checked the references is much more effective for both spammers and good faith but inexperienced editors than our usual notices. I only sometimes do this because there are just too many, but we really always ought to. We need to at least give the impression that this site is run by humans. DGG ( talk ) 18:10, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.14 21 October 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Project updates

• ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
• There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.

(why is this considered an advertisement?)

There are the following problems:

1. The article is addressed to "you"
2. Overpersonal account of the founding of the company
3. Referring to people by the first names alone
4. Repeated use of straight advertising language, eg "... makes international payroll payments faster, cheaper and easier" "in under 24 hours" "helps employees, freelancers and contractors receive their wages all over the world, "
5. Inclusion of practical details about how to use the service--this belongs on the firm's own web page only.
6. Inclusion of routine features as if they were something special.

In addition, there are major problems with the referencing:

1. Using references that merely mention the company as if they had substantial material. Every reference from something that could be seen as a major reliable source is of this nature,
2. Using references that are straight PR sites, or based on PR, or are mere announcements.

The only likely way of getting an article on Wikipedia is that the company might become so notable that there will be truly substantial, independent and non-promotional sources, and for someone unconnected with the company to want to write about it. DGG ( talk ) 19:41, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

CoinSwitch

from my Comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:CoinSwitch 27 Oct 1018

One way of looking at promotionalism is that if the article is suitable for a company web page, it is promotional , not encyclopedic; another is that a promotional article gives the information the company would want to give, rather than the information a reader might want to know; yet another, is providing information that would interest none but present or potential participants or clients. associates. Either way, it's promotional. You may not have intended it as such: the nature of some subjects is that it is difficult to write an article at all without it also having large elements of promotionalism; the world is so full of promotional writing that people naturally write in that style; Wikipedia in particular, has so much promotional content from the earlier years when standards were lower that people assume that's what is wanted here. It will take us a long time tor remove it all, but the least we can do is not add to it.

. Unfortunately, those references that are of high quality seem to talk about various aspects of the industry, not this company specifically. I think that it it is very difficult within our rules to write articles on companies in this industry; there is relatively little distinguishing them which could not equally be seen as promotionalism . The only likely possibilities for articles would be industry leaders in either size, prominence, or historical role--or those which have been the focus of major scandal or regulatory action. Probably at least half of our existing articles in this field were accepted when we had not yet realized the difficulties, and need to be re-examined. As I said earlier, this problem is to some extent common to many industries, especially those dealing with immaterial objects. But the general hype in this particular field makes it perhaps the most difficult.

Editing Team newsletter.

Recent changes

• The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
• The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
• The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [22]

Kevin

...What is truly sad is that he died so early; what is particularly unfortunate for WP is that we lost an excellent editor, and a still more excellent organizer and advocate. As I knew him, he was not the sort of person to think all of his work was perfect, any more than I think mine--although what he accomplished in the early days of the education program was much more important to WP than anything I have been able to do here. DGG ( talk ) 20:46, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

== Request on 18:48:22, 11 November 2018 for assistance on AfC submission by Robhmac ==

• Robhmac (talk · contribs)
  • Draft:Erie High School (Pennsylvania) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Regarding Draft:Erie High School (Pennsylvania) I do not know what else you require for this article stub to be acceptable. I've included THREE external, third-party sources, including the school's official website, the school district's website, as well as the local newspaper article that documents how and when the school was formed by the merger of other high schools. It was never my intention to write a full article, just enough to update all of the other Erie high school pages that imply that they still exist as high schools. However, if I have not provided enough sources, can you give me some more details, such as what else should be added? Thank you so much.

Robhmac (talk) 18:48, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

If it were up to me it would be acceptable. But the purpose of AfC is to evaluate what the consensus is going to consider acceptable. The current opinion here is that unsourced articles on high schools will be deleted. I have argued against this for many years, and I thought that I had established the principle that high schools would always be considered notable or the purposes of WP. In the last year, the consensus has been otherwise, in spite of the greatest effort to prevent this change that could be made by me and the others who agreed with me. One of the characteristics of the way things work here is that the interpretations of the rules are not fixed, but can change. Nobody here can tell other people here what they must do: there is no such authority, and consequently sometimes not a great deal of stability. there really is no alternative between there being an authoritative top-down decision making and relying on the general agreement ( we could do it by voting--we don't , we do it by a sort of rough consensus.) It would be irresponsible of me to tell you it was OK when I think it likely that this will not be the decision.

How much sourcing is required is however an open question. I suggest that you first check for articles about the school in the local news sources--here ought to be some, especially if there was a period of changes in the organization and consolidation of schools in the district. Then the best approach might be to write a combination article, High schools in.... . I shall certainly support it, and I hope others will also. But the nature of WP is that neither I nor anyone else can make any promises. DGG ( talk ) 05:29, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom

I hope you run to be on ArbCom again. Please do. --David Tornheim (talk) 19:48, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

At the last minute, I have decided to. The time it takes in relation to the useful work I can do is lower than almost everywhere else on WP, and I have been able to accomplish much less than I might have elsewhere, but perhaps what I have been able to do there has been something that few of the other people on the committee have been inclined to do. Unlike some of the other candidates, I am interested in accomplishing specific things. If people support them enough to elect me I will be pleased that the committee might accomplish something; if people do not support them, then I will have been saved the frustration of uselessly trying, and will be able to redirect my time to other projects here where I know I can be effective. DGG ( talk ) 22:52, 13 November 2018 (UTC)...

NPP Review

Hi DGG! I noticed that you marked the page Google News Lab as patrolled. When I came across it, though, it still had a lot of problems, such as not linking to the page for Google, not including projects on its talk page, not including categories, etc. I'm in the process of fixing those, but I just wanted to open a conversation with you, since it's my understanding that those things are required before a page should be marked as patrolled. You're more experienced at NPP than I am, though, so if there's a rationale behind marking that sort of page as patrolled, feel free to let me know. Sorry if this comes off as accusing you of not being thorough; I'm not trying to do that, but more rather just get a sense of what the norms are in NPP since I'm new to being a patroller. Hopefully that makes sense, and thanks for your thoughts! - Sdkb (talk) 09:02, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Sdkb, You are correct that I did not really complete this adequately. Here's why: The basic decision I was trying to make, is whether it should be necessary to send it to Draft space for further work; I almost did that, but finally decided that first, it was not just notable, but quite important, and that on a topic of as general interest here as this, it would be more likely to get the necessary improvement in mainspace. I therefore marked it as reviewed, but found it necessary to stop at that point. There's no clear practice on how much tagging is needed at NPP -- I usually do the most critical issue only. I do not usually add categories, for there are a number of people here who specialize in it; uncategorized articles are automatically marked, and they will get the needed work (and because I have considerable disagreement with the way categories are used here, so I think it better not to interfere). I usually do add the basic links--others typically get added later. I normally try to make sure the first sentence at least is clear, and the overall organization reasonably standard. But fundamentally in NPP I am looking for signs that the article shouldn't be here at all, because of promotionalism or lack of notability , or copypaste. These are the things that should not be missed.

The additional work on it you did was correct, and illustrates the way WP manages to work: people here tend to make up for each other's deficiencies.

I should also add that as a teacher, I have found it very effective to make use of my inevitable errors for the purpose of explaining how I came to make them, so that others would learn. I'm therefore always glad to have them pointed out here so I have the opportunity. DGG ( talk ) 06:32, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, that's all helpful to know! Cheers, Sdkb (talk) 07:17, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Nomination of Rachel Parent for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Rachel Parent is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

FWIW, I comment at this afd: "as I said in AfD1, "possibly speedy delete G11 as promotionalism. A report of a non notable activist's series of minor interviews" " The article, however, was kept DGG ( talk ) 05:43, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

(about teaching paid editors)

...

2. In principle, we should teach people. This is however not easy. I've taught WP to hundreds of people in classes, and only a few have become regular editors. I've mentored a good number of PR people and others with COI, and I have found it very difficult to get them to write what is wanted, tho there have been a few successes. It is very difficult to really persuade someone that what they want to write about themselves is not what is appropriate here. It is very difficult for even a very good PR editor to get an honest non-promotional article approved by their client. (Several good PR people who have been reasonably good declared paid editors have abandoned this line of their business for that reason). And who will teach them? If I were to do nothing else, I might be able to try to teach 2 or 3 people a day, and I expect the result would be that only one of them will in the end be willing to learn. (In practice, I do 1 or 2 a week) I do not think there are more than 20 people on the English WP who are willing to do even that much. But we get over 1000 promotional articles submitted every day.

3. What I do hope to do , is to persuade people to write general articles about their industry. I and a few others have tried, and we've had some professional associations cooperate with us, and we've had some individual success. (The best example is medicine, where there's an organized effort for this, which is being done quite well. I'm not involved in that one--I prefer to try to work in the fields or aspects that are not yet going well. DGG ( talk ) 04:56, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Robert M. Epstein

I was browsing WP:REFUND and saw that you turned Robert M. Epstein into a live article. As far as I can tell, the entire content of that page, with the exception of some memberships in professional associations, is based on Epstein's own work and words. I am well aware that requirements for secondary sources are, shall we say, relaxed for people who meet WP:PROF, but that seems extreme. Furthermore, much of the content doesn't even seem based on the cited sources or even flat-out misrepresents them (in a way that promotes Epstein). Were you aware of these issues? This is a BLP, after all. Huon (talk) 18:33, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I did not do it as well as I should have. As you recognize, the membership in the National Academy of Medicine is enough to pass WP:PROF, and in my opinion even a sourced stub saying no more than that would be sufficient for mainspace, though I myself never write anything that sparse. The content needs reliable sourcing, not necessarily independent sourcing. A person's CV is suitable for that. . But you are absolutely right there are some sentences that make claims that are not supported, and I did intend to go back to the article. I removed them now. Thee's one I think could be supported but needs a cite and I marked it. I had meant to remove most of the material about university service, as I usually do; I removed it now. There's a running debate about whether to make improvements beyond those necessary to pass afd indraftspace or in main space; I take an intermediatep position, that they could be done either way. Of course, the danger of doing it in mainspace is that one might forget to go back, or, more likely with me, be diverted into other things,, so I should have done more here. Thanks for reminding me. DGG ( talk ) 18:53, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

and my difficulty is that in reviewing deleted G13s to see what shouldn't have been deleted, a/I seem to be the only one doing it and b/ there is no single step process for seeing the contents, Both of these get me frustrated every time I do it, so I get tempted to do it as quickly as possible, which is not always a good thing. DGG ( talk ) 19:02, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Help with explaining NAUTHOR/CREATIVE?

Hi DGG, I have someone arguing that coverage (ie, reviews) for an author's works doesn't count towards notability for that individual, as that would be the author inheriting notability for the works. I'm going to try to clarify my viewpoints, but I wondered if you would be willing to help as well. I think that since the article was created by one of my students, they may be assuming that I'm making the argument to save their work. (I did spiffy it up by adding the reviews and some tweaks, but I wouldn't move bad work live, of course.) I think hearing it from another person would probably help reassure them. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:18, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

• Of course if you disagree, I totally respect that. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:19, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Reviews of their work are the principle thing that count for notability of an author. Ideally, substantial critical reviews from independent reliable sources. Authors do derive notability from their works, just as athletes from their performances, politicians from the office they win. What would possibly make an author notable except publishing notable works? Generally not their personal lives, and what else is there? Even prizes are normally for a particular work, though a few are for a whole career.

The question however is how many works, and what kind of reviews., I consider, and thousands of AfDs have uniformly confirmed, that the consensus here is that two or more notable works is enough .The usual problem comes from an author writing only non-notable works, and here I would be very reluctant to consider notability without very good sources about the author that are more than PR. The other likely dilemma is for an author who whas written a single notable work. A good case can be made forthe article being about the book, or about the author--I do not think it matters much, butI usually prefer the author because the author article has moreo f an opportunity for expansion as almost everyone who succeeds in writing one notable work writes others, but I have always opposed having 2 articles in such cases, unless the author is truly famous; there have been only a few genuine cases.

However, in practice it depends upon the reviews. Borderline significant reviews I do not consider sufficient, by which I mean the brief reviews in Publishers Weekly and the similar. I will look at the specific case later tonight.

And rest assured that if I disagreed with you I would say so. DGG ( talk ) 01:32, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to soften Jytdog ruling

Though I am still worried about your opinion of WP:N, thanks for your comment here. There, but for the grace of God, go all of us who care just a bit too much about the Wikipedia. Poor Dog. --GRuban (talk) 16:50, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

User:ThoughtNoodle

Hi DGG. Since you mentioned on Jytdog's user talk that you going to try continue on with his efforts with respect to COI/Paid stuff, I wonder what you think about ThoughtNoodle. The contributions do sort of indicate (at least to me) that there might be some undiclosed paid editing going on. The editor has previously denied this before on their user talk, but there lots of overlap and an undeniable connection between the articles they are choosing to edit. FWIW, this is the kind of thing I typically asked Jytdog about to get another opinion before actually interacting with the editor-in-question. However, there's an added bonus in asking you since you are also an admin and therefore any post from you to this editor might carry a little more weight than something from me. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:57, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Of course the likelihood is being a paid editor, but some of the articles may represent genuine interests of their own. I have never seen the point of repeatedly asking an editor after they deny it. But see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Safari Industries. DGG ( talk ) 18:22, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough and thank you for taking a look at this. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:19, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom

The spread of votes for the elected and top 2 unelected candidates was very small as compared to past elections. I am going to regard the result as a random fluctuation rather than an indication of anything. . DGG ( talk ) 17:16, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Although I am still upset about some of the things, but not seeing you for another term is more upsetting. There is now more establishment than ever, but less, if not non-existent at all, member that are willing to uphold the terms of use on what this project was and should continue to be about. But I suppose more productive work are done on the sidelines. Alex Shih (talk) 08:25, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Huh. That sucks. You had my vote, for what it's worth. Guy (Help!) 14:17, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Really sad more so as you had the Second highest number of supports after GorillaWarfare. Tactical voting appears to have done it.Really cannot see any reason to oppose you.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 16:26, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Same here - you had my vote as well. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 16:40, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• I thank you for re-running and for promoting stricter action on COI issues while you were on ArbCom. I'm sorry you didn't make the top six this time. Perhaps another year. Softlavender (talk) 17:33, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• 😞 I share the same sentiments as Alex. ^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 03:06, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
• ditto the above:( Coolabahapple (talk) 13:41, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

(a band)

... as with other bands, there is also the concern that coverage that appears to be secondary might really just be the result of a press release. My sense is when the band is touring, there is a massive amount of monetary outlays promoting the concerts, so differentiating advertising from truly independent coverage is not always so easy. This article on the band's use of social media to promote itself gives a sense of the money involved and major corporate advertising connections needed to go big. Is it just because of talent? I think not. I think it is mostly about money and good PR, something I think both of us are equally concerned about with regard to Wikipedia. --David Tornheim (talk) 10:09, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

There are a number of industries built in large part upon hype. In such fields, you are completely right that it is difficult to distinguish NPOV sources from PR. In particular for some genres of music it is impossible to distinguish--what makes a group notable is the publicity it gets, not its actual music. This is true to some extent even in the world in general. PR contributors I trust have told me, what I should have realized myself, that the goals of the best PR is to get genuine news and magazine accounts written about their subject, and that essentially all magazine articles or newspaper features about most topics are to some extent based on PR no matter how high the quality of the source that publishes it.

What I think this means for WP is that for material about organizations & people connected with them & some fields of sports and entertainment, it makes no sense to use the number and type of sourcing for notability, but we must base our inclusion criteria on known or presumed real world importance, and judge it by the most objective means available For content we should consider everything no matter how commercial as a possible source, but judge it for what it is worth (for an example, the words "leading" or 'famous" is unreliable no matter where published. It's just part of the PR boilerplate & if a reputable journalist copies it, they're not being as responsible as they pretend to be.

The difficulty is that this requires the sort of judgment many enWP contributors do not have. The first step in this direction would be an explicit rule, that the extent and detail of an article depends upon the importance within its field, as judged by either objective criteria or by true experts, not upon the number of sources. DGG ( talk ) 02:55, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

I think there are recognized source for film, even new film, and even new film out of the mainstream, but it takes experts in these sub-genres to find them, and I am not. This is much more the case than it was 12 years ago: popular culture of all sorts is an academic field, and academics write books and articles. I have not had time to get back to the NYPL Film division fo do any actual work there for several years now, but we can use the criteria of recognition by experts even in these areas. I'd like to encourage any WPedian who knows and uses academic sources in this field to come forward. But there's another factor, even for critically insignificant art, if it is nonetheless popular enough , we ought to cover it, and here we need people who can judge the various source for popularity. Contrary to WP dogma, popularity is one form of notability -- so is excellence, merit, influence, and recognition. Any of these count in any field. DGG ( talk ) 04:54, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

I am ignorant about the relationship of youtube to the artists they record. Thinking about fields I do know about, there are many cases of major differences between the published version and the authors' preferred version. In discussing them, we need to talk about all released versions, though we need not necessarily link to them. (for major authors & works, we also need to talk about their unpublished manuscript versions) That's what we do with film and books. There are certainly cases where the critically preferred version is, and also where it is not, the authors official version. Art is among other things, meant to sell, and the version that is legally sold can usually assumed to be the basic version or the purpose of discussion. The question of authorial intention is a very difficult one, and I have never subscribed to the critical theory that a work means what the creator says it means, or even what he intends it to mean.

More generally, a WP article about will normally have at least the by-product of promoting the subject it discusses. An article about anything good or interesting in even the most NPOV terms will have a promotional effect. Often , this even extends to subjects where the NPOV view cannot help having have negative implications--some people will still think, bad as it is, it might be interesting. Almost every article here on a book, film, or published music has the effect of promoting it, and the financial benefit will usually go both the creator and the publisher. DGG ( talk ) 05:27, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 19 – 27 December 2018

Facto Post – Issue 19 – 27 December 2018 Learning from Zotero Zotero is free software for reference management by the Center for History and New Media: see Wikipedia:Citing sources with Zotero. It is also an active user community, and has broad-based language support. Besides the handiness of Zotero's warehousing of personal citation collections, the Zotero translator underlies the citoid service, at work behind the VisualEditor. Metadata from Wikidata can be imported into Zotero; and in the other direction the zotkat tool from the University of Mannheim allows Zotero bibliographies to be exported to Wikidata, by item creation. With an extra feature to add statements, that route could lead to much development of the focus list (P5008) tagging on Wikidata, by WikiProjects. Zotero demo video There is also a large-scale encyclopedic dimension here. The construction of Zotero translators is one facet of Web scraping that has a strong community and open source basis. In that it resembles the less formal mix'n'match import community, and growing networks around other approaches that can integrate datasets into Wikidata, such as the use of OpenRefine. Links Zotero Comes to Google Docs, Zotero blogpost by Dan Stillman, 19 October 2018. Category:Wikipedians who use Zotero T115158 Write a Zotero translator and document process for creating new Zotero translator and getting it live in production, long Phabricator thread 2015–17. Zotero Translators, documentation from zotero.org. Home page on GitHub for Zotero translator Javascript Example translator, for Wikisource. m:Structured Data on Commons/Newsletter/2018-12-07

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Documentation
	Thank you for providing the most directly informative user page that I have seen so far. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:02, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Driving to Geronimo's Grave

I don't understand your objection to pick me publishing and article about a collection of stories written by an author who has been working in the field over 40 years and has won numerous awards over his long career. Maybe if you learned a little bit about this guy, you wouldn't think his books were not worthy of articles on Wikipedia. I mean what do you want me to do? Read and comment and spoil each novella? There's nothing that pisses me off more than an editor that gives a 2 paragraph synopsis of what happens in a book to have the entire work ruined. I don't publish high school level book reports! If that has come down to doing that just to get my article published, then I'm done as an editor.PKDASD 21:39, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_R._Lansdale
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_R._Lansdale_bibliography

If you were going to write about the individual stories, yes you would have to give a very brief precis of the entire plot, including the ending. See WP:SPOILER. Everyone should realize by now that WP includes complete plots, and if they don't want to know the ending, they shouldn't come here. We're an encyclopedia , not a place to publish teasers. But I see no evidence that this particular collection is notable enough to have a WP article about it at all.

Are the individual stories notable? Have people written extensive critical commentary about any or all of them? Have any of them won an award individually? If so, they could each have an article. If these individual stories are not notable, but the overall work in that format is, which is probably the case, there would be reason for a collected article about his short stories, where each of them is described in a paragraph--this is one of the options at WP:GNG. Is this particular collection of stories notable as a collection? Is there substantial reviews of this particular collection? Did this particular collection win an award ? If it did, add that information and there can be an article.

The fact that an author is notable, does not make each of their individual works notable, much less each individual reprinted selection of them. If an author is very notable, then we can justify a separate article about each major novel, but only if an author is actually famous, which usually means Nobel prize calibre, then we probably could have articles about each of their individual works, down to each short story; but even then we usually do not go to that level except for the best known and most published-about stories. And even then we don't list particular selected works as separate articles. We haven't even done that for Shakespeare--we do justify articles for each play and each sonnets, but that's because multiple critical work has been published about each. We could probably justify articles about some of the most famous collected editions, which have been similarly discussed. But we do not even for him make a separate article for each volume containing a selection of his plays or a selection of the poems.

There may be some existing articles here at this level about Lansdale's minor works or collections similar to this one. When I have no higher priority, I will probably challenge them. I'm not going to challenge articles about his major novels--nobody would do that. DGG ( talk ) 23:13, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Re 'Trans Tryer'

Hello, DGG. Recently you wrote about a draft I created with this name. Briefly: I recently read a news item which stated that WP had a new agreement with Google Translate. Because I read that, and am an optimist, I hoped that WP had created a new, automated 'mechanism'. Fooled again.

While I was exploring that, hoping to decipher where/how this might work (after, for the last time, struggling through WP's abysmal writeup on translation) ... I created a draft container. I gave it that throwaway name to do the experiment.

A machine translation is sometimes adequate to get a decent article stubbed. It's more valuable to get the translation into a visible page, thereby gaining an audience and opening an editing field for people who may not be expert editors, but may very well be very familiar with the subject-matter. As far as I could figure out, the news release was complete BS.

I do not wish to have anything to do with using Google directly. I consider their translations to be mostly shitty (as in: why do they even bother), but they are helpful in gathering facts that are helpful for research ... names, dates, places, etc. I've used that tactic several times in the past.

I will bother only with: 1) WP will take my request for a Google translation, ship that off to Google, and 2) pick up the result and drop it into my user-box. I'll take it from there. I'd be VERY glad to take advantage of such automation to improve many existing English articles about Europeans.

I'm not interested in wasting time on process (unlike many editors) ... I want to do research and create quality writeups, not turn endless cranks. So since I'm done, if you want to translate the article, that'd be great. Thanks for asking, and if/when WP gets its act together, if I'm still alive, I'll be thrilled. Twang (talk) 08:33, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Most people at the English Wikipedia fully share your skepticism. The use of the WP translate feature , whether with or without G Translate, is in fact not authorized here except for experienced users. As I mentioned, I do some translations of straightforward articles from frWP, and I never use it--I test it from time to time to see if it has gotten any better, but l tried a few days ago, & threw out the result and started over. The use of GTranslate as a starting point is sometimes helpful. How close it comes depends on the subject and the language, and I have never seen a translation from it that doesn't need revision--usually substantial revision. (I really do not see why machine translation can not automatically substitute it for she when referring to inanimate objects in Spanish, for example, or know to use the past tense for past events) But it's a help sometimes, like a dictionary. The actually difficult factor in doing translations is not as much language skills, as cultural and subject knowledge. The institutions mentioned need to be specified so they will be understood--the terms of art used properly--the historical events & the geography put in context.

There's a lot of machinery here that most people ignore, and only a few specialists bother with. As you realize, you don't have to know things like categories or reference format to write articles. All that is necessary is to get the article right and see that it is referenced clearly enough in any format so that some of the many people who do like to check such things can adjust the details. So I very strongly urge you to do just that: use the other language's article for information, and write an equivalent. it doesn't even have to be a translation, just an equivalent, with more or less detail as appropriate, and even a start at one that makes an understandable stub is helpful DGG ( talk ) 08:51, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Re: Talk:Linda Gottfredson

.... (for full discussion, see my usertalk about Bias, intolerance, and prejudice

I will comment, but I cannot impose my own view of what is the correct version. No single admin can do that, though an uninvolved single admin can summarize a dispute. I will however, make some suggestions for going forward forward, including additional people to ask. .

But , having read the material, I am no longer an uninvolved administrator. I now have a definite view on the subject, which is that her published work is in no way racist . . All I can therefore do is argue for it, like any other editor. This is why I do not act as an admin in fields where I are very much about personally--and for the ones I really personally care strongly about, I will usually not even edit, for I do not like to get involved in the usual WP cross-exchanges about who of the various people with strong opinions is the most biased. I could have chosen otherwise, and used my skills in understanding scientific material and constructing effective arguments according to any arbitrary set of rules (even such as those used in WP) to try to bring important WP articles to express what I think a fair view of the subject. Some early experiences here have left me with the impression that anyone trying to give a fair view of a controversial subject will be subject to abuse from both sides and is unlikely to make progress.

I've therefore preferred to work in other aspects- , rescuing poor but improvable articles in any field I know enough to do so, and trying, conversely, to keep advertising and self-promotion out of Wikipedia.these are things I can do with needing to have an opinion on the subject. That I'm going to get involved in the argument here is one of my rare exceptions. I do need to ask you a question about conflict of interest--you can do this best by emailing me. in confidence. I'm still bound by the proises of confidentiality I undertook as an arbitrator. DGG ( talk ) 07:22, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

...... I keep it displayed at the top of my user TP under the title "To include it in a BLP or not?": A person's biography is not a good place to debate scientific theory or ideological beliefs; such debates belong in the articles that focus on those topics. For BLPs, it is enough to simply state what their views are and link to the articles which expand on those views. ^{(quote by Zaereth edited for brevity; Jimbo Wales agreed.)} Hope that helps. ^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 11:48, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Atsme, I really appreciate the response, and agree with your referenced quote -- This line of thinking is what drives me to assist biography pages which have been written unfairly due to ideological bias.

With that said, DGG, do you intend to make the edit(s) based on the proposed changes, or would you rather another trusted member weigh in before we proceed? Thanks once again, 2601:42:800:A9DB:ECC0:551B:9183:5CD6 (talk) 04:03, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

I was waiting for the conclusion of Amendment request: Race and intelligence, [23], because the issues there are closely related, I take the result to mean that the majority of the present arb com is in agreement with my view of it, though, there also, at least one person is not. But you will notice Atsme's point, that this will probably lead to a formal RfC , in which case everything will have to be disputed here yet again. The result will be, as always, unpredictable. If so, I will probably feel that I have to comment in it, and this is a topic I very emphatically do not want to work on at Wikipedia. I shall do what I think the minimum necessary. DGG ( talk ) 05:37, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

That makes sense. Do you happen to know when a decision will be rendered on that case? 2601:42:800:A9DB:F0B3:BBB1:C14B:1097 (talk) 23:20, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

this issue is not going to be finally resolved for a long time. As I have said, I don't intend to follow it. DGG ( talk ) 02:45, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm not quite so sure about that any more; perhaps what I might do would be helpful DGG ( talk ) 05:56, 20 January 2021 (UTC)` ...

Comment about revising promotional articles, from a user talk p.

But this further explains my dissatisfaction with negotiating articles with coi editors. I can revise an article till I think it acceptable, and fair, and informatively describes the subject. . What I can not do and will not do, is revise an article so if makes a more effective presentation of the subject. Presenting the subject effectively the way they would want to be presented, is the job of PR, and a perfectly respectable thing to do--elsewhere. I will not help anyone do it here, and to the extent I edit, I will reduce the article to documented informative material: forsome relevant examples, if a person's books and awards are listed once, it provides the needed information, and there is no need to list them twice over. If reviews are cited, there's no reason to pick our the favorable bits. If someone's avocational interests unrelated to notability are mentioned and linked to a source for further information, there's no need to explain them further. DGG ( talk ) 03:10, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

NYU faculty articles

Hello, I looked over Marisa Carrasco, changed "Publications" to "References" and removed the tags per the talk page comments. The references on the article, and the many not there, are enough to show notability. As noted if there are continuing neutrality concerns they can be addressed on the talk page. Many times I tag or leave comments on article talk pages, in attempts to not be a "drive-by tagger", with plans to revisit. It is made easier when there are comments of substance. Thanks, Otr500 (talk) 21:20, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

I have no concerns about her notability, because WP:PROF relies on impact, which in the sciences is measured by quotations to her publications, and the GNG and its baroque ramifications are usually irrelevant. Her citation record does show that, and I'll add them. (somebody should have already, but this is WP). There is nothing wrong with calling attention to WP:PROF articles which may imply notability , but do not show it. Most of the time the ones that need deletion for lack of notability by WP:PROF are also highly promotional, so it is rational to check carefully everything done by a promotional editor. And of course there's a degree of blatant advertising where TNT is applicable, I try to balance that factor with notability, because it is impractical to devote the time to fixing the articles where notability is just borderline. DGG ( talk ) 01:19, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2019

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.

}}

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Hello DGG. At outreach:Wikipedian in Residence your Wikimedian in Residence project at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts still has the information "under construction" as project page. Could you please link to the project page at outreach so that everyone interested can learn about your project? Thank you so much, --Gereon K. (talk) 10:14, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

actually, I haven't been doing it for several years now,and I'm not sure whether or not I will be able to return. DGG ( talk ) 10:16, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Ok, yes, but I think it would be nice if the Wikimedian in Residence list on outreach would contain a link to the project (no matter if it's up to date or from 2012), so that interested readers could learn about the project. --Gereon K. (talk) 12:22, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Academic publisher "monitoring"

Do you know if there's anywhere, e.g. a wikiproject, where data are collected on publishers that are cited on Wikipedia with citation templates? Having run across this citation, where Springer Publishing was listed as the publisher of something from Springer Nature, and having made the same mistake myself plenty of times (e.g. spending time seeking Publishing books at link.springer.com), I wonder if there's anywhere that could be used to find likely errors of this sort. Not computer-processable, of course, but a human could look at a list of pages citing Springer Publishing titles and identify topics, like this one, that don't have anything to do with their fields.

Also, do you know if there's a way to look up matches between URLs and publisher names in citation templates? The first diff made me wonder about finding such issues elsewhere, and here I changed a publisher from Publishing to Nature. It would be interesting to see how many articles list Springer Publishing as the publisher for items on springer.com, or list Springer Nature as the publisher for things on springerpub.com.

Thanks for your assistance! Nyttend (talk) 02:55, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Nyttend, As you have probably guessed, this is complicated on multiple levels. .

First of all , for journals it is not usually necessary to specify the name of the publisher even in print citations l. The title is enough 95% of the time, and the usual distinction if it is not is the city of publication, and if more is needed, the dates. There are exceptions, such as when it is necessary to distinguish the publisher to indicate the degree of importance. Usually that's not reaally needed, because the name ofthe journal gives that information to those who know thesubject, but itcan be helpful--especially nowadays with predatory publishers who use titles that deliberately sound very similar to those of major journals.

This is different from books, where the name of the publisher is the key independence of reliability, and must always be included. (the place usually not, because most book publishers cooperate in several countries--it's only really need for ones that will not be recognized.. There are two questions --who actually published it, and what form of the name to use.

When one does give the name, a person is supposed to cite is what is on the item they actually use; this is not necessarily what will be on a formal record, nor will it necessarily correspond to the actual facts of production. In traditional publications, the copyeditor normalizes the citations according to house style, and what they will do with the publisher field varies--each firm has its own conventions. What you are suggesting is that we normalize it similarly. The copyeditor, or ourselves, would necessarily depend upon the library cataloging, but library cataloging has its own conventions, and these have changed radically over time and differ between countries , and do not except for rare books even attempt to be an exact record--in practice, for books, they copy what is on the item in front of them. For journals, title changes and publisher changes are common, and for both the rules are extremely complicated, being designed to cover all possible situations, and have changed with time, and vary with countries. For example, the 19th century practice was the opposite of today, to give the place always, but often not the publisher.

For the example example you gave, the original ed. and you both made errors. The original ed. didn't realize this was not the main Springer, but a separate and less important company. You made an error, for the citation in from 2009, and in 2009 there was no such firm as Springer Nature. The OCLC record lists it as Springer, so you need to change it back. [24]. OCLC and LXC doesnot usual between various forms of the corporate name.

For both journals and books, publishers change their names, or change the names of their sub-divisions (usually called imprints).They often merge and sometimes split; when this happens, sometimes the name changing to the firm that purchased another, but sometimes not and sometimes only after a period of years. They sometimes merge partially, when one publisher will sell one of its subdivisions or subject areas to another, and what happens to the name on the item similarly varies. Sometimes one publisher reprints work of another. Sometimes the responsibility for publication is divided between different publishers in all sorts of manners. Sometimes an item has different publishers in different countries. Sometimes the print and online have different publishers. Publishers have divisions i different countries, and sometimes they are in effect the same company and sometimes they are very different, as between OUP and OUP India, and this too can very with time. Often when a book is reprinted after the publisher merges, the name given will be the new publisher, but usually the new name will simply be added along with the new copyright date.

There's a problem with authority. OCLC merges the records for different versions and libraries. LC catalogs what they consider to be the version of record, but many libraries modify their copy of the record. For books other than rare books, different editions are separated, but not different printings. (In US practice, a new edition is where the contents changes, either in the main body of the text or the addition of a preface; a printing is where it doesn't. The practical distinction is whether the number of pages changes. A new copyright date is not necessarily a new ed. , because the use of revised date for each new printing if there is even a trivial difference extends the copyright the publishers will claim.) So if you take out a book from a library or buy it, the publisher on the item may be different from the publisher on the cataloging record, depending on when you or the library bought it. As a further complication, a e-print is usually just a printing variant, but since it is hard to tell, some libraries will list it separately. OCLC tries to distinguish, but in practice they mixit up in a totally irrational and unpredictable way.

Sometime an author (WP or conventional) will actually have seen the item, sometime they will copy the citation from that given in another publication; sometimes (especially in WP) they will copy it from a database. Sometimes they will have seen one form of the item, but copy the citation given in a database or catalog for a different form. Sometimes the version they have seen is an illegitimate republication that should not ordinarily be cited, but for which a genuine version is available. Sometimes they see a translation and cite the original, or do just the opposite. Often in WP they fill in the cite form wrong, listing a publisher as author , or a reprinter as publisher, or omitting one or another. Sometimes the WP rules even require that we cite an unauthentic version, such as an open access preprint, rather than the paywalled version of record.

The most important thing we need to fix in WP is to add online or print when only one is given, and to link to both the publishers version and , if available, a open access version. I believe there is in fact a project running to add the open access links. Correcting other variations, is something that affects not individual records, but all of the various WPs, and I suggest is something best left to Wikidata. At the moment, I think they are just working on journals, bjt anyone could add or elaborate a record for a book. I do not myself usually doit, for it will be most efficient as an organized exercise. In the past , I would not personally work with Wikidata, because I considered their standards too low. Now, their goals at least are higher, and the WD people now appreciate the bibliographic and semantic ambiguities. Just like WP is a long term project, so is WD., and though I would possibly now be able to cooperate with them, I am quite occupied enough here. DGG ( talk ) 06:09, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

News release tag

Dear DGG: You put a news release tag on Ned Holstein. Could you expand on your rationale? As a scientist, my biography articles are mostly about other scientists (people I have never met or dead), describing their education, a synthesis of their research, their media appearances, together with a list of selected publications; trying to do so in a stimulating, friendly and positive manner. This is about an activist though, so it is a little different than what I normally do. I tried to describe his education, his organizational affiliations, a synthesis of the advocacy arguments he uses, and his media appearances, together with a list of selected publications. How could I do this better? I want to use the sources to relay the content and logic of the advocacy, which is the core of the notability and corresponding to the research done by a scientist. To simply create a dry tally of events, activities and personal anecdotes that some Wikipedia biographies have is less informative for the reader. Any suggestions on how to move forward on these types of activist biographies? Martinogk (talk) 07:49, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

That's exactly the point. WP is not a place to do advocacy. It's an encyclopedia, and you used the same words I sometimes do in advising people how to write here: encyclopedias are inherently dry and dull. They can also be fascinating, as a framework to find out a little about a great many things. To find out a great deal, that's why we have references. But in a more positive way, the method of handling people who are known for their advocacy is to say what others have said about it, and to say it briefly, and do as much as possible of it by implication, giving titles of works and the like. (I also notice that at least half of the sources given for "Media Interviews" merely include him in a small part of a long general story; including these gives a promotional effect--and also affects notability.) The article is not supposed to be built up of quotations from his works, but by describing them. The place to use quotations, is where there is something distinctive, or where the exact wording matters. The rule for promotionalism in general ,is that we say not what the person would want others to know about him, but what others might want to know. It must be based not on his work, on what is said about his work, and there are unfavorable ones also, they must be included. It should not be written to give the impression that everyone would naturally agree-- I notice that some of the coverage of him, and some of the places where he has published, are publications that are generally considered not to be reliable sources, with WorldNet Daily as the most notorious; that he would choose to publish there implies that some aspects of his work may not be as uncontroversial as they sound.

And I can't help noticing that some of this affects some of your other articles, both those specifically on advocacy groups for shared parenting, and those on scientists who are associated with that movement. DGG ( talk ) 22:17, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
  • paid-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing.
• *checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.

