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Hi some questions about reference of the article : Disruptive Technologists

Answered

– Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:20, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

AFC of Disruptive Technologists

Hi, the reviewer wrote that the first two links of the reference is invalid and believes that it is written by the company. However,David Craig,the writer of the article, does not work for Disruptive Technologists, he is a freelance writer. Lauren Keyson does write freelance articles too, and also writes for NY Convergence, but she is not a team member or employee of NY Convergence. She is considered a "contributor." Will that make a difference in your decision? Thank you Lygmahan (talk) 04:15, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please read WP:N. It is more a question of the reliability of the sources and establishing the notability of the subject. NYConvergence is described as the blog of Trylon SMR, a PR company. Not really a suitable source for an encyclopaedia article. You also need to read carefully the comments of the reviewers at AFC - a good encyclopaedia article does not consist of telling the reader about the company's trademarks. Spinning Spark 18:22, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WHY SO FEW IMDB RANKINGS ON FILM PAGES?

Answered

Just wondered why the decision was made to publish Rotten Tomatoes ratings on almost all film pages, sometimes Metacritic, but hardly ever IMDB? I would have thought that IMDB was the most important rating to include? Jdavies555 (talk) 17:48, 26 January 2013 (UTC)--[reply]

I have moved this post here from the talk page. I believe the reason is that IMdB ratings are user generated, whereas Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregator of reviews in other publications. Rotten Tomatoes is not universally accepted by all editors as being a reliable source for this purpose. In my opinion, using Rotten Tomatoes is better than Wikipedia editors drawing their own POV opinion from an assessment of available reviews. Spinning Spark 18:17, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

From MOS:FILM#Reception: "Do not include user ratings submitted to websites such as the Internet Movie Database or Rotten Tomatoes, as they are vulnerable to vote stacking and demographic skew." Cheers. Doniago (talk) 21:47, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The same guideline also says "review aggregation websites such as Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic are citable for statistics pertaining to the ratio of positive to negative reviews". These are aggregates of reviews of professional critics, not user submitted reviews. A distinction needs to be drawn between the two. Spinning Spark 22:30, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

partial merge question

I am very new to Editing, and I have what I think is kind of a tricky problem.

I'm looking to two book articles: The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near. These articles contain a ton of predictions by the author. But then there is also a separate article containing predictions from all his books and from other sources (interviews, etc): Predictions made by Ray Kurzweil. There is a ton of duplication here, the predictions from each book appear both on the book pages and on the predictions page. Plus they have diverged significantly, so neither can considered complete or correct.

This doesn't seem to be an article merge issue. Because at the end of the day, I expect there will still be all 3 pages. There is content on the book pages besides predictions, and there are predictions on the predictions page from non-book sources. So it's hard to see anything being merged away completely.

So the first question is should the predictions really live on the book pages or in the combined prediction page? I'm sure the answer is it's up to the interested parties on those pages, but really there is not much activity there. I'm wondering if this has come up generically in other contexts? Better to push as much as possible to the shared/aggregate page, or better to keep it in the separate individual pages.

Second question is how to mechanically do the merge, considering there are a lot of conflicts and it's not clear how to resolve them all. Do we follow merge protocol even though this isn't a full article merge?

I have raised these questions on the talk pages, but there is not much activity. However I think it's worth doing, because I think this much duplication is really bad for readers and editors alike and it's only getting worse the more they diverge. Thanks. --Silas Ropac (talk) 22:02, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your second question first, there is no reason why you should not follow the procedure at WP:MERGE to actually gain consensus and carry out a merge. You can always open a discussion on the talk page (which should be done anyway) to explain that you are only proposing a limited merge. A merge template on the article itself will often attract more comment than just the talk page, but if there is still no reaction you can go ahead and merge as you see fit.

I looked at the first book article you linked. Honestly, judging just by what is there now, there is no justification for that article to exist at all on notability grounds although a search for sources may turn up something more substantial. The article is entirely about the book's content, which it covers in far too much detail. There is no coverage of reviews, the book's impact or legacy. Of the three references given, one is the book itself which as a primary source does not count towards notability. The other two are blogs which in most cases are not considered reliable so also do not count. The second book has rather more references (but I have not reviewed them for reliability, I leave that to you) but suffers from exactly the same faults - a long discussion of content with no indication of why the book is notable.

