User talk:Jimbo Wales

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WTF?

This and this astonish me and my first instinct is that surely these stories are wrong in some important way. Can someone update me on where I can read the community conversation about this? Did it happen? How did it happen?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:13, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Not an isolated case, I'm afraid, Jimbo. See here for another example. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 17:27, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

That's not exactly the same thing. The articles complain about people (apparently) removing women from the main category to a "ghetto" of a women's category. Categorization that assumes male defaults is a very bad idea. The case you're talking about is a list, not a category (that's not important, and I know you know it, but I mention it because likely reporters will read this discussion). And having a list for women directors, and a list of all directors, isn't the same thing as having a general list (for men only) and a women's list.

There are still valid arguments against it, of course! But my point is that there is a respectable and non-sexist argument for having a category for women and a general category, namely that there are academic studies on female literature, female film, etc. Some might argue that the existence of such academic disciplines is sexist, but those arguments aren't very compelling since these tend to be highly pro-feminist areas of academic study. I do not think, let me be clear, that we should have any differences in the treatment of gender at all. But I also do respect that a person can be in favor of dual categorization of females for academic reasons and not in favor of dual categorization for males.

What is completely and totally unacceptable - and there seems to be strong consensus on this - is to create a general list or category and only include men, and then a special list for women. That's nonsense and sexist. I haven't seen anyone in favor of it, and so I think the Guardian and HuffPo (and NYT) articles are unfair to us in that regard. It seems that most of this came about because people categorized in a haphazard fashion, rather than through any real discussion or policy about this.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:37, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

The main category actually just includes one article and a bunch of subcategories. I have seen some categories created for "Male x", but there doesn't appear to be one in this case. So, really, it is more like women are getting a special category of their own and men aren't.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 17:42, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Ah, it is talking about the American novelist category specifically, rather than the general novelist category. It isn't actually accurate, though, as many female novelists are still included in the main category.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 17:45, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh, there is also a category for men so it isn't only being done to one gender.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 17:49, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Having a main category for an occupation and a subcategory for women with that occupation is the standard around here. It's everywhere in Category:People by occupation/Category:Women by occupation such as Category:Composers/Category:Women composers, Category:Scientists/Category:Women scientists to name just two. Deli nk (talk) 17:44, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I was hoping someone would take the hint, Jimbo, and merge the two lists. It makes no sense to have a list of all of X (which is very incomplete) and a separate list of women in X (some, but not all, of whom appear in the main list). Either have one list or make the lists separate by gender (although one would have to question why we might wish to do that). We have separate lists of male and female kickboxers, not a list of kickboxers (including males and females) and a separate list of female kickboxers. This is a silly situation caused by the extreme gender imbalance in the Community. I'm surprised that you haven't noticed this before. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 18:25, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

This is just another example of the tendency to micro-categorize pages into sub sub sub categories what makes identifying and finding things via categories almost impossible. If I know X is a novelist and cannot remember the exact name or spelling for some reason I should be able to go to the appropriate category (Category:Novelists) and find the person. However given the policy and practice to shove the article into the most sub-sub-sub category possible it means I must know that the person is a novelist, their nationality and now gender. Getting a efficient category intersection system would make issues like this null. Werieth (talk) 17:29, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I find those big cluttered categories with hundreds upon hundreds of entries far more difficult to navigate. Dividing them into smaller categories can make it simpler. If you have a particular author in mind, but can't place the name you should know whether said author is male or female, American or British, etc. Should someone only know that x is a novelist then it is going to be nigh impossible to place the person by sorting through any category.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 17:35, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to both arguments, i.e. that big categories are too hard to navigate and should be broken down, and the argument that excessive micro-categorization is hard to navigate. I'm interested to hear more about "an efficient category intersection system". What would that be like?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:39, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

You know two things about a song, it was written in 2009 and written by Sean Garrett. Using WP:CATSCAN link to example you can filter the two categories Category:2009 singles and Category:Songs written by Sean Garrett from 2,029 items and 52 items respectively to just 7. Without the need to create a category called "2009 song written by Sean Garrett" This would enable the ability to find sort and organize articles using large categories and avoid sub-sub-sub categories. Werieth (talk) 17:50, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

It would probably look like something like Semantic Mediawiki; but you dismissed that years ago as "too difficult" or something. - 68.87.42.110 (talk) 17:49, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

No, you are mistaken.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:17, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

It looks like it was done earlier this month en masse by a single editor (although I'm not 100% sure, there may have been others doing it). It seems to go wider than just novelists. I've left the editor a talkpage note pointing them here.Formerip (talk) 17:37, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I think editors who do things like that should be banned much more quickly and firmly than our usual relaxed approach to banning.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, maybe. These were obviously poor edits. But my general impression is that mass changes to categories are not strongly discouraged or well-policed (hence, undoubtedly, the problem here). This could be an editor who's been caught speeding in a zone with no speed limit (i.e. this may be a failing of the community as much as an individual editor). But I'm not experienced with categorisation, so don't take my word for it, I could just be plain wrong. Formerip (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:51, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Unless it is somehow disruptive I fail to see why banning would be appropriate. Dividing a category into sub-categories when the main category gets cluttered (the American novelists cat has 4,000 articles) is a good improvement.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 17:47, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Um, Jimbo, why does the question of banning even come up before it's determined whether the editor in question understands the problem and is willing to work with the community? Is Wikipedia:Assume good faith no longer in effect, or have you already talked with the guy and found him to be intractable? -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:14, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

@The Devil's Advocate: Maybe, but dividing a category into people and women gives an obvious cause for concern. Formerip (talk) 17:55, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

As I noted above, that isn't actually what has happened as a cat exists for men and women are still included in the main cat. The lamestream press are just being their old noobish selves, creating an Internet controversy where none would exist if they actually understood what they were talking about.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 17:59, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

No, that isn't how it happened. The category for "American men novelists" has been created in response to the NYT piece. Originally, all the women writers had been moved into "American women novelists". What the NYT describes looks to be basically accurate in terms of a description of the situation a day ago. Formerip (talk) 18:04, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

As of last night, very few of the "American women novelists" were in "American novelists," largely due to one editor removing them from "American novelists." Some of us have been re-adding them over the past twelve hours or so, which is why a lot of them are back now. --Elysdir (talk) 18:10, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I think people who actually take the time to look at this more closely will find that the situation described in the press reports (the general category is assumed to be male by default) is more than not the way things are done here. User:Johnpacklambert is an experienced Wikipedia editor and is in no danger of being banned for this. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 18:12, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

If he can't come up with a darned good reason why he did it - one that is in the direct interest of our readership - he should be. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:18, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, why not examine his contributions to the discussion yourself before passing judgment? He's not only given an explanation for his behavior, based on precedent, but he's also offering constructive suggestions on how to address the problem. Is that really the kind of editor we're trying to get rid of? -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:31, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

As a meta-comment, it's long been my impression that categories are more trouble than they're worth. As this case demonstrates, they can create a lot of bad feeling and bad publicity. If I had a nickel for every time a knock-down-drag-out fight develops over a controversial categorization, I'd have several dollars. A number of categories - particularly those with the potential to reflect negatively on living people - expose us to some ethical and legal risk. And I don't think they're useful as a navigation aid. I don't have any formal statistics measuring how categories are used by the average Wikipedia reader, but they don't seem very helpful at all; I find them difficult and inefficient to use after 7 years here, so I can't imagine the average casual reader gets a lot out of them. MastCell ^Talk 17:53, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Yup. Shoving people into boxes and labelling them, even metaphorically, is a nasty little habit. It is high time Wikipedia grew up and stopped doing it. And no, I'm not kidding... AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:08, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Since we aspire to host the sum of all human knowledge, it's probably an unavoidable duty that we involve ourselves in the taxonomy of knowledge. I agree with you both that the way we presently do it, particularly with regard to human and social types, needs improving. I agree with Looie's and Wnt's comments about usability, too. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 00:54, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

• The problem is that someone took it upon themselves to exclude members of the subset American Female Authors from the universal set American Authors. This should be a learning experience why this kind of thing should not be done. There is nothing wrong with that subset, there is a legitimate academic concern with that subset. But making membership in Group A in any way related to inclusion in Group B creates a ghetto and controversy. A person can be part of categories "People born in 1926," "People from Duluth," "Swedish-Americans," "American female novelists," and "American novelists" — all 5. The last two are not and should not be regarded as mutually exclusive. If there is a structural reason why this happened, it should be fixed. If this was done by individual volition, it should be stopped. Carrite (talk) 18:09, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Let me be clear (because it may get lost) that I do not support the movement of women novelists to a separate category. It is a bad idea, but it is not necessarily a mendacious idea. I've deliberately avoided identifying the editor in question, so that I can comment generically. It is not an unreasonable thought to believe that women are under-represented in many categories: novelists, heads of state, architects, and many others. It is not unreasonable for someone to want to study the phenomenon, to look at the differences geographically, temporally, and by occupation. It is not unreasonable for someone wanting to do such a study, or make it easy for someone else to do such a study, to support counting women in various categories over time. It is a small step to think that the categorization started may be helpful to those who are interested in studies. While the specific approach is the wrong next step, it doesn't necessarily follow that it was undertaken with ghettoization as a goal. The effect is clear and should be reversed, but I urge dropping the banning talk. The problem arises because our categorization approach is deficient in many ways. As Jimbo notes, we should address this more broadly, rather than simply decree that this breakout should be reversed. There must be a better way to approach the categorization problem, so that one can, easily, identify women novelists, yet simultaneously be able to see a list of American novelists regardless of sex, or nth century novelists, regardless of country, or many other breakdowns, without having to resort to assemble micro-categories.