-

NPR Newsletter No.17

NPP Tools Report

• Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
• copyvio-check – automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

(Indian sources)

... In this specific case, an additional concern was that Indian women tend to bring up less sources from a web search than subjects in the west. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:39, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

You are right that local papers are available from the US, but not India. However, when they get national coverage, that might be quite sufficient, if the coverage were independent instead of PR. The problem for the ones we see here is the irresponsibility of many Indian sources. (and many US etc. sources as well, of course, but there's more likely to be something real) DGG ( talk ) 18:04, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

SYSTEMATICBIAS does not remotely apply for any Indian (woman) CEO, operating from a posh business area, in the 21st century. Just no. And, it's quite untrue that local Indian papers are not available over web; every major vernacular daily has an online presence and their archives date back at-least to the 2000s. Some even have digitized stuff till the 1960s.

That being said, you cannot view local newspaper articles of the 1800s over web and that's a hindrance to ours' judging notability of characters of those time spans. There is a major ongoing project to digitize old newspapers (whose publishers have shut their shop, long back) but it's way too slow and fund-crunched. Still, archives of yester-century's leading vernacular newspapers like Amrita Bazar Patrika, Jugantar et al are slowly made available for free viewing and searching.∯WBG^converse 19:16, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm very glad to hear the increasing availability of sources. It might be useful to compile or identify a guide to them, and how to locate them. There's of course also the problem of translation--GT is not at its best with Hindi, but seems borderline usable; I have no idea how it handles other Indic languages. DGG ( talk ) 06:32, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2019

• As a reminder, according to WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Good advice on the additional footnotes needed; thanks Sf360mk (talk) 22:07, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Today's Wikipedian 10 years ago

Awesome

Ten years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:20, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.18

Reliable Sources for NPP

Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.

Discussions of interest

• There has been a lot discussion about Notability of Academics

---

A beer for you!

This [25] page misled me, too. Authors and readers can go overboard promoting a book. But what I came here to say is that this is why I enjoy interacting with you. Your rational approach to evidence is deeply cheering. E.M.Gregory (talk) 17:37, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

+1 ^Atsme _Talk 📧 18:25, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC seeks to clarify whether WP:OUTING should include information on just the English Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project.
• An RfC on WT:RfA concluded that Requests for adminship and bureaucratship are discussions seeking to build consensus.
• An RfC proposal to make the templates for discussion (TfD) process more like the requested moves (RM) process, i.e. "as a clearinghouse of template discussions", was closed as successful.

Technical news

• The CSD feature of Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
• Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.

Miscellaneous

• The previously discussed unblocking of IP addresses indefinitely-blocked before 2009 was approved and has taken place.
• The 2019 talk pages consultation produced a report for Phase 1 and has entered Phase 2.

Stop moving articles to Draftspace

This is not a helpful activity. You are harming the encyclopedia and irritating veteran editors by doing this. There is minimal harm in allowing in-progress new articles to be worked on in the main article space. In some cases you have broken active links by moving existing articles from mainspace into draftspace. I don't know why this policy even exists — Wikipedia is NOT PAPER. It does not matter if there are articles that are less than notable, so long as they are eventually deleted or (preferably) improved. Please stop doing this. It is anti-social behavior and discourages contribution. I've looked over your contribution history and (at least recently) is seems to mostly consist of undoing the efforts of other editors. This must stop. --Wclark (talk) 05:23, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

EDIT CONFLICTED:

I'm sorry — this isn't your fault. You're following policy. It's the policy that's at fault, here. There's no good reason to ever delete articles, in my opinion. They don't harm anything by existing. Who cares if people write overly-positive vanity articles about private businesses, as long as they're properly sourced and halfway decent? Let the spammers create articles to their heart's content... we just need to be diligent about how we link to them. If something is legitimately mentioned in some article, I'd expect there to be an article on it. Worry about how facts are cited in existing articles, not which ones merely exist. Deleting/Renaming/Needlessly-screwing-with articles that somebody else is working on — even if they exist in the main namespace — just creates entirely avoidable conflict for no good reason. So long as links within articles are relevant, there's no real problem with allowing even the spammiest of articles to exist. Fix them (if they actually start to get traffic/links — which in and of itself indicates some measure of notability, by the way) but don't go through some rename-to-draftspace/delete convoluted approval process. --Wclark (talk) 05:53, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

• I do this to rescue and improve articles, not to delete them. When I think the subject is probably notable, but the references are not sufficient, I move the articles to draft as an alternative to nominating them for deletion, under the provisions of alternatives to deletion in WP:Deletion policy. All that anyone needs to do is to add the necessary additional references, and submit it for returning to mainspace. (It's also possible to add the references and return it outside of the drafts process, but that loses the opportunity for review.) If the references are sufficient for notability, neither I nor anyone else is likely to list it for deletion. The article will be improved, and WP will be the gainer.

It is of course technically possible to revert my moves if you disagree, even without adding references. If that is done, I will check it myself, and if I do not think there are sufficient refereneces, I will probably list it for deletion, and the community will decide. Even after such a nomination, it can still be rescued by adding references.

In earlier years, before we had Draftspace, this alternative was not available, and so many articles got deleted that need not have been. I'm very glad the procedure exists, and I use it whenever possible, because my purpose since coming here 12 years ago has consistently been to keep and rescue every article that is possible to be kept. I've rescued thousands. Ideally, it would be better if I could source them all myself, but that's beyond what one person can do; at least this starts the process of getting them sourced.

There's probably some specific article you have in mind, so I'll look at it tomorrow. . DGG ( talk ) 05:36, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

It seems like we probably agree on some deeper level here, but maybe not about how best to implement things toward that goal. Fair enough; my complaint isn't with you. Cheers, --Wclark (talk) 05:56, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Wclark, checking, it seems there is a larger and somewhat different problem than I thought. Most of what I have been moving the last few days has been a group of articles from an improperly organized WP educational program class, whose students have ben moving or copying their own articles from draft to WP space, apparently without review from the instructor. This has caused a number of problems--it's thoroughly messed up the cross references structure -- as you noticed-- , it's created duplicate or near duplicate undeleted drafts and article, and most of their articles were unencyclopedic essays, not encyclopedia articles, with the typical unsourced opinion appropriate to school essays. Clearing this upwill be long and complicated, and I will try to do it this weekend. Since, as is generally the case with classes, the students are unlikely to return to respond to messages once they have finished the course, the drafts are very unlikely to be improved. The only thing I can think of doing is trying to rewrite myself as many of them as possible as stubs, and then move them properly to mainspace. Snf ythen try to find all the erroneous links. This has happened before, but usually the articles/drafts have been so poor that they can simply be deleted, but most of these can be rescued. Despite years of effort, there is no real way of making sure the people in a class project follow the instructions. And just as anyone can edit, anyone can run a class sometimes without even telling us. DGG ( talk ) 05:40, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Request on 17:42:34, 16 June 2019 for assistance on AfC submission by RecordAR: Arizona_Center_for_Education_and_Research_on_Therapeutics}

• RecordAR (talk · contribs)
  • Draft:Arizona Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Hello. Thank you for your assistance. I would like to properly revise this article.

1. You are correct that AZCERT focuses solely on heart arrhythmia caused by drug interactions; the mission of the organization is to reduce fatalities. This is a *huge* medical problem that involves hundreds of prescription medications. Does the organization need a wider focus to be considered relevant? JDRF focuses solely on juvenile diabetes. Just trying to understand.

2. Would these resources help establish the organization's credibility? Most are medical resources because it is a medical issue. https://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/704202_3 https://secure.medicalletter.org/w1509a https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1767957/ https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/medication-induced-qt-interval-prolongation-and-torsades-de-pointes https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/medialibraries/urmcmedia/medicine/palliative-care/patientcare/documents/methadoneandqtcprolongation.pdf https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/744382/qtc-interval-screening-methadone-treatment https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/PUArticles/DrugInducedQTProlongation.htm

Again, thank you very much. I am trying to get it right.

RecordAR (talk) 17:42, 16 June 2019 (UTC)RecordAR

RecordAR (talk) 17:42, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for reviewing Oleson

Did you have any comments on the article? How it can be improved? Anything that bothered you? I gather from your profile that you have a strong academic background so welcome your comments on an academic’s bio. (Hope to add a talk page to the article when I have some time IRL.) Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:11, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

A Dobos torte for you!

7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it. To give a Dobos torte and spread the WikiLove, just place {{subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

7&6=thirteen (☎) 12:54, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Draft:YEET

Philosophically, do you think repeatedly deleted drafts should be salted? 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 15:57, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

If it clear that an article cannot be written on the topic, or if the various versions are all of them advertising, I usually semi-protect after 2 or 3 times. But for the one you have in mind, Draft:History of Yeet, the current draft is significantly different from the previous versions, and if it can be sourced it might conceivably become an article. One of the deletions was a one-line stub, one here, and one or or 2 of the variants were where the term was used as a BLP violation. The most recent was similar to the present in content, but written in Wiktionary format, and belonged in Wiktionary .Since the term is in widely used--even someone like myself has seen it multiple times--, I wouldn't say it's impossible. DGG ( talk ) 16:56, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Jenny Brown

Hi DGG. Please review my comment for you on Talk:Jenny Brown (feminist).--Elindstr (talk) 23:42, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Submission declined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Marina_Anca

Hi DGG,

You declined an article I submitted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Marina_Anca

I chatted with ToBeFree in the wiki chat room and he/she thought the English was understandable.

I am a native English speaker, so I'm trying to understand what I need to change to have this article accepted. Can you please advise. Thank you.

Mr. Promise (talk) 22:40, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Note: I'm not a native speaker and I didn't review the draft's sources. The text appears to be understandable, but there may be something specific you're referring to. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:02, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm trying to get an understanding on what I need to change to get the article accepted, so any help would be appreciated. Thank you. Mr. Promise (talk) 23:11, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi DGG, I'm still awaiting your response so I can change my article so that I can have it accepted for publication. Thank you. Mr. Promise (talk) 11:54, 1 July 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr. Promise (talk • contribs) 21:58, 30 June 2019 (UTC) Mr. Promise (talk) 11:54, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

)

Today's Wikipedian 10 years ago

Awesome

Ten years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:54, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

WP:CEN is now open!

To all interested parties: Now that it has a proper shortcut, the current events noticeboard has now officially opened for discussion!

Thank you for your participation in the RFC, and I hope to see you at WP:CEN soon! –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 17:10, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter July-August 2019

Hello DGG,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

More new features are being added to the feed, including the important red alert for previously deleted pages. This will only work if it is selected in your filters. Best is to 'select all'. Do take a moment to check out all the new features if you have not already done so. If anything is not working as it should, please let us know at NPR. There is now also a live queue of AfC submissions in the New Pages Feed.

QUALITY of REVIEWING

Articles are still not always checked thoroughly enough. If not sure what to do, leave the article for a more experienced reviewer. Please be on the alert for any incongruities in patrolling and help your colleagues where possible; report patrollers and autopatrolled article creators who are apparently undeclared paid editors. The displayed ORES alerts offer a very rough 'at-a-glance' overview, but do not replace reading and thinking about the article. A community of reviewers is always ready to help at NPR.

Backlog

The backlog is still far too high at between 7,000 and 8,000. Of around 700 user rights holders, 80% of the reviewing is being done by just TWO users. In the light of more and more subtle advertising and undeclared paid editing, New Page Reviewing is more critical than ever.

Move to draft

NPR is triage, it is not a clean up clinic. This move feature is not limited to bios so you may have to re-edit the text in the template before you save the move. Anything that is not fit for mainspace but which might have some promise can be draftified - particularly very poor English and machine and other low quality translations.

Notifying users

Remember to use the message feature if you are just tagging an article for maintenance rather than deletion. Otherwise articles are likely to remain perma-tagged. Many creators are SPA and have no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Use the feature also for leaving a friendly note note for the author of a first article you found well made or interesting. Many have told us they find such comments particularly welcoming and encouraging.

---

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

the WMF/enWP crisis

Please note that all responses are likely to be delayed during the crisis at Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram. Unlke some of the admins I know and like best, I'm not resigning my adminship or leaving WP, but I find it discouraging to work under the profound contempt for the community by those who think they are in charge, combined with their incompetence at what they are trying to do. DGG ( talk ) 06:07, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

fwiw, I consider the WMF statements as reasonably satisfactory--except that they still think arb com is not suitable for the full text of the confidential material. (so after 3 or 3 days of inactivity, I'm back.) DGG ( talk ) 08:49, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

List of IEEE Fellows

Hello DGG,

I hope you are doing well. I am writing to you because I saw that you reviewed my article List of IEEE Fellows. Another editor has suggested that Wikipedia doesn't really need a page like this since most of the fellows actually don't have their own page. I do agree with their point to some extent, but the notability guideline for academics says that all IEEE Fellows are notable. Even though most don't have their standalone articles right now, they might in the future. What do you think? Should I continue creating the lists or should I delete the ones that I have made? You can see the other editor's point of view on my talk page.HRShami (talk) 05:04, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

My own view is that since all IEEE fellows are ntoable, the llist serves also to indicate the many articles needed. We have done similar lists in many other subjects with good effect. Such lists have on occassion be challenged at AfD, and results vary-- consensus at WP is always a little unpredictable. If it is challenged, let me know, and I will comment. What would help the most is if you added some information to the items in list format--birth and death, date of election, and it possible workplace and specialty. DGG ( talk ) 05:42, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

That's my point of view too. A list will highlight all the articles we need to make and we can start working on them. Can you please take a look at this List of fellows of IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society and let me know what you think? I am adding the year of election, citation and name. When you say date of election, do you mean the date or the year? Birth and death would be a little difficult to find. In my own experience, even after thorough research on a subject, I am mostly not able to find their birth date. I will try to find the workplace they were working at when they were nominated and add it to the list for each fellow. HRShami (talk) 06:29, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

If they elect more than once a year, and you can find the exact date use it; if it is going to be difficult, year is enough--the idea is to give some idea of years of greatest activity. Over time, we'll accumulate birth date and --eventually-- death dates -- these are important identifiers and will tie into Wikidata and to the ongoing efforts to build a database of references to all scientific publications-- from those we'll eventually be able to get brief bios. Once you've got this going, the next step is to learn how to enter what you have into Wikidata. I unfortunatley don't have time to work there myself, but I can guide you to the experts in this. DGG ( talk ) 06:55, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

I will get more details about how many times fellows are elected in a year. Wikidata sounds interesting. I would love to learn how to work there. I think it would be better if I add data for the birth and death dates to Wikidata of each specific person, instead of adding them to the list page. Please put me in touch with someone who can help me with Wikidata. HRShami (talk) 06:21, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Just because

--EEMIV (talk) 16:15, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Topic ban?

My suggestion that nlWP handled this problem differently was perhaps a little ironic: it was intended to emphasise was what I had said just before, that whichever way we did it makes absolutely no difference to the encyclopedia. Most quarrels based originally about content that are this extended are over something significant in some way--usually, the interpretation of something that is or could--however remotely--be interpreted in some manner to be controversial. But this is controversial in no way whatsoever. When we have such an extended dispute over something inconsequential, it's almost always a matter of style (such quarrels are peculiar also, but they seem to be a recurrent feature of enWP. They are extended generally because there is perfectly good reason for either position, but at least there's the question of what ought to be the better.) I read the whole of the enWP discussion, puzzled because I could not figure out why anybody would have thought it made a difference--I read it a second time, and concluded that it did not.

I can only conclude that the dispute arose because of previous disagreements. However, as was hinted in the discussion, these arose at the nlWP. The basis for them can only be figured out there, and it's the business of the people there to deal with it. (Even had I thought it appropriate to consider it at enWP, I would have had to rely on a rough translation, and would thus be unable to figure out the implications and tone of what had been said there--this is true even of discussions in other WPs where I know the language--the different manner of discussions and the special meanings of terms used in the discussions makes it almost impossible for someone not closely familiar with that WP to accurately understand the true sense of what is said.)

It is in my opinion not generally helpful to try to establish blame in disputes like this. My experience from arb com is except in the truely obvious cases, different unbiased people will see this differently--even when the sequence of events is clear, it usually comes down to whether the blame should be on person who was provoked, or the person who did the provoking, and the responsibility is generally on both, because either of them could have prevented the quarrel. The purpose of ani/i is not to punish or blame, but to stop further disruption. Some admins do not like the principle of no-fault conclusions--myself, I think they are usually the best solution. I base this on my own method of avoiding disputes--after two replies or so, I just stop. If I am right, other people will have been convinced, but if I cannot convince people after two tries, further ones won't do any better. If other people did likewise, there would be very few quarrels here. That's certainly true in this case--either side could simply have stopped, because there is no sense in arousing bad feelings over something as trivial as this. There are things in the world--and even on WP--that actually matter. One could argue that honing one's skills on these trivial concerns serves as a sort of debate training for real political or other issues, but that's using WP for a purpose destructive of building the encyclopedia 13:46, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

another statement of promotionalism

There are two problems: the content and the sourcing.. Sources need to be references providing substantial coverage from third-party independent reliable sources, not press releases or mere announcements. Most of your references are press releases, either prwire or a publication reprinting prwire. Some are just directory information. Others look like newspaper articles, but are not independent, because they merely reprint what you told them. Some, like the Inquirer or NBC, are general information about the problem of addiction combined with a interview where they reprint what you told them. Some are just announcements of hte opening of a facility. And a fe are just directory listings. There is not a single one which fully meets the requirements.

Most of the content is a list of individual centers and the specific services they provide; this belongs on your web site, not an encyclopedia. Much of the rest is payment information, ditto.

It is extremely difficult for a person with direct COI to write an acceptable WP article. What they usually produce is just what you have produced, the information that they would like the public to know, especially prospective clients. That what PR work consists of, and there's nothing wrong with it in its proper places. Announcing your existence and fee structure to prospective clients can be a useful activity. But an encyclopedia article gives what a member of the general public who has heard of your centers might want to know. This does include the number of centers and the general locations. It also includes information about the growth of your company, but since I see it's a private company that may not be available.

If you can find proper encyclopedic sources, you can try again , but without them it will be impossible to have an article. DGG ( talk ) 20:42, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

 '

BTW, journal search links

See Template:Infobox journal#Search links if you haven't already. It adds a couple of useful links to the infobox (see [26] for what that looks like). Those aren't displayed to readers, just people who choose to see those links. Lets you verify/determine abbreviations quickly, and also look up indexing on MIAR. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:20, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

		The Reviewer Barnstar
		This is for your valuable efforts for reviewing new articles in Wikipedia. Thank you. PATH SLOPU 10:30, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

(from an AfC comment)

...The standard for acceptance is not that it unquestionably pass afd, but that it probably will pass AfD. Interpretations of "probably" in this context vary--no reviewer uses just 51%, most use between 70% and 90%. These are obviously not exact numbers, because AfD is unpredictable--nobody is capable of selecting articles that will always pass, because even if the reviewer knows the standards perfectly, the AfD consensus does not always follow it. (my own estimate is that about 5%-10% of AfD decisions are wrong, in the sense of being against what would be the more usual consensus) And, very few of my acceptances have ever been deleted, because if there is a problem, I try to improve the draft myself before accepting it. DGG ( talk ) 03:30, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

(academics & public affairs)

from recent afds

• with respect to AP:AUTHOR, A co-edited volume counts much less than an authored book, and so there is only one substantial publication. This isn't enough for either WP:AUTHOR (I point out that every academic book has at lest one and usually 2 reviews, regardless of significance--the point of academic reviews of academicbooks is to tell scholars what other people are publishing--its the humanities equivalent of being listed in an abstracting service) , and her work is not cited sufficiently for WP:PROF as an influential academic./

• With respect to the public influence portion of WP:PROF as a (which, as pointed out, is essentially thesame as WP:GNG, though generally interpreted fairly narrowly), there is not substantial coverage. If references 4, 7, 8, 9 and 10 were substantially about her, or her work, they would be, but they are not. It is necessary to read the references, not just look at thetitles: in each of them, she is just one of several people quoted, to add material or perspective to the reporter's or commentator's content. None ofthe 5 give her special attention. Nor should we give any credance to the reporter describing someone they quote as an authority--that's the routine description, in order to justify using them in the first place: everyone whose opinion an essayist or reporter uses automatically is called by them an "authority". There is possibly some place to build an index of everyone ever mentioned in a magazine or newspaper, but it isn't Wikipedia. DGG ( talk ) 05:41, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Special Barnstar

Dear DGG. I am new the Wikipedia thing (I have tried a few times before, but have never been successful in getting going). Upon some exploration today into my grandfathers page, it appears you were the one who saved it from speedy deletion and made sure his legacy was remembered after he died. I don't know how to get in touch with you but, I have some great information I would like to add to his page, but don't really know how to go about it. Maybe you would be able to coach me. He has a boat load of awesome awards that aren't listed here (i.e. Rocha Lima Medal [1967] and Hermine Aye (his mother) was the niece of the Vice Chancellor of Germany in the early 1900s. His lab still lives on beyond his own life and is still doing great things. Anyways. Thanks for saving his page and being dedicated to preserving the legacies of academics. I can't thank you enough. Banach13 (talk) 01:33, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Banach13, the first step is finding the source for them. Then go to the page, click edit at the top, and add them with the references. Give it a try, and let me know. DGG ( talk ) 05:33, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Articles for Creation barnstar
		For accepting a raft of deserving drafts on this day. ~Kvng (talk) 20:34, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Regarding Draft:Ishvinder Maddh

Hello. You rejected Draft:Ishvinder Maddh. I conduct a project for new editors, mostly in German-language Wikipedia, where I'm a longtime volunteer editor. The draft's author is one of them and also fluent in English so she could contribute in English Wikipedia, too. The project focusses on socially relevant topics, and Ishvinder Maddh is a well-known figure in the Austrian movie landscape and renowned as a sort of "cultural ambassador", that's why he is in our scope. The article is written in a different style than I would use (e.g. a little "excessive" use of references) - but I can't explain to the new editor what's wrong with it. :) First and foremost, I think it's written in a neutral, not in PR style. I hope you could reconsider your rejection (I'm not that familiar with enwiki's draft system), or could explain me some of the abbreviations you used. (We have a similar problem in German-language Wikipedia with new editors and insider language, now I can experience this first hand...) 1. "This submission is contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia. bio" What does "bio" in the context of the Five Pillars mean? 2. "WO does not do that" What does WO mean? 3. "Topic is contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia (AFCH 0.9.1)" (from the edit summary). What's 0.9.1? Thank you! --Raimund Liebert (WMAT) (talk) 12:12, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Raimund Liebert (WMAT) (talk · contribs) -- I will give you a full explanation later today--this will take a while to explain properly.And I'll deal properly with the article. In the mean time, I apologize, DGG ( talk ) 15:45, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

There are several factors involved. 1. Although all the Wikipedias in the various languages I have seen appear to have problems with promotionalism , because of the very diverse readership of the English WP, there seems to be a special pressure here. I don't know the figures for elsewhere, but for many years almost half of the submissions to the English WP are eventualy rejected for either lack of notability or promotionalism, which commonly go together. For businesspeople, especially those who call themselve sentrepreneurs, the figure is probably more like 80%. Consequently we have a very high degree of suspicion. It's inevitable that we make mistakes--guessing at the numbers, we probably fail to remove about 10% , and we probably unreasonably remove about 2%. That does not excuse our errors, and we need to improve in both direction, but as a practical matter I doubt we will ever get the numbers reduced by more than half.

Furthermore, promotionalism in the world in general, and in Wikipedia in particular, is so pervasive, that even people without a promotional intend tend to write in a promotional manner. Sometimes., they even copy the style of promotional articles in WP, saying in all honesty that they think this is what is wanted. On the one hand this gives an increasing urgency to the removal of the large amount of promotionalism entered in earlier years when we had lower standards, but it also requires remembering that not all promotional-looking articles here are deliberate advertising. It's very easy to lose sight of this, and I know this is not the first time I --and others-- have done so.

There's not actually a sharp distinction between promotionalism and the incidental promotionalism that necessarily accompanies an article about any notable current individual or organization. Finding out about something will tend to encourage attention to it.and finding out about good things, or people who do good things, will inherently to at least some degree promote them.

There are a number of differences between the enWP and the deWP. I'm quite aware of them, because (though a typical of Americans I have no real speaking or writing knowledge of any language but English) as an academic librarian I have just enough reading ability in German (and in French and, borderline, in Russian) to revise articles translated from those languages into the enWP, and to fix the customary Google translations they are usually based on.

Most of what I work on is from German, because for a wide range of academic fields, the articles in the deWP are more complete than in enWP. As a rule, the articles are also better written, as there are (presumably) fewer non-native speakers in the de than the wp WP.We have a special page WP:Translating German Wikipedia of advice on this: perhaps the key difference is the greater insistence on specific formal references in enWP. (That does not mean our content is more accurate--just that we insist everything be written out, and avoid the sort of general references found in the deWP.

2.A key procedural difference is the enWP has a two-step process for accepting articles from new editors: they go first into Draft space, and are then evaluated by a process called WP:Articles for Creation, where the standard is to only pass those that have a reasonable chance of being accepted. After approval, the nrew articles go into our regular New Pages Patrol Process. The purpose of Draft space is to give editors a chance to revise--and also to decrease the likelihood of a promotional article being mistakenly accepted. (we still continue the userspace subpages for rough drafts). "AFCH 0.9.1 " is the current version of the program that handles the details. "WO does not do that" is my typo--it should have been "WP does not do that".

3.As for the draft: the reasons I judged it promotional included:

1. The duplicated list of film productions,
2. the use of vague language "facilitated" , "explored" , "ventured", "under his guidance"
3. Style characteristics such as the inappropriate use of bold face for project names, the inappropriate capitalization of terms like Tourism and Film Productions, Aviation Industries, etc.
4. The list of cities visited
5. The second picture & its legend, which is non-informative and amounts to name dropping
6. The excessive citations more than are needed to reference the actual content.--we call that WP:CITEKILL
7. And, especially, the nature of the citations: most of them are press releases, travel promotion sites, non-authoritative websites, quotes from the subject, mere mentions in general articles,

and combinations thereof.

I have reverted my earlier review, and I have re-reviewed. The promotional elements do need to be fixed. I am additionally not at all sure that the few good references are enough to support notability (of course, we recognize that almost all references available for the Indian film industry is very unreliable, with even the best news sources contaminated by the expectations that producers and other participants will pay for news coverage, so we tend to be a little flexible.) DGG ( talk ) 06:05, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

deWP , enWP, and new editors

In German-language Wikipedia promotionalism is a (social) issue in the Onboarding Program (de:Wikipedia:Mentorenprogramm) where many new editors seek support by experienced editors only because they want to write about themselves or their company. However any conflicts of interest or promotional language cannot be used as justifications for the rejection of new articles; many deletions of new articles are because of our notorious notability criteria which are also known in the general public: at least some years ago I often heard, "if you want to write about yourself, better go to English Wikipedia." Specific formal references became important a while ago, it's more like in English Wikipedia now. However there are still tons of articles without strict referencing from former years - which makes it sometimes difficult to explain to new editors why they can't write their articles like existing articles anymore. --Raimund Liebert (WMAT) (talk) 15:11, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

I have for the last 10 years been doing the same sort of activity you do, at theWP-NYC editathons. In the beginning, 8 or 10 years ago, we would try to accommodate people who wanted to do an autobiography or had strong COI. After spending an undue amount of time with them with very little positive results in articles, our practice has changed. Unless the notability and available sourcing is really excellent, we stop them. Consequently, unlike most of the editathons in the US, we have almost 100% results in our articles not getting deleted in Wikipedia . (We can't prevent them trying it outside the editathon, but we do not want it under our banner. And in practice we do effectively stop almost all of them, because--NYC being the sort of place it is--most of the people in NYC who try to get articles about themselves are early-career musicians or artists. The effective argument for them is that if their notability is inadequate, the article will get deleted--after a discussion in which it will remain on permanent record in WP why the person was found not to be notable--and that this will not help their careers.

More generally, unlike what I believe is the pattern in Europe, WM-NYC has no centralized control over editathons--any person or group who can find space and attract people can run one, and we list them on our events page if they are at least in principle open to the public and otherwise in line with the purposes of WP. Everyone in our chapter is a volunteer in the chapter, though sometimes a WPedian in residence or an employee of a co-operating institution. Our membership includes many very experienced WPedians with a range of interests (about half of us librarians or other educators) ; enough volunteers have always come to guide every event. We have no formal way to enforce standards, but we volunteers are fortunately in approximate agreement on standards & practices; when there have been disagreements, we have worked out a modus vivendi--which I think we do better for lack of much in the way of formal structure. (There are of course also non-public editing sessions usually in connection with educational programs, and one or two of us generally help there also, but we do not usually list them as current events--they are included for the record in our event archive. Please note that all of the above is only my own personal interpretation of what I think we do. DGG ( talk ) 04:36, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Ayoub El Amloud

I know I keep droning on about this in various places, but this article is typical of the reason why I totally fail to understand why academics are considered non-notable by default until they have jumped through many, many hoops, but the quarter million bios about soccer payers are nearly all like this. Something needs to be done about this kind of SNG. Maybe I'm just biased - I am an extremely rare type of Brit who can't abide soccer. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)

Were we to start trying to decide explicitly the appropriate relative coverage of the different fields, I foresee interminable and bitter arguments which would lead to instability, and make impossible even our very limited approach to rational decision making about individual articles. (The result, furthermore, might be very unsatisfactory--any consensus would really be a measure of the cultural understanding of the average WPedian, which in turn is a function of the level of the English-speaking world in general. )

So for practical action, the two problems are separate. For sports, the best approach is to make use of the usually ignored provision in the WP:N guideline for merging articles about technically notable subjects about which there is little information, WP:NOPAGE. (The page on the team would seem the obvious place to merge when relevant. WP:MERGE specifies two methods, merge discussion on individual talk pages, and mergers as alternatives to deletion at AfD. There's a provision for centralized listing of merge proposals; pehaps there should be a central place for discussion.

For academics, the basic hoop is having an influence on their field--I think that a reasonable approach. I have many times suggested that we accept a full professorship at a major research university as sufficient evidence of this, on the basis that they are more equipped to judge than we are. (This can even be linked to sport criteria--in a sense, it's similar to playing on a highest level professional team.) There are various good criteria for what level of university we might require. Recently, there have been an increasing number of instances for associate professors passing afd (I think this may reflect the increasing competition in the academic world, which is causing an increase in standards for positions). So we might as a second step have a two level rule: full at a research university, associate a ta major research university. Reflecting various discussions I've known , a decision for associate professor in a major university means a decision that the individual will be permanently of so great an influence as to attract other researchers and faculty. That's a very high standard, and such decisions by experts should be respected. DGG ( talk ) 11:09, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Useful neologism?

You seem to have (inadvertently?) invented a new term, culturall (or cross-culturall) [27] and in all seriousness I think it has a nice ring to it. EEng 11:34, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Inadvertent, and, as you suggest, I'm going to let them stand. . DGG ( talk ) 21:32, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

08, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you for reviewing and accepting Lise-Meitner-Lectures, I`ll do my best to improve this and related articles! Best regards ASchoenherr (talk) 08:16, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

promotionalism and fashion

...

(2) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a place for publicity. Promotional content is material that says what the subject of the article would like the public to know; encyclopedic content is what someone in the general public who has heard the name of your company somewhere might want to know. The usual context for an article of this sort is something like "Mary said she bought something from X; I wonder who they are" or "I saw an advertisement from X--I'd like to see something objective about them." That's the general public--someone looking to buy furniture is best served by other resources, and the web does this fairly well--we have no need to be a directory or a product guide.

For comparison, although Rent the Runway was written in considerable part by a coi editor, the firm now has multiple refs from some of the most reliable major non-specialized sources. Hims, Inc has at least some similar very good sources. When this firm has similar sources, it will be possible to write an acceptable article.

(3) In earlier years WP accepted many such promotional articles, but recognizing that we have become a very attractive place for attempted advertising, our standards have risen. It will be many years until we remove the 50,000 or so articles we need to get rid of, but the least we can do is not add to them. The prevalence of promotionalism in the world is so great that ofter newcomers acting in perfect good faith write articles here in a promotional style, because they see so many existing promotional articles that they think that's what we want; yet others, like Hims Inc., though written by experienced editors, contain promotional elements. DGG ( talk ) 17:24, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

AFC contributions

Wanted to pop you a quick note just to recognise your extensive AFC work, I see you do a lot at AFC and feel it's an under-appreciated task, so thank you. Steven Crossin ^{Help resolve disputes!} 11:16, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

internal and external references

Yes, when referencing an organization's internal guidelines, certainly one cites the organization itself. But to show the organization notable, one needs external sources. That's the basic principle for inclusion here, WP:N. You do have two externaal sources, refs. 2 and 3. But in each case they're printed books, and though printed books are perfectly OK for sources, we really need o have some idea how extensive the discussion is there, because it might just be a mention in a list. The way to do this is to give page numbers, and ,if it's very brief, sometimes a quotation of what it says.

That however was not the problem. The problem was that the article was promotional , indistinguishable from a web page the organization might post on its own site.. The present draft is oriented to show why the organization is needed and how important it is. Rather , it should be oriented to telling what the organization is and what it does. It needs to be directed towards what the general public might like to know, not whatthe organization would like the public to know. The way to do this is to find external sources that talk about the organizations work.

DGG ( talk ) 18:35, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Request on 00:09:57, 24 September 2019 for assistance on AfC submission by Mr Kalm

:One thing you say is certainly right, and I have been saying this on and off for 12 years now: we should not call it " notability " because then when we reject an article, it does sound like an insult andis not really fair to the subject. '

What we really mean is "not suitable for an article in an encyclopedia", and that properly puts the responsibility for the decision on us. ' DGG ( talk ) 22:37, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

NCORP

....I feel the way in which certain industry segments are being presented on Wikipedia does not reflect reality – highlighing small players, disregarding bigger and more relevant ones. Rzenner (talk) 13:51, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

The proper criteria according to the current rules is references providing substantial coverage from truly third-party independent reliable sources, not press releases or mere announcements --and not just about initial funding or opening of facilities, etc. It's explained further at WP:NCORP. Technically, size, etc is irrelevant. I consider that absurd, with only a weak correlation to any real-world idea of significance, and have been saying so for all of my 12 years here. However, there's strong consensus to use that rule. (Though in practice, whether we consider the references adequate can be affected by such things as relative importance within an industry). And whether we accept any article can depend on whether the field has fans at WP--we go by consensus, whether the consensus is right or wrong. If you'll think about it, there's no other way a system like ours' without any actual structure of authority for questions of content could work otherwise. DGG ( talk ) 21:10, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Trap of promotionalism?

Remember the distinction between something written from  the perspective of what the subject might want the reader to know, and what a reader might want to know. As a start, try reorganizing it in the sequence, Biography, Education, Positions, Research, Publications, Public Involvement--that is, pretty much the reverse of the present version. Then ping me here again and I iwll take a look.  DGG ( talk ) 01:28, 5 October 2019 (UTC)  

A muskrat for you!

Thanks for editing with The Black Lunch Table!----Raggachampiongirl (talk) 23:34, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Editor's Barnstar
	This weekend we celebrate International Teacher's Day. A star for you for being an invaluable teacher for the new editors of Wikipedia! Demetrius Phalerum (talk) 21:06, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

nts ==

Not an RfC at all, but more a tiny group slowly but surely making changes that probably require a larger consensus. Perhaps you could take a look. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:53, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Content Translation Slides

Hi DGG, I am posting the slides to my presentation here as you asked. Thank you for your interest! https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rOyIssDrYehc2i_HE4wt8tDPD36xWbbZNRumVX9IZYU/edit?usp=sharing Doriszhou1224 (talk) 19:56, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

AfC COI

Howdy hello! You mentioned some draft templates you were working on in regards to AfC and COI. Captain Eek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:13, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

revising them a little/.I'll let you know. DGG ( talk ) 06:15, 18 November 2019 (UTC) .

"Geographies" as spacial marker for 'varied' economic realities

Hello User:DGG, It was great meeting you at WikiConference North America this year! Relating to the conversation we had, I decided to do a bit of digging, to give a bit more of a colorful idea behind the idea of geographies as a spacial marker for varied economic realities as used in the roundtable we shared in. I noted your preference for this term as opposed to (the oft-used) unnuanced hemispheric divisions for discussions relating to global issues surrounding economics, human development, and access.

The term (in this context) is a multidisciplinary approach to identifying and appealing to a more politically correct & comprehensive view of varying realities with an eye for establishing a distancing from implicit political & racial biases. It achieves this through the intentional exclusion of the terms "North" and "South"; cited as sources of the aforementioned implicit bias(es). Moreover, authors like Ahlberg et. al speak of the 'biases' resulting from;

...the shift from an explicitly racial system of stratification for example, based on colonialism, segregation and apartheid, to a system of racial hegemony.
—  Ahlberg et. al, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00061/full

I would love to delve much further into the idea with you perhaps, at your convenience, either in a presentation or even a paper if you'd like.

Let's keep the conversation going.

JamaicanEditor (talk) 23:25, 12 November 2019 (UTC) Check

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	Thank you for your diligence in contributing at AfD with policy based justifications and reliable sources. You are setting good examples for the new contributors at AfD. your good work is appreciated. DBigXrayᗙ 16:02, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	You deserve it for your tireless work on Wikipedia and especially helping to improve pages here. ScholarM (talk) 16:36, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	Thank you again for your work on WP:AfD and Proposed deletions. Bearian (talk) 20:02, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

WikiConference 2019, North America: Following up after our great conversation.