In my opinion, both book articles could be entirely merged into the "predictions" article. But if it were me, I would carry out a thorough search for more sources first to satisfy myself that decent book articles could not be written. There is a notability guideline specifically for books at WP:BOOK. Spinning Spark 17:40, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for looking at this. I also wondered about the "too much detail" issue. I have seen many articles which seem to summarize the plot of books or TV shows in excessive detail. But that doesn't mean we should do it here. I will look at WP:BOOK for guidelines. With "predictions" I think it is tricky because if you leave some out, it generates a lot of discussion, are you hiding his bad predictions, or vice versa.

I think the predictions page deserves to exist. It grew of the author's his main page (Ray Kurzweil), and predictions are core to what he is all about. They come mostly from his books, but also from other sources.

As for whether the book pages should exist, once the predictions are moved, I think that is TBD. For the 2nd book The Singularity is Near it got a lot of coverage, I think it's just a matter of tracking it down and citing it correctly. For the 1st book less coverage for sure, but I will look into it.

I think the order of events is:

follow WP:MERGE and eventually do the partial merge, leaving all pages for now
fix up the newly minted predictions page. With duplication issue gone, I think there will more motivation and energy to improve this page, maybe thin it out some.
look at the now smaller book pages, and either improve them or decide they go away

I guess two smaller followup questions are:

WP:MERGE says don't put discussion on a page which is frequently archived. We just started archiving on these talk pages, with 90d period. Seems like 90d is long enough? Or else where would you put a discussion so it's permanent?
As far as actually doing the merge. With these lists there's going to be essentially conflict for every line. I guess one editor just takes their best shot, then people can propose changes and fixes after the initial merge? Or else is there a precedent or reason for doing the merge on some subpage somewhere, and then swap it in only when it's settled down?

Thanks again. --Silas Ropac (talk) 20:02, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:BOOK is a good place to look for guidance on writing book articles, but actually that was not the guideline I meant to point to. I intended of course WP:NBOOK which defines the notability criteria for book articles. Spinning Spark 00:45, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tech problem at Dean Foods talk page

Resolved

– Unionhawk ^Talk ^E-mail 17:16, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There are talk posts that can been seen in edit mode but do not appear in normal read mode of the talk page. I can't figure out what's wrong. Can someone look at it please? Many thanks! -- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:36, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This edit removed a character so all the following was interpreted as part of a non-displayed comment. I restored the character [1] but also had to handle two attempted signatures by other users. They were not expanded to real signatures at the time because they were inside the unclosed comment tag. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:55, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for fixing that!! :-) -- — Keithbob • Talk • 02:41, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Invalid Citation / Falsely Cited

The Description section of the Holtzman Inkblot Test has a claim about the typical cost of the procedure and what it costs. The cited source is a medical dictionary entry that mentions neither the cost nor what it should cover. How should I deal with this? I thought there was a way to flag it as an invalid citation, but I couldn't find it. If I have posted this in the wrong place, please politely tell me and I will post elsewhere. --un4v41l48l3 (talk) 01:49, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. The correct way to go about this is to start or continue a relevant discussion at Talk:Holtzman Inkblot Test. If there is no response after a couple of days, invite the contributor of the information to join in the discussion. If that does not work after a couple of days, and the information is clearly inappropriate and/or unsourced, you can remove the information per WP:BRD and wait for further developments. It would also be advisable to say on the article talk page what you have done. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:57, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your direct question, the correct tag to use in this situation is {{failed verification}}. However, the material seems to have been removed now, which in my opinion is a good thing even if it is accurate. Price and contract information rapidly goes out of date. It is not the function of an encyclopaedia to act as a price list, although it is often legitimate to discuss historic changes in cost - for instance, when discussing the falling cost of technology. Spinning Spark 09:50, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fate of USS Constellation 1797

Hi, I'm about to submit a major edit to the article: USS Constellation 1797; the following is an example of a major change to the fate of the Constellation, citing a primary source reference. Your advice on how to proceed, in keeping with Wikipedia etiquette guidelines will be appreciated. Thank you.–

