User talk:DGG

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Barnstars, Awards, etc.

Reminders

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How do i lock a page? Need Help

Hi DGG, I don't know who else to contact. I manage a page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Global_Trading. Day in day out some users are writing false information and hate speech for the company. It leaves me thinking if i can get the article locked or delete it off completely. Can you please assist me with it. --Mahmoodyaqub (talk) 08:40, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

uw templates

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

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

Ping about Wikipedia talk:WikiProject user warnings/Testing

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

Guide to information sources

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

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

Talk:Scholar Indices and Impact

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

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

Academy of Achievement

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

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

Primary sources

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

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

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

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

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

Looks like a very good start.

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

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

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

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

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

On newbies and deletion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please comment on Talk:Stella Parton discography

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Strayer University

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

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

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

Lists of self-publishing companies

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

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

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

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

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

Self-publishing

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

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

Tropes in Agatha Christie's novels

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

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

Stevens Institute of Technology page

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WikiProject NIH

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ambassadors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taxatio Ecclesiastica

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

Thank you!

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

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

Regarding the Stevens Institute of Technology

Was this ever completed? Silverseren^C 21:20, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

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

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

Your comment at WT:RFA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

User talk:Materialscientist#Impact factors and infoboxes

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

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

CityU of Seattle

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

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

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

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

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

"What DGG says"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FYI - user warnings

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

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

City University of Seattle

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

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

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

Library portal

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

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

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

Essay about Wikipedia

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

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

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

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

Bibliography of Encyclopedias

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

PC

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

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

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

Google scholar anomality

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge

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

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

Talkback

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The Wikipedia Library

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

Unrelated

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

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

Just so you know...

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

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

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

Robert Peernock

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

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

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

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

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

Journal of Population Economics and Les Halpin

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Rumi's Kimia

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

Jacob School of Biotechnology and Bioengineering and possible merge

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

Talk:British Studies Seminar, University of Texas at Austin

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

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

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

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

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

UMI Dissertations Abstract

Hi DGG!

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

Thanks for your consideration.

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

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

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

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

My copyright violation on an article talk page

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Reply

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

Rising above the mediocre

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't altogether agree with your comment about academic quality. I don't think articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy would be suitable for WP. What is needed is well-summarised and well-explained articles on difficult or general subjects that would be accessible to anyone of high school age (15-18) and above. The Wikipedia article on Being and the corresponding SEP article [4] are both unreadable but for different reasons. The WP article, as you will appreciate, is a rambling dog's breakfast of uncited original research (plus some glaring factual errors). The SEP article looks pretty accurate to me but just goes off into the clouds ("Anti-Meinongian First-Order View") once it gets going. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is better for a general audience but is incomplete. Hestiaea (talk) 09:15, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Expert attention requested

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Help clean Cal Poly Pomona

Hi, DGG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just to let you know

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David A. Schauer

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

Re: Advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have mail!

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

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

Coursera

Hi DGG--I hope this finds you well, with none of your toes frozen off. I was wondering if you could have a look at Coursera, just to go over it and see what minor or major improvements you could make or suggest. As the late Whitney Houston put it so succinctly in "How Will I Know", "I'm asking you cause you know about these things." Also--do you think this business model stands a chance? It seems so unlikely to me, yet everywhere I look I see stuff like this, even at my own school. Thanks in advance, Drmies (talk) 15:55, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest converting the business model section into prose, & I'll look for additional references. As for success: the financial question is whether people will actually pay for this, but the examples of payTV etc show they will, if the quality is high enough. What costs most is the supplementation by group discussion & tutoring if they include that, and students will pay for that also, if they can thereby get credit at their college for less than the college would charge ordinarily, & if widely adopted, it is possible that this may be enough to pay for a free service as well. The educational question is whether this will degenerate into lecture-only, and thus dilute the quality of college instruction. But what is the actual quality of much conventional college instruction? DGG ( talk ) 20:03, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

List of big-firm partners at Tulane Law School

Looking at some page histories, I see that back in 2009 you spearheaded a discussion of whether the Tulane University Law School article should keep its long list of lawyers who were partners at Vault 100 law firms. You argued (correctly, in my opinion) that such a list was not the sort we maintain on Wikipedia. It looks like this discussion went from Talk:Tulane University Law School#Partners at Vault's Top-100-Most-Prestigious Law Firms to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities/Archive 6#Notable alumni, where it appears to me the consensus was that the list was not appropriate: one editor strongly argued to keep the list but the others more or less all agreed with you. Nevertheless, it seems that since then, each time someone has tried to delete this section they have been reverted with an edit summary stating that consensus had agreed to keep the list.[5][6]. Was such a consensus actually established somewhere? Would such a list be allowed at another law school's article? Thanks very much for your input. (I'll watch for your answer here.) --Best regards, Arxiloxos (talk) 20:28, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I removed this obvious spam, though if it is restored I cannot take the actual admin action that may be thought necessary, because I both edited and commented; some other admin will have to do that. DGG ( talk ) 20:55, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree with the deletion, and I added a link to the old Wikiproject discussion for anyone who may be interested. Best, --Arxiloxos (talk) 21:49, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

NYC panel

Hi there, DGG. I sent you an email about details for the upcoming panel discussion last week, and wanted to try you here since I hadn't heard back. I hope you can still make it, and if you have any other questions, just let me know. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 03:45, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador

Just saying hi... I see you are the Brooklyn College campus ambassador, no? Am working on a Wikipedia project for Amy Hughes Theatre History Class.

--Eparness (talk) 19:58, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Hey DGG. I've just noticed that you've joined the Brooklyn College Theater History course as Campus Ambassador. Just wanted to say hello myself (I'm OA-ing the course), and add that I'm glad it's you - we've never crossed paths much that I can recollect, but I've seen you around at ANI and so forth, and you've always struck me as a pretty stand-up and level-headed guy. I look forward to working alongside on this project. Cheers, Yunshui 雲‍水 22:21, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

help find sources project

Hello DGG, last time I came here was for your comments on the description on the template primarysources. This time I seek for your comments on my drafted IEG grant proposal here m:Grants:IEG/find_sources_2.0. The basic idea is to enhance source-finding and thus citing practices for contributors old and new by providing lists of online and offline resources and some basic general description on the nature of the sources in these resources (per general research/librarian perspective and per WP policies WP:PSTS WP:V WP:RS.

Since you are the expert who are familiar with both perspectives, I hope that you will can provide comments to improve the grant proposal. Thanks. --_{(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng)} 00:26, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I'll get to this tonight. Thanks. DGG ( talk ) 15:48, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Local interest topics

Hi DGG, I noticed on some AfD's that you believe local interest topics are not suitable for inlcusion in Wikipedia, and I'm wondering why. When you find the time, I'd love to hear your reasoning. I think they are, on the same account that - for example - articles on insect subspecies should be included. They may be of interest to just a small group of people, but they are of interest. I quite often fidn your reasonings comelling though, so I look forward to hearing how I am wrong on this one! Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:01, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

this will take till tomorrow, for I want to give a full explanation; it's been a while since I last wrote it out, & I want it to represent my current view. But as a starting point, using your example, I think you probably meant insect species, not sub-species. I would not support articles on most insect sub-species--we will have enough work to do with the actual 900,000 known full species. (and the estimated 10 times that number that have yet to be identified). The subspecies should be handled the way anything but the most highly specialist books handle them: as part of the article for the species. There will of course be exceptions, when the particular subspecies has been much studied. DGG ( talk ) 21:08, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

No problem, take your time - good is more important than fast. The reason why I think we should include it, by the way, is point one of the five pillars: "It incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers" (emphasis mine). Now I realise that 'it incorporates elements of' doesn't mean 'it should include everything in', though if it is verifiable I don't yet see any objection to including it, and including it does seem to further our mission. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:24, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

from my holiday address (greetings from Koh Pha Ngan. You may be jealous now) a polite ping. 180.183.220.31 (talk) 09:01, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't mean to rush you, but have the feeling you may have missed this. So a quick second ping. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:17, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Medical College of Georgia Wikipedia page

Hello DGG!

Just saw you redirected the Medical College of Georgia page to the Georgia Regents University page, History section. I'd like to request that you undo this action, with the caveat that I know this can be confusing.

GRU used to be MCG - the Medical College of Georgia was a standalone university back in the day. However, the university grew to become Georgia Health Sciences University, and the Medical College of Georgia became ONE of the university's colleges.

On the Georgia Regents University web site (http://gru.edu/colleges/medicine/index.php), the Medical College of Georgia is listed as one of the nine colleges in the university. I believe the page you've redirected is the page for the college, so it's a sub-set page - not a historical university page.

I'd love to talk about it with you - please get in touch with me? Thank you!

Email: crule@gru.edu, or of course on my talk page, or here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GRUcrule (talk • contribs) 14:52, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

You are correct that it is customary from medical schools at a university to have a separate page; therefore, I intend to rewrite the page, and I think I said so on one of the talk pages, probably the one for the university as a whole . The reason I deleted the prior page is because it was almost entirely a copyvio from the university site;it had previously been deleted as a copyvio also, in several versions. I'll give a further explanation on your talk page tonight; there are acceptable ways to go forward, but also unacceptable ways. DGG ( talk ) 15:43, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good - I'm our Social Media Coordinator, but this is a recent position, so I haven't been involved in editing any Wikipedia pages prior to late January. I look forward to learning from your work. Thanks for the speedy reply! GRUcrule ( talk ) —Preceding undated comment added 16:24, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

IOP_Publishing

Ever since I accidentally got involved in an article being worked on by a WWBTOO employee (I did not realize the editor worked for him) I've been trying to avoid the Request Edit queue, but since nobody else is manning it, I'm going through it.

I came across this one that I thought might be up your alley on getting a second opinion on my merge suggestions: Talk:IOP_Publishing#Books_Publishing_section

I don't know enough about academic periodicals to know the best course of action. CorporateM (Talk) 17:12, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I responded. DGG ( talk ) 20:16, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Muchos grassius. I would prefer not to handle the Request Edit queue, but since nobody else is, I cleared up a good 15 requests that were mostly fairly obvious.

BTW - if you care to, I haven't gotten any feedback yet on Talk:YouSendIt#Draft_for_consideration. I'm pretty happy that they included content from an analyst report, because this is something volunteers will never have access to otherwise, but I feel we could use feedback on the BLP issues and any anti-promo tips. CorporateM (Talk) 21:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Ryan said he would take a look after his Wikibreak, so I'll wait for him! CorporateM (Talk) 16:21, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Nova Publishers

Hi, if you have a moment could you please have a look at this edit of mine and the discussion on the article's talk page. I'd like to hear your opinion especially about this SENSE reference. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 09:36, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Milking the bull

In working upon this topic, I observed that you had a particular interest in list of proverbial phrases. When I get a moment, I plan to make some bold edits there as it seems to have gone quiet. Just letting you know in advance... Warden (talk) 14:12, 23 February 2013 (UTC)~~

we perhaps should talk first. The main thing I think it needs is citations. I could put in a few dozen/hundred quickly. then of course it needs articles on all or most of them--that part I do not want to do. DGG ( talk ) 15:51, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

#smwwiki panel

		The Real Life Barnstar
		Thanks again for appearing on the discussion panel at Social Media Week NYC; it was a great conversation and I'm glad you were part of it! WWB Too (Talk · COI) 13:00, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Some falafel for you!

Thanks for your Guide lines for Islamic Azad University Khorasgan Branch. I will try again. Please check it soon Mehrnazar (talk) 08:15, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

CRL

It has been suggested you might be interested in the discussion at User_talk:Phoebe#CRL. LeadSongDog come howl! 21:12, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for unblanking that article about Paul

It was about Paul the Afc BLP (I forgot his last name), not the other Paul, Fisher of Men. I didn't realize that declining an Afc, for not complying with BLP standards, would result in automatic blanking, not until after the fact. There was nothing libelous or copyvio-ish there, merely insufficient, as in "needs more work". I didn't know what to do, if I could reverse it without causing yet more problems. I appreciate that you caught that and unblanked.

I have a few other items, while I am here. I can help you with certain aspects of your work here, not as sycophant-as-a-service, merely because I have a similar skill set as yours, in one tiny area of your field of expertise. On second thought, I think I'll just leave this on my own talk page, for your perusal, should you have time and inclination, rather than littering here. Again, thank you for your help yesterday. --FeralOink (talk) 05:38, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Douglas W. Owsley bibliography

Hi, could you have a look at this article? I'm not really sure what to think of it. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 11:56, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm working on it. DGG ( talk ) 17:50, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Library theft

Hello DGG: Library theft is a new article that you may find of interest to check out, improve, etc. Cheers, Northamerica1000^(talk) 22:20, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

== Might have found some new refs for [[Inter

AfC source tagging

Hi DGG per our last chat I've stated on implementing some (non game based) ideas for improving communication at AfC. I hope that these will be usefull in more rapidly establishing better reviewer norms at AfC. To wit I've developed two new inline warning tags templates tags and will add a few more tomorrow. The point being that these would supplement the existing rejection tags by providing more focused issue detection and better troubleshooting links.

I think the most common issues are

1. sources that are not independent - which we should tag with Template:!IN
2. sources that are user generated (blogs, wikis) - which we should tag with Template:!Blog
3. sources that come from Wikipedia - which we should tag with Template:!Wiki

So far I've tagged used these here BO | Talk 17:31, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Journal statistics

Hi, this discussion has stalled a bit and could use your input. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 16:35, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

A beer for you!

You made a very appropriate edit on 23:49, 5 November 2011‎ on the Mankind Project article--you removed a lenthy addition that was, as you noted, quite promotional in nature. I've been a member of MKP for 12+ years and credit the organization with helping me transform my life in many positive ways. However, puffery has no place for an organization that emphasizes Integrity and Authenticity. Cheers! Mark P.S. If you don't imbibe in alcoholic beverages, a fine tea or exotic coffee will be offered. :0) Mark D Worthen PsyD 09:08, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Precious

keep articles
Thank you for your efforts to keep articles, such as this piece of culture, for your love of libraries, for sharing resources, and for your thoughts on elucidating, - repeating: you are an awesome Wikipedian (25 April 2009, 25 June 2009)!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:54, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Selective Law Databases

Hello, what are some selective databases for law that would be the equivalent of MEDLINE? To avoid article deletion, inclusion in which law databases would signify that a journal is notable? 206.174.67.237 (talk) 10:13, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I will inquire. But since any legal journal is likely to be used for citation in a judgment, including a judgement of a supreme court, and since WP considers essentially every modern supreme court case notable , a case could be made for inclusion of articles on all of them. Most of the important law journals in the US are published by law schools as projects run by the students--obtaining a place on its editorial board is considered the highest honor the school can give, and all of these will be notable. But many schools now publish a variety of additional journals, University of X Law School Journal of International Law, ... of Constitutional, ,,, etc. , which have, I think a much lesser reputation--we have deleted a number of these at AfD. There are then the journals of the StateBar Associations, which could be merged with an article on each of the Bar Associations. Otherwise, I need to consider and ask advice. DGG ( talk ) 05:15, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Quick question: Outlines

In my work on public relations I came across this article Outline of public relations, which seems like a massively extended See also section of the PR article. Should I AfD it as a fork? CorporateM (Talk) 15:33, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

It's intended as such, essentially as a table of contents, like Outline of physical science, and many others: see WikiProject Outlines and Portal:Contents/Outlines. They are more systematically arranged than th text format of a general article, which requires reading, not scanning, to find specific topics. They are more article oriented than Portals -- see Portal:Philosophy, but more general than Indexes & Lists such as Index of standards articles or Glossaries, such as Glossary of US mortgage terminology . There's also a combination page type: Portal:Contents/History and events-- click "see in all page types".

It's a good question whether we need all of these systems of organization. We've tried others: a systematic organization based on List of Dewey Decimal classes or Library of Congress Classification or Wikipedia:Outline of Roget's Thesaurus, and yet others have been proposed. I think the overlap more than they ought to, but we'll never et agreement on which to concentrate on. Personally, I very much like the Outline of... structure, and would support it over the others. I believe that's the current tendency, also. Ideally everything would be indexed according to the two library systems also, because they're familiar--not that they're any good--especially LC, which was designed to match the structure of a US university curriculum in the first decade of he 20th century. There is no viable one dimensional way to organize knowledge--the alternative is some sort of Faceted classification, whose construction and use can get really complicated. There's even a totally different approach--to have no classification or indexing of any sort, but rely on free text implemented as we implement the see alsos, and the hyperlinks, as anything anyone thinks related, with no systematic organization. Or the extreme of having everything be a free text search.

Perhaps however you are asking whether every item on that particular outline you mentioned belongs--that's for discussion on it's talk page, or whether other things should be added, in which case boldly add them. Or whether the whole outline is biased in some way, in which case, discuss it. Only if it is irretrievably biased or confusing should it be deleted.

Categories are a necessary complement--they are self-populating, but eliminate the possibility of saying anything about the individual items. I use them very heavily for what I do, which is, upon finding a problem article, finding others that are likely to have a similar problem. They should also do very well for finding term paper topics. They will be more effective as subject guides when we implement category intersection in a simply and obvious manner. (And there's the related Series Boxes, those colored boxes at the bottom. I dislike them--they're visually awful, and are used frequently to express or dispute a POV. But they do serve nicely to indicate missing articles.

Quick question, long answer. See chapter 17 of Wikipedia the missing manual for a longer one, oriented towards categories. DGG ( talk ) 18:29, 16 April 2013 (UTC) .

Wikipedia Ambassador Barnstar

		Wikipedia Ambassador Barnstar
		For your extensive efforts both as an Ambassador and in other capacities on Wikipedia, I award you this barnstar. You and I do not always agree on specific matters, but your qualities of humility and devotion are admirable and I am thankful for your contributions. Neelix (talk) 14:39, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Cultural intelligence

Hi DGG--I ran into this, which has great potential (according to JSTOR), but it's hardly my field: I can't write such articles on such topics. Perhaps you can have a go? Thanks, Drmies (talk) 19:00, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Kansas-Armenia National Guard Partnership

In reference to your issues with the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_-_Armenia_National_Guard_Partnership I am the main contributor to the 22 National Guard State Partnership pages, but I am not the one deciding what goes up on each page. I was tasked by EUCOM with coordinating the efforts of each SPP director (there is one for each State) and each BAO (there is one in each overseas embassy) and taking what they give me. Obviously, they do not want to duplicate there own work and rewrite what they already wrote on their State National Guard website so they are copy/pasting select content and asking me to upload. This is what EUCOM wanted to do in order to avoid requiring each SPP director and each BAO to learn the enormous Wikipedia guidelines and to prevent a drastic variation in style and quality.

Tell you what you suggest. The content is not plagiarized. Would a comment on the State National Guard websites indicating Wikipedia is authorized to use the content be the fix? Incidentally, we are nearing completion of our own SPP page here http://www.eucom.mil/key-activities/partnership-programs/state-partnership-program and if you click on any of the 22 links halfway down, you will see it takes you to a pdf (currently in draft form) that shows the exact same content that is appearing on the Wikipedia pages. These pages are going to be part of a printed posture statement. Again, this is to avoid having to create yet another version of the same material.

As for the pictures not being relevant to the partnership, I'm at a loss for words. These were very carefully selected from a large pool of pictures and they each show something meaningful about the program. The soldiers lined up on the airfield getting off a plane is an example of a monumental form of cooperation among two countries that just a few years ago were bitter enemies. The fact that they appear together at all in a picture like this should speak volumes. If you don't get that then I suppose nothing I say will matter.

I am open to your suggestions. Briansmith451 (talk) 11:24, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

There are a few principles involved.

1. Copyright. WP requires that all material be either in the public domain or licensed under a free license, by which we mean a CC-BY-SA license, which irrevocably gives everyone in the world the right to copy, reuse, and modify the material. Permission for WP to use it is not sufficient--WP is a free encyclopedia, which intends its content to be used freely for any purpose, even commercial, as long as attribution is given and the material remains freely licensed. Any use of material not under such a license is limited to brief quotations. We do not permit any compromise with this.
   1. We additionally do not permit Close paraphrase of unfree material; not just the words must be changed, but the arrangement into sentences and the sequence of ideas.
   2. As I mentioned, material published by the uS Government is in the public domain, and so is material published by a certain few individual US states, such as California. (This does not apply to photographs or other material they reprint from elsewhere, which may already be under copyright). Material from most states requires a license--see WP:COPYRIGHT.I note that almost all material from other country's governments (and the UN) is not in the public domain--the US is almost unique in this generous provision for free use.
2. Plagiarism, which applies to all material, free or unfree, copied or paraphrased. Anything taken from an outside source must be attributed to the source explicitly. This goes beyond copyright--it's a basic convention of responsible writing.
3. conflict of Interest You are apparently editing on behalf of a group of outside organizations, as part of your job. This creates a conflict of interest. For our rules on this, see WP:COI. We do not absolutely prohibit it, but we do examine such edits very closely for objectivity. As a general rule, a suitable page will be best written by someone without COI; it's not impossible to do it properly with a conflict of interest or as a paid press agent, but it's relatively more difficult: you are automatically thinking in terms of what the subject wishes to communicate to the public, but an uninvolved person will think in terms of what the public might wish to know.
4. Ownership. Nobody owns a WP page, and anything you write is subject to editing by anyone--as an official editor you are no more entitled to determine the content than anyone else.
5. Notability A Wikipedia article needs to show notability with references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases. All or almost all the sources in the articles are from the relevant government units, and do not show importance. There should however be newspaper articles available for all of these, but they must b independent, not essentially copies of press releases. Additionally, such sources can show undisputed facts, but they can not be used for conclusions, such as the success of the programs, which must be shown by outside sources.
6. Promotionalism Include only material that would be of interest to a general reader coming across the mention of the subject and wanting the sort of information that would be found in an encyclopedia. Do not include material that would be of interest only to those associated with the subject, or to prospective supporters, or intended to produce a favorable public impression of the program --that sort of content is considered promotional. WP is an encyclopedia, not a vehicle for promotion of even the most worthwhile things.
7. Illustrations. Actually, I noticed that photograph to which you might be referring, in the California-Ukraine article . I noticed it as a very good photograph, though there is nothing to indicate the field as being in the Ukraine But there is no need for the duplicative photographs of soldiers practicing treating casualties in the Illinois-Poland article--onei s sufficient; and I do not think purely ceremonial photographs such as [[7]] or [[8]] or [[9]] are appropriate--dignitaries meeting each other are PR, as are group photos of the participants. They may make good PR, and good content for the organizational websites, but they add nothing that cannot be said in words as far as the encyclopedic purpose is concerned. Yes, it's important to show the soldiers from the two countries working together I agree with you on that--it adds a demonstrative element beyond what words can do, but perhaps once per article is sufficient, and also those few that show actual military joint activities, rather than just training. Excessive use of what would be a good thing if used in small quantities is a sign of promotionalism--saying the same point over and over again. But, as I mentioned, since nobody owns an article, neither you nor I need decide this.

There are several courses I could take, as an experienced editor: I could nominate these articles at AfD for deletion as promotional and lacking 3rd party sources ; I could list them for a requested merge into the main article; I could list the problem on a suitable noticeboard and ask for opinions; I could persuade you to fix them; I could fix them myself. I do not want to delete content if there is any alternative; a merge would greatly decrease the usefulness as indicating the foreign relations of each of the countries involved; I will list them on the COI board (WP:COIN) if we cannot reach agreement, but perhaps that will not be necessary.

But there is one thing I must do as an administrator. I must remove copyright violations from the articles, by either rewriting or blanking the sections, or listing at the copyright problems notice board. If you do not immediately remove the ones from state pages which are not public domain, I will do one or the other, or remove what I can quickly find, and then list them all--action there usually takes a few weeks. DGG ( talk ) 18:46, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

It is good to know that my efforts have been noticed... particularly by a user who, when I see his user names on edits and efforts, I have come to simply assume that something necessary was being done properly. --Nat Gertler (talk) 22:43, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Library resources box

DGG, I and I expect others would appreciate your continued attention at the talk around user:JohnMarkOckerbloom's Template:Library resources box. There is a deletion discussion about this at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_April_30#Template:Library_resources_box. There was an article about this template in The Signpost in March, and some external press in other places.

This seems like a big issue which could set a precedent for how the Wikipedia community interacts with libraries. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:24, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

category intersects

Since you've mentioned wikidata many time, I thought you'd be interested in this: Wikipedia_talk:Category_intersection#A_working_category_intersection_today. We could use it as a band-aid while waiting for wikidata to spin up. Also w.r.t your votes - I think that whether we use the proposal i made above, or wikidata, simplifying the categories *beforehand* will actually make things easier. None of the categories i've proposed deleting could not be recreated through an intersect - but for now they serve to ghettoize and are against the guidance for ethnic cats.

Anyway, regardless of what you decide on the CFD votes, I'd really appreciate your input and help on the cat intersect proposal. cheers --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 05:25, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I have almost always supported ethnic subcategories. People look for articles in these fields, often to find subjects for school papers. I in general agree with maintaining the categories in the meanwhile, but I'm not sure its worth arguing about them for the present, considering the degree of opposition. As I said there is that intersection will remove the entire need for the discussions.What we need most to keep are the categories from which the intersections will be constructed. (Defining and organizing the root data is a harder problem--I find some of the current Wikidata proposals a little too casual. Adding data fields as one thinks of them is not as good as a systematic ontology.) DGG ( talk ) 15:02, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Following up on your Predatory Journals discussion

I wonder if there's a definite list of ones to watch out for, as there seem to be a few creeping up at AfC. Instead of doing a thorough search, it would be practical to have a reliable list so we can notify the submitter, don't you think? Regards, (please TB me) FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:27, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I may have already said this, but I do not want to compose a list. Who are we to judge?

In fact, I do not like to use the term "predatory" at all, , just like I want to avoid "controversy" sections in articles. To the extent I can tell, some journals commonly considered as such may be fraudulent or hopeless, but I know that some are sincere efforts at alternative publishing. not all of the sincere efforts will prove to be useful, of course, but that's not a reason to condemn them. Publishing is a profession for optimists. I do not want to rely on Beall's list. I greatly respect him and the work he is doing, but there are objections about a few of the entries on Beall's list from reliable npov people in various listserv discussions, and i rather agree with some of the objections--I think he should possibly be removing from the list the very few that develop into respectability.

