Talk:Proplifting

Globalize article

When I initially saw this term, yesterday, I thought it was something that rugby players did in a line-out, after a rule change in 1999. The article needs to explain that this term appears to have originated in North America among plant hobbyists there. The term's use elsewhere in the English speaking world seems limited or unknown. Legally, this is a criminal act usually known as theft with an added component of property damage that, if it takes place in retail store, is commonly known as shoplifting. The example given of the theft from a botanic garden is more like an example of plant poaching, because it did not happen in a shop. This article needs to be viewed in the broader context of plant collecting. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 23:44, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

@Cameron Dewe: Well, it has made it to the antipodes, according to this unreliable source. One of the sources in the article is from UK's The Guardian and mentions it there. I saw no references to rugby when I did my searches. --awkwafaba (📥) 01:02, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

@Awkwafaba: The practice might have made it to "The Lucky Country" but the name for this form of botanical larceny hasn't crossed the Ditch, yet. Even the Daily Mail article puts the term in quotation marks, which suggests the term is not widely known in Commonwealth countries. A more reliable UK source refers to the Reddit group using the term, but doesn't use or explain the term in any other way. The earliest independent explanation of the term, that I can find, dates from July 2018 where it is said to involve "picking up fallen succulent leaves off the floors at big box stores and taking them home to propagate" but it is still closely associated with the Reddit group of the same name. Also, the activity does not involve the removal of live plant material from living plants; only sweepings from the shop floor. Additional advice is to be ethical and ask first, too. Even Fox 5 bills the San Diego Botanic Gardens incident as "Plant Theft", suggesting "Proplifting" needs too much explanation for the American TV audience too. The term "Prop-Lifting" is only attributed to the gardens CEO, Dr Ari Novy, in the written version of the article and is never mentioned during the on-screen interview. This appears to be paraphrasing of a media release and it would be good to locate the original documentation that Fox 5 based their reporting on, especially since the article is being used to verify the term's existence. My reference to rugby comes from the position of Prop and their role in "Lifting" the "Jumpers" in a line-out. I was merely using this to emphasize that some readers might associate the words used in the term to mean something utterly and completely different. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 03:33, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

@Cameron Dewe: I'm not sure how your "more reliable" source is that much better than the one i referred to you previously, when they are the same Guardian article. --awkwafaba (📥) 17:19, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

@Awkwafaba: If you check the unrelaiable source you gave you will find the website is www.dailymail.co.uk. My contention is that the evidence that Proplifting is a term that is in widespread usage outside of North America is weak and even in North America, it is misunderstood as "Plant Theft", which the Reddit group of the same name says is unethical and that they oppose the practice if it involved taking cuttings from live plants. In New Zealand, we too have problems with "Plant Theft" from botanic gardens and other places. But it is not known as Proplifting, here. New Zealand's Ministry of Primary Industries and the NZ Plant Producers Industry take a dim view of people smuggling foreign plant material into New Zealand. Biosecurity is taken very seriously here, as any imported plant can potentially be considered a noxious weed, especially decorative house plants that people might want to import. A few years ago, MPI, quarantined and destroyed all shipments of apple tree cuttings from a North American plant nursery just because the accompanying biosecurity paperwork was suspect, even though the plants appeared to be disease free. Also, our Kiwifruit industry has had problems with both biosecurity incursions and intellectual property theft involving propagating unauthorised cuttings. Even so, New Zealanders are mad keen gardeners and it would not surprise me if acts of proplifting took place here; it is just not come to anyone's attention to be notable activity. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 22:53, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

I said “One of the sources in the article is from UK's The Guardian and mentions it there.” And then you said “A more reliable UK source…” --awkwafaba (📥) 12:43, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

The Guardian article mentions, first, the subreddit group r/proplifting, and discusses the ethics of taking plant parts from the floors of retailer. The second time it uses the word it is quoted and about the topic of "proplifting" coming up in an Instagram discussion group. As the article uses quotation marks, so one could interpret that it is the subreddit group being discussed on Instagram. Nowhere in the Guardian article is "proplifting" mentioned as anything other than the subreddit group. The Guardian uses terms like theft and property damage in other places. I don't think the article from the Guardian is sufficient evidence to say the term is well known outside the subreddit group, or an instagram discussion about the group. - 12:20, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Archived references imply they all need repair

Why are all the references in this article archived when I can find most of the original URL's being stable permanent links that are available on-line? The use of archive URL's in citations for this article is inconsistent with many other Wikipedia articles. The purpose of an archive URL is to combat link-rot. The wording of WP:SOURCELINKS implies that if a source document exists off-line in hard copy form there is no need to provide a URL unless it is free to access. So no URL is required for the Star-Phoenix newspaper citation. Also, there is no need to provide a URL to a database such as ProQuest because it requires a subscription to access the paywall. Anyway, the need to use a paywall should be indicated using the URL Access parameter set to subscription. Providing an archive URL in such circumstances is pointless because the archive copy cannot circumvent the paywall anyway. The use of archived URLs is primarily suggested in the context of dead links and with dead being the default setting of the citation template parameter URL Status this strongly suggest the archive feature is intended to only be used if the current URL is not stable and no longer points to the original source material. Dead links should be migrated to known live links containing current content used to verify the article. Adding an archive link to a citation implies that the live URL is out of date and that the archive URL is now the correct version to view. However, it also implies that any citation containing an archived URL ought to be repaired by finding a live version of the source material, or an alternative source, and remove the archived reference. Before I repair all the citations and remove the archive references, can someone explain the logic and thinking behind using both a working URL and an archive URL in each citation. What Wikipedia guideline says to do this? After all, Wikipedia is not a link farm. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 09:35, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