Fate: Museum Ship, Baltimore, 1955-2012

Admiral Hefferman quoted a memorandum signed by the Secretary of the Navy that states “Official records disclose that the Constellation was many times rebuilt, including major rebuildings at Washington in 1812 and at Norfolk in 1853-1855. Nowhere in these records, however, is there any indication that the original Constellation, launched in 1797, was in fact broken up, stranded, scrapped or otherwise disposed of, nor is there any statement authorizing or sanctioning the disposal of the ship by any means whatsoever” The Navy’s Director of History had responded to the writer Howard I. Chapelle’s statement in a book that Constellation had been broken up in 1853 and a new ship was substituted and without Congressional authorization and named Constellation II. Hefferman’s memorandum was never contested by the Navy or anyone other than Chapelle until the publication of “Fouled Anchors, The Constellation Question Answered” in 1991. During the interval the National Archives and Records Administration collected and cataloged Constellation’s repair records in the 1970s that confirmed the position taken by the Navy in 1954.

--Maxwell404 (talk) 00:02, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Provided the source meets with WP:Reliable Sources, and is verifiable per WP:V, there should be no problem. The effort should be to merge your text with existing content in a manner that avoids representing a conflict between content added by other editors. The normal procedure would be to signal your intention on the article talk page, but there does not appear to be much recent action there, although you could invite the opinions of other main contributors (see: list of contributors). The main thing is to avoid any claims that the addition could be your own WP:Original Research. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:19, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have fixed the broken links to the citations in that paragraph. I recommend that anyone considering making changes read the available material in the references first, which is quite extensive. Spinning Spark 08:02, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Loading a photograph to a biography of a living person

Brenda Gourley

I am helping a friend, Pref. Brenda Gourley, update her biography. She would like a photograph to be loaded. I see that you need to be an editor of some standing to do this. Can an exiting editor load a picture for her? (she can email one to you)

Many thanks Anne Chappel Zanzibar64 (talk) 07:51, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Anne, I have confirmed your account so you can now upload images. However, you might want to consider uploading to Commons: instead so that the image is available to other projects as well. Please note that the image must be released under a free licence (CC-BY-SA) by the copyright owner. This would normally be the person who took the photograph (not you). Spinning Spark 08:22, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

An English Translation of a Suicide Letter

I searched Wikipedia's help pages for an answer to my question. I'm still stumped. My father has translated an Olympic athlete's 1968 suicide note, for Wikipedia on my behalf, from Japanese to English. The suicide note is available online through various Japanese-language sources (newspapers, support group for people with depression or anxiety issues, books, published essays and so on), but none lists the ownership of the suicide note.

According to three newspapers, the police released a copy of the note to the public two weeks after the athlete's death. All three did not mention whether the family supported the police's decision to allow newspapers to reproduce the letter. My father says it was common to see the reproduction of suicide notes in newspapers, but he doesn't know if this is still the case today as he emigrated from Japan during the 1970s.

I was told by a Wikipedia editor that it's fine to publish the English translation since we won't be reproducing the Japanese contents of the letter, but I'm not so sure. Particularly the legal aspect of publishing an English translation of a Japanese-language note in Wikipedia and the copyright of the 1968 letter's contents. Please advise. Thanks. 0zero9nine (talk) 00:50, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not the place to "publish" such a translation. If you are intending to use it as a reference in an article, the best way to do so would be to use an appropriate {{cite}} template to cite the original letter, and provide the translated text in the citation. It could be argued however that a translation that has not been published in a reliable source is original research. Don't forget that sources do not have to be in English, although English is preferred.--ukexpat (talk) 15:19, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The suicide note is already provided through an off-site link in the athlete's Wikipedia entry, but the note is in Japanese and the athlete's Wikipedia entry is in English. Hence, my question. However, a fair point that an unpublished translation could be seen as original research, so I won't use it. Thanks. 0zero9nine (talk) 19:07, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think you should worry too much about the OR problem. It's perfectly acceptable to use the translation as a basis for, say, usefully quoting portions of the letter, or for describing its contents. Adding a wholesale translation of the note might be inappropriate (depending on how long it is), but you should be prepared to have the translation questioned. As ukexpat says, foreign-language sources are totally acceptable. But it sounds like you're also concerned about copyright issues and respecting the author's family's wishes. With respect to the former, it depends a bit on the length, but you could argue fair use for quotes. As to the family's wishes... that's more a matter of editorial discretion. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 15:15, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ethnic edit campaign (European-American, black)

