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Village pump (policy) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Wikipedia and the GFDL

I know this has been discussed before, but I think it's time to bring the issue up again. As many of you know, the GFDL in its current form is not a good fit for Wikipedia. In fact it's a downright terrible license for the goals we have as a project. The only reason it was chosen is because it was the best option at the time (Creative Commons licenses didn't exist at the time). When I brought up this issue a long time ago, I was told that Wikipedia and the GNU Project were in discussions about updating the license. It seems nothing came of those discussions as the GFDL is still the same as it was 4 years ago. Wikipedia is BY FAR the biggest user of the GFDL. Why is it impossible for us to get some minor changes made to the license (changing the DRM and printing restrictions for example)? And if it is that difficult to get changes made through the GNU Project, why can't we just update the license ourselves? To me, the current sitatution seems akin to Intel having to get permission from the descendents of Charles Babbage to make a change to the design of their microprocessors. Why are we still stuck in the licensing dark ages??? Kaldari 22:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

If you change away from GFDL, every article will have to be deleted and recreated, since those who wrote them did so with the understanding that they would be licensed under the GFDL. Any new articles or edits could be retained, but we'd violate copyright if we change the rules now. User:Zoe|(talk) 22:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Who said anything about changing away from the GFDL? I'm talking about updating the GFDL. Kaldari 22:31, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

It isn't Wikipedia's to update. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:31, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I know. My point is, we should either convince the GNU Project to update it or we should initiate a military coup to wrest control of the GNU Project from Richard Stallman. Who's with me? BTW, has anyone told you you have a knack for restating the obvious? :) Kaldari 22:51, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

That's an important skill. Sometimes people need to see the obvious restated. We can't get the licensing stipulations changed. It's a tangled web of regulations and red tape. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 22:57, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, Kaldari. I try. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:24, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, the GFDL does not provide for material licensed under an older version to be automatically relicensed under a new version. This would understandably make people using the license uneasy, since future versions could theoretically include unfavourable terms. In other words, we could very well update the GFDL, but this would make migrating content between articles a big mess, since the two versions of the license would likely be incompatible (in at least one direction). Moreover, the FSF owns full copyright on the GFDL itself, ironically enough, which makes it illegal for us to create a derivative license. Deco 05:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you should pay more attention to what you have agreed to:

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. (emphasis mine).

Dragons flight 05:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow. That's terrible. Oh well, suppose we'll have to trust the FSF not to do anything ridiculous or stupid. Deco 03:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Along the same lines, we should be licensing all new articles under a real license, like a creative commons BY-SA licence. Of course they could be dual licensed so that they are also GFDL as well, keeping compatibility with other articles. —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 14:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Why the snipe at GFDL? As far as I am concerned GFDL is a bit more a real license than CC, because when I say GFDL you know exactly what I am talking about, whereas when you say Creative Commons it could be anything from a wide spectrum between public domain and all rights reserved. In terms of free content licenses CC is a bit of a joke because most things licensed under CC are either NC or ND, which make them unfree and unsuitable for uses in such things as, say, Wikipedia. --Cyde Weys 02:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Come on guys, stay on target! We're not talking about CC here. The issue at hand is how can we get the GFDL updated (so that it's more compatible with Wikimedia goals)?. Deco answered 1 question: We can't just update it ourselves; be are completely beholden to the Free Software Foundation on this one. So my new questions are:

1. Why did previous negotiations with the FSF go nowhere? The GPL is being updated, why not the GFDL too?
2. Who communicates with the FSF on behalf of WikiMedia? Jimbo? Brad? Danny? Anyone that cares?
3. What can we do to restart the process?

Kaldari 23:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The first discussion draft of the GNU Free Documentation License version 2 was released on 2006 September 26, along with a draft of the new GNU Simpler Free Documentation License... here

Go and feed back, that's what you need to do to restart the process ;-) Shimgray | talk | 23:59, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Whoa! Guess I just had to wait an extra week :) Thanks for the link! Kaldari 23:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Verifiability and public opinions

I'm having a problem with an editor in the 2006 Thailand coup d'état and Public disapproval and protest of the 2006 Thailand coup d'état. And I'm seeking some advice and clarification about one issue in particular. This editor keeps adding the claim "The urban poor, as well as the rural farmers in the north and Isan still widely respect Thaksin". To support this, he links to this article [1] which basically makes that claim (well not quite but close enough for my purpose). He claims that this statement fulfills our requirements as it is verifiable. However it is my belief that he's wrong. It is impossible for the author to know for sure that the urban poor etc respect Thaksin therefore we can only mention that this source (and possibly other sources) made that claim (e.g. a number of sources have claimed that the...). And I believe this holds even though we don't know of any sources which specifically dispute this claim.

Firstly, is my understanding correct? Secondly, assuming it is, I would like some suggestions as to how to better explain this issue to the editor. Nil Einne 21:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Your understanding seems correct to me and here's the weakness to the other peson's arguement, as I understand policy. A single newspaper article uses a single individual to illustrate a point. The article present the newspaper editor's conclusion, Chalaem's lingering respect for Thaksin -- still widely shared among the urban poor and rural farmers across the country's north and northeast.. That is a valid cite and if there were 1000 such references then lingering respect for Thaksin would be the widely held (because it is widely published) point of view. But only one newspaper article by one editor says that. this link] says that editor doesn't normally write about Thailand. Therefore, because it is a single source, then that information should be presented as coming from a single source, as being a single source. Something like, A Washington Post's writer, Anthony Faiola, said that the urban poor and rural farmers have lingering respect for Thaksin in a Washington Post article.[link to article]. Terryeo 21:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Addition to existing Wikipedia Vandalism Policy

I propose that an addition be made to Wikipedia:Vandalism#Types of vandalism. Specifically to mention the practice of disemvowelling as an act of vandalism. The current policy states as such:

"Changing people's comments Editing signed comments by another user to substantially change their meaning (e.g. turning someone's vote around), except when removing a personal attack (which is somewhat controversial in and of itself). Signifying that a comment is unsigned is an exception. e.g. (unsigned comment from user)"

I propose that the practice of disemvowelling be added to this text, so it would read as such: "Changing people's comments Editing (or disemvowelling) signed comments by another user to substantially change their meaning (e.g. turning someone's vote around), except when removing a personal attack (which is somewhat controversial in and of itself). Signifying that a comment is unsigned is an exception. e.g. (unsigned comment from user)"

I wish to give an example from Calton's talk page:

"If you remove sources from articles it makes it difficult for other editors to check the matters referred to. Please don't do this in order to make a point about Arbitrarion Committee decisions having to be kept to even if you don't like them. David | Talk 15:07, 9 September 2006 (UTC)"

was changed to this:

"f y rmv srcs frm rtcls t mks t dffclt fr thr dtrs t chck th mttrs rfrrd t. Pls dn't d ths n rdr t mk pnt bt rbtrrn Cmmtt dcsns hvng t b kpt t vn f y dn't lk thm. - David | Talk 15:07, 9 September 2006 (UTC)"

Not only is this uncivil, but it is an overly aggressive way to handle any situation resulting from any edit conflict.

Thank you. TruthCrusader 15:45, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Gawd, that's terrible ! While "disemvoweling" (one "L" preferred) is quite descriptive and accurate, and the illustration you've provided clearly and completely disemvoweled, I would oppose. Such a disemvowelment is so obviously a vandalism that further specificity is unneeded. Terryeo 15:59, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to hijack this, but please can it have two Ls? He started with Oxford English spelling :) Fiddle Faddle 16:29, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem with it being "obvious" or "common sense" that such a thing is vandalism is that BOTH of those terms are subjective. I mean, its obvious and common sense NOT to not to do a LOT of things, but yet products still carry warning labels warning against such..why? Because of sujectivity. Its one simple addition to existing policy that only makes it stronger, I would think this would be easy to support. TruthCrusader 17:06, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Before my supporting or opposing, please can you justify the true need for this. My rationale is based on a packet of nuts with a label that says "Caution, product may contain nuts". I tend to dislike on sight "nanny rules" and need to see why this is not one. Fiddle Faddle 17:11, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Off topic:

On topic: Aren't we already discussing this above? -- nae'blis 17:15, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Dude, I do contain nuts! But seriously, it is blatant vandalism, it passes the duck test of vandalism, so why do we truly need it. Sell it to me and I'll support it (as if I were important!) Fiddle Faddle 17:22, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Fiddle Faddle about "nanny rules", but there's an even more important point. Labelling someone "a vandal" on Wikipedia, in effect, is Open Season on that individual: people stop assuming good faith, their edits are reverted & they banned far mosre often. If we don't apply that label, & the person misbehaves, then we are forced to talk to them about her/his behavior. The second approach is much harder than the first, but in situations like disemvowelling a post on a Talk page it may be more effective & may prevent an editor from becoming a renegade & a troublemaker. (I also agree with Nae'blis -- this matter is being discussed elsewhere on this page.) -- llywrch 19:35, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

You know, we really need a template for all the stupid vandalism of the freaking Cattle page! Of all the dumb pages to want to vandalism. With there being so much vandalism, I do think it merit's it own template. My ideal template would be PG-13 and probably not good to have but it would get the point across. like ((cowf****r)) Please do not (mess) with the Cattle Page. It is considered vandalism and the Cows do not like it - Tom

Back to the original topic...we need this added to policy, IMHO, because if it is NOT clearly spelt out then certain editors would continue to disemvowell because they will just argue "show me where it is written that I cannot disemvowell". WHich is an argument I see a LOT on Wikipedia when it comes to certain grey areas; "Show me where it is WRITTEN down". So why NOT write it down? TruthCrusader 08:13, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Is this a joke? Idiotic instruction creep. --Yath 08:26, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. If we had to start listing all the ways people can vandalize or alter comments on their talk pages, the list would never end. Can we just use common sense here? Deco 12:34, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Adverts/spam

There is discussion on WT:CSD regarding deletion of blatant advertising or spam that is either (1) of a non-notable product, or (2) in userspace of a user with little or no other contribs. >Radiant< 13:06, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Subpages

On first glance 1,3-Butadiene (data page) is a nearly empty article with no introductory text or other context. On closer examination, it's meant to serve as a "subpage" of 1,3-Butadiene, to present infobox information that may be too extensive to display in the article's main infobox. There are also several related infobox "subpages". I was just wondering if there's support for this in any of our style guides? Is this sort of thing a good idea? Might it be better to store subpages that contain no prose whatsever somewhere else (eg. in template space?) so that people don't get confused and mistakenly think that most of the normal style rules apply to them? --Interiot 20:10, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... why is it that meta:Wikidata doesn't exist? Melchoir 20:31, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

How many images does a stubby article need?