@Cameron Dewe: the whole point of |url-status=live is to prevent linkrot. 99% of what IABot does is add archive links to articles to prevent linkrot. If i archive my sources, and link them immediately, then if a source link becomes dead, then a reader doesn't need to sit around and wait for the link to be rescued. And I don't think making links to the Internet Archive could be considered linkfarming by any reasonable editor. If you have a problem with this rather common practice, this is not the place for it, perhaps you should go to the village pump --awkwafaba (📥) 17:25, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

@Awkwafaba: If adding links to the archived article is common practice, sorry, I have not encountered it before. I have reviewed several thousand articles in the last year and not encountered this citation practice. I have encountered articles where the only copy of the cited source was the internet archive and the current link to the live URL had be usurped or was unsuitable because different content was present. I have also encountered situations where the original URL was dead because the website had been restructured and the source material was still live but at at a different link. I have even dealt with situations where I had the option to read the text of the source or an image of the source from newspapers and magazines published before the internet was invented and even before linotype printing was invented. So I am familiar with the way archive linking works. I also know you can use a live setting of the URL status parameter. However, reading the various Wikipedia guidelines about using the archive option, its use in live URL situations is ambiguous. I cannot find a guideline or policy where adding the current archive to the source citation is considered best practice when the URL is live and stable and is the original source. Current common practice I have seen on Wikipedia is to not add the archive link until the cited URL does not point at the original source, indicating the citation needs repair. Personally, I find having both the original link and the archived link confusing, because I don't know which one is correct to follow. I know that the cited links get archived, and it is good to know an archived version already exists, but I don't think you need to prove the archive link also exists by citing the archive link in the article, too. If you think I am misguided or wrong, please demonstrate this by providing the existing guideline, recommendation, discussion or even a list or sample of articles where the consensus is that this "common practice" is a good idea. I think asking a question at the village pump should only be necessary if there is no consensus setting a precedent about using the archive link in this way. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 21:56, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Pitching Proplifting ethically

The more I read about Proplifting, the more I am convinced that ethical proplifting is not a criminal activity and that many of the practices that are portrayed as proplifting in this article, are not. In the form that is advocated by the Reddit group r/proplifting, there is a matter of morals and ethics that needs to be discussed as these set the boundaries between what is Proplifting and criminal activities like plant theft, shoplifting and property damage of retail stock. This misunderstanding seems to arise because others attribute unethical criminal behaviour as proplifting because they misunderstand the term as a form of shoplifting, which it is not, even though it derives from the word. As a way forward I think the article needs to be divided into sections and explain that the term derives from the Reddit group's name, what the original intent of the practice was for, along with the original definition and how it came about. How shop owners and retailers have reacted to the practice and misinterpreted the name, including misapplying it to the unethical practices of "plant theft" or "botanical larceny", also needs to be covered. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 03:35, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

I disagree that ethical proplifting and unethical proplifting are really all that different, and the stores proplifters visit would agree with that statement. Pinching leaves off of succulents and taking cuttings from plants in stores are both forms of proplifting. Whether ethical proplifters like it or not, some proplifters *do* damage the nursery plants and are stealing. Some proplifting is theft, and I think it is biased against the stores and nurseries to insist that only ethical proplifting is real proplifting and anything else is just theft or property damage. Shop owners, especially smaller nursery owners, understand proplifting as a practice. Small nursery owners collect the dropped leaves of succulents to propagate more themselves, which is why even picking up fallen leaves is often banned in small succulent nurseries. It cuts directly into their profits. Thecloudking 2:48, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

External link formatting

@Awkwafaba: I'm not sure why you're against the removal of a CS1 template in the external links section. CS1 templates are for citations, and the link to the subreddit is not a reference. The way I formatted it is the standard way. The original formatting didn't even specify which website the link led to. The external links guideline even says: Do not use {{cite web}} or other citation templates in the External links section. Opencooper (talk) 04:10, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

@Opencooper: CS1 templates are maintained automatically. You can still specify more information to the link after the template. --awkwafaba (📥) 11:45, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

@Awkwafaba: Which part of that maintenance is necessary for external links other than archiving? Linking to an archived version of a subreddit wouldn't even make sense. It's also semantically incorrect to call something a citation when it isn't one, and the CS1 templates wrap the text in <cite> HTML tags. Lastly, you completely ignored my quote, where you're doing what our guidelines say explicitly not to do. In fact, the documentation for the template itself says right at the top: Do not use this template in the "External links" section of articles. Opencooper (talk) 12:56, 11 April 2022 (UTC)