Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new other than a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.

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

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Sexual orientation of non-heterosexual celebrities

Apparently, Wikipedia has a policy of mentioning the sexual orientation of celebrities who are known to be non-heterosexual. But celebrities known to be heterosexual/straight do not appear to have this information included.

While I can understand that heterosexuality is of little interest to anyone — what makes the other sexualities more interesting and more worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia?

There are many personal details about celebrities that most people would surely consider irrelevant to their public status, and unnecessary of inclusion in Wikipedia, such as their shoe size, hair colour, left-handedness, weight, race, etc. I don't see why their sexual preferences are any more relevant.

It may be relevant if the celebrity's sex life, or sexuality itself, are of particular relevance to their celebrity status or somehow feature in their work. In which case, the disclosure of their sexuality should surely be mentioned in relation to that, rather than in isolation.

So, rather than saying:

"Sarah is openly gay."

The article should say:

"Sarah is openly gay, her homosexuality playing a large part of her humour and often being the subject of public attention."

If the celebrity's homosexuality (or bisexuality) isn't actually relevant to their fame at all, it surely need not be specifically mentioned:

"Sarah has had numerous girlfriends, some of whom have appeared on the show with her." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grand Dizzy (talk • contribs) 22:47, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I've always found this interesting, especially since there are no categories for straight people, but there are GLBTs. Perhaps its because heterosexuality is deemed "the norm", and not being "normal" is notable enough to discuss. SashaCall ^(Sign!)/_(Talk!) 22:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd agree with that. How one perceives the whole issue aside, "I'm gay" simply carries more notability than "I'm straight" in most cases (a gay man suddenly saying the latter might be an exception). It might be a different story when the media dismisses it as commonplace. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 22:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

We make mentions of people who were adopted (Category:Adoptees and its well-populated sub-categories) even when that fact has little signifiance to the subject's notability. We don't make mention of people who were not adopted, nor do we say that a politician won the majority of votes in their district, etc. In these cases, we are making a note when someone deviates from the norm. Most people are not adopted. Most politicans get a majority of votes. It's the case where there's an exception (e.g. Bush 2000) where it becomes of note. No value judgement is made. We aren't saying Adopted people are better or worse, and nor does the placement of someoe in a category imply much of anything. Yes, heterosexuality is considered the norm. But that's just the defintion of normal. 90-99% of the population (depending on where you take your figures. Demographics of sexual orientation notes that range, saying that there's a mean of about 95-96%) is heterosexual. That's the norm. Without having to make any value judgements at all, an attribute of someone who lies two standard deviations from the mean is generally worth mention. Heterosexuality is the norm. We can go for ages about why that is (i.e. biological or cognative), but at the end of the day, it is "normal" or "typical" to be heterosexual. --Ybbor^Talk 03:48, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

BLP's for heterosexuals often note that they are married, have children (and sometimes give ages and even names of issue) which rarely has any impact on the subjects notability. Obviously the phrase "heterosexual" itself doesn't appear, but the orientation is obvious - and as irrelevant. LessHeard vanU 12:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Dude, Oscar Wilde was married and had children... SamBC(talk) 16:22, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

We have no such policy that strictly forbids or allows it. Its just standard practice combined with a few other policies. If a celebrity comes out as being gay, that fact would probably make the cover of every celebrity magazine and would be widely circulated on the internet. If a celebrity issues a press release saying that they are straight, the media is going to say "Who cares?" There just really aren't any sources that specifically mention things about celebrities that are considered "normal" - people wouldn't pay to read it so People isn't going to report it. If there are almost no sources saying something about someone, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to mention it in their article. If there are a lot of sources, then apparently people consider that to be a significant fact and we should probably include it. Mr.Z-man 18:02, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

To Sambc, indeed - but it isn't relevant to Wildes notability other than an example of Victorian morality, whereas his homosexuality did effect both his work and his life. To Mr.Z-man, but the same celebrity lifestyle magazines are full of straight celebrities personal lives regarding girl/boyfriends, engagements and marriages; it is simply an assumption of heterosexuality rather than the publicising of it.LessHeard vanU 21:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

But we can't use info like X is married to Y to source statements like X and Y are heterosexual. That would be synthesis. Mr.Z-man 05:16, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

We don't synthesies, we often simply state that X is/was married to Y - and allow the reader to draw the conclusions. That said, X being married to Y is rarely of any consequence to the notability of the parties concerned. LessHeard vanU 12:25, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the determination to mention someone's sexual orientation should be made on a case-by-case basis. For celebrities, public figures, and historical figures, their sexual orientation could well be relevant, particularly if they are LGBT in an oppressive era or geographic location, or if they were closeted. If a public or historical figure was hiding something, that's usually interesting. It's also interesting if they are a role model because of their sexuality, or if they themselves have spoken about their sexuality. Like it or not, LGBT identity is more notable than straight identity, because we're in a historic period where LGBT issues are controversial and widely talked about. Plus, (1) LGBT people want LGBT role models, and (2) straight people are fascinated with LGBT identity.

For some people, however, it's just not really germane to the article. For example, who cares if an obscure Nobel Prize winner in physics or chemistry is gay? They are only notable because of the prize they won and for their scientific work. How is their sexual orientation relevant or even interesting? Another example might be authors who are not public figures. If someone is otherwise obscure and private, and is known only for their work or some notable event that has nothing to do with LGBT issues, I don't see how sexual orientation or identity is relevant or interesting.

On another point, I've always been bothered by statements that so-and-so are "openly gay", since we would never say someone is "openly straight". If the subject of an article is gay, and that fact is worth noting for some reason, then let's just say that they are "gay", "lesbian", "bisexual", or "asexual", etc. In the case of closeted living people, we can't comment on their sexuality, so for any mention of sexuality of living people, "openly" is a given, so why say it? For dead people, it may very well be relevant that a person was closeted, since that fact and their sexuality was likely very important to that person and those around him or her. But while we might comment that a dead person was in the closet, I don't see any need to ever use the term "openly gay", as if being open about your sexuality is something unusual. COGDEN 18:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

As has been said before - part of the opportunity is that in other areas we mention that someone is or is not something, and expect the reader to conclude if we don't mention that they are either the other way inclined or of no public position on the issue - we don't for instance have many white people categories, but we are pretty equal on male/female cats. I think part of the advantage of using the category is that in part it is driven by the GLBT editors and community itself to recognise how normal the whole issue is, and that its OK to be gay - lets be honest, there is still unfortunatly homophobia in the world. Part of the brief of Wikipedia is to educate, and for that reason in this case I don't think we need a tag which relates to some form of openly hetrosexual - the tags and volumes of diverse people within the GLBT cats highlight just how normal the whole issue is. On your second (implied) point of how we write the sexuality in to the article, I think its best left to an article by article conclusion/debate - but unless the subject has said "hey, I'm openly gay" then using such a term in their article would seem NPOV. Rgds, - Trident13 23:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

So we say that Dumbledore is simply "a closeted gay", rather than making a big, perverted fuss about it. Right?~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 23:54, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Dumbledore is a character in a series of books, not a real person, and Rowlings identification of him as gay is more to do with how she saw the development of the character to what he is when the story of Harry Potter involves him. It is to be considered that Rowling is not gay herself, so her interpretation of how a persons homosexuality might impinge on their character is both likely theoretical and open to artistic license. Lastly, he's a ruddy wizard - not really based in the human experience, I would suggest. LessHeard vanU 19:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

A long term solution will be tricky to find. A person's sexual preference should not, in my opinion, be any more notable than their eye colour. Unfortunately it seems that a homosexual soccer-player / politician / pop-star becomes more notable just because they've declared their sexuality. What do we do if they've been outed, but deny it? Also, sticking a label on someone seems a bit binary; maybe some people are a bit more complicated than "gay" and "not gay". (But I can't imagine saying that John Doe is 'a little bit gay'.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by DanBealeCocks (talk • contribs) 22:05, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

One solution/reality is that Wikipedia reflects the primary sources. If the articles we use as sources describe someone as gay or adopted, so should we. And we want to avoid weasel words so we don't need to say e.g the Times says Sarah is gay, we just say it neutrally and move on.Obina 20:41, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Being gay, lesbian, bisexual and in their own way transgender or intersex is of interest and much speculation although it has becoming less of a big deal over the past few decades. Closeted refers people who keep their sexuality (or other potentially embarrassing info) hidden even when asked ("who are you dating?"). Many people are LGBT and yet have children or traditional marriages, households etc or otherwise this is not a major component expressed so that it warrants undue weight (like the first paragraph of an article). This can even be evident in people who are well-known "non-heterosexuals". A person's sexuality should be given proper weight and well-sourced if considered controversial at all just like anything else. Also in some cultures it's certainly taboo to call someone gay even if they have have same-sex relations. In these cases it's best to use quotes and terminology of their culture. In the same way that some dykes do not consider themselves lesbian or gay and transgender people should be referred to in the gender they identify. We need to respect their right to self-determination and self-identity. Benjiboi 12:26, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Take, for example, color blindness. A phenomenon of comparable frequency. If some celebrity is known to be color blind, it makes sense to include that information in that person's Wikipedia article, if only for the reason that there are quite some (namely about 5 percent) people who struggle with their not being "normal" color-perception-wise and may be looking for someone who has success in life sharing that property. Or, putting it differently, ask yourself the question: Why don't we call 95 percent of the population "overly-color-sensitive"? --217.232.218.170 11:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Shock Sites

I agree with the fact that wikipedia must contain information about shock sites, to be classified as a true encyclopedia, but as it is a trusted website, shouldn't there be some protection on someone just editing a page to link to shock sites? I propose that a page can not contain any links to any shock sites UNLESS it is in the category shock sites. These pages would require users to agree that there is a link to a shock site on the page, and to be wary if they do not wish to go onto a shock site. A list of shock sites could be created (I agree with something lik shock sites the list will be ever changing and not definitive, but any protection is better than none at all) and these links banned. Thank you for reading my consideration. 78.150.127.87 09:34, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Scroll bars

Something like [1] is bad, right? Anyone care to revert? --NE2 21:12, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I would not say that scroll bars are bad, but that application of them certainly seems inappropriate. I don't see what you buy by scrolling 98% of the article text in a small window. Vegaswikian 05:07, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Scroll bars are not inherently bad, but they are almost always used badly, and very seldom have a place on Wikipedia. They can hinder accessibility by breaking screen readers; they make printing articles difficult; they can screw up formatting in some browsers; they take up valuable screen real estate; and long articles get scroll bars on their window anyway. Concur with removing them in this instance and most instances. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:34, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

This user has placed the scroll bar back on the page. It is certainly out of place there. I am relatively new to Wikipedia and I wondered what the next step would be if the person refuses to comply with the prevailing view? D3av 10:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. In brief, take it up with the editor first, then escalate if necessary. Powers ^T 13:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Just my 2 cents: Why not, instead of wasting time and efforts in a long dispute, engage in further developing the Wiki frontend to eventually leave the choice to the user whether he wants to have table contents scrollable or "full". Of course it would take some time to find the best possible solution, like "full" being default (for compatibility and printing reasons), but I am pretty sure the final result will make everyone feel a lot better than having won or lost an edit war. --217.232.218.170 11:32, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Revisit WP:ROLE ??

Perhaps it might be time to reconsider the role of banning role accounts in the smooth operation of things round here? See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User:OrbitzWWCorpComm for context (anyone can change that to a permalink if it gets archived as it will shortly)... but we have a case of a corp wanting their PR bunch to meticulously follow our policies but as a role account. We have one role account exception. Which appears to do little, or so it was said if you follow the links to WP:ROLE's talk page. Are there any pros to changing our policy? any cons? ++Lar: t/c 21:57, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think it needs to be changed. While that account mentioned was not necessarily disruptive, we need to look beyond "is this directly harmful?" and remember what this project is: an encyclopedia edited by the general public. I don't like the idea of having it "general public and corporate PR firms." I'd rather have advertising than explicitly allow such accounts. Some say ads would control content; at least advertisers would not actually edit the content themselves. If accounts like that can be kept away from the articles about the companies they work for, I'd be okay with it, but these accounts are made up of professionals paid to promote their company. They are not being paid to "create the sum of all human knowledge" nor are they being paid to write a balanced account of their company. Perhaps I've become a bit of a cynic about this from spending too much time at CAT:SPAM, but IMO - we don't need accounts like these. Mr.Z-man 13:46, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Isn't there also a legal issue? The individual editors own their copyright and have to label their edits separately. Maybe a corporate role account could be approved for edits only being done with the corporations' approval, but that's something WMF lawyers have to define. (SEWilco 14:19, 30 October 2007 (UTC))

Permalink http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&oldid=168000130#User:OrbitzWWCorpComm ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 01:29, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Software

Why does it always seams that it is an important thing if software is open source, proprietary or something like that. It is often mention first in articles, in infoboxes, in comparison of different software... I think most people care more about the price than this. How many think about if you can read/edit the source, very few does that. I think it gets a to big role in the articles (it can be mentioned of course, but not the way most articles does). (This discussion will probably not change anything, guess there are too many open-source fanatics here, like GNU/Linux-geeks. Helpsloose 23:21, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Whether software is open source is important in terms of licensing and support (whether for better or worse); both of which are significant factors for businesses thinking about adopting new products. Some companies, for example, will only adopt software that has a strong support model, whereas for others the price is a key determinant. These can vary significantly between closed and open source models. — RJH (talk) 22:08, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

There might also be more information available about open software which can be examined, rather than the amount of information which a manufacturer releases. That depends upon the particular item. (SEWilco 03:35, 31 October 2007 (UTC))

But it plays a too important role in many articles. Helpsloose 17:01, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

It would help if you pointed out specific problems, instead of vague claims of the subject being "too important" in unnamed articles. -- 68.156.149.62 12:34, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I think he/she means that, besides other things, Open Source is generally considered a political issue, too. So he/she possibly tries to hint at the supposed fact that Wikipedia is too political here. The real issue behind this being, of course, the sad fact that most people are still not aware how much they can, and already do, benefit from the increasing amount of Open Source software. --217.232.218.170 11:37, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Original Research and Spoilers

Over at the Meerkat Manor article, we are running into an issue of what consitutes original research and I'm seeking some additional guidance from folks not emotionally involved in the article. For the short background, Meerkat Manor is a documentary series about the Whiskers and several other meerkat groups being researched by the Kalahari Meerkat Project (KMP). Since the show is a documentary about real life meerkats, it was agreed by a general consensus that the KMP website is a valid and extremely useful source for providing additional information about the meerkats on the show, particularly updates on their lives (or deaths) between seasons and on the count of meerkats in each group.