As for WP, the basic rule is simple, if they get into any of the ordinary indexes, they might be notable & there is no way to find out without a discussion. I know AfC is supposed to accept only articles which are good enough that not only will they pass AfD, but that no good faith AfD is likely; however, I think this is unrealistic in areas of unsettled notability, & this is one of them. If they're in a index more selective than DOAJ etc, and ifthey've published more than a handful of articles, I'd accept them, but I would first warn the editor that it will be challenged and that if they do not want what may be a very unsatisfactory discussion from their POV, to withdraw the submission until they have a better case. If you let me know what they are, I'll comment (or accept or decline, depending), but I think we have to go one by one. (If an article is about a publisher, I think it is just common sense that we want it to have at least one notable journal.) DGG ( talk ) 00:32, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, you've answered my question. My main dilemma was if we should simply go for GNG or should journals be held against stricter rules for those reasons. But you've clarified the issue pretty well. I agree in principle, although a list could be useful for bogus, unscientific claims, not for AfC's purposes. Thanks again! FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:22, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

As for bogus claims, the problem is not that these journals are used for publishing important but weird work, but that the work they publish --if they actually publish anything -- is almost always thoroly mediocre, because people knowing enough to do good work know enough to publish in better journals. People wanting to spread crank ideas try to publish them conspicuously, and most of the really fraudulent work that makes headlines as such has been published in journals that should know better. DGG ( talk ) 02:43, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

category intersection

You mentioned this in a few CFDs. Mind swinging by and giving your thoughts here, on a possible band-aid while awaiting wiki-data? Wikipedia_talk:Category_intersection#A_working_category_intersection_today? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:52, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Quick question

I noticed you (and other admins) often tag pages for speedy deletion, even though you can delete them yourselves. Is this out of personal preference for wanting review by another admin or is there some guideline or unspoken rule that calls for review by at least two different people? Ramaksoud2000 ^{(Talk to me)} 00:36, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Most of us think it better that two people see the article. I am capable of mistakes, and I know I occasionally make them, because people are not at all reluctant to tell me--sometimes I will have missed something, or not understood, or just gone too quickly. Even for the utterly obvious, there's the possibility of carelessness or sleepiness, or just frustration at having been seeing so many totally unsatisfactory articles. I doubt anything requiring human judgment can be done at less than 1% error. I've deleted over 12,000 articles over the 7 years I've been doing this. and that would have been 120 wrong deletions, and potentially 120 good editors lost to WP. But with someone else checking, that makes it only 1 or 2 in the whole time.

In fact, I've argued that this should be absolutely required, but there are cases where one must act immediately, and it's been difficult to specify exactly the exceptions. DGG ( talk ) 00:48, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh ok, thanks. I agree with you. I was just curious. Ramaksoud2000 ^{(Talk to me)} 01:47, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I appreciate that there are times when you must act immediately, such as WP:ATTACK and WP:OUTING and possibly other situations. Do the admins have a tool that makes it easy for admins to "delete (or WP:REVDELETE) now, and list the page for review by another administrator ASAP" and if they do, to most admins who make "unilateral deletions" use this tool? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:04, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) There is no rule that admins can't delete anything on sight, but tagging and leaving for a second admin to delete is a good, unwritten practice that most seem to observe. Most of us will of course delete blatant COPYVIO, attack, and vandal pages immediately and some other cases of obvious nonsense. However, admins don't actually make many mistakes with their deletions, so 'delete and review later' by another admin would be redundant. I've deleted around 3,000 pages and only restored 20, and those were userfications. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:15, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I define 1% as "many" if one thinks of the cumulative effect over the years. If everyone who had a reasonable case stayed and complained, yes it would work, but most don't. There's also the definition of "error"-- does it mean an article that would pass AfD, or an article that with enough work might possibly pass AfD, an article to which the speedy criteria did not apply, but would end up deleted anyway The 1% is for the first two classes; for the third, it's more like 5%. In any case the error rate will depend on the type of speedys. I tend to look at the ones that have been passed over for a few hours. I only really know about my own errors, and of course my rate may be unusually high because I may be unusually incompetent. Some years ago I did intend to audit speedies--the reactions I received from admins involved in the ones I challenged persuaded me it was not the route to effectiveness here, and tolerating injustice in this was the way to be more useful overall. (There was 1, & only 1, admin who did change their practice in response to my comments.) I think I will decide the same about the G13 AfCs. DGG ( talk ) 20:57, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

List of principal conductors by orchestra

Hi. Would you like to comment here? Thanks. --Kleinzach 01:37, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

J.O. Patterson, Sr., Nazis, syphilis, etc ...

Thanks for your very interesting message. I have read it all with interest, and replied to the part that is of most immediate relevance. JamesBWatson (talk) 07:50, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Confused. Perhaps I did something wrong.

Hi David. Thanks for all your many years of generous service volunteering here at Wikipedia. As you are somebody whose opinion I greatly respect, I wanted to ask about some comments that have confused me. This comment of yours seems to sort of conflict with this comment. As the author of the RfC in question, I think I may not have provided enough background or maybe not described the situation properly. Perhaps I didn't make a clear enough connection between the template and the service. Could you possibly let me know if I could improve the situation? Thanks very much. 64.40.54.118 (talk) 04:07, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't see the conflict. I think it's a wonderful service, and should be implemented very widely. It doesn't quite do everything, and considering I equally use two different public libraries and two university libraries, a link to a single library will not be of as much use to me as most people. Do I misunderstand, or is it that I did not explain myself clearly in the 2nd comment? DGG ( talk ) 04:14, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps I was misinterpreting your comments. One seemed enthusiatstic while the other seemed subdued, but I was probably reading that in to it. I was more concerned that I may not have presented the RfC details well enough for the community to fully understand it (i.e. what the service is and its benefits). I guess I was looking more for suggested improvements to the RfC. Thanks for the help. 64.40.54.118 (talk) 04:45, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

You are right, I was not clear enough, so I added some unmistakable emphasis. I think there are lots of possible improvements, but the most important thing is to get the basic interface adopted. I'll have some suggestions. DGG ( talk ) 05:24, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you I'll look through the RfC tomorrow and see if I can rewrite it to be a bit more informative. Thanks kindly. 64.40.54.118 (talk) 06:41, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

RfA

Hi DGG. I've posted a reply to your question - I'm not sure if it answers it as well as you'd like, so if I can help by clarifying something just let me know. Issues around our policies are, I suspect, something most of us could write a thesis on, so I tried to stick to only the two areas. :) - Bilby (talk) 09:49, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

What's in a name ?

An editor is interested in the correct title and information pertaining to the article entitled "CSA (database company)". Of course, I am also interested in accuracy. The introduction use to say that the company name is "CSA Illumina" [10] under the ProQuest banner.

However, someone tagged the article, and removed the "Illumina" from "CSA Illumina" in the intro [11]. The editor did leave a query on the talk page. Today I have responded and assembled some links. Although the other editor has not responded (not a lot of time has passed), it seems to me that "CSA Illumina" is not incorrect [12], but it may also be called CSA Illustra [13].

In any case, now that I have wet your whistle with the above external links, maybe you could review the talk page discussion, and links, and maybe you can come up with something (I hope). Thanks in advance. --- Steve Quinn (talk) 15:51, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll check the sources later today. I have some familiarity with the company DGG ( talk ) 15:52, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I just added some refs to the Science Citation Index article. It looks some interesting reading, if you have the time and interest. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 17:39, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Your ANI comment

"the problem will settle itself": that's the kind of thing my father used to say. I don't know how often he was right about that, but given that today is the third anniversary of his death I find those words extra striking. So often your comments are like oil on turbulent water, DGG: keep it up, in good health. Drmies (talk) 05:42, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Library count

I was wondering how one finds out how many libraries stock a particular author or book. I notice that you reference that in a couple of AfD nominations. Thanks, Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:06, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

the way is with [www.worldcat.org WordCat]. Search for the book, isbn is simplest if you know it . Click on the book entry and look down. Best way to find all books by an author is to go midway down to the "Find more information about" selection box:. " Caution: Coverage is almost entirely US & Canadian public and academic libraries, some major university libraries elsewhere, with most academic and some public libraries in the UK, & some public libraries in Australia and New Zealand. There is no single convenient technique for elsewhere, best gateway is, VZBl, then see Special:Booksources. Caution2: Some types of material, like popular sex manuals, esoterica, and devotional literature are not well represented in library catalogs. DGG ( talk ) 15:45, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:55, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	For your great work on Jack Ernest Vincent!. :) – →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 05:34, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

boundary 2 again...

Dear David, boundary 2 is again under attack by POV pushers who claim that this is an "in-house" journal without peer review. There is a sopurce for the latter (Ulrich's), but it's reliability is doubted because it is behind a paywall. Perhaps you can join the discussion on the talk page. I must add that I find it exceedingly difficult to keep assuming good faith here... Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 16:30, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

There are reasons from recent events at WP for being extremely careful about negative approaches to anything related to contemporary American writers. But Ulrich's is not really an independent source for this--see my comment on the talk p. DGG ( talk ) 17:15, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

So how do you suggest we describe the journal? As "peer-reviewed" or "internally reviewed" (as suggested on the talk page by the SPAs) or otherwise? To me, "peer review" can be either external or internal or both. By the way, PLOS ONE is by now using peer review more or less in the same way as other journals do, as far as I can see (I'm an "academic editor" for them). --Randykitty (talk) 10:35, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

List

FYI. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:53, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

A bowl of strawberries for you!

For your extensive digging at D. C. Reddy. I did checked for sources and all I could find was this. You deserve this Solomon7968 18:41, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Current projects 7-3

I was reading through your current projects listed on your Userpage, and I was curious about 7-3; how would you first define what an "established editor" is? Autoconfirmed? 50 edits? Consensus? Anyhow, I liked 7-1 and 7-2 (and 7-3, just curious about the details). Please let me know when you put this in front of the community at large or if you'd like any help! Happy editing! --Jackson Peebles (talk) 06:49, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I really should revise these. The problems at WP change over time, and so do my interests. I am a little less concerned about articles directly, and more about how we deal with editors, I no longer object to using A7 for organizations, and I'm less concerned about the misuse of speedy in general. Since I wrote that 5 years ago, there has been a greater degree of consistency in speedy deletions generally, and in fact with deletion process generally. But more important, as WP becomes important, we are under increasing attack from people and companies who wish to use us for promotion, to the extent that very strong measure are indicated. Many of the A7 company & organization deletions also qualify as G11, and often as G12, copyvio. Their authors have no interest in contributing to an encyclopedia, but want publicity for their enterprises, and a greater percentage of them are paid editors. I have come to think at AfD that for borderline notability, we should also consider the promotional nature of the article--the combination of borderline notability and considerable promotion is reason to delete--but since that's a matter of judgement, it's a question for AfD, not speedy.

I am still willing to restore articles if anyone intends to work on them, and I'm always surprised at the few admins who aren't, I'd now say, not "established editor" but "editor in good faith", & when there's actually a chance of improving the article. In practice it's usually clear enough--and a good faith editorcan even include the rare paid editor who wants to learn and conform to our standards. The problem is a more practical one, of people finding out about the deleted articles. But this is related to what I see as the main current problem:

in the advice we give new editors. too many people rely on the templates, either in New Page patrol or AfC. In any case where there's a reasonable effort , it is really necessary to explain specifically either what is needed, or why it's likely to be hopeless--and by specifically I mean showing that one has actually read and taken into account the particular article. I don't always do this myself--there are simply too many articles to deal with them all carefully--but I try to do it if there's a likely prospect of improvement, in either the article or the editor. But most patrollers and reviewers patrol or review using insufficient care or the wrong criteria.

I'm currently not that much specifically trying to save individual articles, or even to teach individual new editors--I'm trying to use my experience to help the people who work with new editors do it properly. At this point it's not a question of changing our rules, but the way we apply them, and changing the practices and expectations of the people who apply them. I tend to do this as Idid 5 years ago with speedies--I can't check every article submission, but when I see inadequate advice, I can follow up with that particular person. ` DGG ( talk ) 23:15, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Review journal

Hi, there is a discussion here about the definition of what constitutes a "review journal", which is hampered by a lack of good sources. Would you know of any? In any case, please participate in the discussion. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 17:11, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

commented there. DGG ( talk ) 02:54, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Library cat

Hello DGG: I accepted Library cat from AfC, and per your background in library science (et al.), please feel free to check it out, improve it, etc. if you have the time or interest. Best regards, Northamerica1000^(talk) 13:34, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Request for input in drafting potential guidelines

Hi. There are, at present, no particular clear guidelines for religious material here, or, for that matter, guidelines for how to deal with ideas in general, particularly those ideas which might be accepted as true by individuals of a given religious, political, or scientific stance. There have been attempts in the past to draft such guidelines, but they have quickly been derailed. I am dropping this note on the talk pages of a number of editors who I believe have some interest in these topics, or have shown some ability and interest in helping to develop broad topic areas, such as yourself, and asking them to review the material at User:John Carter/Guidelines discussion and perhaps take part in an effort to decide what should be covered in such guidelines, should they be determined useful, and what phrasing should be used. I also raise a few questions about broader possible changes in some things here, which you might have some more clear interest in. I would be honored to have your input. John Carter (talk) 22:09, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative

Could you clean up the promo language and emphasis on activities not really noted by independent sources? I have a feeling your tax dollars were at work in the creation of that article. 86.121.18.17 (talk) 12:11, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Duckduckgo

DGG, I noticed some article creations by User:Duckduckgo (who probably needs a namechange anyway, as this is the name of a company), and at his talk page, I noticed your comment "I know this has been discussed in the past, and I know that what you are doing has been discouraged, so it disappoints me that you are still doing it." If this is a new user, thne your comment is rather WP:BITEy, as that user is probably not aware of this being discouraged. If he is not a new user (which seems not unlikely), then it seems probable that he is one of those users that used to create DNB articles but are now blocked. The lack of edit summaries or "own" writing in these DNB articles makes it of course harder to detect the possible sockmaster. The teahouse invitations he sends to new users may be a clue though. The "clever" name as well.

Do you have any further evidence or indications that this is a returned (blocked) user? Fram (talk) 14:16, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I tend to look at the article, not the contributor. I wrote that in fact before I saw the name of the user, as I had seen the exact same thing yesterday on several other recently submitted pages, which I shall now try to collect. As you say, the idea of doing this could occur to more than one person, but I think I recall seeing it on figures of a similar very slight degree of importance. I have also see the old (and in fact the new dnb cited as a source for people who are only mentioned, not the subjects of articles or receiving substantial coverage themselves. I'll try to find some of these also.

Fram, when you come back to see this, take a look at the item just above. It's .gov, but not a US-PD source. DGG ( talk ) 14:31, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the swift reply. I'll try to look at this and the thing above tomorrow! Fram (talk) 14:41, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Eric A. Spiegel

Can I ask you why the copyright violation is being ignored. Never mind I see what you did...sorry spoke to soon. :- ) Moxy (talk) 22:35, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

DGG -- A BIG thank you for your help in getting me started on fixing this. I see what you did and now understand. Many, many thanks! CRHassettVA4 (talk) 23:08, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I rewrote it entirely. The copyvio from the source listed was only in the first paragraphs, but I assumed the rest was copyvio also and I rewrote them also, as well as changing the general pattern of the article to our style. I rarely do it for business executives, but he seems important enough.

For anyone watching, there are some internal signs of promotional-style biographies for businessmen that are almost always copyvio as well (besides the obvious giveaway of a statement of how important the company is, and especially a statement of how important their duties were in previous positions in the firm.)

Headings that use <big> instead of our formatting

Placing the education at the end, with a final sentence of about spouse and children.

Not giving the positions in chronological order, and often not including earlier positions except the one just before coming to the firm.

The corresponding signs for academics are slightly different, depending on whether they're done by a central office or by the individual. For senior administrators they characteristically include multiple junior executive positions and in-university awards. For any faculty, if the individual wrote it, it will often includes full details of all publications however minor; if the central office, it will omit most exact titles, especially for journal articles. DGG ( talk ) 01:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Local interest topics again

Hi DGG, a while back I asked you for your position on local interest topics. I think you may have forgotten about it. Could you see if you can find the time to give it another swing? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

As before, the problem is maintaining them free from promotionalism. The more local the organization, the more likely it is that any available sources will be essentially press releases. for example, I've got this problem in my own neighborhood, Boerum Hill: there are a number of interesting creative projects of various genres, as well as some fascinating stores, all with good coverage in the fairly respectable local paper, but that paper will essentially write an article on anything in the general area, and will say more or less what the proprietors tell it. (The paper's political coverage I do trust, and i could use it to justify articles on every city councilman and community board member in the Brooklyn, not to mention the losing candidates, but I don't want to push it against the consensus they aren't notable ) So Iwait until the NYTimes or at least New York covers something in a substantial way--New York may be a bit of a tabloid sometimes, but it isn't a PR outlet. I love local journalism. I even read it when I don't know the area--it shows the way people live, in all their variety. If we could maintain the articles, I might want to do it.

The best hope for this is a local wiki. The attempts at a local wiki in NYC haven't really taken off--there are insufficient people in any one neighborhood who understand, and the ones that exist tend to be dominated by the real estate agents and local attorneys. Or possibly something built around Open Street Maps--that sort of a geographical interface makes sense. Or a combined wiki, Wikipedia Two, still maintaining NPOV and sourcing, but not requiring notability and not all that strict on promotionalism.

actually, I'd like a three way split, WP, the general encyclopedia; WP 2 for local content, and WP+, for academically reviewed material. Citizendium offered promise for that third part, but it 's manner or working drove off too many of the good people. I in fact joined it as one of the original group of expert editors, but I didn't get along with Larry, and if you didn't support him, there was no place for you there. DGG ( talk ) 06:22, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses. Reading what you say, and thinking about my own experiences, the problem here is that local newspapers are reliable on some subjects, but aren't necessarily reliable on all subjects. Because of that, we have no objective measure on how useful inclusion in a local newspaper is as a measure for inclusion in Wikipedia, and some organisations and individuals will take advantage off that to inject their self-promotion in to Wikipedia, so you prefer to rely on other sources that make it easier to draw a clear line. Is that roughly it, or am I just filling in my own perspective? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:50, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I prefer to rely on other methods than using the GNG to make it possible to draw a clear line. Decisions under the GNG come down to the details of what counts as reliable especially with respect to the key words "substantial" and "independent." Depending on what one wants to include or exclude, questions of what is a RS for notability purposes can often be rationally argued either way. But I've learned to work with the GNG, since it is unfortunately still the rule and likely to remain so.

And our key problem now is dealing with promotionalism. It's hard enough to deal with it in articles on major organizations--our standards for what we've accepted before were incredibly lax, and probably 90% of the articles on commercial and non-commercial organizations need to be rewritten. I'm reluctant to start including any thing that would add to the problem. DGG ( talk ) 00:43, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Mentioned you...

at User talk:Yngvadottir/Archive 3#Arkiv för nordisk filologi. Just thought it would be fair to let you know. --Hegvald (talk) 13:27, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

thanks, I'll be making a response there. DGG ( talk ) 00:43, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I've now made a response. Let me know if I can help with anything. DGG ( talk ) 03:58, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Wayra

Hi there. I noticed that you PROD on Wayra as being a non-notable business incubator, which expired on June 24th 2013. I would like to discuss this with you. Wayra is now the world's biggest technology incubator, and has academies in 14 countries. I am the CEO of a current member company. There are many press articles about Wayra in both Europe and Latin America. In the UK alone 28 companies either have been or are going through the incubator currently.

Wayra has also now partnered with UnLtd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnLtd to create a joint social-business incubator called Wayra UnLtd. Again, there is much press coverage and independent coverage from non-profit organisations about this new incubator that establishes notability to some degree.

Wayra was opened by Boris Johnson, is run by Telefonica, has had guests such as HRH Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and numerous politicians, leading investors, etc visit it or mentor at it.

Are you willing to consider allowing me to contribute a neutral, informational piece on Wayra that establishes notability? In many ways it is more notable than Techstars for its breadth and reach, yet Techstars seems to have little problem securing a page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techstars

Thanks! JonathanMayUK (talk) 16:51, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

It was only deleted by the WP:PROD deletion mechanism, and since anyone could have stopped the deletion while the prod was running, our practice is that it will be restored for any good faith editor who wants to work on it. I will restore it to your user space as User:JonathanMayUK/Wayra.

Please read WP:CORP and WP:COI before you begin editing. Remember that the references must be references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases. They have to discuss the company not just record an investment or acquisition, and be written by independent writers and journalists show make it clear they are not just repeating the press releases.

That its the largest in its field is relevant, but not determinative, but you must have a source for it. That any of the companies have been substantial enough for WP articles would help. That notable people have visited there is usually not even relevant. It's done for the PR value, and we see no reason to repeat it.

It must provide information that a general reader coming across he name of the company would want to know, not directed at those who might want to participate or contribute. It can mention the social purpose of the group, but not talk extensively about its worthy intentions . It needs not discuss the principles of company law in the uK under which it is organised & regulated. It must not use adjectives of praise, the material given should show the notability so obviously that it isn't necessary.

The article UnLtd is not very satisfactory for many of these reasons, It uses words like "outstanding", It does not say what it has actually accomplished in the 13 years it has been operating , and not a single one of its references are really satisfactory, except the first one which can be used as a basis for the plain facts. At present, unless I, you, or someone fixes it, it is very likely to be deleted.

Techstars may have apparently written by a PR firm specializing in writing of WP , for it shows the characteristic hallmarks: about half of it is an anecdotal account of the formation of the company, which is of interest only to the principals and their immediate families. But it does the rest well: it shows the accomplishments, including formation of companies with articles here, many of its references are good. It needs editing, not deletion. I do that sort of editing & I'll clean it up tonight, if you want to look at it tomorrow.

After you've rewritten the article--try to do it within a week--, let me know here, and i will move it to mainspace if it is good enough. Let me know too, if you decide to add some ref showing accomplishments to UnLtd, I can fix it up also. Describe your joint enterprise in your own article, and refer to it in the Unltd one. DGG ( talk ) 01:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

WP:COIN#Fairleigh Dickinson University

Hi DGG, I thought you should be aware that Mfuzia responded to your block proposal a few days ago. Crcorrea hasn't responded, though he/she hasn't made an edit since February 19 so I wouldn't expect a response. --Nstrauss (talk) 18:18, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

thanks, I followed up,saying I do not plan to do anything unless there are further problems if there are, please let me know,for I do not havetime to recheck everything that I ideally would want to. DGG ( talk ) 01:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Blackboard Inc. history

Hi there, DGG. I just noticed that when you moved over the new version of the Blackboard article, the history prior was deleted. Was that just not replaced after a histmerge? Not being an admin, I'm not well-versed in these things—but would it be easy to add back? Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 21:05, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not particularly good at such manipulations; perhaps someone seeing this will help DGG ( talk ) 03:58, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, no worries. I'll see if I can find a sysop hangout and hopefully someone else can handle it. Best, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 18:22, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

User council

That was a truly extraordinarily brilliant statement. Let's hope the truly important people in the Foundation are following that discussion. My fear is that they are probably not, and that if a consensus is reached in support, they will then chime in and declare such a council as having no authority. Individually or as a body, they've already demonstrated in no uncertain terms in the past that they will not hesitate to disregard what the volunteers want and will continue to press for developments that they 'think' the community should have. The problem of communication has always been an issue - when the WMF doesn't want to know, it puts its hands over its ears. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:06, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not actually opposed to the latest developments: I find some of the features of the notification interface quite useful, and I'm very glad we have the visual editor, though for the sort of thing I mostly do, it's not yet useful. But it's allowing the NYC chapter to plan workshops in WP editing for non computer-literate groups that we could not previously have reached. And when I show it to computer-literate people who think the wikitext too much of a bother, they all say they're more likely to actually edit. The main thing the Foundation did wrong here is not having it years ago, and if they over-reacted by putting this one out before it was really ready, I can understand it. And I myself think I could adapt to any editing environment--any regular editor here should be able to do that.

But this would have been so much easier had they told us properly what they're doing, and asked our opinion, and persisted till they got consensus support, just as you and I must do if we want to make changes. Not all their views about communication are irrational; a good case could be made that it's the present in-project system of communication we have fallen into that is ridiculous, and I can see why they have such difficulty learning it. But if you want to talk to people and convince them, you have to learn their language. Trying to make them learn your superior ways is the arrogance of last century's imperialism. It developed together with modern capitalism, and elaborate NGOs and educational institutions, and those who come here with background in the corporate or formal institutional world tend to regard us as unenlightened primitives whose chaotic structure is incapable of actual function. Thus I have a practical suggestion, that everyone hired by the foundation, spend their first month in an apprenticeship editing a WP project on topics of their own choice, and helping with our housekeeping, and continue to do so for maybe 10% of their time, out on the shop floor with the working people. Even the missionary and anthropologist expected to earn respect from knowing the natives on their own terms. The proposals for having selected persons as intermediates is like an anthropologist using only translators.

Of course, by our own lights, it's our pattern of working that it the true one, and the chaos only apparent. We are here not for technical or vocational reasons in the usual sense, but to build a major work for the benefit of mankind on a principle of equal collaboration. Our idealism is not just a corporate slogan, but our continuing motivation. And the reason we expect our way to be followed and respected is that we've actually succeeded--we've made something more functional and helpful than we would have dreamed possible when we started, and certainly one of greater size and importance than all the critics thought we'd every be able to do--the conventional wisdom was that we'd collapse at 1/4 our present size. Now the theorists must rethink the way humans can work in groups based on the way we and multitudes of other such groups have succeeded in working.

Of course we're imperfect. We have not solved all the problems of human interactions. We need skilled people coming in from outside to keep us vital, and prevent us from self-complacency. That most of the experienced editors edit for 4 years at most is actually is a good thing. Those working here are mostly people at their most experimental and creative periods, and also an increasing number who have wide practical experience. Our role is not necessarily to work in our old ways, but to teach the new people how to develop their own ways, but in a manner that will not destroy what has been already accomplished. We are rationally afraid of outsiders coming in to solve our problems, and leave us a desert. DGG ( talk ) 22:25, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

"they will not hesitate to disregard what the volunteers want and will continue to press for developments that they 'think' the community should have" That's for sure. PumpkinSky talk 02:44, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Second opinion

I wanted to ask if you could give a second opinion on this section of the Yelp inc. page. I originally had this under History. It has since then been substantially expanded and move into a "Controversy" section, before the feedback came in that we should avoid such names. I still feel it could be trimmed about 30% and should be moved back to History. For example, some of the individual accusations of Yelp manipulating reviews are only cited to local press or a Forbes blogger and are not as prominent as those that there were high-profile lawsuits for. There is some excessive wordiness, etc. But before I make specific suggestions, I would want to make sure that I am correct generally. I would like to avoid the appearance of micro-managing and lobbying in controversial areas. CorporateM (Talk) 15:44, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

responded there. DGG ( talk ) 22:43, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! It's a good thing I did not push for trims. CorporateM (Talk) 00:06, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Do you think I can borrow you again here? If I have not over-burdened you with my requests yet. It is valuable to have input from someone that you can be confident will be correct. CorporateM (Talk) 00:11, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Ruby McGregor-Smith

Hi. Instead of just posting warning boxes at the top of the article, could you please explain on the Talk Page your argument for flagging the article as being written like an advertisement and the content having been copied and pasted? It has been over a month and nothing has been discussed. Thanks, Vivj2012 (talk) 10:11, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Promotional:use of adjectives of praise

copyvio: first section copied almost word for word from [14] DGG ( talk ) 15:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Could you highlight the promotional content? I need examples of adjectives of praise so I can request another editor improves the content accordingly.Thanks Vivj2012 (talk) 10:31, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi DGG. The 'written like an advertisement' warning box has been at the top of the Ruby McGregor-Smith article for four months. Without knowing what's wrong with the content I'm unable to improve/resolve it. Could you get back to me when you have a moment? Many thanks Vivj2012 (talk) 09:26, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Deon Swiggs

It has been already voted to keep by Admins, so I will be removing the box you have placed on the article. Please do not go on a deleting spree. Thanks (talk) 10 July 2013 (NZST)

the AfD will decide, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deon Swiggs. I've been wrong before, and that's the purpose of AfD. to see what others think. I suggest that a more compact and less hagiographic article might help persuade people to keep it. DGG ( talk ) 15:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Merton Professor of English Language at the University of Oxford - notable?