Let's:

• reverse the poor decision
• use it as an excuse to think hard about the right way to do categorization
• avoid riding someone out of town on the rails for what might be a sincere attempt at improvement.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:25, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

If an experienced Wikipedia editor sincerely thinks that removing women from 'category:American novelists' is an improvement, I sincerely think that we should get rid of him. And I sincerely think that arguing otherwise is missing the point. No matter how you spin it, it is detrimental to the credibility of Wikipedia. And just plain stupid. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:35, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Why wouldn't he think that, when the category says right on it that "It should directly contain very few, if any, articles and should mainly contain subcategories"? People are encouraged to move articles from these parents cats to subcats. Leon Uris isn't at this writing in that category. Why? He's been subcatted. I don't think it's a good decision to remove women only (or even first) or that it's a good decision to put women solely in categories related to gender (as opposed to the handling of Pearl S. Buck, where she is categorized as an author in several ways...but not at this writing, like Leon, in the parent cat). --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh, re: Pearl, I stand corrected; she's been added. Possibly in response to an email I sent out via OTRS a few hours ago. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:41, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to intrude, but here is the link to the current discussion. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 April 24#Category:American women novelists. I may have missed it but I haven't been able to find the link in the above discussion so I thought it may be important. Carry on, and mind the gap. Coffeepusher (talk) 18:39, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. There's also Category talk:American novelists#Preferred gender classification style. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:41, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Same issue with actors/actresses - Category:American actresses is a sub-cat of Category:American actors.--ukexpat (talk) 18:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

And needless to say, Category:African-American television actors is a subcat of Category:American television actors. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:44, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

These are also down to the same editor, it seems. Formerip (talk) 18:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

And that one will be difficult to justify on the grounds that everyone should go into a subcategory, unless he is proposing we have a Category:non-African-American television actors... AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:55, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

To clarify, he didn't create these categories, just moved actors into them. Formerip (talk) 18:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

OK, actually he did create the actresses category. But I think we should focus less on the editor, beyond understanding that the problem is about a lack of community oversight. Formerip (talk) 18:59, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

We do have categories for non-Africans by occupation, including for pasty-faced white folk and that editor has created a few of those as well. Still, go on assuming that the editor is a bigot because Lord knows we can't stop and be considerate when people in the press are crying about the ebil nerdy white male privilege of Wikipedia.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 22:19, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

"We do have categories for non-Africans by occupation"!!!!!!!!! Holy shit!!!!!! Now I've seen everything. Or rather, I haven't. Could you provide some examples... AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:45, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Here you go.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 00:51, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Er, no. I asked specifically for a Category:non-African..., as the logical subcategory to go with Category:African... - you have merely provided further evidence of Ghettoisation. (Though I have spotted a horrific WP:BLP violation in the entirely obnoxious Category:Chechen criminals, so I suppose I should be thankful...). AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:05, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry, I thought you were making a serious request for categories involving non-Africans and not some trolling request for a category that says what people are not. Never mind.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 03:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

General rules of categorization would indicate that if we subdivide for women, we should subdivide for men as well. However, given all the attention that "women" get (Women's studies but no Men's studies, not to mention efforts to reward women based on the fact that they ARE women, rather than just on their accomplishments - such as some of our own programs here with Wikipedia) Im not all that surprised that someone made subcategories for women but not for men. To me, its not "ghettoizing" its giving women special status whereas male writers for example are not somehow special because they are men. Similarly, how many times do you see someone noted as a "gay" writer but never as a hetero one. While I agree that we should have a men's category, I dont think the preachiness or self righteousness is really warranted. Make the category and move on.Thelmadatter (talk) 20:01, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Categories as currently implemented are a worthless pain in the ass

This point was made above (by MastCell), but it is worth emphasizing. The value of categories is to expedite searching, but Wikipedia's category system is completely divorced from its search system. If you type "novelists" into the search box, you don't see anything related to Category:Novelists. Unless this can be fixed, the whole category system is a worthless waste of effort. Looie496 (talk) 18:19, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

The problem is broader than that, but that is a good observation. If the point of categorization is to help readers find things, then it ought to be integrated into search. I know a lot of readers who know about the search function, but have never really paid attention to categories.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:27, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me the only purpose for categories is to give obsessives something to do. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

They're potentially useful for research. I've used them to quickly find articles in a subject area. But they do suffer from and have long suffered from some issues in consistency, and frankly I don't really understand why large parent cats are a problem. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:50, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

They really are potentially useful -- *if* they are implemented with the intention of serving as navigational aides. If I click on an author who has been determined guilty of plagiarism and then want to see other instances of plagiarism, it's helpful to have a plagiarism category at the bottom of the first article. The difficulty is that people start thinking about categories (particularly for BLPs) as identity tags. That's not what I have in mind when I work with categories, but that's where the drama and controversy kicks off. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 19:47, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Just so long as you don't take the contents of your plagiarism category from a list in a book... Formerip (talk) 20:05, 25 April 2013 (UTC

This is all beside the point. The guidelines specify that "each categorized page should be placed in all of the most specific categories to which it logically belongs. This means that if a page belongs to a subcategory of C (or a subcategory of a subcategory of C, and so on) then it is not normally placed directly into C". That is to say, if Sylvia Plath is put in the cat of 'American women poets', she should not also go in 'poets', 'American poets', or 'American writers', which are parent categories. That is why all the American female novelists were in the 'American female novelist' cat but not also listed under 'American novelists', which would be a duplication. If this isn't how categorisation is structured, then you should change the policy. Span (talk) 20:52, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I believe this is addressed in WP:Cat gender. Unless "gender has a specific relation to the topic" categories by gender are not split; women are in both the specialist and the "appropriate gender-neutral role category". --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:49, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

OK, so we have a guideline that might have prevented this problem. The question is why it didn't, for over two weeks. Formerip (talk) 22:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

The whole sentence, "A gender-specific category could be implemented where gender has a specific relation to the topic", actually reads more like a suggestion than a prohibition. As in "you might want to consider a gender-specific category if ...". If the intent is to prohibit such categories in most cases unless there is a strong motivation for them (which seems to be the intent of most of the rest of the page), then I would suggest that the WP:Cat gender section ought to be more clearly written to that effect. Dragons flight (talk) 00:08, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

The mere fact that Category:Male golfers does not exist on this site makes that set of guidelines more lolworthy than useful, and probably explains why the guideline did not prevent the current problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.104.124.60 (talk) 02:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it's more a sign that WP:TLDR is a real problem. My WP:AGF presumption is that people don't see it because they don't dig that deep. To get to that page from the main guideline, you have to follow the first link below "articles" to Wikipedia:Categorization of people and then to another link below "By ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexuality". That said, I agree wholeheartedly that it should be clarified. And I'd really love to understand better why the Category:American novelists should be depopulated. Is there some technical issue that makes listing all of them alphabetically for easy location impossible? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:32, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree - we need to fix the category system, period. The limited display sucks, the inability to lump together subcategories into a single list sucks, and just in case someone would be tempted to use templates or Lua to do better, the contents are inaccessible to any kind of transclusion. We end up having these massive 'infoboxes' like Template:The Beatles that spam 200 links into 200 articles because our categories, which should be doing the job, are ugly and unfixable. And yes, we should be able to click on a nationality of our choice and a sex of our choice and a genre of our choice to create a custom intersection of lists. It's something basic the devs should be working on instead of skins and ratings and "wikilove". Wnt (talk) 00:02, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

• There are long-standing problems with wikipedia categories, as I already tried to discuss on this talk page. My very best wishes (talk) 02:43, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
• There are all sorts of problems with categories, probably the main one being that so many are incomplete, and all sorts of things that it would be great if they could do, but they remain a highly useful and flexible part of the 'pedia, way in advance of what other encyclopedias have. We should celebrate them, and improve them, more than we do, and I deprecate the recent trend to set up bottom templates for everything instead. Johnbod (talk) 13:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

They aren't useful at all. The drones are forever munging them about so what was a valid category one week isn't so the next, the hierarchies are in constant flux. Taxonomies are stable they don't bloody well change every other day. John lilburne (talk) 08:45, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

• As an administrator of many other MediaWiki wikis, this separation of category from search isn't a Wikipedia specific problem. It is a root problem of MediaWiki itself. On one of the wikis I administrate, we even created a custom namespace to improve searching because categories searching doesn't work. Technical 13 (talk) 16:20, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