To be honest, I dislike such pages as city square, which look like they were imported from Commons. Neither do I approve addition of similar Commons images, sometimes arranged in piles and galleries, without adding anything to the text. The article about Saint Basil's Cathedral had six images of the church. Four of these were arranged into a gallery at the bottom of the page. Today, someone started to expand the gallery with more Commons images of inferior quality. I pointed out to WP:NOT which says: "If you are interested in presenting a picture, please provide an encyclopedic context, or consider adding it to Wikimedia Commons." I was instantly reverted with the edit summary "Restore images: best part of the article". By the way, the article links to the Commons page with images of this cathedral. I would like to know the opinion of others — how many images are appropriate for a short page about a church? Is six enough? Perhaps sixteen? Twenty six? Is there a guideline as to this? --Ghirla ^-трёп- 10:36, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

My own opinion is that if they're there, which they have to be to be snapping photos, then they can also get a history of the place from the gift shop or ask a curator about the place. Wikipedia is not a pop-up book or a cartoon: it's an encyclopedia, and I prefer twice as many lines of text as the image takes, myself. I think complex articles need illustration, simple articles benefit from illustration, and stubs are overloaded by illustration. (E.g. all the the genital and "paraphilia" articles can very easily become "Danni's Second Hard Drive.") Geogre 12:17, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

you can always just weed out excess images and place a {{commons}} link instead -- the gallery will be one click away for those who want to see it. dab (ᛏ) 12:27, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

On city square i think the massive wodge of a gallery should go, taking three of the best image into the article proper - the commons link will take the user to a large selection of additional images. Regardless is a square is not notable enough to have it own article then it probably should not be in that massive gallery (if it's kept).

On Saint Basil's Cathedral I do not feel the four additional images in the gallery at the bottom add anything to those already in the article itself. I'd also remove the explicit thumbnail sizing on the images (it's far too big). The article could probably handle three images (at the default thumbnail sizes), but those additional ones aren't great. Thanks/wangi 12:55, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I really dislike the City square one; there is no picture at the top, and you have to read or scroll through the entire thing to get to the gallery, and then the gallery never ends. Yet that's an article where trying to include just one image at the top of the article could well lead to an edit war (and a stupid one at that). Everyone and their hound dog is going to think that their favorite city or image should be the image at the top, and the image will change every week or so. This week it'll be Times Square in New York. Next week someone will come along and think that's Americentric and change it to someplace in Europe. Then someone will come along and change it to be someplace in Asia. Then someone will change it back to Times Square... ad noseum. It's situations like that where I think someone should make an image like Image:Flores.gif, which is used to illustrate the flower article. Then you've got a good, illustrative image which cycles through a variety so that Times Square (or whatever) does not become the definative image of a city square, and you get rid of the annoying gallery at the bottom. Unfortunately, I understand that images like that are difficult to create, require special software, are a strain on Wikipedia's servers, and can't be seen in all browsers. So maybe that's not such a great idea.

As for the Saint Basil's Cathedral one, I think the image gallery adds something to the article and doesn't seem excessive. Though it would be nice to have some images of the inside of the cathedral. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 13:46, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

As the author of the image that kicked off the entire discussion, I would argue that it is, indeed, very special, since it clearly illustrates the symmetry of the building. On all conventional images I've seen so far, the cathedral appears asymmetric and even chaotic, which it is not.

As to “inferior” image quality, I apologise for not being a professional photographer, but then again, I don't understand why imagery that is (objectively) much crappier than mine is still being featured in the article.

(As to the revert, Andrey, go check the article history — it wasn't me. I haven't been here for three days, actually. As the only admin over at the Russian Wiktionary, I've got a whole darn load of other things to do.)

Now, make no mistake, I would certainly not keep adding all images from Commons:Saint Basil's Cathedral here. However, I think a four-thumbnail gallery is much better than a simple textual link to Commons (which goes unnoticed anyway) and does add to the value of an article.

Cf. also the German version of the page I've been working on recently. I honestly don't think this is excessive by any means.

As to City square, I'm not familiar with the situation, but after having a quick glance at the most recent versions, I would say that the old versions were certainly waaay over the top, but the current one makes me yawn.

--Schwallex 21:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Azeri's logo

Somehow I feel the logo used in the userboxes and the project notices for that project should be changed, the main reason being that it's too similar to Wikimedia's logo and therefore can't be released into the public domain. Compare what happened to the Counter Vandalism Unit's logo some time ago. Peter O. (Talk) 00:32, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipe-tan as Featured Image

Wikipe-tan, suitable for Picture of the Day?

Wikipe-tan, a character created as a moé anthropomorphism of Wikipedia and used as an unofficial mascot, was promoted to featured image status (debate). The question is thus whether or not it is acceptable for such an image, which is by its nature a self-reference, to be featured on the main page (currently scheduled for October 2).

Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day#Wikipe-tan as POTD?. Dragons flight 01:35, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:OWN dispute

The page has been changed in the last couple days to include many new things (take a look at this dif). Some of the new things don't really fit in with "owning" an article though. Minor changes, such as formatting, image size and placement, choice of words, and other mundane edits are argued about on a daily basis by one editor seems to be kind of a false indication. If formatting is done wrong on an article, I fix it, to make the article look better. Image size and placement can't be considered owning the article, especially if the image is too big. Sometimes, there are better words to describe something. The articles are for the readers after all, not for the editors alone. Since WP:OWN is an important policy, I believe we should get at least some community consensus before any changes are made. -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk) 02:07, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

• If I'm honest, and with apologies to Royalguard11, I think he or she has misunderstood the dispute, and that the statement of it, above, isn't an accurate reflection. There is a real dispute though at WP:OWN, stemming from the edit war at Hippies. Like Royalguard11, though, I'd encourage community views. AndyJones 13:25, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

• • Not exactly an edit war (most of the editors who have been working on the article simply cannot work with the major irrational and undiscussed changes being made by User:Viriditas, and his refusal to discuss his actions, so at this point basically only Viriditas is editing the article) but yeah, that's where it started. User:Viriditas accused 3 of his fellow editors with 'own'ing an article (Hippie) in an RfC and in the same time frame, Viriditas made edits to WP:OWN with what seems to me to be the intent of tailoring the policy to suit his needs vis a vis the RfC. User:Pedant 08:35, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Pedant is certainly welcome to this POV, but the dispute, for the most part concerns a culture of original research and unwillingness to supply citations. There were ownership issues, and I raised them more than a month ago, and after taking a break, I've raised them again. My edits to the ownership policy did not change the core policy in any way, but merely gave examples. If there is a genuine concern with my edits to that policy, I would love to hear them. As for the issues that Pedant raises, I would like to know what my needs are and how I have changed the policy to suit them. Pedant seems to have great psychic powers, so I defer to his expertise in these matters. All I ask is that he share his lottery numbers with me. —Viriditas | Talk 04:45, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

• Responding to Royalguard11, Melchoir was kind enough to fix things up. I'm going to also add, "this does not include fixing egregious formatting errrors." Does that help? Further feedback is appreciated. I'm sorry I didn't see your reply until now. —Viriditas | Talk 05:39, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Foreign language sources and translated quotes

Hi. An editor at Talk:Vlaams Belang (a Dutch language Belgian political party) came up with the interesting remark that a number of quotes, used in the article, are in fact translated from Dutch into English by a Wikipedia editor, which according to him might constitute WP:OR.

Another remark, noted several times before, is that this article (and a number of other articles on Dutch language subjects) used quite a lot of foreign (Dutch and French) language sources (that are not being translated, of course).

I don't seem to find a policy about this. Is there ?
What is the general feeling ? Does using self-translated quotes constitute original research ?

Thanks. --LucVerhelst 20:32, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I elect not to answer the OR question, but I propose this at least: If we present someone's words in another language as a quotation in English, we must also quote the original language. Whether this involves italics, parentheses, footnotes, etc. is up in the air, but the untranslated quotation should be preserved somewhere. Melchoir 20:51, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. That seems to be the policy, too. It seems I'm up to some work, then. --LucVerhelst 20:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)

Hm. I was too fast again. I found this at WP:CITE:

“ Because this is the English Wikipedia, English-language sources should be given whenever possible, and should always be used in preference to other language sources of equal calibre. However, do give references in other languages where appropriate. If quoting from a different language source, an English translation should be given with the original-language quote beside it. ”

But the issue still remains. Wikipedia's quality is what it is, because of the mutual verification by all the participating editors. When using sources in other languages, this verification process is narrowed down to those editors knowing the language in question. May be there should be a task force or a project or something where the help (in this verification process) from bi- or multi-lingual editors could be found. (This is something entirely different than WP:TIE.) --LucVerhelst 20:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

(Another edit conflict) I think untranslated foreign language sources should be usable. It's not optimal, but otherwise we'll have even more problems with systemic bias. If translations are OR should probably be decided on a case by case basis. If a native speaker translates a simple modern text, that is not OR in my view. For me, translating such texts from German is not different from paraphrasing an English text. Someone translating a text from ancient Aramaic is something else... --Stephan Schulz 20:58, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. Now, if we would have a list of Aramaic speakers, that might be helpful. --LucVerhelst 21:08, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

But translating a political statement isn't like translating a scientific statement. A quote where someone says they deliberately lost a case for propaganda reasons, for instance, could very well have nuances of wording which make it not mean exactly what it seems to mean. A scientific or historical quote won't.

It's true that summarizing an already English quote raises similar issues yet is accepted. But my guess is that if the quote was originally English, we would have recognized the issues and not summarized it either. When a quote is used to condemn someone by their own words, we quote, we don't summarize.

(I don't know Dutch. If the original is so clear that the translator doesn't need to interpret it, ignore this...) Ken Arromdee 21:24, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The thoughtful procedure is always to translate the quote in the body of the text, giving the original in a <ref></ref> note. That way the reader deficient in that language is not slowed or daunted. The idea that translations might be either "original" or "research" is a bit dense. --Wetman 00:09, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Quite. You shouldn't call it original research. But it is true, as Ken Arromdee says, that sometimes nuances of wording don't get translated, or that the wrong nuances are translated.

I still believe this problem warrants a more structural solution. --LucVerhelst 07:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Male Domination?

See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Male_Domination.3F.

Please make this a link. I can't find it.

It doesn't exist any more, probably. --tjstrf 09:19, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

It's archived at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive#Male_Domination.3F. (Don't edit the archive page, start a new section at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals) if you want to discuss it. But you knew that, of course.) --LucVerhelst 09:51, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Simple restatement of our goals

I think it's getting to the point where perhaps we all need to touch base and work out where the common ground on this project is. Our policy and guideline pages are growing out of control and becoming areas of focus as much as the actual encyclopedia is, and I think maybe it's time to rewrite them and try to keep it simple. It looks like we have gone too far down the road of trying to detail every possible instance of what might be an unreliable source, or what might be original research, and maybe it's time to just let the pages breathe and trust our own common sense. Steve block Talk 12:12, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, this is an encyclopedia and I have seen lots of examples of WP:OR. I asked for comunity feedback on one recently. There is a large issue especially in relation to WP:OR that many editors do not understand. We as people learn new things and want to express those, some people want to express them here. They do not take the time to just report what others say, they attempt to draw links. I am involved in an AfD that involves a user connecting two arab men because one of their names are similar and the user wants to connect them because arab names are hard to illiterate. This user has no outside source stating that they are linked, just proof that arab names are hard to illiterate and proof that both are wanted criminals. WP:OR would normally prevent this, but WP:OR perhaps doesn;t go far enough to explain what people can and cannot add. I would almost hope to see every sentence reference unless it shares a previous reference in that same paragraph.