I came across an anonymous editor 218.153.88.228 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot) whose thirteen edits consist entirely of changing

"white" to "European-American"
"African American" to "black"

I reverted them as it seems to be some kind of WP:POV campaign. There was no question of matching sources or any context like that, and no explanation of the edits. Two questions:

Is there a clear WP:MOS or WP:Policy on this?
Is there a search to find similar edits to see whether the campaign extends beyond this one anonymous editor?

-Colfer2 (talk) 11:25, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:IDENTITY appears to offer the answer: "the most common terms for a group will be those that the group most commonly uses for itself." I interpret this to mean "African American" would be the preferred term, and "white" or "Caucasian" used interchangeably, depending on context. "European-American" is incorrect on so many levels...--Unionhawk ^Talk ^E-mail 17:28, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reliable source & scholar quotes v. primary & tertiary inference.

How do we get MEDIATION on a page by someone familiar with WP policy? I have tried Requests for Comment, Third Opinion and selecting from the editor assistance list over a two-months discussion. The United States article says it "includes 50 states and DC". But a scholar looking at U.S. expansion from 1803, says, "At present, the United States includes the Caribbean and Pacific territories, [D.C.] and, of course, the fifty states.” (Sparrow in Levinson, 2005, p.232). And now collaborating with Buzity, we have at U.S. Government Printing Office, “The United States now consists of 50 states, the District …, and the territories ...” (Welcome to the United States: a guide for new immigrants, 2007. p.77.)

Golbez agreed to “include territories”, but then reverted them, citing wikilink to the Insular Cases. He has since promised to revert any further edit. Buzity and I found law journal articles, court cases, statutory law, executive orders superseding Insular Cases. U.N. resolutions cited for "include territories" have secondary sources. I have a summary at "Include territories” summary for mediation, and at WP policies for “include territories”. Golbez added a citation using a tertiary source, but WP policy would prefer secondary sources. We are warned that we are only two, we can be banned from the article and talk page, we are illogical and we cannot change anything unless we agree to change everything in all related articles, none of which rings true. Thanks in advance. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:44, 11 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've posted to the talk page. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 15:37, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also like to note, VH, you may want to relax your style of argumentation. It comes off as Wikilawyering, and you may be interpreting Wikipedia policies and guidelines way too strictly. Things here are very flexible normally. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 15:55, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lists of award winners

I understand from recent discussions regarding award categories that in general we discourage these (many of them have notability issues). I need to ask about award LISTS. At Fred Jarvis I have provided a list of winners of the Fred and Anne Jarvis Award. This is presented annually by the National Union of Teachers so maybe it would be better placed there, or perhaps a list should be created under its own name (say "List of winners of the Fred and Anne Jarvis Award"). At John Read (psychologist) it states he won the New Zealand Psychological Society’s Sir Thomas Hunter Award in 2010. We have a stub of an article at Thomas Hunter (psychologist) and no article at all for New Zealand Psychological Society (although we do have an article for its parent at Royal Society of New Zealand). I have begun researching the Sir Thomas Hunter Award with a view to adding a list of award winners, but where should this be placed (if at all)? If an individual is considered notable enough to have an article in his/her own right then isn't it appropriate for an award named after that individual to be noted somewhere, along with a list of its recipients? Do such lists belong under the organisation presenting the awards (difficult for the Sir Thomas Hunter Award!), or as separate entities (with a mention of the existence of the award in the article for the individual for whom the award is named)? I don’t want to create lists if this breaches any Wikipedia guidelines (I’m guessing it may have been discussed before but I couldn’t find a suitable guidance note). May I have advice, please? Thanks. LenF54 (talk) 19:45, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest that for an example you look to the articles James Tiptree, Jr., James Tiptree, Jr. Award and List of James Tiptree, Jr. Award winners: three (linked) articles, each properly sourced and linked. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:33, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]