No basis for crying sexism other than blind assumption of bad faith

I see that the editor who created this category and did most of this has responded by creating similar cats for men. This is not a simple matter of the editor responding to controversy, however as some would certainly claim. He has created categories for men and women well before this. As can be seen in one instance back in February he created a cat for German male dancers immediately after creating a cat for German female dancers. Similarly, he created a cat for male film actors and one for film actresses within a month. He also created the general cat for American male actors a month and a half before creating the cat for American actresses. Now then, we can all stop buying into the scaremongering from some random "feminist" who lacks any amount of circumspection and thus is quick to assume everything is about sexism. Let no one ever claim again that editors on Wikipedia actually assume good faith. No, we jump to conclusions and have the rope ready before the defendant ever gets a chance to speak.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 22:11, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad you put "feminist" in quotation marks so that people know to ignore your opinion on this issue from here on in. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 22:20, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

A feminist is supposed to advocate for equality and part of that should be giving men the same amount of consideration one would give a women. Someone who is so quick to presume a situation is about men trying to demean women is not acting in a manner consistent with her proclaimed creed. Were a female editor doing this with men you would undoubtedly find certain self-proclaimed feminists less likely to notice, less likely to care, and more likely to consider less demeaning explanations. Most identity politics nowadays is about some person assuming the worst, stirring up a controversy, and calling for heads to roll. It really takes away from the goal of equality.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 22:52, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I rest my case. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 22:55, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I generally detest using identity politics as a way of whipping up an angry mob to attack and demean individuals without any meaningful consideration of guilt or innocence. If you want to say that makes me less of a person or a person with an opinion less worthy of consideration then fine. However, people shouldn't be labeling an editor a sexist and calling for bans based entirely on some random crap they read in the news.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 23:16, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone labelled an editor "sexist"? Has anyone (other than Jimbo) suggested banning anyone in relation to this incident? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 23:30, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, is someone proposing to create Category:non-African-American television actors? AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:42, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

*Points to DC and motions to Andy*--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 23:44, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone labelled an editor "sexist"? Has anyone (other than Jimbo) suggested banning anyone in relation to this incident? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 00:07, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

There are zillions of examples of this so-called ghettoization: Category:American film directors by ethnic or national origin is another one, which has Category:African-American_film_directors and as another parent, Category:African-American directors, which is a child of the (presumably) paler Category:American directors. Why people are up in arms about this one particular case quite boggles me - it's just an application of a standard that is somewhat inconsistent but it happens constantly all over the wiki (e.g. the standard is, always diffuse to most specific sub-cats - UNLESS you're dealing with gender/ethnicity/national origin - and then don't - unless the person is already diffused to a child, which means you need to know the parent-child relationships of all of the super and sub cats, or if you are working within a national origin tree, and therefore... ugh!) - so it's not at all surprising that this happens. And this is not all the work of one editor - for example, see [1], which "ghettoized" a writer, by a well-respected and long standing admin with no malicious intent in so doing.

Part of me thinks that the cat system is hopelessly broken especially with respect to people - most articles have a few cats, but bios have dozens. If we could implement category intersection - even in a stupid, simple way - that would be a massive help - then we could just assign each bio as {m/f/etc} {writer/actor/politician} {gay/straight/bi/etc} {armenian/greek/russian/etc} {catholic/jewish/muslim/etc} - it would be much easier to maintain, there would be no more tedious debates about whether we should create cats for Category:Catholic authors from San Francisco of Chinese descent, and everyone could easily find the intersections they wanted. Wikipedia, can you do Wikipedia:Category_intersection for us please?? So many of these arguments and endless debates would just go away in a puff of smoke if we had good cat intersects. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 06:25, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

• I did not create Category:American women novelists. Nor were was it my edits that made it so Amy Tan was in that category. Nor was Amy Tan in Category:American novelists before being placed in Category:American women novelists. Just because I added a lot of pages to the category does not mean that I created it. I find it very objectionable that people here at wikipedia are so concerned about their image that they would even suggest banning an editor just because the edits he did caused some ob-ed writer to write ill of wikipedia. The edits were completely in line with policy, Category:American novelists has many genre-specific sub-cats and is not the bottom rung. People are willing to let the misrepresentation of the matter by the New York Times color the issue and then call for banning someone with no good procedural grounds to do it. That is heavy handed disregard for the editors who actually create wikipedia by actually paying attention to policies. No policies were borken, and to call for banning someone in this case is totally unreasonable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:26, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

THE STATEMENT ABOVE BY Johnpacklambert is incorrect (although he may be unaware of this). Amy Tan was removed from “American novelists” on 13 September last year (and put into the category “American novelists of Asian descent”) and added to “American women novelists” by a different editor on 24 March. Here are the dates of these two edits: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amy_Tan&diff=next&oldid=510787230 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amy_Tan&diff=next&oldid=543063880 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Burkehart (talk • contribs) 21:55, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

That said people are totally ignoring what I was doing. I was primarily in the process of dividing Category:Women novelists into its varioussub-categories. As it was, some of the people in Category:Women novelists were not in any nationality categories. Many of the people currently in Category:Australian women novelsits were not in Category:Australian novelists before the move. People have entirely misrepresented what I did. Some people seem to want to drive off editors who help wikipedia.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:32, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

• For what it is worth, I did not create Category:American women novelists, Category:Women novelsits by nationality or Category:Women novelists. I believe I have created most other sub-cats of Category:Women novelists by nationality, inclduing Category:Haitian women novelists. I also did not create Category:American men novelists. I did create Category:British men novelists, but that was jsut because I figured that we should not confine such things to the US. My main goal was to split Category:Women novelists into usable parts. Actually, there is another point. Category:Haitain novelists for a time had no one in it, while Category:American novelists has never come anywhere near that. So why is all the outrage about the American category? This seems alot like narrow nationalism. Of course, the American category is also disproprotionately large by any measure. There are only 157 articles in Category:Chinese novelists and all its sub-cats, and that is assuming there is no overlap. There are over 4,000 in Category:American novelists, how much over is hard to tell because I do not know what percentage of Category:American historical novelists or other sub-cats overlap with the parent.John Pack Lambert (talk) 08:21, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

As Delicious carbuncle notes above, the only one suggesting that you be "banned" here is Jimmy Wales. It's quite safe to ignore that threat. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 08:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

DC is wrong about that as I noted already. Not sure why DC insists that Jimmy is the only one.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 14:01, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not insisting, but I have seen no one other than Jimbo suggest this and you have twice failed to respond to my question of who else has suggested a ban. Or provided a diff where anyone has labelled JohnPackLambert as "sexist". Perhpas I just missed your answers - can you repost those diffs? Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:13, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I did direct you to someone, but apparently you didn't catch it. However, I'm not holding your hand as you were one of the first to label him a sexist and only suggested he wouldn't be banned as a criticism of Wikipedia rather than as a request against it, and thus should know well enough that what I am saying is accurate. Of course, you will deny all that as you have never used the words and think failing to say what you mean magically translates to you not having done it.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 18:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Not only didn't I say that JohnPackLambert was a "sexist" in those words, I didn't say it in any other words, either. I have no opinion on whether he is or isn't a sexist, but I don't think it is appropriate to lay the blame for this situation on him (or any other single editor). In my experience, what JPL did is common practice. If there is a problem here, it is that this practice leads to the result that sparked the New York Times op-ed piece and sparked this discussion. I am surprised at Jimbo's reaction, since I think it is not a new situation and it is one of which he ought to have been aware. I am glad that you don't want to hold my hand, but if you with to retain any credibility at all, perhaps you could trouble yourself to provide again those diffs of someone accusing JPL of being "sexist" and the ban suggestions? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 22:28, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Here is one I saw:says JPLs actions are racist and sexist and disgusting, expresses a wish that the press will criticize JPL even more. Outside the wiki, on twitter and blogs, the term sexist has been bandied about a whole lot, and in some cases applied to JPL. In my own little defense of JPL, I've followed him for a long time, and he is both an active editor and active contributor for several years now to CfD discussions - which most of these johnny-come-latelys barely know exists. I don't agree with all of his views, but he is a solid contributor and knows a hell of lot more about categorization that most people I've seen in this discussion, and has been applying that knowledge and work to help clean up cats in wikipedia. He is actually quite knowledgeable about different cultures and ethnicities, and is often fighting for more precise categorization of things so as not to gloss over cultural differences (for example, he argues strongly against categorization schemes based on race like Black so-and-so.) So the flak he is receiving is completely not deserved.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 01:13, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Those were made after The Devil's Advocate's statements, but thanks for pointing them out. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 03:17, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

"Devil's Advocate, are you a sock of Silver seren? You "argue" just like him."

I'm sorry, DC, did you want to actually take the steps necessary to back up that accusation? Come on, I dare you. Silverseren^C 02:44, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, Silver seren, I won't be taking you up on your "dare". I was lightheartedly comparing The Devil's Advocate's failure to back up their statements with your habit of doing the same, but I didn't intend that it be taken seriously. I do not think that they are a sockpuppet of yours or vice versa. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 03:16, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you have discovered the problem with categories like this. There are 2,000 British species of Ichneumonoidea, but nobody is going to wade through them all no matter whether they are all listed in one lump, or sub-categorized into families, sub-families, tribes, and genera. For any given species one might walk back up the tree a bit, but one is hardly likely explorer based on cats. So there are currently 4,000 Category:American novelists if they split 1:1 on gender wouldn't 2,000 in each still be too much, and if the number are skewed isn't the larger number still to many? And how is it going to look in 10 or 20 years time? If size is the determinate factor how should one split the category:Living people? John lilburne (talk) 20:51, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

• Comment Much of the rhetoric about this category ignores articles like Emily M. Danforth that was created with the Category:American women novelists and not Category:American novelists, long before I started adding large numbers of articles to this category. I did not create this category, nor was I the first person to put people in it but not its national specific parent category. In some ways I think it would help if there were better ways to trace the history of categories, so we could see how large they were at given times.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Putting a finger on this specific issue

As an opening disclaimer, I know relatively little about policies governing categories, and I know nothing at all about the technical aspects of how the categorization system works. As a second disclaimer, I expect that what I write below will be old hat to those who have thought about these issues for a long time, and also duplicative of twelve other discussions taking place elsewhere around the wiki. My apologies, but please bear with me.