I think the rules here need to be clarified further, not less, there leaves to much middle ground and gives those enforcing the rules too much leeway in determining when and where they enforce their understanding of the rules. Could you imagine if you lived in a country where the law simply said, donig bad things is illegal ... it would be chaos of police abuse and disorderly citizens. --NuclearUmpf 12:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I fail to grasp your point. Yes, this is Wikipedia, it's an encyclopedia, and original research is not accepted. Nowhere have I suggested anything else. Your current problem is not with the Original research policy page, it is with a user who, based upon your summary, cannot grasp what original research is. Whether you explain that to the user at their talk page or the article talk page makes no bones to the policy itself. And if people are seriously asking that every sentence be sourced then I think we've lost the point here a little. The whole point is that every sentence can be challenged, not that it is referenced within the article. We build by challenging. You are showing that now by challenging the information. If it is as you state, then the original research is removed. Fail to see the problem. Steve block Talk 13:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

People's interpretation of the rules is causing problem is the point, making things less detailed leaves more room for interpretation. Simple is not better. --NuclearUmpf 23:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't matter how you write the rules, we have WP:IAR. Interpretation is always going to be an issue. Keeping it simple allows us to focus on what we want from an article, not what we want from a debate. Steve block Talk 14:00, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

The GFDL version 2!

The first draft of the new version of the GFDL (which all Wikipedia text content is licensed under) was released yesterday. If you are interested in Wikipedia licensing issues, please visit this page and join the discussion. This is very exciting news for Wikipedia! Kaldari 23:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Here is an interesting except from the GFDL2 draft:

“ 8b. WIKI RELICENSING

If the Work was previously published, with no Cover Texts, no Invariant Sections, and no Acknowledgements or Dedications or Endorsements section, in a system for massive public collaboration under version 1.2 of this License, and if all the material in the Work was either initially developed in that collaboration system or had been imported into it before 1 June 2006, then you may relicense the Work under the GNU Wiki License.

”

Kaldari 23:15, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The evident purpose of this clause is to push wikis into using the new GNU Wiki License by effectively relicensing all existing GFDLed wiki content under that license. It's probably aimed at Wikipedia in particular. The language is not terribly precise though and could conceivably accidentally include open source projects. Deco 23:25, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It's also important that Wikipedians take a look at section 6a:

“ 6a. EXCERPTS

You may publish a work, a Modified Version, or a collection, of up to 20,000 characters of text (excluding formatting mark-up) in electronic form, or up to 12 normal printed pages, or up to a minute of audio or video, as an Excerpt. An Excerpt follows the applicable rules of this license, except that the following required materials--the copy of this license, title page materials, historical copyright notices, warranty disclaimers, and any required sections--may be replaced by one or more publicly accessible URLs referring to the same materials.

”

This section was ostensibly added to placate Wikipedia so that individual articles could be excerpted from Wikipedia without having to include pages of licensing material. The problem is that "20,000 characters" is tiny. An average Featured Article weighs in at about 50,000 characters, and longer articles often exceed 100,000 characters (e.g. Vietnam War: 142,958 chars; Paleoconservatism: 190,236 chars). Also 20,000 characters in the Chinese Wikipedia counts for a lot more information than 20,000 characters in the English Wikipedia. We should lobby to have this limit changed from "20,000 characters" to "20,000 words". Kaldari 00:27, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Where is the GNU Wiki License? I couldn't find it on GNU.org or the FSF site. Peter O. (Talk) 01:30, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

It isn't available yet. It's expected soon though, so watch the gplv3.fsf.org site for details. Angela. 12:11, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

"Danny" from the "Office"

Does anyone know where Danny Wood went to law school? What bar memberships he possesses? --GreenCommander81 03:09, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd be willing to be that user:Danny would know such details. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah whatever, brah... GreenCommander81 03:30, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you have some point you're trying to make? It might really help to speak more plainly. Specifically, why do you care? He is one of 6 employees of the Wikimedia Foundation (see Wikimedia staff), and is not the Foundation's legal counsel. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Danny does not have a legal degree but he often acts upon the advice of the Foundation's counsel. JoshuaZ 03:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

• so are you saying that he's an attorney that didn't go to law school? I'm confused... /GreenCommander81 03:59, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

No, Danny is not an attorney. Are you confusing him with Brad Patrick? Angela. 12:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, Danny is not a lawyer. To the best of my knowledge, he also doesn't claim to be one. Is there some kind of point you're trying to get at here? Shimgray | talk | 12:53, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Danny is most certainly not a lawyer. I think Angela is right - GreenCommander81 is probably confusing him with Brad, who is a lawyer and is Wikimedia's interim executive director. Raul654 12:57, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Trolling?

Well the point i'm trying to make is why does everyone think, not only on Wikipedia but also on Slashdot and other forums, that people trolling are bored young while males? Haven't you noticed that the average troll is quite articulate and intelligent? I posit to you, kind sir, that many of those you deride as "trolls" are indeed college graduates, and even some professionals. I know of a troll that operated on this very medium last year to be a retired County Court judge in Florida. Just a thought my man... let's tee it up! --GreenCommander81 03:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)!

your point being? If they are not teenagers, all the more shame on them. dab (ᛏ) 11:40, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Asking provacative and pointless questions [2] [3] [4] [5] in as public of a venue as you can get [6], and then walking away can certainly count as trolling. --Interiot 14:03, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Categories of cruft

We appear to have a few categories that are collections of articles that have no claim to notability (e.g. a brand of detergent). I won't claim that *everything* in these categories needs to go away, but I don't think 90% would be too bold. For starters, take a look at Category:Brand_name_products_stubs. I'm not sure if the best means to this end would be to simply go ahead and exercise judgement in deleting things, individually listing the hundreds of articles on AfD (gah, hopefully not), or something else. Thoughts? --Improv 05:04, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Might I suggest WP:PROD? It doesn't take much effort to cut and paste the same prod reason across a few dozen articles. If things go away, then okay. If things get disputed, then one can figure out what to do next. Dragons flight 05:42, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Considering that several people might want to keep these things in some form, a less drastic approach might be to merge the products (short articles anyway) with the company which makes them. After all, if somebody is interested in a company, it is not far-fetched that they'll seek info on their products, but very short stubs on them looks unprofessional. If the article is too long a "list of products by..." might be useful for those who are interested. For the record, I love cruft just as much as Tom Lehrer claimed to love smut in his song. Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:15, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

• It's possible that several people might want to keep these things in some form, but they're not at all encyclopedic. I would point such people at WP:NOT. Unfortunately, this is a constant problem on Wikipedia -- we have a *lot* of people who will defend articles they create to the death who don't really understand the goal of Wikipedia. This is why I'm reluctant to prod -- no doubt the creators of an article on their favourite deodorant brand will remove it and I'll get to send pretty much the whole lot to AfD. OTOH, it can't hurt to try. It'd be nice if CSD A7 extended beyond people/groups. --Improv 13:16, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what you mean by "not at all encyclopedic", because there is no clear and objectively "correct" place to draw the line for notability of products. I personally believe that every single car model produced by a car company is notable. I will accept that several soda brands are notable. I would probably say that articles on a single brand of toothbrush is going a bit far. Other people may have different standards. Lots of people will defend articles which they think are encyclopedic which other people might feel are unencyclopedic. A7 was introduced in order to get rid of the uncontroversial vanities, articles on schoolchildren, or autobiographies. WP:CSD should not in general be expanded to start deleting things which could be reasonably expected to be contested on an AFD. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:04, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Widely distributed products deserve articles, as do those that are significant within a single country. Remember that we must work to counter systematic bias, and you may not be aware of foriegn products. That said, a stub cull is probably needed, removing those stubs without enough details to allow it to be properly expanded (such as Duotang) and keeping those giving enough information to allow a full article to be built (EverGirl, for example). I am personally in favour of lists in the place of stubs, and so merging should be considered. Mass listings on AfD are generally discouraged, and result in horrible messes that often end up overturned. Prodding those stubs without enough contextual information would be wise, even better would be a CSD catagory for "stub without enough information to allow an article to be built". For now I would advise that you prod those stubs without enough information to build an article from. LinaMishima 15:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

To back up what is said above about systemic bias and the dangers of indiscrimate prodding, people should have a look at teh AfD discussion for Boroline. Hornplease 10:32, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow. Article was written over a year ago, & barely managed to grow to a little more than two sentences before it was AfD'd. And now it's back down to one sentence. You'd think that by now someone would have added a few things like who manufactures & sells it, what its known ingredients are, & if there are any notable advertising campaigns around it.

I'm not against stubs; I'm in the process of writing a couple hundred of them myself. However stubs like these, which begin life as a single sentence & never grow, cause me to favor a proposal someone suggested not that long ago to PROD or merge stubs that remain stubs after 6 months. If no one shows an active interest in the topic, maybe the article should be deleted. -- llywrch 22:31, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Notability

I've found myself thinking that we need to have a discussion, is notability something wikipedia needs? Please note that we are not asking how to determine notability or whether or not certian criteria regarding notability is correct, just if the concept is needed on wikipedia. Does notability stand on its own two feet? Notability has been a proposed policy for a while, yet we have never really discussed it.  ALKIVAR™ 05:36, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it is something that we need, in what form and how it is done, we can work out later. I like the idea of talking about the general merit of notability. I hope that is the direction this debate goes in. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 05:41, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Wikipedia is not infinite shows there are theoretical bounds to how much we can hope to tackle (eg. that WP:V and WP:NPOV alone allow for an infinite set of possible articles). User:Worldtraveller shows that there are practical limits to how many articles our community can hope to maintain at a given level of quality. --Interiot 06:09, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

In terms of the actual guideline, I think a discussion of proposed changes would be great. However, the general idea of notability is important and an integral part of Wikipedia. Without notability guidelines, Wikipedia would turn into MySpace. hoopydink^{Conas tá tú?} 06:21, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I see notability as having a few main functions:

• It ensures that an article or portion of an article has a significant enough public benefit to justify its overhead in maintainence and space/organization. For example, one could reasonably expect many people to benefit from information on eagles, but very few people could make use of information about your pet goldfish, unless they happen to live in or visit your house.
• It helps to ensure that more editors will be interested in the article, so that it remains up-to-date and high quality, since notable subjects attract the attention of more people.
• It helps ensure that policies such as verifiability and no original research are met (which unlike notability are policy) by selecting subjects that tend to be better documented and well-established.

Some have suggested starting a separate project for non-notable subjects, if only to have a place to move these things. I would suggest that, due to the factors above, such a project would have to have a stricter editing system, to prevent degradation of information on topics about which few people are interested. Deco 19:57, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Template:Test2a and "removing content"

I'm concerned about the misunderstandings and potentials for abuse arising from this template and its series Template:Test3a etc. The text of these warning templates implies that "removing content" is automatically "considered vandalism". This is in contradiction to Wikipedia:Vandalism#What vandalism is not, and it has given rise to a widespread myth about a non-existant "don't-remove-content" policy. Please comment on Template talk:Test2a. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:06, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Just minorly reword it to be safe. Blanking content is vandalism, any section of a page where an unexplained blanking would not be vandalism would be a section that was not encyclopedic content to begin with. Personal attacks in articles, incomprehensible nonsense, and other forms of vandalism are probably the only things that should ever be blanked without giving a reason. Even the removal of unsourced negative info on a BLP would at least merit an explanation on the talk page or a detailed edit summary. --tjstrf 08:09, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Derivative works and license compatibility

So I'm planning to start up a small, focused public wiki (non-commercial) that I anticipate will have at least a little bit of overlap with Wikipedia.

As a part of the process of bootstrapping and seeding it with starter articles, I was thinking of grabbing some relevant content from Wikipedia and adapting it for my needs. I assume, for starters, that doing so is in keeping with the GFDL, provided it's republished under GFDL.