Thank you so much for the time you spent with me reviewing the Laurel C. Schneider submission. The 1000+ Women in Religion Project will be working together to make this article a good model for future new articles about academics that are similar to Dr. Schneider. We just finished our presentations and work with the 1000+ Women in Religion Wikipedia Project at the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature. We did an edit-a-thon and a women's biography panel. It was a successful effort. Now I can turn my attention to the suggestions you made on the Laurel C. Schneider article. I plan to be in your area in late January or early February. Perhaps I can convince the librarians at Burke Library at Columbia to set up an edit-a-thon. Thanks again for your kind attention.--Dzingle1 (talk) 23:51, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Student drafts

• If I understand the situation correctly you wrote a draft article .. about an imaginary band to use for a student film, and said in the edit summary "To whoever finds this article, I am writing this for a student film and should not be taken seriously. Most likely when you find this I'll have taken enough screenshots so feel free to delete it if you get here." Presumably your purpose was to have scenes of someone editing this article as part of the film. This is not an acceptable use of Wikipedia . The relevant policy is WP:NOT section 2.5 item 5. "Content for projects unrelated to Wikipedia. "

− I and several hundred other editors and administrators devote many hours of volunteer work towards helping good articles get included in the encyclopedia, and making sure that inappropriate ones do not. In particular, the several dozen highly active editors reviewing Draftspace follow an intricate set of protocols to check material, see that everything goes where it ought to, advise good faith users how to improve their work, and try to persuade and if necessary remove those who would use WP for advertising and editorializing. We are thousands of drafts behind, representing material submitted in some cases as many as 3 months ago. − There is an accepted place to experiment: see WP:SANDBOX. I have accordingly created a page for you which you can use for the purpose. There's another way you can create sample screens: Start a page, enter your content, but do not save it: just show preview. If you accidentally save it, add a {{db-self}} line at the top.

And there's the actually best way to make an article for a film: make a real article on a notable subject. DGG ( talk ) 05:27, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Draft:DC Solar

I saw you had moved this entry to draft space. It is quite notable now as a massive fraud. Lots of coverage. I added some recent sources and noted in the intro the unraveling. How do I get it approved for mainspace? Should I just remove all or most of the rest of what was there? I think it's actually an interesting legacy of a promotional effort and once the reader is informed that it was a fraud the rest is read in that context. I'm not interested enough.to want to invest.oodles.of.time into it or reworking it. I do think we should cover the subject.FloridaArmy (talk) 02:12, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree it's now notable enough, but I think it needs at least one sentence indicating what happened to the races they sponsored. And to clarify it wasn't the principals who pleaded guilty.

As you recognize, this is a dilemma. A company or person that's at most borderline notable as what they pretend to be becomes much more notable once they're found out. This makes it difficult to balance the article. DGG ( talk ) 03:20, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

anon IP at AfD

The AfD  was to see if it would be deleted. That can depend on other factors that the encyclopedic suitability of the subject, and I do not want to waste efforts on articles that ought to be deleted, but won't be.    DGG ( talk ) 16:33, 12 December 2019 (UTC)    

Academics & WP

Wikipedia is not a place for primary research, or for the publication of source documents, It's an encyclopedia , and everything here is supposed to be based on reliable 3rd party sources. The analysis of original sources is original research--see WP:OR for our official explanation of why this is inappropriate here. As you of course know, the interpretation of original documents requires training and expertise. We do not evaluate articles based on their academic quality, or judge whether an article summarizing primary sources is a fair summary, for we are a collection of amateurs, and unable to do so.. All that we do is ensure that they are sourced to reliable published 3rd party secondary sources, so the person who wants further information can consult them and evaluate them for themselves.

Now, in actual fact, some of us are indeed qualified experts. I've had an academic career in two fields, and although my knowledge of molecular biology is way out of date, my knowledge of publishing and librarianship is current, and I am prepared to make professional judgments in this area, just as I did before I retired from Princeton. But I do not make such judgments here, though I use my knowledge in judging whether sources are reliable.. There are several contributors here who have expertise similar to your's in history at various academic institutions. Some of them say so on their user pages; some do not, but I am aware of it because I know them personally-- and some I do not actually know for sure, but can tell from the quality of their analysis. There are other in various fields of the humanities; and there are a considerable number with high qualifications in various fields of science and technology--a few are in fact the leading experts in their specialty. Again, some declare their qualifications; some do not. And they too do not publish their research here or that of their students, but use their knowledge to judge whether articles in their areas are in fact sourced from reliable publications.

There's a full discussion of this at Help:Wikipedia editing for researchers, scholars, and academics and especially WP:Expert editors

And there is a related project also sponsored by the WMF which is open to original research: Wikiversity -- See Wikiversity:Go unto Wikimedia, academics! for an introduction to the possibilities.

and there's a new development--what I consider a really exciting and important new development: Though WP is not a place to publish original research based upon primary sources, it has always been a place to publish reviews of published research. There is no intrinsic reason why a review of research cannot be suitable both for an academic journal, and for Wikipedia, though of course considerable modification of format will be necessary. This has been developed into a formal program: see WP:Wiki to journal publication. and WP:Journal to wiki publication.

I hesitated a while before deciding what do do about this draft, because I recognize the importance of this material being easily accessible. I think personally that our rule about Original Research might not always be necessary, but I also am aware that if we did start making exceptions, we would have even greater conflicts on controversial topics than we do now. We can barely handle the disagreements on such topics, and I am therefore not willing to use here our available policy of WP:IAR, of being able to ignore all rules if necessary to improve the encyclopedia in any individual case

 DGG ( talk ) 23:20, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Book reviews

... the standard to avoid excessive weight is to place reviews of specific books in the section on the books, not the lead paragraph. Quoting from reviews is a method subject to abuse, because of cherry-picking. (And reviews even in peer-reviewed academic journals are not normally peer-reviewed. They're intended as a personal comment by an expert, not an addition to the scholarly literature. There are exceptions on rare occasions for particularly extensive evaluative reviews that are actually reviews of a field. But usually an academic journal controls the quality of views by allowing the book author to reply, and, if really necessary in rare cases, publishing a second review. The way to do it is to add the review as a footnote to the book, putting a one sentence excerpt as a quote within the footnote--see WP:CITE.

New Page Review newsletter December 2019

Source Guide Discussion

Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.

This month's refresher course

While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag.

companies founded after 1990

Microsoft was founded 1975. From 1990 to 2019 is 29 years. To not include companies founded after 1990 (unless ((de))drafted) would have meant omit Microsoft until 2004 (1975+29). No article about MS DOS until 2004, let alone Windows, XP, or even Windows 7? To have Wikipedia become known as too hard to find stuff there would simply cause the first stop to be something else; speedia, speediac and speedyak .com are already taken. This P.S. is not meant to disagree in principal, but rather to note that the goal will take more work. Pi314m (talk) 22:19, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

1. I didn't speedy because I wanted to call attention dramatically; I speedied because I thought and continue to think it is necessary to start over from scratch. I never meant to imply there should not be an article, but there's a long way to go for NPOV. I'm not going to discuss specific content here--see the article talk p. 2.I have never advocated not covering new companies or organizations, tho a few people have--some because they want to avoid POV conflicts, some to avoid promotionalism , some for the greater dignity of an encyclopedia. There's a great deal of promotionalism in articles about older organizations, and I've been working systematically on some fields, like law schools. The idea of focussing on the new organizations is to focus attention, not limit it. DGG ( talk ) 02:47, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2020

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment asks whether partial blocks should be enabled on the English Wikipedia. If enabled, this functionality would allow administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces, rather than the entire site.

• A proposal asks whether admins who don't use their tools for a significant period of time (e.g. five years) should have the toolset procedurally removed.

Arbitration

• The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted rather than reasonably construed.

• Following the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Bradv, Casliber, David Fuchs, DGG, KrakatoaKatie, Maxim, Newyorkbrad, SoWhy, Worm That Turned, Xeno.

you probably dont remember me from montreal wikimania

I have the opinion that TW is actually the highest standard content editor we have in the wonderful land of OZ.

But then as an endless tagger, I have a very personal view, it might not fit with others... JarrahTree 06:58, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Mohamed Trebak

Hi DGG. I was wondering if you had time to give me a quick notability opinion. What is enough cites to meet NPROF1? Does it matter if the subject is the lead author on a paper or not? Thanks – Levivich 16:38, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

The number depends on field. He's in biomedicine, for which our effective standard is one , or better two, papers with over 100 citations each. The total number of citations doesn't matter, what matters is that whether he has done highly influential work, so it's the highest ones that show it. He would seem to clearly meet it , with 22 papers over 100, some in the 300s.

Now some details, not that it's really needed here, but as a guide to how to look at these:

But it has to be his work, not his advisors work in which he merely took part, or his student's work which he merely supervised, and that's much harder to tell. The key date is when he finished his PhD (uncertain, probably about 2003) and his postdoc(s) (2007) , taking account of a usual 1-year publication lag. . The principal author of a paper is either the first or last--there is no way to tell without looking at the academic positions of all the authors and their practices with citations and who received the principal grant under which the work was done. All of this has multiple exceptions: Sometimes a scientist's really important work is that done as a grad student or postdoc. The person is first or last position may be the most senior person, not the person whose actual idea it was or who did the bulk of the work. The person who received the main grant (which can only be seen by looking at the paper) is the head of the lab, but again may not be the person whose actual idea it was or who did the bulk of the work. All of this makes it quite a project. It is taken into account when promoting to tenure, or awarding prizes, but it really takes people who can actually judge the work--there's a limit to what can be done by bibliometrics alone.

There is a potential problem here. His most cited work was done while he was still a student or postdoc, and it seems he remained in the same general field for his later career. But this is a factor unnecessary to take into account for our purposes except if someone's borderline, and he has 9 papers with >100 references for 2010+.

 DGG ( talk ) 20:03, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. The numbers rule-of-thumb is helpful and the explanation about bibliometrics even more so (NPROF is complicated!). I didn't even notice the copyvio issue; I was just focused on the GS cites. Thanks for looking into this. – Levivich 20:24, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

draftifying

hough I'm not a new page reviewer, I imagine there are new page reviewers that move undersourced new articles to the Draft: namespace and then just use the CSD tag to delete the redirect. Is that the best way to handle that, for those without page move permissions? Doug Mehus T·C 01:32, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Dmehus: Yeah, if you want to draftify an article without page mover, that's how you do it. It's often perceived as more civil than nominating an article for deletion, so I don't do nominate unless I must.  I dream of horses  If you reply here, please ping me by adding {{U|I dream of horses}} to your message  (talk to me) (My edits) @ 01:35, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

I dream of horses, Thanks...yes, I always prefer to assume good faith unless it's absolutely patently clear (i.e., replacing the CEO with the name of an unrelated celebrity or something). Thanks for taking the time to clarify that for me! Doug Mehus T·C 01:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• The best way to draftify is by using the script for the purpose, See the documentation at User:Mr. Stradivarius/gadgets/Draftify It does the necessary moves and leaves a message, and , for an admin, it does the necessary deletion of the redirect. A non admin will still need to nominate the redirect page for speedy. I would use the G6 speedy tag, technical deletions, because a mainspace page should not redirect to a draft space page.

If the article is totally hopeless, there's no point adding it to draft space--the criterion is whether it seems possible to make it an acceptable article. For articles that are essentially advertising, I usually nominate for G11 instead of moving to draft, but if there's a reasonable possibility of removing the advertising, then it should go to draft. (we do remove hopelessly promotional drafts by G11, but the rules for this are more limiting than for articles). If a subject is clearly notable, and the advertising can be easily removed, tho, the best course is to remove it yourself. (If only borderline notable or it would take work to remove, then draft is the better choice. ) DGG ( talk ) 01:52, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notices rom HasteurBot

HasteurBot, Oh, interesting. I should look into subscribing to this! I was going through the AfC drafts by date maintenance categories. (Or is that an equally common way?) And, yes, I realize I'm talking to a bot. DGG or talk page stalkers, feel free to reply (if you wish). Doug Mehus T·C 05:44, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

The way the bot works, this is a list of those about to be deleted as G13 that I have previously commented on or edited. If you have drafts in those categories, I think you'll get these automatically. There are a number of complementary ways of looking at all drafts in danger of deletion: I use Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions. It's supposed to be arranged with the ones about to get deleted at the front, but it doesn't always work out that way. I try to pull out academics, organizations, and historical buildings or events , all of which I know some AfC reviewers don't check carefully enough, and the authors often abandon.

An alternative method uses Wikipedia:Database reports/Stale drafts. It provides more information, but is limited to articles in the last day before deletion, and is not quick enough to catch most of them. DGG ( talk ) 06:33, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

AfD control of bulk nominations

Hi DGG. I see you often at AfD and know that you think a lot about it.

Over the last week, I have seen two "bulk-noms" of articles to AfD (which you have probably also seen); one being of Onel5969's US GEO stubs, and another being of Scope creep's WWII German BLPs. Both have resulted in each author leaving the project (at least for a period). While the noms were in good faith, they were "technical" articles where more than simple searches for GNG were needed (e.g. Onel5969's stubs had some confusion a reading of USGA listings as they applied to GEO, while Scope creep's BLPs needed sourcing from offline sources and de-WP). Such AfDs can accumulate easy Delete !votes, while the Keeps hunt for references and sources; and some Keeps will have a finite time capacity for the number of articles they can/will participate in.

My question is whether we should have some kind of rule that a single author can only have say 2-3 of their articles nominated at AfD at a given time – unless an admin explicitly gives consent for more, and such consent only being for egregious cases of PROMO/COI/UPE/SPAM etc. The logic being that a nom could not swamp/overwhelm a creator at AfD, and that it might prompt noms to get more buy-in/have more discussion with the author to other options (e.g. merging articles into other head articles/lists etc.). Also, the outcome of the first AfDs, will greatly inform all parties on the likely trajectory afterward.

I suggest this because the potential long-term loss of either of these two above established editors vastly exceeds any considerations about whether their nominated articles should stay or go in WP (they are not egregious violations by any means). We would not need to program this rule into AfD (although maybe later), but at least an article creator could "press the panic button" if they saw lots of their articles at AfD, and give them time to gather themselves, see if they can build support/consensus etc., and reflect on how the first AfDs progress.

Is that a mad idea? Britishfinance (talk) 17:10, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Britishfinance. apologies for the delayed response.

whether this is a good idea depends on the circumstances. Sometimes the articles are truly indistinguishable in nature, and can be nominated together in one AfD. Experience has shown this is correct only in special situations, because most groups claimed to be indistinguishable turn out not to be if anone looks carefully. --there is often notability for some of them or some special reason,

There is an an advantage from putting them together--people interested in one are likely to be interested in all, and there's a better chance of getting informed participation. The problem is notification: Very few people pay attention to every AfD. We have made a some advances gradually over the years of notifying active projects about AfDs in their area, but it for inactive projects and obscure topics it's a matter of chance. (It's true, though, that this can sometimes have the paradoxical effect of attracting people with by and large a common view, as contrasted to the general interests of active Wikipedians).

Doing them one at a time over a long period there is very likely to be low participation and inconsistent deletions.

My advice , and my practice, is to run trial nominations of two or three representative articles in order to test what the consensus is, or see if consensus is changing. Such nominations can in effect set guidelines, and are much more effective if there is a comprehensive argument including all likely people. After that, then it's easier to see what to do about the others. So rather than prohibiting grouped nominations, perhaps we need an RfC -like system for attracting attention to them.

Now, about these groups of deletions. The geography ones seem to have been decided in a reasonable way. The WorldWar II ones were mostly decided in a reasonable way also. Each article in both groups was discussed at length, and attracted a reasonable number of participants who were interested in the subject field and the notability questions involved.

I consider them good examples of doing it right. DGG ( talk ) 00:13, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for that DGG, and I appreciate you taking the time to consider fully and respond. Makes sense to me now. Kind regards, Britishfinance (talk) 12:11, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

general notes on mass actions

More generally, there has been a trend to mass actions when a problem arises. This started with a decision 10 years ago to remove all unsourced BLPs. The non-zealots were able to get this carried out gradually and relatively few worth saving were lost. It has more recently happened with unedited Google translations done by the Translation tool, and here it affected so many fields that most of the high-priority articles were rescued. It happens about once a month with the discovery of a major sock-puppet, especially paid ones and those whose work has gone back many years. . Since there is complete consensus we do not want sockpuppets, few people try to rescue these. I sometimes do, especially because some of the non-paid people have also written decent articles.

Even more generally, WP is prone to moral panic When a problem we hadn't seen but should have seen arises, then based even on a single case, people take very drastic measures. This occurs in Real Life also--a crime by a single person once changed the course of a Presidential election. DGG ( talk ) 00:13, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thank you so much for approving my article! I worked hard on it!

Florence Hansen (talk) 02:30, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Sebby Frazer

Hi DGG.

How did you come to review Draft:Sebby Frazer. It was not submitted. Do you patrol new pages in draftspace? Is that usual?

This goes to the question of why do anything with things like this. If you did not MfD it, wouldn't it have been nominated for G13 in six months with zero page views? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:37, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Certainly I review new pages in Draft space—it is one of the options at Special:new pages. I look for several things. 1/ material that must be removed or even oversighted 2/ the very worst of the playing around 3/ the most outrageous of the advertising, especially if they look like undeclared paid editors 4/ reasonably acceptable pages from people who abandon them and that either can go in right away or after a copy edit or two,

My view is that the sooner the better the top and bottom of the pages are dealt with the easier it will be later on for everyone. This is especially true for the attempted "contributors" whom we need to very strongly discourage—they should be dealt with right off.

Opinions vary about how drafts should be handled, just as with everything else here. We do not know what really works best, or even if there is one way that works best. We not only can tolerate a great deal of variation, we should have a great deal of variation and experimentation , as long as we don't confuse the beginners or make contradictory statements about policy. DGG ( talk ) 01:03, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

as long as we don't ... make contradictory statements about policy.

I have been wondering, am I being chided about making contradictory statements about policy? These statements were at WP:MFD, a place without much exposure to readers, or even to the average editor. I think the statements came from a disagreement of interpretations, and such disagreements should be aired at suitable forums, like that, and then it was immediately resumed at the linked discussion at WT:CSD (where, you were proved correct). If you think it desirable for me to strike old misstatements, please say so, and I will likely do so. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:12, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe-- sorry -- that was just meant as a general statement to pagewatchers. (and mostly about myself) DGG ( talk ) 02:32, 2 February 2020 (UTC) DGG ( talk ) 04:38, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

All cool, thanks. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:49, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

promotionalism

, Promotionalism is extremely common in our world, and --unfortunately — in Wikipedia. (There are several hundred thousand articles in WP accepted in earlier years when the standards were lower that we need to either upgrade or  remove.) It is therefore quite possible for a good faith editor to write in such a style even without realizing it.  .  DGG ( talk ) 00:50, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 

G11 on Richard B. Lanman

You're probably right, the article's pretty hopeless. GS suggests possible notability but with multi-authored medical papers it's always hard to tell on a quick review. Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 06:40, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

I could probably rewrite it to show notability , by focussing only of the parts that matter here. My decision key is

I. Unquestionably extremely notable, in the sense that WP must have an article: no matter how promotional the article is, rewrite it, even if it means WP:TNT

2. Clearly notable, in the sense that WP should have an article: if extremely promotional , remove it unless some established non-COI editor wants to rewrite; but if just a little promotional , fix.

3. notable , but only ordinarily notable in the sense that WP could have an article: if promotional, remove. If not, cleanup and accept.

4.Borderline notable, in the sense that it might be possible for WP to justify an article if we wanted to be extremely inclusive: if at all promotional, or the editor a UPE, reject. If perfectly OK , accept.

5. Not notable, reject.

The key also works in another direction:

A. Highly promotional : if extraordinarily notable, accept and fix or rewrite

B. Ordinarily promotional : if very notable, fix, if just sort of notable , reject.

C. Borderline promotional : If clearly notable, fix, If not, let the editor try to rewrite

D. Not promotional except incidentally: if more than borderline notable, accept. If borderline, consider. If not at all, reject.

This particular article is the common special case of a scientist moving into industry. This typically occurs when they happen to find something that is potentially capable of commercialization. If the article emphases the academic, I tend to be lenient. If it emphasizes the commercial, and the commercial happens to be one of the rare cases where the commercial aspects are truly important, then I try to rewrite enough to keep it. In the usual case, like this, I tend to be stringent, just as much so as if there were no academic career .

This is at any rate my inclination, or what some people might call bias, about what is important, or at least ought to be important, in the world.

You and I and a number of others here know how to truly evaluate in detail a publication record. As you say, it isn't easy. it's usually outside the range of what we can practically do here. But I wish it were possible to devote the time and energy to it, for it can be very interesting exercise. It's one of the things faculty hope to teach graduate students. DGG ( talk ) 08:25, 1 February 2020 (UTC) .

Thanks for the considered response, DGG. I too evaluate articles according to the balance of notability vs promotion, but perhaps place more weight on notability than you do. I hate deleting material that's more than borderline notable, unless one would genuinely have to blank the entire article to write an acceptable version. I think we're both biased towards academic research over commercial applications. Unfortunately I am some combination of too busy/inexpert, and perhaps also too lazy, to attempt to fix all the articles that I decline to delete -- but perhaps that's what the wikiprocess is about? I hope so, but some days I fear it is failing.

I've found the discussions at RHaworth's arbitration case around what other admins consider deletable under G11 & A7 to provide considerable food for thought. Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 23:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Please ignore this post

Goddamn! Your talk page is f'd. Anyways, had this conversation I thought you might enjoy. (I called you a "bigwig")

Peregrine Fisher, it was made clear by the community not so long ago that to add anything funny to The Signpost is a dangerous occupation. I don't see much very funny about the new Arbcom and its work either, they've had some hard cases to solve right at the beginning of their tenure, but it will be a bonanza for the next issue of the magazine. DGG is probably one of the few really nice 'bigwigs' left on Wikipedia. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 8:29 pm, Yesterday (UTC−8)

That made me laugh. I don't know what the joke is, but the punchline is "DGG is probably one of the few really nice 'bigwigs' left on Wikipedia." Crack me up! Peregrine Fisher (talk) 8:36 pm, Yesterday (UTC−8) Peregrine Fisher (talk) 09:11, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.

Technical news

• Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.

Arbitration

• Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.

Deletion of Äkta Explorer

I first must apologize --I seem to have clicked the wrong button--I meant only to have it considered for deletion. I never actually delete for reasons of promotionalism single-handed, but either nominate and let another admin to check my judgment and delete, or look at the ones other people have nominated and then delete if appropriate. The intention is to avoid just such mistakes as this.

You are quite right--I judged too quickly--it looks a little the way a promotional article might look, but it isn't promotional, for the reasons you've given. (most articles on products submitted here are in fact intended as disguised advertisements, and it's all too easy to just look at the new articles as if everything that might possibly be promotional is in fact an advertisement. ) (I've restored it of course)

as it happens, I'm a molecular biologist myself & I've taught biochemistry and I can easily appreciate what the device does, though in my lab days 50 years ago things were considerably more primitive. I'm not sure though, you can really make a sustainable article for this particular brand of the device. I se our article on Fast protein liquid chromatography, which is written in a brand-neutral way, but mentions only Pharmacia . I think our readers would best be served by expanding the general article to cover in outline the two different lines of machines You could then make redirects from the different brand names. Since for specialized products like this the articles would necessarily have good deal of common material, and the differences between various brans and models can be explained briefly. I think it important to mention all the models, because in reading a scientific paper, people will come across the name in the methods section, and look under its name for some sort of explanation. If you need any help in organizing this, let me know .

I'm always glad to have a bad example of what happens when I work too fast or carelessly, because I can use it as a teaching example when trying to guide other reviewers. DGG ( talk ) 07:00, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Neeyamo

Dear DGG,

We got a notification from wikipedia that says deleted page Draft:Neeyamo (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion, noticed that the request to deletion was initiated by you. We look at having a company page without any promotions with respect to the wikipedia guidelines. Can you please help us get back the deleted article and also let us know if there is anything that any content that have to be removed for a green signal to conversion into a wiki page? Irenejones2009 Irenejones2009, who is us and we ? Only individuals must edit, so I assume you are a representative of the company. If so, you must make the appropriate declaration according to WP:COI and WP:PAID. After that, we can discuss it further. DGG ( talk ) 06:47, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Dear DGG,

Read both COI & PAID and have declared accordingly. Can the wiki page go live? *******

Draft:Airoll(Vehicle)

Hi DDG,

Thank you for reviewing - Draft:Airoll (Vehicle). As per your comments some sections have been reworded as to avoid paraphrasing and an etymology section has been added to discuss the naming of the vehicle. Please let me know if any other changes are needed. *******

== Thanks! ==

Hi DGG, a great big THANKS for all the wikiwork you do (plus thought you might like some kittens ) Coolabahapple (talk) 01:50, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020

Source Guide Discussion

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.

Discussions and Resources

• There is an ongoing discussion around changing notifications for new editors who attempt to write articles.
• A recent discussion of whether Michelin starred restraunts are notable was archived without closure.
• A resource page with links pertinent for reviewers was created this month.
• A proposal to increase the scope of G5 was withdrawn.

Refresher

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.

16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Nepal

I just spotted an old archived RSN comment from you about Nepali literature: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 281 § Britannica.com. It's certainly true that British study of Asian literature was superficial at least at this time, but I was wondering if you have specific knowledge around the Nepalese question? There's a specific interest in Nepal through the Gurkha regiments which I had always thought would have led to better coverage of that region, but I don't know enough about it to have an informed view. I have a bit of an interest in this as there is a substantial local Nepalese community, mainly ex-Gurkha, and my son is in the British Army and knows a number of current serving members from his time at Sandhurst. Ayo Gorkhali! Guy (help!) 11:59, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

my own interest in this area is more about Tibet than Nepal, and not primarily about politics. the 1913 EB is erratic--in some cases, most notably tantra , it is blatantly biased. But I wouldn't necessarily call it superficial--they did understand the basic linguistics. There's a French and German scholarly literature also, which I have never read (and, I think Russian.And, from a totally different perspective, Chinese) It is necessary to keep in mind the very limited number of Europeans at the time who had any knowledge of the area, and the coverage will necessarily reflect their interests and preconceptions. And, I remain unconvinced about how current Indian and tibetan and Nepalese writing is objetive, rather than a nationalist reaction. This is a very peripherial field for me. DGG ( talk ) 15:30, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

I think you're right, it might be hard to find current writing about any part of the region that is truly objective, there are so many political and religious axes being ground. Last time I was in India I discovered that renaming Bangalore to Bengaluru is still considered contentious, largely along caste lines. It's weird, because individual people in India especially - at least in my experience - are incredibly tolerant. I always put this down to the influence of Hinduism - when you have a thousand gods, fighting over one or other of them doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. But then Modi went out against Muslims, which is a bummer and really challenged my preconceptions. I love India, though. Guy (help!) 22:47, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

negative content in promotional article

Am I missing something, because the opening paragraphs of the text seem more like an attack section than anything else. --

people can have various combination of possibly friendly insults, and we have no way to tell either the actual intent, or the way it will be taken. People even say it about themselves, as a way of boasting.

As a separate issue, there is a tradition of unambiguous promotionalism in fields like self-help which make a point of how sinful the person was in their earlier life, and in the arts of how creatively they still misbehave

and, even more difficult, clever PR people sometimes deliberately include it in articles here, so they can defend against deletion at AfD, and they are sometimes successful. DGG ( talk ) 03:20, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

reason for Draft space existing

Currently, the main difficulty for Wikipedia is the widespread presence of promotionalism ... In dealing with this, we try to find intermediate solutions between tagging an article, but never being able to follow up, and deleting it altogether. The current method is the use of draft space. It has in most respects been quite successful-- all articles by new editors get submitted there, and we can keep track of what gets improved and what does not. The use of draft space also opens the participation in this process to non-admins. Anyone can move an article to draft, not just admins, and the process of accepting articles from draft is done by a those editors who hold the AFCH permission, as well as admins. All in al, its a fairer and more effective than our earlier ways of dealing with this (It has problems, such as the delays, but about half the articles now get reviewed almost immediately). Another problem, common to other areas in WP , is the use of templates. They're necessary to handle the work, and as a guide for less experienced reviewers, . but the wording does not always apply. DGG

fixing details in draft ...

Ok, I really appreciate this. I'll find new references to form the basis of the article and then I'll re-submit. Super helpful. Many thanks. Djb2183 (talk) 13:32, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

AfC and Profs

The point of AfC is to make sure the article would survive an actual deletion discussion., not what I or you might think ought ideally to be in Wikipedia. In the past, before we had the present consensus many articles on academics and researchers were deleted at AfD because people unacquainted with the field did not understand what amounted to academic notability. I understand what meets the present consensus based upon my experience at a few thousand such discussions, and what I always advise is to be on the safe side, rather than try to see what one might possibly get away with. any other advice would be irresponsible of me.

The usual consensus here about what counts as notability according to WP:PROF is the impact upon the profession. For a scientist, impact is normally measured by he extent of citation of one's peer-reviewed article. The number 5 is just a rough guide--within reason, fewer or more is often Ok also--I didn't mean to sound so prescriptive. --in practice, the top 5 I have found often turns out to be just right to clearly show the level, e.g. 250, 200, 150 125 , 90 as distinct from 250, 100 , 20, 15, 10. The top one or two in practice is ambiguous--beyond 5 usually doesn't indicate anything further, because the impact from a scientist is their best work. the numbers are indeed not essential, but they help to prevent the article even get nominated for deletion--if the article is challenged, giving these usually proves the case if they are sufficiently high. There are of course other methods of establishing , such as national level awards, or the presidency of the major national society in their field. Again, just what counts as a major award isn't exact ,except that awards from the person's orgnaization always look promotional. Even if the person is notable , a weak article looks like a press release--because the people writing press releases for academics don't really know what's important. We delete press releases, and articles that look like press releases, regardless of notability, because the basic idea of an encyclopedia is that it is different from advertising. DGG ( talk ) 05:54, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Draft:2020 toilet paper shortage

FYI: It was originally written as a joke when I flagged it. KylieTastic (talk) 17:42, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

yes, the boundary between something too funny to be taken seriously and the actual world seems to be vanishing. DGG ( talk ) 19:00, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you so much & Best wishes. Arenasky (talk) 18:46, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	Thanks so much for your help! I'm trying to get better at Wikipedia in general and appreciate any help.  :) Deutschmark82 (talk) 17:18, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Paul Andrews (Scientist)

I'm sorry if this came across as in any way insensitive. You had unintentionally triggered our sensitiveness to a major problem affecting Wikipedia , a problem for which you are not in any way responsible. With the increasing prominence of Wikipedia and, in particular, the increasing use of Wikipedia as a source for the first hit and information pages of Google, there has been an almost unmanageable increase in the attempted use of Wikipedia for promotionalism.In addition to the irresponsible (and illicit) paid editing rings, many university and other academic PR staff also try to insert promotional articles in Wikipedia , as do sometimes services acting on behalf of individual scientists or even the scientists themselves. (It's even more widespread in some other fields, but academic articles are what I work on most) Some of do it naively, not realising we are not a suitable medium for PR. Others continue to do this even after our requirements are made clear to them. Some declare their conflict of interest according to our rules, but nonetheless write articles that are indistinguishable from promotional web pages.

Your article had one particular feature of many such articles: the claim that a worker in basics or applied science has done something which will have multiple potential applications to human diseases. Such claims have their place--they are a staple of grant applications, and application for promotion. But they do not belong in an encyclopedia unless they are proven, not just potential; our requirements for these are at WP:MEDRS. This is not the exact same situation as the usual claim at MEDRS, but it's similar. The source you've just given will help, but it is not a peer-reviewed review article. If you know of any, by a third party, add them, or tell me here, and I'll adjust the wording.

Please understand that Wikipedia is used so extensively for promotional purposes, even by academics. This constitutes so much of a danger to the objectivity of the encyclopedia that it's necessary to ask such questions--but we normally accept any good faith assurance--I appreciate your details, but they're not necessary. And we will always primarily rely on people in the same field to contribute articles about what they know. DGG ( talk ) 00:51, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

A pie for reviewing the Eckart Conze article

Thanks :) RubenSchade (talk) 09:17, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Category deletion

Hi David

I enjoyed reading your bio, especially as we have nothing in common - I'm not an expert in anything but have a remarkably good eye for spelling errors! I have however always edited under my real name, not a particularly brave thing though, as I rarely get involved in fashionable or contentious subjects.

Could you please look at the deletion of Category:Gilbert and Sullivan performers? I became aware of this when one of the articles on my watchlist had this category removed as the category no longer existed. Gilbert and Sullivan is a well-defined and unique body of work, (not one I particularly enjoy, but have been subjected to four or five performances in the genre) and many performers have made it a speciality, and defines them as an artist; it's not just a casual association. Category:Shakespearean actors comes to mind as analogous.

When an article is put up for deletion, users who have shown an interest are usually pinged, but who gets notified about CfD? Is the only solution to keep an eye on Wikipedia:Categories for discussion in case something in which I'm interested comes up? Doug butler (talk) 20:35, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Advice on a situation

If you don't mind, I could use some advice or input on a situation, not sure if I'm overreacting, under reacting, or acting appropriately, as the situation is sort of unique. This started when I placed a notability maintenance template as part of NPP and was working with the page creator here to explain the concerns. Apparently, I did not respond to his latest comment quick enough and came back to see that some article I created seven years ago had been stripped and gutted, by the user's own admittance as an act of retribution, further comments here. I reverted the edits he made, as I saw it as a WP:WITCHHUNT and an effort to be destructive instead of constructive and explained such and invited the user to comment on his concerns on the talk page. When the user started in with more passive-aggressive statements, judgments on my contributions, and empty apologies, I chose to try to WP:DISENGAGE and ask the user to stop what I perceived as harassing and continuing comments. I reverted one last time the users edits stating I would need time to review what is wrong with the article and their actions couldn't be viewed as constructive. From that the user has now set another passive aggressive deadline on me in their most recent comment on the Lucky Lou's talk page..

I'll be the first to admit, the Lucky Lou's article is problematic and in need of help and possibly not even notable. I had actually completely forgotten about this article that was created in my Wiki infancy. I would like to improve the article, but I feel that any edits I make would be met with interference and more unwanted interactions with this user. I also am concerned whether or not this user is performing the same acts of retribution against other reviewers/editors who are critical of their work. I could have handled the situation better by probably not reverting their edits and just coming back after a few days. I'm likely just going to wait for the user to move on in a continuing effort to WP:DISENGAGE as much as possible. Just wondering if I have some sort of responsibility in letting a third party know about this, to see if this user has done such actions in the past, since from what I understand retribution and unconstructive edits like this are very much against quite a few policies and I wouldn't want to see other reviewers/patrollers discouraged or attacked. Sorry to bring a bit of drama to your door, but I know you will give a fair assessment of the situation, including the things I could have done differently. If you want me to take the whole thing elsewhere, that's fine too. Cheers. Sulfurboy (talk) 21:55, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I shall take a look.

But to notify me about something like this, I think it's better just to ask me to look at the history of the article and its talk page, and then I will be able to examine whatever may have been going on with any preconceptions. DGG ( talk ) 22:38, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

having taken a look, the only way to handle situations like this is to not get bothered by them. It isn't easy -- I get a few misguided reverts a year; it is impossible to actually win an argument about them, but I remember every one of them & keep trying to imagine some way to go back & do that. No matter how dispassionate I pretend to be, I do like to win arguments--fortunately. this place has the virtue that there's always so many other issues. DGG ( talk ) 03:19, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

House of Roper-Curzon

Any idea if Roper-Curzon family is a notable topic? As per off-wiki evidence, it was created for payment and there is a possible case of sockpuppetry as well. GSS ^💬 02:44, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

there is no such family. For the actual history see the most recent accurate version of the article on Baron Teynham. [28]. The later versions of that article are contaminated by the same imaginative genealogy. . DGG ( talk ) 05:56, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

In that case it must be nominated for deletion. I have reverted the most recent edits at Baron Teynham to non-coi version and dropped you an email. This looks like the same sockfarm. GSS ^💬 06:17, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm surprized how this page was moved to main by user Passengerpigeon just within four minutes of its creation. Most of the sources have no mention of the family and/or aren't reliable so, can you please take a look? GSS ^💬 16:38, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I was planning to check this aspect also. But it is very easy for a reviewer to make a mistake like this when working in unfamiliar fields. There's also a factor of special knowledge: as a librarian I know the inaccuracy of the usual sources for UK genealogy, & I've kept track of previous discussions here in that area. I therefore look closely at any entry on a historic English family that isn't from a known reliable editor. Additionally, many reviewers (including me) are making an attempt to immediately accept anything that seems to them clearly worthy. DGG ( talk ) 18:02, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

How different is the current article from the House of Roper-Curzon article which was AfD deleted a couple of months ago? It looks like it has the exact same notability/sourcing/OR issues that were brought up in the discussion. --bonadea contributions talk 10:00, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

@Bonadea: Looks almost the same. DGG can please G4? GSS ^💬 16:21, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Deleted. DGG ( talk ) 22:09, 29 March 2020 (UTC) *****

writing about products and compapnis

If you want to write Wikipedia articles on people, don't write them on the founders of new companies. If you want to write Wikipedia articles on products, write on a generic product with multiple producers, and mention none of them. DGG ( talk ) 17:41, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	Thank you for your extraordinary diligence! Reciprocater (Talk) 07:37, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Kirkus

Hi, saw your statement about Kirkus in afd. Is it no longer reliable due to Simon purchasing it? Will the Reliable Sources page be updated? Thanks for any help you can provide. Caro7200 (talk) 12:59, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

It reviews independently published books if they are paid to do so. But I need to check that this is still thecase. It certainly was in the past. DGG ( talk ) 17:57, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

AfC Draft Freudenberg Performance Materials

Hi DGG,

I hope you are well! I've seen that you edited the Draft: Freudenberg Performance Materials. I wonder if you have any recommendation on whether the article should be moved to mainspace or not. If you think it should be moved, I am happy to update the financials real quick. Thank you very much in advance for your feedback. Best, Conandcon (talk) 09:19, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

I think the best course for the present would be to incorporate it into the main article or the parent firm, and do similarly with the other divisions of the company. The deWP to a considerable degree seems to accept the notability of major companies based upon common sense as well as references ,and accepts that the majority of the references wiill come from the company itself. TheEnglish WP, because of the degree to which it is underattack by promotional editiors, tends to rely moreuponstrict conformity with WP:NCORP. Personally, I think that for historic firms, the German way is better, but it is difficult to make that argument here. DGG ( talk ) 03:09, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you Sulfurboy and DGG for your feedback. Maybe two remarks: The current German version of the article uses a mix of literature, news (trade and daily press) as well as company sources such as the annual report. We had chosen other sources for the enWP as the sources are all in German and it would have been hard for independent users to check content and sources. Regarding the deWP way of handling companies: The German WP has a clear and communicated notability criteria. When it comes to companies this means that the company needs to have at least 1000 FTEs or more than 100m revenue or being listed at a regular stock exchange or have 20 sites according to article 5 OECD-MA DBA or it has to "have a dominant position or innovative leaderhsip in a relevant product group or service (independent source required)" or it had fulfilled one criteria at some point in the past. As a consultant - obviously - I believe this is a pretty straight forward way to handle this - even though the criteria regarding market position leaves space for interpretation. Regarding sources the German community seems to accept trade press and (some) company sources more likely than enWP. However, you generaly need to have independent, reliable sources to back it up. Company sources tend to be accepted when it comes to facts (e.g. employee numbers, revenue etc.).