It seems to me that the issue here resolves very simply to "when should members of a subcategory also be listed as members of the broader category."

Suppose we have a category for all the past and present members of the United States Senate. (On checking, it looks as if we actually have 50 separate state subcategories for this, which destroys my example, but I'm too lazy to think of another one.) Now suppose that someone studying the history of African-Americans in U.S. politics wants to create a Category:African-American U.S. Senators. There are obvious reasons that this would be worth doing, and there are equally obvious reasons that while creating this category with an unfortunately small number (currently eight) of members, one would not want to create a new Category:White U.S. Senators that would include 97% of the historial Senate membership, simply in order to work in parallel.

But what is also completely clear is that placing a senator into Category:Black U.S. Senators must not remove the senator from Category:[All] U.S. Senators. What this means is that either the listing of senators in the subcategory must be replicated into the parent category, or else that Black U.S. Senators should be a parallel category rather than a subcategory.

Similarly here, I don't see a problem with classifying Willa Cather and Edith Wharton into Category:American Women Novelists, provided that these novelists are not thereby removed from Category:[All] American Novelists. But if the result of the subcategorization is to create a category of "novelists" that includes all the males, and a category of "women novelists" that includes the females, that obviously is not acceptable. It is unacceptable if it was done by design, which per AGF I expect it probably wasn't, and it is also unacceptable and needs to be fixed if it is the practical result of categorizing edits.

From what I do know about the categorization system we currently utilize, this would mean that if we want to keep Category:American Women Novelists, then each female novelists would have to be separately categorized into both the "all novelists" category and the "women novelists" category. The question going forward (at least until we have a better overall categorization system) is whether this extra work can be done reliably and reasonably quickly so as to avoid the problematic situation that currently exists.

(The other question going forward is, of course, whether to have a separate category for males. To decide that, the key question needn't be whether every category for women should correspond to one for men or vice versa, but simply whether such a category would actually be useful to the editors and the readers.

As I say, I'm sure this is a very naive approach to a problem that is new to me (but which two of my non-wiki acquaintances have asked me about this week), but I think it sometimes helps for someone new to an area to look at a situation free from background assumptions and the like. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:14, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I suggest we generally ought to place people into the simplest categories as a rule, and allow for searches using "and" instead of having a gazillion super-limited categories. Thus a search for the categories "Novelists", "Americans" and "Women" would thus find Willa Cather without any real problems. Collect (talk) 00:17, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

yes, that's called WP:Category intersection, and is not yet implemented as a full part of the wiki. You can do simple searches across categories (e.g. (American women novelists + people from queens), but such searches aren't recursive. Perhaps the best outcome of this brouhaha might be wikimedia foundation putting serious resources behind implementing a simple, easy to use category intersection scheme, which would eliminate 99% of arguments around creation of new categories on wikipedia. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 00:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi NYBrad. I don't think your approach is naive, and it actually mirrors more or less the current consensus - which is to avoid 'ghettoization' in these cases - see Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_religion_and_sexuality. However, there are a few wrinkles worth exploring:

What happens when a novelist is in a thematic sub-cat of Category:American novelists - such as Category:American horror novelists- take Elaine_Bergstrom as an example. She sits in the horror novelists cat alongside her male peers, so it not "ghettoized" - but an automatic bubbling up of her to Category:American novelists causes a problem - because now we have to ask, why should Elaine Bergstrom be in 3 cats (Category:American horror novelists, Category:American women novelists, and Category:American novelists) while other male horror novelists who have the exact same credentials would technically only be in Category:American horror novelists... that's the problem with always bubbling up, and with making a special exception for race/ethnicity/gender/sexuality. How far up the 'parent' tree should you bubble/replicate people up? For example, isn't Elaine Bergstrom also a member of Category:American women writers? Should we 'bubble' her up to that category as well? And once you're there, why not stick her into Category:American writers as well? How would you simply and clearly define the rules for membership in parent categories? Is there some maximum number of steps up the tree she can bubble? What if the structure of the tree changes, and parent/child relationships are shifted - does this mean everyone needs to be recategorized?

If you look at this from a purely set-theoretical/mathematical point of view, this theory espoused above is not practically implementable at scale in a consistent fashion (because of recursion), and the complexity required to understand it and implement it correctly (e.g. you *should* always bubble someone up to the parent, unless they are in a sibling or niece/nephew cat already, but only if that sibling cat is not also one of race/ethnicity/gender/sexuality, and only if the parent cat itself is not based on the same race/ethnicity/gender/sexuality), it's not at all surprising that a massive percent of biographies are inconsistently categorized, and even highly experienced editors here completely don't understand this approach - and when one should or shouldn't diffuse. Remember, when assigning categories, people don't usually have the tree in front of them, and we have multiple overlapping systems, so someone could be beautifully categorized in one tree and "sexistly" categorized in another. While I understand the arguments for avoidance of ghettoization, I've become convinced through this discussion that it is untenable, and that a better solution is, if we categorize on a characteristic, then go full board, define all possible subsets, and diffuse fully - so if that means creating a men cat every time we have a women cat, and vice versa, so be it. The advantage would be simplicity in the rules - you just always diffuse - and there would be never again a question of ghettoization, as everyone would be in their own ghetto. One more point - category intersection would be even better, but it may not happen anytime soon, so we have to rely on outside tools until then. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 01:03, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I hope that, while we work to address the problems within the current system, there is still a push to get category intersection implemented. That would solve so many problems, and I would actually use categories to find articles then. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Op-ed author making more misguided attacks on editors

In a follow-up to her op-ed, Miss Filipacchi is claiming that her BLP is being edited for revenge. Looking at it, these claims are clearly garbage. At the time of the original op-ed piece her article was rightly tagged for being severely lacking in sources with the external links section being cluttered with rave reviews added in by some single-purpose promotional account who was responsible for adding much of the unsourced puffery that has been added to the article. Editors removed those links and another began making the effort to clean up the promotional garbage. People should seriously check themselves before heeding her words on any of this as she clearly isn't making any effort to understand the subject she is discussing or consider any explanations that aren't nefarious.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 03:23, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, she says "But at least I’m back in the “American Novelists” category, along with many other women". She may have been when she wrote that piece, but she is not now. There appears to be an edit war going on to prevent her from being in that category. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 04:18, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure, let's ignore the various demeaning and misguided things she has said about editors who are trying to make her bio less of a promotional mess and focus on some trivial bickering over a category.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 04:56, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Her suspicions of revenge are well-founded and not "garbage." The tag that you cite was on April 25. Her article appeared on April 24. Her description of the article history is accurate. Let's face it, this whole thing is a big and well-deserved black eye for Wikipedia. Coretheapple (talk) 14:32, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

It's extremely clear that Filipacchi-related articles are being edited inappropriately. One editor has slapped tags accusing her of self-promotional editing on just about every article related to her, without a shred of evidence suggesting she has ever edited Wikipedia at all. Somebody rather spuriously deleted all the cover images from articles concerning her books, despite the existence of obviously proper rationales; it's hard to see that as anything but malicious vandalism. It's far too common to see editors circling the wagons and teeing off on "outsiders" who rather justifiably view a particular Wikipedia practice as blockheaded. It just adds to the not-entirely groundless perception is run by an odd concatenation of feral children and Afghan warlords. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 16:27, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

The stuff with the images is weird, as policy has been pretty clear since two years ago that it is acceptable fair use to have the cover art illustrating the article about a work (one of them did have an active tag as invalid fair use dating from back in 2007), but the rest is perfectly legit. It does seem there was a lot of promotional wording and unsourced puffery in those articles. See the changes made to Nude Men, Vapor, and Love Creeps. The advert tag was accurate and it is reasonable to suggest there was a COI issue, it wouldn't have to be Filipacchi herself editing the pages for that to be the case. It could have just been a fan gushing over her work, but that tagging was not inappropriate. It may no longer be necessary with all the changes that were made, though.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 17:22, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Given that the editor who placed the tags grouped Filipacchi with "people who've tried to use Wikipedia to promote themselves", their intent is obvious. The tone of the articles may have been favorable, but that's because the books were quite favorably reviewed. The form of the articles was lousy, but that's true of about 90% of what's written here. Removing reviews from major publications like Time and The Christian Science Monitor isn't eliminating advertising, it's at best blockheaded idiocy. And much of that "uncited" content was supported by external links or identified commentary, calling for citation fixes rather than excision. Sometimes, after all, the article about creative work is quite favorable because there's a strong critical consensus that it's really good work. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:06, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh come on now, you and I both know from the way those articles were written that they were not some attempt to present an accurate and unbiased portrayal. In a grand total of two minutes I found this review of Nude Men, which was hardly favorable and it was not the only one.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 18:56, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