Hi DGG! I wonder if you had time to offer some advice on an AFC submission. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Suzanne Romaine seems light on significant coverage in secondary sources, and has been declined at AfC for a paragraph about the person's academic work not having inline citations. The creator of the submission has asked about this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk#Review of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Suzanne Romaine. The person seems perhaps to meet WP:PROF (criterion 5?) and seems to be an academic of some significance. What do you think? Arthur goes shopping (talk) 17:19, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

• Unquestionably notable. One of the provisions of WP:PROF is a named professorship at a major university. Nothing further has to be proven, and official sources do to prove it. DGG ( talk ) 23:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC) .

Toll

Hi DGC. These divisions are huge and in terms of revenue and sales are bigger than some companies. Toll is big in Australia, Europe and Asia. I have only really started the articles. I think others will contribute to them.

Toll is really six very different companies using the toll brand. They have achieved their current size by acquiring many smaller companies around the world some of which have wikipedia pages. I believe that the next part of the process is to move the content from these the old articles into one of the six new articles. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_IPEC , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_Aviation and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_Priority are all part of Toll Global Express and this content needs to be migrated to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_Global_Express page. So I think that this means that there will be fewer pages in Wikipedia about Toll not more. I know that some Wikipedia editors get overprotective about their work so I am concerned about the reaction that I will get when I suggest on the talk page of these articles that they be effectively closed down and their content moved to the "History" section of the Toll Global Express page. Do you have any advice for best practices in regards to this process? Thanks for the help with the referencing. Regards --PinkAechFas (talk) 19:44, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it would in any case be a good idea to start there, merging the smallest, so I will support you. But please declare any conflict of interest; not that there need be any, for I have cleaned up similar article groups in the same way as you are proposing. DGG ( talk ) 23:04, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

George C. Prendergast

Hi, it looks like you accepted new article George C. Prendergast on 20th June, but unfortunately there already exists article George C. Prendergast (American oncologist and molecular biologist) which looks like the same man...GrahamHardy (talk) 15:08, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

same man, but the sequence is more complicated. George C. Prendergast (American oncologist and molecular biologist) article was started as User:Sciencestar27/sandbox on May 20, moved to AfC by another review of July 5, and accepted on July 6. So that's the duplicate. More important, I probably shouldn't have acceptedthe AfC without editing it further. I will merge the articles and do that a little later today. DGG ( talk ) 18:18, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Curriculum of the Waldorf schools

Hi, this is a friendly heads-up that I took off the POV tag from this article awaiting an actual discussion or dispute on the talk page, which (the tag mentions) is supposed to exist first. Please open this, explaining what the issues are, and then re-add the tag. Thanks! hgilbert (talk) 11:43, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Re-reading, I used a more exact tag, on both it and the main article. I've added a mention why on each. I'm not sure how extensively I will have time to get involved in this closed circle of articles, but I call attention to problems when I see them. DGG ( talk ) 05:50, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

OK...if you do have time, it would be helpful if you can point to a few exemplary and specific issues. People have sometimes asked for more criticism integrated into the article, for example, but we need to find reliable sources to draw this from (blogs and personal websites not really qualifying here). hgilbert (talk) 09:14, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I did comment; but we need to find discussions of their methods in general works dealing with the topic of elementary and secondary educational curriculums. They seem prominent enough that I would expect them to be easily findable, though not perhaps online. The main article seems to have some relevant material that could be used. If it truly hard to find outside their own publications, then it's similar to the problem we have with many topics: if nobody from the main stream of discussion has covered their methods , are they notable outside their own group ? DGG ( talk ) 15:57, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit description

Thanks for your edit description here, it's much nicer and more informative than the usual form message that gets left. --TKK ^{bark !} 00:32, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

deletion of Certified Penetration Testing Consultant

Thank you for deleting the Morning277 articles I tagged fro CSD G5. However, the block on Arifhasan23 was removed after I tagged Certified Penetration Testing Consultant. I wrongly decided not to remove the tag. —rybec 02:55, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

restored. Thanks for letting me know, because this in the 1/2 of 1% of false positives in this group of several hundred socks. DGG ( talk ) 08:19, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for restoring the page. I don't believe it's a false positive, but I'll take that up with the admin who unblocked. —rybec 15:02, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

yes, there are problems in how to deal with this and the similar not quite certain cases in the group. There are two possible ways of thinking about them: In the past, we have usually tended to AGF; at present, the extent of the problem is inclining us otherwise. My own feeling is still to use G11 instead of G5 when in doubt, but to use G11 rather more liberally than in the past. I think others feel the same about G11 at least--in practice, the G11 criterion is becoming "too promotional to be worth fixing" DGG ( talk ) 00:56, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

After you restored the page, I took a closer look at it and identified several more accounts that look like sock-puppets. I belatedly realized that I should have looked more carefully at all those other articles, too. I also read a remark by Dennis Brown explaining that deletion would make investigation more difficult. Is there a way to make them viewable again, in furtherance of the SPI, without causing too much work for the administrators, and is that something you'd be willing to do (I was thinking temporary undeletion, moving to subpages of the SPI, moving to my user space, or use of Special:Export)? Here's a list that includes most of the deleted articles (namely, the ones I had watch-listed and which were recently deleted):

Extended content

4Cabling Aasted American Writers and Artists Inc. Amvona Bizible Brendan Wallace Brosix (Company) Bunndle CHMB (company) Campus Apartments Certified Disaster Recovery Engineer Chris Hobart ClassDojo Cleeng Confio CrowdOptic DDC Advocacy David Kiger David Schwedel (entrepreneur) Digital Prospectors Corporation Dominique Molina Echopass Emmanuel Gregory Lemelson Ethan Bearman Fundology Game Cooks GatherSpace (company) Genius Inside Global Met Coal Corporation Go Try It On GroundWork Heel That Pain (company) Heliospectra ITelagen Inflection (company) Inigral John Uustal Jonathan Cardella Junk It! Legitmix Loyaltyworks (company) MarketLive Max Cartier MediCortex Mike Macadaan Misty Lown Neal Creighton, Sr Network Capital NewYorkStay ONEHOPE Oren Laurent PCN Technology (company) PeopleSmart Pneuron PressPad RepairClinic.com ResumeBear Review Boost (company) SJ (musician) Security Innovation SocialSoft Steven M. Neil Sweetcouch TableTopics Talk:Brendan Wallace Talk:Confio Talk:CrowdOptic Talk:David Kiger Talk:Dominique Molina Talk:Ethan Bearman Talk:Fundology Talk:Genius Inside Talk:Kevin R. Foote Talk:Legitmix Talk:Max Cartier Talk:Mike Macadaan Talk:NewYorkStay Talk:ONEHOPE Talk:Oren Laurent Talk:RepairClinic.com Talk:SJ (musician) Talk:Steven M. Neil Talk:Tee Ashira Talk:Tom Dyson Talk:Tsebo Outsourcing Group Talk:WorldEscape Tee Ashira Telly (website) Tom Dyson Tom Hoban (entrepreneur) Tom Kemp (entrepreneur) Tsebo Outsourcing Group Virool Waterfield Group WorldEscape Zipwhip

I realize that this request is likely to be annoying and I'm sorry, but I hadn't made an SPI report before. I don't mind going to Deletion Review but thought I'd ask you first. —rybec 20:49, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	thank u 3bdulelah (talk) 07:05, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll try may best to find English sources. all what I have now are Arabic ones. the problems is that most of the media call most of the armed opposition groups as FSA 3bdulelah (talk) 07:45, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Arabic sources are fine. Just give a translation of a key sentence. DGG ( talk ) 15:05, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of EDP Energias do Brasil

Hi, DGG. I agree that the reason for deleted (creation by sock) is valid and serious. However, I have understandings that this is usually used for newly created articles, not for articles which have been for years and have been edited by number of other editors. Is there any other reason for deletion in addition to G5? The company itself is notable, so maybe you could restore the last version to my user space and I will clean it up before recreating? The problem with Edson Rosa's socks is that if we delete all articles what they have created, we should delete most of articles about Brazilian companies (and also some others from other countries). And it is impossible to stop his current editing as he uses dynamic IP from the Sao Paolo region. Beagel (talk) 07:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree that that is a consideration, but it should also be weighed against rewarding socks. If they know that the articles they create will remain, no matter how they create them, we keep the incentive for others to pay socks to continue to do this and it is getting way out of hand Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Morning277--I am One of Many (talk) 07:15, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Right. It's not impossible to stop the current editing. If we manage to remove all the articles now present, and continue to remove them as they get submitted, then there will be no incentive for that editor to continue. It's the only defense we have. (I did not previously think this way, but the problems we have now been finding are so severe, that they threaten the objectivity of the encyclopedia, and it's time for emergency measures. I agree there's a problem about removing such a large body of content, and the articles should be rewritten. Perhaps the time to rewrite them will be a little while in the future, once we get this editor to stop--and to rewrite them without any of their work in the edit history. I can certainly make the material available to use the references as a base for such rewriting, but perhaps it would be wise to wait. I see only one alternative solution, which is to require identification from editors, and that is such as drastic change in our principles that it is not yet time to propose it. It would be a serious compromise in our mission, but it's a better alternative than permitting promotional editing. We would lose truly open editing, but we'd still have an encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 07:42, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

note: I have come to re-evaluate the question of the articles by this particular editor. They seem for the most part unequivocally useful, and often just what we would do ourselves if we were adding content on these topics. I'm unsure how to handle this, and my opinion varies. Some other sockfarms have been very different, with promotional articles on sub-notable companies. 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 21:16, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Busman's holiday

FYI: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Decline of library usage. Warden (talk) 16:38, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

yes, there is nothing more amusing that taking a statistical report from an organization and finding the holes in it. I used to take library statistics and do this for my class--nice to have another opportunity. Unlike then, I have other things to do, or I could have kept going for pages. Academic grade for the article, B+ (as of the time it was written--if someone presented it now it would be a B- for outdated sources), grade for the deletion argument, C-. DGG ( talk ) 23:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Legiotex

Hello. I write because my item has been deleted for being promotional. Yet another article similar to mine or just has not been erased. He advised me to do my article a consultant Legiotex Article modeled Apifresh, because I have no idea of ​​the use of Wikipedia. I do not understand why the two items that are similar European projects. One remains in Wikipedia and the other has been removed. So it would be very grateful, if I say I should delete or phrases are incorrect by having commercial hue. Thank you very much, greetings. Thanks for your help. I'm trying to search for similar items to see and compare. To correct mine. Any help from you will be welcome, especially where promotional tone note in the article.Rubendesign (talk) 10:49, 19 July 2013 (UTC) Rubendesign (talk) 08:41, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll give you some advice in the next few days. DGG ( talk ) 05:48, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Sarah Franscesca Green (AfC academics)

Can I get a second opinion on something? I'm having a mild dispute on Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Sarah Franscesca Green, who I believe satisfies criteria 5 of WP:PROF by being a Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki and previously serving the same named appointment at the University of Manchester - both posts are verifiable by the respective entries on the universities' websites. Other AfC reviewers have declined the article and the creator is asking questions on the help desk. Can you clarify this person meets the notability criteria? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:43, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I accepted it. The publications plus the position make for notability, tho reviews of her books need to be added. I personally think all full professors at a major university meet WP:PROF. Opinion at AfD has not consistently supported me--some of the experienced eds. regularly discussing the topic do not think it necessarily sufficient except for the traditional UK style universities where there is one professor of something. I have almost always been able to show such people notable, except in fields against which there is a prejudice, such as education or other traditionally female-dominated fields. But it's likely enough to accept any AfC that's ok otherwise. (In addition, anyone who has published two books at good publishers which have received significant reviews meets WP:AUTHOR, which is actually an exceedingly loose criterion, tho in this case the book reviews need to be shown.

The request for secondary sources is unnecessary, when other criteria than the GNG is being used. The university site is a reliable source to prove the position; the books prove themselves--though I generally add the WorldCat reference for them & verify that they are actual books rather than just reports, and journal articles are proven by the journal references themselves.

I am systematically examining all the hundreds of declined AfCs for for academics to see which I can rescue, and this AfC was on my list. I could go much faster except that one of the things that always needs to be checked is copyvio from their university site. And, of course, I try to improve any accepted article to our customary format & referencing styles. It is unrealistic to expect new users to learn these perfectly before getting articles accepted. Nobody should be reviewing who does not know how to fix articles or at least know correctly & specifically what is actually needed and clearly explain it to the new editor in detail, rather than just use the temp[late.

AfC is notorious for people using their own private ideas of the WP standards, whether to decline or accept. Thousands of promotional or even copyvio AfCs have been accepted over the years, and we need to locate & get rid of those articles if they can't be quickly fixed. DGG ( talk ) 16:45, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, and for passing the article. My general understanding is that a named appointment means the academic world at large has decided your work is worthy of note and should be published to further the understanding of human knowledge - which, to me, is what "notability" is all about. The problem with professors is their work isn't typically distributed to the general public, so inherent notability acts as a "free pass" where we assume the sources must exist, but are non-trivial to access. Schools and villages are two other classes of article that regularly come under fire for "not enough sources", but can be passed via an alternative guideline. And, as I recently discussed as a meetup, the general opinion is that there are a large amount of people holding public office in African governments who would pass WP:POLITICIAN, but we don't have an article for them.

As you've no doubt seen, AfC has come under fire recently, partially for its technical design, but partly because there's generally insufficient good judgement in reviews. I think the "canned responses" you get in the helper script is one of the most damaging things, and most of my work at AfC is on the help desk, where writing a tailored response to the particular problem is required, and generally gets better results. I don't think enough people work with the article submitters - even if somebody submits a non-notable promotional piece, there's still the opportunity to teach them basic notability and verifiability policies, so if they go away understanding Wikipedia better, that's a plus point. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:25, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

(1) The key word there is "named" appointment. Some professorships are endowed or memorial appointments, normally pay somewhat to considerably more, and are considered great honors. The longer-established school have many of them, others a few. A named full professorship of this sort at a major university is recognized by everyone working on the subject as notable.

(2) You are absolutely right about a AfC. And I agree that the ideal solution for someone who writes an article that will never be acceptable is when they realize it , and withdraw the submission themselves.There's a message I use, modified as needed : " If you decide that the article cannot presently meet our standards, you can facilitate matters by placing at the top a line reading : {{db-author}}, and it will be quickly deleted.. When you have the necessary material, then try again. I do not want to discourage you, but to urge you to continue to contribute."

(3)general principles of notability later tonight. . DGG ( talk ) 16:35, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Baltimore County Councilman

Hi DGG,

A page of mine was recently marked for deletion (David Marks, Baltimore County Councilman). I apologize that I was not following proper Wikipedia procedure. I want to make this a genuine article on Councilman Marks, and am not trying to make it a political advertisement. I was wondering if you could tell me if this page for a Baltimore City Councilman is in correct form: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Kraft

I want to get this article right and apologize for not creating it in the proper manner.

Thank you, SKahl7180Skahl7180 (talk) 14:01, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Carl Stokes (Baltimore) is better. . They all need some edits to remove adjectives of praise. And the legislative history should include only bills that they are actually primarily responsible for, with a 3rd party source to prove it, not one of several sponsors. Concentrate on factual things, such as the elections, not on the positions, which belong in an political advertisement Let me know when you are ready.~

Crown Disposal, Inc

Hi, DGG.

I noticed that you had deleted the page for Crown Disposal, Inc a few months ago. I was hoping to convince you that an A7 ("not significant") was unwarranted. Crown Disposal is a fairly sizeable company and a large player in the California waste management industry, operating multiple waste facilities as well as having relationships with other large players, including Recology, a very large and very well-known company.

Further, the events that have occurred at their landfill in Lamont, California are perhaps significant in and of themselves - two young men died there in very unfortunate circumstances, caused in fact by extremely poor safety equipment, practices and training. In fact, the local authorities revoked their permit for operation, and there is an ongoing court battle over whether or not this company can continue to operate, especially in light of their multiple safety and environmental violations.

Given the current situation in the area (Lamont was reported to have the worst air quality in the US) and Crown / CRRR's involvement in local environmental destruction, I believe that Crown Disposal is a significant entity, worthy of a Wikipedia entry, and I believe the article as written explained that. Of course, I'd be happy to work with you and other editors to improve the article, if you'd like to see it improved.

Wikipedia is a place everyone - from kids at school to housewives, homebuyers, residents, workers, even important corporate types - goes to learn about people, places, historical events, and corporations. I believe that an article about a corporation with this kind of track record is an important addition to Wikipedia.

Thanks, DGG. Appreciate any comments or help you might be willing to share! Sandyhart68 (talk) 00:25, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I will take a look today DGG ( talk ) 13:50, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I see the AfC you created on Apr 25, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Crown Disposal Co., within a few minutes of when you created the identicalmainspace article.The AfC was declined on May 1 by another editor. I wonder why you didn't mention the AfC just now. I see you added a related paragraph to Recology to say they used one of the company's facilities for a part of the operations. You also added information about not yet substantiated charges against Recology. You're obviously somewhat involved in this issue. G11 is used not only for articles promoting a company, but articles promoting a cause. Obviously it can be difficult to distinguish between neutrally reporting about a cause or a company and promoting it. I think the best step is to proceed with improving the AfC, rather than restoring the article and, probably, sending it to AfD .

If this was a natural person, I'd say that what you were doing is added poorly supported negative information. Our standards are not quite as strict for companies, though I am not sure all your information is supported at all, or that it is proportionate coverage, or that everything you added as been in a neutral manner-- as one example, in an article on another company you said "Republic Services has also had several high-profile fines..." -- where does the word "high-profile" come from? Had the company used it in praising itself, it would be removed, and this works in both directions.

I have every personal sympathy for your general position, but that's not relevant here.

What I think we need in articles on companies is greater attention to the history of the company, rather than the routine appointments and the occasional court case. Some of the articles on firms in this industry have extensive earlier copyvio sections on this from company publications. This is of course the wrong way to go about it, but they will serve adequately as sources. Historical data for any public company and most large private companies is relatively easy to obtain, and any business library can help--most even medium size public libraries have the basic sources. Finding them on line can be difficult ,as the relevant databases tend to be quite expensive (and focused on the immediate current situation) Resist the temptation to tie these too closely in with social developments--this sort of connection should only be done when there are third party sources noneed to apologize. Tho afcwas intended to make things discussing it. With the background of a substantial article, specific incidents can be given without being disproportionate to the rest of the article. DGG ( talk ) 00:23, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, DGG for getting back to me on this. I apologize about not mentioning the the AfC; it's been awhile since I looked at the page, or even thought about Crown, until I was discussing them with a friend. I believe what happened when I submitted the article originally, I didn't understand what had happened to the article; while it was in queue for review, it appeared to me as if it had disappeared, so I just made it again (while I'm on wikipedia a lot, and have made edits and contributions, that was my first stab at creating a page - chalk it up to me being a newbie, and please accept my humble apology for making rookie errors).

Your points are well taken. When I have some time, I'll try to get back to the original submission and spruce it up a bit and try again. Thanks! Sandyhart68 (talk) 15:24, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

no need to apologize. AfC was intend to make things easier for beginners, but instead it often just adds to the possible sources of confusion. We're having an interesting discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC 2013 of whether we should require it; that seems to be soundly rejected, and the discussion is now more on the question of whether we should even recommend it. I think your opinion might be worthwhile having. DGG ( talk ) 03:23, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Canadian Association of HIV Research

Another editor created Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Canadian Association of HIV Research, which has been rejected.

This is a national scholarly association, but I can't find reliable sources for it. A google search for Canadian Association of HIV Research conference shows plenty of research presented at its conferences. Could you please take a quick look at the article? Eastmain (talk • contribs) 14:18, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

This is not an unusual situation for professional societies. Personally, I'd simply include them all, if they cover a wide enough field & are the leading national societies. This is an area where the GNG is useless. Reliable information about them is typically only found in their own newsletters & websites, and in financial reports of their activities. Anything in a third party source is very apt to be nonsubstantial or derived from there,

The afc as submitted should have been deleted immediately before G13 got to it as promotional and mostly copyvio--it's essentially a republication of their objectives and a list of officers. Web sites need to be read carefully: I notice their claim is not to be the largest Canadian organization devoted to AIDS research, which is probably Canadian Federation for AIDS Research, but the largest Canadian association of AIDS researchers. It may in fact be not just the largest but the only Canadian national organization of AIDS researchers

The best way to cover these, as I think you suspect, is to write an article on the series of conferences, or to make the main content of the article the series of conferences. We are so lamentably weak in doing these for many of the most important international conferences that this article is not my highest priority. DGG ( talk ) 23:34, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

AfC Mojsisovics

Hi DGG, I've taken on board what you've said and would appreciate some feedback, when you get a chance. There's been a few problems with your hints though: Firstly there are no know recordings of his works - Unfortunately there doesn't exist any Austrian discography reliable or otherwise. Conversations with the Austrian Mediathek in Vienna and various libraries were equally fruitless. Reviews of his works suffer a similar fate: - Nothing can be researched in EBSCO host 'cause anything over 30 years isn't deemed valid (impact factor etc etc - you're a librarian you know the jig). RILM etc don't offer any reviews either. I've cleaned up the referencing section and have had to quote an apparently anonymous site or two. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks Austriancomposers (talk) 14:38, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

This can become a formidable research project, and it won't be necessary for justifying the existence of the article, thanks to the listing in Grove. I adjusted the style a little, made links to and from his notable students, and accepted it. It can always be improved later. DGG ( talk ) 21:09, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Journals at MEDRS

There's a discussion at WT:MEDRS about indexing biomedical journals that would probably benefit far more from your presence than from mine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:27, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

thanks for letting me know. I commented. They are looking for a black/white test for reliability, and there isn't any. DGG ( talk ) 16:23, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Mojsisovics

Hi DGG,

just wanted to say thanks. THANK YOU!

Austriancomposers (talk) 06:10, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Meaning of "consensus of the community"

Because of a disagreement about it, I started a strawpoll/rfc inquiring into the meaning of the phrase "consensus of the community" at WP:CLOSE. I then looked through the history to see when that phrase was added and discovered it was added by you in this edit. Perhaps you'd be willing to tell us what you meant?

See: Wikipedia_talk:Closing_discussions#RFC.2FStrawpoll:_Clarification_of_what_.22consensus_of_the_community.22_means.

Thanks! --B2C 23:42, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

That was not the point of my addition in 2008, as I've explained there. I also discussed my current position on the issue you raised. If the situation I discuss is not what you intended to discuss, let me know, and i will comment further. I don't think a straw poll at this point is useful, and I suggest that instead it be changed to a discussion. DGG ( talk ) 02:40, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

And in fact, I see that the topic of discussion was the uniformity of article titles. Of all possible MOS issues, this is the one which needs to be adapted to the individual circumstances, and a rigid uniformity is impractical. To try to bring a discussion about general consensus on WP when the actual purpose is dissatisfaction about some article title decisions seems a misconceived use of limited editor resources. . The relevant principles are Let well enough alone and We are here to write an encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 04:05, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Nils Otto Myklestad

I am delighted that you chose to review the submission, and I will continue to work on the page to strengthen it in the ways you suggested. The initial rejection was indeed a jolt but also an indication to me that I had not made the case, perhaps because I first met Myklestad in 1962 and have known and appreciated his work over these many years since; been too close to it maybe.

I have made a few suggestions for changes to the Wikipedia vibration page and see other ways in which I can suggest changes to other pages that may be helpful to others. So my commitment to the process is renewed. Many thanks.

Kllwiki (talk) 03:52, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Problematic IP

Hello. Would you mind semi-protecting the academic journal Boundary 2 Talk page. An anonymous IP has become problematic, and has violated WP:3RR (not to mention wasting editors' time). Please see most recent edit history. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 22:26, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello. I'm the IP here. I and another editor have made several good-faith edits about how to improve the page. These were censored by Randykitty and Steve Quinn. The journal is not peer-reviewed (common knowledge around the Humanities -- even the journal's webpage and frontmatter no longer use the term "peer-reviewed" to describe itself) and yet wiki editors Steve Quinn and Randykitty insist on using Ulrich database, which is out of date, as the definitive reference. At any rate, that discussion should continue until the matter is resolved with a reference that OAA editors like Quinn and Randykitty won't remove.204.15.145.111 (talk) 22:52, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

As I have taken a position in the discussion, I cannot use page protection. My previously expressed view holds, that they use a form of editorial review appropriate for the nature of the material, but not precisely peer-review is the usual sense. Trying to reduce this to a single word is impossible. Ulrich's did the best it could with the situation within their own parameters and limitations, but we can and should give more exact information . DGG ( talk ) 23:45, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I also think the fact that this is listed in selective indexing services says or implies that this journal is peer reviewed. I am thinking that the Ulrich's reference is not even needed to say this is peer reviewed. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 01:17, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

While we have a good reference that says this is peer-reviewed, we have no reference that says otherwise. So all we can (and should say) is what the source says up until such time that a better source becomes available. The "good faith" edits referred to by the IP are not that at all. They are rants about WP editors and the editors of b2 and have no place on a talk page (see WP:TALK). Meanwhile, I'd like to note that the journal's editors are "peers" too... --Randykitty (talk) 14:23, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

No, they're not. There is no one on staff who is a specialist in Chinese culture, which would be necessary for a "peer" review in this issue: http://boundary2.dukejournals.org/content/38/1.toc - they may be "reviewed" but they're certainly not disciplinary "peers".136.145.122.85 (talk) 22:52, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

And who says that in a case like that, they don't consult with outside specialists? Any proof for that? There is no source anywhere that says that there is no peer review. There is a good source that says there is peer review. End of discussion. --Randykitty (talk) 11:31, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

There is a better source, the journal itself, which does not corroborate that what you claim is true. What the journal states about itself is the definite reference. End of discussion.136.145.122.85 (talk) 13:15, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it is not the best source. A journal could say about itself "the most important journal in the world", for example. And at WP primary sources should not be used if secondary sources are available. --Randykitty (talk) 13:45, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

There's no POV or notability issue here, or something imaginary that b2 is claiming about itself. We have an outdated secondary source that is being used as a definitive reference. So, no, there's no reliable secondary source, until--as has been noted ad nauseum on the talk page-- Ulrich's database is updated.136.145.122.85 (talk) 13:53, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't think we should infer peer review from listing in selective indices (we don't need to, anyway), in the same way that I've stated on the article talk page that we shouldn't infer a lack of peer review from the fact that the journal's front-matter doesn't mention peer review. Dricherby (talk) 15:54, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Ulrich's says it's peer-reviewed, which is the source I was referring to in my comment above. Most indexes will indeed include almost exclusively peer-reviewed publications, but the important word here is indeed "almost"... --Randykitty (talk) 16:33, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

The way to word it is to say that Ulrich's says it is peer reviewed, and give further explanation citing the journal. I' explained more fully on the talk p. But the attack on the journal is inexplicable--unless it is perhaps connected with the attack by "Quorty" on various US connected literary figures. DGG ( talk ) 17:24, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

deleted page (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)

hi DGG, I am working for Cheil Worldwide, an advertising agency located in South Korea. Yesterday, I found out the company information on Wiki was pretty outdated so made some changes. There are lots of other contents to be added and/or revised. However this morning I found out it was deleted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheil_Worldwide 17:51, 16 July 2013 DGG (talk | contribs) deleted page Cheil Worldwide (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)

I don't understand what I was trying to umambiguously advertise or promote on the Wikipedia, but if you could let me know which sentences were such cases, that would be appreciated. Would you be able to retrieve the Cheil_Worldwide article please? If you'd like to have more conversation, you can reach me at soomee.moon at cheil.com (I am not familiar with Wikipedia system to be honest, so trying to learn about it step by step.) thanks, Soomee — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moonsoomee (talk • contribs)

I shall look at the other article you mentioned.[Moonsoomee has not mentioned any other article. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 15:52, 18 July 2013 (UTC)] The problem about promotionalism with the one you wrote are first, the use of extravagantly promotional language: its "thousands of global employees create ideas that move brands, products and people from nearly 40 offices in 33 countries. ... delivers innovative communications strategies that drive business results ... creativity is world renown, ..." Second, the attempt to list the executives of all the divisions, and the very long list of services in the infobox, all of which are totally routine for an advertising agency. The article was nominated for deletion by a reliable editor, and any admin here would unquestionably have deleted it. Even were this rewritten, you have no usable references according to the WP:GNG. The AdAge material is not visible, though I will try to find a place to see it. (if it is widely available in subscribing libraries, it's usable, if it's more restrictive, it isn't--but it in any case needs a specific link or reference. and should give a sourced quotation. ) Everything else is a mention or a press release. If you are the largest agency in the country, it should be possible to write an article, but you need to first find good independent news and magazine sources that say it.