The problem, however, is that Animal Planet has renamed several "major" meerkats, but neither Animal Planet nor KMP have released any kind of list that states "X meerkat on the show's real name is Y." However, in several cases, you can easily figure out a meerkat's real name just by looking at the KMP site. For example, on the show, a meerkat named Maybelline left the Whiskers, taking some other meerkats with her, in a split to be a dominant female of a new group called the Aztecs. On the KMP site, in the information about the Aztecs, it states "the Aztecs group was formed in March 2007 as a 15-strong splinter of the Whiskers family, but all adult males returned to the Whiskers within a month. Since then, the Aztecs have consisted of three adult females, led by the oldest, Monkulus, and four pups." Monkulus, therefore, equals Maybelline. For a simpler example, on the show the dominant male of the Commandoes is Hannibal, a big one-eyed meerkat. The KMP site explicitly states that the Commandoes on the show are "played" by the dominant couple of the Vivian research group, which would make Hannibal's real name "Jim Bob" (further evidenced by a picture of Jim Bob, who is a big one-eyed male.

My question is, does this constitute original research because the site does not specifically say "Jim Bob's name was changed the Hannibal" on the show? Must there be a verifiable source that does stay a rename exactly before we can use the information, even if it "seems obvious"?

A secondary question relates to "spoilers" and namely, do non-fiction TV show articles need to be tagged with spoilers if we are including publicly released info from AP or KMP, such as when the article noted Flower's death weeks before the episode aired in the US because AP made press releases about it and the episodes all air in the UK before they air in the US? In general the consensus on the article has been "no spoiler tags" per the guidelines, but we have at least one editor who disagrees (though he doesn't actually contribute to the article, and is speaking solely as a fan). His latest round of arguments can be found on my talk page since he took it there for some reason. Collectonian 01:51, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, unless a reliable source says "X = Y", you cannot infer the information from the two sets of data. Saying "X is true" and "Y is true" does NOT mean you can say "X therefore Y" without an external reliable source making that connection. It should be noted that Meerkat Manor is NOT identitical to KMP. The latter is a scientific project whose primary interest is to present facts; the former is primarily an entertainment show whose primary purpose is to sell advertising time on a cable TV network. It does not mean that Meerkat Manor is necessarily false, however stories told in Meerkat Manor cannot be assumed to be purely fact in the same way that information related by KMP is fact. There are certain dramatic liscences I would expect the TV show to take that the research project never would. Even if the TV show is not actually taking said dramatic liscences, it is reasonable to think that it would, and thus would be an unreliable source for anything EXCEPT its own storyline. That is a longwinded way of saying that while the Show is based on the Project, one cannot assume that the Show faithfully reports the results of the Project. It may, but I wouldn't count on it, UNLESS a reliable, independant source says that it does. If no source exists, you can't make that conclusion yourself. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree on the X=Y, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't just me being much of a hard nose. That fits with what I was already thinking myself, that unless a reliable source says "X=Y" or Animal Planet didn't alter the name, then that info can not be used.

I would, however, have to disagree that KMP is not a source at all and I don't think the KMP data should be completely excluded. It is still a documentary and a non-fiction show, despite the dramatic narration, which would seem to say that it should be taken as fact unless a valid source proves otherwise (as have been noted in the differences section). Other documentary articles work from a presumption the documentary is factual, do they not?

Also, other non-fiction show articles include additional information from outside sources and are not limited to just what is in the show. Animal Planet is not reporting the results of the project, true, but they are reporting the events in the lives of specific meerkats under the project scope. The article shouldn't be pure KMP data and some of the first edits done in the clean up of the article was to remove all KMP meerkat individuals and groups that were not actually featured on the show and other outside information that had nothing to do with the show itself. However, I think information from KMP on the meerkats Animal Planet does choose to feature is a valid secondary source of information. KMP can confirm Animal Planet's telling of events, fill in gaps where Animal Planet sometimes forgets meerkats, to provide additional information about the history of a meerkat, or to point out one of those "creative licenses" such as using two groups for one. Collectonian 02:48, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

See, I would disagree with that, and I wonder why the article needs that. Honestly, there is no need to "fill in" any information. List the "characters" as the show reports them, name them, maybe mention the fact that it is based on the KMP, but what is the need to add the extra information? --Jayron32|talk|contribs 03:13, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Because they aren't characters or fictional elements, but real life meerkats. They are the "cast" of a non-fiction show, not the "characters" of a fictional one. The additional information is relevant to their roles in their groups and the show. If it were a documentary about a group of people on an island, is it not relevant and proper to include some background info about each person in the article to put them in a proper context of where they are in the article and to maybe include follow up about them afterwards? Almost everyone who appeared on Survivor not only got background info added, but they got their own articles. If such information is unimportant for non-fictional shows and those articles should only include exactly what is said in the show, then what is the point of having the article at all? Just watch the show. I thought part of the purpose of Wikipedia was to expound on a topic, not just act as an episode guide? Collectonian 03:52, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Articles about other shows with multiple versions point out differences. Without checking those articles, I expect several BBC shows which have aired in the USA have articles with differences mentioned. I recently looked at one of the articles about The Office and think I also saw comparisons between the separately produced versions. I'd suggest MM deal with what shows on AP, with linked mention of its KMP parentage. In KMP put all the KMP details, and at the bottom of KMP start an X,Y table of significant similarities with MM. See where that goes. (SEWilco 03:33, 31 October 2007 (UTC))

The KMP article once had all the details of their meerkats, including those not on MM. After some discussion between the few editors who have bother much with that article, it was removed under the grounds that it wasn't "encyclopedic" and just a repeat of the KMP site. To quote one editor "It's a study of meerkat ethology. Although the meerkats and the groups are given names, this isn't for the purpose of making them into film stars or soap opera characters, as someone watching Meerkat Manor might be led to believe." The article has since been greatly expanded, but info on specific meerkats is still out unless someone else wants to go argue the case that it is valuable information (I tried and failed).

So, the desire seems to be to keep most MM stuff out of the KMP article except to mention the show features their meerkats (along with some other documentaries), with links over to the show. With that idea implemented and following the somewhat confusing TV project style guide, an overhaul of the MM article began to try to vastly improve and expand it. I do think it is much better than it was, as it now has actual information appropriate for a TV show article, such as production details and reception, and removing a lot of fancruft. There are sections listing differences between the show and "reality" (as well as the UK/US differences).

To further add to the mix/confusion, there is now a book out called Meerkat Manor: Flower of the Kalahari with covers Flower's life and the other Whiskers. If the KMP info is to be excluded, should then anything from the book be excluded as well (which is by the KMP researcher)? Also, the spoiler issue is separate from the KMP issue (most of the "spoilers" have come from UK viewers or the official show sites), so feedback on it is also appreciated.  :) Collectonian 03:52, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Non-fiction elements cannot be "spoiled". Flower's death, for example, is a fact, being the real death of a real meerkat, reported on in news sources, and it would be a disservice to fail to note that simply because the death hasn't been documented on a particular program. Game shows and reality programs are a bit of a grey area, because the reality is being presented for entertainment purposes. However, in this case, the death of Flower was not a scripted element; it was not planned for its dramatic effect, and thus nothing is "spoiled" by finding out she's dead. Powers ^T 14:22, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I don't think the spoiler tags belong at all. The issue on the KMP data is still very much in the air though. Per the discussion so far, no more KMP data has been allowed to be added until a consensus was reached, but now quite a few other editors are upset because the article is presenting incorrect information. In particular, the new book that came out appears to correct quite a few things mistated in the show, or adds details not mentioned in the show, and now that it is available, several editors are wanting to put in "corrections." Originally I would agree, but after this discussion, I'm more conflicted. I can see both sides of the issue. I personally prefer having the info because it authenticates and enhances the show's topic, but the article is about the show and not the topic itself, so in that regard, the other stuff doesn't belong. Collectonian 15:35, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm the one who suggested a syllogic argument (i.e., if A=B, & B=C, then A=C) is not original research, so I'll comment on your question about original research. I would say this is a case of the letter vs. the spirit of the policy. One important reason original research is discouraged is because very often the person who wants to add it believes only his conclusions are true & all other possible interpretations are wrong. In other words, the intent of the editor is not to open further discussion on the matter, but to limit it.

So what to do in cases where it is "obvious" or "clear" that X=Y? I'd say that this is a case where you should use a conditional statement, e.g. "X may equal Y" or "It appears that X=Y". Obviously, this is an attempt to move out of black & white absolutes into shades of grey, that it takes the first few steps down the slippery slope, & all sorts of related cliches that indicate this approach is open to abuse. (For example, "Gary Ridgway is a convicted serial killer, but he may have been a kind human being.") This suggestion requires some maturity & care to use properly -- but as long as conditional statements are used in uncontroversial cases where there is no reasonable alternative interpretations, one shouldn't go astray too badly. -- llywrch 19:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Policies regarding use of quotations

I have some question regarding the following passage:

In preparation for the game, developers gathered together materials from all manner of sources—"mountains of photographs snapped from ventures outside the dark confines of our office...huge numbers of nature books that our artists use for recreating authentic trees, grasses, and plants." "Texture images, reference photography of architecture, natural formations" that the team has drawn from personal trips overseas also formed a part of the team's sources. "We pull," said producer Gavin Carter, "from as many sources as we can get our hands on."[19] Where, in Morrowind, the chief graphical focus of the team was on water, the chief focus in Oblivion lay on its forests, its "big, photorealistic forests".[21] The inclusion of procedural content tools allowed for the creation of realistic environments at much faster rates than was the case with Morrowind.[22] Using IDV’s SpeedTree technology, for example, Bethesda artists were able to "quickly generate complex and organic tree shapes with relative ease". Bethesda's Noah Berry attests that "using parent/child hierarchies and iterative branch levels comprised of highly modifiable cylinder primitives, an entire tree shape can be created in a manner of minutes, just by adjusting numerical values and tweaking spline curve handles".[23] Instead of Morrowind's artificially smoothed-over terrain, erosion algorithms incorporated in the landscape generation tools allowed for the creation of "craggy mountain vistas" quickly and easily.