And plot summaries do not need references, the novel itself is the reference. User:Qworty's actions look deliberately punitive to me. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 18:43, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

If it were simply stating what occurs in the book that would be one thing, but it threw in some editorializing and analysis that was not sourced.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 18:56, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand why you keep denying the obvious fact, blindly obvious to everyone else, which is that she is being subjected to retaliation for her op-ed. Coretheapple (talk) 11:05, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Possible pitfall in Wikipedia governance

is there some reason that Arbcomm cannot answer some correspondence, posted at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests#Mandated Jerusalem discussion appears to be a bureaucratic morass? even when I posted on 3 or 4 personal talk pages for members of Arbcomm? Is this spring break for them or something? :-)

just wanted to mention this, and to solicit any feedback. I do feel that something about this process might need to be addressed. I appreciate any help, comments, ideas, input, etc etc. :-) thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 02:26, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia's governance does not have pitfalls—it is filled, instead, with long drops to the mantle and outer core. ArbCom exists only to protect the strong against the weak. Although I am not in favor of its abolishment, I think that Wikipedia needs stronger institutions, including an elected assembly and content review boards, to deal with the cabals which have hijacked our political processes. Of course, most decisions should be local, but legislative and content decisions of consequence should be dealt with by elected officials chosen by the entire encyclopedia, not by ArbCom making every attempt under its establishing policies to legislate from the bench. All this leads to are remedies which are incongruous with the underlying problems that are supposed to be solved, with no other way of solving them.

Wikipedian content builders need to rise and take back the political process. Election of legislators, while it seems contrary to the fundamental precepts of this project, is the only way of giving content builders an (albeit indirect) form of control over the encyclopedia and of reining in the small special-interest groups and POV-pushers which masquerade for the "community". Wer900 • talk 04:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

The reason ArbCom takes so long to respond is that an official answer takes a week or two to wind its way through the process. The most common reasons that ArbCom didn't respond to people in my tenure were, in no particular order:

1) The correspondent failed to ask a question, or 1a) the correspondent failed to ask a question before everyone's attention span had expired. ArbCom gets probably a couple of emails a week that fall into this category, assuming the distribution hadn't changed. You've all probably seen things like this, where someone essentially gets in a dialogue with themselves, tacks a question on the end of their assumptions and reasoning, and emails the lot to the committee.

2) The correspondent is disliked, or 2a) the correspondent is feared. These are different--some people are just plain unpleasant to talk to, because they will just miss the point like they have done before, but others have a track record of trying to harass identified people. 2a doesn't actually happen all that often, but 2 happens all the time, especially in ban appeals.

3) The committee is not agreed on the answer. This happens when reasonable people post specific questions, and then the arbs have to find consensus on an answer, of some sort, in addition to all the case work, clarification, amendments, CHILDPROTECT matters, misbehaving admins, and OTHER private correspondence.

The committee has no SLA for private correspondence, such that much of it gets handled on a what-is-the-biggest-threat-to-Wikipedia-right-now basis, by the selected volunteers. You may be ignored not because your question is TL;DR, not because you're disliked, but simply because you've posed a question that needs Arbitrator consensus... and the committee as a whole is working on more important things. Jclemens (talk) 04:26, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

hmmm, okay. well, thanks for your replies and helpful input on that. Like --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 05:24, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Was this even an e-mail, or are you simply looking for discussion on this post of yours? It seems like an odd place to start that discussion, in part because it's probably a little-watched corner these days, and it's not a likely place to discuss policy/process changes. If you're waiting for discussion on your idea there, you could be waiting for a long, long time for anyone to stumble across it (✉→BWilkins←✎) 11:05, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

hi. well, I agree with you. Actually the place where I tried to start the discussion is at : Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests#Mandated Jerusalem discussion appears to be a bureaucratic morass. I should have been clearer about this before. That was in my previous link, but I shouldn't have assumed that everyone could click that.

if you want, could some of you, please read the note which was left there, and let me klnow what you think?? thanks. still not seeing any replies yet. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 11:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, as soon as I saw the phrase "all possible wordings" I realized that it was unworkable, and I can understand why nobody else replied. Besides, mixing ArbComm and RFC's seems a bit odd ... Not much else to say (✉→BWilkins←✎) 11:33, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

well, I appreciate your reply. however, not sure that I follow your point here. how does the phrase "all possible wordings" relate to this item? that is not a part of my idea. I think that the idea is fairly workable. this is a response to the process for an RFC which Arbcomm itself set up. feel free to read the next section there, which further explains it. You can read it at:

• Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests#Mandated Jerusalem discussion appears to be a bureaucratic morass.

thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 11:45, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

ok, opened a request for Arbcomm at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Clarification_request:_WP:ARBPIA.2FJerusalem. just letting you know. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 02:27, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Just to update matters here. I replied to Steve (Sm8900) at WT:RFAR, and he has now, it seems, found the right page to post at - the best link is Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Clarification request: WP:ARBPIA/Jerusalem. Apologies for the delayed response, but some of the pages you initially posted to are rather obscure (as others have pointed out). I've asked my fellow arbs and the clerks to help keep an eye on them, though it is difficult to keep track of postings to the pages of closed cases (there are many such pages). To pick up on Jclemens's point about e-mail, some of his observations are true, but in this case no e-mail was received about this. That might, ironically, have produced a faster response. Oh, and on pitfalls, I've never yet seen Wikipedia's governance (ArbCom is not governance, by the way, Wikipedia doesn't really have an established governance system) compared to the inner structure of the Earth, that is a new one on me! :-) I'll now ping my colleagues so they are aware of the clarification request - though it will likely take days to a week before enough arbs will have opined there on what (if anything) is needed. Carcharoth (talk) 19:27, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

hi there. ok, well thanks for your reply. I appreciate it. I will keep all of your points in mind. thanks very much. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 11:34, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Commons isn't getting better, it seems

Are the adults at WMF ever going to get around to demanding respect for fellow human beings at commons? Any father of a daughter (like you, or I) should be enraged at crap like commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Mardi_Gras_Flashing_-_Color.jpg#File:Mardi_Gras_Flashing_-_Color.jpg. I'm not upset about the boobs, but I am appalled by the incredible lack of decency on the part of the people commenting there. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 23:56, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I think we need to remember the daughters who aren't in the picture also. If one of them loses control over a topless cellphone photo, how humiliated will they feel? I think they will feel less humiliated if we don't suppress the "background noise" of photos like this on the Internet than if we do. Normality is a competition, a zero sum game, and when we push one girl up in the rankings, some other one must come down to occupy that place of social disapproval from those foolishly judgmental about ordinary human anatomy. This is true no matter whether society's threshold is an exposed breast, an unveiled face, or a flash of ankle. The difference is that the one we show now in some way volunteered to step out of the fold, and may therefore feel less injured than the one who takes her place. And that when we move the threshold with our uncensored coverage, women everywhere are just a little freer. Therefore, we should simply go by the routine policies that apply, maintain the image and forget about it. One day people throughout the world, moved by legal precedents like in New York and Canada, and heroic protesters like FEMEN, will come to appreciate that there is nothing any more improper about a woman's body than a man's. Wnt (talk) 03:56, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Insofar as there are arguments that this image is harmful, it's harmful to an individual. We cannot justify harm to an individual on the grounds that it's generally good for the world. Individuals matter; that's why we have BLP in the first place. Ken Arromdee (talk) 19:18, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Consensus is great, bit only as long as it agrees with you. I am not sure what you hope to accomplish by filing a complaint predicated on an appeal to emotion fallacy. Resolute 04:44, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Appeal to emotion, yep. Emotions are not false, they're real. They count. argumentum ad passiones is inducing emotions, such as greed, hatred, fear or pity in the listener, solely in order to beguile them. It is not false or wrong in any way to take into account how our behaviour affects the emotions of others. It's natural and normal for humans and, I think, a number of other primates. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:48, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Depressingly the 'keep' votes all centered on 'is it legal?' ignoring moral, ethical or even 'encyclopedic value' grounds. Why when I saw this here did I know that Russavia would be involved.... Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:49, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Why doesn't my argument above count as ethical grounds? The problem here is not emotionalism or moralism per se, but a lack of imagination. You see only the single most easily pictured possibility and not the many less likely scenarios. Wnt (talk) 15:13, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

The day may come when no girl regrets flashing, and every girl is thrilled to see herself flashing on a webpage visited a thousand times a day. Until then, putting this image on that article is callous and morally irresponsible. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:37, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

This discussion was about the Commons image - I'm not even sure what article you're referring to at the moment. Wnt (talk) 16:40, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

