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Discussion report

Discussion Reports and Miscellaneous Articulations

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The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.

No fair! Users beware

At Wikipedia talk:Non-free content, User:Erik9 requested clarification of the policy on non-free content and its application in user space, especially with regards to non-free text such as excerpts from books. Erik9 felt such a move was necessary given the debate created by the deletion discussions regarding User:Jack Merridew/Blood and Roses. (See Signpost 2009-08-24) Erik9 proposed:

[since] Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria does not clearly and concisely describe the circumstances (if any) under which non-free text is permissible in userspace. A change that I would support, and that I believe is reflective of current practice in all cases except the matter recently at MFD, would expressly permit short, one or two sentence quotations of non-free prose in userspace, but would disallow longer excerpts (except when present in drafts of articles, consistent with existing standards for non-free text in mainspace.) Since poetry, song lyrics, or similar material present exceptional copyright concerns, and could be problematic if so much as a single line is quoted, it's probably best to avoid any copyrightable lengths of such non-free content in userspace altogether.

However, User:Ikip argued passionately against this change, saying "fair use has been interpreted to include anything around 300 words, but it is purposeful left vague. If there is no lawsuit about this, and to my knowledge there has never been a lawsuit. Therefore, future self-promoted copyright police, the vast majority with zero legal education, should not dictate to other editors what should or should not be on their user page. This will cause a hell of a lot of contention for vague slippery slope arguments."

User:ViperSnake151 offered a historical context on the forming of the current guidance to argue against the change:

WP:NFCC only applies to media files. I think I may have suggested saying "non-free media" within NFCC itself just to make it increasingly obvious that WP:NFCC only applies to files, and that text is judged under the "normal" fair use clauses, and not the stricter NFCC standards. To end this, I think the lead of NFCC should instead say "The fair use provisions of United States law allow the use of brief verbatim textual excerpts from copyrighted or non-free media, properly attributed or cited to its original source or author, within the English Wikipedia. Non-free media, which encompasses copyrighted images, audio and video clips, and any other media files that lack a free content license, must also comply with the 10 following criteria: [...] There is no automatic entitlement to use non-free content on Wikipedia, editors should consider whether the use of non-free context is appropriate for its planned context before adding it to Wikipedia." Our rules on fair use of text have never been as strict as with images, so we should stay along that idea, but still be careful.

User:Lar pitched in to support a change. Mindful to avoid "a repeat of the Userbox wars, in which a big hunt is carried out for every single one line quote in user space in order to remove it ... I'd like to see the NFCC clarified to be explicit that short (one or two line) quotes of prose are OK. ... I think we need this clarification, the MfD showed us that the way the NFCC is written now leaves ambiguity that caused issues. The only question remaining to me is exactly what the best wording change should be."

The recent death of Wikinews

At Template talk:Recent death, a suggestion was made by User:Brian McNeil to add "an additional, optional, parameter such as 'wikinews_obituary='. This would be to link to an appropriate obituary article over on Wikinews." The addition was made boldly by User:Cirt, before the bold, revert discuss cycle was initiated. After discussion and what many believed to be a consensus, Cirt again added the code, amended per discussion, only to be reverted again by the only dissenter, User:Flowerparty. At this stage User:Cenarium joined the discussion, offering the opinion that "We should definitely not link to an obituary in a lead template". However, User:Gosox5555 supported the proposal, noting that "I've been reading the arguments and it seems like a good idea." User:TheGrappler felt that policies and guidance did not bar the addition of the code, and summarised relevant guidance to show why.

Deprecating the future

A centralized discussion regarding the utility of {{future}} and related templates initially generated a consensus to deprecate these templates. However, despite best efforts the discussion did not reach all users of the templates. The attempted removal of these templates from articles caused further discussion, and the nature of that debate caused User:Drilnoth to request an RFC on the issue: "During this discussion, please be willing to try and find some middle ground. Perhaps changing the guidelines on the use of the templates, or changing what they actually say, rather than an all-or-nothing keep-or-delete."

User:Equazcion felt the templates should be deprecated, because they believed "the use of these templates stems from an understandable compulsion to tag articles based on categories." However, User:TheGrappler pointed out there were viable uses for these templates, with a lenghty post that was summarised to point out that "future events articles have different verifiability concerns to most others, and at least in certain topic areas appear to have an unusually high risk of becoming inaccurate despite appearing misleadingly up-to-date". User:Peregrine Fisher offered a potential solution to try to guarantee wide participation: "Why not just do a TfD?"

Polling

A round up of polls spotted by your writer in the last seven days or so, bearing in mind of course that voting is evil. You can suggest a poll for inclusion, preferably including details as to how the poll will be closed and implemented, either on the tip line or by directly editing the next issue.

  • Polling has been spotted at the village pump on the issue of whether to advertise for article editors. Although initiated as a discussion by User:Peregrine Fisher, who commented that "(w)e should do adds that emphasize that you can edit this article, with some sort of advertisement. [sic]" Most respondents have latterly opted to offer their opinion a style similar to that used for polling. Whether this is an actual poll or a discussion which bears a typographical resemblance to a poll is unclear at this stage.
  • Similarly, at the village pump discussion on adding a different color to internal links for links to stubs, polling has developed through discussion.
  • Further outbreaks of polling can be seen elsewhere at the village pump; Current weather asks whether we should add a technological feature which would allow articles on cities to display the current temperature in that city, and Main page feature suggestion suggests having one article per day displayed on the main page near the Featured Article as that given day's "Article that needs your help".

Deletion round-up

Your writer has trawled the deletion debates opened and closed in the last week and presents these debates for your edification. Either they generated larger than average response, centred on policy in an illuminating way, or otherwise just jumped out as of interest. Feel free to suggest interesting deletion debates for future editions here.

Articles

Categories

Files, templates, redirects and stubs

Deletion review and miscellaneous

Briefly

Requests for comment

Thirty-six Requests for comment have been made in the week of 6–13 September:

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==Good work again== I really like this new format. I like how you say "your writer", and "Whether this is an actual poll or a discussion which bears a typographical resemblance to a poll is unclear at this stage." really cracked me up. I'm still laughing as I type this. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:48, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The Signpost: doing it for free since 2005.
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