Our current best practice for people acting as press agents for a company is to submit the article through WP:Articles for creation, which gives people here a chance to review it. The rules about promotional articles, though, apply there also. Try rewriting it neutrally, with good sources, but do it there. DGG ( talk ) 19:15, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi DGG, When I tried the WP:Articles for creation, below message popped up. I am happy to do it through WP:Articles for creation but can I have the deleted article (Cheil_Worldwide) to make changes? I did not save the wording and it's a lot of work to start from scratch. --Moonsoomee (talk) 05:09, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

---

A page with this title has previously been deleted. If you are creating a new page with different content, please continue. If you are recreating a page similar to the previously deleted page, or are unsure, please first contact the deleting administrator using the information provided below. 17:51, 16 July 2013 DGG (talk | contribs) deleted page Cheil Worldwide (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)

---

Another questions is the "good independent news and magazine sources" - some of the sources are available to paid subscribers only. Or, some are not in English. In such cases, should I just give up introducing such facts? --Moonsoomee (talk) 05:09, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

1. .I have moved it to User:Moonsoomee/Cheil Worldwide for improvements.
2. .References in any language are acceptable, but if not in English, translate at least the title.
3. .References behind paywalls are acceptable, if you have actually seen them.
4. .The main problem is not additional facts, it's rewriting to remove the advertising, especially from the first part. Try doing it without adjectives entirely. List only the principal line of business in the infobox, and only the CEO.
5. , Please check with me before moving it back. DGG ( talk ) 01:13, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Randykitty's talk page.
Message added 14:19, 29 July 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Randykitty (talk) 14:19, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Myklestad

I did more work on the Myklestad biography and have a couple of questions. But before that thanks again, and again.

Most of his work was published and how he is best known is as N. O. Myklestad or sometimes Nils O. I used the full name for completeness. Should the page title be changed to N O Myklestad or an alias created? If so how?

Much of my information comes from a Univ Texas Arlington internal memorial document as well as resumes that I have. I was his next to last PhD student and inherited his library, so I have a lot of first-hand information, but no official bio information reference yet. He was a fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science so I can probably find something there or in a Who's Who but I have to go the Univ Library tomorrow to dig that out. Is the page OK till I get that sorted out?

I also have a report on the Spruce Goose in my office to get the specs on and maybe one on the B36. And I'd like to track down his other PhD students and add that info which I can probably do through dissertation abstracts.

Meanwhile take a look at the page if you have time and let me know how you think it's going.

Many thanks - Kent Lawrence

Kllwiki (talk) 22:06, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

1. We do not consider who's who and related publications a reliable source, because the subject of the article controls what is being written. They can however be used for the plain facts of birth, education and so on.
2. Has the U Texas document been published on the web, or elsewhere. If so, you can use it.
3. The notability of a scientist depends on the extent to which his work is cited. For publications in his period, there will not necessarily be complete information, but see what you can find in GoogleScholar/Scopus/Web of Knowledge.
4. Alternative notability depends on the books being used as standard works, with substantial reviews. Get information on editions and library holdings from Worldcat, and try to find reviews of them.
5. What is really needed, is awards he has been given, not just those named after him.
6. The way to make credirects is to make a page under the alternate form of the name, with the contents reading only #Redirect[[Nils Otto Myklestad]] DGG ( talk ) 01:20, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Understand. Google scholar gives a lot of evidence of the contribution of the Myklestad Method with over 200 references to its use from 1946 to 2013. I'll be out on travel for 10 days or so but will provide additional documentation on the other points when I return. Thanks for the constructive comments. See now that I really didn't do my homework before starting on this project.

Kllwiki (talk) 01:14, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Speedy deletion declined: Integrationalism

Hello DGG. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Integrationalism, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: article is about a book, not a person, so A7 does not apply. Thank you. JohnCD (talk) 09:10, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

my error, of course; I can't imagine how I came to make it. DGG ( talk ) 18:43, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

A good example of the two-pairs-of-eyes effect. I apologise for templating you: I was using the CSDHelper script, and was surprised (and amused) when it told me who it had notified. JohnCD (talk) 22:24, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I would much rather be templated, than not told of my errors. DGG ( talk ) 23:27, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Business & Decision

Hello DGG ! I wonder if Business & Decision wiki is not quite a promotional article. Do you think it could be proposed for deletion ? Thank's for your opinion. Best regards. 2A01:E35:243A:FAF0:216:CBFF:FEA7:C51A (talk) 13:08, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I already tried this April at AfD. It was closed as keep. DGG ( talk ) 23:26, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Ted Eisenberg et al

I'm just going to retract all of it, delete what I wrote. If Wikipedia wants this, "Booby Piggy Bank" and this guy's article with references only to having done the world's most breast augmentations and a hatchet thrower as a hobby, which is in a blog, not a news article, nor AOL, that's fine. It was nominated for deletion once, and kept.

He might be the only practicing osteopath breast cosmetic surgeon with a listing on Wikipedia. So be it. I am not going to fight. I was outraged, but I give up now.

Aaron Swartz's "partner" was a woman, but that was a subject of contention too. The newspaper described her as "his girlfriend". What is wrong with having a girlfriend? Instead, user Mark Bernstein and others agreed that the gender "she" should not be used. Given that her name is not gender-specific, Taren, it is difficult to know what gender she is.

Similarly, for John Forbes Nash, PhD and Nobel prize winner, he had a younger sister and married a woman who graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics from MIT. None of that was in the article. I added it. I also read the talk page, which went into lengthy debate about whether or not he is homosexual. A lengthy discussion is currently on the talk page about whether anal or oral penetration is necessary to define homosexual activity. The fact of the matter, which I wrote in the talk page (it was promptly deleted, unlike anything else I have experienced here) was that John Nash had several relationships with different women, and was a handsome man, who loved his grandmother and parents. He was an excellent student, enjoyed school, and chose Princeton because he wanted to be nearer to his family in West Virginia. He wasn't some sort of misanthrope. He is happily remarried to his wife now, works, goes on trips with his colleagues at the Advanced Instiitute at Princeton, and takes nice photographs with beautiful women smiling at him and of himself interacting with his colleagues (all PhD mathematicians). But no, so many people who write on WP only want to portray successful men as alienated underachievers who didn't get along with their families, and were disliked because they were homosexual. I'm sorry, but everyone who is brilliant and accomplished cannot fit that profile. Nor are they Libertarian. The Noam Chomsky page describes HIM as Libertarian too!

In the article about women's breasts, actually bras, it cites at length a supposed medical condition that causes a young woman's developing breasts to increase massively almost over night. I checked all the sources cited, none of which said that any such condition was known to exist. Far be it from me to remove that. I would be afraid, lest, I sound outraged.

I'm sorry. You are a kind person. I am too agitated right now, am unemployed and scared, frayed nerves. Thank you for your help and support. I will be back, I am sure. I really want to do more with good Richard Baron Kahn of Cambridge Circle. He conceived of the Keynesian multiplier and has hardly anything in Wikipedia. I also like watching over William Janeway's BLP. I'm not sure why. Jared Cohen's BLP is ridiculous. Dave Winer's BLP is slowly evolving to converge on reality. He's such an egregiously grumpy, mean persona online.

I've been trying to write the entry for The Levant in Wikitravel. That's going to be a challenge! Somehow, I think a tourist guide for Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan will be less contentious than writing about brassieres on Wikipedia. --FeralOink (talk) 19:11, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I have done my best to remove articles that amount to advertising, and this includes physicians. Those fields not covered by typical medical insurance in the US are those most likely to advertise, and this primarily amounts to those doing cosmetic plastic surgery, from any of the many specialties that try to include it within their scope of practice. I've made a point of checking from time to time, & many of the articles have been removed by now. The ones that aren't, are in two groups; the legitimate group is where there is the same notability as other physicians under WP:PROF, and the articles are purely descriptive--essentially, that amounts to a few researchers, and a few heads of services in major hospitals. The less legitimate group is where the people have done sufficient PR that there is substantial newspaper coverage of their activities--the problem here is the same as any local businessperson doing this, which is why I tend to be very restrictive about local notability. There's an intermediate class, not limited to cosmetic surgeons, where they are notable as authors for writing successful popular health books. Under our extremely liberal rules for NAUTHOR, there is often no way to remove the article (this does not apply here--the book is published by a firm publishing PR books, and is in a total of 6 libraries).

I now need to decide whether I will fix the article by omitting the nonsense, or AfD it myself. As I currently have a somewhat more deletionist approach to PR than the consensus, I use AfD when in doubt, and some of my AfDs do get rejected, which lets me see the current consensus. There is an attitude of some admins, that they will use speedy to remove articles they thing shouldn't be here, in the knowledge that the great majority won't be challenged. I well understand the temptation. DGG ( talk ) 20:29, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I have returned. Didn't take long, did it ;o) Please forgive me for my rant? I am sorry. I would like to give you a very large barn award, but you might find that embarrassing. It might also slow page load of your already heavily burdened talk page. If you want, you can feel free to erase some of my earlier diatribe. If you don't want to, that is okay too. It does not make me feel embarrassed at all, after re-reading it. If you keep it, I promise that I will not feel affronted and complain, loudly, as I did in a prior episode with a different WP personality (which I am now feeling some chagrin about... a little, maybe, maybe not). Thank you for your tolerance and patience with my indignation and high spirits. --FeralOink (talk) 14:52, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Outsell (deleted article)

Hi DGG, I think you should be aware of a request I made to to Smartse. Thanks! 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 15:14, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

yes, thanks. I didn't come on it by chance--I'm actively looking among recent accepted AfCs for promotional articles, because some of the reviewers seem to not recognize them--or possibly not even know that they shouldn't be accepted. DGG ( talk ) 16:13, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate you are doing that. You might send a friendly note to the AfC reviewer (time consuming, I know) explaining promotional language. Many of the AfC reviewers have taken heat recently for declining articles with reliable sources, so momentum may have swung the other direction. All the best, 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 18:25, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

It will be a little tricky, as it's a very experienced and generally trustworthy editor--and someone I know personally to be reliable. We all make mistakes. See a little above at Integrationalism for a really stupid one of my own. And I may perhaps be more sensitive to detecting PR, because most of what I do here these days is looking for it. Sometimes in fact I'm oversensitive, judging by consensus of good people at AfD. DGG ( talk ) 22:57, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

FDU

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Fairleigh Dickinson University and PublicMind. Thank you. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:43, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

saw it there before I saw this. Article is deleted, & recommended an indef block. DGG ( talk ) 23:14, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll just note that your comment that you "will certainly send the contents to any uninvovled editor who wishes to use themas a start for a proper article" might be read by a tendentious editor as an invitation for meatpuppetry (of which there's already a history). Just beware. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 23:34, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the hint; I adjusted the wording. DGG ( talk ) 05:04, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Anthologies

G'day DGG,

Thanks for your comment We normally accept inclusion in anthologies as notability [15], which as well as being a welcome contribution to that particular discussion interests me more generally.

I agree we should, but is this documented anywhere? I can't find any explicit mention in guidelines or policies or help pages, but perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong places.

Or, are there other notability discussions where inclusion in anthologies has been cited as evidence? I don't lurk on AfD currently (I used to but WP:RM seemed to have a greater need) so I'd have missed them.

Any help appreciated. I'm vaguely thinking of proposing some sort of tweak to notability guidelines to better cover hymnists, and don't want to be reinventing the wheel and/or generating useless instruction creep. Andrewa (talk) 03:55, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

we've routinely used this for poets and writers of short stories, and for short stories themselves-- see for example Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mouse (short story), where it was used in a negative sense, deleted for not being in anthologies. I don't know we've used it in this context before. There was an explicit guideline once somewhere; I typically have the sort of memory that always remembers if I've seen something, but not necessarily where or when. Actually, I consider this an exceedingly broad criterion, but so is NBOOK, and in consequence NAUTHOR. . DGG ( talk ) 04:54, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

AnchorFree

Hi DGG,

Were you aware that AnchorFree was created by a suspected Morning277 sockpuppet? Do you consider the edits you have made to the article to have pushed it out of the realm of G5? Thanks. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:25, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

yes,I was aware; I thought it was important for use to have this article. It was not an easy decision, but they have political role. I explicitly did it to put it beyond the range of G5. If you think it should be deleted anyway, AfD can always decide to do so. DGG ( talk ) 14:07, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

What about BofI Federal Bank (company)? You declined to delete it in April, and the creator was only uncovered and blocked months later. I'm honestly just trying to get your opinion here on what should be kept, what is worth keeping. I am truly torn on a lot of these sock-created pages. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:56, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

As I've said before, it's a dilemma to which I have no solution, but I'm trying to think of one. We can't remove everything that might be by a sock, because while still letting anybody start an article. Our removing articles by known socks has not stopped people from persisting at it. (Some have certainly acted as if it were a contest, and been willing to keep going for many years.)

1. The way I've been approaching it, and the way at least some others have, is keeping anything sufficiently important where a known reliable editor will taker responsibility for fixing the#REDIRECT [[]] article. This at least has the merit that the people who pay for editing who certainly ought to have an article will have one, and the borderline ones won't. (They could get an article just as soon by asking someone here to make it for them, and perhaps we will find some way of communicating this, because in a sense it's the consequence of our own failure to have enough good editors interested in these topics to make the articles beforehand.) A difficulty is that as this discussion shows the standard is very variable, because quite apart from what different editors want to do, whether any one person is willing to do it varies--myself, there are days when I'm more patient than on others.

2. Apparently a typical contract for paid editing is that the article stay for a certain length of time. Perhaps we could re-creating the most worthy articles--but after a year or so. That way the person won't get paid, but those who clearly warrant articles will have them.

3. A partial solution will be to do what the German WP does, and allow organization accounts, under the name of the organization. Then at least some of it will be identified, and people can judge the reliability with the information of who did the editing.

4. Ultimately, it may become a choice between the principles of not accepting promotionalism and allowing anyone to edit. If it comes to that, I'd choose requiring identification. We would no longer have a fully free encyclopedia, but we'd at least have an encyclopedia.

in the meantime, AfD is the normal step when a speedy is declined. Of course, the decisions there can be almost as inconsistent as a random selection of admins at speedy. DGG ( talk ) 05:10, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

User:Mfuzia

Hello DGG. You commented in the ANI thread which is now at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive807#Fairleigh Dickinson University and PublicMind. You indicated you didn't want to immediately block before the editor had a chance to respond. As it happens, he did give a response in the thread which seems to blow off the whole thing. In my opinion we are now in the territory for admin action under WP:PROMOTION and WP:Disruptive editing. If he continues on his present course, regular editors will have to spend time reverting his inappropriate changes. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 16:33, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

done. DGG ( talk ) 17:31, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you for following up. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:48, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Quality of new articles

Hi David. This year's conference was small (and slightly disorganised), but because it was small it was an excellent opportunity to press home some of the issues concerning the quality of new articles - and controlling the quality of the patrollers and reviewers. It was possible to meet and have in-depth discussions with the enablers and developers who (I belive) are now finally aware that these issues should be a Foundation priority. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

well, I hope you post some details about who said what, so we can hold them accountable this time next year after they will have done nothing useful,

But actually, it's not their fault, but intrinsic to the current stage of WP: there are three simultaneous factors: 1/ the more people rely on WP, the higher is the demand for quality 2/ the more important WP gets, the harder is to to maintain quality, because everyone will want to use WP for promotion 3/ The longer it is since we started , the earliest people with the most enthusiasm will have moved on to other things and it will no longer be as exciting for those who join now. None of these three factors can be alleviated by anything the foundation does, or that we can do here at WP.

The hope, is that we will get a new generation of editors, who rather than trying to play with something new, are people who want to produce something as useful as they can make it, without the casual attitude the pioneers did about actual quality and freedom from promotionalism. if we can do that, deficiencies of infrastructure will not matter. Good people with the right approach to the right goal can master any system. DGG ( talk ) 03:49, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Well said, though it is not the quality of new articles that should mainly concern us, but that of old articles. Hope you are all having/had a good time. Johnbod (talk) 04:20, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Kliegl Bros. Universal Electric Stage Lighting Co., Inc.

In re "Kliegl Brothers Universal Electric Stage lighting Co., Inc.". Thank you for you comments. I am aware of the article on "Klieglight" to which you refer. Reading it, in fact, was the impetus for writing my submitted article. "Klieglight" is incomplete and in many places inaccurate. Further, a responsible revision based on the title would provide technical data on a particular device. This may well be useful, but does not, except i the narrowest and fragmentary way, address the intent of my article, which is to outline the history of the iconic firm and its impact on the industry.

As for the scope of the article, I felt that it would be most useful to include material on the management and managers as, to a large extent, they were the firm. (For the recor, I am not related to the Kliegls, nor have I contacted one of them in over over 30 years. I was employed there from 1958 to 1969.)

Having said all this in explanation of intent, if portions of the article are unacceptable to Wikipedia for reasons of policy, I would appreciate specific comments that I may make appropriate revisions.

D.W. SaffordDwsafford (talk) 13:56, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me all the current material on the light would fit very well into your article, and could always be expanded later if someone wanted to do more on the technology--at present it isn't on any more technical a level than yours. I think the article should go under the light, which is overwhelmingly the better known term, which is a criterion we normally use. However, I'm not particularly concerned about it for the moment--articles are easy to move, and this should be discussed, not settled between the two of us. (As for titles, for your present title we would normally drop the Inc. from the end.)

With respect to the article contents itself, the main problem is the reliance upon archival sources. It is expected here that readers are able to check the material in an article, and we normally refer to only published material. (Archives are mentioned, buy putting in an external link or a footnote to the place they are located.). The catalogs are no problem, since I see they are all on the web at http://Www.klieglbros.com/catalogs/catalogs.htm. The personal communications are another matter. There are two ways to use them; best is for someone to publish a conventional book using them, that can then be cited; as an alternative, if they are in public archive and have been summarized properly in detail in a finding aid on he web or in print, that can be cited.

That's what our guidelines are. I didn't write them, but I must tell you what the consensus is about them. Remember also you don't own the article. If someone else should want to merge material and get consensus for it, they can do so. I always think the most important thing is article content and references, and I will be very glad to accept your article when it is properly cited. DGG ( talk ) 21:30, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Kliegl Bros. Universal Electric Stage Lighting Co., Inc.

Thank you. I understand the issue, and will attempt to address it. My difficulty is that some of the material is presently privately held, so I must beg permission to post it on line. If this can be done, I will follow up with you.

Thank you for your help.

David Safford Dwsafford (talk) 22:04, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

This Barnstar is for showing the right path. Sourov0000 (talk) 00:51, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Del of interest

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kenneth A. Bollen: btw, I am curious if Echo gave you a ping when I mentioned you there? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:40, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

yes, it did. But I hadn't checked Echo today, It's not as if it were some sufficiently visual obnoxious banner that you can't ignore it. DGG ( talk ) 06:01, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

K :) Btw, did you mean we have a category for ISI_Highly_Cited people? I can't find it - if we do can you add it to Bollen's article? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:37, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

it's Category:ISI highly cited researchers I've added it. DGG ( talk ) 04:16, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Deletions in terms of G5 of four articles

Hi DGG, on 3 June 2013 JamesBWatson deleted 4 articles Thomas Pearson Stokoe, Johannes Schumacher, Hippeastrum cybister and Getaway (magazine) created by Androstachys, at that time a sockpuppet of mine. Since November 2011 I have been editing under my original name. Is it possible to restore these articles which I think are quite useful? cheers Paul venter (talk) 19:13, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

JamesBWatson is quite active today. If JamesBWatson deleted them, why don't you ask him? Why would you expect any other admin to unilaterally override him?—Kww(talk) 19:17, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Because from previous discussions I know that he is a staunch deletionist for punitive reasons - I also know that there are others who believe that G5 is nothing more than WP shooting itself in the foot. Paul venter (talk) 19:35, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I think the reason he came here is because for at least one of them, I had removed the speedy G5 tag, and JBW deleted it anyway. The situation with these is uncertain and there is no real solution, but as I understand G5 we may but do not have to speedy delete the article (I almost always do delete such articles, but a few are worth rescuing). In a situation like that, it is wrong for any one admin to insist on imposing his view across the board, after other make an opposite decision. The Wheel-warring definition makes this not wheel-warring, but I think it comes pretty close. DGG ( talk ) 20:46, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

If you are unwilling to restore the articles, is it possible to let me have copies of them? Thanks Paul venter (talk) 07:14, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I don't know whether you saw the question above, so I am drawing your attention to it. Regards Paul venter (talk) 07:41, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Boundless (company) and Inkling

Hi - I need some help. I've written two articles about start up companies in the textbook market. They are young companies in a market that is being disrupted by technology and (to some extent) social change. In order to describe the companies and their impact, I felt it was necessary to describe their products. The technical nature of the products in this space is key to understanding why the market is rapidly changing. The Boundless article has been flagged as being an advertisement, and the Inkling article is flagged for speedy deletion. This feedback is important, but it is not specific enough to help me improve the articles. Can you help me with specific examples of advertising, promotion, or inappropriate links? Otherwise, I'm just guessing, and I could easily guess wrong.

One problem I face is that information about these companies comes from press sources that cover new technology and start ups, and there's definitely a "gee whiz" factor in those articles. I have tried to extract the facts from the enthusiasm, but for young companies there are not many alternative sources I can use. Also, information about growth of these companies is difficult to extract (as they are not public companies). For example, I can see how this sentence from the Boundless article sounds promotional (and may in fact need to be deleted): "In January 2013, the company claimed that students at over 2000 colleges in the United States were using Boundless textbooks." I included it because I had few sources to show the growth of the company. I was careful to note that this was a "claim," and attribute it. The information contained there is not complete, but without it, the article has less information about the scale or growth of the company. I debated almost every sentence in each of the two articles, and deleted more content than I kept.

Long story short, I appreciate any specific advice or examples. Seeing those advertisement & speedy deletion flags was a terrible feeling. I want to fix this and not have this experience again with future contributions to Wikipedia. Thanks - James Cage (talk) 16:21, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

You are quite right-- I was too hasty. I did some editing on the Boundless article, mainly to decrease use of the company name, and removed the promotional tag; I removed the speedy tag from the Inkling article, and am about to review it to see if I can improve it. I did make a clear error, and in compensation I will try to do some positive work.

The problem is that WP is under siege from promotional editors for organizations, including , ironically, organizations aligned with open source material. There has developed a certain tendency to shoot first, and ask questions afterwards. Fortunately, we have some checks: admins rarely delete an article single handed except in the most outrageous cases, but list it for confirmation by another admin. In the 9 hours after I listed this one, no other admin deleted it, although many other articles were deleted. If it had continued a few hours longer, as seems likely, I would have noticed it myself and thought again. You will see above that other people sometimes decline my deletion nominations, and I decline some also from even the most reliable editors. We are all of us imperfect, and almost all of us know it.

Looking again at the Inkling article, I see what I had spotted: sentences of the pattern "While doing whatever, X saw the need for something" are very often characteristic of promotional paid editors, in particular a particular ring of low-paid editors that has inserted several thousand unworthy articles over the last year or two that we are slowly removing. Unfortunately, there is so much promotion not just in WP but the world, that people have come to naturally write in a promotional manner.

The problem of sourcing for new things is a difficult one. For new things that get hype, and that seems to include these two companies, there are usually sources; for the less spectacular one that appeal less to news media, it can be very difficult or impossible. The sourcing for Boundless is fully adequate by our usual standards. The sourcing for Inkling uses some acceptable sources, but also uses Businesswire, a blatant medium for promotion that prints essentially anything a PR agent sends it.

An article about a company , new or old,should describe its major products. There is a difference between describing and promoting. The way I word the difference is that an encyclopedic article tells the reader what the reader might want to know, while a promotional article tells what the company wants the reader to know. Obviously, to some extent a good article on a good product can have a secondary promotional effect, but it can often be told apart by such features as the freedom from adjectives.

What is really wanted for this type of article is full nonpartisan product reviews from trusted sources, and they should be forthcoming. If I can help you further, please ask me. DGG ( talk ) 01:05, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

No apology needed! I think that this is a very beneficial discussion to have, and only in the very broadest sense a "mistake." Clearly, the articles were written in a way that they could be mistaken for promotion - that's an issue and I'm glad you raised it. About mistakes - they do happen, but many people can't admit that. They become defensive and argumentative. You took exactly the opposite path. I'm impressed, and I sincerely appreciate it. And you are completely right about how people tend to write in a promotional manner. I do tend to do that, but I'm consciously trying to do better.

Regarding BusinessWire - I see your point. I have my notes from the article, which includes ~30 sources, including several from the time of the press release. If there's any information that is not already supported by other references, I will find a solid reference or delete the information. (done)

Regarding nonpartisan product reviews - I have a Google alert for these companies, but I'm not sure what constitutes a nonpartisan review or a trusted source. For example, I found this: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15424065.2012.762213?af=R&#.UhQT-ZK1Fc4. Is this fair game, or would citing this be considered primary research? The abstract fairly gushes with praise - can it be considered nonpartisan?

Regarding the plague of promotional content, how can I help with that? For example, during my research for these two articles, I came across the page for Kno, another company in this space. In its current form, it consists largely of text copied from the Kno web site, and includes sentences like "Each Kno eTextbook is packed with interactive features ..." The current text was apparently added by a Kno employee. I would be glad to work on the Kno page - how should I begin? I'm thinking of rolling the page back to the 16 June 2012 version, and then adding some more information from recent & reputable sources. Does that make sense? Also, to minimize debate, would it be good for an administrator to do the roll back or to mark the current version as promotional in nature?