 Conandcon (talk) 19:33, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Conandcon, Just so it's clear (as some of your comments seem to be misdirected) the German wiki notability standard has zero bearing on whether or not this company would be considered notable on enWiki. We are two separate projects. Our concern also with this article is how it is sourced. The vast majority of the sources are either press releases, unreliable blogs with zero editorial oversight, and/or niche trade magazines which are often subject to both of the aforementioned concerns. We need to see sourcing from reliable, secondary sources.

...

:I should mention that I have tried for 12 years at enWP to get the acceptance of notability based on rational criteria relevant to the importanceof the subject to the user of an encyclopedia , rather than details of sourcing. The consensus has almsot always been against me. except in some special areas. DGG ( talk ) 05:56, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

At least then I know that it is not solely the COI that causes the decline. ;) Thanks for letting me know! Best, Conandcon (talk) 20:05, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Galerie Chalette

Hi DGG-- I joined Wikipedia recently, and I'm writing here because I saw your entry on the Wiki-Projects Visual Arts page as having a "primary interest is in rescuing inadequate or threatened artist biographies." Looking over all that you've written here, I'm thinking that this is a primary element of a secondary interest for you, but... reading through your page, I get the sense that you are tilting at some of the same windmills that interest me.

I started working on the Galerie Chalette page because it was something that I knew a little bit about and which I figured would lead me into an interesting and valuable group of artists. I first picked off Leon Polk Smith for serious revision, and have been working outward from there. Jean Arp and Josef Albers are probably the two most obvious notable/important artists by some measure... it was actually pretty shocking to me that Albers's teaching was not addressed in detail in the first draft I saw up.

In any case, I am now grappling with the aspect of all these pages/articles that visual elements are important to understanding much of anything in this field. I very much am trying to conform to Wikipedia's copyright/fair use policies, but still evidently haven't figured them out yet as an entire gallery was stripped out of the Galerie Chalette page (unless I am imagining things and I didn't save my changes, an entirely possible/plausible explanation). If you have the time or interest, would you mind having a look at... the Galerie Chalette, Leon Polk Smith, Jane Davis Doggett and Stephanie Scuris pages? I list the four because it shows... more broadly what I am attempting to do. Also Robert Engman, though that page really need some sorting and I haven't quite figured on the best workable approach there.

This ia a truly notable group of artists who had a notable impact through their work. But there are several different levels of complication in transferring an informational sense of their work, lives, and impact into a written account.

Oh--and here's the general statement that I'm trying to develop for my non-free fair use uploads...

"Writing about late 20th c. Art and Artists and Art Galleries

This is not easy, particularly as the bulk of the visual supporting material remains under copyright. This has led to a general avoidance of developing quality articles on these subjects. It is not possible to understand these visual topics without illustrations of the work in question. While repecting these elderly and dead artists' estates (where such exist) rights to retain copyright, it will not be possible to broaden either appreciation or understanding without some minimal visual representation of the work and context in which that work was produced."

None of this is intended as a complaint--I'm reaching out in the hope that I can improve my learning curve. My preference--doing the work in an acceptable format... the first time.

All best, Katya Sicklemoon (talk) 17:51, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

First, the general part: you will find it extremely difficult to change the NFFU criteria: The enWikipedia community takes a very narrow approach to this, and their basic principle is to keep it to an absolute minimum. The justification is to make as much content as possible usable directly in those countries that do not recognize Fair Use, and those commercial re-uses for which Fair Use would not apply even in the US. They are aware that in the US it would be legally possible to be very much broader--the US law of fair use is more liberal than any other country.

My own personal view is different, and I think we should take advantage of as much fair use as falls squarely within the current US judicial interpretation. Since some of our images are fair use even now, people reusing in non-fair use countries already know they have to be careful, and we would, as we do, label the fair use content. My view has approximately zero chance of ever being accepted here. Some of the reason is historical: at the time WP started, copyright observance on the internet was chaotic, and outright pirating was rampant. As Wikipedia was trying to do something that had never been done before, it was seen necessary to adopt a very strict approach to this to differentiate ourselves from the pirates-indeed, the eventual decision to allow fair use images at all was a close thing, and many other WPs decided differently.

My advice is not to even try. If you do, prepare tor either a quick dismissal of all your arguments without serious consideration, or a long discussion with almost everyone opposing you, and an eventual overwhelming vote against you. DGG ( talk ) 19:44, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Hola! It took me a few days to see this...

Thank you for your serious response (and your patience in coming back to a question that I'm sure has been posed before). I note with irritation the rather good job that has been done on the John Singer Sargent page. I guess if you are a socially successful artist and popular, and have been dead since 1925, you're in good shape! The talk page there was interesting. And, yes, definitely there has been a contention over many of the images.

I have to say, coming at this from another angle... I also wonder if there is some sort of unconscious conservative bias at work against non-figurative modern art. For a lot of people, Picasso, in their mental landscape, really is the end of things.

And I will add--the gallery creep and creeps!--who seem to be doing a lot of the writing here are rather skin-crawly. I don't have any real desire to become a champion for this late 20th c coterie, but... there's such a void in the knowledge base.

Okay--I am sure you have much else to do, but I wanted to touch base to say your background info was helpful. I'll be interested to see what happens with the Galerie Chalette exhibition catalogues! And, yes, I'll try not to let a fixation on images prevent me from doing some more work on the late 20th c art guys & gals.... all best, K Sicklemoon (talk) 18:51, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

If anything, there's a certain bias against figurative contemporary art. The coverage of Wikipedia is based on what people are interested in writing, and most of the volunteers here interested in the visual arts are more likely to be interested in developing genres, or else in art history. But what is absolutely true, is that about 90% of the articles on contemporary artists are written by the press agents. As you apparently noticed, the style is distinctive and very similar to a gallery brochure. We would need a serious campaign to rewrite them, but at least we try to avoid accepting more. And the articles on galleries and dealers are a particular problem this way-- so much so, that it is very difficult to get any new ones accepted. You may be interested in our many WP:MEETUPs devoted to the arts--in the NYC area, and elsewhere, once they are able to resume. DGG ( talk ) 00:01, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Point taken. The safely dead, or the currently trying to move artwork. I... am feeling a touch naive for having jumped into the pool with the idea of filling in... the gap that comes between those two. After I put up the Stephanie Scuris page, I sent her a postcard at the address the 'net has for her. She's...90? I've never met her, but wow she was hot potatoes in the 1960s! Here's this amazing woman who made a living out of doing these huge, "important" sculptures in metal, she made a comfortable bundle, she was up there with 'the big boys,' and... she's old news, so there was no article for her. If she cared about the internet or bothered with press agents, she'd definitely already have had an entry here!

I'm still trying to figure out how far to enmesh myself in this project. Don Quixote, right?

As always, thank you for the thoughtful response. --K Sicklemoon (talk) 18:53, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Seven years!

- Happy Easter, or: the resurrection of loving-kindness --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:12, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

== Question on citations ==

So my question is, when can it be said that the amount of references suffices? The guidelines that I have seen on this aren't clear enough for me, so I turn to an experienced editor for help.

Thanks in advance! I will continue to work on it, but I would love to hear your tips. Owndifiction (talk) 15:00, 15 April 2020 (UTC)Owndifiction

there are several different complementary answers.

1. the amount of references suffices when nobody challenges them. this can depend on how controversial the article is, how much attention it gets, or just someone being difficult.
2. . It varies by subject: for biographies of living people, we usually do reference every substantial individual fact,--which is our own rule; for medical articles we usually reference every sentence--which is the custom in the professional literature; for articles on history, we usually give only fairly general references, though professional writing in this field usually references every individual fact, resulting in books composed about 2/3 of references, and the other humanities seem to be moving in the same direction--but normally we do not do this here, though a few Wikipedia articles written by academics in the field are written somewhat in that manner
3. . It depends somewhat on the likely familiarity of the reader with the subject, and that's the problem here.
4. . The way to go is to cite one or two standard works for most parts--you can cite them repeatedly: If in the visual editor, you cite one, and then simply copy the reference number. For specific points, then cite additional references. It's not the number of references, but their strength that matters. So for books, always give the publisher; for articles, always the journals; for web sites, avoid unless there's nothing better. DGG ( talk ) 00:07, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Pauline Johnson

I have requested a topic-ban against the paid editor. The professor probably should be the subject of a BLP, but won't be as long as her flack continues to push fluff at us. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:40, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

My suggestion

Thanks for your wonderful idea @DGG:! You really are terrific. Will merge it as suggested. Thank you! MaskedSinger (talk) 04:44, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thanks for the kudos in regard of the article about Prof. Wilhelm von der Emde!

Hager Irene (talk) 17:01, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Seeking Your Assistance in editing these Articles

• Draft:Adewale Aladejana
• Draft:Kola Oyeneyin

Hello DGG, I am a new editor still learning the rules and guidelines of Wikipedia.

By the way, I loved this passage in your own bio.  Good advice!

In the period after the February Revolution had overthrown the Tsar, when the Bolsheviks were a very small minority, Lenin's slogan was "patiently explain", as he urged the policy of talking to workers and soldiers individually to convince them of the validity of the party's program. Most of his colleagues wanted either to compromise with the more moderate politicians, in which case they would have been quickly swallowed up by their opponents, or go out immediately on the streets, where they would have been destroyed immediately. Lenin and his co-workers continued persuading until they were a majority in the key places--the forces of soldiers and sailors who would have been sent to suppress them. That's when they went out on the streets, in October, and they succeeded immediately. DGG (talk) 19:50, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

CharlesMerrimack (talk) 15:49, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

A goat for you!

Thanks for "goating" me along with great suggestions. They really helped.

WeavingGrace (talk) 18:05, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Delayed Response to your comments on Draft on Udai Singh Pawar

Dear DGG,

Apologies. I created this page draft ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Udai_Singh_Pawar ) in October and got a comment from Robert McClenon. Unfortunately I did not reply in time, as did not put the time in to understand how to use the talk pages. Then in January you reviewed the page and possibly since there was no response, so you might have declined for that reason. Unless you had some other concerns, those I would be happy to address.

Very sorry for not having replied in time, but finally I used the live chat to understand how to use the talk page - I hope that I have done this correctly - and so I do have a response, below.

I would request you to take a look whenever it may be convenient. Best Regards and apologies for not figuring this out sooner. --

The film has been released as a Netflix produced Original Film (official netflix link: https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80998890) and discussed a good amount in the media, especially Indian media...

A sampling of some of these articles and some reviews are below (in addition to the pre-release articles that are there in the references section of the draft). More articles could be found if necessary, please do let me know.

https://rollingstoneindia.com/upstarts-review-unexpectedly-relatable-success-story/ https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/342155 https://www.telegraphindia.com/entertainment/upstarts-a-real-effort-to-depict-the-start-up-world-from-inside-out/cid/1713515 https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/upstarts-the-story-behind-indias-first-film-on-startups/1642485 https://www.news18.com/news/movies/upstarts-movie-review-netflix-film-is-a-decent-tale-of-friendship-and-start-up-woes-2351809.html https://www.freepressjournal.in/entertainment/the-story-behind-upstarts-netflix-indias-first-film-on-startups https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/upstarts https://entreterse.com.br/resenha-upstarts-original-netflix-39219/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

This is an interview of Udai Pawar on CNBC that was broadcast live nationally. https://www.cnbctv18.com/videos/startup/startup-street-check-out-netflix-indias-first-film-on-startups-and-what-is-brewing-at-mygate-cars24-4548531.htm

The film was also nominated for RadioCity (top all-Indian radio station) Hitlist web awards for Best Web Film, though awards have been delayed due to covid - https://www.mid-day.com/articles/hitlist-web-awards-go-binge-on-2019s-best-desi-shows-from-ott-platforms-thank-us-later/22696284

also the director Udai Singh Pawar and his personal journey also has been featured by various respected media outlets such as...

https://theprint.in/features/udai-singh-pawars-upstarts-indian-startups-netflix/306817/ Yourstory.com Weekender feature on Udai Singh Pawar

I hope this helps.

Thank you so much. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karan5463 (talk • contribs) 14:13, 30 April 2020 (UTC) Karan5463, it will probably be about a week until I get to this--my apologies, but WP is not my current priority --doing the ordinary parts of life has gotten much harder and somewhat depressing DGG ( talk ) 07:33, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

1. 1. NEEDS CHECK

Freeman Osonuga deletion

Hello DGG; thank you for the great work you do here, I am really a great fan. I realized that you deleted Freeman Osonuga page on the basis of its promotional tone which you are very right about. I have always had the plan to re-format it in a neutral form but not had the time until today, and then realized that it has been deleted. So want to seek your consent & advice if I can re-create again since it has been continuously recreated; thank you as I await a response from you. Kaizenify (talk) 20:11, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

it will probably be about a week until I get to this--my apologies, but doing the ordinary parts of life has gotten much harder and somewhat depressing

I am going ahead to recreate the page. Thanks and hopefully you can help review aswell. Kaizenify (talk) 00:26, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

1. 1. NEEDS CHECK

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).

]]

Guideline and policy news

• Discretionary sanctions have been authorized for all pages and edits related to COVID-19, to be logged at WP:GS/COVID19.

• Enterprisey created a script that will show a link to the proper Special:Undelete page when viewing a since-deleted revision, see User:Enterprisey/link-deleted-revs.

Miscellaneous

• A request for comment closed with consensus to create a Village Pump-style page for communication with the Wikimedia Foundation.

---

=Beer!

Thanks for your all your contributions! Yoleaux (talk) 05:23, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

128.91.218.136, yes please delete most of the papers, and any of the books that are unimportant. That's what I meant DGG ( talk ) 21:15, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Seeking Guidance for AfD and Evaluating Sources

...

 It's difficult to write articles  here that necessarily depend on sources that are specialized in areas where few WPedians are knowledgable or interested. Myself, I can't say I have ever paid attention to this subject, but I'm always glad to learn and expand my horizons. WP is great for that. .  DGG ( talk ) 08:41, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. This has definitely been a learning process. I am still trying to understand the source guidelines/policies because some things seem to contradict other things and there is a lot of information, but it doesn't always resonate with the "why" question in my head. So I definitely appreciate your explanation. The writing has been challenging and time consuming but I do enjoy the internet research trying to dig up things. I pretty much have only used WP for some random small edits but mostly reading and clicking link after link and ending up going down way too many rabbit holes learning about all sorts of things I'd normally not even consider researching. Mlepisto (talk) 19:31, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Marmol Radziner

Hi, you tagged Marmol Radziner as {{advert}}. I did a fairly massive overhaul of the page some years ago to address previously tagged editing issues. I realize that seems positively inclined towards the subject, but that merely reflects the inclination of the sources (if there was any negative reporting, I am sure that I would have found it, and would have also included it). I'm not sure how that issue can be "fixed" without removing or inaccurately reflecting sourced content. Cheers! BD2412 T 00:48, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Just as a follow-up, I will not be at all put out if you disagree with my assessment. I generally write on less commercial topics for exactly the reason that it can be problematic to write a neutral-sounding piece on a commercial entity that only gets positive evaluations in the sources. BD2412 T 16:06, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

It will take me a few days to get there. DGG ( talk ) 04:48, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Eh, no deadline. It just caught my eye from being watchlisted. BD2412 T 13:53, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

BD2412. I returned to it again, and did some minor cleanup, but I think it still needs major revision to decrease name-dropping. DGG ( talk ) 22:41, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I understand your concern, but the "name-dropping" merely reflects the coverage of the subject in the sources, and meets WP:NOTEWORTHY because of this coverage. If the article was based on, for example, a list of celebrity clients posted on the firm's website, or PR releases published in outlets without editorial control, that would be a very different matter. While it is true that some of its designs for non-famous persons have also received coverage, the firm derives some measure of its notability because of its designs for the celebrities reported. BD2412 T 22:56, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I see it the same, but interpret it differently. The sources are PR, covering the architects in terms not of their buildings, but their clients. But this is not of significant encyclopedic interest as far as the architectural firm is concerned, though the houses they live in might be of encyclopedic interest in the articles on the clients. If the fact that they worked for celebrity clients is relevant at all, it should not be emphasised in extended paragraphs, but a list or a table. The references and links for them will give the necessary information for those interested from that perspective. In exceptional cases architects can be notable in terms of whom they work for, but in general they are notable for their actual architectural work. (where I usually encounter this is celebrity dentists and dermatologists, and here the entire articles are normally deleted. . We certainly should allow considerable latitude to non-coi editors in how they choose to emphasise an article, but it is inescapable that the purpose of a connected editor is to promote the firm in the terms in which the firm wants to be promoted.

But the place for this discussion is the article talk p., so the PR agent who wrote the article can try to defend it. I will copy the relevant parts of this this discussion there. DGG ( talk ) 00:48, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Looking for advice

.. i've come across a page that is reads like an ad and has a lot of unsourced material. I'm not sure how to proceed. Should I tell you the page? ...

when you come across such a page, and think it unlikely to be improvable, list it for deletion at WP:AFD, and take responsibility for your own nominations. . Except, if you think there might be something in particular I might be able to help with, then ask me. This is especially true if it is a page written by someone with whom you have previously come into conflict. DGG ( talk ) 08:26, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft:New York Heritage

Is there somewhere this would fit? I came across it online and didn't know what it was. FloridaArmy (talk) 20:32, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

It should be expanded into an article on Empire State Library Network. Megs, can you help on this of suggest somebody? ``

Bravo

...on the R&I stuff. I am as fundamentalist anti-fringe as they come, but you are absolutely on the nail here. The process needs to be robust, fair and repeatable, and not favour those who are loudest or most committed. The fact is, some bullshit has significant minority support, and it's not our job to fix that. Guy (help!) 22:08, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate your support. It is people with views like your's and mine who need to support the inclusion of non-standard views. The best way of dealing with ignorance is to let it be expressed. People tend to have unwarranted sympathy with what they think are persecuted minorities DGG ( talk ) 22:20, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

my computer advice

... I also use many windows, most with very many tabs. Fortunately, I've always tried to keep up with new equipment--I enjoy testing the limits. : my experience is that the most reliable browser for multiple windows in safari, at least on a mac. I especially like the feature of adding text shortcuts at a system level, which is faster than add-on programs. . When you can get a new machine my advice is thst the limiting factor is memory, (for images, especially videos, processor speed matters, but I usually just work with text and it matters only when one of the windows has a video or continual updating. ). My most recent machine is a macbook pro with 32 GB. My next will be an imac with 64. replacing one with 16. What I can save on is storage--almost everything I have is either on the cloud, or on WP itself, so 500 GB is more than enough--but it has to be solid state. I'm told I can do just as well with linux, and with much less memory, but tho I used BSD unix long ago, I've forgotten most of it. What I like most about the current mac OS is failure recovery--if it does crash wtih too many windows, and it does, about once a week, , everything always comes back again--this did not use to be the case even 2 or 3 years ago. Good luck, and may the computers keep up with you. DGG ( talk ) 09:58, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Customized discretionary sanctions

Hi, I was reviewing Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American politics 2 and it seemed to leave for a future discussion the question of "customized" sanctions devised by individual administrators applying discretionary sanctions. You and other arbs commented directly or tangentially on such a discussion, which I have made note of here. Just wondered if this is tabled for followup by Arbcom? Are you waiting for community action first? ☆ Bri (talk) 18:42, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

I would be easier for arb com to do it by its own internal resolution, and I have not given up hope for this. More later. DGG ( talk ) 00:17, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Appearance of neutrality

Your statement at the Medicine proposed decision that personally, had I been on the committee, I would have voted for remedy 1, perhaps as modified by Colin, and simply given warnings. I would have been as neutral as possible on the underlying dispute--I would not topic block the people who might have deserved it, for fear of affecting the content issue one way or another, even to a side i might have thought right. troubles me. The idea that ArbCom would be willing to tolerate non-neutral outcomes so that it can maintain the appearance of neutrality is not what I want from an Arbitration Committee. It also lends credence to the idea, often advanced by partisans, that when working in contentious areas uninvolved administrators must be careful how they administer remedies, making sure to apply remedies only in equal measure to both "sides". I hope you will give that idea more thought before proceeding with that thinking in a future case, especially because as recently as the 2019 election you were willing to defend GWE where you did not appear to operate with that mentality. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:02, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

The role of the committee is not to punish people, but , as deletion policy says, to settle intractable conduct disputes--which , in reality, usually do have their origin in content disputes, as a great many RfA decisions have mentioned. this does create a dilemma, and you are right to mention it. We do not effectively settle conduct disputes by penalizing people or assigning blame--we setttle them by providing a way to apply WP policy so as to permit the communitycto resolve the underling issue in a cooperative way, and the great difficult is doing this in a way which avoids influencing content. It would be very easy, but very wrong, for arb com to settle conduct disputes by penalizing the people on one side of the dispute; the way to avoid it is to come as close as possible to penalizing nobody. cases do not generally reach arb come where one person only prevents settling of a dispute--the community nowadays usually handles these by itself. You, and possibly the committee, seem to think one side of this has prevented a NPOV decision on content, and I disagree.I do not know the basis of their thinking, as I do not yet know the internal discussions, but if it like many previous decisions, it is deciding who has behaved the worst when everyone had behaved badly. Since the two sides of a dispute usually in effect provoke each other, trying to decide this is pointless. The way to proceed is to find a way for the community to decide the underlying issue,--and I think the committee has done this in R1 in a way which I hope will prove very successful, whatever decision may be reached.

You say the committee should not tolerate non-neutral outcomes; if you are referring to the underlying issues, the committee can not decide this for the community, it can not directly decide which outcome of a content dispute is NPOV., and it should at least try to avoid doing so indirectly. If you mean non-neutral outcomes about who is guilty of the worst conduct, it should if possible resolve the dispute here too without assigning penalties, and I think it could be done here. I have my own view about who has behaved worst here, and it is tempting to say so, but it would not be helpful.

Now, when I am actually on the committee making a decision, rather than saying what i would have done if..., there is another factor.The committee must reach some decision, and it is not productive to prevent the formation of some sort of workable consensus, even if it is not the one I would have desired. I have therefore sometimes voted for opinions that I do not think the best result, but would settle the issue. I have usually done so in order to achieve a result which although unsatisfactory, is not as unsatisfactory as it might have been. I have only once or twice voted to oppose as a protest when I thought the commitee very badly wrong, usually by being over-legalistic. If I were doing things over, I might have done so more often. (to be continued) DGG ( talk ) 01:48, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

You mention the Discussion of the GWE case. I said at the discussion: "The matter initially presented as a contents dispute proved out to feature the continuing harassment of the principal editor on one side of a dispute, and the attempts to coordinate action against one's opponents by the use of a Wikiproject as a cabal. " And so I still think, and I consider this perfectly consonant with my views here. That case featured the use of a cabal to destroy NPOV. Arb com knows how to deal with such cases, and did so. The present case consisted mainly of the attempt to use an arb com case to affect content". Arb com has not handled this anywhere near as well. DGG ( talk ) 02:22, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

I can't reconcile what you're saying about Medicine with what you're saying about GWE. In Medicine you're saying the committee should, do nothing against editors for fear of affecting the content issue one way or another. In GWE you're saying That case featured the use of a cabal to destroy NPOV. Arb com knows how to deal with such cases, and did so. I agree with what you're saying in GWE and hope that in the future when you're active on cases that you pursue that line of thinking to its logical ends - which will sometimes mean sanctions against editors and other times not. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:21, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

In general, I am more likely to agree with you than not; in this case the encyclopedia would benefit more from the coperation than the removal of these editors, regardless of what I personally think of their relative roles. Each case is different, and there is often a contradiction between valid general principles. As you said, "sometimes and sometimes not" DGG ( talk ) 18:35, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Articles for Creation: List of reviewers by subject notice

Recently a list of reviewers by area of expertise was created. This notice is being sent out to alert you to the existence of that list, and to encourage you to add your name to it. If you or other reviewers come across articles in the queue where an acceptance/decline hinges on specialist knowledge, this list should serve to facilitate contact with a fellow reviewer.

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020).

Administrator changes

CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth

Anna Frodesiak • SQL

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment asks whether the Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS) should allowed any unblock request or just private appeals.

Arbitration

• A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.

A like-minded DS soul

Hi DGG (No worry if replies take a while, given your TP header!)

But I was just going to say how nice it was to see an arb with as much, if not more, dislike of DS as a system than me. Both generally, but (perhaps with more relevance to what might be changed in the foreseeable future) with particular dislike on how DS somehow defaults to retaining sanctions in the event of a no-consensus!

You ever make or see any steps to change that, let me know, and I'll be right on it.

Cheers, Nosebagbear (talk) 09:34, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

COI editors

Maybe an acceptable compromise rule would be this: Initially, paid editors can do paid edits, as usual. But, if they violate WP:COI, anyone can issue a warning; or, an admin can bar them from paid editing, temporarily or indefinitely. While they're barred, they can do unpaid edits, like to our Happiness and World peace articles. But, if they violate their bar, they may be completely blocked from editing.

—Unforgettableid (talk) 19:29, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 39, May – June 2020

• Library Card Platform, New partnerships
  • ProQuest
  • Springer Nature
  • BioOne
  • CEEOL
  • IWA Publishing
  • ICE Publishing
• Bytes in brief

Read the full newsletter

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.

Discussions and Resources

• A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
• Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

Your recent edit to WP:COI

Last month in the section on "paid editing" you changed "you are strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly" to "you are strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly; you are prohibited from making more than trivial updates directly" on the guideline page for conflicts of interest. [29] Banning paid editors from directly making non-trivial edits is a pretty big change (especially considering the weight of guidelines in general); I was wondering if there was any consensus I wasn't aware of to make it. Chess (talk) (please use {{ping|Chess}} on reply) 04:26, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Chess, It is certainly the practice, because that's the point of the COI edit requests. I do not necessarily support it as a guideline--I am uncomfortable with the entire COI edit request procedure --I find i hopelessly clumsy, and do not use it or help with it. I was trying to adjust to what seems to be the actual rule. What we need is a discussion on how to handle such things (I have a firm opinion on what our policy ought to be on this and other aspects of paid editing, though it may not yet have consensus: paid editing should be banned from enWP, and then these problems would not arise.) If you think I did not state things right or do it right, please do revert and start a discussion. DGG ( talk ) 04:59, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. From what I've understood it hasn't been officially banned yet though and I believe the best venue for that would be an RfC. Chess (talk) (please use {{ping|Chess}} on reply) 07:46, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Chess, if we;re going to go to the trouble of RfC we migh want to see if there are other loopholes we can deal with at the same time, like a/ prohibitions on coi moves or de-merges, or expansion of redirects, or moves from user space,

b/making it explicit that all coi articles must be declared not just on the userpage, but on the arrticle talk p. and paid coi on the article pagw alao, and that paid coi tags never get removed from article pages ever; andthat coi editors may not make GA nominations, or iTN, or nominate competitors for deletion without specifying coi. etc. etc. But then we need a lightwieght procedure for minor updating., and there are so many work aorunds tht this is why I prefer banning paid editing altogether and totally, both after detection and retrospectively. DGG ( talk ) 08:30, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

The problem is that there's a lot of paid editors that we deem acceptable such as Wikimedians in Residence and all the professors in Wiki Ed (plus WMF employees). Banning all paid editors opens a litany of problems unless we can figure out a way to draw a clear line between what's OK and what's not; I don't believe it would be the best idea to give the WMF even more power to adjudicate if the guideline is unclear or expand COI/N to endlessly debate whether someone should be allowed to edit Wikipedia. I personally don't believe a ban is the best solution; we should be incentivizing better and more transparent practices on the parts of companies or individuals who may have legitimate concerns (celebrities with bad photos or obvious vandalism perhaps) but if there is an RfC that ends up with consensus to ban I'll try to help write something that covers those looholes. Chess (talk) (please use {{ping|Chess}} on reply) 02:48, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

i have rarely considered WIRs and faculty and wmf staff advising then to be paid editors. The are normally there to teach people how to write in the general field, and to assist them in using the facilities of the instutions to do so, this will usually make them COi editors to a certain degree but they are not editing specifically to promote the efforts of the foundation or of the universities. This like everything else can be perverted and there have been cases where editors in residence have devoted themselves to writing articles about the staff of the organization that is paying them. This is a mis-use of the position and people who have tried to do it in connection with the Bright Institute at Harvard and elsewhere have been stopped on the same basis that anyone else would be stopped in editing similarly. Do you of student edited we use of student editors to write articles about faculty in their own college is not desirable whether or not they are paid in money for it; it is too much like direct paid, promotional coverage. Those cases I know of here have been stopped and if there are others I would like to be informed. Rather it should be done by writing about people in the same field at other colleges. There have also been misuses of student editing in having them write articles expounding the partivulat theories of one particular professor or advisor-- this is direct promotional editing and is wrong whether paid or unpaid. Instances of this that I know about have been stopped and if there are others I would like to know about them.

The usual problem about college and faculty articles is normally that way have been written by the faculty member themself, their paid staff, or their his universities' PR staff. Much of what I do here are continuing efforts to remove such articles DGG ( talk ) 00:45, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2020).

Administrator changes

Creffett → GeneralNotability

DeltaQuad → AmandaNP

Arbitration

• Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. The RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community.
• The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles.

Please see ....

User:Smallbones/Proposed commercial editing policy

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:14, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Discussion about WP:PROF

Hello DGG,

I would like to invite you to take part in a discussion that I have started (If the topic interests you). Thanks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(academics)#Quantifiable_metric_for_WP:NACADEMIC Earthianyogi (talk) 23:16, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I've been there & I will have some more to say tomorrow. There are many more things to be taking account of than I think you may realize; sometimes individual decisions among people who have a common interest are the best way. DGG ( talk ) 06:02, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

re: alternatives to deletion

Redirects are fine, and I am generally very fond of WP:SOFTDELETE, but there is the problem of people restoring redirects back into the article without any notification. And while I can log speedies, prods and even drafts with Twinkle, I have yet to figure out an easy way to keep a list of redirects, so that I can check in a year or so if it hasn't been 'sneakily' restored with no rationale... There are editors who will randomly deprod stuff with no rationale, but because of the logs, I can at least check this and AfD the article. But a redirect is sneaky both ways: it's a hidden deletion that doesn't generate notifications for others, and when challenged, it often becomes a sneaky restoration. I think how to make redirects more accountable, both ways, is something to discuss. I'll ping User:Aymatth2 who may find this topic interesting enough to start a wider community discussion, just like he recently did for PRODs? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:26, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Pietrus, I as well as you have dealing with this for years-- keeping track let nobody messes up some good work is one of the real problems at Wikipedia, and trying to keep a list of everything we do is impractical for anyone who works as much as we do . It is equally impractical to try to keep a list of everything that has been deleted and ought to be restored or rewritten by somebody better able. We have had good number of tools added to keep track of things in the last few years and maybe we can get something some here also. Considering all of the resources that the foundation puts into administrative function, could be enough to do something that will benefit the actual encyclopedia-- which is the reason the foundation is here in the first place; as you say volunteers do seem more likely to do the work that is actually needed. DGG ( talk ) 05:57, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

I often move articles, e.g. E.g. Roan Antelope copper mine, moved a few seconds after it was created. A full article turned into a redirect. Turning a redirect into a full article is also quite normal. I often create a redirect to an article section, then decide the topic really deserves a full article in its own right. I may be wrong, but do not think many articles are converted into redirects as a sort of quiet deletion, with significant coverage of a notable subject lost, and do not think many redirects are expanded into articles as a nefarious way of creating articles on topics that do not deserve them. I suppose it would be easy enough to have a bot maintain reports on articles turned into redirects (other than via moves) and redirects turned into articles. Not sure that anyone would monitor them. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:27, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

in earlier years, it was certainly used as a quiet deletion method by a few particular editors, but I haven't seen anyone doing for at least the last year or two. However, expanding a redirect to an article to avoid scrutiny is something I have seen, usually with articles on businesses where the article is written first, with a redirect from the exec later turned into an article. This sometimes succeeds, because creating articles on both at once from a new editor is very likely to attract notice at NPP. DGG ( talk ) 23:13, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Sigh. There are so many topics with masses of solid sources, clearly notable but with no Wikipedia article, or just a tiny stub. And there are so many ways to publicize a company, product or person without using Wikipedia ... Aymatth2 (talk) 13:51, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

....advice about a series of articles that the community is not accepting

....I have been here 13 years, 12 as an administrator.(and 5 of them on the Arbitration Committee). That qualifies me to judge whether people are following the behavioral rules; it does not qualify me to be a judge of content. For most of the 13 years I have worked predominantly with the various stages and methods by which we keep or do not keep articles; I've participated in thousands of discussions; I've rescued many hundreds of articles; I've deleted many thousand; I've improved tens of thousands. This does give me a considerable degree of knowledge about what is considered acceptable, but it too does not qualify me to be a final judge of content. No one person is: only the community is the judge, and it decides for the individual articles by the WP:AFD process. A discussion at AfD is closed by someone, usually an administrator, deciding what the consensus is, based on the policy-based arguments of those who participate. These decisions are not always what any one person would consider correct, but aim at a certain degree of consistency. There are similar processes for deciding on fundamental policy and more detailed guidelines. Over time, it becomes clear what the community opinion is regarding various questions of content.

I do not necessarily agree with these opinions. I doubt that any individual who is very active here really agrees with all of our practices, but I have very definite and opinions about what parts of our content policy should be changed. Over the years, I have been able to convince the community in a very few cases to agree with me, or I have been part of a general change in opinion. For many guidelines I disagree with, when I need to make a decision involving them, I have only two choices--stay out of the discussion entirely, or follow what I know to be the community consensus no matter how strongly I disagree. If I tried to do otherwise, I would soon be removed as an administrator; if I made myself a nuisance about it, I might even be removed from the community.

On the question of the articles you propose to write, I cannot finally decide on them, but I think I can accurately predict what the community will do: they will not accept them in their present form based on their present sources. I gave you above some advice about the type of sources that would be needed, and about what alternatives you have to keep the content from being deleted. It's up to you whether to follow them, but if you continue a campaign to get them accepted in their present version, and continue the attitude of other community members that you are expressing above, I can also predict what will happen: you will either leave on your own account when you see you are not getting what you want, or be blocked.

When I came here, a few of the articles I first wrote were deleted, and some of my changes to others rejected. When I looked around further, and saw the opinions of people here generally, I decided not to continue to try to work in some specific fields, but concentrate on others. My opinions about some of them have not changed, but as I do not try to insist on them, I have had a very satisfying and I hope useful time here. DGG ( talk ) 20:52, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Respected sir, what can I say but I am deeply touched by your response; please accept my gratitude and admiration; I might be wrong but I think I have received your message; and I have changed my mind; I will try to protect the concerned contents from vandalism as best as I can in spite of my severe disadvantages regarding rights/privileges through content enrichment; though I must confess that I am not at all optimistic about the result/effect given the existing circumstances; but after your response it is simply impossible for me personally to give up that easily which otherwise would have been a perfectly cogent and rational course of action. Thanks and regards --AranyaPathak (talk) 18:08, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Günter Bechly

(for full discussion, see my archive of Bias, intolerance, and prejudice)

Looking at this a few months later, I continue to think that the result of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Günter Bechly was one of the 2 or 3 most disgraceful decisions I have seen at Wikipedia. DGG ( talk ) 05:38, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2020).