Likewise, my hope would be that we would eventually develop content that might be appropriate for a general interest encyclopedia, which we could then port to Wikipedia (pruning it down to general interest length). Again, I assume this is not an issue if ours is published under the GFDL.

But let's say I don't wish to encumber future iterations (print edition?) with the unweildy GFDL manifesto and opt for something like a CC share-alike license...

I take it that the first half of the above (copping Wikipedia content) would be right out—that GFDL content simply can't be republished under CC-by-sa. (Or is there some viable work-around?)

But what about republishing CC-by-sa content to Wikipedia? CC share alike says "you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one." Does Wikipedia's GFDL qualify as "identical" in this respect?

75.21.89.221 18:55, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

No. Any pair of copyleft licenses are fundamentally incompatible. What you would actually want to do is release your new work under both licenses. The articles derived from Wikipedia articles must remain under GFDL and only GFDL, even if significantly modified, unless it so happens that all authors to that article multilicensed their work (which is extremely unlikely). Deco 20:01, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

There needs to be a careful considered of what *derived* means. In this case *wholely derivative* being perhaps redundant is significant. If you get 10% of your information from wikipedia, and cite it, and 90% from your own seperate research, then your new work certainly does not need to be licensed under GFDL. Derivative in this case, would mean, "consisting of material entirely retrieved from another work". Wjhonson 20:15, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

For articles with no anon contributers and only a few registered authors, you can request that the author release their contributions under another license. If you can get this for all the authors, you can re-publish that article under another license. --Carnildo 21:06, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Deco writes: "Any pair of copyleft licenses are fundamentally incompatible."

Are there no copyleft licenses that are flexible enough to allow relicensing under other, similar copyleft licenses? Or would that just be fundamentally too flexible?

Wjhonson writes: "In this case *wholely derivative* being perhaps redundant is significant... Derivative in this case, would mean, 'consisting of material entirely retrieved from another work'."

I'd actually think that "wholly derivative" would be the opposite of redundant—perhaps oxymoronic. At any rate, are there any law-minded individuals out there, with the actual patience to read the GFDL, who can back up what Wjhonson says above?

Carnildo: "For articles with no anon contributers and only a few registered authors, you can request that the author release their contributions under another license."

This seems impractical for a wiki, though I suppose to address my second concern it could be dual-licensed from the start. (Or triple-, quadruple- or poly-licensed?)

75.22.206.71 21:25, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I would add ("I" being both 75.21.89.221 and 75.22.206.71 from above) that the share-alike portion of this CC-by-sa draft reads, "you may distribute the resulting work only under this license" where the final version says, "... a license identical to this one." This change at least suggests to me that CC might not view their license as necessarily "fundamentally incompatible" with other potential copyleft licenses.

So I'll ask again: can CC-by-sa content be republished under GFDL? Both are considered share-alike licenses in some respect. Where does "identity" between licenses begin and end?

Where my law dogs at?

64.109.248.198 00:09, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Generally copyleft licenses are incompatible because of the copyleft aspect itself - GFDL but not CC-by-sa requires distributed derivative works to placed under GFDL, while CC-by-sa but not GFDL requires distributed derivative works to be placed under CC-by-sa. This might be immaterial if the other terms of the licenses were identical, but they're very different, and may become even more different in future versions. Deco 02:10, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia should use exonyms only as a last resort

I'm not 100% sure I'm posting in the correct spot but I would like to suugest a new wikipedia policy. Namely that, "Exonyms should only be used as a last resort." I came to this conclusion by recently stumbling onto the debate at the Meissen page, which concerns the correct spelling of the town (ss vs ß). It seems to me, regardless of the original title of the created article, if the article deals with a proper name then the native spelling should be used whenever possible, espcially if it won't cause undo confusion among English speakers. Naufana:^Talk 03:13, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems you posted in the correct spot! It's an important question that applies to all Wikipedia articles about places. --Haldrik 08:53, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, this is the English Wikipedia. It is our policy to use the most commonly known name in the English language. Would you have our Germany article at Deutschland? User:Zoe|(talk) 03:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

What Zoe says! What good could come out of using Meißen or Deutschland or Wien? Just good ol' confusion for the users. Most of the geography pages state the local name in the first line or two of the text anyways and the native name is often made a redirect. This is really a non-issue. Pascal.Tesson 03:21, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I see country names can be English, but city names should be as close as possible to the local language of the city. English might have "English" versions of some cities, but doesnt have English versions of all cities, and so usually has to use the local names. Having to switch back and forth between sometimes using an English cognate and sometimes not creates even more confusion. Consistency is more important. For example, all names for German cities, towns, villages, hamlets, lakes, rivers, brooks, streams, meadows, regions, mountains, hills, etc., should be according to their German names. Thus the article can have the German city name, Wien. Notable English cognates such as Vienna can redirect to Wien. The only exception is, the English alphabet must be used for English articles. For German, this isnt a problem, thus Meissen (not Meißen). The proper spelling in the local alphabet can be mentioned in the article. --Haldrik 03:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Given the arguments on the talk page, the chances of using ß in the name is slim to none. When I go looking for a city, I know I won't look with a ß. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 04:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually I respectfully disagree. The issue is similar to having Sean Carter as a redirect to Jay-Z and not the other way around. Pascal.Tesson 04:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, "Jay-Z" is the name Jay-Z himself chooses, and that should be the standard. "Wien" is the name that the inhabitants of Wien themselves choose, and that should be the standard. German is pretty straightforward, but other languages are extremely problematic when switching back and forth: for example between the closest approximation to the real name Beijing versus the silly "English" name Peking. The local language itself should set the standard for the sake of consistency. --Haldrik 04:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

But we don't actually care what name he prefers to use. If tomorrow he chooses that he'd prefer being called MC Haldrik, we would still use Jay-Z as the main article because that is the name that most english users would recognize. This is the long standing principle of WP:NC. And you have your facts mixed up about Beijing. It was indeed formerly known in english as Peking but the standard has, for about ten years now, been switched to Beijing. Actually the article discusses this in length. Pascal.Tesson 05:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"But we don't actually care what name he prefers to use." But the fact is, the article is under the self-designated name. "It was indeed formerly known in english as Peking but the standard has been switched to Beijing." Chinese isnt the only language whose naming convention standard is switching to the local language. --Haldrik 05:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

For the sake of a universal standard for all Wikipedia articles, using the local name is the only possibility for consistency. --Haldrik 05:39, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

But wikipedia is not universal. It's English only. I agree that a multi language gazetteer based on semantic markup to provide statistics for all places should prefer the local name but that will be a different project.81.187.181.168 09:28, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Were that the case, Vienna would be at Wien, and no one would be able to find anything. For consistency, we should be using the name people will be most familiar with, as is policy. I sure as hell don't have a ß on my keyboard, so why would I possibly look for it under that title? Your argument about Peking is moot, because it's been standardized as Beijing for some time now. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 06:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The nonstandard Vienna can redirect to the standard Wien. --Haldrik 06:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Vienna is the English standard. That's what you don't seem to get. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 06:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

So you're saying that Beijing should be at 北京? Or are you suggesting that we should select a romanization to generate our own set of exonyms? --Carnildo 06:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Most countries have their own Romanization policy. Their policy is the one that should be standard for placenames in their country. --Haldrik 09:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

See Romanization of Japanese. There are three standards for romanization in Japanese. The most commonly used (Hepburn) is not mandated by all government agencies, and is not a government standard. ColourBurst 21:24, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

And - how do I put a ß into a word when I'm searching for it? And what about Αθήνα? I think it's Athens & Meissen! Saltmarsh 05:57, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

That's what redirects are for. Any name containing characters that are not easy to type should be accompanied by redirects. Unlike Athens, which is clearly an English form, "Meissen" is probably just a transliteration. A redirect and {{foreignchar}} explain the situation well enough. There are many places in Germany or Poland that do not have a name in English. They only have German or Polsh names that contain funny characters. I don't see a point in spelling these names wrong just because they are hard to type. Oh, and Wikipedia's naming conventions are not consistent, because they mirror real-world usage. Consistency will be impossible to achieve, and not a good thing. Kusma (討論) 06:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

By holding down the Alt key and typing 225 on the numpad (doesn't work with the numbers along the top), though granted it's cumbersome and few people have the ASCII and Unicode tables memorised. --Sherool (talk) 06:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"There are many places in Germany or Poland that do not have a name in English." Exactly. And not just Germany or Poland. Everywhere on this planet Earth is almost nothing but places that dont have a name in English. Insisting on a traditional English equivalent is just an irrational fixation on a few places compared to every other place on Earth. --Haldrik 06:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"How do I put a ß into a word when I'm searching for it?" One doesnt. The standard equivalent is used: a ss. The official equivalent for Αθήνα, according to the Greek government, is Athina. --Haldrik 06:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Obviously some names take a bit of getting used to, but redirects easily solve the unfamiliarity. The world is getting smaller, and in the long run, using the local standard as the standard is the better policy. --Haldrik 06:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

To the contrary. The world is getting smaller, and in the long run, having everyone standardize to one language is the ideal policy. --tjstrf 06:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

But now you are trying to impose your righteous point of view on users. Wikipedia is not a place to try and force every english speaker to use Wien instead of Vienna. Whether you like it or not, Vienna has been the standard name used in english for centuries. In French that would be Vienne, in Spanish Viena and so on. And again, you seem to be missing that point, the native name is always given in the first line of the article. What point would there be to categories if they were filled with 北京. Pascal.Tesson 06:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"Righteous point of view"? First I'm not sure conformity is always a good thing. So there's nothing "righteous". Wikipedia requires a standard naming convention, and the nature of Wikipedia is universal and global. There is no policy that is practicable except using the local names as the standard placename. Just look at news journalists on tv. When they cover global stories live, it becomes increasingly difficult to not use the local placename when they are actually standing right there in it. --Haldrik 06:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Find an English reporter saying "I'm live here in Wien" and you might have something. A minor phonetic difference (your removed "Iran" reference) is hardly convincing. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 06:42, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

And find a user browsing through Category:Capitals in Europe who would find it more convenient and practical to have Praha, Wien, Warszawa and Beograd. Pascal.Tesson 06:49, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Warsaw can easily redirect to Warszawa whereupon the user becomes informed about its actual and standard name. --Haldrik 06:56, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Anyone who cares enough to look up the name of a particular city can be expected to become familiar with its local name. --Haldrik 06:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

A better example is the Italian city Torino. The actual local name in Italian is Torino. The English cognate is Turin as in the "Shroud of Turin" or in the "Turin Canon" ("Turin Papyrus of Kings"). The article for this city is still "Turin". However even as we speak the official English name for this city has switched over to the local name Torino since its official use for the Olympics. (Not Turin). For example: NBC Olympic coverage. This switch to the local name as the standard is inevitable. --Haldrik 06:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Then there's no problem. In time, it will change. Until then, we use the most common/least surprising one. --Golbez 07:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

But there is a problem: which English standard is used? The history book Turin or the newspaper Torino? By always using the local name Torino as the standard, there is never a problem. --Haldrik 07:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is. not everyone knows it as Torino, and will not associate that with Turin. Those that will, however, recognize that Turin is the alternate form. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 08:05, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