I believe the author relies too heavily on the developers (quoted) to make his points for him. Which policy(-ies) apply? Manual of Style? NPOV? SharkD 20:16, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. I think that if there is a fault in Wikipedia writing, it is that we quote too little, not too much. there are many biographical articles in which the subject of the article is not quoted at all. Here, I think the author has done a pretty good job of putting the quotes into context. If I were to criticize it, I would suggest breaking it up into several paragraphs - having quote followed by quote makes it hard to read, sometimes. --Ravpapa 06:02, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I think Ravpapa is right here. The use of quotes is not inapporpriate. There are some issues with the tone of the writing, as it gets somewhat informal in places, but that is a small copyedit issue. The use of quotes here seems appropriate for what it is. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:53, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with the two above views. I dislike quotations as they can be used to advance an agenda. For example, you might have a prominent scientist who says only once that there might be some truth to telepathy, and then in all later works says they don't believe in it. It's all too easy to 'enlist' them into supporting telepathy via quotation. In this example, we have advertising-like langauge sneaking in under the guise of quotation, which is also annoying, although not so insidious. I've written a small essay on the topic: Wikipedia:Don't overuse quotes.--Nydas^(Talk) 17:21, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely, and thanks for the essay. (Must try and contribute something to it if I find the time.) It's a crucial part of the detached, neutral, objective nature of encyclopedia writing (just like of all academic writing in general) that our texts should be in our voice throughout. If a student did something like that in an academic essay, they'd get a fail mark. We talk about our subjects, we don't let our subjects talk about themselves. Every direct quote should be motivated by some function it fulfills that couldn't be fulfilled otherwise. Why can we not say the things ourselves, in our own encyclopedic voice, that we let our quoted subjects say? Quotes framed by an introduction showing lack of distance, like "... says X", or "in the words of X, ..." should almost never be used. Where quotes are overused, it's either out of intellectual laziness, or because editors are trying to sneak something past the NPOV filters by using the quoted person as their mouthpiece. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:51, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

In this case, we have the designers of Oblivion saying how great their product is. Was their attempt to make photorealistic forests successful?--Nydas^(Talk) 19:03, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm uncomfortable with Nyadas' essay. Yes, people misuse quotations in Wikipedia to inappropriately push a given opinion, but (1) that's only one of many tactics those people use, & (2) I worry that this will become a case where because they do it too much, they should be told not to do it at all. (Thanks to Circeus for that link.) Balance against those drawbacks the positives that quotations (1) provide a sense of immediateness that regular text lacks, (2) accuracy of fact, & (3) often the quotation is better written than anything one of us Wikipedians could write. As for the passage quoted above which started this thread, I feel it is simply a case of bad writing: having read it a couple of times, I still have no idea what its point is supposed to be. Is it a description of how a computer game was created? How a given software package was used? Or is it a case where someone wanted to show off their knowledge? -- llywrch 20:39, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The reason quotes are more immediate is that they're often from a slanted perspective. Balanced accounts can seem distant or dry compared to them.--Nydas^(Talk) 09:04, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I really appreciate your essay and hope that it eventually becomes a guideline or is incorporated into a guideline. Quotes are too frequently used by critics to skew articles toward their point of view. They tend to insert the most damning quote they can find, even though it might have been just one comment in passing in a long newspaper report that mostly covered something else. TimidGuy 11:57, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Nydas, I offer for your consideration two examples where I used quotations: Iyasu V of Ethiopia & Tekle Giyorgis I of Ethiopia. In both cases I would argue that I used quotations accurately to improve the content of these articles. (One might say that they are the best parts of those articles.) However, to repeat myself -- as well as to indicate that you do have a point -- I would say that what SharkD posted above is an example of a poor use of quotations. -- llywrch 17:25, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I've noticed you use quotations a lot, Llywrch, but they are generally of a different quality than the type shown here. The tone of the above passage is very news report-y and rather informal, not encyclopedic tone. Usually your quotations are of well-respected historians explaining situations or people in an already rather encylopedic (in the sense that it is a bit detached) manner, and often more eloquently than a Wikipedia editor can be expected to write, as opposed to the use of quotation above, in which someone close to the project is describing it rather informally and personally ("as many sources as we can get our hands on," the use of the adjective "big," "dark confines of our office"). Quotations from the article's subject interspersed throughout an article can be useful when describing an aspect of his/her life or an opinion s/he holds, as well. As for the rewrite by Geuiwogbil below, it's better, but still suffers from the same problems when quotations are used. The first quotation is still in the same style as news reports ("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet," said X), and would sound much better rephrased into something like: The team producer, Gavin carter, further noted that the team used "as many sources" as possible. The last sentence is also better off without the quotation, as the phrase "in a matter of minutes" is itself too informal and the quotation doesn't really add much. — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 21:59, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I've stricken the first quotation; I'm not sure it adds much. I don't believe that I can really improve the last quotation, though. Anything else would either lend too much precision or too much ambiguity to the time estimate. Geuiwogbil (Talk) 23:54, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Ahem. I've edited the section now. I do hope it meets your standards.

While designing Oblivion's setting, developers worked from personal travel photographs, nature books, texture images, and reference photographs of architecture and nature; "as many sources," said team producer Gavin Carter, as the team could obtain.[19] Procedural content generation tools used in production allowed for the creation of realistic environments at much faster rates than was the case with Morrowind.[21] Erosion algorithms incorporated in the landscape generation tools allowed for the creation of craggy terrain quickly and easily, replacing Morrowind's artificially smoothed-over terrain.[21] Following the shift in the dominant focus of the Bethesda graphics team from water to flora, a number of technologies were enlisted to aid in the production of large and diverse forests.[22] One such was IDV’s SpeedTree package, which allowed a single programmer to generate a complete and detailed tree model "in a manner of minutes" through the adjustment of set values.[23]

I apologize for whatever inconveniences I might have caused. Geuiwogbil (Talk) 21:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Interpretation of WP:NFCC

The article Anzu Mazaki has eight images. WhisperToMe and I have come to an agreement to remove two images, but that still leaves six. WTM argues that the six images are justified as the media and the appearances differ and that removing the images would deterimental to the reader's understanding of Anzu. However, I think that WP:NFCC#3a limits this very severely. Would like a third opinion and whether my interpretation of NFCC is correct or not. hbdragon88 23:43, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I think you could remove 2-3 more without any noticeable harm to the encyclopedic coverage of the article. I'm a manga / anime novice, mind you, but I just don't see why the very slight (to me) differences in appearances between the character from one series to the next are all that important to understanding the character. If they are important, that would warrant more discussion in the text. As it is, one infobox picture, one character design sketch, and one picture of the completed character in the text seems plenty, perhaps one more if it's from a completely different genre and there's some supporting prose in the article to explain (e.g. US production vs. Japanese, anime versus manga, etc).Wikidemo 00:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

The info box image, the first character sketchings, and one shot from the anime are sufficient. The rest add nothing encyclopedic to the article at all and are just redundant and cluttering things up. In general, with an anime/manga character article one manga image and one anime image are sufficient unless to illustrate a substantial change (such as the article on Sesshomaru showing his anime, manga, and full demon appearances, or Sailor Moon's article having multiple images due to her multiple forms). Actually...looking closer, that first image may need to go. It is has an incorrect licensing and its fair use rationale seems sketchy to me. I've tagged it for possible COPYVIO violation. Collectonian 01:46, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

The character design sketch was speedied, so we just have three manga pics (two in color, one in B&W), one from the 1st anime, and one from the 2nd anime. WhisperToMe 04:40, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the sketchings had invalid fair use rationales and appeared to be copyright violations. I would recommend removing the other manga pics. The one in info box is good enough, and its unnecessary to have both a color and black and white version. Only one pic from the anime is really needed, despite the minor color changes between the two series. The character design section is not detailed enough to support two, which is where they would appear to belong per the image guidelines. So I'd keep one and move it up to that section, aligned to the left. Right now, all four are badly placed. Images should enhance the sections they are in, and none of the extra four relate to her "Romance with the Yugis" Collectonian 05:13, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, the B&W is actually from a different story arc; it is NOT in the same arc as the first color image. I also included it as there was no color image from Millennium World that I found. I'll see if I can move some pics in the front. Also, the reason why I have the two series pics is that one is derived from the character design in the earlier manga and one is derived from the character design of the later (not Millennium World, though) manga. WhisperToMe 05:54, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Being from a different story arc doesn't make it different, nor are the character designs so very different that five images are necessary, or appropriate. Every single iteration of the character isn't necessary unless there are actual major changes. The first three are close enough that only the infobox one is really necessary. You can make a better case for the two anime ones, as they are slightly different. I've modified the article as a suggestion that would keep the two anime ones while putting them in their proper context. Feel free to revert, but hopefully you'll find its a good compromise to allow illustration of the differences without overloading the article with excessive images. Collectonian 06:03, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I decided that I do not mind if the B&W is gone - I still like the other manga color image since the face in the first chapter is drawn differently than the faces in the rest of the series; even the animated series do not have an equivalent. WhisperToMe 19:56, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Image Geotagging

Is there any particular reason why it's not possible to geotag an image when uploading it? Surely the upload page should ask for lat/long by default? It also seems impossible to geotag photos that have already been uploaded. Or am I missing something? Thanks Socrates2008 05:56, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Just to know, why would you want to? If someone is taking a picture of something in a certain spot, it will presumably be for a specific purpose, and the uploader will no doubt describe what it is of in the first place. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 05:59, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Some people find it interesting to know where a picture was taken. The description is often not accurate enough to find the location in say, Google Earth, or may require considerable time and effort to do so. This is particularly the case with some historical photos. If a 'coord' tag could be placed on the photo page, this would be very useful, but it does not work. I think a more reasonable question would be why you'd NOT want to it, as there's no downside to having it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Socrates2008 (talk • contribs) 06:12, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

There'd be several reasons not to: 1, people aren't likely to lat/long every photo they take; 2, just because it's interesting does not mean it's important, and quite frankly I can't see this as being something most uploaders would even think about, much less consider the least bit important; and 3, it is of little relevance to Wikipedia if someone is having trouble Googling a specific location. There is no reason to geotag photos, because their lat/long is not relevant to them. All that is relevant to the photo is its source, a short description of where it is being used, under what circumstance it's being used (PD self, fair use, etc), and other such concerns. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 06:17, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

1. Indeed, and they shouldn't have to. 2. Consider why Wiki articles are geotagged - the rationale is similar. While you personally may not understand or appreciate the benefit, please don't preclude others who do. Socrates2008 06:23, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Wiki articles do not have to be geotagged, it's just helpful. Also, you're comparing apples to oranges. An image is not an article. It's something a person upload to help the article. There is no reason for them to jump through hoops to figure out the lat and long of the place they took it. What you suggest is simply unfeasible. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 06:27, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but you're completely missing my point. I'm suggesting the **OPTION** of geogtagging a photograph, and am not suggesting that images **MUST** be geotagged. i.e. Make this the same as for articles, which don't **HAVE** to have a geotag, but **CAN** have one. Seems pretty straightforward, and does not require any changes in practices, so don't understand why you come out so vehemently against this...? Socrates2008 06:37, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

You already have the option of geotagging it. It's really simple too: add it to your summary with {{Coord}}. This isn't a policy concern, and it certainly does not warrant any changes to the uploading interface. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 06:45, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Does not work on Wikimedia Commons Socrates2008 07:02, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Then you should be asking this question there. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 07:04, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

The Commons:Geocoding project is quite active on geocoding the camera locations of images and showing them on maps. The added advantage is that all the images are free, which unfortunately isn't the case here. But even there, so many images that aren't related to a geographical location are uploaded, so there probably won't be a request to geocode on upload, other than perhaps suggesting the possibility of adding one of the coordinate templates to the description. --Para 11:59, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Wheel war policy discussion

Please see Wikipedia talk:Wheel war#Request for comments: Wheel war where a discussion about how we define wheel wars is taking place. A wheel war is a struggle between administrators who undo each other's actions. Wheel wars are extremely harmful to the project. - Jehochman ^Talk 14:35, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I note, because this was omitted in this description, that what is proposed is to change the definition of wheel war so that the first revert is wheel warring. GRBerry 18:57, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Not really, that's too mechanical a view, I think. What is proposed is to change the definition of wheel war so that reverting an action (except in certain limited and urgent circumstances) without first seeking consensus for doing so, as has been going on here of late a bit more than is appropriate, is not an acceptable administrative approach. Right now, whoever reverts an action, however well founded that action may be, has the upper hand, even if they did not discuss it with anyone first but just did it on a whim. We need to get to a place where noone has the upper hand. ++Lar: t/c 22:26, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Formatting Talk Pages

I have edited two talk pages. Talk:Steve Ballmer and Talk:Russia. I did this with every intention of helping, but I am puzzled as to Wikipedias policy on this. Could you help me?--Dwarf Kirlston 01:17, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

In short, it is bad. You should undo it. New topics go at the bottom so people can easily find them. Your system, while an admirable attempt at structure, screws up that system. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 01:22, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

But there are discussions which are ongoing and others that are "please make this edit, done". And people don't put real titles on their topics and it looks awful. Could you link me to the official wikipedia policy on editing talk pages? --Dwarf Kirlston 01:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:TALK - in general, you don't edit talk pages in the fashion you did on those pages. As Someguy said, you should undo it. Collectonian 01:32, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Thankyou both.--Dwarf Kirlston 12:40, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

First of all I did not seek consensus. I worked hard and honestly to reformat/refactor/whatever those talk pages. I (did) not wish to undo because I consider that the work I did was useful.

The problem I was trying to fix was (from WP:TALK)

Keep headings on topics related to the article

Make a new heading for a new topic:

The First which (nearly) everyone ignores and the second where people instead Make a new heading for an old topic whenever they feel like the discussion was not going according to their plan - It would be as if I made another question (the same really) just because I wanted people to think it was a new topic and therefore deserved thought.I believe WP:RTP is in fact what I was doing when pages got too long and ugly. from WP:RTP

Refactoring, unlike editing, saves the entire original intent and meaning of the author(s).

Content to remove

Redundant - Separate discussions of similar or identical topics.

Superfluous - Content that is entirely and unmistakably irrelevant.