Thanks again, amigo. I appreciate your attitude and what you're doing - all of this is new to me, but I fell like I'm part of something important here.James Cage (talk) 01:57, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

One more - Thank you for your help with Boundless. I would like to discuss one change, which I think is important to users, and to understanding why the company was sued. I put some discussion on the article's talk page - is this the right way to go? Thanks again James Cage (talk) 02:43, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

that review you mention is the sort of thing that is wanted-- even if it turns out the author has connections with the company, it's still a peer-reviewed journal. . I don't think I've seen an article on either company in the Chronicle of Higher Education yet, but I would expect to. I'll keep an eye out for others. For kno, some of the material in the history section is usable and updates the article in significant ways, so it is better toy edit to remove what isn't appropriate. Just as you say, doing drastic removal like that might run into some problems if done by a relatively new editor, so I've done the first round myself, and you can clean up further--probably some refs should be removed, and it would be helpful to have a good ref on no. of titles and major publishers. I blocked the promotional editor and dealt with an article of his on the company founder. (sometimes there is good reason for drastic action by an admin). If the ed. reappears under another name it will be obvious--let me know, or list it at WP:COIN, the conflict of interest noticeboard. It would not surprise me if similar attention will have to be paid to articles on other firms in this industry. I look forward to our further cooperation in this. DGG ( talk ) 04:02, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Opinion

Dear Sir. Long time no greetings! Thanks in advance for your view on this [16]Jimsteele9999 (talk) 00:59, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

we have always accepted an entry in Gale's Contemporary Literary Criticism & their similar series as notability , even if they call a figure minor. The article is in need of some cutting, which I will do tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 04:42, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

THanks for the reply. I guess I'm missing something, because he's not coming up on Gale, and mentions in NYT, etc. are not substantial. Jimsteele9999 (talk) 00:02, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

I will double check that, probably tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 22:39, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Sir, thank ye in advance.Jimsteele9999 (talk) 01:00, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC Reviewer permission

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC Reviewer permission. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:03, 24 August 2013 (UTC)Template:Z48

finally we are getting there! DGG ( talk ) 22:19, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

==AfC question

Hello again, The article has been, once again, rejected, this time by Zach Vega, admonishing me to "use footnotes". Otherwise he offered no useable advice. I doubt if he really read the article. At any rate, I have included the interview as a reference in the bio. This is the best source I have for this. Since you are the reviewer who has helped me the most, I sincerely hope you get the chance to review it again. If you do, you will see the other changes I made for clarification. I will now re-submit. All the best,Geoffrey Kline (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to let you know

You have been (indirectly) mentioned here: Wikipedia_talk:Canadian_Wikipedians'_notice_board#Notability_is_defined_entirely_by_presence_of_reliable_sources.22.3F.3F.3F_-_Reply_to_Bearcat (I know you are busy - so I am pointing you to the middle of this very long text). XOttawahitech (talk) 22:32, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

actually, it's the whole general question I find of interest, & therefore I commented at considerable length myself DGG ( talk ) 23:13, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Message from Dgoodman15

For some weird reason, the following message has twice been blocked by an edit filter as a "personal attack". I am posting it here on behalf of its would-be author who was thwarted by the edit filter. JamesBWatson (talk) 15:09, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi David,

Thank you for your thoughtful and purposeful work to improve the Wikipedia environment. As an end user, it is people like yourself that ensure the accuracy and reliability of this information resource. I am an administrator of "Schulich Leader Scholarships" and a 'newbie' Wikipedia page administrator. How can I learn the ropes to ensure our program can begin to document the lives touched by our scholarship in Canada and Israel? Please tell me how I can avoid deletion in the future, based on your previous assessment of our page: (05:06, 17 March 2013 DGG (talk | contribs) deleted page Schulich Leader Scholarships (Multiple reasons: speedy deletion criteria G11, G12. Source URL: http://schulichleaders.com/about-scholarship).

Best regards, Dgoodman15 (talk) 14:35, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Although the request in and of itself sounds reasonable, there are a couple of issues that probably should be addressed: The admitted COI, and a possible infringement of this section of the usernames policy. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:29, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Dgoodman15, your entire purpose is wrong for WP. WP does not exist for you to document your program, and certainly not to document "the lives touched by our scholarships". It exists for the general public who may want information on your program. A page mostly copied from your own web site doesn't do that. Besides being a copyright violation,it says things in the way you want people to see them, and is almost always unsuitable even if you give permission.

You need to describe the program , without using superlatives or adjectives, demonstrating it' notability with references to major news sources not based or copies of your own PR, Don;t direct it to prospective schools or universities or students who may want to participate. Don't explain its benefits, just say what it is. Certainly don't give a list of the students who received awards--that information belongs if anywhere on your web page, & it's there complete with photographs of even the hundreds of finalists who did not get the award. And describe things properly: this is an undergraduate scholarship, not a postgraduate fellowship like the Rhodes.  ::Don't be extravagant in what you say: The degree to which it has made an impact on the world is largely prospective--this is just the second year of operation, and no lives can yet have been touched beyond having their first year university expenses paid. Remember, that to to the extent it does have an impact of the world, other people will write about it.

See our general guides to writing articles, WP:PLAIN and WP:FIRST; see also our list of the things we don't do here, WP:NOT, and our practical guide to conflict of interest, WP:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide DGG ( talk ) 20:58, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)Also note, Dgoodman15, that you are not "a Wikipedia page administrator": there are no such beasts. Nobody "owns" or "administers" a particular article in Wikipedia (these are encyclopedia articles, by the way, not MySpace or LinkedIn "pages"; the difference is revelatory). Instead, all of us here are mutually pledged to improve existing articles in ways that follow our "Five Pillars", regardless of our own personal ties and self-interest. Some of us have been entrusted by the community as a whole, after a rather intensive grilling process, with the Mop-and-Bucket of administrator status; the regalia keeps us humble, reminding us that we are merely glorified janitors, with a few more keys and tools than other editors. --Orange Mike | Talk 22:12, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Don't fool yourself, Mike: there are certainly "Wikipedia page administrators". I can't imagine a large consumer company that wouldn't have someone in its marketing department that is specifically given the task of monitoring relevant Wikipedia pages. We don't recognise the role and make active efforts to ensure that such people don't actually gain control of the pages, but such people certainly exist.—Kww(talk) 22:34, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

But we refuse to legitimate or approve such behavior, and quash it where we can; we recognize no kingpins or capi di tuti capi, and fight to uproot them where we can. It has even been suggested that in some countries (not the U.S.) such actions by corporate tools may be illegal. --Orange Mike | Talk 22:47, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

OM, this is getting a little exaggerated. Here we have an editor coming here using what is apparently his true name, saying he represents an organization, and asking for help writing an acceptable page on it. The organization is clearly notable--there are substantial reliable news sources for it in Canada and Israel. He deserves to be permitted to make another try, now that things are clarified for him--indeed, people should be encouraged to do that. If he doesn't succeed, the organization is notable enough that I might write the page myself; if we had enough people interested in writing on higher education, it should have been done previously. He may or may not understand he doesn't control the page, but that is easy enough to explain. When I consider all the illegitimate & incompetent paid editing on non-notable or barely notable topics being submitter to WP by rings of puppets, hundreds of which we've been deleting each month, it's good to have someone coming in up front and saying what he's trying to do. We admins are here both to keep the improper stuff out of WP (as I did, in deleting the copyvio & promotional article submitted),and to use our experience in helping people do it right. I consider it my responsibility to "legitimate and approve"--and encourage and support anyone who comes to me honestly and asks for help, as long as they then don't go making problems (if they do , I deal with them--I block about 1% as often as you, but I certainly block when nothing else serves). What's illegal in some countries is doing it under false names. Our policies, of course, have the effect of making doing it illegitimately extremely easy, and it's absurd and counterproductive for us to make it harder being honest. The German WP accepts verified organization role accounts, to keep them under control. I think we should also. DGG ( talk ) 04:17, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

On a related issue, in my opinion probably the single silliest thing that many Wikipedia administrators do is to block an account because its username is the name of a company, telling the user that the username is the only reason for the block, and they are welcome to open an account that doesn't show the company connection. Whether we like it or not, there are, and always will be, accounts set up ion order to edit on behalf of businesses. How does it help to positively encourage businesses to run such accounts stealthily, hiding the nature of the account? If an account is persistently used in unacceptable ways, such as for posting spam, then it should not be allowed to edit under any username, and if it isn't being used in unacceptable ways, then far better that it openly declares its nature in its username than that it hide behind an apparently neutral name. Personally, I never block an account just because its username shows that it is a role account, in the absence of problematic editing. JamesBWatson (talk) 08:27, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree. If you want to make the proposal, I'll support it. ~ 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk)

Notability of Richard K. Lublin Teaching Award

I am on the verge of AFDing it. I actually thing this kind of stuff may be encyclopedic, but is there a policy that backs it up? If not, an AFD discussion could result in one... what do you think? (If you reply here please ping me somehow). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:50, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

There is an inactive guideline at WP:Notability (awards) relevant guideline, unless one wants to go by the GNG: besides the in-house publicity each year, which is not independent, there will be news references for when it was established, but they too will almost always be in the college papers, and therefore also not be independent. There is very rarely anything else substantial.

As for arguments used successfully at AfD, we have almost always considered that an award which itself confers notability to be appropriate for an article, just as we consider an articles on a named professorship usually appropriate because it confers notability. I do not consider most in-college awards relevant to establishing notability, and in fact I usually remove them from articles as mere puffery. There could perhaps be exceptions, for major in-house awards from the very most famous universities, and conceivably Duke is one of them. (My own view would be to doubt it unless there is clear evidence of some sort)

Another argument used for awards is whether the majority of the awardees are notable, independent of the award--as judged in the usual way, either by having WP articles or being unquestionably qualified for them. A few of articles on the individuals have WP links; others have external links which show clear qualification under WP:PROF, either at the time of the award or later. Spot-checking, about half of the total probably would not meet WP:PROF. DGG ( talk ) 19:51, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

So do you think we should AFD this article or leave it be? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:54, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

== Question ==

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

your comments at the Malafa AfD

I really appreciated your thoughtful reply. I think that rationale is similar to what bothers me about these poorly sourced construction/building articles i've been nominating for deletion; many of them rely on forum pages for their referencing, and if they really were notable that wouldn't be necessary. That's a higher standard, strictly speaking, than WP:N, and I'm getting my proverbial ass handed to me ratio-wise for that reason, i think. there are territorial issues coming out that are interesting as well, but that's another discussion.

One thing I am particularly interested in, though, is rooting out the bad articles and the bad actors. When an article is CSD'd as promotional, non-admins can no longer go back and look at its history to see who created it, or did the most work on it, cross reference dates and times, etc. And unfortunately, it sounds like the only way to get the ability to look at those sorts of things is to get the mop. personally, I really don't think I'm up for that sort of responsibility at the moment for a number of reasons, but i find it curious that there's no permission like e.g. rollbacker to allow folks to do this sort of research.

I have other thoughts on the nature of this endeavor, etc, but i'll spare you them for now. partly i wanted to say that i appreciated what you said, and partly i wanted to gripe, i guess. anyway, thanks. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 04:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

If this particular article is deleted, I will have no hard feelings. But I think we have lots of articles with input by COI editors, but in most cases, especially high profile articles, experienced NPOV editors are watching and reverting COI edits.

When you nominate for deletion articles about giant malls covered by reliable sources for decades, and stand your ground when reliable sources pour in, your credibility with active AfD participants is bound to suffer. But I will support your well-founded nominations any time. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:57, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

"in most cases, especially high profile articles, experienced NPOV editors are watching and reverting COI edits." -- I have not found this to be true except on the highest of high profile articles.

as an example: Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center had what looks like pretty consistently good but not huge pageview numbers. 80+ per day would actually be pretty great for a non-WP advertising website. and until i took an axe to it it was composed almost entirely of unreferenced PR nonsense.

I do not recognize the "it's been here for a long time, therefore it's notable" excuse. that has put me at odds with other editors on a number of occasions. but i've also, in my short time here, seen enough to indicate to me that that really is not a valid justification for keeping an article. when an article is an orphan, or has limited inbound links and 0-5 views per day, for instance, that excuse cannot possible be used to justify the keeping of an article. the flip side of the coin that, as far as i can tell is never mentioned, is that if not saying anything is justification for keeping an article, then after a few years someone should have stumbled across it and, if it were truly notable, added some reliable sourcing that would help said article establish GNG.

But noone makes that argument, apparently.

-- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 08:21, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• My own comprehensive response to this is forthcoming. DGG ( talk ) 15:33, 29 August 2013 (UTC) (see below)

(talk page stalker) The level of activity from disinterested editors depends on how interesting the topic is to Wikipedia's editor demographic, not how important the subject is. However, larger companies may - in some cases - be more likely to be a topic of interest to more editors. OTOH, many consumers but few CEOs edit Wikipedia, so a consumer company like Symantec is more likely to be closely watched than an enterprise software company in the same revenue category. CorporateM (Talk) 02:11, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The followings is not a comprehensive response, but I wish to at least stay something: disagree that a re

1. That there is relatively low interest in a subject is not a grounds for deletion. That there is relatively little current interest is a particular poor grounds. This is an encyclopedia--a work of permanent record, recording whatever is notable, whether currently or in the past. Page view numbers are not the standard: if an article is used once a year by somebody it's presence is justified on the grounds of helping users: the relevant policy, one reflecting the technological basis that makes WP possible , is NOT PAPER.
2. That WP will reflect the interests of the contributors is inevitable. But as an encyclopedia it should try to compensate for the imbalance to some degree. I interpret NOT DIRECTORY as meaning that we do not include directory information in a non-selective indiscriminate manner: I think we should include directory information as a starting point for articles for organizations above a certain size, which may well vary by industry. The possibility of doing it in a systematic manner is greater than it used to be, because of the possibilities given by wikidata: it is now quite feasible to enter basic information about geographic and political entities and also people and organizations in a standardized form to be use by all WPs; while converting this information into text articles (or accepting infoboxes as article stubs) is not yet an accomplished procedure, but I think will be soon possible. We then need to decide what we want to use. But expanding such articles beyond stubs will depend on local interests: an example familiar to me is the very different amount of information given here for different universities.
3. I consider the GNG a very poor standard for inclusion; it is very indirectly related to any rational meaning of notability, especially because the availability of the limiteed range of sources we consider reliable for the purpose reflects in large part the limited searching interests and abilities of the editors here, and the differences between different subjects. When I first came here 7 years ago I thought it very clever--but I have since then realized that in practical application it is totally dependent upon the meaning of "substantial" and "independent", and we can make whatever arguments we like for these with equal validity. What is kept in any borderline case depends upon the skills of whoever is doing the argument and the prejudices of the immediate audience at the time, rather than upon anything rational. We would do much better having objective determinable standards.
4. The current challenge is to prevent the further corruption of the encyclopedia by promotionalism, and this will be much easier when we remove the existing. I am open to the possibility tat this can best be done by having a relatively stringent standard of notability in some areas. Though as I've just argued, we could build articles on very minor subjects by accepting directory content, we'd then still face the challenge of keeping promotionalism from getting added to them. An encyclopedia with variable coverage is merely an incomplete encyclopedia; an encyclopedia containing advertising is unreliable and worthless. DGG ( talk ) 05:43, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Paid Editing Q&A SignPost

Would be interested in your thoughts on this if you have time to give it a read. CorporateM (Talk) 20:09, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

this weekend. 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 21:16, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Just checking in... CorporateM (Talk) 21:39, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Academic journal notability

Do you know of any precedent, guidelines, or essays that talk about standards for whether or not an academic journal is notable? My gut feeling is that it's analogous to WP:PROF, in that we don't actually need sources that talk about the journal, but, rather, we need sources that cite articles in the journal. That is, my assumption is that nobody actually talks about most journals, but that doesn't mean that the journals aren't notable. The question occurred because someone asked on Talk:Azerbaijan International if the journal is notable, and my feeling is that it is, though I doubt that, in a formal sense, it meets WP:GNG. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:17, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

See the essay Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals). Though technically an essay, I think the standards there are the general consensus of everyone working regularly on the subject, and are followed in almost all decisions.

In summary, they say that the basic standard for notability of a journal is being indexed in major selective indexes. Which indexes they may be in a given instance is subject to discussion, but inclusion in WebofScience has always been considered adequate proof of notability, and usually Scopus has also. Difficulties come with 1/ new journals, which we usually do not include unless its obvious that they are going to be included, such as coming from a major society publisher all of whose existing journals are notable. 2/ journals which are in niche areas or from regions which are not adequately represented in such indexes. 3/ journals which are not strictly academic journals in the usual sense, but magazines, for which there is no consistently accepted criterion.

The GNG is in my opinion almost always irrelevant for this sort of subject. However, as in most other cases, if a journal should happen to meet the GNG, we would probably include it. If one wishes to make some sort of interpretation that aligns our usual practice with the GNG, one would say that the coverage by the major selective indexes is the sort of substantial coverage by RSs that applies.

That individual articles in a journal are or are not well cited does not determine the notability of the journal; however, it's a relevant factor. In any case, it has to be applied according to the standards of the field in question.

I shall look at the article in question. DGG ( talk ) 02:57, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, and I welcome your input on the specific article. It turns out that the "journal" isn't actually refereed, meaning it is somewhat questionable to even call it an "academic journal"; there's some info on the talk page from another editor about how it is indexed. And I agree that WP:GNG is a very bad too to use here; good to know that there's at least essay guidance suggesting some sort of standards. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:42, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

notability check

Hi David This artist’s entry needs to be rewritten, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Jodoin, but as it has the notability flag, does someone other than myself need to review it? The artist is very well-known in critical art circles and in art school set, but not in the commercial sense. Her work illustrated the 2009-10 season brochure and eighteen posters for the Théâtre français at the National Arts Centre (NAC) in Ottawa where it was also exhibited. It won the award for documents at the APPLIED ARTS Design & Advertising Awards Annual 2009 (Toronto). She has had solo exhibits at these public galleries: Richmond Public Art Gallery, British Columbia, Musée d’art de Joliette, Québec, Ottawa School of Art, Ontario, National Center, for the Arts, Ottawa, Ontario, Maison des Arts de Laval, Laval, Québec, Connexion Gallery, organized by University of New Brunswick Art Centre, Fredericton, New-Brunswick,McClure Gallery, Visual Arts Centre, Montréal, travelled to Nanaimo Art Gallery, Nanaimo, B.C, and solo exhibits in Montreal and Calgary and group shows in Praque and New York with commercial galleries. She also has been a guest lecturer at art schools in Montreal as well as:Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Fontbonne University, St-??Louis, Missouri, Minneapolis College of Art & Design, Minnesota, North Park University, Chicago, University of Calgary, Alberta, Plattsburgh State University, Plattsburgh. There are also biographies of her on university sites and she mentioned in the entertainment section of several newspapers http://www.richmondreview.com/entertainment/159955635.html . There are also about ten favourable critical reviews from Canada's top art journalists. There is no hurry for a reply if you are on vacation. Thanks HeatherBlack (talk) 14:37, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

If you want to rewrite it, there is no reason why you should not do so: anyone may and should improve an article, if they do it properly. If you do so, and thing you clearly meet the objections posed by a tag, you can remove it. If you remove an otability tag and someone wants to challenge it, the best way for them to do so is at AfD . The best information, as always, is not just exhibitions, but artwork in the permanent collection of major museums. If this cannot be shown, major reviews are desirable. A long list of appearances in group exhibitions in my opinion adds little: I would limit it to the few most important. I'm not sure being a guest lecturer means anything unless it is a full term appointment, not an occasional lecture. DGG ( talk ) 00:50, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks David, I think I have a better idea now. So if I look at the "notability for artists" criteria "The person's work (or works) either (a) has become a significant monument, (b) has been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums.", there is in fact the following hierarchy with the possibility of 4 or 5 being challenged as "open to interpretation":

• 1. critical attention and museum collections with a list of "notable works" at each institution
• 2. critical attention and government distinction/awards, art at expo pavillion or Governor General's Award or the Order of Canada
• 3. critical attention and peer recognition ie elected member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art (RCA)
• 4. critical attention outside region, regional museums, plus newspaper bios, interviews
• 5. critical attention outside region, regional museums, plus minor awards

Is this a reasonable assessment? I'm finding that these take me a fair bit of time to do, so I appreciate your input. Thanks HeatherBlack (talk) 14:45, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

• You're trying to be rational. But the only practical definition of notability is what the consensus at a particular time considers important enough for an article in WP: it's an entirely empirical standard, of whatever succeeds. Most of the rules are ambiguous & ill-defined, & we are in any case under no obligation to follow them. People at WP are not good at making fine distinctions or balancing multiple factors. Considering the various degrees or rationality and knowledgeability of people who engage in discussions, simple rules of thumb are better. It doesn't help to pass a formal standard if the net effect is not convincing. The goal is for a subject to be what I call "undoubtedly notable ", notable to the degree that no reasonable person who understands the field will challenge, or even better, obviously notable, that any one challenging it will not be taken seriously by anyone.

Having multiple works in major museums is in practice sufficient. Having these works get independent critical commentary is even better. For the sort of work that doesn't typically get into museums (such as street art or architecture), awards and commentary and official recognition are the equivalent.

The practical difficulties for the sort of articles you've been writing are 1/whether the museum is in fact a major collection, rather than the sort of civic collection which is not particularly discriminating with local artists 2/ whether the critical discussion is in fact substantial and independent. A museum's description of its own collection is not independent, unless the level of scholarship is universally recognized. Almost no commercial gallery's description of anything is reliable. Too many articles here depend on such descriptions, & it would be very easy to challenge them. (The classic example is the degree to which the association with Duveen might have cast doubt on Berenson's objectivity). 3/ (which I think you recognize)--no provincial or municipal level award is meaningful. DGG ( talk ) 00:53, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Got it! I'll go back and improve the ones that I've already written. Thanks again HeatherBlack (talk) 20:34, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

CCC - help!

Hi DGG (do you prefer David now?) -- The Copyright Clearance Center page is getting edits from three editors, one of whom is the CCC "PR guy" (Craig Sender). They have been identical edits, and I've reverted them because, among other things, they removed referenced content and replaced it with substantively different content -- while using the same reference. To be honest, I don't have time to go through all the changes (there are a lot) that these editors (or editor, because I think the others are socks or employees) are making to sort out the wheat from the promotional chaff. I've posted on Talk:Copyright Clearance Center with diffs to help illustrate, and would welcome another editor on this. I don't have a "Conflict of Interest", but I'm not CCC's biggest fan, to say the least, and I'd appreciate someone who presumably "feels" more neutrally about the organization to be part of the discussion, and work through editing conflicts. Although I strongly suspect socks, I'm not bumping this up to socks noticeboards or whatever, because, again, I'm swamped with the beginning of the semester, and I hope that this is all just a misunderstanding on the part of Craig Sender and/or his minions not really understanding that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a promotional website; that it follows referencing rules just like any other publication; that conflicts of interest should be disclosed; etc etc etc.

So help? Or help me find someone else who can be another experienced Wikipedian voice familiar with the field?

Thanks,

Laura / Lquilter (talk) 20:51, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I will take a look. . (BTW, Any name will do for me, but DGG is clearer to new WPedians who might be reading this and had not seen my user page which gives my real name) DGG ( talk ) 00:20, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience

Hi DGG, thanks for moving this to its proper name. However, I think you may have deleted everything in the process because the article now redirects to itself. Could you (or any admin with the powers to do so) please restore the article's original content? -A1candidate (talk) 16:07, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

fixed; what happened is that two successive move requests got transmitted; due to slowness of computer connection. I thought the first had aborted. DGG ( talk ) 21:36, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I noticed your careful edit to WP:AUTISM

On the basis that you saw and edited the essay, may I invite you to consider joining this conversation at WER? Fiddle Faddle 10:30, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

There is some discussion about whether your cookies got deleted so I thought I should offer a replacement. :-) Spartaz Humbug! 20:43, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Living people categories

Hi DGG. I recently noticed an article on a living person without the category, and added it in this edit. What I wanted to ask you, as I know you spend a fair amount of time around new pages, is whether that would likely have been picked up eventually? I noticed the article hadn't yet been marked as patrolled (a little note in the bottom right-hand corner told me this). I'm asking because earlier this year I noticed another article on a living person that hadn't been put in the category, and I wondered how common this is? The note I left at the time was here, but I don't think anything happened as no-one replied there. Carcharoth (talk) 00:01, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

(1)The only sort of cleanup I do these days is to make sure references are present & visible, remove promotionalism. (including among many other things excess categories, links, or references), and organize articles if the structure is incoherent or inconsistent with basic standards.

(2)I do not meddle with categories, except I do add the BLP category in accepting an article from AfC. I am under the impression that uncategorized and undercategorized articles are tagged as such, and that they get categories added by those WPedians who regularly work with categories. I used to add them myself, but so many were changed by the specialists that it seems better letting them do it. Rather than trying to reform the system, I keep out of it, just as I do with infoboxes & many other aspects of the MOS. I learned in my first year here I could not do everything.

(3)But I strongly support efforts to rationalize WP metadata and subject access. I'm delighted at the success of Wikidata, and I see every prospect of it replacing much of the current infobox system and permitting basic article translation across WPs—together with category intersection, it could replace the current category system also, I think a sufficient number of excellent people are working on these problems.

(4)I think it important to concentrate of what I can do best that is most needed. When I look at article histories, I see dozens of cleanup edits by bots and individuals, but nobody ever has looked to see if the article is basically inappropriate or in need of fundamental improvement—or whether the editors need assistance or instruction. DGG ( talk ) 03:34, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for these thoughts (more than I expected!).

(1) Clean-up is something I've rarely done, as it can be very time-consuming. One of the things that makes me hesitant to do large amounts of work on some articles is the need to invariably check existing text against sources to see if there has been any blatant copy-pasting, or extensive close paraphrasing, or (worse) whether the text has been edited over time from an originally infringing version that wasn't spotted.

(2) and (3) Categories aren't that difficult. I used to do lots with them, but not so much now. The HotCat tool is invaluable. I agree with you about Wikidata, but I'm worried that many misunderstandings and arguments may arise, along with setbacks along the way. I guess we will see how it works out.

(4) I was looking at some of the articles recently created by Barney the barney barney (it was your note on his talk page that indirectly led me here). I'd like to help out and offer advice, but am not sure what to say. Some of the articles have been moved to titles beginning 'Sir'. This is very commonly done (I did it once), but article naming policy and guidelines discourage that. I'm torn on whether to bring up whether the articles are at the right title (in the long run, not terribly important, but relevant for future article creations), or whether to help expand the articles (much more useful in the long run. So I'm going to leave a note on his talk page pointing out both. Another thing I like to do is suggest to people that when they create biographical articles that they also create the talk page with {{WPBiography}} on it, but it can be difficult to suggest that if people don't see the point of doing it.

Carcharoth (talk) 23:12, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Khaldoun Almhanna AfD

So I don't think i disagree with this nomination, though i might refrain from entering a vote. I had a discussion with the user in question, and they appear to be working in good faith. I have removed their entry from my talk page but it is of course in the history, as an ip editor. (I felt like it gave enough identifying information that i would be uncomfortable with it, though i left it up to the user whether to ask for revdel). I also left an entry on their talk page.