In fact, Torino is the Italian name for the city, but in the local dialect, it's Turin. Care to let us know which version you would prefer? But in fact, there is no point in arguing this, this policy is not going to change. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:46, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The national dialect (Italian) versus the regional dialect (Piedmontese): quite a relevant observation! Which would you use? (It appears the traditional English name derives from the regional dialect whereas the journalistic English name uses the standard national dialect, no doubt to emphasize national pride in hosting the Olympics.) Since most places dont have English names, Wikipedia needs a policy to refer to non-English places regardless. For the sake of the most consistency, I feel Wikipedia should use the country's national standard dialect for the placenames in that country, and mention the regional dialect as an "also known as". For example, the article on Torino may mention nearby towns, lakes, mountains, and so on that have no English name. From your point of view, how do you propose to name them? Should the Torino article use the national standard dialect or the regional dialect? --Haldrik 00:55, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

"However even as we speak the official English name for this city has switched over to the local name Torino since its official use for the Olympics". "Official English name" where? Nobody in Britain would call it Torino. It's still Turin. The Winter Olympics may have been known as Torino 2006, but that doesn't mean the normal name for the city has changed. -- Necrothesp 01:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Categories don't contain redirects. Also, Torino is indeed an exception where Torino is starting to become standard. But if you want to go the Olympics route, it was the Athens Olympic games, not the Athina olympic games on NBC. Pascal.Tesson 07:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

If the local name is always the standard, then there is never a surprise. If the standard is sometimes an archaic English cognate or sometimes a contemporary journalistic local name, then there will always be surprises. --Haldrik 07:07, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

It will remain a surprise because regular visitor Joe Smith isn't going to be looking for Wien or Warszawaor or Meißen or any of those city names that aren't commonly used in English. It's the principle of least astonishment. If I get redirected to Wein, I'm going to be astonished. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 07:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

When Joe Smith searches for "Vienna" he be redirected to "Wien". If Joe Smith needs to know information about the city Wien, he must know - of all things - that its name is Wien! --Haldrik 07:21, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

It's name in English is Vienna, not Wien. It's is called Wien in German, which the article notes in the first sentence. We favor Engish terms, not foreign ones. Until Wien becomes an English standard, Vienna is and always will be the name that city goes by. What you suggest seeks to confuse everyone by using names no English speaker would immediately (if ever) recognize. not happening. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 07:25, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

So, if we're going to use local names, is it "Iran", or "Persia"? The locals can't seem to decide. And what about that valley in Asia? Calling it either "कश्मीर" or "کشمیر" is endorsing a specific point of view. --Carnildo 07:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"Iran" or "Persia"? The official name of the nation state according to that nation state must be used. Preferably nation states should be the local one, thus Italia not Italy. But, nation states are limited in number, and using archaic English cognates can apply to all of them consistently, so its not so problematic to use traditional English. However using archaic English for cities and towns doesnt work as a policy because English cant be applied to all of them. --Haldrik 07:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Another problem is English tends to accumulate several archaic cognates (via different languages, different archaic transliterations systems etc.) for a placename. For example, Antolia vs Asia Minor vs Turkey, Acre vs Akko, etc. By always using the current local name, there is never ambiguity about which English name to use. --Haldrik 07:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

What about the valley? Whose POV do we endorse? --Carnildo 07:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"Whose POV do we endorse"? POV is a serious problem. Using the defacto local name helps reduce this problem. (It is Iran, not Persia, whether we like it or not, and until it's changed.) Even when the local name is still in question, it's irrelevant to the policy of using the local name. Is it "Israel" or is it "Palestine"? It's frustrating to write articles on this because the usages of these placenames are complex and still fluid. Nevertheless, whichever is prefered, the policy would have "Yisrael" and "Falastina" (assuming the local names would be used for nation states too). Haldrik 07:46, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople. Istanbul, not Constantinople. Why did Constantinople get the works? Aint nobody's business but the Turks!!! (They Might Be Giants) --Haldrik 08:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" was actually performed by The Four Lads in 1953; the They Might Be Giants version was a cover. *Dan T.* 13:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

"It's name in English is Vienna, not Wien." Well for example, say your standing in the German city Wien/Vienna, and (hypothetically) you are standing on the corner of "Wien Street" and "Meunchen Road". Do you actually call these roads by their names "Wien Street" and "Meunchen Road", or do you switch over to the archaic English cognate and call them "Vienna Street" and "Munich Road"? These kinds of complications are extremely confusing, when you actually have to refer to these names in real life. Simply using the local name as the standard solves all of these kinds of problems. --Haldrik 08:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Street names are irrelevant. We are not talking about the streets, we're talking about the city from an outside perspective. This is an encyclopedia, not a travel guide. English speakers do not call it Wien, and calling it such here creates far more problems that it solves, contrary to your opinion. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs)

But in the 21st-century there isnt any "outside perspective" because the journalist is standing right there! --Haldrik 08:22, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

And the journalist isn't going to call the city Wien because no one would know what he's talking about. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 08:25, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Go to the English Google Maps website and type in the "Vienna" search. See what happens!!! --Haldrik 08:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a "noat found" URL. But when I wentto Google maps,Vienna produced a map of Vienna, Austria. So?Kdammers 08:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Look at Japan and Russia in Google Maps, and you'll find place names in the languages and character sets of those countries. Apparently, Google Maps isn't designed as "English", but as multilingual. *Dan T.* 13:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem linking to the correct site from above. In any case, when you enter the English name "Vienna", you get a map that doesnt use any other name except "Wien". There are no exonyms, for the sake of a global, universal, consistent policy. The same policy Wikipedia needs for the same reasons. --Haldrik 08:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Haldrik, did you ever reply to the issue of things like Chinese cities? Should Beijing be listed under its name using the Chinese alphabet? Or should it, instead, be listed under the standard english name of Beijing?
Unless you're prepared to say that an english encyclopedia should list it as 北京, you really don't have a leg to stand on. So, which is it? Should Beijing be listed as 北京, or should Wien be listed as Vienna? Bladestorm 09:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I did reply just minutes ago. Most countries have their own official Romanization policy. Their policy should be the standard for all the place names in their country. --Haldrik 09:41, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Beijing is the official Chinese name using its Romanization policy. Similar, Tokyo is the official Japanese name using its Romanization policy (the "Romanji" alphabet). --Haldrik 09:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Really helps if you know what you're talking about, as all three major romanizations of Japanese don't come out to "Toyko"; one is Tōkyō, and two are Tôkyô. Thanks for playing. --Golbez 10:40, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

According to Japanese law, either of two Romanization systems can be used: the official Kunri system or the Hepburn system. Altho, Kunri is "more official", Hepburn is the one that is officially used by Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on public signs (which uses a simplified variant of Hepburn without diacritics, whence "Tokyo" found on most official signage). Wikipedia editors who write articles about Japanese places can discuss among themselves which official Japanese Romanization system is the most appropriate standard for Wikipedia articles, at Wikipedia:naming convention. All articles about Japanese places will use their consensus as the standard. --Haldrik 11:28, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Romanization is a bias, if ß is allowed, since 北 and ß are similarly non-recognizable to someone who speaks only English. Simplified Hepburn is even more biased towards English, since it modifies non-English readable letters (ō). Either romanize everything or romanize nothing. ColourBurst 17:40, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

A counterproposal: English Wikipedia should use non-ASCII titles for articles only as a last resort. Every foreign name can be transliterated unambiguously. Using non-ASCII characters creates only problems to Unicode-disabled people, and I see no real advantage of using them - local name is always displayed in the first paragraph.  Grue  11:15, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia will potentially mention millions of places that dont have an English name. Wikipedia must have a policy to handle this. This policy must be consistent. --Haldrik 11:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yet it seems that you are refusing to point out any way in which the existing policy fails to meet that standard. The existing policy is "in the __________-language Wikipedia, use the name which is best-known to __________ speakers." The closest you've done to pointing out an issue is to point to the non-issue of "what if the place isn't known to __________ speakers at all??" The reasoning behind "use the local name, in that case" is quite obvious. However, you seem to be trying to jump from "use the local name, in that case" to "use the local name, in every case", and your reasoning for that jump seems rather obscure. -- Antaeus Feldspar 12:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"You seem to be trying to jump from 'use the local name, in that case' to 'use the local name, in every case'". Exactly. Because. Where English might have English cognates for ten cities in a particular country, there will be thousands of city/town/suburb names that dont have English cognates. These thousands of names require a comprehensive Romanization system that is consistently and systematically applied. It becomes stupid to fixate on ten cities, when the local names are used for virtually everything. --Haldrik 14:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Moreover, most English speakers are totally unaware of both the English cognate and local name of a city. For example, who here knows where "Hamath" is? How about "Scythopolis"? If you dont know where the English name refers to, you might as well use the proper local name. --Haldrik 14:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

When you end up using the local name for a town because it has become very familiar to English speakers (such as Torino) and you end up using the local name for a town because it is very unfamiliar to English speakers (such as any obscure village near Torino), at a certain point its just stupid and confusing to worry about a handful of archaic English names. --Haldrik 14:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

You've replied without addressing my point. You say "These thousands of names require a comprehensive Romanization system that is consistently and systematically applied." You seem to think that of "Always use the local name" and "Use the name best known to speakers of the language", only one of those two can be "consistently and systematically applied", yet you've shown no reason that should be so. The latter is equally practicable and is more practical besides, since it means that the majority of the speakers of the language who want to link to the article will be able to do so on their first try instead of getting a redirect. -- Antaeus Feldspar 14:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Anyone with a brain can see that the advantages of using a consistent system outweigh using an eclectic system when needing to standardize millions of data. How many seconds does it take to go thru a redirect? Not even a second. If users know to always use the local name, then that is the "name best known" because that is the name that is 100% predictable. --Haldrik 15:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Users will never know to use the local name. They don't know the local name. You have yet to show what possible reason makes your system any better than our current system. When English speakers look for something, they should get the page they're looking for, not some redirect to a four-letter pagename making them scratch their heads and wonder what's going on. Anyone with a brain would realize this immediately. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 15:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Look, Wikipedia isnt just for 4th-graders who are working on their book report. This is the 21st-century, there is a whole planet out there, and Wikipedia has to cope with all of it. --Haldrik 15:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"Users will never know to use the local name". Of course, users will know to use the local name. The unfamiliar will use whatever name they know. In a split second they will be redirected and they'll know the proper name. --Haldrik 15:10, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

But we're not the whole planet, now are we? We're English speakers. We expect things to be in English. This is what you've consistently failed to understand. No English speaker is going to look for Wien or any other foreign name. They're going to look for the name they recognize and understand. English speakers do not know Vienna as Wien and likely never will. Why should we confuse everyone by using names no English speaker will recognize? You'll never make a convincing argument for that. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 15:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"But we're not the whole planet". Rather, Wikipedia is the whole planet. "No English speaker is going to look for Wien". Those who want to search for "Vienna" will find "Wein". And who knows? Maybe they'll be happy to know the Naturpark Eichenhein is right nearby! Not to mention the airport is at Schwechat. --Haldrik 15:24, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia has many different projects that encompass the entire planet, but we here certainly do not. We encompass the English-speaking countries, which know "Wien" as Vienna. That is the name they've been taught all their lives. They're not going to use Wien when looking for the city, and Googling "Wien" only gets someone a bunch of German sites and unrelated pages. I google Vienna and I get what I'm looking for instantly. Why should we confuse users by using names that aren't standard English? Answer that. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 15:29, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"That is the name they've been taught all their lives." Any user that needs to know information about Wien, needs to know its name is Wien. --Haldrik 15:38, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"Wikipedia encompass the entire planet, but we here certainly do not." Speak for yourself. Most of the articles that I've worked on refer to foreign names with no English equivalent or worse several competing English alternatives. --Haldrik 15:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Reindent. They need to know it's also called Wien, eh? Then what, pray tell, is not clear about this: "Vienna (German: Wien [viːn]) is the capital of Austria"? I think they know. You're argument is misleading, because you act as if Wikipedia somehow hides this information from its users. Clearly, this is not the case. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 15:42, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Many places are known in English by names having nothing to do with the local name. However, that is how English speakers are going to search for them, and how they're going to read them. In particular, we should never use letters which don't even appear in English. It's one thing to use an accent over a letter (é or ü). It's another to use a totally unfamiliar character. A typical English speaker seeing "Meißen" is going to think "Meiben" which isn't even close. Fan-1967 13:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Can we all agree that this is a rejected proposal? --tjstrf 15:34, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Certainly. I should note (claiming great offense), that my homeland is referred to on the German Wikipedia as the Vereinigte Staaten. I hereby suggest (not demand, being mindful of WP:POINT) that the German Wikipedia immediately rename all articles concerning placenames in English-speaking countries to use English names.