Content to alter

Outdated - A discussion that has reached an unalterable conclusion.

Poor formatting - Misused or underused indentation.

from WP:AATP

Unlike the permanent link archiving method, the archive can be edited for clarity. For instance, headers can be renamed to be more helpful, unsigned comments can be noted, irrelevant comments can be moved to a more appropriate place, chit chat can be removed, etc. (However, this kind of editing might be considered a mild form of refactoring.)

Discussions can be archived by topic, rather than chronologically. This may be appropriate on talk pages where certain topics have a tendency to come up again and again, and it is convenient to have all past discussion on an issue in one location. Archiving by topic is usually less appropriate for personal user talk pages.

Could (for Russia) the talk page be made into a disambiguation page to the talk of different topics (especially History and Demography which extremely long). Someguy0830 called it (my attempt at structure) admirable. As I said, I intended to help. New topics should go at the bottom, and I agree! I have kept it so that it stays like that, but within the topics of history, within the topics of religion, rather than letting separate discussion of the same topic get spread out all over the talk page.--Dwarf Kirlston 12:40, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Update Someguy0830 has reverted my edits of Talk:Russia and Talk:Steve Ballmer--Dwarf Kirlston 13:13, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Refactoring is only relevant when discussions are relatively active and very long. You archive pages like Russia if it gets too long. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 22:49, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Thankyou for your help, and for taking the initiative in reverting the edits. It was well done. --Dwarf Kirlston 01:18, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

When is it acceptable to delete comments on a talk page?

My impression was that deleting comments on talk pages was controversial, and was only suitable in cases of death threats, private personal information, racist abuse, etc. Yet at Wikipedia Talk:Spoiler, we've had a couple of editors deleting a comment which accused one of them of 'unprincipled behavior'. See the diffs here and here.--Nydas^(Talk) 17:01, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

There are differing views and policy certainly suggests that it can be done [[2]] but hints that perhaps it should not. However, it is also seen as inflammatory to do so.

I've been involved with a page where an admin stated that anything that hinted of personal attack would be deleted, and I think if the ground rules are set then it can be a very good way of cooling the situation, but it needs to be set down and the person doing the deleting has to be seen to be acting fairly.

I'm for it, but also recognise that you need to also be aware that people then adapt to more subtle ways of driving you mad. Spenny 17:37, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Discussions on article Talk pages occasionally become nasty and confrontational. It's not always clear that these fit the definition of personal attacks. I wouldn't object if someone were to move such a 'confrontational' comment to the User talk of the person who made the comment, and then left a link in the article Talk. The person who made the comment might consider that their views were being suppressed. It would help if, should you decide to relocate their comment, you could replace it with a summary of what they were bothered about. EdJohnston 17:51, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't normally find it very useful to remove an individual posting just because it's nasty or incivil or otherwise objectionable. It's like trying to punish the specific editor for being nasty, which is not very helpful. What I do support, however, is removal of threads of discussion when they have been sidelined into off-topic banter, and then especially if it contains nastiness. The criterion is not: should we protect the oh so sensitive souls of the present disputants from the shock of reading the nastiness (chances are, by the time you remove the posting they'll have read it anyway, so it makes no difference and the removal is of merely symbolic value.) The criterion should be: now that we've all had a go at each other, does this thread really save any useful purpose to be archived for future generations of editors who want to actually discuss the article? Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:58, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

It is very poor behavior indeed to blank sincere comments from your talk page. It is however allowed. I don't think it should be, but there is not a consensus to disallow it at this point. One can not however deny someone access to their talk page. I suggest that if someone has the habit of blanking comments and warnings that you use a very descriptive edit summary so that it can be easily spotted by people checking the history. 1 != 2 18:07, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, all that I just said it in reference to user talk pages, article talk pages should not have content removed unless it is for an archive or very innapropriate. 1 != 2 18:08, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

As an illustrative example of what I meant, I just happened to have done this [3] a couple minutes before I saw this thread. I'd stand by my opinion that such removals are sometimes useful. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:18, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

In this case, we have a post which is pretty tame by Wikipedia's (or any) standards. What should be done in such situations?--Nydas^(Talk) 18:49, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

It says in WP:RTP that you can remove "Reduntant" and "Irrelevant" articles while refactoring. If the comment was irrelevant as well as a personal attack then there is even more defense for it. Personal attacks of any kind can be deleted and should. Wikipedia is not a stage for personal vendettas--Dwarf Kirlston 19:58, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I've recently run into a situation where someone was starting to delete as "irrelevant" comments about the policy implications raised by the article. Every once in a while I see good faith comments deleted as "unhelpful" or something that's already been decided. We should probably put in an admonition that deleting good faith, nonconfrontational comments from an article talk page is often inflammatory, and should be avoided unless they are causing some kind of a problem. Most of the rules in the talk page guideline are helpful hints on how one can better contribute to a productive discussion, and are not meant as a filter for what can and can't be deleted. It's one of those things like verifiability where, if you take a strict and extreme interpretation of the rules (and a few do) you can start deleting 80% of the content there because you don't like it.- Wikidemo 20:33, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Good faith comments that are considered "unhelpful" or about something that's already been decided, assuming that they are in sections that aren't active, should be archived. I see no excuse for deleting them. The (controversial) practice of deleting personal attacks has a clear rationale - they fail the "discuss content, not contributors" rule, but "unhelpful" and "already decided" comments are still about content; the right thing to do is archive them, if in fact they are quiescent. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:35, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Administrative policies of banning and blocking editors

In my time at Wikipedia, I've noticed that most administrators will jump through hoops in order to avoid censuring an editor, even when that editor has been reprimanded multiple times and acted in a highly offensive way. Temporary blocks are not rare, however. My problem with this is that the administration is heavily weighing contributions while ignoring the extreme damage that can be caused by editors that have gotten out of control. I have seen threats against other users, dozens of puppets made, blatant personal attacks, and more, all from a single user. And yet this person continues to edit. I do not wish to speak their name because this has more to do with general policy that a single person. I think this hands-off policy is a sign of weakness among the admins and it will only lead to continuing problems on the site. We cannot ignore this kind of behavior — we are practically condoning it. I am a forgiving person and am willing to give second (and likely more) chances, but I would not let things get out of hand like this. No single editor's contribution to Wikipedia is invaluable in my opinion, not to the point where any type of offensive conduct from them would be overlooked. Editing Wikipedia is a privilege, not a right. - Cyborg Ninja 21:33, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I partially disagree, and partially agree. I believe a lot of user's get a way with alot. However a certain percentage of them are because they are unaware it's against policy. I believe there is a difference when it's blatant bad faith (replacing a page to say wikipedia is for f*ers for example. Or going to a user's talk page and cussing them out (apparently bad faith). Those are the one's I think need swift dealings,because it's obviously intentional, but for any other situation it's hard to tell, and the rule (assume good faith) should all ways be assumed. Admins I think however do a great job of discipline, but you have to remember there are millions if not billions of global user's, and only around 2,000 something administrators. That is enough to say in the least, and probably about 2-300 of those admins get recalled and/or disciplined themselves (not sure about this but I see a huge list of complaints on various admins in one of the requests pages). Either way, I think that the current policies do a good job of discipline, or did you have any advice on something specific you were presenting. I saw your view above, but no real "ideas" on how current policies, disciplinary dealings could be improved? --businessman332211 17:47, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there are many users who just aren't aware of the policies, but like you said, there are others who blatantly violate them or just don't care in order to flame someone. I give leeway in arguments between users, but I've seen those that have gotten out of hand to the point of threats of stalking and even violence — and the user doesn't get a banning. I think you're thinking about less-serious cases, but I mean really vile, hateful stuff here, and not from some little kid who thinks curse words are funny. I do have to give props to the overall system here, too. The general atmosphere here is one of congeniality and professionalism, and that is extremely rare on an Internet forum. My advice is for administrators to be stricter and to deal account bannings more often than they currently do, and not to feel ashamed about it. Users typically get many warnings (even from other editors) on their behavior before any serious action is taken. - If we get rid of contributors who are offensive and spiteful, then Wikipedia will be an even better place. Cyborg Ninja 20:09, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Unless you're willing to name names and get specific, it's very difficult to have this conversation. Yes, we need to do something when somebody is causing more problems than they're worth; no, it's not very easy to establish any precise distinction by which we can decide to act or not. Specific examples are pretty much a must, here. – Luna Santin (talk) 08:20, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

If he talking about the person I'm thinking of, I'd suggest he stay away from naming names. There are enough people who will overlook any offense due to doing "some" good edits. I have seen too many issues with people who simply are nasty or mean-spirited (or more often passive-aggressive which is the most difficult to work with) but nobody wants to punish because of the number of edits they've done. I think most admins (most people really) take a "let's weigh the good versus the bad" attitude as opposed to a "here is the general standard of conduct to follow; don't meet that and be gone" attitude. Unfortunately, that's just the way the world works; if you do some good, you have more leeway (why infinite blocks for vandalism-only accounts are allowed and not if there were some good edits) because people are willing to overlook all the negative and assume people will change for the better (like that a person will learn not to use curse words in their edit summaries, even if they aren't blocked). My biggest problem is allowing people who have used sockpuppets; for a system that is supposed to be built on consensus to allow users who use sockpuppets to get their way (or worse), it just goes against its fundamental core. Actually, I always find it funny how much times we see a block conducted and WP:AN or WP:ANI is filled with "I think the block was excessive, I think the block indicates the following; I think the block will have the following effect" all without the person being blocked doing anything like, I don't know, apologizing or promising not to do it again. THAT doesn't teach people anything. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:38, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Ricky. I think we're on the same page here about the person I have in mind, though it's not limited to that one person. However, I don't agree with the real world outside the Internet being like that. If you screw up in reality, any good you've done is likely to be ignored. Especially if you're a celebrity, or politician, or someone else in the public eye. This is a serious problem. We can't just ignore someone's bad conduct because of any good edits they've made. BTW, in the case of the person Ricky's thinking of, most of their edits are just mindless citation tags of articles. If you do want me to name names, we should probably discuss this privately. - Cyborg Ninja 20:18, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

License plate numbers in images?

Do we have any guidelines here for whether licence plate numbers can appear in images? This recently uploaded image [[4]] is of an unmarked (or personally-owned) police car in Slovakia. It's a beautiful shot but the plate number is clearly visible and I don't know if that's cool or not. Do we have any precedent about whether plate numbers need to be airbrushed out in this situation? Squidfryerchef 22:29, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Good question. I can't think of any specific policy on it, though one could argue that it should be airbrushed or otherwise obfuscated in compliance for privacy and in keeping with the living persons guideline (since the license plate is only slightly less personal info than posting someone's DL number, at least in the US), especially for a personally-owned car. The license plate could trace back to a living person. So my off the cuff 2 cents is that a readable plate shouldn't be seen in an image. Collectonian 02:23, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Collectonian. Unless this person is ok with their license plate being shown, and has said as much, a courtesy blurring or blotting of the number would probably by the best option. I can't imagine such a modification would cause any problems in regards to attribution or license used. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 02:33, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

In general, I disagree. A license plate on image of a car (absent any other context) is not significantly identifying information. I can walk down any street and get dozens of license plates without knowing anything significant about their owners. Now if the caption said, this is Bill Person's BMW and it had an identified license plate, that would be entirely different. But I don't see any need to remove isolated pieces of information taken out of context, any more than I feel the need to blur out all of the potentially identifiable faces in photographs of a crowd.

All of that said, in this specific case of a license plate on an undercover police car, it is the kind of specific context where removing the plate is probably a good idea. Dragons flight 02:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The police in this case could if they wanted have arrested the photographer if they didn't want the picture taken so why are we worrying about it .Garda40 19:46, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I would say that in this particular case the courtesy blurring of an in service undercover vehicles plate would be an option. I would hazard a guess that the blurring of all non-relevant plates to halt possible identity theft is not within Wikipedia's remit. If some governments are silly enough to sell their licence databases to anyone who wants them (such as the US DMV), and those buyers charge one-off fees on the internet to anyone who wants all the information related to that plate isn't our problem. 86.21.74.40 03:16, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm with Dragon's Flight. It's not exactly private when you slap it on your car and go for a drive (unlike your DL number or SSN, which presumably you keep to yourself). As for this image, it's not exactly undercover with that red light on the roof. Not sure I see a privacy problem with it. --Kbdank71 03:58, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd just like to clarify. I don't think it's an unmarked in the sense that it's used for undercover detective work, i think it's for traffic enforcement. The notes with the pic said it was taken at such-and-such highway in Slovakia. Squidfryerchef 03:57, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

There may also be a law in that country that prohibits the disclosure and publication of police and other government vehicles for security purposes. Otherwise we could all produce a database on such vehicles which would pose a national security threat. Better to obscure the undercover vehicle's plate. --Andmark 15:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Beg pardon, but "While I don't have anything definite, there might well be a law against (blank) somewhere!" is not and has never been a justification for removing anything on Wikipedia, nor should it be; our standing orders are to report any legitimate legal concerns to WP:AN and the Foundation's full-time legal counsel) who will then bump it up the ladder to Jimbo as necessary. Any more than that is WikiLawyering and beyond our individual mandate to act.