For a while, the image was at the top of Exhibitionism. I forgot where I was. Still, for all the same reasons, it's wrong to host it on Commons. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:58, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, it might have been more debatable there - how well do we know that what the girl was doing was "exhibitionism" rather than something else? (As can be exemplified by asking whether you would categorize her as an "exhibitionist") The article starts by describing a festival much like Mardi Gras, but doesn't actually mention Mardi Gras and focuses more on individual decisions than group action. Undressing in the locker room for a swimming pool isn't exhibitionism (remember nowadays the 'polite' assumption that everyone is heterosexual is gone) Is Mardi Gras more like that or more like an individual who decides to go streaking? Wnt (talk) 18:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Hm. Anyone who knows me on Commons should know I'm a keen advocate of improving respect for BLP and privacy - but I find it hard to see how this image could be deleted within Commons' current policies. There is good evidence from the source Flickr stream that image was taken in a public place in the US, and that subject was well aware of the photographs being taken - so legality of hosting is not an issue unless we want to argue about age. The photograph was taken in 2008, so well into the Internet age, which reduces the moral "she might not have known it would end up on the internet 20 years later" argument that sometimes applies (which is anyway weakened here by the clear exhibitionist intent). There are good arguments made at WP:BLPN for not using the image in the Exhibitionism article, but to justify deletion from Commons, you'd have to alter Commons policy - and I'm not even sure how. I've argued for explicitly or implicitly applying the precautionary principle commons:Commons:Project scope/Precautionary principle, which as written is for copyright issues, to BLP - but I don't think that would cover this case. Feel free to make suggestions. Rd232 ^talk 09:19, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Kept: Please note that Commons is not English Wikipedia, and what may not be ok on English Wikipedia does not make it not ok for Commons. This photo is from this Flickr set entitled "Mardi Gras 2008 (Wild Girl Edition)". Here is the same person with a camera stuck up to her boobs, so she is well aware (and obviously consented to the photos being taken). One will see that she is present on the left hand side of the photo. If one looks at the rest of the set, we see all sorts of public exhibitionism (which is what Mardi Gras in New Orleans is famous for!), including a photo of a guy getting a blowjob. OK, so people on English Wikipedia object to it's usage on that project, but this photo is utilised on numerous projects on articles related to exhibitionism, so scope is automatically met as far as this project is concerned. There is also no problem with COM:IDENT in relation to this photo.

It would be great in future if people, instead of drumming up dramuh elsewhere to import to Commons, would do a little homework (it took me all of 10 seconds) and present this before making out that Commons is broken blah blah blah. Based upon the above information, appealing to emotion fallacy has no more sway on this project, as would the argument of this woman possibly being someone's mother.

So in light of all the above, we'll close this circus down now so y'all can go and do something that is useful for this or other projects. russavia (talk) 05:20, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Russavia, this statement is so horrific that I am more convinced than ever that commons is ethically broken. You should be ashamed.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:27, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

How the hell did someone like Russavia wind up in a position of authority, again? Does he have dirt on somebody or something? Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:18, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Jimbo, you are right. As somebody said yesterday Russavia is just a little troll with a very dirty mouth, yet Russavia is an admin and a bureaucrat on Commons that "is ethically broken". Now, Jimbo, as co-founder of Wikipedia maybe you could do something about that "ethically broken" Commons? 173.255.139.16 (talk) 18:00, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

So you think that because she doesn't know she's being videoed by the camera 6 inches from her chest? It was a good close IMO - clearly shows there are no "did not consent" issues. -mattbuck (Talk) 10:25, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Someone that is flashing their breasts at a Mardi Gras parade most probably isn't expecting the photos to appear on a top 10 website. People do stuff in public which is a momentary thing, and haven't thought through the consequences of the actions, its a few minutes of fun, caught up in some event at one particular time. For a top 10 website to upload the images from a flickr account where the images are NOT indexed by Google is a sleazy sort of thing to do. For others to justify the collation of the images is pretty slimy. That is what Jimbo is hinting at when he says "this statement is so horrific that I am more convinced than ever that commons is ethically broken." BTW watch as you walk about there is also pool of slimy at your feet. John lilburne (talk) 10:44, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I guess my boyfriend is leaking. -mattbuck (Talk) 10:48, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Should we send arm-bands? You seem to be out of your depth here. John lilburne (talk) 11:26, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Can people unlearn their naked shame? Count Iblis (talk) 15:59, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

This is less complicated than that. There are already plenty of perfectly good cultures where women's breasts are routinely visible. We don't have to do basic research to see if it is possible. The U.S. culture is just one of those societies like the Taliban that have sexist taboos about parts of women's bodies. Any decision we make here should be equally applicable to images of unveiled women from Saudi Arabia, for example. Wnt (talk) 16:52, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

If Wikipedia cannot consider the idea of harm to a person because different things count as harm in different cultures, you've pretty much discarded the idea that Wikipedia may consider the possibility of harm to a person at all. This contradicts Wikipedia policy. Ken Arromdee (talk) 19:27, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

What I think is that we shouldn't delete something merely because someone thinks "even if someone consented to being photographed and video-taped that person will surely regret it in the future and will not want to immortalize those crazy banner days of youth!"--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 19:59, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree here. If we are allowed to invoke the unknown future, one can just as well argue that if in the future being naked is the norm and people would feel embarrassed if they are seen wearing clothes, all pictures of people wearing clothes should be deleted. Count Iblis (talk) 21:42, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally there is a BLPN discussion: Wikipedia:BLPN#Photos_of_private_people_doing_things_they_might_be_embarrassed_about_later and one on the talk page of Exhbiitionism: Talk:Exhibitionism#Image_at_top_of_page which might bear reading. Half the arguments seem to be "keeping it is legal, so we shouldn't care about the subject of the image". Ken Arromdee (talk) 19:27, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I come here to add a link to the same BLPN discussion that Ken Arromdee just mentioned. I won't repeat here the comments I've posted there. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:35, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Commons isn't the only thing that's broken. When the Wikimedia Foundation can send what amounts to a cease and desist letter to someone who's editing historical logic subjects by adding useful information, but ignore the likes of Russavia, Wnt and mattbuck, then that foundation too, is broken. Good to see you lot have a solid grasp of what the "terms of service" should be used for. Not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.118.133.243 (talk) 12:10, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

We could also replace all such contentious pictures by digitial ones that are ab initio computer generated. They then depict people who look 100% real but these are not pictures of people who really exist. Count Iblis (talk) 13:07, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Not sure whether that is meant as a serious suggestion, but I can't think of an situation where replacing a photo with a computer generated alternative would be a good idea.

In any case, consensus seems clear and the photo has been replaced, so I reckon this is a discussion to continue, if at all, at Commons. Formerip (talk) 13:13, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

In the media, when there is concern for the privacy of people the faces of such people are blurred. What I'm suggesting is similar. Since the real identities of people don't matter for us anyway in these sorts of cases, we can just replace the real people by fake ones. So, one can illustrate the act of a woman showing her breasts safely in the appropriate Wiki article. It can be based on the same real world event; we take the real picture and we then modify the woman so that she looks totally different. Count Iblis (talk) 14:01, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Give them a finger and they'll take your whole hand. I've seen some commercial TV shows that have been intimidated by bogus legal things - they end up half blur - numbers on license plates, logos on T-shirts, brand names on boxes, images of people on the street - once they get that first little bit of momentum down the slippery slope, they don't stop until it is too sad to even watch. Commons recognizes that private people doing non-profit educational writing have the right to take pictures on a public street without some Soviet minder running along behind them saying "don't photo this" every time something seems in some way unseemly to someone. Wnt (talk) 15:00, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Why is it that every reasonable proposal is hijacked by someone making a poorly informed "slippery slope" argument? Logos on t-shirts and brand names on boxes are blurred because such things appearing on screen are seen as essentially free "advertising". If a given television series utilises, for example, cans of Coca-Cola in product placement, they will almost certainly blur out a Pepsi logo if it happens to appear. Even if they don't have a competing advertiser, things are usually blurred anyway, as allowing logos to appear lessens the incentive for the company in question to purchase advertising on the show. That is a decision made by advertising departments, not legal departments. There is no legal consideration in the matter whatsoever. Until Wikipedia begins selling advertisements, your argument is a complete non-starter.

Also, I can't resist making a finger joke, so: Give Commons a finger and they'll find somewhere to put it... Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:27, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

• Russavia says above "Please note that Commons is not English Wikipedia...'", as if we're not all we're not all aware of that by now? Yes Russavia, you're quite correct; degenerate, prurient behavior gets one blocked on en.wiki, while on Commons it gets congratulations and high-fives from the top down. Tarc (talk) 13:55, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

• So, Wikipedia is similar to Saudi Arabia while Commons is similar to Britain? Count Iblis (talk) 14:21, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

• More like a crack house to a cigar lounge, really. Tarc (talk) 15:44, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

• I rarely ever venture over to Commons, let alone check any of the discussions, but I'm certain I lose IQ points every time I do so. I'm aware that there have been some attempts made in past years to make it less of an amateur porn hosting service, but it seems that other problems are cropping up and/or getting worse all the time. As far as I can tell based on the discussion linked by SB Johnny, a lot of the editors there would do well to read "Don't be a dick" (but ohgod that's not a Commons policy! like zoinks!). While everyone wastes time making sure they retain as many pictures of boobs as possible, deletion requests for files that are blatant copyvios can remain almost untouched for months at a time (last month I was informed that a "speedy deletion" is generally considered anything that takes less than two months for someone to get around to closing). Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 14:18, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