I had suspected that there was a CoI here based on some searches i did, but apparently there was a mistaken-identity element there. I would encourage you to engage with this editor, as I am trying to, because i believe it's entirely possible that the series of mistakes they described is true, and that they simply need encouragement and direction to contribute more usefully.

Feel free to comment here or on my talk page, whichever is more convenient for you. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 05:44, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

If a person wishes to establish themselves as a good faith editor, it is best not to start out by writing articles about several borderline notable people from the same institution. DGG ( talk ) 04:39, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, and we'll see how they do in the future. I'll be keeping an eye on them, and I imagine you may as well. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 05:19, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

User:UseTheCommandLine, Cantaloupe made a useful statement somewhere, that ethics does not = alignment. There are a lot of PR reps that are ethical, but that work for a non-notable company or someone with a bad reputation, etc. There is nothing we can do to "help" them, because they just want something different than us. They want to have an article on a topic we don't want to cover.

The same is true in my COI work. I only accept a small minority of new business inquiries that come in, because most of the time they just want something too different than what Wikipedia wants. There is a good example here of my approach to coaching a PR rep to voluntarily move on. Though, everyone has a different take on it. Cheers. CorporateM (Talk) 17:35, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	I award the Special Barnstar to DGG for giving an exceptionally detailed answer on Talk:Cossack Research Center regards to titling. RainCity471report my errorslist of failures 18:41, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

In regards to David Horvitz's "game" of deleting his Wikipedia page)

Hello DGG,

I'd like to explain, if it's not already known, that Horvitz is a conceptual absurdist artist. Such projects in a way is a performance, a commentary on social media and technology. I see no harm in deleting the page for it becomes a form of performance art. I understand there is protocol but to uphold protocol for a situation that will generate no controversy seems silly. To delete would be trivial, so why not support its deletion? A game is meant to tease to entertain, but this is a new form of participatory art with a social commentary about the web and the accessibility to information. It in no way is to undermine WP as an insult or as a jest. This is art and to have the authorization to delete the page would complete the work. I hope you understand and find in favor of assisting in the proper deletion of David Horvitz's WP page. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joebunkeo (talk • contribs) 19:15, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

his making the page may be part of the game as much as the deletion, but he is none the less notable. WP is not a place for original creative writing--or performing art either. I consider the entire process to be abusive of the encyclopedia. I consider it just like the professors who wish to conduct an experiment in social communications by having their students add deliberately false information to WP, to see if it gets removed. . It seems you got trapped in your own absurdist artistry: to get the article in, you had to show he;s notable, and now it's in, you find you can't reverse the process. Consider it part of your art work: it may not be what you planned, but performing art with other people as unknowing participant-subjects has that inherent aspect. DGG ( talk ) 22:59, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

You, DGG, are incomparable. I have seen the range and depth of issues that you contend with, everything from Wikipedia-as-performance-art-NOT, to raining in the young lady who was using Wikipedia to write her autobiography, viz. What Wikipedia is not: Facebook!!! I agree, by the way, regarding those wretched professors who assign their students to vandalize Wikipedia as part of a university-level course. I read one such account, maybe THE canonical account, as I hope there are not multiple instances of professors doing such things, in the Chronicle of Higher Education the other day. You know Magnus. the extraordinary toolserver contributor by way of German Wikipedia, correct? He is of sufficient stature as a scientist that he got his own BLP article, although his countrymen on German Wikipedia deleted it as "not notable"; the temerity of them! It wasn't as though he wrote it himself. Anyway, I noticed on his talk page, that someone was writing some pseudo-science crud article about a ladies food and health book. Remember, I am a lady, so I can say these things. Magnus has a PhD in biochemistry. So, in this message, the WP editor wanted to use a copyrighted image about the ladies food book's author, from Flickr. She asked Magnus to make the account holder on Flickr re-license the image so that she (the WP editor) could use it in her article here on WP! Can you believe that? I mention this because I noticed your civil and courteous response to the young lady's edict to you, "not to mess up" her autobiographical page about her poems. Sigh! You need the "Patience of a Saint" Barnstar. Magnus probably does too. I am so happy I ran across you, and selected others, here on WP! I wish we could all meet one day, you and Andreas and the kindly man who owns pigs and lives in Thailand, and Snowy Susan (whom I've missed), and the good CPA From L.A. and my new acquaintance, the hillbilly, and a few others that I have since triangulated with on the Twitter. We would talk and tell stories of our Wikipedia adventures and laugh and... I will stop now. Again, thank you so much, for all that you do. I wish I could too. --FeralOink (talk) 14:44, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

PROF qualified main topic articles written as biographies

Hi DGG. I posted a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics) to carry forward on a discussion at COIN that you posted in. I would appreciate receiving your comments at the PROF proposal. -- Jreferee (talk) 21:09, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate your intentions, but I think you are making too much of this. To the extent it's a problem, it's a more general problem,and belongs elsewhere than in a notability guideline. I've commented in some detail. DGG ( talk ) 23:45, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

)

Hassan Hathout

Regarding your edits on Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Hassan Hathout - I'm minded to delete this under WP:CSD#A10 because we already have the article Hassan Hathout in main space. The two are somewhat different though, so please consider merging material from the AFC version into the main version. The AFC version is essentially an abandoned draft, so there is no sense in making improvements to it when a main space version exists. ~Amatulić (talk) 15:24, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) A10 only applies to pages in article space, not AfC's. I've added a second decline notice with the reason "exists." Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:30, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

We do not yet have an agreed way of handling these. Certainly material should be merged when sourced & relevant, but if it is merged, we need to keep the attribution. There are 3 cases which have b=to be distinguished: ::

One The draft,although declined was used for the article. Here I think the first step is to replace the text of the draft with a link to the article talk page, and then, to consider the article for possible deletion. (This is the case I usually see)

Two An article is taken into AfC space for improvement, and moved back again by copypaste, with or without improvements. Here the ideal step is a history merge, but I do not think it worth the trouble, unless there are important changes. (I almost never see this, but others report it)

Three. The two articles are independent.If there is content in the AfC worth the trouble, the contents should be merged. An exact history merge is the ideal way to deal with the merge, but again, I leave it to those who think it worth the trouble--I just redirect to the article talk p. with a suitable edit summary. (As a special case, the AfC is better, but I think of this as merging all the content without removing the prior history, and let the redirect & edit summary handle the attribution.) ! DGG ( talk ) 16:00, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

A history merge is not practical if there are too many interleaving edits. Most admins are willing to do a clean merge where the histories don't overlap, but it's horribly time consuming and painful to deal with overlaps. It would be best simply to incorporate any improved content and sourcing from the AFC version into the main version, and explain this on the talk page. ~Amatulić (talk) 03:41, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you entirely about history merges. I am not one of the admins willing to do them. I did a few in the past, and I got them correct only about half the time, which means I was causing more problems than I was fixing. Doing it informally is best, whenever possible. In the early days of WP, I think there were an overabundance of people trying to do how complicated they could make it to do things with the wiki software, and how intricate an "explanation" they could write about the way to do . We have enough problems with real copyvios without worrying about merely technical ones within WP, as look as we do explain the attribution somewhere. DGG ( talk ) 04:00, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Notability

Hi DGG, You've nominated several of my articles for deletion or speedy deletion. I'm always careful to write neutrally and cite everything that I write. Obviously, I think the topics that I choose are notable, but you disagree with me on some points. I find the notability guidelines to be somewhat vague, so if a topic has enough information written about it in newspapers, magazines, or similar media to create a short article, then I go ahead and create one. Is there some other measure or guideline that you're using to determine notability? Are there a certain number of sources that you look for, or does a magazine need a certain amount of circulation? Guidance is appreciated. Thanks, HtownCat (talk) 17:52, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I rather expected to hear from you, and I've delayed nominating further articles until I could see your response. There are two separate but linked problems in articles about organizations, their leaders, and their products: notability and promotionalism:

The basic problem of promotionalism is that WP is addressed to the potential readers, giving them the information they might want to know upon seeing mention of a subject (for example, at the most basic, where is that company and what does the company do?, or which organization is that & what do they advocate? ). A promotional article is addressed to a prospective user or purchaser or supporter: This is what we do, and here is why it is valuable that you buy our products or support our endeavors. Encyclopedia articles are characterised by plain description, promotional ones by praise, or the sort of detail one would need only if one is considering a purchase. Promotional articles are intended to give a favorable image of the company, such as describing its ostensible social purposes or community contributions.

the basic problem of notability is deciding whether something is worth describing in an encyclopedia at all. It doesn't correspond to importance in the world, but to whether it should be included in WP--we can;t after all judge the world, but we must decide what we want to put in our encyclopedia. . In a few cases we go by a general decision--for example, the decision that all named populated places are appropriate for articles. In some others, we go by outside evaluation: for example, that a holder of a distinguished professorship at a major university is notable, or someone chosen to compete in the Olympics. In many cases, there are no such firm standards, and we go by the WP:GNG, the general notability guideline, which requires substantial coverage by multiple independent third party reliable sources. (some people say this is the only real standard, and everything else is just an assumption of what will meet it). the key words there are "substantial" , "independent" , and "reliable." A substantial source is more than a product listing, or a mention of an event taking place, but a significant discussion, such as a full product review. How substantial it must be is of course a matter of judgment, which is decided by consensus at WP:AFD. An independent source is one not derived from the subject--not the subject's web page of product literature, or what its principals write, or the press releases the put out. A reliable source is one using editorial judgment, rather than simply publishing press releases or gossip. Again, these terms are matters of judgement to be decided at consensus.

In all but extreme cases. nobody can predict accurately how consensus will go--I will nominate an article for deletion if I think there is a substantial probability that it will not be considered suitable, --but even after 7 dears of experience at it , sometimes I am wrong, either because I made a misjudgment or because the community wishes to interpret things differently. The community decides, and another administrator judges what the community has decided. Guidelines are necessarily subject to interpretation, and what really matters is how the community decides to interpret them--after all, we make our own rules collectively, and we can decide how we want to use them , and if we want to make exceptions. The best way of learning this is to observe afd discussions on similar topics, to see what arguments succeed, and what the practical standards are.

Some things are deleted immediately, by the concurrence of two administrators, rather than an AfD. One relevant example is blatant promotionalism, which is an article so much devoted to advertising or promoting something that there appears no way to fix it without rewriting. (As an admin, I have the technical ability to do it without concurrence, but I rarely use it unless there is some immediate hazard, such as libel or copyvio) . We also immediately remove articles on people or companies where it seems obvious on the face of it there is no possible indication of any importance or significance, --a much less demanding standard than actual notability,. Again, normally two admins will concur in this. If such deletions are seriously disputed in good faith, most admins will reverse the decision and send the article to AfD for a community opinion.

I said there was a connection between the two: A key reason we have a notability standard is that for most things that are not notable, there is nothing much to say except directory information or promotion. It is critical to WP that it not become a mere directory or a place for advertisement--we want to provide information that people can trust, so we require sources and objectivity and some degree of significance. There are many other places on the web for advertising, and google does very nicely as a web directory.

There are additionally some factors that can affect how people here view an article. We tend to regard an attempt to write simultaneous articles about a borderline notable company, its products, and its executives likely to be an attempt at promotion--it is much better to have one strong article. Also , it is considered possible that someone writing articles about a wide range of barely notable subjects may be doing so as a paid editor. We do not absolutely prohibit this (though many people here would like to do so), but we strongly discourage it, because it is extremely difficult to be objective about what one writes with such a strong conflict of interest. If by any chance you are such an editor, I can explain to you how best to deal with it so as to get the articles accepted--I am one of the relatively few admins here who are willing to assist paid editors who come here openly in good faith and are willing to learn our standards. 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 21:29, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your detailed response. If I am not completely sure whether a subject is notable, should I submit it to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation?

I really thought I was careful about keeping promotionalism out of my articles. I would like to improve them, if given the chance. Is there a way that I can edit the deleted articles and then submit them for approval to be posted? I've read something about restoring articles to a userspace, but I'm not sure what the procedure is for that. I absolutely do want to contribute quality articles and nothing that other editors might view as promotional. Thanks for your help. HtownCat (talk) 20:02, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I will take a look next week. You should first check if there are good references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, because otherwise a rewrite is useless. DGG ( talk ) 04:19, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

User:Anne Delong/G13 Rescue

Dear DGG: I know that you are checking the G13 nominations, and I have been too. I'm keeping track of which ones I've checked at the above page. If there is a batch that you have checked, can you please leave me a message about it on that page so that we don't duplicate out efforts? Thanks. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:54, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I've been using the dated categories, such as Category:AfC submissions by date/December 2011 You 're going alphabetically within a month, but I do not know from what list or category. For Dec 2011, I can complement you if I know, but after that we need to think about the most effective way. Ideally, more than one person should each screen; for example, I simply ignore popular music and athletics, DGG ( talk ) 00:50, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

On the page above there is an infobox. I click on the large number and it takes me to the sorted list of G13 eligible submissions, sorted by month, oldest to newest, and within that listed alphabetically. YOu can tell what month the bot has got to by looking at the first one on the list. I've been checking them all, but I wouldn't necessarily save the same ones you do. If you tell me a month that you are working on, I would be glad to go through it and check the music and sports ones that you skipped (I'm a musician). —Anne Delong (talk) 01:49, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there seems to be a good reason for different people to do it differently. But until we get a little ahead, we probably should work in the same sequence, so I will work in yours' . (At this point I have done Dec 1 and Dec 2, 2011.). What I mostly check is organizations and people and books and anything that seems so obvious that it ought to be covered. (I often find there is already an article--Ideally if its about the same we'd make links, but in practice I'm just skipping over them in order to stay ahead. If it's not the same, I accept, and then merge/redirect. I sometimes delete a few of the worst as I see them, but usually not--enough other people are doing that. If I can fix and accept in a few minutes i do it, especially if its the sort of academic article I specialize it. I'll let you know on your p. the ones I've looked at, in a separate column. DGG ( talk ) 08:08, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

CSD G13

I'm slowing down and taking a closer look. Here's an article I thought was worth a second look:

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Gary Shapiro--SPhilbrick(Talk) 23:25, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

yes, and he was on my long but unfortunately incomplete list of academic AfCs I intend to revisit whether or not they get deleted. That's what I became an admin for, and I said so at the time. It turns out in practice to be quite difficult getting people who publish local archeology to pass AfD, because the publications are normally very specialized and of very low circulation; but about half the ones that should succeed, do.

In the meantime, a number of other people have started deleting g13s, and since the bot keeps nominating to match, it's getting even harder to keep up. I have however never given up entirely in such situations, just specialized further and further the ones I work on. Among G13n nomination that I have either stopped or rescued after deletion in the last week that I have rescued are several university presidents, a number of MPs & government ministers, academics with distinguished professorships. Admins who are unwilling to read articles should not delete them. The bot is just a bot, and must be forgiven. But we shouldn't have admins who view their job as imitating a machine. I don't think the bot designer intended this. I have tried never to do an admin action I didn't think about, and even so I've by now deleted over 15,000 pages. If anyone became an admin because they want to delete things, there's enough genuine opportunity. DGG ( talk ) 04:00, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

(stalking) I regularly watch articles tagged with {{db-a7}} to see if I can rescue them, and I've started doing with the same with G13s. The link I use is here and it does them by oldest creation date first - for instance Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Justin Clements appears to be oldest, created on 13 April 2010. What's our general procedure for challenging G13s? Clements might or might not be notable enough - I can't tell without effectively taking ownership of the submission and looking for better sources.

On admins, since it came up on Yunshui's talk page yesterday, I have been prodded by the odd admin about going for an RfA at some point, and dealing with CSDs would be one area I think I can help with. I don't want to do it without a consensus from a couple of longstanding admins who know those areas well, though. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:36, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

DGG, how is the bot's process (which is much further locked down when compared to a editor) any different than an editor trolling the G13 eligible category and rapid fire nominating everything they can get their hands on? The bot does not subdivide itself and create a exponential increase in the number of instances that get spawned up (which you allude to in The Sorcerer's Apprentice). The bot only nominates enough articles in it's current run to get the category filled up to a percieved 50 nominations. If you don't want to perform any nominations you don't have to. The bot is perfectly happy to sit on a backlog of 50 or more nominations to the end of the universe. Would this be helpful? No, but the bot is coded to wait patiently. Obviously if the G13 backlog stays at 50 with the same nominations for over 5 days I as an editor will start asking pointed questions to the admin corps about the negligance to the community authorized CSD process. Hasteur (talk) 13:27, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Hasteur, there would be nothing wrong with the bot, if deleting admins would be careful. But they are often not, and since the bot makes deletion a single-handed process for one admin, when it should take two except in extreme circumstances, it adds to our problems. It's not your fault that other people aren't careful, but unfortunately the procedure you designed makes it easy for them to be reckless at a greater rate than they ordinarily would--as you say, an exponentially greater rate. But I think neither of us expected it would be used this way. I agree with you completely that the real problem is with admins acting with no more discretion than if they were bots themselves. Do you think you can fix that? I know I can't. Though I do try be persuasion, and perhaps I'm at least making people aware of the problems. Whether I will affect what anyone does is as usual another question, and all I really expect is to educate some of those new to our processes. DGG ( talk ) 15:49, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

DGG, are there G13's deleted on topics that could eventually become articles? Certainly (although often, while the topic is notable, the article isn't worth rescuing anyway). But the reverse happens as well, people stopping the deletion of G13s incorrectly, e.g. this one and this one which I both had to delete as copyvios.

Similarly, you just stopped the deletion of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, which is a copyvio of [17]; you stopped the deletion of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, but we have the much older Institute of Business Administration, Karachi already, and the AFC page was a copyvio of that page[18]. Admins shouldn't be here to delete whatever they can, but they shouldn't be here to keep whatever they can either, even if it are copyright violations. Copyvios (together with spam, BLP, ...) was one of the main reasons to get G13 going. (comment by User:Fram), 13:51, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

challenging G13s

1. 1. The way to challenge a G13 is to edit the AfC . It ought to be enough to merely remove the G13 notice, but I always make an edit to the text also. The way to prevent a G13 is to edit the AfC. I do not know if it is enough merely to make a comment.
2. Once something has been nominated for G13 it is likely to be deleted in a minute or two. The only effective way to prevent it is to immediately remove the G13 tag and save. After that, I almost always make an edit to the the text as well, Since essentially every AfC needs improvement (as does almost every article in WP, it's easy to find something to fix quickly.) Sometimes I also make a comment. If I think it's going to be a problem I add an {{underconstruction}} tag
3. If the G13 tag has not yet been placed on the AfC, it's enough to edit the text. (and sometimes I leave a comment.)
4. If I think the article needs checking, I first remove the tag and save, because otherwise it will be deleted. That does not necessarily mean I think it will make an article. That does not even necessarily mean I think it's free from copyvio. It's necessary to stop the process first, a( as with any speedy) because otherwise things go too quick before they can be adequately looked at.
5. What percentage I challenge depends on the particular mix of articles. Last evening there was a batch of 50 where I did not challenge a single one of them. Once in a while I might challenge as many as 5 or 6. .

further work on challenged G13s

1. If I think the saved AfC can be fixed up in less than 5 minutes, and its of any interest to me, I fix it and accept it. This is maybe 1 in 50. .
2. If it's in a field of great WP interest to me and I think it will clearly make an article and I think the subject is important, I will spend up to an hour fixing it. I do this only once a day or so.
3. Otherwise if it's of WP interest to me I place it on one of two lists I have, for work up as soon as possible , or deferred. Experience unfortunately shows I will not get to all of them. If it's of no particular WP interest to me, I just leave it, and let others do it.
4. Just as a guide. WP interest to me now means academics, universities, many writers, classical musicians, painters (and sometimes other visual artists) political figures or movements, major national organizations or companies, major executives or government figures, anything of historical interest, a good deal of science, and many general articles. No WP interest means sports or computer games or popular music or entertainment & popular celebrities generally, "WP interest" does not necessarily correspond to personal interest in either direction--it corresponds also to what I can effectually do, or effectually do more than many other people. As the pressure comes on, I narrow my criteria.
5. I try to get the article good enough to probably pass AfD. I do not attempt to get it past a stub, unless there's material for more already present. I do not concern myself with detailed format beyond the minimum for clarity, though I do pay attention to arrangement & removing duplication. I would like to fix references, but there's no time. I do verify or add the key references. I sometimes pay a little attention to style, if the English is really inadequate. I think that just being able to pass CSD is not sufficient, unless there's clear promise for rapid improvement by others.

Duplication and copyvio

1. I check for duplication. Unless it's obvious, I stop the G13 first, because this is actually the slowest part of the process-- it can be there under other words. I find a great deal lot of duplication.
2. Most of it is articles that were not accepted but copied into mainspace anyway.
3. About half the time the move is of content that should not have been accepted. If the moved content qualifies for speedy & isn't worth fixing, I place a deletion tag on it. If it's just of low quality but passes speedy, I tag it as needed.
4. About half the time the move is acceptable and seems to contain all the material. I do not know if there's a clear simple procedure, but I usually nominate for deletion as "speedy G6, already in WP". Until recently I would check the edit sequence and merge histories, but the time pressure is too great. Normally its the same person in any case, under whatever name, so any concern about attribution is merely technical. Those who are concerned can see the G6 and do the merge.
5. Sometimes the content does needs to be merged. Again, there's no clear simple procedure I know of. I accept the article under a variant name if necessary specifying it's for merging, and do the merge immediately, leaving the normal edit summaries for attribution.In a case like this attribution matters.
6. I check for copyvio, at least in the obvious places. Sometime I miss it. Yesterday there was particular RW concerns for me, so I deferred some of the checks . The Institute mentioned above was on my list to check today. I would not have missed it. Ditto the duplication of Karachi, except that -- as I mentioned above--I do not consider that a true copyright concern but rather just technical cleanup. (Of the other two listed above, ether of which I think I worked on, both are the sort of copyvio content that is blatently suspicious, and we have probably at least a few thousand similar in mainspace)
7. It is true I occasionally do miss actual copyvio. A proper check for copyvio can take a half-hour even if no print sources are involved. One of my concerns about the bot is that it leaves no time to do anything carefully. If I think there is likely to be copyvio on style grounds but I can't find it, I do what I do at NPP--I place a copypaste tag, which is designed for the purpose. (Or I stubbify the content; or, if it is of great interest to me, I even rewrite it. Deletion is the proper approach to copyvio--when we can't fix it, or it isn't worth fixing.)
8. I make mistakes. I would make fewer mistakes if I could work more slowly & carefully. I could work more carefully if more people wanted to fix articles, and if those admins doing deletion checked more carefully themselves. At the moment, neither of these seems practical.
9. One thing does seem practical to accomplish: fewer mistakes will be made if the initial AfC checking is of better quality. Most of the problems at G13 should have been dealt with earlier--and of course this includes copyvios. Our about-to-happen limitation of AfC review to those at least presumably qualified will help this greatly, once we have caught up with the backlog. Therefore I understand those who want to remove the backlog as soon as possible--but I think a year the shortest practical goal.

Misc.

1. I am keeping a record of the impt. articles I rescue, and intend to put it on WP. DGG ( talk ) 15:33, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Copyvio The 33 Strategies of War

A while back you removed a large section of material from this article as probable copyright violation. Since then, the same amterial has been added repeatedly by a variety of SPAs. Edward321 (talk) 14:10, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I've removed it again and explained on the talk p. I cannot protect my own edit, and I was the one who originally removed the material. Ask for other opinions, & if there is consensus it does not belong, get another admin who has not previously edited the article to enforce it. DGG ( talk ) 17:45, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

CSD G13

Although I'm not yet convinced it is a good use of time, I've taken a closer look at some of the G13. Some I thought were worth another look are:

• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Larry Laverty
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Letsbuy.com
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Living Computer Museum
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Luis Herrera Cometta
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/NEPAL SPOT EXCHANGE LIMITED
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Organizational Theory of Social Movements
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Pediatric Psychology
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Psychology of Hoarding
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Stonecap High School
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The Game (Alyssa Reid song)
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Theresa Wong
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Tim Scott (Social Justice Activist)
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Valley Council of Governments
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Volcanoes Safaris
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Veronika Zikmundová
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Elings Park International Raceway

I see the G13 nomination process will be on hiatus for a month. I think I see processes being put in place so it is easier to look at those about to be nominated, which seems easier than trying to look at them after deletion.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:22, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, certainly but I would also be really really glad if there were a quick way for admins to see the content after deletion, for AfCs and for other things also. And it would help all aspects of AfC review to have some way of roughly classifying AfCs by subject.

Incidentally, just putting on the postpone template does not always work. I find that to actually stop the deletion I have to edit the AfC to remove the speedy tag, and then also edit the text of the article to at least some extent, I'll look at the ones you spotted tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 04:33, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I worked on the assumption that I had to remove the csd tag, although I see I missed one with Elings Park.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 11:47, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Recent Wiki-PR scandal

I'm sure by now you've seen this. A lot of editors I've talked to are saying they want WMF to pursue legal action against them. I wonder if that is in part because of my influence, or if it's always been on everybody's mind. But I brought it up here. It seems like a stretch to me that WMF would actually get involved, but I'd be interested in your comments. CorporateM (Talk) 14:01, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

it would be foolish for the WP foundation to pursue legal action against anyone, on the basis of their contributions. This opens a door to all sorts of legal interventions to control our content, some no doubt based on motives in total opposition to out basic principles. This is a user contributed encyclopedia, and the users control the content, not the foundation. The WMF should never interfere with that. I consider it perfectly plausible that the underlying puppetmaster is of the honest opinion that WP ought to cover such institutions, and accept content prepared on their behalf, and that consequently writing the articles is a reasonable commercial pursuit, and our attempts to keep them out show our narrow-mindedness and intolerance, and that they are therefore justified in circumventing our policies. Our most essential defense is to maintain standards, and this can only be done by attention to articles that are created, no matter who makes them. but if we ourselves created articles on notable commercial enterprises, there would be less scope for these activities.

I am just as concerned with articles about non-commercial organizations, and advocacy of all sorts; they are even more of a threat, because they often get even less attention. In my own subject, most of the university articles here are indistinguishable from press releases, and not very good, transparently self-serving press releases at that. There is rarely one that adds much to the information available from the web site.

But there may come a time, as I have in the past suggested, and as I now see also suggested by others, where we may have to choose between the principle of anonymity and the principal of NPOV. There can be encyclopedias written with or without identification of the actual writers, but without NPOV there can be no encyclopedia at all. DGG ( talk ) 03:09, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Four profs

When you have time, could you give me an opinion on these four?

• Fred Botting
• Simon Morgan Wortham
• John Mullarkey
• Scott Wilson (Professor in Media and Cultural Studies)

They are all recent creations by a new user who has posted a number of articles about the London Graduate School, an "interdisciplinary research organisation in contemporary critical theory", part of Kingston University, and its staff. Two lecturers have been speedied A7. I have advised her to study WP:PROF before writing any more.