For the record, and in keeping with the Project's status as a "neutral source of encyclopedic information", I oppose any material alteration of an image unless it's WP:OFFICE ordered or manifestly designed to improve the image in some inoffensive way. Bullzeye ^{(Ring for Service)} 21:01, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

IRL problem has a solution that is to make a sockpuppet. What's a person to do?

Please comment here. Thanks ScienceApologist 23:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Soft redirects to Wikia wikis and other non-Wikimedia GFDL projects

Regarding Wikipedia:Soft redirect and Category:Wikipedia soft redirects.

Apart from the special case of Wiktionary, I can't see a lot of guidance regarding when it is appropriate to create soft redirects to other wikis.

I'm particularly interested in the case of "fan" wikis, e.g. WoWWiki. WoWWiki is a wiki dedicated to World of Warcraft and other games in the Warcraft series, licensed under the GFDL and hosted and run by Wikia.

Now, with World of Warcraft being a hugely successful and popular game, we get lots of people contributing detailed content regarding its gameplay and lore to Wikipedia. And then there is conflict as to whether the subjects of these articles are notable, and some end up being proposed for deletion.

See, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Warcraft character articles, in which approximately 50 articles were nominated for deletion. This discussion ended in no consensus but many of the individual articles have now been nominated separately.

Anyway, I'm thinking that a lot of aggravation and biting could be avoided if "fancruft" articles like this could be soft-redirected to WoWWiki and other similar wikis hosted by Wikia? Anyone who wanted to contribute to such articles would be smoothly led to another Free Content wiki where their contributions would be welcomed with open arms rather than attacked as being "cruft". Broad articles in Wikipedia could have names of characters, places, etc. as links which lead to further information offsite.

What does anyone think? --Stormie 00:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

At first I was confused, but not any more. I now understand the fiction policy. Because of that I disagree with the proposal, only because if they are written properly to begin with and/or rewritten with the fiction policy in mind. It is really not that hardto write them under policy. I had one of the user's explain to me how the policy works. The only reason they are deleted generally is for not being written from a notable stand point which wouldn't take a lot of extra work to make them pass policy. --businessman332211 17:52, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that if the subject of the article isn't notable by Wikipedia's standards, it's not possible to write an article demonstrating their (non-existant) notability no matter how hard you try. This is why there are many obscure topics that cannot have articles written about them in Wikipedia. However, these articles would be permitted in wikis that cover smaller topic areas and can consequently go into more depth about that particular topic.

As for making soft redirects to these articles, it sounds like a good idea although it would be necesary to avoid te soft redirects turning into directories of links to every wiki that covers that particular topic. Tra (Talk) 20:18, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah that's pretty much my thoughts - there is a large overlap between the set of article subjects which aren't notable by Wikipedia's standards, and the set of article subjects which a lot of people really really want to write articles about. There must be a better way to reconcile it than deleting the articles and hoping their authors start writing about subjects which do fit Wikipedia's notability criteria. Especially when there are Free wikis dedicated to articles on these subjects, and you know they don't get as many editors as Wikipedia! --Stormie 22:00, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Over a year back I was involved in some hand-wrangling about notability standards for fictional entities. The Warcraft character AfD above was one of the trial balloons (that blew up in my face). Nowadays, the notability standard for fiction is much more akin to what I had hoped for then: that multiple secondary sources that establish notability is the sine qua non of encyclopedic coverage.

That said, I greatly hesitate to link Wikia so prominently on Wikipedia. Wikia is Mr. Wales' attempt to turn the wiki model into a profitable venture. Wikipedia has strongly resisted all attempts at commercial endorsements, and should resist promoting for-profit wikis even if they perform the laudable task of finding a home for articles that do not fit Wikipedia's scope. Nor do I think a soft-redirect to multiple targets, where they exist in wiki-form, would suffice, for what then are the standards used to decide which fan-wikis are worthy? A game like Guild Wars, the last I looked into it, had half a dozen fan-created wikis. Oblivion, and The Elder Scrolls in general, have over a dozen wikis. I would suggest, as a means of avoiding a future mess, of limiting soft redirects to Wikimedia projects.

On the issue of interacting with editors who persist in creating overly detailed in-universe articles on facets of a fictional work, I would say that these editors can be gently nudged in the direction of Wikia or whichever wiki best suits the purpose. This can surely be done without biting them. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 12:05, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Backlog Policy

I want to present a potential new policy creation related to and dealing with backlogs. It would also have a relevant "guidelines" page that wasn't policy, but a community guideline. The idea is to offered policy of what kinds of pages to add cleanup and other tags to. SO we can cut down on the one's that are added needlessly, and help put tags on one that really needed it. Also in the policy we could add in to remove cleanup tags when not needed, and re-date them as needed. Not only that but perhaps other things to help prevent major backlog, like work on older ones first. The guideline could be step by step generally instructions on how to properly deal with backlog. I was going through the "needs cleanup" backlog by month. I finished up the oldest month, and most of the one after that. However about 40% of them had been cleaned since the one's where added. Another 10-20% of the ones I went through were improperly tagged The rest where horrible and really needed cleaned, which I either cleaned on the spot and removed the tag, or re-dated so we could eliminate the oldest months of the backlog. I think a well written, well placed policy and/or guideline would really help only tag the one's that really need it and also allow for the backlogs to be cleaned/dealt with properly. --businessman332211 17:42, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Most of the ones that you say don't need it do actually need it but not to the extent of others--Ρhøenix-ωiki 19:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I realize that. But on some of them the tags remain, then it undergoes A LOT of work, until it looks good but the tags never taken out. Have you looked at the backlog recently. It's horrible. Not only are there a lot of articles need cleaned (just speaking about the need's cleaning backlog not to mention the others), but a lot I went through really didn't need it, and the one's that really did needed re-dated. We have months and months of backlogs that could be cleaned. A lot of times when they are cleaned the tags aren't removed and/or there tagged incorrectly. There has to be something we can do to clear backlog, keep it cleaner, and really give attention to one's that need it. It's not helping much of anyone with an article sitting with a clean tag for a year with no-body working on it. We need some sort of policies on re-dating older clean tags that still really need it, and weeding out the one's that have

• already been cleaned.
• Don't really need it
• Can be cleaned in 5 minutes and the tags removed

This goes for everything. The citation needed backlog. It tags 5-15 minutes per article to fix it so the tag can be removed. SO many are incorrectly tagged (for example) tagged with citations needed when there are citations instead of using refimprove. Other small things like that, would make Backlog maintenance and cleanup A LOT better. I love backlog, I have a great time going through and doing the things in the backlog's list. However I have ran into so many that were incorrectly tagged on various things. Even under categories needed, I went through 50-100 of those, and A LOT of them had already been categorized SINCE the tags were added, and the tags never removed. This happens a lot with almost every backlog. I would go to guess that about ATLEAST 40% of the total backlog was caused by incorrect tagging, not removing taggings when there done, don't really need the tags they are tagged with, and being put off while newer one's take precedence. --businessman332211 21:17, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps this isn't something necessarily a policy would help. Perhaps I need to consider writing an essay with my thoughts on the subject instead. --businessman332211 21:46, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe people need a bit of encouragement that working on backlogs like these isn't necessarily a lot of hard work? That a bit of time spent trawling through the "citations needed" backlog can produce results, even without any hunting for citations, as you find articles that have already been fixed up but never untagged? --Stormie 22:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes I am writing a big essay on it. I am just annoyed there is so much backlog over a year old. I want to find away to get some medium sized group working together so we can get "all" current backlog caught up and get to where we can deal with backlog as it comes (every 10 articles tagged for whatever reason are dealt with within 24-48 hours type of thing). I think if people are instructed on "how" to tag, "when" to tag, "why" to tag, and when not to, then we can help deal with the amount of unnecessary backlog is piling up, dealing with it faster, and keeping the whole process running smoother. I hate seeing the backlog for need's cleaning. I hope to work down the backlog about 150 per day (cleaning the ones that need it as I go), and so far I am handling about 20-40 cleanings per day and I am sure other people are working on backlog regularly. However I think if a group got together to focus on that, then we could deal with it. With a steady group of 1000 people dealing with backlog it could be caught up in under one month, then only 100 would be needed to affectively "keep" backlogs from getting over 1 month old (plus instructing the taggers as they tag when they are doing it incorrectly, mis-tagging, or mis-understanding the purpose of tags and what there all used for. --businessman332211 22:28, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

If you want a group to work on cleanup, then you're really talking about a WikiProject. You might want to check on existing ones, Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce in particular. Also, the Signpost seems to be running a feature each week on one WikiProject; perhaps you could volunteer to help write an article about this taskforce, or about a WikiProject you've started to deal with the problem because there was no existing WikiProject that did what you wanted. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:43, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Another, possibly weak, idea might be to contact the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council, which seeks to be a group which tries to deal with issues of importance to all the projects out there, and maybe check to see if there was any way to create a cross-project effort on a given template for a specific time. I can't know how many projects would involve themselves the first few times, but it might get a bit of attention to the subject anyway. John Carter 15:56, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah, it's a passing thought. I jump from one thing to another. I was able to (with whoever else was working on them) able to knock out 2 months of backlog on cleanup. However I am interested in catching up all backlogs I can. But I am also working on other stuff. I might make a backlog related sub-wiki project later if no-one else does first. Now I amworking on rewriting the "instructions" for the RFA submittal and some other random stuff. I Created the basic essay I just want to build onto it for the backlog. I might just create a project for it, if there isn't one out there for all backlog's. --businessman332211 16:41, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Is this considered notable? Or is this trivial?

Regarding Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907, there was an e-mail rumor claiming to have photos of the final moments of the Gol Airlines cabin. In fact the images are from a TV show called Lost. (Confirmed: I saw the images, and the show. They are from the show. 67.188.118.64 10:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC) )

One of the editors feels that reporting on the e-mail hoax is trivial, and that the sources describing the hoax, About.com (excluding the Wikipedia mirror) and Snopes, are not reliable enough.

About.com: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_photos_gol_737_crash.htm Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/brazil737.asp

The talk page: Talk:Gol_Transportes_Aéreos_Flight_1907

I feel that the fact that About.com and Snopes report on this prove that the hoax is widespread and that reporting on this is notable and not trivial. WhisperToMe 23:55, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I would consider the hoax notable, but notability should NOT be the criteria here. What would an unsuspecting person think, if they recieved an email, and then used wikipeida as a refrence? Would you like to know that other hoaxes that have been disproved are on wikipedia, so that you can find them? I got the email about the rumor. I checked it by typing Flight 1907 Hoax into google. Hmmm Wikipeida didn't show up? I replyed to the email with the hoax link.

It would be more important for wikipedia to be encyclopedic than popular. JMFO 67.188.118.64 10:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Character Article Policy

So apparently I've gotten into a bit of a predicament. I was taking a look over at the Light Yagami article. And I noticed this:

It doesn't satisfy the notability guidelines established by WP:FICT. It's basically just plot summary, which isn't allowed per WP:NOT.

It has little no real world content, which is supposed to be the focus of the article. The L Lawliet article is the same. I thought that it would be best to condense the two articles and merge them into List of Death Note characters.

A similar experience occured regarding the Characters of Kingdom Hearts article, which I helped clean up: most of the separate character articles were EXACTLY like those two articles: just plot summary. So we condensed the plot and merged them all into that article. The exception was Organization XIII. It was kept separate because we were able to find real world content for that article (specifically "Concept/Creation"), and less importantly because that article was already very long anyway.

Yet, at this proposal, some pointed out that making character articles like those two is a common practice. And I have noticed that this is true: Bleach is a good example. Ulquiorra Schiffer, last I checked, was basically little more than plot summary as well. Ichigo Kurosaki, ditto. It's like that with Naruto as well. I did notice one thing however: most, if not all of those articles are B-Class or lower, and have tags requesting cleanup regarding in-universe perspective, merge tags, among other things. So what exactly am I supposed to do? What's the policy regarding separate character articles? I still feel that the two articles should be merged. If enough real world content becomes available for them, we can split them again.HadesDragon 00:07, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

It is, unfortunately, common especially in the anime/manga realm but many of them have the same problems you already mentioned. There is no single policy that addresses them, just a combo of style guides and the policies already mentioned. The Wiki TV Project cautions that few characters deserve articles (and gives an exampled of an great one and a decent one) at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Television/How_to_write_about_television_programs#Characters. The Wikipedia MOS for anime articles (Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(Anime-_and_manga-related_articles)) also discourages it, but alas, its mostly been ignored. So, I think agree, they should be merged, however depending upon the willingness of the editors in that area to get in line, you may have to settle down for a fight on your hands and be ready to WP:Be Bold and start doing mergers. If possible and necessary, you may have to AfD the existing articles, which seems to be the one way many of the character articles can be effectively removed when rabid fan objections occur. Collectonian 00:44, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I have another idea: When Death Note: How to Read is published in English, check for interviews regarding character development. The creator may talk about how Light was developed. WhisperToMe 03:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad to see I was on the right track, Collectonian. I'll be bold if necessary. But, I have a question: I'm feeling a little stupid asking this, but what does AfD stand for? Also, Whisper: yes, that is the kind of info that we're looking for, and I definitely plan to look into it, but as of now, the articles should be merged.HadesDragon 15:44, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

AfD = articles for deletion :) Collectonian 16:19, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Well to be honest, the entire point of policy and guidelines is to reflect consensus of the community. Why not perform a consesus discussion on whether or not to allow "those" kinds of articles. Some are easy to provide real world context, where possible it can be done. However some articles (as you mentioned) aren't possible, So, perhaps general consensus might be to redo those 2 parts of policy to reflect "some"liniency. If we keep having to fight hundreds of those article, it might reflect a potential change in consensus. It never hurts to see the outcome of it. If more people want it than don't it's obvious it might be for the best of the overall community. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Businessman332211 (talk • contribs) 19:43, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

How to write articles neither Copying from Sources or creating Original Research?