• I have a difficult time getting hot and bothered about this specific image, it having at least theoretical encyclopedic applicability. That's my opinion and I appreciate that I might be in the minority here. The basic issue is that the administrative corps at Commons has been effectively taken over by a clique of individuals holding aggressive pro-porn ideas about Commons' scope, rallying around the slogan "Wikipedia is not censored." Change there is not going to come internally, it is going to come through the volition of WMF, who is going to have to either shut down Commons in favor of image hosting by the language encyclopedias themselves, or else clean house on The Usual Suspects who have wormed their way into the Commons Administrative corps (which would be highly controversial), or is just going to have to accept that there will always be a certain percentage of prurient Commons images and that periodic crises will recur owing to the massive divergence between the ethical standards and perception of their project's scope by Commons administrators and the ethical standards and perception of what an encyclopedia should be of the mass of human society. For me, I will not participate in Commons and I urge other volunteers at En-WP to do likewise. Use the { { keep local } } template whenever you upload files and make sure that bots don't abscond with images to Commons. Carrite (talk) 15:30, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Maybe change could come from over there, if a similar amount of energy were invested into moaning about it there as opposed to here, where it makes zero difference. Just thinking out loud. Formerip (talk) 15:56, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

The problem, of course, is that there is very little centralized discussion at Commons. The closest they have is the Village Pump, and that sometimes goes days without any new comments. Moving the discussion there rather than here, where it actually has an audience, would be... what's the opposite of pissing in the ocean? Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:59, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

What's the point of an audience that doesn't disagree but has limited interest (speaking for myself)? The flipside of a tumbleweed-strewn village pump is that if team prude go over there with a proposal, team pervert are going to have to turn up or face defeat. Of course, reality is it would likely take a while for both sides to work through their issues and start engaging constructively, but the stir-up-drama-on-Jimbo's-talkpage strategy is definitely starting to look a bit George Osborne. Formerip (talk) 16:13, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Now, now, I suspect you are exactly as representative a sample of the audience here as I am — that is to say, not in the least. You have the ability to ignore this conversation; no one is forcing you to read it or to reply to it. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:14, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, the simple solution would be for the WMF to actually start giving a damn about what people are doing to their projects. 99% of the problems on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons could be solved instantly if someone from above exercised some executive decision-making instead of deferring to ArbCom (and whatever the godawful equivalent at Commons is) to decide weighty, legally complex issues in which the people making ex cathedra decisions have absolutely no expertise. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Commons editors and admins will have tears (of joy) in the eyes at the idea of being left alone by the prudes of en.wiki. Béria Lima ^msg 15:51, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, dismiss everyone's opinion by not reading it and calling them "prudes." Everyone get your stuff together, pack up your things; we have a winner. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:55, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I saw 2 opinions dear, one disregarding all laws in favour of a "she might regret go naked in the street when she is 50" and another to fork my home project, neither I find - as a woman or commons admin - valid to a answer. And when one doesn't want to fight... Béria Lima ^msg 16:12, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Nonsense. "Disregarding all laws" sounds as if you're saying we're legally bound to post as many pictures of naked people we can find. Since I have no idea what "valid to a answer" means, I'll just stop right here. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 16:15, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

There have been enough legal threats that when none of them pan out it is worth noting. The ethical arguments are just as barren, but that is harder to quantify. The slippery slope is indeed open for business. Some immediate steps down the slope that deserve to be answered:

• Do we delete or avoid all use of pictures of FEMEN protests because the women might change their minds?
• Do we cut out any images of women in Muslim countries going unveiled in public whether as a protest or if given as evidence that "Islam isn't/wasn't that strict in that country at that period of time because some women felt free to do so"?
• Do we blur the faces of protesters at an anti-gang protest in Mexico City because cartel people might recognize them and decide to kill them?
• Do we omit coverage of American servicewomen involved in a political action against rape because their fellow servicemembers might target them for sexual abuse (with about a 99% chance of not being punished)?

The problem with being God is that you'll have to spend all your time on these weighty matters, deciding whether each and every picture is really a good thing or a bad thing to post. You'll need those plenipotentiary powers from WMF so that none dare naysay your divine omniscience. Wnt (talk) 17:21, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

So your concern is that Wikipedia editors shouldn't be in the business of making content decisions about what to include and not include in Wikipedia. Seriously? Formerip (talk) 17:43, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

No, I'm saying they should be making those decisions based on the core priority of education, instead of substituting new goals. Wnt (talk) 17:59, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't know the answers to those questions. In fact, no one does, because in so far as the questions relate to future images, those questions have not yet been raised. Commons, like Wikipedia, is governed by consensus. Ideally, that consensus should be informed, and should not by the result of a pack of disrespectful trolls chanting Borg-like "Wikipedia is not censored" every time someone raises a valid question.

The solution to this, like the solution to most problems, is structure. Maybe file uploading isn't a right that all, or even most, users should have. Maybe we could have something similar to PC protection, where anyone without the file uploader right would have to submit their upload for review. Maybe that review would determine that, after the first 2,000 images of naked breasts, that 4,002nd nipple just isn't unique enough to warrant spending five megabytes of the foundation's server space. Maybe instead of just accepting every image of a topless woman that crops up, Commons editors should give serious consideration as to whether those images fulfill an extant educational need.

I can understand a few images of this sort of thing being educational; really, I can. Maybe we need ten, or even twenty of them to keep everything diverse. But sixty-seven? Really?

Hell, the answer to that could be "yes" for all I know, but we have to be able to discuss it. And the current state of things at Commons is that things are not being discussed properly; bullies like Russavia are steamrolling over conversation and driving away people who disagree with him.

And yes, it is reasonable to consider blurring out faces in images like this. The law doesn't say we have to do it, but for God's sake, is it really that much to ask that we at least be able to discuss it on a case-by-case basis, even when we're not required to? Is it really that much of an inconvenience to the project/s that maybe, from time to time, editors might determine that a certain individual should not be personally identifiable in a given image? Is it actually absurd to assume that consensus can be agreed upon for reasons other than potential legal ramifications and WIKIPEDIA IS NOT CENSORED!!!!11! Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:37, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

And yes, it is reasonable to consider blurring out faces in images like this... - no it isn't. We really have to get away from blurring (or related things like cropping) being a good option - it is far too commonly the case that the subject can still be identified fairly easily. See commons:COM:BLP#Identification. Rd232 ^talk 00:45, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, because every woman who flashes her breasts at Mardis Gras is exactly as identifiable as the Mona Lisa. Thank you for showing me the error of my ways. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:48, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I know it's tempting to look at pretty pictures, but the text in the guideline isn't actually just lorem ipsum. The third sentence is in fact Outside of the image, clues may be obtained from the image title, description, origin, source url, geolocation and date. (Source URL is particularly relevant for Flickr-sourced images, as the original unblurred image is then just a click away from the file page.) Well, feel free to tweak the section to make it clearer. Rd232 ^talk 01:04, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I read it (I skimmed a little, admittedly, but I read it), and I'm exactly as unconvinced as I was before. Acting as if thinking about considering the idea of maybe, from time to time, discussing the possibility of blurring a face, is actively harming the project is moronic. You can quote guidelines at me all day; that isn't going to change. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 01:09, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Acting as if I said or implied that is, er, "moronic", to use your word. Blurring/cropping/etc may sometimes be acceptable, if you're really sure there aren't other identifying clues, or unaltered versions easily available elsewhere. Personally, it would need to be a really, really valuable image before I'd think it worth discussing seriously - otherwise, just delete it or don't use it. YMMV. Rd232 ^talk 01:20, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

@evanh2008: re your "how many of these images do we need" issue - see the current (but languishing) commons:Commons:Requests_for_comment/scope. Some injection of energy wouldn't hurt it. Rd232 ^talk 08:58, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

So what would work as a Commons policy change?

My remarks above seem to have been lost in a blizzard of prudes v perverts silliness and slipperyslopery. But the real concern is surely BLP, so why can't we be grownups and focus on that? The situation is that commons:Commons:Photographs of identifiable people is focussed on (a) protecting privacy (as in "images taken in a private place") and (b) respecting local consent laws (commons:Commons:Country specific consent requirements). This gives a fair handle on media that intrude on privacy or were taken in (or may have been taken in) countries with strong local consent laws (applying at least partially in public places). The image that sparked this thread was taken in public in the US, so neither (a) nor (b) applies (because US requires no subject consent for publication of images taken in public places).