Guideline and policy news

• There is an open request for comment to decide whether to increase the minimum duration a sanction discussion has to remain open (currently 24 hours).
• Speedy deletion criterion T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) has been repealed following a request for comment.
• Speedy deletion criterion X2 (pages created by the content translation tool) has been repealed following a discussion.
• There is a proposal to restrict proposed deletion to confirmed users.

---

Response to rejection of ...

I am not going to help anyone write an article about themselves here. There has proven to be almost nobody who can do so properly, and even if it were in some case done properly, I can not think of any circumstances when it is appropriate to the spirit of Wikipedia . When someone who knows a person's notable work wants to write an article about them, then there can be an article. Since you're clearly notable, I might consider it myself, except I do not really fell intellectually secure in your specialty.

I can not speak to what other people may choose to do, for we all act independently.

As for me, I am considering going somewhat further, and not helping any organization write an article about any of their staff; in the past I have done so if the individual is really important, but I increasingly think this also tends to lead to a breech of our principles. DGG ( talk ) 01:27, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

James Finlay

Regards Bebington (talk) 09:58, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

given your obvious expertise, I'm going to accept--in fact, I should have accepted. The problems could be addressed in mainspace perfectly well. I attribute my error to the extraordinary frequency of truly promotional articles, the more sophisticated of which do indeed have the pattern I assumed, of having a decent section of the history from real sources, and a section on the present company taken from PR (this is most noticeable in historic houses converted to hotels). My apologies, for I increasing find that the deluge of promotional submissions is contaminating everything here, including my judgment. As advice, do continue writing your articles in mainspace, for other AfC reviewers are likely to make the same errror as I, for the same reason. DGG ( talk ) 00:51, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your generous response. Advice taken. Bebington (talk) 08:14, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Paid editing

Most undeclared paid editors when they run into difficulties like this simply go away, and, if they try again, do it quietly under another username. . I have encountered only 2 or 3 who stay and protest, and none of them quite matches this pattern. I have accordingly blocked indefinitely for disruptive editing. DGG ( talk ) 23:15, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you so much and I will definitely check out the Teahouse page. Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vanitapandey (talk • contribs) 22:45, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Christopher Cannon (medievalist)

I've been cleaning this up a bit. The man is highly notable, but the draft is written up likely by a grad student who was doing a nice thing but doesn't really know what it is we do here. If you have a moment to devote to developing it, that would be great. Writing these biographies seems to be more difficult and tedious every single time. Hope you're well, DGG, in these difficult times. Drmies (talk) 14:22, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

tedious, certainly. They would be a prime candidate for automatic article writing. DGG ( talk ) 02:56, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

DGG after the last attempt at ediiting this on Christopher Cannon i am loath to meddle in case your work gets undone. If you let me know when you are done then i can fix things according to your comments, if needed. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Academy-aureus-argent (talk • contribs) 22:27, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Fantastic work DGG, thanks so much. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Academy-aureus-argent (talk • contribs) 21:16, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Surreal Barnstar
	Thank you so much DGG! I appreciate it! You do rock! I do believe I corrected a few periods in error. Could you please take a final look. Thank you. Roccie ;) 05:41, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

RSN comment

.... (entire discussion in [[User talk:DGG/Archive 0.11| User talk:DGG/Bias, intolerance and prejudice)

(about AfD:

I basically agree with what you say about AfD. I too think some degree of consistency in AfD is a virtue--not just simplify arguing at AfD, but for the benefit of the readers, who can better predict what they are likely to find here, but for guidance in advising people with new articles and AfC drafts--which is what i do most these days. . Since there will always be special cases, your suggestion of starting with a discussion of what is usual --and why this might be different--seems sensible--and I notice looking back that I often discuss at afD in this comparative way. There remains the question of what to do with borderline case, where they're borderline not because nobody as looked for material, but likely to remain borderline. The usual suggestions are merging, or draftifying--but merging can still lead to surreptitious deletion, and draftifying only works if there's someone to actually improve it. We need to be more willing to accept permastubs.)

...nor ought we to be guiding readers. We must present information to readers: if we personally think something is the right position, we should have confidence that the plain and honest presentation of the facts and arguments of both those supporting and opposing our position will show it. Otherwise, why are we so sure of ourselves in the first place, if we think the facts and arguments of our opponents will convince the reader. Why do we need to protect a reader from making the right judgment on their own? The people who are convinced of absurd ideas do so because in their experience and education they have heard only their side of the argument.That they haven't been taught to distinguish?--very likely so--but if they come here they will ought to find a presentation that will lead to a fair conclusion. How are we to account for their errors--their intrinsic perversity?--if that's the case, protecting them isn't going to help much. No, there is only one reason for hiding or obscuring of minimizing or denigrating one side of the argument--the fear that it might convince people after all. That's the way some politicians do things: having no reasonable views of their own that might convince anyone, they hide, ignore, or mock the views of their opponents. If they pretend to consider the evidence, they present it in such false setting and misleading graphs and statistics--and they certainly don't let their opponents have a fair chance to explain their side without being made fun of.

I'm aware of "teach the controversy--a paradigmatic example of a misleading catchphrase. Those who pretend to teach the controversy do so in a way to avoid presenting the opposing side fairly. Actually presenting objectively the history of evolutionary and anti-evolutionary thought in a neutral but academic way is an excellent way to show the falseness of the anti-evolutionary position. Actually explaining the historical development of current economic and political thought, is the clearest way to show the real motivations of some popular views. Presenting biased history of course leads to biased conclusions. How can the reader know which side is resorting to unsupportable evidence and false logic unless their views are fully presented in detail?

People who might come here to read a controversial topic who are already certain of the rightness of their positions will not be convinced by anything said here. An imaginary reader who has never heard of American politics who should happen to read certain news sources, will recognize at once they have no good case to make, just like someone who might never have heard of some pseudo-medical treatment will be, if they see the typical advertisement for it. But people who come here in order to find out what position they should support, if they find one side is minimally treated in an unbalanced way, they will just conclude we are biased and ignore us.. If the current general opinion is correct that in current politics it is just such voters who will determine the result, we have a special obligation to be scrupulously neutral. DGG ( talk ) 01:56, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

‪Frank Dunn Kern‬

...

I and other reviewers are making a special effort to try to review the clearly notable unexceptional articles as quickly as possible. The sooner we remove them from the stream of the many that need longer consideration, the better for all the new articles. DGG ( talk ) 19:44, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

ARCA-pseudoscience

Hi, there's something I wanted to clarify for the Arbitration report for next issue of The Signpost. At ARCA-Pseudoscience, you have posted a somewhat more lengthy rationale for why the community needs to decide what pseudoscience is. It's hard for me to tell if this is agreeing with the other arbs, or if you are trying to take your approach? Or maybe it's all overcome by events by the last post by GW? Can you help with my confusion? ☆ Bri (talk) 21:03, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

in preparation--this is extremely important to me, and I want to check what I have written and post it tomorrow afternoon. DGG ( talk ) 05:26, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Bri, as may be evident from that page, my views have changed somewhat in the course of discussion; I cannot write the extended essay I had hoped to here without much more time to think, and consideration of the consequences and interrelationships, but my current positions as an arb is that

1. Arb com deals only with behavior. Arb com can not determine which POVs are acceptable, or what POVs are mainstream.

2 I consider that the original pseudoscience discussion was fundamentally erroneous insofar as it attempted to deal with content, and similarly are all subsequent arb com decisions in the area

3. Arb com can determine how we conduct discussions, and when to remove troublemakers, but it can not do so on the basis of the positions they take on content. It can not declare in what fields WP considers certain positions to be correct. For example, it cannot say how WP can treat topics that may be called pseudoscience, except by insisting that people who obstruct discussion in this or any other area must be removed.

4. So in terms of the question asked, we as arbs are not entitled to say this particular field is pseudoscience, and we as arbs were never so entitled to say this about any fields whatsoever.

5 The community itself cannot declare that certain views are pseudoscience. It can only report whether they are called so by reliable sources, and it must take into account all relevant positions. This is the basic principle of NPOV, which neither the committee nor arb com can ignore. The community can determine the details of how NPOV is to be interpreted, but it is a content rule, so arb com cannot.

6. It is my opinion that the effect of declaring how WP can handle certain fields, by using Discretionary sanctions, encourages and perpetuates bias. As it works at present, rather than destroying cliques it facilitates them, by giving an inordinately strong first-mover advantage. There is not now any basis for using DS at all, in this or any other subject. It encourages people to use their bias, and makes it too difficult to stop them. It may not have been completely wrong for arb com to use DS in an earlier stage of WP, as an attempt to deal with "unblockable" editors, but this is not a problem at present, at least not in the same fashion.

7 Arb com can change the rules for conduct in an area under disruption, but only if it does it in a content-neutral way. It can for example make a field subject to 2RR, or 1RR. It can remove specific troublemakers from a discussion, or from a field, or from WP., or warn that the rules for conduct in a given field or a given discussion will be interpreted strictly, and do so in a way that makes it very difficult to appeal. These are dangerous powers, for it could do so in such a way as to selectively help one of two contending sides, and in my opinion it has done just that in some decisions. But at least it requires an agreement of a majority of the individual arbs to do so. Discretionary sanctions allows any of the individual admins to do the same, while making it almost as difficult to appeal as to appeal an arb com decision. This is too dangerous. It is possible that 8 out of 15 arbs may be biased, knowingly or not. It is inevitable that some one of 500 admins will be biased.

8. One of the responsibilities of arb com is the supervision of the actions of arbitrators, and if the committee thinks that they have been making decisions in a way that effectuates bias rather than NPOV, the committee is entitled to take action. This again is a dangerous power, for it might, and in some cases has, been used unfairly. But it remains a necessary function, and the committee must do it until some fairer scheme can be devised.

I have refused on that page to give my personal opinion of Ayurvedic medicine. I do have one. Its current practical application is pseudoscientific, but we must make allowances for cultural bias. It seems unlikely a priori that we are the only civilization on earth that understands the world correctly. Its practitioners think they are using theory based science validated by experience. The same is true for Western European medicine as practiced until about the mid 19th century: physicians thought they were using theory-based science validated by experiment and experience. In both cases, their theories were wrong , their experimental methods crude, and their ability to analyze experience inadequate--and their treatments correspondingly irrational and generally ineffective. In its historical aspect, ayurvedic medicine made no less sense than any other any premodern medical theory,.

In our articles on ayurveda, the historical aspects would in my opinion would more clearly be treated separately from the current practice. In my opinion our repeated emphasis in our articles, especially the lead of the main article, that ayruveda is considered a pseudoscience is excessive, and indicates bias rather than NPOV. A proper statement is appropriate, but the present orientation of the entire article gives the reader the impression we are not actually a NPOV encyclopedia. (And I think we have made the same error in other subjects.) I would say these things in a discussion on the relevant talk page, except that I think that the mere fact that I'm an arb would affect the discussion.. DGG ( talk ) 04:34, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Iván Enrique Rodríguez

Dear DGG, I am buildng a collection of the contemporary Puerto Rican composers to add to Wikipedia. This was my first article. Could you help me make it better?--MahlerLover (talk) 20:45, 26 August 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by MahlerLover (talk • contribs) 20:43, 26 August 2020 (UTC) ...

MahlerLover, I added a note to the draft. It's better, but there's still no major performance or recording. It may be too early in his career, but I will leave it for others to review. This is a field of interest to me, but not expertise. DGG ( talk ) 01:00, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Dear DGG Thanks so much for your comment! I truly appreciate your knowledgeable insight a lot! I do believe your opinion in relationship to the WP:Composer: criteria needs to be addressed within the 21st century understanding of the White Frame and systemic discrimination of composers of color in classical music. For a “major orchestra” (whatever that means, as the orchestras mentioned have yearly budgets of over 14M dollras) to consider a composer of color is inherently harder If not almost impossible due to the structure of the white frame and diversity-negating status of the system. So, when considering this article and the national and international achievements (such as the historic Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music) of this composer as well as the other composers of color that I intend to write articles about, has to be understood within a place of deep knowledge of race and anti-racism. Thanks again for everything! I’ve learned a lot! MahlerLover (talk) 02:26, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, MahlerLover, I do understand the situation. The solution within WP is to make sure first that we do have articles on those individuals from other geographies who most clearly meat the conventional criteria, before trying to convince WPedians to include others. I have always been in favor of flexibility here, but the best strategy is to work from the top. If you think I haven't taken this enough into account, the way to proceed is to build up the article as strongly as possible and then resubmit. Let me know. I will do what I can to help you, but remember that I'm not the judge--the community at an AfD is the final judge, and all I can do is predict. DGG ( talk ) 08:19, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

detecting PR

(re:Draft: Danny Kabakib) ... Sources showing notability must be references providing substantial coverage from third-party independent reliable sources, not press releases or mere announcements. Most of the sources here, 1,2, 3,5, 7, an 8, although they may look like newspapers, aren't. They are PR outlets,. Their stories are entirely based upon what the person chooses to say about themselves. to see this more clearly, look at some of the other stories in the publication. You will find none which are genuine news accounts under editorial control. References 6 and 9 are geneuine news publications. However, their stories about him are exactly the same as the PR in the straightforward PR publications--they're just what he says about himself. News sources in all countries do this: they print press release as well as actual news, and the profession of PR is in large part devoted to placing these stories. One way to see this is to look at the extravagant claims made--if they were genuine, there would be real news accounts in major newspapers about his accomplishments, Another is to compare the accounts--they ar almost identical, including even the headlines. They're all modifications of the same press handout.

In general, taking topics from the list of desired articles needs to be done carefully--anyone may place a topic there. Since PR writers know that if they write the WP articles directly, they will find the articles rejected and be banned as undeclared paid editors, this has become a common trick for inducing good-faith wikipedians to do the work for free. But the results are indistinguishable from paid editing. The best way of finding topics is list prepared for editathons, or based on genuine news accounts that you see yourself. Before you start, make sure you have at least 2, and better 3, excellent reliable independent sources from books by major publishers or major magazines or newspapers with national coverage. You will also find list of desired articles at the various Wikiproject pages. DGG ( talk ) 23:44, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Cengal may be notable , but the article didn't show it, and neither does your revision.

Notability for an author or reporter

(re:Katya Cengel ) Notability for a reporter is very difficult to demonstrate unless they win an individual pulitzer or something equally important. Notability for an author is much easier--it depends on the reviews, and the first indication of whether there are likely to be substantial reviews in third-party published independent reliable sources, not press releases, blurbs, blogs, Amazon, or Goodreads The article didn't give it , but I should have looked further. The books are mostly from University of Nebraska Press, or one of its subimprints, which is a very good sign. I shall now add this information to the article. The place to find the information is WorldCat. Of the places where you took the reviews. none is a major publication, such as the NYT book review. Pacific Standard is an online environmental magazine, and is the best of them--see our article on it--not that despite what our article says, it is still active--I shall have to update it . NY Journal of books is of undetermined reliability(--it is not New York Review of Books, a magazine of very high prestige. ). Judging by its Web site [30]. we need an article on it. The article needs to focus on her as an author, not a journalist. To some degree, the number of copies of books in worldcat libraries can indicate significance, tho its not a formal criterion for notability . I made a start at that, and accepted it. You will find listings for additional reviews of her books in Worldcat, and there is some material to find a reference for. And check the exact name of the field in which she received a degree. DGG ( talk ) 00:49, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

The basic skill for you to acquire is to be careful and skeptical about results found on Google. You need to read them, and find out about the publication they are coming from. DGG ( talk ) 00:49, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your response. You gave me exactly the information I was looking for and I am sure I can improve both articles. I really appreciate your time. . Again, thanks so much for your answer, it helped a lot! I am very new, so I have no doubt I have plenty to learn here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiJSPN (talk • contribs) 03:03, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For your views and works, happy to read your user page. Rahulsomantalk - contribs 23:29, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Robert Peckham (historian)

Hello. I'm curious as to why you moved Robert Peckham (historian) to article space. It had, and still has, zero independent sources, albeit a plausible claim to baseline notability. Books written by the subject aside, the personal biographical details are completely unsourced, and the article creator's edit history seems to be nearly entirely based on the Peckham family. --Animalparty! (talk) 19:39, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

He has written 3 books published by respectable academic presses, one of them being Cambridge University Press.That makes him notable as an academic.The publications are independent sources. They are not given in standard format, but I never decline an article for that. His key achievements as such as adequately sourced. The routine facts of his education are not, but probably could be easily enough from a CV, which we accept as sourcing for such unexceptional material. I will accept or write an article about anyone who publishes a book by CUP. The time to do the remainder of the fixing is in mainspace. DGG ( talk ) 22:27, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

requests for review

the draft will be reviewed in the ordinary course of events within the next month or two . If I reviewed on request, it would be unfair to everyone else. DGG ( talk ) 20:57, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Admin and Policy news September 2020

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the minimum length for site ban discussions was increased to 72 hours, up from 24.
• A request for comment is ongoing to determine whether paid editors must or should use the articles for creation process.
• A request for comment is open to resolve inconsistencies between the draftification and alternative to deletion processes.

A barnstar for you!

	The Civility Barnstar
	You know what this is about; Thank you for being civil and understanding even when I got a bit heated. AviationFreak💬 20:20, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Role of a revieweer

The role of a reviewer is not to decide if a article is acceptable, but to decide whether the community is likely to find it acceptable at an AfD discussion. We do this by results of AfD discussions, and knowing the effective guidelines as they are applied, and can therefore predict what is likely to happen. My prediction is that it has less than a 50% chance of passing AfD with the current sourcing. How would it help if I approved the article and it then, as expected , got deleted.? It would be much better to try to improve it first. Of course I, like any individual, might be wrong. That's why I do not make the final decision. You can try to improve it and submit it again; someone else will review. DGG ( talk ) 17:13, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

OK, Thank you, I'll work on it. It seems that the Ukrainian Wikipedia lags behind WP-EN by 12 years :) --Perohanych (talk) 17:28, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 40

• New partnerships
  • Al Manhal
  • Ancestry
  • RILM
• #1Lib1Ref May 2020 report
• AfLIA hires a Wikipedian-in-Residence

Read the full newsletter

A brownie for you!

I wish more people thought like you. I feel like you understand what Wikipedia's true intentions were and over the years people have been making up their own rules in order to feel a sense of entitlement. I would appreciate if you could look at my draft of the short web series "Becoming Jiff". Thank you. Drwho92 (talk) 06:20, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

A question - conflict with admin Awilley

Hello David. I am in a rather unusual situation, and the admin that I'm in a conversation with recommended that I seek your opinion on it. I recently was part of a brief back-and-forth on Tucker Carlson, in which a different editor added some material (sourced), a user named Springee deleted it, and as I felt the reversion was without cause, I re-added the material. Springee continued to delete the material - I never violated 3RR, but when I researched Springee's past, I noticed that every single time anyone added anything that could be construed as negative about Tucker Carlson, he would delete it - often citing WP:BLP, even if material was well-sourced. I pointed this out on the talk page, which was the improper place to do it (I know that now) but I really didn't think it was that crazy at the time. Nonetheless, after Springee was reported for his behavior (by a different editor, I might add), the admin reviewing it, User:Awilley, decided to give Springee a "voluntary" self-1RR sanction - ie, Springee would promise to limit themselves to 1 revert per day for the next 6 months on articles related to American Politics (it turns out Springee has been deleting things on right-wing figures' and organizations' articles for a while and with great frequency). If Springee refused, Awilley would give him a formal 1RR anyway. Seems odd to me but okay, I'm not that invested in it.

Here's the problem: Awilley also decided to "offer" me the same deal, which strikes me a little like saying, "Hey I'm letting you quit this job, but if you refuse, I'm firing you". Keep in mind these things: nobody reported me for any bad behavior, I never violated 3RR, I'm the one who finally started an RfC on the issue to try and resolve the edit war, and this is really the only American Politics page I have edited in any substantial capacity recently - I was previously involved in an edit war with a sock-puppet (now blocked) on the same article. Meantime, Springee has been indiscriminately removing negative-light info from numerous right-wing articles for a while. One of the things Awilley didn't like was my calling attention to Springee's behavior on the article talk page, and while I see now that I was wrong to put it in that forum, I also believe that may have led to, or at least contributed to, someone else reporting his behavior in the first place, which is why Awilley even noticed it.

My issue with Awilley is that I feel I'm being handed the same sanction as a user whose conduct was an order of magnitude worse than my mistakes, which I assure you were born of not being that familiar with policy and the edit wars that seem to accompany American Politics pages. Springee is clearly far more experienced, but all I have learned from him is that apparently one can skirt 3RR right up to the limit and get away with it, just by quoting lots and lots of Wikipedia policies that may or may not be relevant to the situation at hand, exhausting other users until they give up. I now regret ever lifting my head up enough to point it out, because now I have Awilley looking to sanction me. As I told him, I don't necessarily feel this 1RR sanction is that big a deal - but to give me the same exact punishment as the guy who's causing all of the problems, and not looking to make Wikipedia better (he's clearly here just to defend right-wingers), is not fair. The vast majority of my editing has nothing to do with politics.

Anyway, when I voiced my concerns about this, he basically said "You'll find I can do whatever I want" but suggested you as a possible third-party to look at it. I hope you have time for this. Thank you. JimKaatFan (talk) 19:17, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

JimKaatFan:

The advice he gave you was, more exactly "The admin who I think is most likely to tell you what you want to hear is User:DGG, who has been most critical of my methods in the past." He gave honest advice: that sentence accurately describes the situation. I have no way as an individual of dealing with this, and based on long experience I see no reason to think any advice I might give directly is likely to be helpful. The only way of proceeding is to go to AE, and in the very likely event you get no satisfaction at AE, to arb com.

If you go to AE, I will support your position, and a few others will also, but it will be an unpleasant battle and as you recognise yourself, disproportionate to any possible likely gain. If it ends up at arbcom while I am still there I shall have to recuse myself, and the result will be similar. It's only fair for me to warn you that, before I joined arbcom, I always advised people never to go there, for I had never seen anyone come out the better for it. Now that I have been on that committee for 5 of the last 6 years, I am all the more convinced of my earlier advice.

What is necessary is not to deal with any particular admin as an individual, but to end completely the use of Discretionary sanctions. DS is not arb policy, but an arb com procedure, and we at arb com could end it with a simple motion. (the community could also change arb com policy to disallow it, but that is a very complicated and lengthy matter indeed) I've been urging the committee to do this for some time. (see WP: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Clarification request: Pseudoscience} ) Discretionary Sanctions gives any one of the 500 active admins who cares to act, quite inordinate power, and it's only to be expected that some, out of that 500, will be inclined to misuse it. The purpose of arb com is supposed to be to settle disputes, but the use of DS exacerbates them.

There is however some effective practical advice I can certainly give you--advice I have given others, and a few WPedians have actually taken it. Get out of the topic field of American Politics, at least until 2021. Feelings of the majority of WPedians are so strong about the immediate situation in real life, that there's been a loss of perspective. By now, reasonable judgement cannot be expected. WP is not suited for advocacy. If it's advocacy you want, and I find that a perfectly rational desire, there are more suitable places. If it's true encyclopedic coverage you want, it's too early. If it's the immediate provision of accurate information for the benefit of the public., WP should be capable of it, but experience has made it quite clear that our method of working can not hold up in the middle of an emergency. DGG ( talk ) 04:06, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Redsense Medical

Maybe I wasn't clear. I meant that, with a draft and an article, either the draft should be redirected to the article, or the article should be deleted and the draft left standing. If you think that the article should be deleted, because of conflict of interest and other reasons, then I will support the deletion. I expect however that if you also nominate the draft for deletion, some of the MFD regulars will want to Keep it. I know that DES will say that it might be notable, and will oppose deletion of drafts in general. What SmokeyJoe will say will vary from week to week. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:51, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

what I think might not be clear is our procedures . If the article gets deleted first, your reason for decline no longer holds, & that was my reason for listing both. I nominate for MfD if I think it should be deleted, unless I think no one else will support deletion. The question of how bad a draft should be before it gets deleted, just as you say, is much disputed among the few of us who are interested in this. Since it's a judgement call, and I can imagine no explicit guidelines that would make the decision easier, I know no way to resolve it except to continue to send drafts to MfD in the hope that a pattern will develop. DGG ( talk ) 05:22, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

==Draft:Eran Elinav==

.....

It is permitted to edit for pay. But when you do, you should not expect volunteer editors to have to copyedit for style, or deal with missing sources. Learn the detailed rules--asking money for writing for a publication for which you do not know its style is not reasonable. Speaking for myself, I very much resent doing work on articles for which someone else is receiving money. And for paid work, asking any particular reviewer to review an article is not a good idea--my feeling is it makes us complicit in aiding your coi editing. Wait your turn in the queue. DGG ( talk ) 18:50, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

g11 and biographies

I like to message users when I delete their creations, and I use User:Deepfriedokra/g11 where needed. But I'm seeing more biographies G11 tagged, and I feel I need a fresh message or an adjustment of the current one. Would you mind commenting at User talk:Deepfriedokra/g11#Adjusting for biographies to help me help them? --Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:14, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I have commented there, and will comment again. DGG ( talk ) 08:33, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

You talk a lot of sense about DS, but I have concerns about how you see us managing intractable long-term disputes without them. What would you do with, say, a chiropractor who constantly demands that we change the page on chiropractic to state that innate is real? Would you just send this to ANI as tendentious editing?

AE started out well but has become one of the most capricious processes we have. My personal view is that this is largely an artifact of the underlying weakness of Wikipedia: we have no robust mechanism for definitely resolving content disputes, so any substantial content dispute will escalate and roll around the various drama boards until the first person loses their temper and gets banned. DS was designed to stop this, which it kind of does, but in a distinctly heavy-handed way. Ten or fifteen years ago we wasted a lot more time with disruptive editors, but also dealt out a lot less summary justice to people with half a dozen edits (leaving aside obvious vandals).

In particular, I think dispute resolution practice hasn't yet taken on board the more nuanced approach we can take using partial blocks. Anyway. I can't make up my mind whether DS is fundamentally a shit-show or just an example of, as per Churchill, "the worst system apart from all those others which have from time to time been tried". Do you have an essay on "if not DS then what", as it were? Thanks. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:05, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Reply in process, but two preliminary points: I agree with you that the capability for partial blocks may provide the solution. But second, how to handle areas like parascience adds the additional complication that you and I represent-- a persisting disagreement between how we ought to deal with the topic area, although we both have the same view of the underlying reality. This is a difference that amounts to what I see as a challenge to the concept of NPOV, and in my mind , therefore to the entire basis of the encyclopedia. There can indeed be disruption that must be dealt with, but it can be hard to distinguish here between disruption and the fair presentation of a minority viewpoint. It will be easier here to deal with disruption in areas where there is no right or wrong, and good faith editors of knowledge and experience disagree and always will disagree about the actual facts and the interpretation, such as ethnic conflicts, and there is not and will never be a majority viewpoint. The possible justification for the use of DS I think always was here. Please wait a few days. because this is the sort of thing I do not like to formulate in one go at it. DGG ( talk ) 05:31, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

• @JzG:: Per your comments above, it is my opinion that DS has evolved into exactly what it was not intended to be. It is a combination of a "shit-show" and "the worst system apart from all those others which have from time to time been tried". While the intention was commendable, and possibly needed in some cases, the current system ends up harming Wikipedia more than it helps. I do not, and I will surmise many others, edit pages that are under DS except maybe some grammar corrections. Those that know how the system works can use it to their advantage. Other editors that do edit often end up in a losing battle (an example "might" be User:JimKaatFan in the above mentioned Tucker Carlson article) where the logical (and prudently wise) advice is to "Get out of the topic field of American Politics, at least until 2021". The really wise advice would be "stop editing articles under any DS because the powers-that-be will go the direction they choose". As part of dispute resolution how sad is it that the directive to "stop misconduct and damage to the encyclopedia" is replaced with "punish all involved to easily solve the issue". Just the threat of possible ArbCom intervention means --- "run" or likely be sanctioned. I commend DGG (and others) that continually look for ways to possibly "straighten out the mess" but like the U.S. Electoral College, that has been deemed flawed, there does not appear to be a better system. I hope at some point we will not have to advise editors to leave a project or area because impending sanctions will likely result. Our "feelings", one way or the other, should not even be a consideration when we put on the Wikipedia editing hat. In my opinion, if there is no "disruption" or "misconduct" then long term general sanctions imposed on articles are more of a hindrance than help. Otr500 (talk) 16:55, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Otr500, I'm not going to disagree, but there are so many potential downsides to wholesale removal that I think we would need to be very careful about it. I do think that we should be more willing to introduce more granular sanctions - for example, people who routinely add badly-sourced content can now be blocked from mainspace, but still propose changes on Talk.

We should also make more use of escalating blocks, and be quicker to reject rambling complaints and we should use interim sanctions while other options are explored. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:51, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely 1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created.

Technical news

• The filter log now provides links to view diffs of deleted revisions (phab:T261630).

Miscellaneous

• Office actions may now be appealed to the Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee.

---

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pretty Nose (2nd nomination)

I noticed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pretty Nose (2nd nomination) you wrote: "I have a non-specialist awareness of the general situation, and am very aware of the policy implications". What is the "general situation", and what are the policy implications? Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 16:52, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

the general situation is the manner in which we can use oral and non traditional sources in WP. The policy questions are cultural bias, NPOV, and , especially, WP:V,. An additional consideration is whether the nature of the discussion requires starting over. As for any assumption about which way I am thinking, I have, as usual, written rationales for several different conclusions to see what is best. As I consider this a test case, . I am equally concerned with trying to give my view about how articles such as this should be handled. DGG ( talk ) 00:34, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I nominated a few similar articles and had two editors question my motivations here. There was absolutely no ill intentions to my AFDs, and before nominating these articles (I withdrew one), I searched WT:BIO for any previous discussions about the notability of American Indians, and looked online for sources to support notability and improve the article. If you have a moment, please look through the edit history at Lake Ontario Ordnance Works, where you will see I spent much time improving the article and then working towards its "good article" status. Please also have a look at this satellite image of Pletcher Road, which leads to the former LOOW site, and see how at one time it appears to have been a two-lane road. In fact, it was a two-lane road, and the reason for this was because they didn't want trucks carrying radioactive waste to smash head-on into each other on the way to and from the dump. How do I know this? Someone who used to work there told me. Unfortunately, I could not find any source to support this likely fact, so I could not add that to the article, because like many editors, I follow the rules that have been agreed upon by consensus so the quality and reliability of Wikipedia remains high for its readers. I don't always like that, and it is unfortunate some histories have a plethora of detail while others have little, but that is a reality I cannot change. Magnolia677 (talk) 10:57, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

We need to recognize the degree of reliability in oral sources. In the example you gave just above, had it not been merely "a person who works there" but "the engineer in charge", I'd say to possibly use it, certainly if we had name and date, especially if it is congruent with the spatial data. We normally use a person's account of his childhood in a university oral history; it may well contain significant omissions, especially if released during their lifetime, but I think readers realize it. What a person says his grandmother told him, is much less likely to be reliable. In the passage through generations, things tend to get amplified --or forgotten. "My father, your grandfather, ran for congress" may mean that he often talked about how he would like to have run for congress. Formal oral records of non-literate groups recited by specialists are a special case; they often match written and archeological data to some degree, but not completely. The bestcurrent is to say in the text where the accounts come from, assume people with common sense will draw reasonable conclsions, and never state possibly disputable facts in the lead or in WP's voice.

The people questioning motivations reflect more on them than on you. But to avoid such problems , when I wish to nominate a groups of closely related articles, I nominate the weakest, and judge from the result how to handle the others. DGG ( talk ) 16:41, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughtful response. Most of my AFDs are to garage bands and rap musicians, where the response is quite different. All the best. Magnolia677 (talk) 17:36, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Saving G13 stale drafts

Hi, DGG,

I've been on G13 patrol for a little over a week and have noticed quite a few drafts you have rescued from deletion as stale drafts. I think that is awesome! But I also noticed the large number of editors listed as participants at AFC and I think that you shouldn't be shouldering this burden alone.

Do you think you might convince a few of the AfC regulars to glance over User:SDZeroBot/G13 soon or User:SDZeroBot/G13 soon sorting once a day and pull out any promising drafts? There is also Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions for drafts closest to G13 status but there are thousands of drafts in this category which can be overwhelming while the SDZeroBot pages are moderately sized and G13 soon sorting is arranged by topic which can be handy.

I think that editors who regularly evaluate submitted drafts for their quality would be better judges of article potential than myself. Just a thought. Thanks. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:45, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I I have no effective way of persuading people except by example. (and sometimes giving problems a little publicity, as you are helping me do now)

It's a problem designing the best strategy. Having several different way & people reviewing the same material is in principle good. Whether something is worth saving is a matter of judgment, and we all differ in this, which is desirable. Often, it is impossible to predict without actually working on an article whether it can in fact be rescued, and nobody has ever been able to accurately predict what will pass AfD. Experience is of limited usefulness when confronting a chaotic process . But all the methods are especially inefficient because half of the material is absolutely hopeless and should have been removed long before the 6 months. We have no mechanism for doing that except MfD, but a few reviewers inist on keeping because they think its better to let everything simply wait the 6 months--they may not be realizing how much it clogs up the system. BTW, Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions is not as overwhelming as it looks, because they're arranged in chronological order. The ones closest to the month's end come first, about 2 days per page of 200.

There are also a few other devices, like deleting more liberally as G1, G2, G3, and deleting duplicates by G6. We're both admins; I almost always nominate and let another admin delete, but I'll do it myself if it's truly obvious, especially in draft. . DGG ( talk ) 06:20, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Awards for Academics?

Hi DGG.

I usually write Wikipedia pages about Professors and Academics. You have been helping me around here and there. So I thought of brining this query to you. What are some of the most important academic awards that do not have a Wikipedia page? For instance, the IEEE Medal of Honor is an important academic award, but it already has a page. Does a list exist somewhere on Wikipedia where I can find the awards that we really should have articles about? What is a good structure for the page of an award?HRShami (talk) 05:16, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

The general practice is that if the award has been established for more than a few years, and if most (or, even better, almost all,) of the people who have received it are notable enough to have WP bios, thenthe award should have a page. It is often very difficult to find true substantial third party sources, but it is always possible to find the web page forthe award, and the mentions of it it articles about it being awarded, so in practice it can be an exception to GNG. The logic is a little circular, for once we have the article on the award, it can act as at least an indication of probable notability , but normally only the highest level national award in a profession is enough to prove notability by WP:PROF. Challenged articles on awards can be brought to AfD--some are kept, some deleted. The use of anaward to show notability is idscussed in the individuall afds, or sometimes at WT:NPROF, of the talk pages for the various wikiprojects.

As you have noticed, the award you mentioned is, (1) the highest level award of the major international society in a very broad field, and (b) there are pages for everyone who has been awarded it. DGG ( talk ) 06:51, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Hmm. Is there some list where I can find the awards that should have a Wikipedia page? Or do you have some Awards you would like to see pages of? I only want to write about Awards in Academics.HRShami (talk)

Also, can you please take a look at this. On this page, the members are listed according to alphabetical order, but if we list them alphabetically, there is not difference between a list page and a category page? Should I organize them based on year the membership was awarded?HRShami (talk) 10:30, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

AfC & G13 eligible soon category question

Like I said, I've been working in this area for about six weeks and each night, User:SDZeroBot/G13 soon has consistently listed around 250 drafts coming to G13 status in 7 days. That number can fluctuate between about 200 and 350 drafts and out of that total number you, and a few other AfC editors, remove about 20-25 drafts from each day's list that you see as having potential. y. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:40, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

So, DGG, Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions is up to 3,300 drafts! Some related discussion about this is at User talk:MusikAnimal#G13 database report with help from ProcrastinatingReader. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:53, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Count is now up to 4,800+ drafts and that is considered a backlog! So, looks like things are back to normal. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:22, 6 November 2020 (UTC) TC)

Looking for advice

I am newcomer here. I have read the general set of rules in Wikipedia but I am not sure what should be my next step. It would be helpful if you could assess my short number of edits so far and give some feedback. My ultimate goal is to improve articles within my expertise. Since I have other things to do in real life, I would like to know how to contribute as efficiently as possible so that I don't waste valuable time and energy. I have no interest to be in this platform except my altruistic mind says otherwise. Red Society 01 (talk) 23:47, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Red Society 01, if DGG is willing to help you will be in good hands. (talk page watcher) -- Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 23:51, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Red Society 01, you have started out well, by learning the syntax by making small improvements in articles; the usual advice is to now move on to adding whole sections, but I suggest you also try rewriting poorly written articles. When you come to write new articles from scratch, you may encounter difficulties in finding find new subjects in cricket, but there is an immense range to work on in socialism. You'll find it much easier in that field to start with biographies of already deceased people--writing articles on movements and general topics can be complicated, and bios of living people require finding very good sourcing, which sometimes can be difficult--in choosing a topic, first find references before you start writing, and go where the available sources take you. I don't know your background or education, but regardless of how great it is, you can expect to learn a good deal more by working here. Try to avoid current politics, or nationalistic movements, until you have much more experience--if you encounter a disputed area, go somewhere else. You can expect some of your articles to not be accepted--it happened to be at the beginning also; success here requires patience. It's not easy here to be efficient--the only suggestion I can give you is to find a good source or group of sources, and use it as the basis for several articles. I unfortunately won't really be able to keep up with your work, but if you encounter some real difficulty beyond the ordinary, ask me. As long as you're not quarrelsome, people will help you. DGG ( talk ) 04:05, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

NOT TABLOID

I said, as a direct quote from the redirect to the basic policy WP:Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, NOTTABLOID. I was referring to the inclusion criteria for wikipedia, what it does and does not cover. It's a frequent abbreviation in AfD debates when an editor wants to say that the material over-personal or an appeal to the emotions. My complete rationale for deletion was "essentially advocacy." The usual personal story., with the usual promotional coverage. WP is not a tabloid]] . There is no way to read "tabloid" as referring to the charity--it refers to a style of publication. Calling a charity's fund raising appeals an appeal to the emotions is not an insult either. It is appropriate & expected for any charity to publish appeals to the emotions. It's the basic way they raise funds--even the most notable national and international organisations. . It's what I respond to when I give money, and I give to both national and local organizations--even those as local as my own neighborhood; including one as local as a few blocks of my own street. There's nothing wrong with local charities, and calling a charity local is not an insult. It's appropriate to use tabloid-style material when appealing for money; but an encyclopedia does not contain appeals for money. DGG ( talk ) 16:51, 30 October 2020 (UTC)...