I don’t understand how to write an article neither copying from sources (paraphrasing is disallowed too) or creating Original Research. Please point me to Wikipedia guidelines on how to cope with both these issues simultaneously. Thanks. Dhammapal 08:17, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Um, where is paraphrasing disallowed? If by paraphrasing you mean that your source says "In the year XXXX a cataclysmic event hit the town of Springfield when the volcano erupted" and you paraphrase to say "In XXXX, Springfield was affected when the volcano erupted. <ref> Source </ref> ." You can't use word for word plagiarizing but you can take take the narrative of the source and rely it back in your own words and give due attribution to where you got the information from. Original Research would be more along the lines of saying "The single most important event in Springfield's history was in XXXX when the volcano erupted." Hope that helps. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 08:59, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

A more abstract way to think of it is that facts aren't copyrightable, but the manner of presentation of facts is. The best approach is to find good sources, whittle out the facts from those sources, and then present those facts following the Wikipedia Manual of Style. The only time you should be actually quoting is if you're actually discussing the source itself, rather than the subject of the source. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:02, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I run into this problem all of the time, due to the subject area I focus on: Ethiopian history. (Question to prove my point: how many books on Ethiopian history does your public library have? Residents of NYC need not answer.) Right now, Tekle Giyorgis I of Ethiopia is, AFAIK, the best account of his life available. This is not because I am a wonderful researcher/writer, but because most history books either dismiss him in a few sentences or ignore him entirely. (The exception is the massive history of Ethiopia written by E. A. Wallis Budge, who covers the Emperor's reign in a few pages -- & he did an embarassingly sloppy job on the subject.) The secret is to let the facts speak for themselves, much as Agne7 recommends above; avoid trying to express an opinion or on the subject, but if you must either find an authority to quote or use the conditional. -- llywrch 20:10, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the excellent advice Agne and Johnny.

I misunderstood CorenSearchBot’s direction:

Replace the copyright text with your own work. Note that simply modified or rephrased text is still an infringement — to remove the copyrighted contents you will need to completely remove them and then write totally new text to replace it.

Paraphrase is different to rephrase right? Dhammapal 10:24, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

It depends on the extent of the rephrasing. As suggested above, simply distilling out the facts and presenting them in your own words is not an infringement, and doing so from multiple sources makes this even less likely. On the other hand, slight grammatical or syntax changes from the original make the "new" version considered, for all intents and purposes, the same as an exact copy. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:06, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

An application of BIO

I got involved in Mitch Clem at AfD. Please look at the references and let me know whether you think I'm right on his notability. He is not an important topic, but this illustrates an important application of the BIO and Notability rules. I think that the Minnesota Public Radio spot is just about enough, then the mention in PC World, while not in-depth clearly is saying this person is noticed. The other comixtalk source is marginal, but I think that it adds to credibilty. It appeares that Comixtalk has a blog section, but where he is covered is more akin to an online magazine in a scheduled and dated issue. Cheers! --Kevin Murray 15:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Self published sources

There has been a question raised at the AfD for Mitch Clem (see above) regarding the correct use of self published autobiographical materials used in articles. Please see WP:SELFPUB an excerpt from that guideline below. I have mixed feeling on how much of an article should be self refeenced, but I don't at this point see a prohibition. Is there another controlling policy page? --Kevin Murray 18:03, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Material from self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources in articles about themselves, so long as:

• it is relevant to their notability;
• it is not contentious;
• it is not unduly self-serving;
• it does not involve claims about third parties;
• it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject;
• there is no reasonable doubt as to who wrote it;
• the article is not based primarily on such sources.

What percentage of the "facts" are should be supported by independent sources? What does primarily mean? 90%? 51%? Clearly we have differing opinions among our evaluators. --Kevin Murray 18:03, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Value Judgments in the System.

I came across this issue while looking into a novel by Stephen King, Gerald's Game, which I have yet to read. While I feel no particular attachment to this work, the presence in the discussion page of a rating system that ranks works of literature on the grounds of them being more important based on rather arbitrary standards strikes me as a biased way of talking about works. If this is indeed an impartial source of information, the only goal for any articles on artistic works ought to be matters of comprehensiveness. While singling out certain works as important to world culture etc makes sense in the text of their respective articles, including a system for determining how low on the metaphoric totem pole a work is in terms of value strikes me as decidedly unprofessional for an encyclopedia. This is inexcusable unless the actual point of wikipedia is to tell people what they should enjoy and value and what is a waste of their time, rather than the impartial information. More impartiality, less ideology! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Snyrt (talk • contribs) 18:42, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Those ratings don't represent which works are the most important or most popular literature. They are used to indicate which articles are of highest priority to the particular wikiproject. Oftentimes that merely reflects the opinions of the members of the project as to what they want to work on next. Check the wikiproject - they may have an explanation of their rankings, and if not, maybe you can help them create one. Karanacs 18:56, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

If you look at the discussion page for the novel "Gerald's Game" you will see that this book is low on the importance scale, which is explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels/Assessment#Importance_scale As you will notice, this chart rates works depending on their supposed overall importance to the field of literature, and gives examples of these various categories of important and less important works. If this categorization system is meant to put the books in order of priority for editors rather than ranking the books, I think it ought to be put differently, making it plain that the books are not being rated on their overall quality/importance in the world. User:Snyrt —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.192.68.117 (talk) 06:40, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

You'll probably need to take this up with the wikiproject. Karanacs 14:55, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Project pages and the article talk pages are meant for internal discussion, "how the sausage is made". They're not the public face, they're how to write the public face. We allow anyone to look at them, but we don't show them off. They're not "to tell people what they should enjoy and value", they're to tell project members who are interested what to concentrate on editing. It so happens that many projects do believe that those subjects that are most important in the real world are also the most important to have the best articles on, but that's not an endorsement of those subjects. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 19:52, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The importance ratings are only there to make it clearer to the members of the project which are the articles which are more or less likely to either be standard in an encyclopedia or are most "important" to their particular field. You'll note that their "top" importance books include the likes of A Christmas Carol, Dracula, The Grapes of Wrath, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Madame Bovary, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. The project has determined, based on their own standards, that these articles and the others at that rating are of the most central importance to that project. Ranking something as "Low" importance just means that, while all members and other editors are encouraged to work on it if they so wish, the project as a project isn't likelty to devote a lot of attention to it unless "difficulties" arise. Again, all projects to a degree have to do this. That project has 15,417 articles tagged, and triage of this kind has to be done when you're dealing with numbers like that. John Carter 20:12, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps if we started giving importance ratings to users, we could have some very lively discussions. :) - Crockspot 21:17, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Quick (odd) question

This may not be the best place to ask this, but an issue has come up with an editor who insists on adding the {{in space}} template to their userpage. This causes their name to appear in the Category:People currently in space, which is not appropriate. I was not able to locate a guideline or policy about having article template tags on userspace, but in this case, it is pretty inappropriate. Attempts by another editor to request it be removed have not been successful, so I'm wondering if there is a policy anywhere I've overlooked that would explain this shouldn't be placed in userspace? Thanks in advance, Ariel♥Gold 18:58, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

You may be looking for this guideline WP:CAT#User_namespace. Karanacs 19:01, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that helps a lot. And if the person still refuses to remove it? lol. Ariel♥Gold 19:06, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

We could always work around the matter by editing the template to wrap the category links between "{{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}||" and "}}"; that way, the template will only categorize pages when used in the main namespace. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:05, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Also, there seems to be a matter of timing here: it's impossible to accurately self-categorize oneself as being in space by doing a Wikipedia edit, since there are no internet connections in space; ergo, adding the template is posting false information, on its face. We don't have to know the user's underlying identity to know that the edit is incorrect. (And, of course, it is forbidden for multiple people to use the same account, so we can rule out the posting being done by a different person, not in space.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:28, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The editor removed the template after being asked nicely, so this is resolved. Thanks everyone :o) Ariel♥Gold 07:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

NFCC 10(c) and backlinks

I've started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content#Is a backlink required by NFCC 10(c)? regarding what seems to be a discrepancy between the current wording of the non-free content criteria and BetacommandBot's interpretation of them. Any opinions on the matter would be most welcome. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:01, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, turns out the perceived discrepancy was based on a misunderstanding on my part regarding BetacommandBot's operation. Feel free to comment anyway, but the matter as such is resolved. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:38, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

{{NCAAFootballSingleGameHeader}} template usage

Hey all. Over at Wikiproject College Football, we've been having a debate over one of our templates and what the proper use should be for it. We'd really appreciate it if you could pop over and give your two cents if you've got the time.

Example A
Example B

Basically, the debate is over whether this template should always be at the top of a single-game college football article or whether it should only be at the top of underdeveloped college football articles and in a statistics section in large ones. Please drop by if you get a chance, and thanks for your help! JKBrooks85 16:12, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Notability guidelines for songs; resolution needed

For many months now, WP:MUSIC has included a section on WP:MUSIC#Songs that is preceded by the announcement that This is a proposed new section, presently under discussion on the talk page. The conversation has been dormant for what seems to be about three months. On October 31st, I proposed removing the disclaimer if there were no objections, lacking any response at all, did so on November 2nd. Another editor has restored the disclaimer with the suggestion that the matter be raised here...and here I am. :) I believe that the section on songs either needs to be removed or confirmed; having it hang around on the guideline with the disclaimer can only be a source of confusion, particularly since the proposal is patently not "presently under discussion". Opinions either way would be greatly appreciated so that we can have this matter resolved. The discussion, such as it is, is currently located at songs section redux. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:20, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The criterion really seems unnecessary and prone to the lawyering which the sub-notability guidelines already encourage too much of. ("They drove cross-country in a van and played in some bars, it's a national tour so we have to keep it!"). If a song meets any of those criteria there, it will more likely than not have sufficient source material about it to justify an article. And in the unlikely event that is not the case, we still shouldn't have an article. As in everything, we should reflect independent reliable source material, not second-guess it or write it ourselves based on primary sourcing. If independent reliable sources have taken little or no note of something, we should reflect them—by taking little or no note of it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:38, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I would like to point out that there is a similar problem with WP:Fiction a section on sub articles that has little consensus and that in the eyes of many contradicts policy has been added to the guideline. I think these multiple notability guidelines are getting out of control. They all contradict each other, in many cases they actually contradict themselves, and they are slowly turning into loopholes for established policy. I don't really understand why these guidelines are trying to establish what subjects deserve an article.

Demos, mixtapes, bootlegs and promo-only records are in general not notable.

Why is that line there? If a mixtape passes all the core policies that every normal article needs to pass it's notable, these guidelines are slowly turning into style guidelines. Another issue is sections like this one from WP:Fiction,

To a limited extent, sub-articles are sometimes born for technical reasons of length or style. Even these articles need real-world information to prove their notability, but must rely on the parent article to provide some of this background material (due to said technical reasons).[3] In these situations, the sub-article should be viewed as an extension of the parent article, and judged as if it were still a section of that article. Such sub-articles should clearly identify themselves as fictional elements of the parent work within the lead section, and editors should still strive to provide real-world content.