Start from there. If you want this image to be deletable from Commons under COM:BLP, make suggestions on how COM:BLP can be changed to accommodate that objective. Nothing's going to change from talking here or raising hopeless deletion requests - policy needs to change, and that starts with discussion about how. Rd232 ^talk 00:25, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

In case of pictures of a sexual nature where the concern is that despite (implicit) consent, the person may regret having taken that picture later, blurring or otherwise modifying the picture is a solution. While in theory you can then still identify the person in the picture using other features, in these sorts of cases that's not going to be a problem. The nature of the problem here is one of instant recognizability of such pictures. So, if you get new job, a colleague who watches porn sites can see an old picture and then instantly recognizes you. What is not going to happen in practice is that every pornographic picture on the internet is going to be analyzed in detail to see if perhaps it could be you. Count Iblis (talk) 12:23, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Issues with Flickr imports

• one solution is to close down the "data mining" of Flickr type sources because the majority of issue come from them, thats not to say Flickr isnt a useful its just that with bot one transfer 100's of images an hour which makes the miners less selective in both usefulness and quality. Its rare for a Commons Photographer to be source of such images and when they are they have to obtain consent of the "model". Not every Admin on Commons is a problem many do try to be both conversant with copyright and the cultural needs but there is no single solution. Gnangarra 00:21, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Agreed - so many of these problem images come from Flickr. See commons:Commons:Village_pump/Proposals/Archive/2013/03#Moratorium_on_COM:PEOPLE-affected_Flickr_imports. Rd232 ^talk 00:26, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
    • Fortunately, the under-supported and under-powered Commons UploadWizard has at least been getting Flickr import functionality, which in no way requires lots of developer time to get it to work properly. Rd232 ^talk 01:01, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
      • Does Flicker itself have a reputation for being a reliable source for the licenses of the files uploaded to it? If not, (and I suspect the answer is "no" based on the various flickerwashing scandals) then what basis does Commons have to rely on the stated license for Flicker-uploaded files? Jclemens (talk) 02:38, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

• Flickr doesnt actually specify what version of the CC license is in use, currently images uploaded from there are tagged with version of cc...3.0 without further clarification sort from the source. Gnangarra 07:46, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Flickr doesnt actually specify what version of the CC license is in use - to my knowledge that's not true (though it's a bit hidden under "some rights reserved", linked to a CC license deed), and if it were, those images would not have a valid license, and would fail verification. Verification of licensing statements on Flickr imports is automated and fairly effective, AFAIK (the problem comes with judging whether the statements are true, which is a whole other issue). Anyway, let's not get side-tracked into copyright. Rd232 ^talk 08:48, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

So your solution is to give up trying to assemble a library of free-licensed images, and just let a private company be the custodian of these things, just to avoid the possibility of being at risk of being accused of being "unethical" for not stopping users from uploading legal images? This is entirely wrong, but if it were not, then WMF should recognize more generally that maintaining free content is a chore that will only be done by for-profit enterprises that have a profit motive to hire PR men and lawyers to defend their hoards. And, therefore, close up shop entirely. Wnt (talk) 03:29, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

the solution isnt to "give up" assembling a library of freely licensed images because that was never Commmons focus. Commons scope specifies freely-licensed educational media content, whats is ethical when "image/data mining" from sites like Flickr cause both harm and requires admins to spend time deleting bot uploads as out of scope even one of Commons crats has a page dedicated to deleting out of scope/policy images. As I said Flickr is a good source but individuals should be doing uploads one at a time reviewing, the licensing, whether the image is useful/educational and whether its of a reasonable quality, the same process a person goes through when uploading work they themselves have produced. Gnangarra 07:46, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Nothing stops users from contributing freely licenses images to commons themselves. What I propose is to stop taking people, some of whom lie to Flicker, at face value and perpetuating such licenses without first-person verification, nothing more. Commons is quite fastidious about not taking fair use images, but seems to be quite inclined to look the other way as long as a pseudonymous third party is willing to say "Yeah, I'm the author and this is OK, honest". Jclemens (talk) 04:15, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

This case had nothing to do with any doubt that the photo had been freely licensed, so any proposal in that direction has no more likelihood of removing it than removing any randomly chosen content item from Commons. Wnt (talk) 05:13, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I was responding to Gnangarra's post, not the specific issue here. I have no opinion on the underlying photo, which is why I didn't express one. I am actually drawing more from an ArbCom case and some OTRS work I've done myself for the suggestion rather than anything directly related to this drama du jour. Jclemens (talk) 05:34, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

This was previously discussed at Commons:Requests for comment/images of identifiable people. The BLP and COM:PEOPLE policies need to be harmonized to prevent Flickr images from being used unless consent is available, particularly if the image is of a sexual or embarrassing nature. Don't hold your breath waiting for consensus, as only the Foundation could introduce this as policy.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:59, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

There's nothing to stop English Wikipedia declaring, for example, that Flickr-sourced images where WP:BLP issues are raised regarding the image need some evidence of subject consent for publication. Wording might be a pain to nail down, but the principle is clear enough and sensible enough. Rd232 ^talk 08:42, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

That's pretty much the main problem: As long as there is someone (A random Flickr account, a redlinked throaway-account) saying "I'm the author, trust me." the images will be accepted, and the burden of proof will be on those wanting to delete the images. And nothing but 99% certainty that the images are indeed problematic will get them deleted. It's no wonder that 85% of all current porn images on Commons were uploaded by throwaway accounts with <15 edits in total. --Conti|✉ 11:06, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Is that a real statistic, or did you just pull it out of... thin air? -mattbuck (Talk) 11:19, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Flickr is too much of an online rummage sale to be able to say for sure that a person wanted a photograph to be uploaded, or that the uploader is the copyright holder. This has been stated *many* times before in deletion debates on Commons, but there is still a tendency to ignore this. For images with WP:BLP issues, Flickr should not be the go-to source.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 11:34, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

It's my experience from going through various porn categories that practically all of the images I find are from redlinked throwaway accounts, or from Flickr accounts (which have more likely than not been deleted by now). So I should probably have included Flickr in that number. It should be easy to get some real numbers for this. --Conti|✉ 12:41, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

This and similar imaes are from fully public settings where photography is permitted without the subject's permission as a matter of policy, which is why the sourcing from Flickr doesn't matter. Wnt (talk) 12:45, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

If this was a response to me: What image are you talking about? --Conti|✉ 12:49, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

The one that started this thread, or for that matter, any Flickr-originated image from the category mentioned by Dan Murphy below. Wnt (talk) 12:59, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Going through the lovingly curated commons category Female Breast Flashing 60 out of 67 images (90%) are from flickr, 1 is scraped from Salon (of a picture associated with the Abu Ghraib torture and abuse scandal -- the only picture with the face blurred) and six come either from the porn blog "lukeisback" or the porn website "reviewerhell" (which appears to be mostly pictures that the owner, who goes by "dirtybob," has scraped from other commercial sites.Dan Murphy (talk) 11:54, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Dunbar's number

Editors might optimize their interactions with other editors by considering Dunbar's number. (It was mentioned, in May 2011, in a link near the end of a discussion now archived at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 76#More RfA and Swedish WP lessons.)
—Wavelength (talk) 15:26, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I loved his Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:43, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Cf. MeatBall:TheTippingPoint. --Nemo 14:42, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Category intersections by CatScan or wikisearch incategory

I think WP's current capability of wikisearch with multiple "incategory:" (to find articles which appear in multiple specified categories) is very good. As explained in general essay "wp:Category intersection" just list multiple categories with prefix "incategory:" in the wikisearch box, Search:[______]. For example, I could remember the first name of that famous paleontogist from New York (as "Stephen..."), and I remember he talked with local baseball player Joe Dimaggio, and so the wikisearch was easy:

• search incategory:"American paleontologists"+incategory:"People from Queens"

Hence, among the 685 pages in "Category:People from Queens" (NYC), this palenotologist's name was matched, as "Stephen Jay Gould". Although the wikisearch categories do not also scan the related sub-categories, there is a wp:Toolserver tool, wp:CatScan to scan for articles which also match within the sub-categories. Those features seem to handle over 90% of what people have requested for category-intersection lists. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:05, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I had no idea the search allowed you to do that. Presumably, it would be relative child's play to set up a form (?) Formerip (talk) 16:42, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

One feature that would be nice would be a NOT operator so you could search for articles that were in category A but not in category B. A use case would be to easily add articles to WikiProjects. It would be nice to be able to generate a list of articles in Category:2000 novels but not in Category:WikiProject Novels articles. I could easily add the articles in this list to WikiProject Novels. GabrielF (talk) 16:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I have a vague memory of when the search interface was updated to include such things. I've used the "intitle" search operator for some time, but not many people seemed to have noticed the changes. It might be worth pinpointing when the changes was made, and also notifying the people elsewhere on this talk page and in other places who are in uproar about the categorisation system. Those who have any experience with the categorisation system (I did for a few years about five years ago) are probably a bit shocked at how many people don't really follow how it works at all, and the amount of misunderstanding going on around this. Carcharoth (talk) 20:28, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not enough for it to exist, it needs to be made usable. I ought to be able to type "female American novelists" in the search box and at least have the category intersection offered to me as an option. The only simple way to use a category currently is to view its contents. Looie496 (talk) 00:26, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

These "expert" tools are in a sense worse than useless, because they make it seem to the people in a position to develop Wikipedia like there's not a problem, even though nobody else knows they exist. I even forgot about incategory. And the toolserver seems like a graveyard of grand ideas that will never be routinely used, and which probably will stop working sooner or later anyway. In order for them to be relevant to users they have to be both easily available from and documented plainly as options within the standard search interface. They should be integrated with the interface (the checkboxes for namespaces in the advanced search should apply rather than having a category for namespace in a tabular output from Catscan for example) Toolserver development needs to be available in a place where apps have ready access to page text, and where in turn normal pages can transclude their output, and where they're not subject to EU/German law, and not under special rules and invite-only development but are directly part of the WMF projects. Wnt (talk) 13:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Bad category mixture.

Hello, you were a Building or structure in Indiana until I made this edit.--Müdigkeit (talk) 21:20, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Category:Kazakh-language media

Should there be a Category:Kazakh-language media? --Normash (talk) 12:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)