Even better, if you can give me advice on how to assess this kind of article, I might have less need to bother you in future... Regards, JohnCD (talk) 19:51, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

The easiest way to assess anyone in a humanities subject is to look for possible notability under WP:NAUTHOR, searching for the individual in WorldCat. In those fields where academic importance is built around book publication, this is usually a simpler criterion to evaluate than WP:PROF--in my personal opinion a little too inclusively in some cases. For example Bolting has published several books each held in hundreds of libraries; as there are therefore undoubtedly reviews, he is notable. The article is however written in ignorance of our standards, putting emphasis on listing the courses he is teaching. It needs to be rewritten. For the others, similarly, though the books are not quite as widely held. I will give some advice to the editor involved, and look at the deleted articles. I created a redirect from the correct name , London Graduate School, without the title, and I will also deal with the AfC.

Unless we ourselves write articles properly on notable authors and scholars, we leave an unfortunate opening for those likely to be affiliated with the institutions to do so improperly. DGG ( talk ) 01:33, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment

As you previously participated in related discussions you are invited to comment at the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC for AfC reviewer permission criteria. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:30, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Ambassador in Boston?

David: Terry Epperson here. As you recall, you visited my "Anthropology of Cyberspace" class at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) during the fall, 2011 semester. I am now living in Boston and plan to offer a similar course this spring. Could you please connect me with an Ambassador who can do classroom visits in Boston. I don't know how to email you directly. Thanks! user:twepperson —Preceding undated comment added 15:48, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Anthony W. Ulwick

Hi DGG, I noticed you placed a news release flag on Anthony W. Ulwick. Can you clarify so that I can fix it? Is it written in a news style or coming off as promotional in some way? Also, I was unaware that patents shouldn't be included, so thanks for pointing that out. HtownCat (talk) 19:50, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

The sources are entirely self-written or promotional: Ref 1 is a self published source; Ref 2. is his own article. Ref.3 does not seem to refer to him. Ref 4 is his own book. Ref. 5 is his own company's website. I doubt ref 6 is a reliable source, but the link is dead. Ref. 7 is self-published praise. Ref 8 is his own blurb at Amazon. His actual demonstrable notability is probably as an author, as his books are fairly widely held by libraries. This needs to be shown properly, by including references to substantial published reviews of his books in reliable sources. To clarify, patents are relevant--if exploited to a notable extent, not just if granted. They are granted for something new that might be useful, not for something important. DGG ( talk ) 00:19, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	The mensch barnstar. For listening, although my idea is doomed I know. Fondest regards to you and yours. Irondome (talk) 03:13, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

== update ==

With regard to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Emad Rahim, did you see "Is wikipedia for sale"?

Apparently Emad Rahim paid a PR firm to manage his wikipedia article.

Rahim paid Wiki-PR $1,500 over two installments to create a page for him on the site. “After reviewing all of my information [Wiki-PR] assured me that my profile would get published on Wikipedia without any problems. We wrote a short bio, included quotes and links to credible sources, publications, employment history, and a picture.” At first he was happy with the result, but within two weeks the page had come to the attention of other Wikipedia editors. Email exchanges show the extent to which Wiki-PR spun and obfuscated the issue. On July 17, Rahim emailed the firm after noticing that his page had been marked for deletion for not being notable enough. CEO Michael French replied, “You're covered by Page Management. Not to worry. Thank you for your patience with the encyclopedic process.”

So, how mch does being outed as someone who paid to selfishly subvert the wikipedia add to his notability? Geo Swan (talk) 17:35, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Can one become notable for not being notable? Interesting concept... Peridon (talk) 18:00, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

we have had some AfD discussions on people & organizations whose notability arises in large part because of either criticism or attacks they have made upon WP; results vary--my own view has consistently been that as part of NPOV we should always in case of doubt be careful not to remove information about those who don't like us.

But in this particular instance, this is a person who has without malice towards us made the error of hiring a firm whose practice it is to evade the principles of WP; This would fall under BLP policy. This is minor negative information, not relating to whatever actual notability he might have. Even if he were to have an article, I would not include this material--it's a basic BLP policy that we do not include the misdemeanors of basically private individuals, let alone use them as the basis for notability. DGG ( talk ) 00:29, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

• Okay. Thanks. Geo Swan (talk) 00:46, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Contesting speedy deletion of MAIC (disambiguation)

Could you please read section A3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, which you cited as the criterion for speedy deletion of my new page on MAIC (disambiguation)? It explicitly exempts disambiguation pages from the standard rules for notability, encouraging disambiguation pages for something as minor as variations in spelling.

After creating that article, I left a note on Talk:Mergers and acquisitions#What's MAIC?, asking someone who knew what MAIC meant in the context of that article to explain it there and add that to the disambiguation page I just had created.

For more detail, please see the comments I appended to your notes on my User talk:DavidMCEddy#Speedy deletion nomination of MAIC (disambiguation).

I very much appreciate your many contributions to Wikipedia, and I hope that you will ultimately agree that my creation of that page did NOT violate any rules and restore it speedily. Thanks. DavidMCEddy (talk) 06:01, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Disam pagers disam between articles. Under the format of a disam page, this actually was a page consisting only of external links. Looking at the discussion, and at Center for International Stabilization and Recovery, mentioned there, I think there is another way of handling it that gives at least one WP link, and I will do it. DGG ( talk ) 19:18, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the redirect for Maic. Do you still plan to restore the MAIC disambiguation page?

To reduce the incidence of future problems like this it would help if the Wikipedia Template:Disambiguation described clearly in the intro to that article the criteria for an acceptable disambiguation page, explicitly mentioning speedy deletion.

I skimmed that article plus Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Disambiguation pages before creating the MAIC (disambiguation) page. Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Disambiguation pages says, "A single disambiguation page may be used to disambiguate a number of similar terms." Examples include, "Terms which differ only in capitalization, punctuation and diacritic marks. ... Corresponding singular, plural and possessive forms, or compound words. ... Variant spellings. ... Variant forms of names. ... Terms which differ by the presence or absence of an article." I perceive a disconnect between G6 and this article: It would help reduce conflict over speedy deletions if either G6 or Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Disambiguation pages were changed. I favor changing G6, because I find great value in disambiguation pages, even when they do not disambiguation other Wikipedia pages. I would not have taken the time to create MAIC (disambiguation) otherwise.

Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion says, "Speedy deletion is intended to reduce the time spent on deletion discussions for pages or media with no practical chance of surviving discussion. Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases." Reason A3, which you cited, clearly provides an exception for disambiguation pages. Wikipedia exists because volunteers contribute content. Most do so to help others. Speedy deletion is an appropriate response to contributions that are either silly or sinister. MAIC (disambiguation) was neither.

Reason G6, mentioned by PamD, discusses "Uncontroversial maintenance, including ... Deleting unnecessary disambiguation pages, such as those listing only one or zero links to existing Wikipedia articles." We have an honest disagreement about what makes a disambiguation page "unnecessary". I created that page for two reasons. First, I tried to use it to help explain to contributors to the article on Mergers and acquisitions why MAIC should be defined. That may not have been the best way to raise that issue. However, in the past when people have used undefined acronyms, I have sometimes responded with a list of alternatives, and ask which one they are using, if any. I felt that helped get compliance with my request for a definition. Second, I've found disambiguation pages quite useful in the past, and I thought others might find a page on MAIC useful also. Until PamD mentioned it, I was completely unaware of G6 threatening speedy deletion of disambiguation pages with fewer that 2 links to other Wikipedia articles. As I mentioned above, G6 seems to contradict the spirit and intent of Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Disambiguation pages. I think it would help others like me if some effort were made to reduce this apparent contradiction. I'm not an administrator, and I don't feel qualified to edit those pages. DavidMCEddy (talk) 18:39, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

A thread on the Conflict of Interest noticeboard

Hi,
Just letting you know... I mentioned two of your deletions in a thread on the Conflict of Interest noticeboard about some problematic articles. Feel free to comment there. bobrayner (talk) 18:33, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Books and Bytes: The Wikipedia Library Newsletter

Books and Bytes

Volume 1, Issue 1, October 2013

by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs)

Greetings Wikipedia Library members! Welcome to the inaugural edition of Books and Bytes, TWL’s monthly newsletter. We're sending you the first edition of this opt-in newsletter, because you signed up, or applied for a free research account: HighBeam, Credo, Questia, JSTOR, or Cochrane. To receive future updates of Books and Bytes, please add your name to the subscriber's list. There's lots of news this month for the Wikipedia Library, including new accounts, upcoming events, and new ways to get involved...

New positions: Sign up to be a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar, or a Volunteer Wikipedia Librarian

Wikipedia Loves Libraries: Off to a roaring start this fall in the United States: 29 events are planned or have been hosted.

New subscription donations: Cochrane round 2; HighBeam round 8; Questia round 4... Can we partner with NY Times and Lexis-Nexis??

New ideas: OCLC innovations in the works; VisualEditor Reference Dialog Workshop; a photo contest idea emerges

News from the library world: Wikipedian joins the National Archives full time; the Getty Museum releases 4,500 images; CERN goes CC-BY

Announcing WikiProject Open: WikiProject Open kicked off in October, with several brainstorming and co-working sessions

New ways to get involved: Visiting scholar requirements; subject guides; room for library expansion and exploration

Read the full newsletter

Thanks for reading! All future newsletters will be opt-in only. Have an item for the next issue? Leave a note for the editor on the Suggestions page. --The Interior 21:49, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Corporate user names

Hi. I read your remark (at the Deletion review) "I think we should change the rules here to match the German WP, and accept openly avowed & authenticated corporate user names" and I couldn't agree more. The ban on corporate usernames does not make sense and doesn't make the wiki better in any way. I'm considering writing a proposal to get that rule scrapped but have no idea how to do that. Where should I publish/list the proposal, for a start? If you could point me in the right direction or have other help to offer, I would greatly appreciate it. Cheers, Yintan  09:49, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

• Try Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), but first see how other proposals there are discussed. I'll keep an eye on it. I would suggest it might be a better idea to propose it not as something that will solve all our problems in this area, but something which will be a modest improvement over the present, The clearer and simpler we make it for people with COI to do right, the more likely they are to do not. It wont go from 10% to 90%. but perhaps from 10% to 20%. It eliminates some overhead, but if we follow the German model, requires some sort of evidence they are the firm in question., which adds overhead. DGG ( talk ) 15:24, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll see how things go there first. I'm not so much in favour of requesting proof that an editor belongs to a company, I just don't see how banning corporate usernames can do any good. At least with promotional/corporate usernames you know who is editing. Yintan  20:57, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

The point of requiring proof is so you know who is editing, rather than whom the editor says is editing. We have a rule that a individual whose true name is that of a well-known identifiable person, can request special permission to use it, after verification. See WP:REALNAME. 'DGG (at NYPL)' (talk) 21:35, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Your comment

at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC for AfC reviewer permission criteria was excellent and what we obviously don't want is poor reviews being pushed on to NPP where the reviewing isn't any bettar or faster. Based on comments from Foudation staff (whether posting from their WMF account or not), software help is unlikely to be forthcoming from MedWiki and I think our volunteer programmers at AfC are quite capable of finding a local solution of some kind or another. It just needs the community to decide on a simple set of of permission criteria instead of attempting to re-debate the whole thing, or completely missing the objective of the discussion proposal. I think, based on the discussion, most of which is objective, I'll start a straw poll there on some of the realistic suggestions. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:23, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Help?

I asked here, then remembered you.

--FeralOink (talk) 07:41, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Anthropological Literature and Anthropological Index Online

Dear David, are these two databases selective enough to confer notability according to WP:NJournals? Thanks for your advice. --Randykitty (talk) 10:59, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Anthropology is a difficult subject this way, because much of the literature appears in very specific journals devoted to a particular region, published by local museums or universities. SSCI covers it only very scantily. My own view is that we should cover every journal important enough that it is likely to be used as a key source for a WP article--in other words, the principal journal in each possible specialty. (Some people here think we ought to write an article on every journal or other source used in any WP article, to help readers evaluate it, but even if we ought to do this, I think that this is a considerably lower priority.)

comparing these two indexes, AIO reflects a European emphasis, AL an American. The two sources complement each other, and are available together from Ebsco as Anthropology Plus; I will add this information to the articles. Including everything in either is a little more on the complete side than the selective. I suggest the purely empirical solution of including all journals that are listed in both, which I think will prove to be about two hundred. DGG ( talk ) 03:24, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Books for Keeps

Is Books for Keeps, a British children's books review magazine a reliable source? I am reviewing author David Orme's notability and several of his books seem to have been reviewed on the site, but I am unsure as to whether that is significant (or if the source is paid advertsising). Also, if it is a reliable source it might be good to have a Wikipedia article on the magazine itself. Thanks for any assistance you or your page watchers can provide. Candleabracadabra (talk) 13:08, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

First, the easy parts: The quote from Pullman at the top of the web page would seem to justify an article. And as general guidance for notability this issue at the bottom lists several awards, any one of which is sufficient for notability, though I am not sure about just being on the shortlists for them.

It is very difficult to judge the notability of books from a different culture, and, especially for children's literature, England counts as almost another culture. Especially for younger children the books tend to be oriented towards familiar backgrounds, and consequently fewer American libraries or reviewers (or children or parents) are likely to be interested, WorldCat unfortunately, lists mainly US libraries; there is no adequate equivalent I know of with the same very wide reach into UK public libraries. Nor am I familiar with UK review media for children--I was examining this for the first time.

What I found is that the reviewers are as well selected as in the familiar US; and the reviews have a consistency that shows careful editing. On checking books for the middle school levels up, I could clearly determine that about 2/3 of the titles were certainly notable on US criteria alone, and given the differences, I think almost all of them would be notable by UK criteria & sources. For the books for younger children it is much more difficult to judge. At the primary school level, about 1/3 were clearly notable onUS based criteria; I cannot tell about the UK, but in any case I try to avoid judging notability of books at that level unless there are obvious prizes.

As I've previously said, I think the NBOOKS criterion or the GNG somewhat too broad--it removes only the junk, since two reviews is unrealistically low for many areas. I use mainly supplementary and indirect criteria. I've mentioned library holdings--it depends of field, but for current children's literature any US book with over two or three hundred Worldcat holding is probably significant. (As one goes back in time, the criterion stops working, because few public or school libraries keep older children's books) I look to see whether the book is known internationally--in this field, whether it has both a US and UK publisher, and in all areas, if the book is translated into other languages, especially if into more than one other language. I look at the reputation of the publisher (but I do not know all reputable UK specialist publishers) And I rely a great deal on the same criterion all readers use in Real Life, coming second only to recommendations from their friends: if the author has published other successful books also. This is especially true in this field, where most well-known books are published in series or at least with a common theme or title or style.

When in doubt, there is a simple solution: to write an article on the author. including the information and reviews at hand. And then make a redirect, so someone who looks here will find at least something. DGG ( talk ) 23:06, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much for looking into the issue and for your detailed response to my query. Much appreciated. I have started an article on the website and updated my comment in the deletion discussion accordingly. Take care and enjoy life. Candleabracadabra (talk) 23:10, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

FYI, I created an article on Brian Alderson (children's book critic) and another on the Children's Books History Society. I'm not completely satisfied with the Alderson article title, maybe Brian Alderson (children's book reviewer) would be better? Not sure. But anyway, it's a start. Thanks again for your help. Candleabracadabra (talk) 00:08, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I see it's now at Brian Anderson (writer), which is certainly preferable. DGG ( talk ) 00:46, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

COI stuff

What do you make of Asia Literary Review and Ilyas Khan? ^Bongo_matic 16:25, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Based on the contributors, the Review is almost certainly notable. Khan may be also, but probably primarily as a businessman--the article on him needs either deletion or some drastic revisions, DGG ( talk ) 19:09, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

John C. Norcross

You tagged John C. Norcross for deletion as a copyvio. The copy was a paraphrase of a list of facts, which as you no doubt know has reduced protection. I paraphrased further and declined the speedy. Please see my comment on Talk:John C. Norcross if you are interested. DES ^(talk) 21:30, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

of course, one of the options to deletion is rewriting. Whether I rewrite myself to avoid deletion depends on many factors and I certainly am very satisfied when others do it also. I think needs further work, and I may get to it. There are no firm rules whether a paraphrase is sufficiently close for G12. Almost all WP copyvios are essentially lists of facts: both the arrangement & wording of the facts is relevant--& it is also true that in some formulaic articles like academic bios there are not many ways of expressing things. DGG ( talk ) 22:44, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at 78.26's talk page.
Message added 00:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 00:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The block proposal

As one of the few adult respected editors to oppose the consensus for blocking proposal (I agree it wasn't presented there optimally), I am curious to hear your opinion on User_talk:SandyGeorgia/arch95#June_2013. Why, of course we judge established and all editors "on the basis of their work and their behavior" ... and expect them to "know how not to get themselves into situations where they might get blocked", but those of us who have been around longer are more likely to have attracted fans who will push the block button for no reason at all, with no warning, with no discussion, with no basis. When challenged, they can remove the block as quickly as they placed it (with a false edit summary), and not have to face the music at ANI (and I doubt that many editors are as fortunate as I to have an arb in there immediately, indeed, the block was lifted before I was even online or aware of it, but it was lifted with a false edit summary). It can happen to anyone. Of course admins shouldn't be placing blocks that wouldn't gain consensus from anyone anywhere anytime. But the fact is they do. This proposal is not to enable folks to go around saying F and C; it's to stop the cowboy admins. It happened to me once-- it has happened to Eric enough times that he just doesn't care anymore. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:21, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

If he doesn't care any more, either he should start caring and change the way he engages in discussion, or there's no place for him in a group project. I consider your suggestion pure discrimination. It justifies all that has been said of admins & established users protecting each other. It's unfair to newcomers, and it's even unjust to established editors by not holding them to the standards they are capable of. If there are cowboy administrators, they're the ones we need to deal with. I work mainly with new articles, and I have seen people too quick to block in that situation; a few of them are wikifriends, and I think I've persuaded at least one of them to change the way they use blocking.

The reason I do not myself do what I say we ought to do, which is enforce NPA strictly with respect to established editors, and deal with gross impoliteness by established editors--which I consider an attack upon the community at large, just as if it were a newly arrived vandal, is that I don't want to spend my time here fighting endlessly with other users. But it ought to be done, and I give my admiration to the people who have tried to do it. Most of them have given up, and your proposal wants to institutionalize their failure and make it policy.

I do not know either you or he personally, nor most of the other people in the discussion. Bur perhaps I can to some degree sympathize with your viewpoint--it's just the same as the way I get annoyed at the policemen who enforce the speeding rules when I am speeding a little. But if we didn't have them, the reckless drivers would make the road impossible for ordinary people.

It is even from your own POV better not to enact this. It is true that the ability to punish other people is a temptation to self-righteouness and hypocrisy, When a individual does this, the rest of us can correct them. The way we have of ganging up on people at AN/I and elsewhere is worse, for nobody can withstand it. Having a group do punishment will not be constructive. At present, someone unjustly blocked can be angry at the individual who blocked them; with your proposed rule, everything escalates immediately to the community, and the person on the receiving end unless they are a fool will simply leave WP rather than suffer it. DGG ( talk ) 03:26, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

But you see, this is what happens each time the discussion comes up. People see Eric's Fs and Cs and think that is all that is involved. No, there is more. An admin can do it to me, too, or to anyone, with no Fs or Cs or any reason whatsoever, and know that by removing the block quickly and lodging a faulty reason, that will stay on record. I am not sure this proposal (if properly reworked) will result in "everything escalat(ing) immediately", in fact, the hope is it will do the opposite-- that is, admins who know they are making controversial blocks will stop doing it. Perhaps I'm naïve. But I'm fairly sure that admin abuse results in more lost editors, and most lost productive editors and productive editor time, than the F and C scuffles do. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:35, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, the one time it happened to you was in a question involving sockpuppet accusations, & was removed immediately; the only person who was really harmed by this was the one who placed the block, for it will not be forgotten. This has been a difficult area, with worse things both happening and threatened to good people. The direct contradiction between user policy and privacy policy is the problem here, not the action of individuals, and this will not be solved till one or another policy bends considerably.

What the proposal is saying , to continue my analogy, is that to prevent unreasonable penalties for speeding, we should not stop speeders until the police force has all agreed it; the correct approach combines an avenue of appeal, sanctions on the worst-judging enforcers, and recording of police stops for later scrutiny. We have all three. Your case is an example of the system working.

But with respect to the case that evoked this proposal: People are rationally bothered by such language here because they see it as the hallmark of abusive feelings and interactions, not just words. In most environments people don't talk that way unless they intend to provoke a fight, or show they're so tough they don't care whether or not they do. I see it as bullying, and I see the proposal as giving virtual immunity to the bully.

In a more general sense, this is not merely an environment where we build an encyclopedia, but an environment where we work together to build an encyclopedia. The only people who should be working here are those who can do positive work in a cooperative way. The difficulty in attaining this is the traditional toleration of those who cannot cooperate; we are indeed open to those who may not be able to work effectively in other setting, but when we are be open to those who antagonize others in this setting, then those others who find it intolerable will not come and contribute. I think this is a much greater number, and we need them. DGG ( talk ) 05:45, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad to understand your reasoning (and how strongly you feel about it), because when reasonable seasoned editors like you oppose block reform, I know there's no chance. I agree that the blocker in my case did more harm to himself than to me, which is one of the reasons it doesn't bother me the way it does Eric, but that is not to say it has done no harm to me. First, as has happened to Eric, others will use the block log to justify future blocks, without investigation. Second, and more importantly, my ability to explain policy to new(ish) medical editors is hampered by them seeing a block log. The system has worked in one sense (folks in the know can see what was done to me), but that doesn't help when I'm dealing with new editors who are pushing POV, misusing sources, whatever, and they see me as an editor not to be taken seriously because I have a block log. And then there's the issue that I see so much worse abuse that is tolerated every day, as long as the abusers avoid profanity. Anyway, that's life on the internet! Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:27, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

• I stumbled on this even though I wasn't pinged. Please note that it was I who exhumed Drmies' proposal, not SandyGeorgia; I'm grateful for her coming to the defence of the spirit in which it was offered, but I'm the one you should rightly excoriate :-) I believe you're assuming that everyone shares the view that certain words are unacceptable. That may be an objective metric in one sense, but it isn't in another - there will be disagreement even as to the words (for example the person who argued that "bugger off" would not have been profanity; and what about blasphemy?) I agree with Sandy that we have a problem also with abuse that avoids profanity, and I'd like to put it to you that it's not good for the encyclopedia to have a standard for incivility that defines it so narrowly; it's a misleading economy that will disadvantage some in the community (certain regional language communities and perhaps more importantly, those who in discussions write closer to how they would speak) while also allowing some forms of incivility. That's why I wanted another look at a consensus-driven process. Thanks for thinking about it. I'm not much of a politician, but it's me you should rightly argue with about this if you wish. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:18, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Replying: (1) My feelings on bad language are irrelevant. Many people are bothered. This is a community project, and to provide a welcoming environment not conducive to abuse, we must take the feelings of the more sensitive into account. When working with others, one avoids annoying them, and talks in a way acceptable to everyone present. , I regard this as so basic to a civilized environment anywhere that I have always been amazed anyone here things otherwise. It's pure arrogance to use what some present consider rude language. It's saying, it doesn't bother me, so it shouldn't bother you. There's a basic level in our society though there are settings where one can go outside the bounds. A workplace is not one of them. We have rules about this at WP meetings, and they should apply here also. (2)I agree that focussing on specific words is not the optimum approach. But here we have a case of someone consistently using language which they must know is not considered acceptable to many people here. Such people, if they can not change, poison the environment. (3) There are two issues here that have gotten confused:, first, whether a particular individual should receive a block, and second, what our general blocking policy ought to be. My amazement at the language often used here remains amazement, but to avoid frustration I do not comment on it except in extreme cases. I regard this as an extreme case, but views may differ. The second much more =fundamental question is whether experienced editors are to be privileged here in their behavior, or whether whatever policies we do have apply to everyone equally. The proposal to enforce the rules differently of different members of the community is what horrifies me. We should have a reasonable amount of tolerance for everybody, and use discretion in dealing with them. Admins whop do not show good judgement can indeed be our problem, but this applies to their dealing with everyone, not just the established users. It's those admins we need to deal with, but wee have no good way of dealing with this. I myself avoid bringing what I consider abuse to ANB, because experience shows it doesn't usually make things better. Working with individuals once one has gotten to know them does sometimes help. The worst possible way to deal with the problem is to let them continue to abuse the defenseless newcomers, but make it harder to censure the experienced. It produces a system hostile to newcomers, and the survival of WP depends on attracting them, for none of us will be here forever. DGG ( talk ) 23:01, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I couldn't agree with you more (apologies for butting in here, David). Incivility and personal attacks, especially when accompanied by profanity which significant portions of the population at large and many editors here find offensive, is even more inexcusable in people who pride themselves on and frequently remind everyone of their "content" skills. Everyone has a choice about which language to use, especially people who are highly articulate, educated and in command of multiple registers of their native language. They know exactly what they're doing and why. Insulting someone and/or using coarse language to do it is a choice. Being aggressive, confrontational, and belittling is a choice. Being an apologist for such behaviour in others because they write FAs is a choice. It's time to stop making those choices. But I'm not holding out a lot of hope. Voceditenore (talk) 06:57, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, since my point was missed, I'll restate it. I can't speak for others, but I am not an apologist for potty mouth, and certainly not because one writes FAs (we have some really disruptive editors who happen to write FAs, and they are well versed in disrupting without using profanity, but I digress). I do wish that whenever the discussion of abusive admins comes up, people would stop misreading it as a) protection because of content writing, or b) a defense of profanity while overlooking 1) that many editors routinely get away with far worse simply because they don't use profanity, and 2) those editors have a much worse effect on content contribution, and 3) they often are or are protected by abusive admins. I do think that because of the language Eric uses, he has made it more difficult to address the broader global problem, because editors make simple-minded, black-and-white distinctions and focus on the profanity rather than the other issues. My concern is that we cannot even hold the discussion without people seeing it in black-and-white terms, reducing the argument to who used F or C, while overlooking the much worse issues that go on among those who get away with it by avoiding profanity. It's time to stop mischaracterizing those who want to address the global problems, and believing that the "camps" are divided into FA writers vs others; the concern is the double standard and the far worse behaviors that are endorsed, tolerated and accepted simply because no Fs or Cs are involved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:28, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I didn't miss your point. I simply don't agree with it. Nor am I making a "simple minded distinction". I've seen plenty of abusive, aggressive language from Corbett towards other editors without him using profanity. That is also inexcusable, but combining that kind of abuse with profanity is the sociolinguistic equivalent of a punch in the face, and no amount of minimizing rhetoric, e.g. referring to it as "potty-mouth", changes that. Would he say what he says here to the face of a total stranger who was annoying him, especially if that person were bigger, stronger, and meaner? No. Why does he do it to total strangers here? Because he can get away with it, treats his blocks like badges of honour, and is inevitably rewarded with people flocking to his talk page to point out what wonderful prose he writes. The fact that "abusive admins" exist does not excuse "abusive editors". As long as you continue to conflate the two issues into what you call a "global problem", nothing will change, neither problem will be solved, and you will be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as condoning the toxic environment that abusive editors produce, provided of course that they're "established editors", but I've taken up enough of David's talk page as it is. Voceditenore (talk) 15:55, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

SPI

Hi, I wanted to bring this to your attention, since you had previously commented on the article. Thanks. Logical Cowboy (talk) 17:11, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Performance Marketing for Professionals

You take a measured approach to paid editing. I can't recall how this editor came to my attention, but I'm pretty sure there's a problem there. And an IP on my talk page is pointing towards others. Any advice on to what, if anything, to do about these? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 06:33, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Craig Keeland

Hi DGG, if you don't mind, I'd like your thoughts on how to improve the Craig Keeland article so that it isn't promotional. Thanks, HtownCat (talk) 20:38, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure it will be worth the trouble, because I don't think the article will pass AfD for lack of notability. But the way to at least make a better impression is to start by removing the overuse of his name. A good substitute is "He". Then write it in multi-sentence paragraphs, like an encyclopedia article, not isolated sentences like a press release. Don;' make a separate section for each of bis businesses: "Business career" will do fine. Don't try to dignify a $10,000 contribution by calling it "philanthropy" If Pauling is involved with his company document it from a reliable source--not a press releases in the local paper. And celebrity endorsements don;t belong in WP. I'll hold off nominating it for AfD for a day or two to give it a chance. But I suggest the best course is to withdraw the article, which you can facilitate by placing at the top a line reading : {{db-author}}. DGG ( talk ) 04:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi again, I've been working on this article. Do you mind giving feedback on its progress? HtownCat (talk) 20:36, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but it is not just the links, but the fundamental content seems intended to promote him and his company. I';e listed it for AfD. DGG ( talk ) 02:01, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I still don't understand how it's promotional. It's written neutrally and everything is cited. Can you give me a specific example? HtownCat (talk) 13:50, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

"Model" page for Trolley

Hi. Can you point me to the link for the "model" trolley page? Thank you. LoreMariano (talk) 19:34, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

OK. I'm ready to go but I need help from someone who can assist with the scanning and guide me as to best practices---naming convention; resolution; etc. Can you give me the name(s) of the person(s) you thought we could ask. LoreMariano (talk) 18:01, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm thinking about who--I'll get back to you in a day or so if someone else doesn't answer here & volunteer. DGG ( talk ) 02:08, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Did I understand you correctly...the ideal is to have a wiki page created for every trolley? I'm thinking it may be easier to create the pages as we scan the negatives. Maybe I can get someone from ERA (Electric Railroaders' Association) to help with the page content. We were thinking of scanning in batches of 20. ERA will FedEx me 20; when I finish that batch, I FedEx them back and get the next one, and so on. Most are from the mid to late 1940s. It would be great if we could create a template (or info box) to standardize the process. LoreMariano (talk) 15:33, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

As an example of the level of detail we use for locomotives, see GWR Caesar Class. or List of British Rail Class 91 locomotives Each individual one made is listed, but the article is for the class. Particularly important individual ones do have articles, e.g. GWR Thunderer locomotive. As a closer example, for trams, see Škoda 03 T and compare with the much lesser amount of detail in SEPTA PCC II. See Siemens_S70 for an example of how many pictures we'd usually put in an article.