So in other words, and how it is read by most users from my AFD experience is you don't need to satisfy WP:V, WP:RS, WP:N, or WP:Plot as long as the parent article is notable.Ridernyc 05:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Speaking as one involved with trying to adjust WP:FICT, we completely understand that allowing for subarticles is a loophole in terms of notability and (lack of) inheritance, but it is appropriate when considering MOS, WP:SIZE, and summary style. However, most articles on fictional characters or other elements outside the notable work are certainly not written towards meeting MOS, SIZE, and SS, and instead were likely written because WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS ("Hey, all the key characters on "The Simpsons" have an article page, that must mean its ok for all shows"). And because a lot of these are edited by fans of the works, it's very hard to convince them to trim, merge, transwiki, or delete such pages. The rewrite is aimed at legitimate cases where the editors of the page have discussed and tried other means prior to splitting off a section into its own subarticle to meet MOS guidelines. Mind you, I don't believe the guideline revision is completely done as we're waiting for a potential merging decision from WP:N of all the notability guidelines, as well as input and cooperation with WP:WAF. --MASEM 06:22, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

• We have a notability guide for songs. It's called WP:N. Most of the minute notability guides are the worst examples of instruction creep anyways. WP:N adequately covers 99% of everything anyways. All it asks for is independant, non-trivial, and reliable sources. Either the sources for expanding the article as described by WP:N exist or they do not. If they don't, the subject is non-notable, regardless of whether it is a song or a person or a corporation or any other random category you could put it into. We don't need more guidelines, we need less for clarity. All that is needed is WP:N. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:37, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with most of what Jayron32 wrotes. Most of the sub-guides are not just instruction creep, but confuse and distract editors from the relatively simple core guidance at WP:NOTE, which provides some general principles to be applied across all fields. I note that there is already a proposal to merge the whole of WP:MUSIC into WP:NOTE, but if that doesn't happen then rather than deleting WP:MUSIC#Songs, I suggest that it would best to merge it with the preceding WP:MUSIC#Albums section and state explicitly that any individual article on a song or must meet WP:NOTE standards. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:20, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I have been working toward this goal for almost a year. There are three ongoing tasks: (1) intercept the flood of new proposals for guidelines, (2) merge superfluous guidelines, and (3) clarify and simplify those that remain. Right now WP:PROF is due for evaluation; for some time the core has been incorporated into WP:BIO, but PROF has not been redirected. --Kevin Murray 14:12, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Much as I would like to see these guidelines simplified, & agree that WP:N covers the vast majority of cases, it's that last, small group that cause the most heat & frustration. Looking over each case enumerated in WP:MUSIC, I can either remember or envision the conflict which led to that case; there have been an awful lot of electrons expended arguing either that a suitable article should be deleted, or an unsuitable one kept. (This is something my five years on Wikipedia helps me see.) To paraphrase an old programming adage, guidelines & policy should be simple -- but not too simple. -- llywrch 17:35, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
    • Llywrch makes some good points here about moderation in eliminating ALL sub-guidelines to WP:N, for example certain guidelines make SMALL and FOCUSED exceptions to the normal requirements of the Primary Criterion (reliable, non-trivial, independant sources), such as the WP:CORP exception for companies that are listed on highly notable rankings (like Fortune 500), or the exception provided for recognized or incorporated municipalities. However these exceptions are carefully thought out and narrowly defined for a certain purpose, and should not be the norm. I have never seen a rationale why an article on a song should be kept despite lacking reliable, non-trivial, and independant sources; this I can see no reason why we need an extra guideline. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 18:04, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
      • I have seen some fringe artists that are worth being listed here have trouble satisfying WP:Music. I Have also seen total unremarkable bands make it through AFD because they somehow satisfy one of the silly criteria, i.e. have been a national tour with a notable act. The problem I have is not with the guideline being laid out and trying to clarify things. The problem is all these sub-guidelines are being edited by different groups of people, who don't talk to each other. I also think certain ones WP:Fict for example have been taken over by editors with questionable motives. I'd much rather see everything on one page worked on by one group. These guidelines over lap in ways you don't see at first. For example a novel is notable for the most part because of it it's fiction, but take something like World Of WarCraft, it has fictional elements but is it notable for it's fiction. Should all the fictional elements fall under WP:Fiction? Should songs from a musical fall under WP:Music where songs have their own set of criteria to meet. or do they fall under the automatic notability of WP:Fict? Ridernyc 21:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Guideline contradiction

A contradiction has been discovered between two guidelines: Wikipedia:Lists and Wikipedia:Avoid self-references.   To solve the problems this guideline conflict has created see Wikipedia talk:Lists#Contradiction between Wikipedia:Lists and Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. The Transhumanist 09:03, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Policy: Education

What are the issues to be considered for Public Private Partnership in Education? What could be the different ideas for PPP for school education? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.95.128.95 (talk) 03:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a question for the reference desk. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:00, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Excessive literalism

This might be subtitled, "The misuse of policies like WP:V and WP:RS and guidelines like WP:REL to cover an attempt to push a POV, by claiming WP:OR, and interpreting guidelines as rules and rules so narrowly as to violate common sense. It seems to be a favorite tactic of some editors, and seems to need at least an essay that could evolve into a guideline, and then into a policy. It seems likely to have been discussed before, but so far I haven't found it.

It can take various forms. Here are are a few:

• 1. The article name is a phrase "word1 word2 word3" and an editor rejects any source that does not contain that exact phrase, even though it contains synonymous expressions or descriptions, or leaves out a word as a way of abbreviating, or separates or reorders the words in ways that are synonymous, that anyone who knows English would recognize as synonymous.
• 2. Insisting on treatment of the article as only about the usage of the name rather than the object or denotatum of it, and that the thing denoted didn't exist before it was named. Then rejecting under WP:REL anything about the thing known by other names.
• 3. Delecting an entire paragraph or section because a cite that supports the entire paragraph or section is not inserted after every sentence or phrase.
• 4. Insisting that two policy statements, expressed as independent sentences, must both be satisfied. An example would be to insist that the first two sentences of WP:NOR#Citing oneself must both be satisfied, rather than either of them.
• 5. Inserting material that is obviously incorrect, because it seems to come from a reliable source. E.g., a statement that an event occurred on "April 31" when that month doesn't have a 31st day, the correct date "April 13" can be easily seen from the rest of the source, and then, if another editor wants to just delete the date, or say "in April", he deletes the entire passage.
• 6. Rejecting even the most obvious summarizations as OR. E.g., having a source that says "A came in the room." Then says "B came in the room." And the editor summarizes as "A and B came in the room." But the obsessive editor insists on a source for "A and B".

I could go on, but others can probably think of others. It could become an essay or policy WP:NEL -- "No excessive literalism". Jon Roland 04:26, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

This is in regard to Constitutional militia movement‎, of which this editor is a prominent leader. As an involved expert he is asserting that the movement is whatever he says it is, regardless of what the few available reliable sources say. The editor does not seem to understand the need for verifiability, or respect the limits imposed by WP:NOR. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 04:57, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

It is partially inspired by my experience with that article, but I have also looked at what some of the same adverse editors, and others that seem to be allied with them in their methods, are doing on other articles to which I have not contributed. A couple of them have also been following me around to other articles I have edited, including this one, and on the basis of that I charge them with violation of WP:HAR. The above entry is not responsive to the problem posed by the article, and seems to have been made only to annoy and discredit me. I interpret policies like WP:NOR differently than they seem to, and I think more in line with the way they were intended to be understood, that is, reasonably and with common sense, not rigidly and literalistically. If no one can point me to where this question is already addressed, I will create an essay on it. Jon Roland 07:49, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

When you disagree with the interpretation of a policy, as you do with how other editors are interpreting WP:NOR#Citing oneself, the best solution is to propose a rewording of the policy that clarifies its meaning (that can be done in a number of ways, including just doing it, and seeing how people react, then taking the matter to the policy talk page), or to initiate an RfC regarding its meaning. I really don't think another essay is going to help. And Wikipedia has a dispute resolution process for content disputes (which this is); that's also a better alternative than bringing a list of arguments to this page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:59, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, and of course I intend to pursue other alternative for any particular disputes. However, there seems to be a general problem for which an article is needed that editors can cite to as a way to make their points. It is really just a way to urge editors to use common sense, which every policy and guideline article also urges, but for a few editors who seem bent on excessive literalism, as some seem to be, including some with which I have never engaged and am never likely to, there seems to be a need for an additional general guideline that covers all policies and guidelines. We don't want excessive clarifications of existing policies and guidelines, either, trying to anticipate all the ways anyone might try to misunderstand them, because they have not been written to be nitpicked. That would make them too long, and most of them are okay in their present state if interpreted in a common-sense, plain-English way. Excessive literalism is a tendency that has appeared and been debated for centuries in many fields, especially theology and law. There should be a single article that focuses on the general problem and allows discussion there of what is and what is not excessive literalism on policies and guidelines. Jon Roland 16:50, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, there is already Wikipedia:Use common sense, and, more generally, Wikipedia:Consensus, which says, among other things, It is difficult to specify exactly what constitutes a reasonable or rational position. Good editors acknowledge that positions opposed to their own may be reasonable. However, stubborn insistence on an eccentric position, with refusal to consider other viewpoints in good faith, is not justified under Wikipedia's consensus practice.. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:33, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the internal links. I added them and some others to the article at WP:NEL. Jon Roland 03:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think John Broughton has it about right, but I could add the most helpful policy to this difficulty may be WP:IAR anyway. I certainly don't think we need a new guideline or policy.Obina 14:31, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

An essay can supplement or explain an interpretation of policies and guidelines, so that people who feel other editors "just don't get it" can link to an article that sums up what they are trying to say. The trouble with WP:IAR is that, for people who have trouble with common sense, it seems to be contradicted by rules they can invoke while ignoring it, with its admonition that it is more important to write good articles (for the people who will read them) than to adhere fastidiously and narrowly to rules and guidelines that are intended only to be used with discretion. But who knows. If enough people start citing to WP:NEL it might become upgraded to a guideline or policy. It is intended to expand on what has gone before, and make more clear what has been intended, by referencing to the long history of "excessive literalism" and what can be learned from that. Jon Roland 17:55, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

May I suggest that you approach Wikipedia with the perspective that we are writing an encyclopedia. You may want to see the general advice of where to start. It appears that instead you are approaching Wikipedia from the premise that you may use it to advance your political manifesto, and that you are finding frustrations while using Wikipedia for this purpose. Also, I recommend reading the Wikibreak and the Wikistress essays. SaltyBoatr 18:13, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

How to deal with users of questionable mental stability

This issue is an important question for Wikipedia policy. How should administrators and the average user deal with other users who are mentally ill? What qualifies as mental illness? Where should the line be drawn? In terms of this matter, my view may be seen as rather strict. I believe that the contributions of an editor do not factor in their judgment if they have shown to be irrational and abusive towards other users. This is similar to how I think abusive editors (even if they are not mentally ill) should be treated. Currently, the administration seems to take a very laissez-faire approach. This is causing a great deal of harm here at Wikipedia as a whole and to individual users. - Cyborg Ninja 06:35, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

It is difficult to address this problem with any kind of guideline or policy, because it is a difficult problem even for mental health professionals in face-to-face situations. It will probably have to be dealt with on a case-to-case basis. Wikipedia assumes rationality and good faith, but as an activity it is vulnerable to intrusion by the corrupt, the malicious, and the deranged. The barbarians are always at the gates, and it only takes a few to destroy a civilization or a Wikipedia. We also have to recognize that Wikipedia has become an arena for contests for power. The high ranking :of its articles in the search engines is also an incentive for invasion, at first by subtle and skilled efforts that can seem to be "civilized" in this context but which if not repelled will eventually destroy the project. Jon Roland 07:59, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia, in general, takes a very laissez-faire approach -- it's one of the fundamental precepts of our philosophy, in general, both a great strength and a source of many problems. For my part, I'd rather we avoided throwing around a bunch of unqualified, amateur guesses as to whether so-and-so has such-and-such illness, and just focused on the issue of a person's participation in the project. Are they contributing? Is their behavior disruptive or productive? Is there anything we as a community might do to help them become a better editor? What chance of improvement is there? Again, as I mentioned in your other thread, it's very difficult to have these sorts of conversations in a general sense, and I'm not sure how productive it might be. Problematic users can be reported to the appropriate admin noticeboards for discussion and possible administrative response, if need be; I'd also encourage you to make use of the dispute resolution process, whenever possible. – Luna Santin (talk) 08:26, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Cyborg; While I can understand your concern at dealing with users who, as you say, are of "questionable mental stability", may I ask one small thing? If they don't give you any indication (by userbox, etc...) - what puts you in a position to be able to judge who is mentally stable or unstable? That's not meant as an argumentative statement, simply an idea for me to understand, say, do you have some experience of dealing with mentally unstable people by reason of work or something? No one on here has ever questioned my mental stability, but I suffer from Paranoia. If I hadn't said anything about that, would you have had some way of knowing that that was the case? Thor Malmjursson 13:44, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