If it isn't obvious, of course, the above suggestion is entirely facetious.

--EngineerScotty 16:21, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, the last line i wrote was "espcially if it won't cause undo confusion among English speakers." I think it's obvious that established names should probably be left as the exonym (exonym as a last resort was in the title) but for lesser known places the original name should be used. As for being unable to type an "ß," well redirects can bring you from "meissen" to "meißen" and the "ß" is located in the characters list below (second character in the second line) if it is needed in editing. Thanks Naufana:^Talk 16:38, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I certainly think English names of places should be used where they exist. Rome, Vienna, Munich, Prague, Warsaw, Moscow, etc., all have well-established English names distinct from local names, and those English names should be used. But places that have no common name in English, such as Meißen, Toruń, Chişinău, etc., should use their native names as they are spelled locally, including unfamiliar characters, provided the local spelling is in the Latin alphabet. Where the local spelling is not in the Latin alphabet, a transliteration of the local name into the Latin alphabet should be used, as in Blagoveshchensk and Beijing. (And yes, ß, þ and ð are part of the Latin alphabet!) The only problem is deciding what counts as a "well-established English name", or even more so, what is not an outmoded English name. Mainz and Koblenz are really no longer called "Mayence" and "Coblence" at all; "Constance" for Konstanz and "Brunswick" for Braunschweig are pretty old-fashioned but not completely dead; and "Turin" for Torino, as mentioned above, seems to be on the way out. If policy leaves any ambiguity, it should be on this question: if English has historically used a name spelled differently from the local name, is that historical English name still up-to-date? For Munich, the answer is a clear yes; for "Mayence", the answer is a clear no; but for "Brunswick" and especially "Turin" the answer isn't clear at all. Angr 17:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Meissen does indeed have a common name in English, which is well established. Every English-language encyclopedia that I've checked, spells it as "Meissen."[7][8][9] And yet, there are still people at Talk:Meissen who argue, against clear evidence otherwise, that there's no common English version of the name, and hence they want the article moved to "Meißen". --Elonka 22:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Britannica can't be trusted to use unfamiliar letters at all, since they also misspell their articles on "Torun" and "Chisinau". Interestingly, Encarta and Columbia do use diacritics for those names: [10], [11]; [12], [13]. Nevertheless, what other encyclopedias do is still irrelevant. Meißen has no English name and never has. The spelling "Meissen" is only used by encyclopedias who don't trust their readers to know what "ß" means, and who can't or won't provide links to an article explaining it. Since Wikipedia has the convenient {{foreignchar}} template which will provide a link to ß at the top of the article, there's no reason for us to provide our readers with misinformation. Angr 07:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

As I said above, Turin isn't "on the way out". The BBC still uses it, for a start. Just because the Winter Olympics were officially called Torino 2006 doesn't mean that people are stopping calling the city itself Turin. -- Necrothesp 13:36, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Subnational entities in town-twinning

Check out this diff. I put it in, two days later it got removed.

Cons to allowing subnational entities in sister cities: many.

Pros to allowing subnational entities in sister cities: nobody knows where "Faribault" is (it's in Minnesota).

Discuss! Zweifel 10:46, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

• Seems to be a lot of confusion there. The "Rochester, US" one is especially meaningless. Depending on where you live that can mean any one of a dozen towns at first glance. I see no problem in putting in the state. The place's name is not "Town, USA", it is "Town, State, USA", and if others want to improve the locations in other countries, they should. But they should not remove what is essentially more precise information. Sparkhead 12:01, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Public service advertisements

Recently, above, the idea was raised of using advertisements on Wikipedia to raise funds for charity. I don't think this is a good idea, primarily because any sort of commercial advertisement gives the appearance of bias - that these companies could control content by threatening to withdraw advertising funds. But here's a rather different idea.

In Seattle there is a public radio station that plays dance music run by a high school called C89.5. They have a large listenership, but have no advertisements at all; instead, they have "public service announcements", which briefly describe volunteer opportunities in the community, environmental issues, and so on. I wonder if Wikipedia contributors would be willing to tolerate unpaid "public service" advertisements for charitable organizations such as the Red Cross, especially during times of crisis such as natural disasters when they solicit donations. The organization would supply no money for the service, but it would still have a positive impact on the world community. Just a thought? Deco 03:28, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposition considered and denied. Wikipedia does not exist to champion social change outside of an increase in free information and collaberation online. --tjstrf 05:04, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia and Wikinews already contributes significantly to publicising such responses to natural (and man made) disasters through their articles and the external links attached to those.81.187.181.168 08:55, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Several editors have said that they will leave if Wikipedia goes commercial. They see no reason why they should give their free labor to a commercial enterprise. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:03, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I proposed anything of the sort. Deco 04:42, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Been there, done that. BAD idea. [ælfəks] 10:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Charitable spam is still spam. We can do NPOV reporting on which organizations are doing what in a crisis, and an external link to the Red Cross website seems perfectly reasonable in an article about a disaster. More than that is of evil. Robert A.West (Talk) 00:31, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I'm forever frustrated by not learning from any reference work other than a dictionary how the headword is pronounced. I often consult encyclopedic - or reference - dictionaries, which do give a pronunciation guide (because they are chiefly dictionaries and follow the dictionary format). Would it not be an idea for Wikipedia to be (if, indeed, this is the case) the first to do so? Those people who have contributed articles (and I realise some will have contributed a lot) could go back and add a small edit, and, over a couple of years or so, articles would have a pronunciation guide for their headwords.

Andy Armitage

That might be a good idea, except for the fact that not everyone knows ho to read and write pronunciation guides. I know I don't. Some of Wikipedia's articles currently have pronunciation guides, and I often find myself with no more idea how to pronunce the word then without one. Some other articles have little things you can click and hear the word pronounced, and that's better (imho), but not all browsers support those features. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 15:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

That is an interesting idea. There is a whole series of specialized marks which represent speech sounds. Are you thinking of (what I would call) "commonly understood" pronounciation guides ? Such as "spigot, rhymes with bigot" or "automobile, auto + Moh-beel" ? Or are you thinking of linking to wikidictionary (which really should have pronounciations) ? Terryeo 15:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I thought it was referring to the series of specialized marks, which is what I was referring to when I said I had no idea how to read or write them and when I see them in an article I have no more idea how to pronounce the word than I would without them. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 15:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia already uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in some articles, but it's a little arcane and hard to read for many people. You may want to view Wikipedia:Pronunciation for more on the subject. -- nae'blis 19:25, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the best solution is to include short audio recordings for terms that have unclear pronunciation. Nothing explains how to say something better than hearing it said. Of course, we still need to include written pronunciation for print. Deco 23:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

But "correct" pronunciations vary all over the place. For example, the way a New Zealander says "pen" is very different from the way I (a northeastern USAian) say it. FreplySpang 15:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Using hide/show in navboxes

Is there any policy for or against hiding information in navigation boxes? For example the nav-boxes used on United States. _→AzaToth 15:54, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I've only seen one such navigation box discussed at TfD. There a persuasive argument was made that it made the articles the template was used in unwieldy for handheld devices and took too much time to load. I'd suggest that any navigation box not to be initially shown probably should be linked to or put on a sub-page where it is appropriate to show it. GRBerry 19:38, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Help needed

The recent (and I believe worthwhile but that's beyond the point) proposal to replace the old notability essay with a guideline page reflecting the actual use of notability in the deletion process has led to a lame revert war among experienced editors and admins. The edit warring concerns whether or not the proposal is a proposal or a guideline. One can see that the talk page has become a nasty screaming match where people have pretty much stopped to listen to one another. I think this urgently requires the intervention of cooler heads. Pascal.Tesson 21:36, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Information gathering poll regarding notability

Wikipedia's very own dreaded "n-word" is being discussed over at the proposed rejected disputed Wikipedia:Non-notability. I've just set up a sort of straw-poll thingy at Wikipedia talk:Non-notability#Information-gathering straw-poll, and I invite people who are interested in this issue to contribute their opinions so we may gauge how the community of Wikipedians feels about notability as an inclusion criterion.

Have a great day, and remember, voting is evil! :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:17, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

User talk redirects

I now have user accounts on three Wikipedia projects: en, fr and commons. I don't visit each of them on a daily basis, so would it be acceptable to redirect the other two to my talk page on en? My concern is that users would then be unable to sign their names appropiately without explicitly typing in their signature. Is there a better solution to this? (Please reply on my talk page.) --INTRIGUEBLUE (talk|contribs) 07:40, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

moving pages through wikipojects

I can't find a page explainig if it's a policy about moving pages i.e. from wikipedia to wiktionary. We just added on It.wiki and I would to compare it between the mayors project. Bye The Doc post... 13:45, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Rudeness

Moved to WP:ANI, as there doesn't appear to be any actual policy question or discussion taking place. Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 20:31, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Merges and histories

What's the policy on en.wikipedia regarding the histories of merged pages? Are the histories merged into the destination, or do they just go "poof"?

I'm actually asking this as a wikibooks admin... I discovered that this could indeed be done several weeks ago, but I'm not sure whether it's worth the bother and/or potential upset if an editor comes across the page during the process of merging (it involves merging the stuff into the destination, then deleting the article, then moving the merged article to the space, then restoring all versions, and finally updating to the most recent version). Is it done here? --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 15:41, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

BTW, I'm very much a GFDL hawk, which is why I think it might be worth the trouble. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 15:43, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, histories should almost always be preserved. From a GFDL standpoint it's a good idea, and moreover it simply helps editors to be able to see earlier revisions and track the history of an article. An article should always be moved such that the history is preserved... copy and paste moves are a bad idea. A history merge can be done in about 30-60 seconds really, so the impact on readers is minimal. --W.marsh 15:52, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, that's what I figured :). Is there a policy page lurking somewhere about this I could copy? The other WB admins didn't even know this could be done (and I'm relatively new, so it obviously hadn't been done earlier). --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 16:14, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves might be a place to start... I'm not sure if there's an official policy page anywhere. --W.marsh 16:25, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's prety much what I was looking for. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 22:46, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I assume this doesn't count for merges like explained in Wikipedia:Merging and moving pages? The backlog of merges is already big enough that one doesn't want to request admin help every time for a history merge. Garion96 (talk) 22:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually the admin action would take place after step 7 on that page. I just did a couple on wikibooks, more like 45 seconds of work if you just move/delete in one step, then restore in the second step. W.marsh is right, regular readers and editors wouldn't likely hit the page when it's in progress. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 23:04, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

...in popular culture

My watchlist is mostly fruits and vegetables (I'm a farmer and these are the things I'm interested in), and many of these seem to have rapidly growing sections on "trivia" or "this fruit in popular culture".