But, just for the record, and intended as guidance:

There are many reasons for deletion besides notability. The basic rule for inclusion in WP is the policy WP:NOT, and this applies both to whether we should have an article, and what an article should say. Material which is essentially advertising or advocacy does not belong in the encyclopedia regardless of how notable the subject is, or we'd end up being a medium for publicity for notable subjects. We don't do advocacy, but provide information, though admittedly this sometimes is not a clear-cut line. We have no formal definition of advocacy in our rules because of its many forms: it's a matter of judgment, not of strict definition. I think of it like this: Advocacy provides the readers with what the organization would like to tell them, and is typically addressed to prospective customers/investors/donors/students/applicants/ etc. In contrast, an encyclopedia article is addressed to the general reader who may have heard of the organization, and wants to know what it is and something about what it does. I find a useful rule of thumb is if it reads like an organization's web site, it isn't suitable for an encyclopedia . This can be applied dispassionately, and equally so to what one approves or or disapproves, equally so to the horrible or the laudable. .

AfD does not explicitly clean up an article. AfD can do so nonetheless, because a clean articles is more likely to be accepted by the community. In actual practice, the most effective way to force an article to be clean, at least in relatively simple cases, can be to nominate it for deletion. This often works with articles on organizations, though it works even better for biographies.

As for the GNG, whether a subject meets GNG depends on how one interprets the key words, significant, independent , and reliable. It's not a matter of strict or literal reading--these are not qualities that can be defined strictly or literally. For example, local news is not truly independent because local news sources generally feel obliged to cover everything in their area. And here again, it's a matter of degree, and many cases could be argued either way. (And I've generally chosen which way to argue on a holistic view of suitability for the encyclopedia) DGG ( talk ) 05:30, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Appian Corporation

Hello, I'm reaching out because you added a {{Cleanup-PR}} flag to Appian Corporation but you did not note why. For full transparency, I have a declared COI and have been working with other editors to update the page through talk page requests. Can you elaborate on the part(s) of the article you are mainly concerned about in relation to the flag? I'd love to help cleanup any concerning language or content. Thank you! JMGAppian (talk) 20:14, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

The template's wording is a little unfortunate, because it's the one we use for too many things. It basically means, in this case, that the article resembles a company web page, but not to the extent of being downright advertising. The following changes would help:

1. What we need are substantial 3rd party indepedent reliable published sources, not blogs or postings or mere notices, especially notices of sales or of funding--see WP:NCORP for the current rules. About half the references are mere notices, and a numberof other promotional . 4 or 5 strong references are better than 42 weak ones.
2. Try not to sound like a list of products,
3. Don't use references like #20 where the article, though in PCWeek, is actually the head of the company giving a walk-through about his product, rather than being a product review written by an independent reviewer. Reference 2 rather surprised me. I didn't expect to see such blatant PR is the Washington Post--now I know better. But the WaPo is still basically honest--it says it's just quoting the company. That does not count as independent. Be careful with Forbes: ref 40 is written by a "contributor", not by their staff. It's not subject to their usual editorial supervision, and therefore not reliable.
4. try not to write as a list of one-sentence paragraphs.
5. Try not to use the company name as much. Generally "it" works very well.
6. Remove poorly sourced claims or puffery--the "leader" in the first paragraph turns out to mean only one of 11. The term should usually be limited to mean 1st or possible top 2 or 3. DGG ( talk ) 04:19, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I really appreciate you taking the time to break this down, and I do agree that these are all clear areas for improvement. These are issues that were already on the page prior to my involvement and there's only so much I feel I can reasonably ask at a time through talk page requests so these issues fell to the wayside. I'll draft up these changes and see about getting those implemented. Again, thank you for taking the time to share your feedback! JMGAppian (talk) 23:51, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

I pinged you on the article's talk page, but wanted to follow up here as well. If you have the time, I'd really appreciate you taking a look at the changes I've suggested to address your concerns above. Happy to discuss anything that you feel still needs to be addressed. Otherwise, if you feel that the issue has been addressed sufficiently, feel free to paste from the sandbox. Thank you! JMGAppian (talk) 15:26, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Hello, just wanted to reach out again to see if you'd have the time to review the changes I mocked up in response to your concerns and the {{Cleanup-PR}} flag you had added. You can see the changes here. Please feel free reach out if you have additional concerns or requests. Thank you! JMGAppian (talk) 17:17, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

:I will take a look today or tomorrow. Thanks for the reminder. DGG ( talk ) 17:55, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I'm reaching out to see if you had any questions or concerns about the sandbox mockup. Thank you. JMGAppian (talk) 15:04, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

########

Hi DGG, I just wanted to touch base about this. Do you have any concerns about the sandbox mockup? Thank you. JMGAppian (talk) 14:00, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

*(check and delete from this p.)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2020).

• Community sanctions now authorize administrators to place under indefinite semiprotection any article on a beauty pageant, or biography of a person known as a beauty pageant contestant, which has been edited by a sockpuppet account or logged-out sockpuppet, to be logged at WP:GS/PAGEANT.

AFC

I tend to not clear the duplicates in Draft space if the article doesn't meet the guidelines to be accepted, mainly because, so if the person in working on the article wants to add to the article, they can do that, and remove the duplicate section themselves when they resubmit their articles. But either way, it's just sitting in draft space, and It's not fatal for the article to be doubled. But it doesn't really matter either way. --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 22:30, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh and is EN wiki loading slow for you too? Or is it just me? --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 22:31, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

yes, it doesn't matter much, but I have a tendency to do fixes that affect the basic structure myself, if only so I can understand what I'm reviewing. This was a simple one, but if it looks notable and would take more complex reorganization, I do it. I k now I do this more than most reviewers--it wasnt meant as blame, but as explanation to the contributor . ,

enWP is fast as usual for me here. NYC, FIOS, recent iMac, Safari. The AFCH macro, on the other hand, is almost always too slow. DGG ( talk ) 22:50, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I have been spending most of my time on the Simple English Wikipedia, I'm always shocked by the size and complex language EN wiki uses everytime I come and visit! --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 22:54, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Think of it as trying to lift a set of the printed Brittanica with one hand. DGG ( talk ) 23:15, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

A pie for you!

It seems to have been awhile since anyone has thanked you for all the hard work you do at AfC. Your willingness to help new editors, and to take on tough cases has not gone un-noticed. Thank you. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 01:44, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

New York Poetry Forum

I'm not in favor of moving this to draft, as that leaves a gap in the listing of a national structure of poetry societies affiliated with the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. The notability is not invested in the individual affiliates, but with the national structure. This particular entry has very little to no online presence and it may remain only a stub, but it's still part of the overall structure and removing it has left red links. I've emailed the listed officer to request further information, but there may not be a response, so this may not be incubated any further. Please move it back to stub status. Thank you. Pkeets (talk) 17:23, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

P.S. I'm autoconfirmed so I can move it myself, but I'd rather not get in an edit war with you. Pkeets (talk) 22:51, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

PKeets, it is possible, but very unusual to restore a draft to mainspace other than through the AfC process. Were you to do that, I would not revert you, but I would nominate the article for deletion. The best thing you can do, as I know you realize, is to add third party references. As for gaps in the structure, I checked a few of the others and also found no third party references. I have great respect for your project in adding articles on notable women, but it is quite rare here for us to have articles for state branches of any national association: I looked at the most important one I could think of, the NAACP, and we do not seem to have articles on any of its branches. Nor do we have articles on any of the branches of National Organization of Women. Of course it might happen that a particular branch will have sufficient substantial 3rd party reliable published sources, not blogs or postings or mere notices to be notable, DGG ( talk ) 02:30, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

So now you're going to criticize the whole body of work? Every little town in the US has an article, right? - third party sources or no. Plus, I see above you have a record of doing this to experienced editors. These are only stubs, and I'm sure the individual chapters can add a lot to them - literary organizations are seldom at a loss for words. Some chapters look to be very active and other like NY, not so much, but still this looks to be an important resource for poets in the US, and Wikipedia has apparently been totally unresponsive to it until now. I'll check around for more sources. I've already added a couple to NY. Pkeets (talk) 02:57, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

It is not I who do this. If I nominate for deletion, I leave it to the community to decide. Normally after I nominate an afd, I respond at most once more in the discussion, unless there's a particular special point. Sometimes they agree with me, sometimes they don't. All of my experience can't convince the community when they disagree. I managed 12 years ago to change consensus to accept articles on all high schools, and then 2 years ago the community decided differently, and I argued both the RfC and its interpretation for a few months, and then accepted it had changed, and articles on which I along with a few others had spent years working for have been getting deleted. For that matter, on the very example you give, I did indeed try to keep the policy that every inhabited or formerly inhabited populated place, should have an article, but the consensus again has changed against me, and I no longer argue ones I know I'll probably lose.

I think in general in the last few years the general feeling here has changed to avoid very small articles. Good encyclopedias have been made with them, and also by combining into large articles. Either way can work, and I can work with either. But nobody can work effectively without some kind of consistency.

What you see above is not my fighting against stubs. What you find in my talk is my fighting against promotionalism . That is something which matters. Whatever the notability standards , this would still be an encyclopedia. If we included promotionalism, then we're just another version of the googles. That's something I care about.

Similarly, I care about NPOV. With articles biased towards one side of an issue, we won't be an honest encyclopedia, and there's no reason for anyone who wants to learn the actual facts about the world to come here.

But article size and similar things, they can be done in many different ways without our losing our purpose. DGG ( talk ) 07:14, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

How about Wikipedia being a resources where people can quickly find information? I personally don't read long articles. If it's really long, I just check the lede. Pkeets (talk) 14:10, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

"Quickly find information" is the opposite of "encyclopedic" it's the difference between an Encyclopedic dictionary. such a the one-volume Columbia Encyclopedia. and printed works like the Brittanica.The practical place online to quickly find information is not Wikipedia , but Google.

But in an encyclopedia , there are multiple equally valid ways of arranging the material: related short articles, a few long articles, WP:Summary style, a mix depending on the amount of information available, a mix depending upon the perceived importance, a mix determined by the people working on each broad topic area, or (at the low end of validity), a mix depending on the preferences of the people doing the writing for each individual article,. My. own preference is WP:Summary style for substantial topics, and Annotated lists for others, but that's just me.

In any case, as I said a little above, I'm much more concerned about questions Reliable sourcing, NPOV, and avoiding promotionalism DGG ( talk ) 05:53, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

(stillin draft, Dec. 11) ###

AfD on ...

... When two people get into an angry dispute like the one I have just removed from my talk p., there's no point in trying to apportion the blame, or accusing each other of harassment. This is one of the difficulties of the way arb com and AE and ANI work--they try to find the most party who has behaved the worst, and sanction them. That's not the way I work. I try to prevent personal disputes from occurring, or at least from continuing, or at the very least, escalating. The place to discuss notability is the afd. The place for the rest of this is nowhere. I can't affect the world outside WP, but I can try to prevent this from happening on-wiki, or , at the very least, on this page. DGG ( talk ) 20:48, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Real Life Barnstar
	You are not only good administrator but also good user-friendly member of Wikipedia. I appreciate your sentiments. 🇮🇳DRCNSINDIA (talk) 14:54, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

ld not pass afd, but if fixed, it might. DGG ( talk ) 01:48, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Rejected drafts

Hi, DGG,

I have had little involvement with AFC over the years but I am taking care of hundreds of stale drafts these days. Plenty of them have been rejected by AfC reviewers but, to my untrained eyes, even though they don't have 4 or 5 reliable sources, they would definitely make decent stub articles. I'm just wondering if AfC reviewers have high standards, looking for every claim to have verification, and declining articles that, are not in great shape now but if given time & attention, might make decent articles in the future. Or are reviewers discouraged from accepting submissions that would just be stubs? Just wondering. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:53, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

The basic standard is that the draft will be likely to pass AfD, but as usual at Wikipedia, every reviewer uses their own interpretation. The key word is "likely". Remembering the discussions from 4 or 5 years ago, it was established that it does not mean 51%, but also not 99%. Most reviewers say they interpret it at between 60 and 80 %, but in practice the actual range in 80 to 90%. However, most reviewers probably think more globally than numerically. There will always be disagreement about what ought to pas AfD, and many us tend to judge by what we think ought to pass, more than what we think will in the current state of things pass.

I do not try to judge what the community will do at afd for drafts not in my fields of interest, for I do not review them. In practice very few of my approved drafts have ever been rejected, but that's because if they're borderline I will if necessary fix them myself. A relatively small number of other people also do that.

There is considerable pressure to keep the level high--nobody wants to be called out for passing something that the community rejects, nobody wants to have a long discussion getting an article improved and then seeing it rejected, and there's even a warning message at various places about listing for deletion or changing the status to unpatrolled for something that passed AfC--whereas reviewers rarely get blamed for declining a draft.

For the 6 month old drafts now appearing for G13, some of them are by notably over-demanding reviewers. For the ones that are declined for clearly incorrect reasons, I will say so in a comment, which postpones them. An article does not need 3 or 4 reliable sources showing notability to pass; one is enough if it's good enough, like being in a standard encyclopedia. But I will often decline them and ask for more, in order to increase the chance that it will actually pass. I take into consideration whether further sources are likely. I also at least nowadays, carem ore about promotionalism than notability. I will not pass a basically promotional article regardless of notability -- although if it is extremely notable, i will once in a while remove the worst of the promotionalism and pass it.

What concerns me even more than the mis-reviewed drafts are the ones that are good enough, or almost good enough, but never got submitted. If I think they might be good enough, I will always at least fix them a little and postpoen them, or even just submit and accept them.

My advice is to follow your instincts about what belongs in Wikipedia. I tend to check deleted G13s a little as well as ones not yet at 6 months. I do not check something if its obvious from the title that its hopeless or not in my field. I see many that you've deleted, and I restore about 1/10 of them, I consider 90% agreement between two reviewers as good as can be expected.

There are not merely 2 classes of articles at AfC--the passes and the fails. There are 3: the hopeless, the improvable, and the adequate. I'd say the proportion as they arrive in draft is 40-50-10. As formally submitted, it's 20-60-20. Dealing with the ones in the middle takes more work than the available people can do. That's the basic problem. It's mot the fault of draft and afc, before we had it, there was the same proportion at New Page Patrol. We tended to accept everything that was possible, about 50%, which is how the early junk got into WP, and, if not of great interest to people, never got improved. Unsatisfactory as it is, the current way is better. DGG ( talk ) 04:48, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

RE: Articles for creation: Sun and Moon Pagodas has been accepted

I guess responding to a new message notification is a force of habit—even as an IP address rather than a username. Thank you for reviewing and accepting Sun and Moon Pagodas for article creation. Your username sounds familiar, I used to be a Wikipedian but it looks like I was leaving just as you were arriving. I know the notice is boilerplate, nevertheless I thank you for the invitation to sign up. However, I will not be rejoing Wikipedia as I am still unsure this is a community that I would find welcoming as most of the concerns I had when I stepped away seem to have gotten worse over the years. Even so, I am glad to see Wikipedians like you serving on committees, defending obscure—but notable—subjects from deletion, and investing in their creation. I hope you have continued success. Cheers! -24.35.158.128 (talk) 13:20, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

as before, there are more contentious corners and less contentious. The general attitude is considerably more bureaucratic, as we are better at devising new rules than removing obsolete ones. But it is also more predictable, and in most fields the personalities don't matter as much as in 2006: there's nobody who has the same kind of influence some people had then. In general, the article content is better, and as long as one stays away from fields like American politics reasonable people can do thing without trouble. So please try a few more. DGG ( talk ) 16:58, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Dean Lomax

Hi DGG, I'm a bit confused by these comments:[31]

That draft is just a recreation of what was brought to AfD which was closed as delete. Maybe you weren't aware of that AfD when you made the comment the subject was notable and removed the speedy deletion. We're basically in the same position as when the draft was speedy deleted back in 2019, so I'm curious why the tag was removed without deletion this time? Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:03, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I consider the original deletion closing an error: "detailed discussion of sourcing is that what is there is not about the subject but their discoveries." is in complete opposition to WP. :PROF. The problems listed there can be fixed, which I intend to do. This is a lot simple than DelRev, because it can lead dieectly to a decent article.Naturally, this puts the burden on me , but it is my field. (there is, you ay be aware, a little wiki-politics involved in trying to avoid recognzing notability of entomologists; there have been more important inequities, which I intend to work on . but this will be a start) ). If you don't like what I do, when I put it in mainspace, there;\'s afd 2, but I hope it will get more careful attention this time. DGG ( talk ) 09:18, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I must have been cross-eyed when I read the draft comment because I thought it was part of the speedy deletion template for a second, so ignore that last bit of reverts on my part there. Not to nitpick, but given your statement above without really editing the draft and removing the deletion tag, it does come across a little WP:SUPERVOTEy as the closest way to describe it. The better option like you mention is to work on the burden aspect by editing content, and there are a few months for that now that the clock technically restarted.

I'd disagree about WP:PROF since part of that is the "average professor test" that I alluded to at the AfD (i.e., naming/discovering species is kind of normal among taxonomists). If sources start commenting that he stands out due to sheer volume/quality of work, that'll pass the threshold for me. I actually asked our resident taxonomist down the hall about that article and their thoughts were similar to mine (but kinda cool on the local popular science/education side of things). My vote then was more of a notability TOOSOON issue though, so obviously my opinion can change.

As for entomologists, maybe I've been missing out on some AfDs this year, but where has some of this politiking been going on? I'd definitely chime in if I thought an entomologist was notable (and it'd be easier for me to dig up more sources), though I'd put a lot of scrutiny on it too like I do above in terms of what a "normal" professor tends to do. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:10, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

• Supervote refers to my over-riding the community consensus in a afd or afc. That's not what's in question here. In trying to restore an article, if the community disagrees with what i do , the consensus will correct me. But none of that is what happened here either. No admin action is in question. Anyone can remove a speedy tag. Anyone can stop a G13 deletion, and any admin's G13 deletion will normally be restored on request. That's all I did. I haven't even restored the article yet. as I said, there are two acceptable ways to restore an article that's deleted at afd: Del Rev, or making a new one, where it it should be improved enough to have a reasonable chance.. If it wasn't protected anyone can do that. But I didn't even do that yet. I just put it into Draft, which is being as cautious and conservative as I would advise anyone. I think the consensus for AfCs is that a prior deletion is no bar to making an AfC, unless the AfC is also protected, which is very rare.

In carrying out admin actions, I follow the community consensus rather closely, particularly because I am quite aware that some of my opinions about what that consensus ought to be are not (yet) accepted. In editing, however, I have the same right as anyone to be BOLD, because the community can & sometimes does correct me. In giving someone advice about policy, I try to be very safe and conservative, and I never advise people to see what they can perhaps get away with. . In expressing my opinion about what guidelines are, when in a discussion, I use my judgment, keeping in mind the full range of permissible interpretations, and that the effective deletion policy anad notability guidelines are what happens at AfD, which can be quite variable.

The "average professor test" reads " When judged against the average impact of a researcher in a given field, does this researcher stand out as clearly more notable or more accomplished?". In my opinion, this as written is not helpful, because it depends 1/on the definition of "a researcher in the field" which could mean anyone from a grad student who has published a paper on up, but probably means anyone who is making a profession out of research in a subject which to my understanding is someone on a tenure track position or the equivalent. and 2/ "stand out clearly", which is totally vague and can only have an operational meaning of anyone who stands out clearly in the consensus of the community at any particular AfD. It also uses a word that isn't in any other of the other guidelines "accomplished"--which is about as indefinite as one can get. Considering the great flexibility of the guidelines here, it's remarkable that about 95% of the individuals submitted are clear one way or another--and even 80 or 90% of those challenged at AfD!

As applied to taxonomists, the standard is not clear as to how many species--it obviously depends on what sort of organisms one is working with. I think that although the consensus at afd in the past has sometimes been that a single species is enough, this is no longer the case & more is required. I agree that even in the broadest interpretation a single species would be much too wide for those working on, say, coleoptera. (as for the political examples, I meant wiki-politics, not RW politics. I need to look--the story is a little complicated) DGG ( talk ) 05:47, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

deWP-enWP

I hope that I'm correct in replying here to the comment you made on Olaf Kosinsky's talk page concerning the translation from German to English Wikipedia. I have read your comment and I must admit, I hadn't noticed the differences until you pointed them out specifically, like the example on Rudolf Pichlmayr. Thank you for that and I'll take it into consideration when working on future articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MMike94 (talk • contribs) 10:16, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

---

Charles R. Cutler

Me again, hopefully less controversially :D Curious if you think WP:PROF standards have changed since 2012 when you thought he met the notability bar due to his membership in NAE. If so, happy to remove the tag but I wasn't able to find any sourcing which was what had led me to possible PROD before I saw your comment. Thanks, as always. StarM 18:41, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

NAE is one of the things considered an absolute pass. This applies to the United States National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine. They're not subordinate bodies of lower status, but co-equal parallel parts of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine . It's useful, because it is otherwise difficult to sort out the most notable for some of the career paths in the NAM, and it can be very hard to decide otherwise for people in specialties that don't publish in the usual way in the NAE. I am aware of no contradictory decisions ever. If you know of any, please tell me , because I intend to challenge them and expect to be successful.

The article you mention is a good illustration of the value of the standard. I'm sure a great deal more could be written, but it wouldn't be easy for most of us to do it. DGG ( talk ) 00:27, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, as always, and for getting to the removal of the notability tag before I got back to the article. I don't know of any deleted, I just wasn't sure whether standards might have changed or not. My red flag was his re linked work, but I can understand why that might not apply in his case. My main goal with these tremendous backlogs is to get some attention to these mostly-forgotten articles. For some that might be deletion in some form, in others hopefully a project or other tag gets the right eyes on them. I'll see if I can find a good home to "adopt" this one who might have access to sources needed to shore it up. Thanks again. StarM 00:39, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I will help rescue (or , when necessary delete) as much as I can--don't be reluctant to ask. I'm very willing to be directed to where I am needed. As you say, the problem is in how to appropriately distribute the work. Usually I like it that we are an anarchy, but it has its limitations. DGG ( talk ) 06:26, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thanks for your help! Eli185 (talk) 16:27, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Jiliang Tang

Hi DGG -- Could you possibly take a look at stale draft Draft:Jiliang Tang -- a computer scientist with apparently high citations in GS. The draft appears to have been created by a student with permission from the subject. It's been declined twice, the subject is fairly early career (assistant prof, PhD 2015)[32]. I postponed the G13 based on the GS profile [33]. Thanks, Espresso Addict (talk) 06:02, 22 December 2020 (UTC). @@@@

I think I missed spotting this one, so thanks! I'll deal with it. it may take some analysis of the actual citations to decide, and computer science has its own peculiar publication patterns.. It is discouraging when new eds or classes write inadequate articles on notable people, and I wish we had a way of catching them earlier than the six months. DGG ( talk ) 06:53, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks. I've improved it a touch and the creator has re-engaged and submitted it for review. Even if Tang isn't quite over the threshold now, I think he will be soon, especially as he appears to have a book in press with Cambridge University Press. I never know what to do with such articles; deleting plausible drafts G13 every 6 months is such a waste of everyone's energy. Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 07:29, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

there are several routes to a solution--most desirable, fixing them when submitted, but if not getting them before 6 months, or if not at least getting them at 6 motnhs, or, at worst, deleting htem longer. But I intend to try something in Janaury, now that I'll be free from the arb com prison: making a list of everything I postpone, and trying to distribute it. .

and there's another dilemma--when we fix it enough to go itnto main space, how much do we fix it--just enough, enough so it would pass afd without our needing to defend it, or into an actually decent article. I know the first is more efficient, but if I am going to work on something, I want to do it in a respectable fashion. DGG ( talk ) 07:38, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I've been wondering for a while if a wikiproject or the like might be the way to go. I try to pick up expired drafts when I can, but I rarely do more than postpone these days -- there's just too much, one always feels to be drowning in it. Often I find that the drafts I pick up (independently) have been postponed by you 6 mths or 12 mths ago. Might a joint list of postponed items from established editors be useful?

Women in Red is a great resource if the subject happens to be female, but I often feel like proposing Men in Red for the academics/writers/historical figures/non-Anglophone people &c&c that aren't sportspeople or American/British politicians. No doubt that would make me very popular :) Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 08:07, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

We already have the AfC project, and it does fairly well. If I were going to find a slogan, it would be pople in red, possibly divided up by subject. Women in red had done splendidly, once hey realized they needed to be selective. I'fd not be opposed to other subgroup or national projects, iif they can get enthusiasts, but dividing people in these ways is not an ideal way to build a truly npov WP. I think we could do academics sucessfully on a university by university basis, with optional participation of the students in the schools involved. If we don't do something like this, the college pr people will do it for us, smd it makes even more work trying to get them to do it right. But the more specific the better. I would start with the subject lists in List of members of the National Academy of Sciences. first making a a list of everyone who has every been in the groups involved, and working on the redlinks. --the NAS has the advanrage of bios on deceased members available., but we haven't used them except sporadically. Other ideas welcome. We should take advage of the fact that for certain honors, everyone it is is notable, and we could start with the most basic stubs. This is a suitable place for wikidata to help us with a list, tho I wouldn't want to write even stubs on the basis of the information there. If we have 1 or 2 more people, we could start tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 10:34, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I'd be interested in joining a group that wanted to build up the coverage of academics, though my preferred focus would probably be Brits. (I'm much less familiar with the American education system, and they tend to have better coverage.) Last I looked there were still some redlinks in the Fellows of the Royal Society lists, which confers bullet-proof notability (and also has bios for deceased fellows, although as I recall they're not currently free), and moreover the bulk of the articles that exist are extremely poor. It would also be extremely useful to get some community discussion on precisely what honours/similar constitute bullet-proof notability, to the point it's worth going through lists indiscriminately. I tend to be very conservative, and in consequence I don't think I've ever had an article I created deleted, but it's meant I tend to investigate people in detail and then NOT start the article because I'm not certain whether they are quite there yet... Not so much FRS-type awards, but (off the top of my head) presidents of national but specialist bodies, professorships at less-prestigious universities, invited autobios in various Annual Reviews (I did some of these a while ago and got pushback that they weren't independent), citations in disciplines off the mainstream, and -- broadening to writers -- precisely which writing awards count. Every time one brings this kind of issue up at general noticeboards, one hits variants of "just meet the GNG" or "three good sources" arguments, that ... aren't really helpful.

What would be excellent would be a single talk page where one could bring bios -- or ideas for bios -- not relating to women and get the kind of enthusiastic, positive but not uncritical support, advice and collaboration that the Women in Red project routinely offers on bios of women. For example, I recall encountering an apparently good-faith editor who was trying to build articles on civil engineers who'd served as president of a society of which the editor was also a past-president, and had been meeting storms of deletion requests on the grounds that the society didn't provide an independent source for its presidents. I know nothing about civil engineering, and most of the people were in commercial companies rather than universities, and of course they were all male, so I had to leave the creator to flounder. Architects are another discipline where apparently good-faith contributions tend to get rejected, in my experience.

I don't know about creating microstubs; they tend to put me off contributing sometimes because someone's "stolen" the creator rights, but it might make it easier for new editors to contribute (which could be positive or negative, given the quality of the average newbie edits). I worry that an autopatrolled editor could start a microstub and then a student expand it into a promotional wreck, without going through Articles for Creation or New Page Patrol.

Anyway, just a few jumbled thoughts to mull over the solsticial period! Cheers, and festive greetings if they're appropriate, Espresso Addict (talk) 04:18, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Ideally, in a borderline situation the thing to do is to do the article, and see if it gets accepted, but of course nobody want to spend effort on things that won't be accepted, so it is always a balance. Beginners I advise to start at the top; experienced people like us can take chances. Similarly, microstubs can be argued both ways--I personally create them, because I know my own inclination is to edit an existing article rather than start a new one. But I'm overall not all that concerned with people in mainstream fields as for some other topics, such as the practical side of life in general. It's very hard to go out and specifically look for sources--the technique has to be to find a good encyclopedic source, and work from it. Architects I think have a usable standard: notable buildings, and monographs about the person.

An excellent technique for all of this is editathons. It simply doesn't work online, and least not for me or for any I've seen, but in a place like NYC we've done very well with both small and large groups. The very best have been the ones at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum. Maybe next fall... DGG ( talk ) 01:39, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your opinion on K D Krori by the way. I haven't stepped into AfD for a while, and was surprised at how many people whose notability seems to me fairly clear are currently being debated just in the Academics & educators list -- deletionists clearly don't take time off at Christmas/New Year...

I've not lived in/near a city since the foundation of the 'pedia, so I've never attended an in-person editathon. I've never succeeded in helping/encouraging a person to edit offline, despite trying many, many times with my online/offline acquaintance. There seems to be an enormous barrier to surmount before people make even one successful edit, even among people who are fluent in English, highly educated, used to professional or academic writing, and highly computer literate. In terms of online ones, I can't imagine it working with beginners but the British stub expansion that was held in March 2020 worked quite well, with established editors competing for prizes and improving ~thousand articles in the month. So looking forward to autumn, already! I'm trying to reconcile myself to the fact that I will have to shield till then, when I haven't been out in public since the beginning of March.

The new free sources in the Wikipedia Library need to be more widely publicised; I only worked out what was newly available without application the other week, and there must be a lot of qualifying editors who've never heard of it. The OUP collection is particularly useful; I've been working on a music theorist based on Grove's, and on a spotcheck there must be thousands of Grove's bio entries without articles. Resolution for 2021 to write more articles and get less drawn into fractious venues that make me walk away for 6 months; we will see how well that goes. Espresso Addict (talk) 07:25, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

WP:MOSFAQ2

I adapted the top half of your close at WP:BIRDCON into a new lead section at Wikipedia:Manual of Style extended FAQ, though this took some juggling of text around, and some massaging to replace redundant phrasing, plus some tweaks for clarity, and some links.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:18, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).

Administrator changes

Hammersoft

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek • Primefac

Oversight changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek

Joe Roe

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion T3 (duplication and hardcoded instances) has been repealed following a request for comment.

Technical news

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time.

Arbitration

• By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes). The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason).
• Following the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, L235, Maxim, Primefac.

Robin Callan - Draft

....

sometimes the work done in trying to save something turns out to not be worthwhile; I try to judge this before I start, but my judgment is not always correct. I am always trying to improve my skill at rescuing articles, and I have learnt from this one that I should have insisted on much more drastic revisions from the beginning I know it matters to you, and if I encouraged you unduly, I apologize. This is s why it is difficult to edit with any degree of coi: success here requires a considerable degree of detachment. DGG ( talk ) 05:50, 8 January 2021 (UTC). ####

Draft-Frank J.Manheim

...

the purpose of an encyclopedia is to be a place where people in the general public can go to find basic information about people and things that are sufficiently notable that they will have heard of them. Just as we're not here to make someone notable initially, we're not hereto provide everything that might be interesting about a person to those who already know about him. That's the purpose of biographies, amnnd there are plenty of places to publish this material. I like full biographies of people I care about; I read them on the internet, I get them from libraries, I sometimes buy them, and I've a few times even watch a film or video about a person I particularly care about. But for people I just want to know something about, the amount of material I want to know typically reflect the importanceo f the person, and will very rarely indeed extend to anecdotes about their hobbies or personal life or early interests. See WP:EINSTEIN.

And this is exactly why it is difficult to write about people with whom there is a conflict of interest. I'll give an example. I wrote a short bio of my thesis advisor, because it was asked for by the relevant work group dealing with members of the national academy of sciences. I didn't include everything I knew, either personally, or from department gossip, or what he said about himsel fin the books he had written (including an autobiography), Those who are interested enough will red the autobiography, and his other books, and interviews. Perhaps someone will write a full biography. Now, if he had been very famous to the general public, like Pauling or Feynman, I would have included considerably mrore, basedon the many books and other published avvoutns that have been written by and about them.

As for the article, I shall deal with it. Nobody owns an article, and the editor you mention has as much right to edit it as you or I. I've worked with that editor many times before, and we fdo not always agree about what ought to be in an article, but we'll work something out. The one person who should stay away at this point is you, because there's a conflict of interest. DGG' ( talk ) 02:09, 8 January 2021 (UTC). ####

Request Edit Template

Hi DGG, I read your comments at User talk:MarioGom#Appian Corporation about the request edit template, and finding alternatives. I'm posting here to avoid derailing JMG's request and going off-topic.

It was stated in the discussion promotionalism & sourcing & notability can best be evaluated in the context of the whole article . I know "request edit" doesn't work that way. I think this argument says request edits are usually posted in sections by COI editors, instead of the COI editor proposing all of an article's edits in one ticket, and causes the backlog that we see in the queue today. If I misinterpreted this argument, I am sorry and hope it will be clarified.

I agree that promotional language, source and notability need to be evaluated together when fulfilling request edits. However, I actually think the template has a different problem: many "quick" proposals (changing a paragraph, removing a sentence or updating the company's revenue) are completed quickly because it takes a short time to assess. Article rewrites (where promotionalism, sourcing and notability are evaluated together) linger in the queue for months because those request take a long time to assess. For example, I think if you did not volunteer to assess JMG's request it would have stayed in the queue for at least three more months because of the work required.

The backlog at request edit needs to be reduced because COI editors don't want their edits to sit in a queue for five months. If edits aren't completed COI editors will ignore the process and implement the edits themselves, causing worse problems for Wikipedia. I don't know how to speed up this process, but here's some options: AfC has a structure for reviewing articles, even though it has a backlog, too. Updating and simplifying the template's reviewer instructions might encourage other editors to join this area. Perhaps having a new user right like pending changes reviewers or rollbackers will encourage wiki hat collectors to give the area a try (and I don't consider hat collecting to necessarily be a bad thing, as long as editors use the roles they apply to).

I'm just throwing some ideas out there to try to fix the process. Thanks for reading this long message.

I think we agree--for fixing quick updates, we need something quick. For revising for promotionalism it's much better to work with the whole article. There are a few other processes split this way. But even for working with the whole article, I personally prefer they either suggest an alternative version, or make the changes they want and I will then revise. What I try to avoid is bargaining back and forth. The coi editor should make their case, and then let the reviewer handle it. DGG ( talk ) 23:28, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

I like splitting the process, but will it create another bureaucratic process for COI editors to mess up? Rather than split the process, we need to encourage editors to tackle the larger requests.

I hate the bargaining, but I don't know how to eliminate it. The bargaining is good because editors make mistakes or sometimes the COI finds better sources. One change could be the AfC process: the whole request gets denied and the author has to fix the problem parts and resubmit their preferred version. The problem with this is the second reviewer might be duplicating work by checking sources and what-not. Also, AfC is also backlogged.

If I was king of Wikipedia I would survey editors to find out why they are not participating in this process, especially editors who have participated in the past or regularly participate in COIN. My hypothesis for the lack of participation is: people want to work on their own favourite articles, don't want to help companies promote themselves, are put-off by the volume of work and just aren't interested in this aspect of Wikipedia. Z1720 (talk) 23:55, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Enlabs draft

Hello DGG,

Thank you for reviewing Enlabs draft page couple of months ago. I have now made changes to the draft, removed low-quality and industry-related references and added new references from Reuters, MSN.com and others.

I already talked about the draft to Cerebellum who also reviewed the draft and seemed to be happy with the changes, but wanted another reviewer to take a look at it for the final call. If you have time, could you please take a look at the draft?

Randomhero77 (talk) 10:36, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I might get there by Monday. DGG ( talk ) 01:52, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

OK, Randomhero77, I've taken a look at the current version. First thing to do is to combine sentences into paragraphs, and try to use "it" or "the firm" instead of the company name whenever possible. . Second, it is still the the case that all the information seems to refer to financing, some of it in perhaps more detail than necessary. Try to find something else to add, if you can find sources. DGG ( talk ) 10:59, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for checking it out DGG. I have now combined sentences into paragraphs where it made sense in my opinion, mostly in the history subheading. Removed company name where possible. Also added new Brands heading so there would be more than just acquisitions related references. Hope I didn't make the Brands sections look too promotional. Let me know what you think if you have time.Cheers. Randomhero77 (talk) 11:55, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

DGG I fixed that one confusing sentence which appeared to be just a typo. I did reply, but not sure if I did it in the correct place as I'm still bit of a Wikipedia amateur. Thought I'll give a quick update here as well. Cheers. Randomhero77 (talk) 09:53, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi DGG, hope you're well. I don't mean to be pushy, but is there anything else I can do to polish the draft? Thanks.Randomhero77 (talk) 12:59, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

I still itnend to get there. DGG ( talk ) 04:30, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for Arbitration Service

Thanks for your service on the Arbitration committee. A thankless but so important job! ---- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:08, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

username

User:David Goodman is not taken, so you could change your username ..... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 18:39, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I have been here so long that I now think of my actual identity as DGG. DGG ( talk ) 18:54, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Draft Sosnovskiy Leonid

Dear DGG, I ask for help in finalizing the draft article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Leonid_Adamovich_Sosnovskiy. I corrected most of the comments, in particular, I deleted unnecessary and superfluous details in Professional employment and Scientific activities, awards, etc. But the article was again rejected. Please help bring it up to the standards of the English Wikipedia so that the article will be accepted. Barejsha02 (talk) 06:30, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

I have consulted the Physics wikiproject on this one. I am not going to approve it unless the consensus there is that he is notable, and even then it would probably need very major rewriting. DGG ( talk ) 07:36, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

The consensus there is that it t someone should take it and related articles to AfD or MfD, but nobody had done so yet. DGG ( talk ) 02:10, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #1

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter

Completion rates for comments made with the Reply tool and full-page wikitext editing. Details and limitations are in this report.