There's a "This Wikipedian is off their meds" userbox? In all seriousness, having a bipolar userbox on a user page hardly qualifies as a legitimate means of diagnosis. Personally, I don't think we can make any special exceptions for disruptive editors because they're mentally ill, otherwise every malicious editor will try to use that as an excuse. Caknuck 15:37, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Caknuck, I quite agree. We don't make any exceptions for anyone based on their state of mind, that is true. But as I have said, How do you know they are mentally ill in the first place??? Thor Malmjursson 15:34, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with Thor and Luna. There's just no way to tell for sure if someone does or does not have a mental illness, even if we had qualified professionals who were editors here. Also, even if there was a way to tell if an editor has a mental illness, they shouldn't be treated any differently unless their behavior is somehow disruptive to the community. GlassCobra 16:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm only referring to users who are disruptive. Paranoia doesn't count as something that would be very disruptive, IMO. In no way am I suggesting I be the person to decide who is mentally ill or not; neither is there an easy way to do this. There are some users on this site who do show their true colors, even after much productivity. I suggest dealing with it privately and to be very gentle, and only in cases that are obvious. At the same time, I don't think it would work for administrators to do that. It seems like a line is being crossed if they do. I've seen mental illness in online friends of mine who have later come clean about it to me (one was extremely paranoid). I tried to help him on a personal basis, but as you probably expect, it didn't work. So what we should focus on is to not ignore any obvious policy violations. We cannot use "Oh he was just angry and got over it" or "He's ill, let him be" as an excuse. I know a lot of you just take the "report it to AN/I" approach, but I've seen administrators turn the other way even in the most extreme of cases because they don't want to hurt someone's feelings, or deal with it any further. The problem is, with many of these people, they'll get upset again and the same thing will happen again. We need to be stronger than this. Thank you all for the replies. Sorry that came off as a bit of a rambling — I don't have all the answers. - Cyborg Ninja 20:36, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

There are some editors who are clearly disturbed, and it's sometimes helpful to conceive of their bizarre or abusive editing as the product of some personal issues. But mental illness isn't a yes or no thing. We're all a little sick in the head at times. And schizophrenics, obsessive compulsives, neurotics, bipolars, and even sociopaths are human beings too and may have something to contribute here. It would be sad and unfair to say that you're disqualified from Wikipedia for having an organic brain disorder. Judge the edits, not the editor, and don't punish people for being honest about their mental state. We shouldn't deny the obvious - our bipolar colleagues can be a total pain at times. But they can also be wickedly smart and productive, and deserve a seat at the table like everyone else provided they can get along.Wikidemo 21:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Some users do 'lose it' a bit very easily and appear unstable. We all know of those that when one of their articles is tagged even by a bot, say it's ruined their experience on Wikipedia. Or they go on massive WP:POINT campaigns, tagging numerous articles, solely because they feel one of theirs was tagged unfairly. It's not disparaging to those with mental health problems, most of whom can still contribute sanely to Wikipedia. But some people even if they haven't been diagnosed with any illness easily flip out, and go on a rampage. They may even say 'now I'm going to turn evil- ruhaha' or some such. Thhen go back to normal briefly and apologise slightly so they get away with it. Then a few days later something sets them off again. Hopefully they get blocked if they continue in such a pattern. As an individual editor, the best way to deal with them is probably to avoid much contact with them. As a community, to notice their history when they invite their latest block, and if the pattern has occurred several times, long-term block. 91.110.169.154 16:03, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

This is exactly what I'm talking about, and I'm glad that you noticed it too. "Unstable" is the keyword here. There are multiple editors who have this problem, and I think it's a part of their lifestyle, but I believe the laissez-faire approach at this site and others on the Web allows them to keep being disruptive. To add to your characterization, these editors take minor setbacks (tags, warnings, bots, etc) very personally and threaten other users for something that is quite minor. This, to me, shows that they are not trying to make Wikipedia a better place and that they are acting in poor faith. I'm sorry, but assuming good faith in evidence of obvious bad faith is absurd, and some administrators and many regular editors need to realize that and stop using that as an excuse. This is a serious problem on Wikipedia. I realize that some of these editors contribute plenty to Wikipedia, and therefore many people don't want to ban them, but if this is a pattern and if they are harming other users: it needs to stop. I try to be sensitive to unstable people like this both online and in real life. I have a grandmother who behaves like this, and the best my family can do is try to alleviate her stress to avoid setting her off. However, I recognize that she does have some ability to control herself and we do not accept every emotional outburst. We do love and forgive her, of course. But please realize, administrators, that if an unstable user has a pattern of this behavior and is harming other users, you absolutely should not accept it. I imagine that a lot of you are thinking "We don't," but I've seen this from other admins and users. The twisting of the WP:AGF policy is partly to blame. - Cyborg Ninja 19:55, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I should add that I have one person in mind right now (though he is not the only one to act like this). A quick glance of his Contributions page shows me that he makes 300+ edits a day and frequently spends over half of the day, every minute, editing Wikipedia. Every day. Now, I think I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia, but that's mostly to read articles to expand my knowledge. But that person's amount of time here... can we really call that normal, or healthy? He does everything the user above cited as conduct that an unstable editor does here. I'm not suggesting that we warn someone just because they spend vast amounts of time here obviously, but I think it's something to think about. - Cyborg Ninja 20:23, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we can be overly suspicious just due to 'spends too much time here.' What we are basically talking about is conduct that would lead to an RfC, but because the user spreads the conduct over different areas and his/her WP:POINT sprees target many different articles and people, it's hard to have an RfC that truly covers what they get upto, because RfCs have to be about 'the same dispute', so it's harder to raise the two people needed that have the boldness to stand up. If RfCs were allowed to address the user's behavior in general when they're having one of their 'episodes', then they would be a more accurate representation of the user. Because while it runs the risk of being seen as ganging up on someone, sometimes that kind of RfC would be useful/necessary.91.110.230.131 21:31, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Two RFCs have been done of one person I have considered as unstable. Even if a tagging spree spans over dozens of articles that are unrelated, a question comes into one's head: is it acceptable to do mass-tagging of articles that one has not spent more than 5 seconds with? I know we have bots that handle other operations, but most of what they do makes sense to me and is useful. Marking every article with a big citations tag at the top isn't really going to encourage people to improve the article. I mean, come on people, get real. Still, some admins think it's helpful. But on this issue; it's nowhere near the worst example and even I wouldn't consider anything more than an informal warning for it if I were an admin, unless they ignore the warning. As you hinted at, RfCs are dedicated to one episode or event. If a user's behavior over several months needed to be reviewed, where should it be done? - Cyborg Ninja 08:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Hello

First time I've posted here, i think, so just interested in some general reaction to this essay: WP:TROLL? No more bongos 08:01, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Tut, tut, tut, far too concise and comprehensible! I read it six times before realising there were no sub-clauses or qualifying comments at all! Small wonder you haven't shown yourself around here before... ;~) LessHeard vanU 16:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

The current practice is that personal essays belong in userspace, not projectspace, per Category:Wikipedia essays. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:40, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh! How do I move my essay, and get it categorised? I confess I got a little confused when attempting to find out originally. LessHeard vanU 22:56, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

My honest view is it seems a bit unneccessary. We already have WP:AGF which means we shouldn't call editors anything. But is describing people as something different to calling them something? Depends on the context. I suspect that if there were a reason to describe behaviour as the behavior of a troll, we'd get pounced on for calling someone a troll. Next we can't use the word vandal, nor sock puppet, nor vanity, nor anything. We move to the land of weasel words. Most editors strive for kindness. I certainly don't plan to call anyone troll or anything else. I just think the general guidelines are more helpful than lists of specifics. Too many specifics are ammunition for the trolls! BTW WP:TROLL already has a redirect.Obina 14:21, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Foxy Brown Illegal picture

Hello everybody, I'm coming from the french wikipedia... I think the picture of Foxy Brown in the english article is not legal. It is said that the picture is on public domain but I think it is false... Maybe somebody should delete it ??? I can't do it myself... Thank you in advance Sylfred1977 17:20, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

It's gone. The same editor had uploaded a number of clearly copyrighted images under false claims that he was the creator and that he was releasing them into the public domain. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:48, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Persistent vandal - where to go from here?

The Television Stations Project has been dealing with a persistent vandal, Dingbat2007 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), for over three months. The vandal was indef blocked, but began creating numerous sockpuppets, both as anonymous IP addresses (until reported to his ISP for abuse) and as registered users. See list of nearly 30 sockpuppets. This user has now been effectively community banned - when a sockpuppet is discovered, edits are reverted on sight without regard to merit and the username is reported to the admins with the result universally being an indef block. No admin has been willing to undo the blocks, for which we are grateful. However, the constant reverting is getting tiresome; does anyone know of any other recourse that we have, or have we pretty much exhausted our options? Although the user has effectively been banned, there is no formal ban in place on this user, nor am I sure what benefit there would be with a formal ban. Ideas? dhett ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:06, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Not sure how it is done, or who might do it, but how about seeing if the underlying ip address is static? If so, indef block that addy - problem solved. (or am I just stating the obvious that you have already considered?) Sprotecting the article will limit the ip's and new users - but you will have to judge the effect on other contributors. LessHeard vanU 23:00, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll have to look into the underlying IP address. I doubt I have access to that and I can't remember if I'd asked help from the admins on identifying that or not. RE: sprotecting - this guy sometimes touches 50-100 articles in a single session, so any steps to protect articles have a potential negative impact to a lot of good-faith editors. The last couple of times, I've caught him red-handed, limiting the damage to 10 articles or less. The only good thing is the guy is predictable, making him fairly easy to watch. dhett ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:04, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

If you want someone to identify and block the underlying IP, go to Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser#Requests for IP check and file a request there. Hut 8.5 12:54, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Done. Thanks to both of you for the tips. dhett ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:13, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Just want another point of view, please

I wrote an article Hyde Amendment (1997) today and another article Barry Cohen (attorney) that is linked to the first one. Another person cleaned up the Barry Cohen article. I have submitted them as a two-for DYK. Someone has put a {{limited}} tag on the Barry Cohen article. I am not sure what I can do to make it less limited. Would you take a look at it and advise me what to do to fix it? Thanks! Mattisse 02:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I visited it, fixed some formatting, and removed some of the most inappropriate references (forum postings and blogs are not a valid source; the op ed pieces are also questionable). If Mr. Cohen is notable, perhaps search for better sources? Almost all of the sources come from the same online site, which would validate the limited point of view, while some of the others are not news articles but opinion pieces, rants, etc. The over all tone does not quite fit with an encyclopedic article and could use some copy editing. A quick web search doesn't seem to bring up a lot of information about Barry Cohen, beyond mostly bloggy or otherwise unreliable sources, making me wonder if he meets notability requirements? Collectonian 03:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. He is extremely well known but a behind the scenes type of guy. Not the Ellis Rubin type, coining media-grabbing defenses but wins many more high-profile cases, and in contrast to Rubin, Cohen never loses a case. The person who put the tag on the article removed it, I noticed. I'm basically using Cohen for the Hyde Amendment (1997) article as Cohen is one of the very few attorneys (actually I have not found another) who managed to win any money under that amendment, and Cohen won $2.9 million compensation, somewhat more than the goverment's offer of $250,000. I have asked the legal people to find another lawyer who has won a case under it. --Mattisse 14:59, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I am really at odds with the NNOTABILITY/Trivia policy right now.

Sirs:

I am really at odds with the NOTABILITY/Trivia policy.

This policy has alienated a large number of WebComic advocates, and certainally cost WP some creadibility and good will, and some donation money too.

As I stated on my former user page, ( I will provbibly not log in again ):

"This is upsetting me, a lot. Articles are set for speedy deletion based upon the concept of Notability, i.e. popularization which to me has a connotation of sensationalizm. Since the most of the web is sensationalism and esoteric, and polarized in that way. ( Some eMusic sites I have been to only have 25~30 page views.)

Why would you want a encyclopedia, that only has popular topics? I really wound't want that. Id read 'People' Magazine if I wanted that. Encyclopedias should EMBRACE THE ESOTERIC. There is an article here on wikipedia for every pokemon character, and I %*&3 hate pokemon, but I respect its reverence amoung five year olds, and especially five year olds who use wikipedia as their reference. Can you imagine the effect of children growing up as knowing wikipedia as something that was usefull to them, and they would enjoy comtributing to?

By this criteria alone ( Notability ), we should delete ALL HISTORY before WWII for its irelevence. Is Joan D'Arc relevent? Practically no. But she has extrodinary significance to the history of religion, spirituality and philosophy." You can easily rewrite history, by only looking at the "popular" aspects of it.

I have an eye for detail and consistancy, and am about to actually work on my first complete rewrite, ( although, no one has stepped forward to guide me, or adopt me). Is it actually become sport to destory what others are passionate about? ( Feel free, of course, to delete this message if you feel that is not notable enough. )

What is being done policy wise about this?

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Comments:Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomic_community%27s_frustration_with_Wikipedia_guidelines#The_tip_of_an_iceberg.

end of soapbox

You're clearly upset about the notability requirement, but I'm sorry to say that I don't understand much more than that. I'll take just a couple of your points: Why would you want a encyclopedia, that only has popular topics? Why indeed? But en:WP isn't that. (Brutalist architecture isn't a popular topic or a popular kind of architecture.) Again: By this criteria alone ( Notability ), we should delete ALL HISTORY before WWII for its irelevence. Is Joan D'Arc relevent? Practically no. But she has extrodinary significance to the history of religion, spirituality and philosophy. If she indeed has extraordinary significance to these three histories, then surely she's notable. Where's the (potential) problem with here? Perhaps you could rephrase your complaint. -- Hoary 09:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)