I hate to be the stick-in-the-mud complaining about how fun (and often silly) trivia isn't really encyclopedic, but fun (and often silly) trivia really just isn't encyclopedic. (For the latest example, see radish). --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 23:12, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

People are obviously more interested in this kind of stuff than the actual encyclopedia article though, half the time. I guess that's a testament to the modern attention span. I think a good compromise is a "WikiTrivia" or something, much like WikiQuote, so this stuff is no longer on Wikipedia but people who are interested in it can still easilly find it, and in probably a better format anyway. If we are determined to compile a list of every pop culture to everything (as we seem to be), well we might as well create a place where that's fully appreciated.

In the meantime, I say if nothing else, remove the stuff from articles if the teeming masses will let you. It will stay in the page history. Of course, if it can be converted into meaningful prose, that's a better option. --W.marsh 00:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

As a Good Article reviewer, a designated Trivia section or bullet point "In popular culture" list is generally frowned upon. Ideally anything that is relevant or encyclopedic about the topic should find its way into the main sections of the article. However, I have seen well written "In popular culture" sections that are presented in a prose format instead of the bullet point list. Agne 00:04, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

That's a brilliant idea actually - a fork of wikipedia that could be solely based on trivia. Someone should propose that :). Cowman109^Talk 00:06, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• There is no actual policy on trivia additions, specifically. Instead, there is wide precedent for trimming/removing it. The author's complaint is valid. One of the first articles I rewrote after getting to Wikipedia was parody. All that stuff in there about the history of the term and literature is me. Immediately, people began adding in "list of parodies." The list was out of order, biased toward whatever was on television at the moment, and preserved genuinely forgettable things. I didn't want to squash the egos of the editors, but, at the same time, that thing was ugly and unhelpful. It's best if you announce on the talk page first that the trivia section is getting hairy and that you'd like to give it a trim. Wait for comment a couple of days. If there is no objection, go ahead and tame the mess. There is little question that trivia sections (and most "in pop culture" sections) are just folks tossing in whatever they can think of, and it's not good to be brutal, revert, or insult them. Geogre 01:27, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• We have a style guideline at Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles that is part of the Manual of Style. The nutshell version is "Lists of facts, as found in trivia sections, are better presented within the context of the text rather than in a section of unrelated items." We have a proposed inclusion guideline at Wikipedia:Trivia, while it is more for trivial complete articles than material within an article, it also contains some suggestions on what to do with overextensive trivia sections when found at Wikipedia:Trivia#Practical steps suggestion. GRBerry 01:51, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• • Wikitrivia actually sounds like a good idea... but if there was such a thing, would links to it be "legal"? I'm not sure how effective a solution that would be though: if you've ever mentioned on a talk page that an article (or sections of it) might belong on wikibooks or wiktionary... --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 15:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The craziest thing I can think of is all of the pages which have a section called "X in popular culture" with an entry where X was the subject of a throwaway line or joke on the Simpsons. If you want to see something crazy, check out the Special:Whatlinkshere/The_Simpsons and you will see what I mean -- I count about 7000 links and the vast majority of these topics have nothing at all to do with the Simpsons. Spebudmak 04:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposal, navigational boxes

See: Wikipedia:Navigational boxes _→AzaToth 12:46, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

An unusual request for participation...

I'd like to ask any wikipedians who are interested in the transwikiing of "how-to" type articles and/or wikipedians who are hawkish about the GFDL to please express your opinion about enabling import from wikipedia to wikibooks.

For those unfamiliar with the import tool, this allows import of wikipedia articles to wikibooks with the page histories, as opposed to the current copy-paste method which either copies and pastes the material (e.g. b:talk:Transwiki:Dishwasher Repair) or just leaves a link to the original page history (e.g. b:talk:A Wikimanual of Gardening/Rosa multiflora).

There hasn't been much support voiced on wikibooks because (a) most wikibookians aren't particularly interested in policy, and (b) most wikibookians aren't too thrilled about having things transwikied (and then summarily abandoned as stubs) from wikipedia (though I' plan to do a bit of userpage spamming there over the next few days to get support... the only other person who voiced support so far only did so to support me (personally), and plenty of others will vote for that reason since I'm the only admin who gives much of a hoot about our how-to books). (← please don't read any bitterness into this, I really like the "bedroom community" quality of wikibooks (part of why I'm much more at home there than here), it's just that the foundation asked me to rally support, and I'll get more votes quicker asking the wikipedians than the wikibookians. This affects us¹ (the "us" that includes me as a wikipedian) probably more than it does us² (the "us" that includes me as a wikibookian... I lead a confused double-life as far as wikizenship is concerned).

Enabling import on wikibooks would achieve 2 important goals:

1. It would make the cleanup jobs connected with Category:Articles containing how-to sections and Category:Copy to Wikibooks a lot easier on us ¹.
2. It would be (IMO) more in following both the letter and the spirit of the GFDL (especially considering the sometime soon universal logins across wikiprojects).

Just to clarify why I'm the one making the request here:

1. I'm the only current WB admin who is active on both projects (I'm also an active admin on wikiversity, which is why I'm familiar with the import tool).
2. I feel strongly that WP contributions of a how-to nature are made in good faith by (usually new) users who are unaware of the WP policies related to this sort of material, and feel strongly that these contributions should be honored and kept.
3. Having used the import tool and understanding how it works, I strongly feel that copy-paste transwikis should be depracated: not only are imports easier, but (again) they are also more in harmony with the spirit and letter of the GFDL.
4. I'm probably the one who will be doing all the work.

Just a note towards a further discussion (assuming the tools are enabled): the "main actors" of the wikibooks community would be a lot more comfortable about hosting transwikis from wikipedia if we¹ made it a policy that all transwikis be done this way, since this would ensure that an admin (who at least in theory is familiar with stub-tagging and the WB categories) will make sure it goes where it should, rather than just sitting there. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 16:14, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Blocking policy?

I have to say that something occurred to me lately. Last year, it was standard policy here that only vandals could be unilaterally indefblocked, while those engaged in "trolling" sans-vandalism could only be indefblocked by Jimbo or the ArbCom. see Wikipedia_talk:Dealing_with_disruptive_or_antisocial_editors (a debate from 2004) In 2005 and before, there existed much long-term obvious trolling, and many of those accounts became somewhat notorious, as ArbCom could literally take months to ban even an obvious troll (see User:Lir, User:Rainbowwarrior1977, User:CheeseDreams, and many other "old school" trolls). In some cases, the arbcom would only warn an obvious troll, like that "Anthony DiPierillo" guy or whatever his name was.

Now, however, many attempts at trolling are blocked in the bud by admins before the troll accounts have time to establish a trolling reputation and nobody complains. I remember people would raise holy hell about "process" and "only ArbCom can do that" when a well-meaning admin would unilaterally ban an obvious troll as late as the fall of 2005 (like User:Wiki_brah). In fact, the only "notorious" troll in 2006 that seemed to defy being quickly banned outright was User:Mistress Selina Kyle, who indeed ended up being banned without Arbcom sanction in the end. So what caused this change? Was there an official policy shift? Pardon me, I've only been observing Wikipedia infrequently this year (new job, etc). Thanks in advance, --Yolanda82 23:05, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Does it really matter so long as they end up banned eventually? --tjstrf 23:11, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

• There was not an official policy shift, nor is your characterisation of the past strictly accurate (although things were different in the past). AfD is generally for questionable cases involving users who have contributed productively to the project, especially where the right thing is not at all clear. When someone is clearly misbehaving or if they're very new, it makes more sense to let admins handle it simply, so that's what we do. --Improv 23:14, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Legal/Medical Opinions

While reading Bankruptcy it occured to me that many wiki articles offer information that could be misconstrued as Legal or Medical advice. It seems to me that it would be a VERY good idea to include a template for a header saying something along the lines of "This article contains information on a Legal/Medical topic. This article is informational only, and under no circumstances should serve as a replacement for professional advice." And then have a little picture of a Caduceus or Lady Justice. That or something like the spoiler warning, except we'll call it a liability warning. Does this seem important to anyone else? --Niro5 17:13, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates. This idea has already been turned down, as they would duplicate the information already available at Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer and Wikipedia:Legal disclaimer. --tjstrf 17:19, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

There's also the problem of how the omission of such a template may be interpreted (omitted either because they've been removed, or never placed on a new or orphan article). If some articles on legal topics have disclaimers that the article does not constitute legal advice, then doesn't that suggest that other law-related articles that lack the disclaimer could constitute legal advice? We're better off with the general disclaimers tjstrf pointed to. Postdlf 17:31, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

And I see Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates already makes this point: "The lack of the disclaimer on certain pages as opposed to others might open Wikipedia to lawsuits." (might as well waste more bytes pointing that out) Postdlf 17:33, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Understandable, but I was unable to find these disclaimers until they were pointed out to me just now. I have used Wikipedia before, and I couldn't find them; what about new users? I understand that the lack of a disclaimer where there are disclaimers might lead to trouble, but perhaps the blanket disclaimer should be easier to find.--Niro5 18:05, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what things are like with the Monobook skin, but with the Classic skin, there's a link to the general disclaimer top-and-center on every page. --Carnildo 18:40, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

In monobook, I think it's at the very bottom, centered, along with "Privacy policy" and "About Wikipedia" ++Lar: t/c 19:33, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Very rough idea

A very rough idea, born of the discussion on Wikipedia:Expert Retention.

It's Wikipedia:User versions, for an idea on a way to deal with edit creep, and better enable expert editors to monitor content in their subject area. Among other things. It's an extension/generalization to the "stable versions" system. And it's completely democratic, and in the wiki spirit. I'm mentioning it on both VP:POL and VP:TECH as it has implications for both.

It is very rough at this point, so please don't consider it a proposed policy, yet.