The Reply tool is available at most other Wikipedias, including simple.

• The Reply tool... is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias.

A large A/B test will start soon.[34] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.

Screenshot of version 1.0 of the New Discussion Tool prototype.

The new tool for starting new discussions (new sections) will join the Discussion tools in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at the end of January. You can try the tool for yourself.[35] You can leave feedback in this thread or on the talk page.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Books & Bytes - Issue 42

• New EBSCO collections now available
• 1Lib1Ref 2021 underway
• Library Card input requested
• Libraries love Wikimedia, too!

Read the full newsletter Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:00, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2021).

[[F Arbitration

• The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover post-1992 politics of United States and closely related people, replacing the 1932 cutoff.

---

Isaija II and the AFC script

I noticed this in main space with afc aretacts, yet you accepted it using the sript. My memory suggests this has happened to you before, but I cannot recall the circumstances. There's nothing wrong. I just felt you might wish to examine the history and consider what, if anything, to report about the script Fiddle Faddle 16:24, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

I sometimes work too fast for it=it sometimes works too slow for me. The response time of the script varies, and I don't know why; but my impatience also varies so its had to separate out the factors. But the script isn't anywhere as bad as in previous years--at the beginning, I did it manually instead because manually was easier and faster. DGG ( talk ) 23:29, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

I remember the days of manual acceptance. The script was a lovely surprise when it arrived Fiddle Faddle 08:30, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Andre Waismann

Hello, DGG! Thanks for reviewing the page I created! The page had been under many discussions and consensus had been reached with 3 other reviwers (scope_creep, chicdat and Timtrent) regarding its contents and tone. They believed the text was neutral after a series of edits and that was the reason for me to re-submit it. However, I'd be glad to work on its tone of neutrality if you can detail. The text mostly cites the facts that happened without any emotional characteristics added, so I'd be glad to hear from you what triggered your attention as "advertorial content". We can discuss it on the Talk Page of the article and I'd like to invite all the editors who contributed for a more constructive discussion. אור פ (talk) 08:08, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

אור פ, I am simply an editor, as is DGG. Their opinion and mine differ from time to time. That is as it should be. My job in this case was to accept it since I believe it has a better that 60% chance if surviving an immediate deletion process. Now it is an article it is subject to the same rigour that all other articles are (eventually) subject to.

My usual advice to any editor who creates an article is to be its father not its mother. If you can improve it to meet a critique then do so, but if you cannot see an issue then ignore the article and let others take over the work. When we create an article we often stand too close to see its faults. And every article, even one stated to be a good article has faults. Fiddle Faddle 08:29, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

{u|אור פ}}, I agree with Fiddle that the article would probably pass AfD, at least if revised. And I agree with them also about the advisability of not becoming over-committed to the particular text of an article--I follow that advice myself. A key thing you could do to strengthen the article is to make sure his most referenced publications are listed, and give the no. of citations from Google scholar or equivalent, Then, remove minor work, such as conference talks--including them is part of what makes the tone sound like a personal web page or CV rather than an encyclopedia article. And make sure there is are references to support his method of treatment that will meet the ]WP:MEDRS criteria. (another excellent editor has just removed so newspaper articles that very decidedly are not reliable sources in the subject).The reader needs to know from 3rd party reliable sources the degree to which his methods are generally accepted in scientific medicine, DGG ( talk ) 12:20, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi, DGG! I believe I contributed enough to the article about Dr. Waismann and I don’t want to be deemed «over-committed». Therefore, I prefer to abstain from editing the article and contribute to other projects. אור פ (talk) 06:28, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

OK, I will if I have time do some checking on this myself, . DGG ( talk ) 07:25, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Ako Akhalaia

Hello Dear @DGG:, I am writing as the author of an article - Draft:Ako Akhalaia. I, myself, am One of the contributors and editors of Georgian Wikipedia. It’s been a while since my submitted article is in the drafts section. You say that person - Ako Akhalaia does not meet the recognition criteria, and the article needs additional resources. Fifteen certified links accompany the article. Here are the leading media agencies of Georgia, the Public Broadcaster, etc. He is Also the official Representative of the Cannes Lions Festival in Georgia + Publisher of Harvard Business Review. This person is the founder of the most popular Marketing magazine in Georgia. His awareness in this area is very high. You can quickly check and verify this. We want to make sure that he can be found in the English Wikipedia as well, so if you do not mind, please, review the article again and help us as colleagues publish the article. I really appreciate any help you can provide.--გიორგი ჩუბინიძე (talk) 23:01, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Each encyclopedia has its own standards. Our current standards for this sort of a career ar e gradually becoming increasing stringent. All that AfC is supposed to do if to say whether or not a draft is likely to be kept as an article. In its current state, based on my considerable experienmce at AfD, it is not likely to be kept. The question of whether I personally feel it should or should not be kept is irrelevant..

The problem with the article is the nature of the sources. The references that are in English are either just notes that he is a member of something, or his own basic bio, or an interview in which he says whatever he wants to, or him speaking about himself at a forum. For the Georgian ones, tho I did not attempt to translate them, they seem similar, especially with respect to what he says ata forum or interview. We no longer consider such interviews or talks as independent references.

Possibly the Georgian WP jiudges notability by whether someone is intrinsically important. The enWP probably should do that, but it does not. It judges only by whether there are multiple substantial independent sources.. DGG ( talk ) 01:07, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

AE comment

Hi, David. I've just read your treatise in full (long but worth it!) and I wanted to thank you for pretty much providing the best piece of insight in that entire sorry ordeal. Thank you for making me think deep. Best, El_C 16:18, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

El C, but it's wrong. DGG wrote: "The fundamental fault is that of arb com" for having passed the sourcing remedy. But the sourcing remedy was the one good thing to have come out of that case. Look at the sourcing in The Holocaust in Poland in January 2018. Citations not written clearly. Some good scholarly sources, but also museum websites, Basic Books, Stackpole Books, Jewish Virtual Library, Aish.com, American Jewish Committee, jewishgen.org, thoughtco.com, h-net.org, internationalresearchcenter.org, polacyizydzi.com, and so on. And really, this was one of the better articles in the area. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:43, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Sarah, yes, I agree with you that the sourcing requirement is indeed paramount, for all the wikivoice stuff. I think that David was making perhaps a more nuanced point (unless I misread) about also expressing the popular views of both sides, as opposed to just the straight-up social scientific end of things (which is the alpha and omega, of course). And, also, what about the so-called peer review works coming out of Poland? The whitewashing that has been furiously pushed by successive Polish governments on their academia is clearly grossly out-of-step with scholarly standards — what do we do with those? Just can't really trust anything coming from Poland these days on the APL front, obviously. Maybe I missed it, but did WP:APL even address that critical problem? As always, I bow in deference to your superior knowledge about Holocaust historiography, overall. El_C 20:56, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

The popular views are all over the place. Wikipedians aren't Holocaust historians; we can't use all the sources historians would use. There is a vast, English-language, mainstream Holocaust scholarship, and there's no reason not to base our articles on it ("English-language" includes translated works). The historians deal with the whitewashing. It may mean that we're a bit behind, but it's like MEDRS; we wait for review articles, rather than using clinical trials. The biggest problem is that people don't want to do the reading. It's much easier to grab something from a website. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:16, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Right, no "preprints" at APL, either, please. Imagine if we could get someone like a Yehuda Bauer to contribute even 30 minutes a week. How things would look. What, I can dream! El_C 22:40, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

That is something the WMF might pay for: a fund to pay subject-matter experts to review certain articles. Someone would have to apply for a grant and so on. I don't have the energy, but I think it's a great idea. There was a plan to do it for FACs a few years ago, but I can't remember what came of it. Some academics will review without payment if you ask them. SarahSV ^(talk) 00:30, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

There was a proposal long ago by arb com to do something of the sort. The community rejected it furiously. The idea behind WP is that it's an amateur, non-authoritative work. I think that's worth holding on to. There's a need for expert encyclopedias also; I like the idea myself, , and was one of the original subject editors of Citizendium--it didn't work, and one of the reasons was bitter disagreement about the quality of the experts. When some medical editors ore recently wanted to do that, they formed a separate but affiliated organization. ) DGG ( talk ) 00:54, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

But, Sarah, the reason for using English language sources is accessibility to readers on the enWP, not intellectual superiority. DGG ( talk ) 00:59, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I didn't say anything about "intellectual superiority" (not even sure what you mean by that). DGG and El C, the problem is that none of the dedicated articles we host related to the Holocaust in Poland (that I have seen) reflect the scholarship. Today I was reading about Zegota, a Polish group set up to help Jews (lots of problems, antisemitism, poorly supported, underfunded, and so on), then I go to the Wikipedia article and the problems are missing or only slightly alluded to. We could use the ArbCom sourcing requirements to change the article, but it would be a battle and it's just not worth it. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:49, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I don’t know what Wikipedia article on Zegota you read, but the one on en wiki has an entire section entitled “Financial difficulties” based on works of prominent Holocaust scholars (Polonsky, Winstone, Kermish etc) That’s a bit more than “slightly alluded”. Volunteer Marek 03:40, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) David, because this is such a key subject, I think what she's saying is that much of the preeminent scholarship has already been translated to English. I always prefer reading anything in Hebrew over English (just because I find it easier), but, for example, I've probably read twice more Yehuda Bauer works in English than in Hebrew. By virtue of, as you say, their accessibility alone. [After edit conflict:] Sarah, there's few subjects where truly representing WP:V is more worthy of a struggle, I would challenge! El_C 01:57, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

The subjects that are a challenge to NPOV are those where we are convinced rationally we are correct, and feel emotionally very sure that our being correct is important. The treatment of the Jews in postwar Poland is one of them, as a sign of our rejection of bigotry. The two most critical others here in the past year or so have been climate change and American politics. In all these I agree with the great majority of people here: I am positive we are right, and I find it extremely difficult to imagine how anyone of good will could possibly think otherwise. In all these I (and we) very much want our view to prevail, and we want people who read WP to agree. I've said, and I think we agree, that a key purpose of WP is to represent information that can be used for practical action to support the side which must prevail. The only fair and effective way to do this is to present what each side had to say, even the most evil or most idiotic, and to give readers the opportunity to judge for themselves. It is wrong to pretend the opponents do not exist, or to label their views in such a way that readers will reject them without listening.

The proof of that is to observe who characteristically and necessarily argues to suppress or label their opponents: Nazis and Stalinists and fascists and supporters of dictatorial regimes more generally, racial or religious or nationalist bigots, or people or firms or nations obtaining advantage from the adoption of their views. They all cannot risk anyone saying otherwise and actually finding the truth. For us, whom I assume are none of these things, to adopt their methods is to tacitly admit that we might possibly lose the argument if we give others a fair hearing. As I said long ago on my talk page, I follow J.S. Mill in this: the answer to bad argument is good argument. Anywhere I read only one side, or where one side is labelled from the start as being wrong, I know that people are trying to manipulate me.

This is especially true for an encyclopedia. To the extent we are trusted, it will not be because we are right, but because we are honest. The only way to show we are honest to to present the facts and arguments that go against us as carefully as the ones we think correct. The reader will judge. Any compromise with this is a sign that we distrust the reader's intelligence and judgment so much that we are afraid to disclose that there are those who disagree. DGG ( talk ) 06:04, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't feel or think any of the things you've described. What I want to do is summarize current, mainstream Holocaust historiography, whatever it says. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:17, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

exactly. You want to summarize only the mainstream. And it's curious that what we personally believe is always the mainstream. DGG ( talk )

and the page is closed for the night. DGG ( talk ) 06:26, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

just for the night. It was 1:30 AM here, and my concentration was reaching a limit. Can be continued. DGG ( talk ) 02:10, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Just noticed this. I'm 100% behind everything Sarah wrote, and want to add yet again that the core problems here are structural, and WP:APLRS was just a half-thought attempt at a solution (thanks for the shortcut, by the way). We can improve the situation in a number of ways that do not change the basic characteristics of Wikipedia, for example by employing expert advisory boards and dedicated TA admins.

The only fair and effective way to do this is to present what each side had to say, even the most evil or most idiotic Everyone along the chain have to make determinations regarding the validity of an idea: the sources, us, and the readers. You're assuming that we can't overcome our disagreements to accurately reflect sources' determination; but if we can't, what gives you the certainty that the reader can? And at any rate, that's not what encyclopedias are for - they are for the gist; the full argument can be had elsewhere. We curate; the only question is how.

The proof of that is to observe who characteristically and necessarily argues to suppress or label their opponents That is affirming the consequent. One could accurately characterize so-and-so as a "structuralist", "post modernist" or "nationalist" without any ill or political intent.

Regarding Żegota - whatever little is there is only there because either I or Icewhiz insisted that it be included. The archives of Talk:Żegota would tell you a lot about who supported what in this argument, as well as who labeled who as what. François Robere (talk) 15:16, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Robere, Yes, you have pointed out one of the ambiguities of NPOV. When we say that we do not tell the reader what to think we realy mean that we do not tell the reader explicitly. No matter how neutral we may be in presenting the facts, to a certain degree we cannot help expressing our view of the facts. No matter how carefully we select references to express all views, we select them as humans with our human biases. There are professions which teach people how to minimize it, such as my librarianship (or Atsme's journalism). I can certainly teach people how to minimize bias. I cannot teach them how to eliminate it. The best that can be done is to become aware of one's biases, and aware that they are indeed biases--this is usually called cultural relativism or implicit bias.

The basic principle behind the possibility of a NPOV encyclopedia is not that we as individual writers can avoid bias; it's that on all important questions we will attract contributors with a range of backgrounds and assumptions, but this depends on our welcoming those who have nonconventional background, and not chasing them away, which we now do all too often. It is certainly easier to write an article cooperatively when everyone there agrees on how it should be written, but it is much harder to write a NPOV article/. Thus I am dismayed by the current tendency to call the expression of minority views disruptive editing. The back and forth of ideas, and the recognition of the possibility. that one might not be altogether in the right, can indeed be disruptive, but what it disrupts is prejudices. And the encouragement of the participation of people with views that most of us here disagree with, facilitates the best technique for learning about one's biases--open discussion with people who hold different biases.

There's another technique-- the deliberate exercise of writing for the enemy--if for example I want to show that the previous president of the US meant well in all his actions, how would I go about it? A background helpful for this is competitive debate--one must understand one's opponents argument in order to refute it. (And, come to think of it, lawyers too must acquire this skill.)

The role of an encyclopedia is to provide basic information that is as free from this as possible--to show people what the arguments and positions and agreed and disputed facts are, so they can think about it, and if they wish follow up the details later. This requires that we make every possible effort to give the full range of opinions. It means we must constantly keep it in mind, because everyone's inherent tendency is to not even listen to one's opponent's argument. I get my news from the NYT, and my opinions about US politics tend to be based on the Washington Post, but if I want to see what's going on, it's helpful to look at what Fox thinks is going on. DGG ( talk ) 07:43, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

From what I've gleaned from this discussion, the issue isn't about using quality sources; rather, it is about who will be grading the sources as quality or subpar? My position about WP:RSP grading entire sources is no secret; I have issues with it. NPOV is a core content policy that cannot be superseded by consensus, so when I see activity that is noncompliant with policy and based more on POV, I'm going to contribute my POV. Keep in mind that academics are also expressing their POV based on the material they've read and had access to, and there will be differences in how historians view the past. I'm not judging which POV is right or wrong - that isn't our job. Our job is laid out very clearly in NPOV. We have to consider WP:WIKIVOICE and WP:WEIGHT, but again, who is making these determinations? It would be different if we were talking about computational science, or medicine but we're talking about atrocities and the horrifics of politics during an era in human history that most find to be beyond belief. It's a topic area that is highly volatile and often interspersed with sprinklings of emotion - how could it not be? Our admins and arbcom are not supposed to get involved in content issues, not even obliquely - it is not within their purview to judge the quality of sources (not to mention area of expertise), and that includes admins at AE. There must be another way to get these highly controversial articles right with the least amount of disruption while still being able to present opposing views per NPOV. And remember WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. Several years ago, I proposed WP:Project Accuracy which incorporated an Editorial Review Committee, but the end result was that WMF turned it down. I still believe it would have worked perfectly, especially in situations like this. Atsme 💬 📧 18:43, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Good morning. Requested changes from NowMedical

Hi DGG. I was hoping you might be willing to take a look here and provide any feedback. Thank you. MarthaLuke (talk) 18:34, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I started commenting; if nobody else does, I'll make what changes I think best in a few days. DGG ( talk ) 02:10, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi DGG. No rush but just wanted to check-in on this. MarthaLuke (talk) 15:04, 27 February 2021 (UTC). ######

Draft:David Lempert

... Sources for review

Have any good sources for reviews? I found this, Google Scholar, but am having difficulty weeding through all of it. Philly jawn (talk) 21:49, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Philly jawn Another good source for book reviews is WorldCat. If you search for an author, first come the author's written , edited, and coedited books, than their chapters in books, their journal articles, the book reviews they have written, and, often, at the end are reviews about their books that have been published in JStor and MUSE journals, and sometimes in some other places. It's incomplete, but convenient. It's what I usually check first, because I've been familiar with the tricks and inadequacies of OCLC/Worldcat since its beginnings in the 1970s, DGG ( talk ) 12:02, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I've added more references, from reviews of his work. I think this is ready to be moved to the mainspace. Philly jawn (talk) 18:14, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Any thoughts? Philly jawn (talk) 01:53, 21 March 2021 (UTC). ######

Wikipedia mirror Wikitia

Hey DGG,

First, I would like to thank you for all of the work that you do on Wikipedia. Second, I was looking through some AFC drafts and found a couple comments of yours that were concerning. On the pages Draft:Julia Ivanova (filmmaker) and Draft:Daniel Primetzhofer you state that the drafts have been copied from the site Wikitia. However, that is incorrect. Wikitia is a mirror site that copies pages from Wikipedia (such as Articles for creation submissions) and then charges people to edit them. You can read more about it at User:Gobonobo/Wikitia, User:SamHolt6/SEO wiki mirrors, and Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/VWXYZ. MarkZusab (talk) 21:50, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

. thanks for alerting me about this--I shall have to check the drafts. If what is copied is changed material from there, then using it here is a copyvio. Otherwise it raises questions about coi editing, but I also gather that sometimes they reprint articles without a request from the author. DGG ( talk ) 22:23, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Larry Lawton

You nominated the page for deletion in 2016, and I've taken to re-writing it. The article was largely unchanged from its creation in 2010 and it really read like a bloody ad. He's covered extensively in print newspaper sources which I've clipped and collected. Any help expanding or writing the page is welcome. Harizotoh9 (talk) 05:43, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

It still needs work. I moved it to Draft space as Draft:Larry Lawton. . After you fix it, let me know. DGG ( talk ) 16:19, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

It still cites his own book which is a big no-no and will have to be fixed. I haven't touched most of the newspaper articles and I'm really looking for more newspaper reporting that covers the actual investigation and arrest. I've found Philly and Florida papers covering that. A lot of them refer to him as "Lawrence R. Lawton" or "Lawrence Robert Lawton" which makes finding sources a bit harder to find. For sources about him, they mostly end at 2013, with the last in 2017. His Reality Check program got a lot of attention in 2013. Most of his media appearances after that is mostly just him commenting on some heist and not really talking about him so it's not that useful for a Wikipedia article. He also has a business advising companies how to avoid being robbed, but I haven't seen any newspapers cover any of that. And funny enough, despite having a Youtube channel with 1 million subs I haven't seen any reliable sources actually discuss that. Harizotoh9 (talk) 22:49, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

If you aren't able to improve it, it will be routinely deleted in 6 months. DGG ( talk ) 00:24, 22 February 2021 (UTC).

Just that it's gonna look a tad bit odd, because he has 1 million subs on youtube, but no reliable sources have talked about his Youtube career. But most people are likely to check his page due to seeing one of his videos. The robberies, the reality check program, the mentoring program, and book, seem to be what has been reported. Likely another media appearance will mention it one day. Harizotoh9 (talk) 02:16, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Article has been completely re-written, submitted, and given a C rating. Harizotoh9 (talk) 19:46, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Related, but Larry Lawton (talk · contribs) appears to be Larry Lawton himself, and has made edits to his own page and his userpage reads like an advertisement. He hasn't edited since 2010 though. There's also Larryfl2007 (talk · contribs) who's only made edits to the page in 2017 who could also be larry (name, lives in Florida, released in 2007). I suspect other users editing the page have a connection to Larry as well which is why the page read like an advertisement until I re-wrote it. Harizotoh9 (talk) 02:25, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

yes, I noticed the user page. It might well fit under the speedy criterion U5. Blatant misuse of Wikipedia as a web host. I am undecided between editing the article further, or sending it to AfD. DGG ( talk ) 05:43, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not too keen on people using Wikipedia for advertisement. Those two accounts seem to be Lawton himself (one admits it, and the other edits only his page and the page for the city he lives in), and others were also writing very similar promotional style material could either be more Lawton accounts or one of his associates. And that user page violates rules on self-promotion. Even curiouser, a user banned for sock accounts, Jeremy112233 (talk · contribs), made several edits to the page and voted keep in the deletion debate. No idea if it's related in any way. And the writers misused sources, where they buried valid criticism of the program by a school administrator that was quoted at length and only used the source to say positive things about it. I'm really not keen on that either.

Well, regardless of why the article was made it's been cleaned up now into a proper page using third party reliable sources (22 so far, with 14 in depth about Lawton). If you have any suggestions on how to improve I'm open. Harizotoh9 (talk) 07:57, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

List of all the suspicious users for the page:

• Effex100 (talk · contribs) - promo language, only edits Larry's page and the city he lives
• Jeremy112233 (talk · contribs) - banned sockpuppet user, could be unrelated
• Larry Lawton (talk · contribs) - promo language, admits to being Larry Lawton
• Larryfl2007 (talk · contribs) - Promo language, edits only Larry's page

Harizotoh9 (talk) 22:00, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Gave a COI warning to all the users, expanded the article to 1300 words, and sources are at 32 so far. Austrian paper Der Standard did a profile on his youtube channel so I can finally mention he has one.Harizotoh9 (talk) 13:03, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

I will look again tomorrow DGG ( talk ) 08:07, 28 February 2021 (UTC) ####

Message mention

I also got a notification that I was mentioned by you - but am unable find it -can you point me in the right direction as well? Gaw54 (talk) 17:05, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I inadvertently overrode the previous message from a different user on this same matter. I can't figure out how to get it back. Sorry.Gaw54 (talk) 17:15, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Gaw54, The message was :

I declined Noma Copley (February 13): Notable, but this draft is overly personal and informal.}}. (and I restored the other message) DGG ( talk ) 19:01, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2021).

• A request for comment asks if sysops may place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?

Arbitration

• By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people. Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions.

Request for help with a request for clarification

Thank you for commenting at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Revisiting_WP:APLRS. The discussion seems deadlocked, and several users suggested the need for ArbCom to clarify what they mean by 'academically focused'. User:Girth Summit mentioned they are considering doing so but they are not familiar with the 'paperwork'. I would be happy to contribute to such a request as well. Perhaps you'd be willing to help draft and format such a request, as a neutral party and a former arbitrator who already gave some thought to this issue? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:40, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Pietrus, Girth Summit, Before I joined arb com, I consistently advised that it was not likely to help any situation to go to arb com; now, with the experience of having served there 5 years, I know enough to say so all the more strongly. Even more important, it is not the place of arb com to decide on sourcing, and trying to resolve a subject dispute by asking them to do so is leading them in a direction they should not go. If you do take it to arb com, I will comment by urging them to remove the entire remedy as an error, it being outside their legitimate scope, and a violation of the authority given them by the community. You may copy my full comment here to the discussion if you wish. The solution is to find a compromise. DGG ( talk ) 06:20, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

For the entire remedy to be ditched is certainly an outcome that I think should be considered. The trouble with compromise here is that the remedy is fairly binary. My initial take on it (before I'd read the remedy) was similar to yours - a decent source, but defer to academic work where they differ. Once the wording of the remedy was pointed out to me by El C, I had to agree that it was not permissible. I wouldn't want Arbcom to make a ruling on that particular source - I agree that's outside their scope - but I am intending to ask them to clarify the wording of that remedy, or to vacate it entirely, which should allow us to move on in this particular case an avoid such situations in future. GirthSummit _(blether) 08:53, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Girth Summit, I concur that ArbCom should not rule on a particular source - it is out of their scope and would open them to be even more overworked than they already are. Hence as GirthSummit notes, what is needed is a clarification of the 'academically focus' wording, or, preferably, vacating the remedy as 'good intention' that didn't work out. Indeed, I also think it is not necessary and creates an unfair burden on editors in this topic area (chilling effect with editors being scared of adding sources that are fine everywhere else, which in turn can lead to long term under sourcing/under-development of this topic area - heck, it is "safer" to add unreferenced content now than referenced one, since adding unreferenced content is mostly ignored, but adding referenced one can result in a visit at AE!). RNS/RFC and like have always worked in the past for sourcing disputes. It would be good to retire this remedy before it is adopted into other topic areas, causing trouble for more editors. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:19, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

My view on this is that arb. having said its usually carefully ambiguous statement, the community should interpret it as they think best. Here I will contribute my experience: two or three arbs are selected to draft the outcomes, their proposals are first discussed on an internal mailing list & wiki, and then discussed during the voting at proposed decision, often in response to the community questions there. In practice, the result is that some remedies are very carefully crafted for precise wordings after long discussions; some are just accepted as the drafters propose. I have no way of knowing what happenned here, but the problem is apparently a discrepancy between the prior admins ruling, and the statement of arb com, which are not identical. You're asking for a fine distinction between academic and academically-oriented, but each of the two covers a wider range or quality and reliability. The range of meanings of each of them overlap the other. Clarifying which wording is meant will not necessarily answer either the immediate problem, or other similar problems, because there will still be ambiguity, as is inevitable for most of our content guidelines, It seems to be obvious that having read quite a variety of historical works, (tho, as I said, not in this particular subject), that if reliability goes from 0 to 10, popular works rank from 0 to 8 and academic works from 5 to 9. Nothing is 10: no historical interpretations are final. University presses rely for their financial survival on having either universally adopted academic publications, or very popular semi-academic ones. The are quite willing to publish unusual but interesting works on widely -read topics that they think will sell several thousand copies ; the profits from these partialy cover the losses on the more esoteric works that will sell only a few hundred. My maxim remains that no source is completely reliable, and no source so unreliable as to be useless. Any attempt to schematicize this for decision making is naïve, whether by arb com or RfC. there is usually some way of wording the use of a source to indicate its limitations to the reader, and that's what I mean by compromise. (And I repeat that I am talking in generalities, not about this particular book, which I have not read and therefore cannot evaluate. As a librarian I could guess, as librarians do when they decide whether or not to purchase a book, using various indications that can be taught, combined with intuition, but that's not critical or scholarly evaluation. (I wonder if it would help to limit the discussions to those who have actually read the sources.) But if you want to confuse things further, go to arb com. If you want to help our readers, use it with qualifications. DGG ( talk ) 09:40, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

DGG, "I wonder if it would help to limit the discussions to those who have actually read the sources.". As a sidenote, at least two people criticizing the source in that particular RfC have clearly not read it as they made the false claim it has no footnotes... but of course, there is no way to really 'test' if someone has read a source or not, unless they make an obvious mistake like that.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:23, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

DGG, I know you're talking a lot of sense here, and I can find very little to disagree with in what you've said; I don't really feel comfortable though with where that logic takes us.

We've got an experienced editor challenging the use of a source, presumably in good faith, because they perceive it as contravening an arbcom remedy. A number of very experienced editors (including, FWIW, three admins) have indicated that, in their view, this source would be excluded by the spirit and the wording of that remedy; a number of very experienced editors, including yourself, have indicated that they feel it would be allowed by the remedy, and that we should assess how to use it as we would any other source.

I have to acknowledge that your knowledge and experience far exceed my own, both in terms of the academic publishing trade and of Wikipedia's policies and procedures; still, I'm not sure I can get on board with a solution which seems to me to boil down to 'it's a bad remedy, so we should ignore it in edge cases'. I'll think on it a bit more before doing anything, but at the moment I'm still leaning towards taking it to arbcom with a set of questions along the lines of:

1. Was this remedy ever within Arbcom's scope (if not, please vacate it)
2. Is this remedy still needed to stop disruption (if not, please vacate it)
3. If the answer to both of the previous questions is 'yes', please indicate how 'academically focussed' should be interpreted, to the best of your ability.

That loooong discussion has seen people argue that 'academically focused' means anything written about an academic subject, which means that almost nothing could be ruled out; they've argued that it means anything written using academic methodologies, which is a reasonable position to take; however, I interpret it really as meaning an academic book, especially since periodicals are restricted to 'peer reviewed scholarly journals' - why would the remedy be intended to restrict periodicals in such as way as to rule out heavyweight newspapers and general-interest history magazines, but to allow popular history books?

Thanks for your insight on this anyway, it's valuable, and I will consider this further before doing anything rash. GirthSummit _(blether) 13:19, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Girth Summit, In case you were not aware, this remedy was already subject to two clarification requests, one by me (Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism in Poland). (I know DGG is aware of those as he commented there before).

The first one resulted in one useful and necessary clarification (That really should have been added to the main page and not hidden in the clarification on talk) was "When a broad article has sections that relate to these topics, the restriction applies to only the relevant sections. Other sections outside of the topic area would not be subject to the expanded article sourcing expectations". Despite the existence of this clarification, I have seen cases where someone has argued that, let's say, a biography of someone involved in Poland in WW/Holocaust topic area is fully subject to the remedy, meaning that they challenged sources used in sections about their pre-war life and/or about post-war legacy (for example, a removed source included newspapers used to reference claims that the person has received awards half a century after the war, or that a commemorative monument was built in their honor).

The second request by me concerned several issues (and while it is lengthy and so are the comments by others, I strongly recommend you to read it), particularly as, sadly, responses by arbitrators were very few, and totally ignored my requests for clarification if certain types of sources are ok or not, and focused only on the 'chilling aspect', with 2:1 statement that violators should not be reported to AE immediately if they add a low-quality source, and should first be engaged in a discussion on talk. I am still troubled that the dissenting arbitrator thought one can be reported to AE as soon as they add a weaker source, and I am further concerned that even that clarification is just a fig leaf dressing - I see a source I don't like, I challenge it mentioning the remedy, the other editor disagrees, explains their point and restores the source, I say I still disagree and report them to AE for violating the remedy - the discussion was held, let's see if I can get my opponent blocked by rolling the admin lottery dice. I proposed replacing this remedy with a 1RR or 0RR restriction on "editors who have been warned and who engage in edit warring restoring bad sources", with a "bad source" defined as one that has been declared as such following a consensus at RSN or RfC, but that proposal was ignored. I'll end by pointing out that several uninvolved editors who commented in this clarification request agreed with me that it likely creates a chilling effect (Nigel Ish, Nug). And it was criticized as too narrow by many others (Peacemaker67, Nick-D). Anyway, I still remain disappointed that that request of clarification I submitted resulted in pretty much no clarification, and I hope you'll have better luck (which is also while I'd rather see this entire remedy vacated, rather than giving the arbitrators to make the rules even vaguer and more complex than they already are). Current rules (RS, REDFLAG, FRINGE, UNDUE, etc.) have been and are still good enough, and as far as the sources available this topic area it is no worse than American politics, Palestine, Balkans or whatever. Just imagine the headache for RSN if the current 'academically focused' wording spreads into these more active areas... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:58, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

There are two separate topics here: one is the role of arb com with respect to issues involving content. The other is how to determine what sources to use, with respect to either our general preference for academic content, or a community or other mandate to use only or preferentially academic content in a particular situation.

I. The exact wording is:

The arbitration process is not a vehicle for creating new policy by fiat. The Committee's decisions may interpret existing policy and guidelines, recognise and call attention to standards of user conduct, or create procedures through which policy and guidelines may be enforced. The Committee does not rule on content, but may propose means by which community resolution of a content dispute can be facilitated.

1A. Neither part of this is actually followed by the committee. The committee does make policy, generally policy on which it thinks the community has tacit agreement. Some are decisions on the policy for enforcement of its decisions, and it is possible to see it as a logical extension of its role. An example is the policy allowing Discretionary sanctions, which it introduced to meet a particular need at the time, (and, in my opinion has been greatly misuaed ever since and is no longer needed) . Another was the policy change introducing extended confirmed status, which it introduced in a limited way to meet a particular need (and was subsequently greatly extended by the community, and unlike DS, I consider extremely helpful) Examples of making more general policy, are manifold, and I think unavoidable: In reality, there is no essential difference between making policy and interpreting policy. Our general policies, such as NOT, are interpreted by more specific policies and guidelines, and these in turn are interpreted by the community consensus in specific cases- For example, The decision on Pseudoscience, where it said that a scientific POV was to be preferred, the recent case on medicine, the decision we're talking about concerning the holocaust, the various decisions on BLP, the decision on infoboxes. Sometimes there is policy made internally by the committee without a specific public case, such as its decision to not review community blocks, or its decision that assisting the enforcement of the policy on undeclared paid editing was a logical part of its role with respect to private evidence.

IB. With respect to content: Content can be affected directly or indirectly. Many of the more important arb com cases in recent years have arisen out of contnet disputes, and any decision on them will necessarily affect content. There are many ways. some difficult to avoid. The most unavoidable is the decision to block or ban or topic ban particular editors, when they preferential represent one side of a contents dispute. In some topics there are so many interested people that such decisions won't really affect content, but in some cases, such as Medicine, they do. I think that the committee does consider this aspect, and certainly others comment on it during discussion. Generally the committee members do not say this is the basis for such decisions, but anyone looking at cases will realize that sometimes it probably was motivated in part by a desired result involving content. Again, Medicine is a good example, or the numerous pseudoscience cases where the people limited were those promoting the eccentric view. The very most dramatic was the early decision on Scientology.

A second way is interpreting policy in such a way that it does affect content. An example is this very case. WP policies almost always involve terms of art, word used in special ways in Wikipedia, and whose exact meang is unclear. The example (tho not involving the committees) I usually give is the GNG. where every adjective in the guideline can be interpreted in opposite ways in any given case. But everywhere there are such words : disruptive editing, conduct unbecoming an administrator, private information, the NFCC policy, the BLP policy, the exceptions for removing vandalism, NPA--there are a few with actual fixed numbers or unambiguous words, but even those , such as the % needed to pass a RfA, or 3RR, can be interpreted in a variable fashion.

in process--please let me finish before commenting

Hi DGG - I don't know whether you were intending to come back and finish these observations, but I've been thinking about this over the last few days, and ultimately I think that arbcom either needs to clarify what they mean by this restriction, or ditch it. I've gone ahead and requested clarification at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment#Clarification_request:_Antisemitism_in_Poland#Article_sourcing_expectations; all I can do is hope that it doesn't have the effect that you predicted. Best GirthSummit _(blether) 16:01, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

yes, I was intending, but I wanted to get it perfect.... So it was perfectly reasonable to go ahead. We shall now see what this year's committee is like. DGG ( talk ) 08:47, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

I continued my remarks in brief at the Clarification Request, [36]. DGG ( talk ) 08:47, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Sharecare article updates

Hi DGG – Hope this finds you well! In early Feb, you were kind enough to weigh in on discussions on the Sharecare article, and you mentioned you’d be taking a look at the proposed infobox edits as guided by input from you and two other editors in the next week or so. I’m checking back in as the latest proposed revision to the infobox remains unposted on the Sharecare talk page. It takes into account all editor feedback received thus far, and if you are in agreement with it, would you be willing to help make the edit? As mentioned previously, since I’m a COI editor, I’m avoiding making the change directly to stay within Wikipedia’s rules. Thanks again for all the guidance and support here. I welcome any and all of your feedback! SCbhaynes (talk) 17:58, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I may have explained my role incorrectly: I do not routinely work at Requested Changes. Since I don't think paid editors should be here at all, I don't see why I should as a volunteer assist them. I am a volunteer, only here to help the encyclopedia, and I specialize in removing spam and promotionalism. Once I've done that, I don't intend to involve myself further. There are many thousands of other promotional articles I need to work on. I may have given the opposite impression, in appreciation of your cooperative approach to removing promotionalism , but I cannot follow it up--there's too much else to do. I do realize that if everyone took my approach, there would be nobody to work on Requested Changes for coi editors, and that part of the system would fail. I would regard that as a step forwards. (Be assured this is not in the least personal) DGG ( talk ) 02:10, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Of course. I totally understand and am in agreement that everyone's charge here as editors is to make Wikipedia a better and objective source -- however they care to volunteer their efforts. I wholeheartedly agree that's the only common denominator that matters here and am operating with the expectation that nothing else should compromise that (no matter what kind of editor is at work). Yes, I did misunderstand the message that you would revisit the page for additional edits, but am understood now that it's complete from your perspective. Thanks again for the meaningful input and contributions! Again, I'm sincerely grateful for all feedback. SCbhaynes (talk) 21:31, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

A new way to organize user talk pages

David, I tried my tp idea at the top of my user page. My talk page has very little content, but did begin to find an interesting exchange in my archive 4. Setting up a list of links will be tedious unless templates or macros can be used. Your talk page links will be a much more rigorous test. — Neonorange (Phil) 00:08, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Neonorange I intend to only do it to the most recent months or two. I can manually move it every month. But I shall have to set up a test page for it--this one is to big to play around with.