For Commons, the situation is be different. They will probably accept a picture of every individual trolly car (though they call them trams) , and the most relevant category list there is this Scrolling down, the cities that has been done most thoroughly are Brno & Prague--see the list for Bruno and the list for Prague; for comparison, there's the disgracefully sparse list for North America.

These will give you an idea of how they are categorized. by city, by transit company, by manufacturer. I see most are exterior shots--some interiors would also be good. DGG ( talk ) 20:32, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Inclusion philosophy

I'd like to follow up on your comment: You said:

I will generally restore all articles on full professors at major universities,

I have a list of 699 people. It may not be your area of interest, but it is to me. Every single person on the list has won a medal at an international basketball tournament. These aren't small affairs, it includes the Olympics and some other events, the most notable international events in the sport. My current task is to do a writeup on their participation at the event, and add it to their biography.

Less than half have biographies. It pains me every time I search for one and don't get a hit.

I think such a player is at least as notable as a full professor. I think almost every one of them (some rare exceptions) deserves an article. It wouldn't be hard to come up with a template that creates a bare biography, including Reliable Sources. I won't do this because I think it is a bad idea, but if I did generate, say 400 biographies, and someone deleted them because they weren't adequately referenced, would you restore them all and either fix them yourself, or expect someone else to do it?

I'm not arguing that a full professor at a major university shouldn't have an article. I am arguing that when someone creates what is barely more than a copy of their bio, and expects us to fix it for them, we shouldn't feel obligated to do so.

We are all volunteers. We all ought to have the right to decide what content work we want to do. I have roughly 400 bios I'd like to write sometime, and I don't intend to spend time on a full professor, no matter how worthy, if I'm not personally interested. I hope I am wrong, but I am getting the impression that you think the fact that an editor identified a likely notable subject, and did little else, that this act imposes an obligation on the community to create the article for them. Again, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't know how else to interpret your reaction. Please let me know why my interpretation is wrong.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:49, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

The basic facts of their career as derived from the biography is a good start for an article. I would much rather go systematically, and make the thousands of new articles needed but even if I did, it would still basically consist of the basic facts of their career, as derived from the official biographies, and the list or summary of the accomplishments for which they received recognition. This is enough for a valid stub. It provides the basic information, and then we can eventually go further. Most WP articles grow by starting with that sort of stub.

Most of what is submitted does not fit into a standard WP format; if it is essentially their bare CV, it needs rewriting into sentences, and the necessary material added; if it is from a PR office, it needs trimming and rewriting and adding the material PR people omit but which are the facts that show notability; if it is from a naïve student, it needs rewriting and expansion. It could be argued that I am wrong in my strategy--that I would accomplish more by letting these go, and working from the most notable in the various specialties. If someone wants to do that, I would strongly encourage them to do it. But I do consider that when someone identifies a notable subject and writes an article sketch, we have collectively the obligation to make articles out of them. We are here to make an encyclopedia, and it is due to our lack of people in most subject fields, that we have not made the articles already before they are asked for. And it is more specifically our failure to adequate guide the people who submit inadequate articles that they languish in AfC. Nobody need do this individually, but we should do it collectively. When I screen G13s, I postpone the deletion of anything in any such that I think might make an article that passes AfD . I was unable to get consensus that everyone should do this, as most were too intimidated by the number of articles without considering the effects of collective work.

Nobody needs to do it for everything--nobody could do that competently. I am perfectly willing to take on the burden of completing as many as I possibly can. I can do this the more easily if I can screen them as popups before they get deleted.. If they have been deleted first, I need to take the steps necessary to view each one, before I can select the few worth working on--as I work on about 2 out of 50, it take twenty times longer.

I do not ask that you do this rewriting, since indeed everyone can select what they want to work on--I do hope that you not hinder my ability to do myself the ones I want to work on. It's a request; you're not required to by any guideline. (It's not just academics, by the way--I also rescue people who on the face of it who meet the basic criteria for politicians and writers.)

At present, I have a list of about 300 identified afc drafts to rescue, and I will rescue them over the next year or two even if they get deleted first. But I have caught only about 1/3 of the ones that I should do, and I want to catch the others. I know I will never catch many of them, because there is no practical way to quickly view all deletions. To the extent identifying them is uncomplicated, I can do more rewriting. I have already rescued about 100 articles from AfC that I think adequate, and removed deletion tags or not deleted an equal number that need further work. And for about 50 that I checked, I identify mainspace articles that were written or moved after the draft had been rejected that should not be in mainspace, and I try to get them deleted. Careful checking works both ways. Anyone who wants, can see what I delete and do not delete from my log and contributions. Probably most people trying to do something this with almost no assistance would have given up long ago, but i know how much positive work can be accomplished if even a single person steadily works at it. DGG ( talk ) 19:51, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Brackets or not in titles

Hi DGG: Could you give your expert input at the discussion taking place at Talk:Yissachar Dov Rokeach I#Page rename. Thanks so much, IZAK (talk) 11:24, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Thomas Aston (born 1480)

I do not think that this edit should have been made because the concerns field has not been filed out (as far as I can tell this is not a prerequisite). If you had looked at the talk page you would have seen what the concerns are, or, as an experienced editor, if you had read the contents of the article, the reasons would be obvious. So as not to make other editors jump through hoops please revert the last edit I made to the page (If you do that then the "concerns" field will be filled). -- PBS (talk) 13:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I could have been more explicit: Your rationale in the prod2 is wrong; the article does not say he was created baronet in 1628. I agree Baronets are not considered automatically notable here , but not only is that irrelevant to whether any particular baronet is, but it is wholly irrelevant, because apparently he wasn't a baronet. (According to the source, , no. 17 onp.110 refers to the Thomas Aston created baronet in 1628; the subject of this article is no.13 on p.197 ) Your second reason, added subsequently, was not one reliable source, not notable. I agree the source given is not wholly reliable, but it is a source. On the other hand, he probably is not notable by our standards, Since I do not think it will possibly survive AfD, I'm deleting it as an expired prod. DGG ( talk ) 18:08, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

New RFC on draft namespace

Hello,

As one of the participants in the previous related discussion, you are requested to comment on the RFC on creating a new Draft namespace at the Village Pump.

Thank you, TheOriginalSoni (talk) 19:48, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at AKonanykhin's talk page.
Message added 05:29, 9 November 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

moved it to AN DGG ( talk ) 06:57, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reward board

You might wanna see Wikipedia_talk:Reward_board#As_we_are_going_to_keep_this.2C_do_we_need_to_tighten_the_criteria_a_bit.3F - Sven Manguard and I started this simultaneously post the MfD (which was also another reason to bring up combining delete/merge/etc again I guess but that can wait as I am a bit short up for time currently..). Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:58, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

if we can remove the cash, great. Otherwise, my current personal preference for a course of action is waiting 6 months and then MfD2. I considered DelRev asking for non-consensus leading to an immediate MfD, but I am too busy now rescuing AfCs to do much else. DGG ( talk ) 20:28, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

That whole bit was very confusing to me. There was consensus to delete the page that involved donations to a charitable cause, but support to keep the one that involved payment directly to editors? Very strange. CorporateM (Talk) 16:32, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Lists of customers are "advertising"?

DGG, I have issued a bit of a challenge for you here. If Wikipedia is not intended for articles to list customers of businesses, then there are hundreds of other problems for you to address. I suspect you're applying a different standard to Comcast Business because it arose from the Reward Board. Have you checked Silgan Holdings, which also appeared on the Reward Board at the same time as Comcast Business? - I'm not that crazy (talk) 03:48, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Silgan gave a mention of two firms, and put it into context, rather than giving a list. And I am not happy with the last paragraph of that article, which I think trivial criticism, But you are correct that many existing articles in WP are far more unsatisfactory than the one you wrote. ( What I think your challenge is, is to find a way of saying something worth saying in an encyclopedia about the firm that would not fit into the overall article. DGG ( talk ) 05:28, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

With all due respect, I wrote much of it, including the section that was gutted, and I'm not even sure that I'm not that crazy worked on the article. I will look at the above example (Silgan Holdings) to see where I went wrong. :( Westin D^odger 15:39, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

It's not that lists of customers are advertising per se but when it is a list sourced to press releases (which are self published) then it is impossible for the article to be neutral as the customer list is WP:UNDUE. SmartSE (talk) 19:38, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Pad site et al.

Don't automatically assume that I didn't pull a WP:BEFORE. I did look for sources on everything I just prodded that you deprodded, and came up empty handed. I think it's actually rather rude of you to assume that I didn't bother looking for sources. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 04:01, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I do not assume, but neither do you state. There have been AfDs where others find references, and AfDs where they do not--you are frequently but not always justified. But much more importantly, I see no indication that you ever consider the possibility of merge or redirect, which are always preferred to deletion. I challenge as many deletion listings as I can where a redirect or merge seems possible. DGG ( talk ) 05:01, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Regarding your revert of my tag

I have so many Farsi reliable sources, stating that man is a fraud, http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2012/01/29/israeli-intelligence-pimps-discredited-iranian-dissident-peddling-regime-change-by-another-name/ Translation of one interview . It's not POV or COI. Danger^Mouse (talk) 06:40, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

You may well be right. i cannot tell without an extensive analysis of the sources. Bu the question is nonetheless subject to dispute, and will not be solved by deleting the article. If discussion on the talk page does not reach agreement on a text, I would suggest taking it to the NPOV or BLP noticeboard DGG ( talk ) 08:01, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking of proving my point on the talkpage of the article, and tagging it for POV, or editing the article, after all we have fraud's bio, on Wikipedia. Danger^Mouse (talk) 16:03, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's the right place to discuss it. DGG ( talk ) 19:38, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Rick DePiro

The search terms on the reward board are actually excellent leads for promo articles that need cleanup. I've been working down the list. For this article, a "Media appearances" section is promotional and most of the article is unsourced. It could be cut in half. I noticed there is an active disclosed PR rep on Talk from A&R (which I use to work for about 10 years ago) and I wish to avoid the usual accusations of sniping other COIs. That narrative is apparently convincing to at least some editors. I'll keep working down the search results, but thought you may have an interest in cleaning up this one. CorporateM (Talk) 13:53, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I am not comfortable working in that field, because I know so little I cannot tell if what I cut out is unimportant, or whether when I rewrite, I have rewritten correctly, But I too have been looking at articles previously advertised there. DGG ( talk ) 19:09, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

What about Metaswitch? Weird, they seem to be following the Bright Line, but nobody fulfilling their requests have bothered to clean up the dedicated sections to awards, executives, etc. I noticed a disclosed engaged participant, so figured I would skip it for the same reason. CorporateM (Talk) 21:54, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

The problem with the Bright Liner is the same as with AfC or NPP -- it works well only if the reviews are competent and careful. So far, most of the people doing Bright Line work have been fairly good, which is reasonable as they are mostly people with a great skepticism about the quality of most PR work. ASs the method becomes more widely used, this is unlikely to continue. You are quite right that in general you shouldn't review the work of your competitors. I'll deal with this one. DGG ( talk ) 22:43, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. If I help a PR rep, I am accused of whitewashing it for my PR colleagues. If I do not make the edits they want, I am sniping the competition. OTOH, company articles are my primary area of editing and it is difficult to avoid COIs in that area. Editors sometimes ask me to help other COIs, but I think in the future I will just abstain when asked. Anyways, I have cleaned up a lot of the promotion in the articles that show up in those searches. I was aggressive about sending promotional, unsourced articles to AfD per NOT, V, and OR and expect some editors to disagree with it. A lot of client lists I left up when they seemed potentially informative. I may check back in a week or so to see if the promotion was restored. CorporateM (Talk) 23:49, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we need to discuss client lists. The sort of client lists that merit removal are the ones from , say, a paper clip company, listing all the large corporations that use their paper clips, which is about the equivalent of an article on the WSJ listing everyone who quotes it. In the other direction, if a company is the exclusive supplier of a major product to the largest user of such product in the world, we should include it. Where in the middle to draw the line is not all that obvious. One thing that certainly helps is to have it as a sentence or two, not a bulleted list. (If I could, I'd outlaw bulleted lists from articles the same way we outlaw writing in FULL CAPS.) For comparison, the practice I have with scientists is to list not all of their cited work, or none of it, but the 5 papers that have had the most impact. (I picked the number 5 to match the number asked for by many grant and promotion committees, the ones who rate quality more important that bulk.) DGG ( talk ) 00:19, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

The article I wrote on Waggener Edstrom comes to mind, because they are arguably best known for their work with Microsoft and that client is the focus of much of the article. When it comes to lists in general, I sometimes give my clients a rule of ten, because the GA reviewer at RTI International asked me to list all 11 divisions. However, for products my rules is that we cannot name them individually if there is more than 3-5.

I imagine the criteria is the same we use for everything; it should be sourced to strong secondary sources, informative and in good taste, but all that depends on the circumstance and the sources. They should not be listed arbitrarily, but to communicate something to the reader such as providing an example of the market they target, identifying the adopters of something bleeding edge, or identifying where a large portion of their revenues comes from. CorporateM (Talk) 01:49, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

On a completely unrelated topic, do you think I could solicit for your input here on the Yelp page? My comment was that instead of documenting every single allegation a small business owner has made against them, we should only include those that have more than just local media coverage. CorporateM (Talk) 17:54, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Bill Still

I think it would only been rational to give me enough time to make a case. The William T. Still article was deleted way too quickly.

There was a "G4" or (something like that) claim. Which just isn't the case, since the stub was created from zero and I actually copypasted the older article in the talk page for reference.

I'm not proposing that the guy's claims are legitimate (although they are not that far from those of Ron Paul), but that they guy is exposing so much material that Wikipedia should find a couple of secondary sources to talk about them. If you check google books, you'll see that some writers claim he is a fraud and some support him. The point is that he has presence, anyway. I had the Beloit International Film Festival Award reference and I was going to add the International Forum on Financial Systems in Istanbul, in which the President of Turkey spoke as well. That and one book (ideally one debunking) and you have 3 unconnected sources.

It is not the first time the article has been done, and it has similar stubs in 3 other languages (the Swedish one foun better references, which I was about to use). There is a legitimate need for information on this guy, who is easy to google, anyway.--20-dude (talk) 03:31, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

• I just found a WHDT report, that's 3 unconnected soures outside Google books [19]. --20-dude (talk) 03:35, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
  • There have been so many previous deletions, that the best thing to do would be to go to Deletion Review. I suggest you make a talk page draft first, with the new references that you have found included. Then make your case, and be sure to mention the articles in the other WPs. If you can make a reasonable case for restoration, with the option for anyone who wants to take it to AfD , I think you've got a decent chance, though consensus at DRV is unpredictable, just as it is everywhere at WP. DGG ( talk ) 03:46, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

• • Well, I'd be losing peer help. But if there's no other way around it (seriously, nothing??) I guess that's what I'll have to do. Originally I wanted to request the article and maybe help providing some sources. Is there any way to get that sort of deal? Or maybe some sort of "trial article" dynamic. The guy is quite a case. He is easy to google, but it's the articles from well known sources are hard to track. It's easier to find those sources (or the leads to them) in his own videos (since they feature clips). How can you link articles from wikis in other languages?? I tried, but when I open the wiki text of an article to see how it's done I can't find it. When I'm done with whatever I do (and if I do), where do I present my case for review??--20-dude (talk) 05:38, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

You wont lose help. I'll help you. More later. The references are in the *text* of the other language article usually, not in the references section; If you find them just copy them as they are to the corresponding part of your text, and add a translation of the title. But I will take a look tonight. DGG ( talk ) 13:50, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, it is still a weak baby, but the sandbox is here. I still have no clue on how to tie the articles from other wikipedias. I started with the Swedish article and added information as second hand sources allowed me. I think I could go on looking for more stuff of the sort, but in my experience (I'm a very lapsed wikieditor, who once new all the technical stuff I'm bothering you with) it's never a good idea to do too much of an article without participation of other people.--20-dude (talk) 06:36, 13 November 2013 (UTC). Ps: I'm not sure how it fits but he's mentioned by Forbes here http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/05/31/the-case-for-monetary-freedom/.

For linking the article to the corresponding articles in other WPs, there's a more modern way, but the older way still works: w place at the bottom [[sw:SwedishTitle]] using the WP two letter abbreviations. The reverse entires will get made automatically. DGG ( talk ) 19:46, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I think this might be the ideal size with enough references for its debut. Short enough to have a tight control of facts and big enough not to be a stub. What do you think of the writing, does it need rephrasing in some spots? [[20]] --20-dude (talk) 20:35, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

I've done a little gentle tidying, to show willing (hope you don't mind me playing in your sandbox, @20-dude:). As I said when I mentioned the article here at first, I'm neutral about the content but was just keen to ensure that if we had an article it was at, or linked from, the "salted" title "Bill Still". Looking good now. It can be easier to format references if you use {{cite web}} etc, which you can use from the "cite" button on the editing bar. And note the "ISBN" trick: by putting it in capitals, and replacing the equals by a space, we get an automatic link to a search page where readers can check the book in Worldcat etc. PamD 22:19, 14 November 2013 (UTC)"

And I've now turned a redlink blue by changing the initial to "I" instead of "İ". If you see a redlink which looks as if it ought to be blue, it can be worth doing a bit of a search to find the article at a slightly variant title (people with or without middle initials, or a Bill/William-type difference, or subtle spelling variations). PamD 22:32, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, @PamD:. Thank you very much. Everyone is welcomed to play with my sandbox, specially if they are going to make contribs as good as yours. What do you mean "salted"? (No, literally - I'm not familiar with the term). I tried with the templates for references, but I kept getting them wrong. Do you think the sandbox is ready to become an article? What else should I edit?--20-dude (talk) 21:32, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

"Salted" means that it's been made impossible to create a new article at that title, without the intervention of an administrator (WP:SALT) - after the 3 Deletion discussions on the title, I suppose. Derived from ancient (or symbolic?) practice of spreading salt over your enemies' fields so that they couldn't grow crops again - Salting the earth. I'll leave it to @DGG: to advise on the article's readiness. PamD 22:20, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Then it's up to you @DGG:. What's next? Should we get another peer review? --20-dude (talk) 08:25, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Loyaltyworks

Hi, would you mind commenting here? It's been relisted twice and it'd been nice to get another opinion. Thanks, SwisterTwister talk 20:51, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

commented. DGG ( talk ) 22:54, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

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Wikipedia:Guide to abbreviations used in deletion debates listed at Redirects for discussion

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Question regarding a wiki deletion

Hi, I need help with an issue I simply don't understand regarding a wiki deletion. I hope your experience as an editor on wikipedia can help me out here. I added a complete new article about the term: "888poker" about two weeks ago. I saw that a few editors seemed to have gone over it changing minor issues which seemed completely normal. I even received the brands' approval for uploading unique content like brand logo, in game photo, etc. Items that I believe can improve wiki users experience. Two days ago I found that a user called "2005" deleted my entire Wiki article, simply taking off the page and redirecting it to 888 holdings. I explained the basic difference between a well known brand (over 10M users) and it's corporate term and even gave the example of pepsico (corporate) having a wiki as well as pepsi, 7up and all its other brands, which is the exact same situation here. The answer I received was unclear (and even rude). You can see the conversation here at the end of the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:2005

As all content uploaded was 100% new, informational & non spam, I just don't get the accusations of duplicated content and the immediate removal. It can't be duplicated as I wrote it, and if there was s shred of a problem with the content itself, the right move, I believe, would be to comment on content change, instead of removing a completely new informational article that actually gives value to users. Because of the swift removal and false duplication accusations, I wonder if the editor actually read the wiki at all. I have no idea why we wouldn't want to actually enhance wikipedia and improve it to users (isn't that the idea of wikipedia in the first place!?).

Regarding the second argument of writing it in the 888 holdings wiki, I believe that a brand this size merits its own wiki article. If more text is needed, then there is no problem to add and enhance it - it just needs to be published first (and not removed). As other editors who went over this did not find a reason to completely remove the article, I feel this is poor judgement by an editor and I request your experience as an editor to see if this is an actual breach of wiki guidelines and give an editor's second opinion. I would like to settle this dispute as I feel there was hard work, effort and time invested in this (by me) and I don't think the reaction here was justified. Appreciate any help on this issue. The original article can be found on the term "888poker" (view history, and then restore it). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eyalkn (talk • contribs) 13:09, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

full answer forthcoming, probably this evening. This topic field is not my specialty , and I need to check a number of things some information before I can give you advice. And it will be only advice, challenged actions at WP are ultimately determined by the community, not individuals, and the community is not always consistent. In the meantime, please read 2005's response on his talk page to another editor in the section above his response to you. DGG ( talk ) 17:28, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, still waiting your answer on the above issue. Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eyalkn (talk • contribs) 09:39, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Greg Schiemer‎

Hello, DGG! About the above article: There is already an article about this fellow in the main encyclopedia. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:34, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

thanks. I tagged it G6. DGG ( talk ) 05:39, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

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SwisterTwister talk 22:54, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Biography: Mabel R. Hokin

Thanks much for the tips, DGG! I'll tone down the personal aspects of the bio, and make it shorter and more accomplishment oriented, rather than a "tribute", which I agree it veers toward. Maybe cite one or two more key articles and reviews. I do hope I can keep the mention of her being blacklisted from entry into the US during the McCarthy era, because that sort of thing is of historical interest and should be preserved in Wikipedia. It wasn't only famous scientists like Oppenheimer whose careers were affected by the anti-communist fervor of that time. It had a debilitating effect over all of science. But I can drop the other personal stuff. It's hard to write a conforming bio of a scientist that did important work, but stayed out of the limelight in a field that didn't get huge until late in her career when technology caught up. There's very little other than articles that she wrote, and the 1996 symposium in her (and Lowell's) honor is totally undocumented (which is shameful). All I've got is photos of her with colleagues. But I certainly think Mabel Hokin deserves a Wikipedia entry when any random NFL football player or porn star gets one. I'll make it better. :) Sammyjava (talk) 21:26, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

the main things we need to increase our coverage in these areas is to have more people interested in writing articles, so I appreciate your persistence. DGG ( talk ) 21:41, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:TheBus (Honolulu)

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Merge never happened

(cur | prev) 04:47, 26 March 2013‎ DGG (talk | contribs)‎ . . (2,783 bytes) (-360)‎ . . (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Malik Deenar (r) Kasaragod Andyavisramam Kollunna Swahabi closed as merge to Malik Deenar) (undo | thank)

FYI In ictu oculi (talk) 01:56, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Engage:BDR

Patrolling pages today I came across this. Could you take a look at and let me know what you think. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:33, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. The media stories are substantial and semi-independent. I think they represent the PR technique we will find hardest to deal with, the generation of apparently respectable stories. I can't call it A7 or G11. DGG ( talk ) 08:45, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Nova Publishers

After an attempted whitewash some time ago, we now have a couple of editors here that seem to be determined to make this a hatchet job and even object to calling this an "academic" publisher. Your input to the (long) discussions on the talk page would be very welcome. --Randykitty (talk) 09:06, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

BLP Prod

Whether notable or not the article is eligible for BLP Prod. If a normal prod or AFD then yes WP:Before applies but not for unreferenced BLP's. BLP prod does not suggest the article is non notable purely that it is an unreferenced article of a biography of a living person which is not allowed on this site since 2010. Articles should not be created without sources and as an admin i would hope you would understand the importance of BLP. Also could you fix whatever you were trying to do with this edit.Blethering Scot 14:04, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

What I understand is that WP:BEFORE applies to all deletion processes, and if something is important enough, it's worth a few minutes trying to source it. It's so much worthwhile that I try to check every BLP Prod before the 10 days are up in order to catch the most important ones, such as government ministers, and add a source. This is especially true for people who have entires in their own country's WPs, as here, for then it is enough to copy over some of the references. (For lack of time, I no longer do it for athletes and entertainers, which are 80% of the BLPPRODS--even though my experience when I did is that about half are in fact quickly sourceable, unless it's an area that isn't covered by easily accessible sources. )

You are correct that in this case the French WP template syntax for the reference didn't carry over, so I fixed it. I should have checked, and the only excuse I can give is the time pressure from the presence of so many things that people nominate that they should have checked first. DGG ( talk ) 19:35, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Gilabrand

Hi DGG: Your expertise would be welcomed at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Gilabrand. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 22:10, 17 November 2013 (UTC)