And I first want to figure out what's with the "reply" function that's showing up -- I don';t think it was announced for enWP, and in any case, it doesn't seem to work at all.

DGG ( talk ) 01:47, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

It seems "reply" does not work on one's own talk page, but it did on a Draft talk page I tried it. Or at least I think it did DGG ( talk ) 01:58, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

It does save a little time & avoids some common errors. . Now, if it could be gotten to appear only where it actually works.... DGG ( talk ) 08:44, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Jérôme Chenal

Dear user:DGG,

Thanks for your comment on Draft:Jérôme Chenal. You mentioned to look for reviews of his books, which in my opinion would make sense for an author, but Jérôme CHenal is an architect and urbanist, and his notability stems from his expertise in the topic of African cities. He was the subject of several interviews in major french-speaking newspapers and has appearead countless times as a quality of expert on these matters on various media outlets. I honestly don't understand how his notability can be questioned?

Thanks for your time! Take care, BatYote. (talk) 11:15, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

BatYote, To show notability as an architect, we need sources written about him or his works , or major awards of at least national stature. He has also published a number of books, and it is relatively easy to shown notability for them if there are substantial reviews in third-party published independent reliable sources. In the English WP there's this peculiar rule, that only substantial 3rd party independent reliable published sources show notability. We don't go by common sense. I didn't make the rule, I don't like the rule, but that how articles are judged here. DGG ( talk ) 19:04, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

DGG, Does that imply that the four referenced interviews about the subject, including one in newspaper Le Monde, are irrelevant? I'm seriously at loss here. BatYote. (talk) 08:58, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

DGG, so sorry to get back to you about this; but I added even more secondary sources. Please also note that one link (avisdexperts.ch) compiles interventions of the subject in Swiss media and could serve as multiple references; I chose this one to avoid unnecessary excessive referencing. I hope this is sufficient! Thanks a LOT in advance! BatYote. (talk) 13:58, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

BatYote., I will get there, but not immediately. I'm working on quite a number of drafts, as you can see from this page DGG ( talk ) 21:46, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

DGG, Noted, thanks a bunch! BatYote. (talk) 09:52, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

BatYote. -- You asked about the interviews. Even in Le Monde, a leading interview where the subject says what they please is not considered a secondary source for notability, tho it can still be a relevant link.

Additionally, none of the items in the Recognition section are the sort of honours that really count here, which is being president of a national level society or the equivalent (in addition , most of them are already included in the Career and Professional activities sections) What really does count is reviews of his building, books, or other creative work.

In the works section, list the books under a separate heading. They count much more than minor publication such as columns, journal articles, or reports. If you can find even one or two , let me know here, and I'll take a look. ' DGG ( talk ) 18:30, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement at ArbCom C&A

That was a very well written and eloquent statement. Thank you.

One big difference that you kind of allude to is between disciplines where scholarly research progresses cumulativaley, with new research building on, extending and improving but rately rejecting wholesale or completely overtuning, existing previous work - most natural sciences are like that - and disciplines where the change comes from "revolutions" or revisionistic approaches which seek to throw away whatever the dominant views and methods are and replace them with something completely new (only to be themselves replaced later, and then resurface again with a "neo" applied to their name). The latter characterizes a good deal of Humanities and some Social Science (economics and chunks of political science are probably more like natural sciences in this respect). This seems to be the "live not by consensus, but by controvers" that you mention, and yes, it makes it very difficult for an encyclopedia to present topics from such a discipline in a proper, neutral, manner, especially in a controversial topic. Volunteer Marek 06:34, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

yes, I did intend that difference. As you indicate, it's not a sharp distinction. Fields change, as do subfields. Psychol is close to a science. Econ I would agree is now a science, except for the political influence. '

It would be less difficult for an encyclopedia to present controversy if we did not to summarize the status of the field in a brief paragraph. Many of the disputes I've been seeing are over a few words in an initial sentence. There can be no way to write such a summary without evading the issue, or an inevitably biased interpretation or selection. Even when we try to say briefly that "opinion is divided" what do we mean by "a few" / "some" /"many" / "most" / "almost all" (what I have in mind here is American politics) DGG ( talk ) 17:30, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Ronny Hadani Draft

I am waiting for your reply on my talk page User_talk:Cbbranin. Did you see this? Thank you. Cbbranin (talk) 20:00, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I am working on as many articles as I can deal with, and will get to yours if nobody else checks it first. I'm a volunteer, like all administrators here, and can choose what I wish to work on -- and I have no obligation to assist as a volunteer work for which you or anyone else is being paid.

The previous reviewer is an editor known, just as I am, for insisting on the strict requirements of WP:COI and WP:PAID. Indeed, if I encountered a reviewer who did otherwise, I would ensure they were removed from the role. They have given you exceptionally full advice; many reviewers give paid editors just the standard form notices, because so little of what they write ever becomes satisfactory. DGG ( talk ) 02:39, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

user:DGG : I appreciate your time and comments. I've done my best to comply with all Wiki terms, and understand the reason for the strict requirements. I have followed any advice i have been given by the reviewers to the best of my ability. If you have any other suggestions, I'm happy to edit further. Again, I greatly appreciate your feedback and time. Cbbranin (talk) 21:41, 17 March 2021 (UTC) ####

Requesting review of new article Jewish Influence in Rhythm and Blues

Hi DGG, hope you are doing well; I know you are very busy, as usual;-) Could you take a look and review this article if you get a chance? Best regards, Carlstak (talk) 22:20, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Seems it's been reviewed. Thanks anyway. Carlstak (talk) 23:32, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

This isn't really my subject in any case, thought the Jewish influence of film definitely is. And in that respect there's a general comment I have: your article starts in the 1940s, and there's a very long history before that. There was first of all the Jewish influence in mainstream US popular music in the first half of the 20th century, which i know about but I am unable to analyze. And simultaneous to that is the Jewish influence on the development of film during the same period, which was in the US though not in Europe very pervasive, and this is something I do know about and intend to write about here. . And there's a common root to both: the Jewish influence on vaudeville in late 19th century America (about which I know a little); now, this is turn was a development of two separate strands: British vaudeville, which was not entirely a Jewish (Cockney) preserve but was greatly influenced by it and about which I do not know much. and the Jewish comedians and traveling musicians in continental Europe--especially Russian Poland during the 19th century, which had a significant effect both on the development of the Russian and Polish film -- a topic about which I am at this moment reading for the first time-- and their influence by emigration to the united states, where they influenced very greatly film, and popular theater, and musical theater. The impression I have is that there was less separation between the popular performance arts in the late 19th and early 20th century than there was in the later 20th century.

I will read your article in aome detail tomorrow. I have many gaps in knowledge that I need to fill in. DGG ( talk ) 02:00, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, DGG. Yes, I'm aware of some of that history before the 1940s, especially the Tin Pan Alley era, as you mentioned. There's a lot to cover; I'll be watching to see what you write about the Jewish influence on the development of film. I'm delighted you'll be taking a look at my article—I'm still researching the subject and have a fair amount of material to work with already, but it needs to be organized and the different strands of it reconciled. Regards, Carlstak (talk) 03:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 42

• New partnerships: PNAS, De Gruyter, Nomos
• 1Lib1Ref
• Library Card

Read the full newsletter

Draft:Endeavor Business Media

This organisation has something about it that smells fishy. If it is as big as it is meant to be, the Google Streetview picture of its headquarters shows a smallish residential building. I've been strugglkng to work out what is going on. If it's big why can no-one find senible sourcing? Fiddle Faddle 17:50, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

I have a similar feeling. But I want to figure out more , and therefore I don't think it should be done as a speedy. DGG ( talk ) 20:32, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

You might want to pop over to my talk page and have a look at this conversation. I think I have now walked away from that particular conversation Fiddle Faddle 20:43, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. Your phrasing of the message illustrates to me that I was standing too close to the discussion and was right to ask for other eyes. Fiddle Faddle 06:47, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

not too close, just frustrated at repeatedly not being understood. If I have any technique for dealing with situations like that, it's to admit right off how inconsistent or frequently wrong WP is, and go on from there (what I said was:

" ... My concerns, ..., are that declarations of coi are accurately made, that attempts at advertising are removed, and that reliable sources be found to establish the suitability for an article under our rules if it is possible. The first step here seems to be to find adequate sources to establish the facts of the enterprise.

Abigail Christine, I must inform you that Wikipedia attempts to have consistent standards, but has not yet fully accomplished this goal. Since we are a loose assemblage of individuals not operating under any central direction, and decide disputed issues separately for each instance by. a rough consensus, it is inevitable that there will be considerable variation--subjects that really ought not have articles by some interpretations of our rules will sometimes have them, and firms that might sem able to justify them may not in practice be able to. In particular , the standards for referencing and for articles have improved over time: [[W{P:NCORP]] in its present state is a relatively new development, earlier approaches to removing promotionalism were erratic, and observance of the terms of use very inconsistent. We are attempting to remedy this and bring articles to a higher standard, but there are probably hundreds of thousands of articles that do not meet current standards. Some will be upgradeable, and kept, some will not, and be deleted.

More specifically, it is by our rules perfectly possible that some parts of a firm may be separately notable, and the overall body not---this can especially be true when oneor two subsidiaries are much better known to the public. My own personal preference is to deal with such situations by combining small articles under the main heading, but this is not necessarily the consensus result. Administrators here do not make decisions based on their own preferences, but only in accord with what they believe from experience and knowledge of the rules will be the express or implied consensus of the general community.

I'll take a further look in a day or two." DGG ( talk ) 07:12, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Good technique. I shall add it to my armoury. The author is very frustrated at present. They exhibit the fairly usual righteous indignation of the paid editor whose payment is unlikely to be forthcoming unless they do the work correctly. All they need is better referencing, which is only hard if it does not exist. Paid editors tend to be between the rock of the $ and the hard place of our standards. Fiddle Faddle 07:25, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

another technique for coi which I see you use also--and I think that I learned from you-- , is to respond in detail, with clear indications that you have actually read the article., rather than using just the templates. I don't see how with the volume of junk we have to deal with, how we can avoid the templates, but they're almost never really enough., nio matter how carefully we word them. I know that when I get a form reply from anyone in RL , I immediately throw it in the trash, usually without reading it. I've seen increasingly many attempts at "personalized" forrms--they go in the trash almost as quickly. Only genuine personal involvement works. Even coi editors aren't idiots. DGG ( talk ) 10:10, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I have a personal set of extra boilerplates at User:Timtrent/Reviewing which you are welcome to use or plagiarise. I modify them as the need arises. I have a feeling some of the now standard decline notices borrowed text from them some years ago when our declne notices were rudimentary at best. It could have been the other way around, too. I do read it. I work a little with paid editors who listen. Those who refuse to listen find I refuse to play. Fiddle Faddle 11:34, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I never quite know whether you accept pings or find them distasteful. In case you do not accept them, the creating editor has esponded to you on my talk page. I have tried very hard to make a quiet, useful response. With hindsight it is probabkly tl;dr. Fiddle Faddle 15:03, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I not only accept pings, I rely on them to set my priorities. DGG ( talk ) 01:37, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Desysop Policy (2021) on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 10:30, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

An article that you nominated for deletion has been recreated

Back in 2017, you nominated Toufik Boushaki for deletion. It was recreated today and used at least one predatory journal as a source and appears still not to be notable despite what looks like a ton of refbombing. I was just wondering how similar this article was to the previous one, if you can remember. Best, GPL93 (talk) 17:01, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

much more extensive, but the material added makes it even more promotional , I think the best course would be to renominate for AfD. DGG ( talk ) 03:06, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Please would you take a look at Electronic Design (magazine)

I'm standing too close to this to make an unbiased judgement. This Commons diff is a declaration of paid editing by the editor who created the article very recently. I am unsure of two matters:

1. Should this have gone via AFC in view of the paid status?
2. Is it neutral and well referenced, thus should it remain?

I can normally make an assessment of the second point, but have been standing too close to drafts on Endeavor Business Media and the paid editor there to remain impartial, so I am asking for your help. Fiddle Faddle 14:45, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

I sent it to AfC as Draft:Electronic Design (magazine) All articles written by paid editing should go to AfC, even if they appears neutral. It is not an absolutely firm rule, but always a good idea, especially when the article might be seen as intended to support another promotional article. DGG ( talk ) 04:07, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll follow your lead on bumping new paid articles to AFC. I'll recuse myself from reviewing this one. Fiddle Faddle 07:16, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Bibliography information

Hello, I want to inquire about bibliography information for my newly made article Alexander Hunter (novelist). What info would be wanted for this list. Any help is appreciated by you or any other users you think could help me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gandalf the Groovy (talk • contribs) 20:40, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

replied on user talk. DGG ( talk ) 21:01, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Request on 18:15:02, 30 March 2021 for assistance on AfC submission by Vanles

• Vanles (talk · contribs)
  • Draft:Christopher K. Glass (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

{{SAFESUBST:Void|

I wanted to note that the use of term 'Distinguished Professor' is not subjectively promotional language, but this is a specific professor ranking. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_States#Distinguished_(research/teaching)_professor

Vanles (talk) 18:15, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

actually, the meaning varies--in this case, it's a title, and I adjusted the wording to make it clear; in some cases both it and named professorships can be temporary one-year designations. See the note on your page for. a problem with copyright. I went to some trouble to make sure this is ok, because he is after all, distinguished in multiple senses. The reference format still needs osme adjustment. DGG ( talk ) 05:39, 31 March 2021 (UTC) .

To The New - G4?

Hi DGG, just wondering if To The New is G4 eligible? Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 11:07, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

there ae. additional sources, including The Hindu. I am very conservative about G4s, so I suggest another AfD. I suggest you request that if it should be deleted, that it also be protected against re-creationi DGG ( talk ) 17:05, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

now at Draft:To The New DGG ( talk ) 19:57, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2021).

Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.

Arbitration

• A community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure is open until April 25.

Judith Okley

Hallo DGG, you had commented on the draft]; I've sourced it, expanded, and moved to mainspace. I trust you're OK with this. She does seem to be notable. PamD 15:56, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

very nice job. Glad you rescued it. What frustrates me is when I comment and nobody responds. I comment in the hope that people will, just as you have. DGG ( talk ) 19:59, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Karlin Lillington article

Hi DGG, I am working now on further referencing re. the above, which you moved to Draft, but I would like to seek guidance on what was considered not ready for mainspace. I have reviewed, copyedited and referenced thousands of articles, and I am careful in my drafting and research, and test with ORES - and I just can't quite see what was so fundamentally lacking. Perhaps a tag or two, but you did not have time to provide comments (I am aware that you are very active but de-mainspacing is a big step, something I have not had happen before). Were you unhappy with the number of references drawing on the subject's own articles? This can happen with a journalist, and many of these pieces are in the highly-supervised aegis of The Irish Times. The subject is a noted commentator, recognised as such by the leading book on Ireland's paper of record (one of the few of its journalists with multiple mentions in the professorial text - as cited). Thanks, SeoR (talk) 07:59, 7 April 2021 (UTC) I apologize for I could have handled this better. --

I've commented on your user talk page. But speaking generally, it is not easy to show the notability of journalists, and it has become quite difficult to distiguish promotional writing from good faith writing that unintentionally imitates it. DGG ( talk ) 15:01, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Journal of Paramedic Practice

Thank you for your input with this, I am trying to add more independent sources. user RandyKitty has again placed a speedy deletion on the page, and as I understand it, as I am page creator I cannot (should not) delete this. I agree the article is currently not perfect - which is why it is held in drafts. I am working to improve it - and it does now have more independent citations. I would welcome your advice, as I feel Speedy Deletion is not the best option. Thanks in advance. Tannim101 (talk) 09:09, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

It will not be speedy deleted--but it will not pass, unless it can show notability and remove the promotional portions. I commentedat the draft. DGG ( talk ) 11:44, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

• I'd welcome your input on how it does not fulfil either Criteria 1 or 2. The talk page has justification for both now. Tannim101 (talk) 15:27, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Please review Draft:Silvan Loher after changes made

Dear DGG (talk), I have now made changes to attend the suggestions you made to this project (Draft:Silvan Loher) which was initially declined on 25 November: adjectivations and wrong phrases deleted, a secondary reference to a national press source added, also a critique commentary about the CD. I hope this will improve the draft to an appropriate stage for its publication in the mainspace. Very many thanks for your kind help.

Neuralia , I'm not certain about this, but I approved, Do not be surprised if someone lists it for deletion; my current view is changing from the former, "I won't approve unless I'm prepared to defend it", to "I'll approve if there's a decent chance, and then the community can decide about it. " DGG ( talk ) 03:00, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

DGG if I could please get you to take another look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Omar_Ayesh.

Thanks for your help. Most appreciated. Smilingbandit (talk) 18:08, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Changes made to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Omar_Ayesh based on your input -- any language that could be seen as peacocking changed, previous citation 24 removed, a few more added, and final line removed. Smilingbandit (talk) 23:29, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Anuj Choudhary

Greetings. I noticed via WP:BADAFD that this article had been tagged by you and linked to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Animal Booster Nutrition. That discussion is now closed and the article on the company has been deleted, but the founder wasn't actually mentioned or co-nominated in that discussion. I've therefore taken the liberty of untagging the Choudhary article, with no prejudice against a separate nomination. Thank you for you understanding. --Finngall ^talk 00:14, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Actually, looks like Praxidicae did the deed. (shrug) Whatever works. --Finngall ^talk 18:07, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

However, I do not agree with your evaluation "This is essentially speculation, over many centuries based on extremely minimal evidence" since many articles in wikipedia speculate based on extremely minimal evidence (e.g. Leif Erikson - He is thought to be the first known European to set foot on North America , etc.).

Jreyes101 (talk) 12:47, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

References

• My role as a reviewer is not to judge articles, but to judge whether there will or will not be a consensus on wikipedia to delete them. I am supposed to know enough about our deletion process, WP:AFD, to be able to predict what will happen there. I do know enough, as far as anyone can, for Ive participated in a few thousand of discussions there over the last 14 years, and watched many more, and also participated in about half of the discussions at our final deletion review board, WP:DRV. What can happen there is not totally predictable--there are occasional errors, and sometimes unrepresentative participation. This is Wikipedia, and a clear consensus has a right to decide to make an exception to any guideline under our basic principle, WP:IAR. Different reviewers have different standards of what they send on--the usual working practice is to to pass a draft unless it has better than a 2/3 to 3/4 likelihood of passing AfD. (in practice very few none of the drafts I pass ever get deleted.) I'm not perfect, and I therefore do not review a draft more than once--some other reviewer may disagree, and it certainly happens that drafts I do not pass are passed by someone else, and some of them are kept, some deleted. So in any case you have the right to a second determination by another reviewer. If they should pass it, I will then decide if I want ot bring it to a discussion at AFD, and the consensus decides. But in this case, I am the second reviewer to decline it, though I have more experience than the first one has so far had. In addition two addition long-term reviewers with very wide experience have left warnings on the draft that it might not be acceptable.

There are two ways of stating the principle here, WP:EINSTEIN, and "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". There is excellent evidence that Leif Ericson landed somewhere n North America, as did a number of other Norse explorers. There remains some doubt about just who landed exactly where, but there is excellent well-accepted archeological results, as well as the rough consistency of a number of the the explorer's accounts. This draft on the other hand tries to build a genealogy with a gap of a thousand years. DGG ( talk ) 03:50, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Laboratory Jacques-Louis Lions

Hello, David,

Did you mean to restore this draft? You left a comment but the content had been deleted earlier today. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 06:04, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

thanks. That what comes of trying to restore a draft and add a comment at the same time. Sometimes it works right. DGG ( talk ) 08:56, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

No problem. I see evidence every day of the dozens of drafts you comment on or turn into redirects or bring over to main space. Occasional mistakes are expected with such a high level of daily activity! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:02, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

--Whiskiz (talk) 15:07, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

This was 4 years ago. I said "What I am much more concerned about is the articles on organizations.The articles on people will be easy to deal with, because most of them are borderline notable at best and should simply be deleted. " This does not mean the articles on organizations were more troubling. It means, in context, that there was no possible reason to keep the articles on the individuals, because they were pure spam and not notable enough to be fixable. In contrast, the organizations might be notable , and the articles on them fixable , so there are a number of different ways to consider dealing with them. (to be continued) DGG ( talk ) 18:47, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Maternal Health Task Force

courtesy ping as you dePRODded. Hope you're doing relatively well my friend. StarM 00:45, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

turns out to be a rather complicated situation of organizations moving from one place to another, and all of our related articles out of date. I commented, but i hope someone else will take it in hand to clean up. DGG ( talk ) 09:20, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Rebecca Wallace-Segall

I saw that you voted to keep this article in an AfD in 2013. I was preparing to nominate it for deletion again, as I am not seeing notability deriving from founding the organization, but I would like your thoughts on it first. Does your opinion remain the same? BD2412 T 05:43, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

I would now vote to merge with the organization. Unless you think that would be opposed, do it. DGG ( talk ) 05:48, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Who's to say what others might think, but in retrospect I would consider that the best outcome. I'll make it a merge proposal rather than an AfD. BD2412 T 06:09, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposed, at Talk:Writopia Lab#Merge proposal. Cheers! BD2412 T 06:12, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:THQ § Why my wikipedia page got rejected?

 You are invited to join the discussion at WP:THQ § Why my wikipedia page got rejected?. Marchjuly (talk) 01:57, 21 April 2021 (UTC)Template:Z48

Hi DGG. I posted the above because you seem to be quite good at sorting out issues involving articles about academics. I know you don't venture into the Teahouse all very often, but perhaps you can help this editor out or at least assess whether the draft has potential to become an article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:00, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for taking a look at this. FWIW, I wasn't aware that you'd actually had worked on this particular draft when I posted the above. I did so because I remembered you previously helping out with a similar question recently asked at the Teahouse about a similarly declined draft. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:34, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Question about Rejection of Pima Community College Foundation

Hello,

You recently rejected the article I created for PCC Foundation. You said that the subject didn't warrant it's own page because it could fit on Pima Community College's page. I do, however, believe that it should be its own separate page. It is its own separate non-profit organization and is actually not run by Pima Community College anymore. The Foundation has its own Board of Directors that runs it, which is completely separate from the Board of Governors that runs the college.

The Foundation really is a separate entity from the college. Seeing as there are articles that have less cause to have their own article, is there any chance you could reconsider your verdict? Are there any other things you believe the article would need to have in order to more clearly showcase its need for its own article? Please let me know if you have any other questions that I can answer.

Thank you for your help BrookeLe13 (talk) 05:43, 21 April 2021 (UTC)BrookeLe13

In the case of public institutions, such as this one , it is almost always considered advisable to ask for financial support from the alumni without the funds being under the control of the government body. This helps isolate the school from politics, and help ensure that the donations supplement the government's budget, not replaces it. They are therefore always legally separate from the institution, or there would be no point in them. However, they exist only to serve the purposes of the college, as an auxiliary. I do not think we have ever had a separate article for such a foundation (I may be wrong, and if you have found any, please let me know) , including any of the most important universities that have foundations, and even including those such as Texas A&M or University of California, where the university foundation play an especially large role.

There are some split articles that fall under special accepted cases, like a list of alumni of a college, where the list can be too long for the article. And there are a few thousand split articles in WP accepted in earlier years when the standards were lower that we need to either upgrade or remove. The least we can do is not add to them. DGG ( talk ) 06:08, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

I have actually seen an article about a foundation. The one I saw was the Jefferson Scholars Foundation which performs that function for The University of Virginia. I see what you are saying, but I think that an organization with its own history would be hard to fit into another page smoothly and in a way that made sense without taking away from the main topic of the page. Thank you again BrookeLe13 (talk) 07:22, 21 April 2021 (UTC)Brookele13

thanks, I will take a look at it. DGG ( talk ) 09:24, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

and it's been desleted as promotional -it isn't even a college's foundation, but a special scholarship scheme within a college. DGG ( talk ) 05:54, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for looking into it for me BrookeLe13 (talk) 17:13, 28 April 2021 (UTC)BrookeLe13

CRC Advisors

I'm shocked that you accepted this articles for creation submission. If you check the sources in the article, hardly any of the content is verifiable. Sentences like "Of particular focus will be judicial confirmation battles, and a broader effort to reshape the federal judiciary, promote a deregulatory agenda, and expand the place of religion in society," sourced, by the way, to The Daily Signal, which I don't think is even an WP:RS (not that it even verifies the content that is attributed to it, but still). Could you explain your thinking on this? I think a speedy deletion is in order. Marquardtika (talk) 14:09, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Marquardtika, I accepted it because I think they can be shown notable, and might well pass an AfD. . That's the criterion. The fact that they engage in their right and far-right activities is of course sourced to right wing sources, but it's enough to establish what they do. and why they say they do it. Personally, I think the point of the article is not to promote them, but b giving a NPOV account, to make connections clear. I would not be surprised if someone sources it in a day or two. I will also say that some of this is experimental--I am trying to see what the proper limits of AfC ought to be. As for speedy, G11 dos not apply, because there is not a single word in the article to make them sound at all attractive except to those who already hold their ideology. As for A7, an assertion that they are the coordinating body between various right wing movements is an assertion of importance.

What I think the article really needs is an expansion, to include the other groups mentioned, as well as better sourcing. DGG ( talk ) 18:22, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Maliban Biscuit Manufactories Limited

I removed your tag from Maliban Biscuit Manufactories Limited, as there was no reason given for the tag in your edit summary or on the article talk page, and the tag alone does not provide enough information to help other editors improve the article. Ibadibam (talk) 21:24, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Guidance on Draft:Wendy Videlock

Hi DGG, I've been editing a draft for a potential page for poet Wendy Videlock. I noticed you had commented on the page in November that you believe she did qualify under notability guidelines. This is something I agree with, but I'm not sure how to move forward. I believe the page accurately reflects her notable contributions (e.g. like you said, being published in many anthologies, or even being a finalist for Colorado Poet Laureate for instance). Do you have suggestions on further edits or pathways forward? I'm relatively new to the editing space for Wikipedia, so appreciate any help! Shivpp (talk) 23:08, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Shivpp, remove the table of the individual poems; instead, in the list of anthologies, mention which poems were included . Give refs for the comment about any for which there has been individual critical comment. (the intro to an anthology, explaining why the poems were chosen, should not be quoted specifically.) Interviews she has given don't show notability . Remove minor and peripheral material, such as her paintings. The reviews of her book are significant, if they have been actually published and are not just entries in a blog or publishers' blurbs--do not in any case quote them from their website, but from where hey were published. How does she earn a living? Does she have a teaching position? Fix up these things as best you can, and then ask me again, and I'll review it. DGG ( talk ) 05:40, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Clothing

Hello ​ Sir, I have recently made some edits in the subject [[37]]. Kindly have a look. Thanks and best regards RV (talk) 04:48, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

RAJIVVASUDEV , what you have is fine, except that almost all of it is based upon a single book. It would greatly help to use additional sources. DGG ( talk ) 13:51, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you ​ Sir, Thanks for your advise. Warm regards RV (talk) 01:40, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Draft: Olalekan Jeyifous

Hey, I am thinking of moving (Draft: Olalekan Jeyifous) to article space. You had objections on notability some time ago. Since then the artist received the 2021 United States Artist Prize, is currently exhibiting work at the MoMA and has some other notable projects since. What do you think? Soupmaker (talk) 02:38, 26 April 2021 (UTC)Soupmaker

I've accepted it, on the basis of what I myself have seen of the current public attention he has been getting. Maybe I'lll add some more when I see it at MOMA. DGG ( talk ) 06:30, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Hello DGG,

Since you are an admin who has expressed concern about the use of "Discretionary Sanctions", I thought it might be best to ask you: is there an quick and easy way to see if any given article has DS applied? I wish to stringently avoid such articles entirely until (and unless) the serious issues you and others have identified with this policy are fixed, but even for an article that I know from discussion elsewhere has DS, I don't see where it's marked that way.

ShashakiroSH (talk) 23:18, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

ShashakiroSH There are several lists: Wikipedia:General sanctions and WP:DSTOPICS, but you also need to see WP:Arbitration_enforcement_log, to see exactly how each of them works. The sanctions are not necessarily placed on each page in the area.; the ones that have been are listed in , I know it's absurdly complicated; but you will get a warning if you edit any of these. . DGG ( talk ) 04:08, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Request on 14:15:28, 3 May 2021 for assistance on AfC submission by JulieKB1953

• JulieKB1953 (talk · contribs)
  • Draft:Sara Bradley (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

I would like to know what changes I need to make to Sara Bradley article so it will not be deleted. I find references to her on Top Chef Kentucky article. She could be added to Notable People from Paducah, Kentucky. I look at articles of other contestants and try to figure out the criteria for articles. Thank you.

JulieKB1953 (talk) 14:15, 3 May 2021 (UTC) JulieKB1953 (talk) 14:15, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

she might be notable if she had won, but she was only runner-up. We do have some articles on contestant who did not win, but they are among they many hundred thousand articles in WP accepted in earlier years when the standards were lower.

I see from your user page that you wrote this as a paid editor, but you declare only that you work for Estes Public Relations. You need to also declare every article you write or contributed to in a paid capacity, Se WP:PAID. . My advice would be to work on articles of personal interest to you until you learn our standards. . DGG ( talk ) 18:14, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

RfC on racial hereditarianism at the R&I talk-page

An RfC at Talk:Race and intelligence revisits the question, considered last year at WP:FTN, of whether or not the theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is a fringe theory. This RfC supercedes the recent RfC on this topic at WP:RSN that was closed as improperly formulated.

Your participation is welcome. Thank you. NightHeron (talk) 22:38, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Resubmitted Draft:Jane Suiter

I believe the subject has now achieved notability so have resubmitted the draft for review. Bogger (talk) 09:39, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Bogger notable, but there's still promotional language and overuse of her name--try replacing most of these by "she", and rewrite the separate sentences as paragraphs. Then let me know. DGG ( talk ) 04:27, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

DGG cool. Done, thanks. Bogger (talk) 13:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Bogger, I did some cleanup, mainly removing minor material--check that you understand the reasons. Next stepa, use only the one best reference for any particular point. I could do this for you, but you could do it better, There is, for example no need to add a German language source when there is an accessible English source. . And when you cite a website or report, please use the work=. or website= parameter in WP:Cite web to show where it came from, so the reader will know without having to actually go there or decipher the wikitext. (and if there arereviews of her books, cite them). Then let me know. (These steps could of course be done after acceptance, but it helps to do them now--the better the article the less likelihood of questioning notability . DGG ( talk ) 22:56, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

DGG Great feedback :) First, I tidied up some minor grammar issues and typos from your changes, and I filled out the reference templates to include the source name/domain. Then reduced the references, and moved them to the specific point referenced. I added back in the info on the wedding band, because :1. It was the reason I became in interested in the subject to begin with, 2. It's notability is clear from the fact it was covered by multiple news outlets years later 3. It would make for an engaging DYK? hook. I hope you can pardon the indulgence. I think it's ready for review again. Thanks again, Bogger (talk) 01:09, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Question

Hello DGG, someone who isnot a reviewer puthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyal_Boers. In the main space , it is a paid entry, is it okay ? (by User:77.126.85.201 14:26, May 4)

in general, no , but the only role here might be as a translator of the Hebrew WP article. DGG ( talk ) 22:58, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Seeking help with an article containing original research

Hello and thanks again for your advice on the Hoffman & Associates draft. I’ve been reading your user page and based on your highly principled approach as presented there, I’d like to see if you are interested in weighing in on a situation I’m trying to build consensus around.

I've discovered what I believe is a fairly severe violation of Wikipedia guidelines on original research and source reliability in the Care.com article. I've posted about it on the article's talk page, but no other editors have responded. Since I am a paid contributor (my COI is declared on the Talk page in multiple places), I am extremely reluctant to just act unilaterally. My hope is that you would be willing to take a look at my description of the problem on the Talk page and offer up an opinion to help get the ball rolling on some type of consensus, no matter what it ends up being.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Care.com

Before posting there, I described the situation to two editors I've worked with in the past, and they both agreed that this is a problem at some level. If things remain quiet, I'll also ask them to participate in the Talk page discussion as well. Thanks for your time and I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of the situation. Please also see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ahunt#Seeking_Input_on_Original_Research_Issue

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bkissin/Archive_11#Seeking_Input_on_Original_Research_Issue SBCornelius (talk) 18:42, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I have posted on the talk p., and edited the article accordingly. DGG ( talk ) 04:35, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

RfC/Arbitration on R&I

Hello. Ferahgo_the_Assassin and AndewNguyen suggested that I reach out to you about potentially requesting arbitration with respect to sources being excluded and misrepresented on Race and Intelligence, as discussed recently at RSN and NORN. The way the new RfC was opened so hastily, despite a proposal and discussion at RSN about how to best formulate a new RfC, struck me and several other editors as highly inappropriate and disruptive. It gave the impression of certain editors attempting to "get ahead" of the debate, in order to hold the RfC on the exact terms and venue of their choosing. In so doing, they've muddied the waters and failed to address the questions of sourcing and verifiability that editors were seeking to resolve.

I have little experience navigating the dispute resolution channels on WP, so I was hoping you may be able to offer some guidance as to how best to proceed:

• In terms of the immediate issue—is there a way to get the current RfC closed as improper and disruptive, for preempting and obfuscating the discussion of the sourcing and verifiability issues that editors were seeking to address?
• And more generally, would ArbCom be a suitable venue for raising the broader issue of sourcing and verifiability identified in R&I and related articles? And if so, do you have any advice on what specifically an arbitration request should highlight and address? Stonkaments (talk) 14:56, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

The short answer, is that there is no practical way to proceed with this at present. Any further effort now will harm you , and come close to destroying the principle of true NPOV at WP.

ß

Trying to revise or stop the RfC would not be wise. I repeatedly urged Ferahgo_the_Assassin not to pursue the RfC at this time, because I did not think it would have much chance of succeeding, and a failure would result in just what has happened--making things even worse. Even if you say you want to abandon it, those who wish to find against you will pursue their intentions and succeed in them. Even those most sympathetic, like myself, have a limited willingness to continue to pursue avenues that will not be productive. It will exhaust everyone's patience--you will not be listened to. There will even be a likely motion to ban the people who continue arguing from the topic area, and it might well succeed.

I am similarly convinced that taking it to arb com is most unlikely to be successful, and a loss there will make it impossible to make any progress for several years. As I told Ferahgo, ask me again in two years, if in the meanwhile there have been published multiple authoritative reviews and standard textbooks supporting your position. Without them, it's just plain impossible now or later..

There are not many ways for a minority to succeed in overcoming a biased majority. Repeatedly bringing up the same issue will stop people from even listening. Trying to convince biased people by logic does not work: to the extent their beliefs are seriously challenged, the stronger they will hold them. Acquiring some sort of internal force that can be used for compulsion is not possible in our system--and that's a good thing, because the use of compulsion only arouses resentment. It has beeen hinted that one might appeal to the outside public--that's the worst course of all, because WP is useless if it does not maintain its independence. The only situation where they can be progress, is first, for new and convincing published explanations, and for new people joining the discussion, who have not yet become convinced of the old bias. Even moe helpful, is if further research elucidates the biology, in a way that might unambiguously clarify the question--keeping in mind that this does not necessarily mean that tit will be elucidated the way you think it ought to. Remember, you may not in fact be correct--do not yourself be biased in favour of your own views the way people tend to be.

There is no other way. I am willing to support causes I think I will lose, if there's an important principle--as there is here. My credibility however depends on my being reasonable about it--at the least, more reasonable than my opponents. I will not support this further at thstime, as there is no reasonable way to do so. I shall probably make the comment, that "the people bringing this case are probably in the right, but the community has made it clear that it does not agree." If I were on arb com, I would vote against hearing the case.

This is not what you wanted to hear, andI wish I could honestly say otherwise, but I must give you he most accurate advice that I can. If you want to help on WP, work on peripheral related subjects; if you want to help more generally, do and publish high quality research.

If you want to ask my advice further, I would like to have some feeling that you might follow it. DGG ( talk ) 09:02, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Requesting for Article Creation

Hi user: DGG, Last 2017- I created an article about ASA Philippines Foundation user_talk: Filipinotayo and it was challenged to speedy deletion. I found that the article is notable and can also add to Wikipedia article. I hope that you will considered this one. Thank you and keep safe. Filipinot@yo^t@lk 03:14, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

OS

Hello, sorry to bother you. Can you please take a look at this edit- is it possible to remove it? --Ashleyyoursmile! 07:23, 6 May 2021 (UTC)