--EngineerScotty 19:55, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Interesting but my initial reaction is that this is too complicated. Technically, it might be a complex overhead, especially because of the proposed delegation system and in practice, I'm afraid you would find that the preferred version is ancient, even though the article has been through a definite progression since or (even worst) articles with low traffic in which an unacceptable version becomes the preferred one because a handful of sockpuppets have deemed it as such. Like it or not, random users will see the preferred page as a mark of confidence. I much prefer the idea of stable versions where the complex process partly ensures that only articles of high importance are tagged. Pascal.Tesson 20:45, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

The base version shouldn't require much more server/database overhead than the watchlist feature itself, which needs to maintain a large set of {user, article} records in the database. The delegation system might involve overhead; I'm not sure exactly how much. At any rate, I hope you don't mind if I copy these comments over to the talk page. --EngineerScotty 20:52, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Redlinks not found harmful

Seriously, all you folks who spend your days hunting them down and eliminating them.... where will new articles come from? Gzuckier 16:35, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

"Hunting them down and eliminating them" we will have to. The whole idea of a red link is to remind us that no article exists with that name, and that we should create one. It's not an obsession. Dieter Simon 22:59, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Maybe Czuckier's talking about people who de-link them? Not really clear. If I'm editing an article and see a redlink that doesn't look like a decent article topic I'll often de-link it, but I've never gone out "hunting" for them. Fan-1967 23:05, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

That's true of course. I should have said "coming across them and doing something about them", that would be a better (if also a slightly weasely answer (;-) Dieter Simon 23:35, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't get where this anti-redlink phobia comes from. As noted above, they serve a vital purpose in pointing out articles that do not yet exist -- or articles that are possibly misnamed. Thanks to people removing redlinks, we have ridiculous situations such as writing an article on a book and finding out later that no link existed from the article on the author of said book. It just adds needless work for people creating articles. I'd much rather see a vendetta against all the unnecessary mundane wikilinks that people think need to be added to every other word. 23skidoo 01:53, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I think many redlinks serve a very useful purpose, as you say, as a signal: "This is an article that should exist." But, sometimes they server a less useful purpose, as a signal: "This is an article that should exist," when it really shouldn't. Fan-1967 02:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

incomplete AFD

Aroma amore was tagged for AFD but not completed. Do I complete it or do I just remove the tag? It doesn't document why it was nominated, which makes completion of the nomination difficult. RJFJR 21:01, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• I'd remove the tags, and also from the other three tagged by the same IP. If s/he really wants to AFD them, s/he can register and do the process right. Fan-1967 21:13, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. RJFJR 21:24, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Meaningless edits

There is a group of wikipedians making edits whose meaning escapes me. For instance, User:Edton routinely makes edits like this, this, or this. When I ask him to explain his grievances, he responds in a defiant tone. Is there any policy behind these edits? How should we distinguish helpful edits from meaningless? --Ghirla ^-трёп- 11:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

In this edit, he/she is refining the category (in addition to moving things around inexplicably).

I dunno. I've asked. -- Hoary 11:25, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

How about this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=207.74.23.67

After lots of warnings, and one block, his new, preferred form of vandalism appears to be to vandalise a page, and then undo the vandalism two minutes later. I guess it saves the rest of us the bother, but it's not exactly helpful. Someone may well have been viewing the page at that point. It seems to be behaviour deliberately designed to vandalise without being blocked.

Merlinme 14:59, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

That type of editing is actually fairly common, and I just assume it's testing when the self-reversion occurs so soon afterwards. Note that there are several days between each pair of edits, and no similarity between the content added or changed, so there's no reason to assume it's even the same person using that IP. Postdlf 15:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Are we looking at the same user? The four most recent 'contributions' of 207.74.23.67: 1) change the Italian definition of Duce to be 'woman', 2) change it back to 'leader' literally one minute later. 3) Add the name 'Doug Beyer' to the Seven Deadly Sins section on Sloth. 4) Remove it one minute later.

Merlinme 15:13, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

It's a school IP, so I would assume that it's an (unusually tidy) assortment of students. FreplySpang 15:39, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, I guess. And going back down the contributions, there are a few useful edits. How do you know it's a school IP?

Merlinme 15:51, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I did a reverse DNS lookup using http://www.dnsstuff.com, which reports it as "server.zeeland.k12.mi.us". "k12" is a common component of school domain names, and pointing my browser at http://www.zeeland.k12.mi.us confirms that the domain belongs to the Zeeland (Michigan) public school system. FreplySpang 23:26, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

So much for the IPs. Back to the first chap: he now promises to double or treble his efforts. Clearly a man (or woman) with a mission! -- Hoary 15:57, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Ownership of articles....

Wikipedia prides itself on being a collaborative venture and often states that anyone can contribute. This does not take into account the proprietary attitude which some editors display to what they regard as their articles. This can lead to the alienation of potentially useful new editors, who often see their work deleted and labelled irrelevant or inappropriate. One way possibly of tackling the problem of "ownership" might be to limit the number of edits which any editor may perform per day on any given page. It would ensure that most editors are careful about only hitting "save" when they are certain that they have finished editing a particular article - the history logs of articles are littered with records of editing that are trivial or malicious. It would also take some of the traffic pressure off Wikipedia servers. The number of edits per day per article could also work on a sliding scale where edit allocations are made according to the editor's history (good or bad) and according to their Wikipedia function. Details would have to be worked out by better minds than mine, but I do think the idea could be made to work well, with very few negative consequences. Have an excellent day....Paul venter 13:25, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I have had numerous problems with other editors (a couple in particular) who seem to think they own articles that they either started or have edited extensively. One editor in particular has absolutely refused to let other editors make any additions, corrections, or changes of any kind to "his" articles, to the point of becoming abusive when other editors attempt to do so. This is extremely discouraging, and one reason why I have all but given up on being able to edit articles in a field in which I have a certain amount of knowledge expertise. I wish I could offer more optimism, but this is a problem that will get worse, not better, as Wikipedia acquires more editors. MrDarwin 17:19, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

As someone who's been working hard to bring an article to featured status, it often involves me making a number of minor edits to catch small typos and style changes that I missed. While ownership of articles is an interesting problem, I don't think limiting the amount of edits is the answer as much as people being more vigalant in getting intervention in situations like that. Limiting edits would do nothing more than create prolonged edit conflicts and angrier disputes as they boiled long-term. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:34, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem I have with this is that I often make many minor changes. I like to fix citation format in articles for references. This is extremely hard to do and frustrating if I had to do them all at once. Would also make finding duplicate ones quite difficult when attempting to remove multiple entries to the same citation. You can see an example on Thaksin's page [14] of how I go about the proccess. Limiting a number of edits would make it quite difficult for me to carry out this procedure in a careful manner. Also something to consider is when i add citations, a bad type out of the ref code can cause large blocks of the article to vanish, having to do 20+ citation fixes will lead me to not know where I made the mistake as easily as well. While your idea is in good faith and smart, I think it would cause too many issues in the long run. --NuclearZer0 13:42, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm also not convinced that ownership is a problem that can't be solved by discussion. As Bdj said, it's so much more convenient to edit articles typo by typo or at least subsection by subsection that limiting the amount of edits is also likely if not more likely to lead to the alienation of competent and well-intentioned editors. As for reviewing a whole string of minor changes, you can always do diffs that span a whole bunch of them. Pascal.Tesson 14:27, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Not to mention the increase in edit conflicts that would probably ensue on the high traffic pages. --tjstrf 16:01, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

This would only create more problems (edit conflicts, good editors not being able to improve articles, sockpuppetry, etc), without actually solving the original problem. Ownership problems result arise when someone's been working hard on an article for a long time, not from making lots of edits all at once. -- Steel 16:10, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why there should be any more edit conflict problems if the total traffic on Wiki is less..... As for correcting typos, the "show preview" button is very under-utilised. Obsessive ownership of pages is often shown by a high frequency of edits by the party guilty of such behaviour. Reverts are often disguised by simultaneous trivial edits to the article. Lechaim Paul venter 16:24, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Making a small number of large edits that affect an entire article instead of a large number of small edits that are each confined to a single section can cause additional edit conflicts in two ways. The first is by making article wide edits instead of section specific edits another edit anywhere in the article will cause a conflict instead of just edits that affect the one section. Second is the extra time required to perform a large, multi-part edit is much longer than the time to perform a small section specific edit and thus creates a much large window of opportunity for conflicts to arise. The reduced number of edits will probably compensate for one or the other of these two factors, but is highly unlikely to compensate for both. --Allen3 ^talk 16:34, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

The show preview button is useful. We should encourage, but not force, its use. -- Steel 16:41, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

A high number of edits per day on one article may be common when there are ownership issues. But it's also a common characteristic of some of the really good editors and, as badlydrawnjeff notes above, good collaborations. I don't see what it will do except encourage an "owner" to make their revisions in single big swoop edits intstead of lots of little ones. I think this proposal is a blunt and hard restriction that would have a lot of collateral damage, and would only have a small impact on the actual problem.--Siobhan Hansa 16:48, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

The worst thing about a rule like this is that it might force you to leave an article vandalised because you are out of reverts, or if you screw something up, you may be unable to fix it. And, of course, as has been said already, it will also increase the likelihood of edit conflicts, if you are copy-editing an article. Article ownership, as described here, is already limited by the 3-revert rule, so any change would restrict editors to 2 or fewer edits per page per day. That is unworkable, and totally disproportionate to the problem. Guettarda 17:04, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• As pascal says above, we can simply remind people they do not own articles when needed. Rules like this would be very inconvenient and fails to distinguish good edits from bad. --Improv 17:31, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• I'm against this idea. WP:OWN covers it. When I'm on a roll I often make strings of minor edits to the same page. It's fine. AndyJones 18:04, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• Wholly against it. I often save work in progress, because it's a really sensible thing to do. Hitting an article edit limit would be seriously aggravating. I would say several very rude words about the parentage of the people who imposed it. As an idea it is amusing but not very good. - Fiddle Faddle 23:35, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Automated Blocking Bot

There is currently active discussions being held on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/TawkerbotTorA and Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TawkerbotTorA related to creating an automated account to be given sysop rights. Currently there are no such accounts. To prevent a ForestFire please comment on the aforementioned pages if interested. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 05:08, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Real name editing only

I have a modest proposal at User:AxelBoldt/Real name proposal, restricting editing of encyclopedia articles to people who are willing to provide their verifiable real name. Cheers, AxelBoldt 06:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

That'll never happen. It runs contrary to Wikipedia's principles. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 06:29, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Which principles are we talking about? AxelBoldt 15:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Even restricting editing to those with a username would probably be a bad idea. Most of the actual information seems to originate from IP-only users. Shinobu 06:32, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

They would still be welcome to contribute information, just not edit the encyclopedia proper. AxelBoldt 15:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. That would be impossible. Michael 06:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

One of the strongest arguments you will have is the idea that the information is made publically accessible. Given this is generally discouraged online, and it would place serious freedom of speech problems on editors within certain reigemes, this is not only understandable but an entirely valid point. A better idea is that of privately confirmed existance, either by peers or via the wikimedia foundation. Only the peers or the foundation would know this information, and would be bound to keep it private. Much of what would be useful to establish is a level of known expert authority for use in such things as peer review. LinaMishima 12:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think real names are discouraged online. All serious publications are nowadays online, and all serious publications provide real names of their authors. If the Wikimedia foundation kept the names private, then the whole point of the proposal would be lost: to make writers responsible for their contributions in the eye of the public. AxelBoldt 15:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it is in many respects when dealing with forums and other user-orientated activities. Doing so gives an element of security and protection - do you openly reveal where you live online. With only a name and some rough incomplete trivia about someone, it is quite possible to find out a lot about them. You are attempting to compare here wikipedia, a voluntary organisation based on a civil community, to a professional online publication, which typcially has full-time employed staff. No single editor is ultimately responsible for any single article here on wikipedia, it is the community that is. LinaMishima 20:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm worried about NPOV disputes and intimidation. ColourBurst 14:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Only users who are signed-in ... may edit the encyclopedia. This is one of the most common perennial proposals, and it's really really unlikely to ever happen. --Interiot 15:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

• I would say categorically that I, for one, would stop editing Wikipedia if I was forced to reveal my identity; and I think many, many others share my view. Batmanand | Talk 11:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Well of course you don't want to reveal your identity. You're Batman. --Golbez 11:48, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Indeed. But those damned films, comics, books, songs etc have done a bloody good job of exposing my real identity already... Batmanand | Talk 12:04, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Would those of you commenting in this section about "Do not force people to show their real names" pleae repeat what you are saying a little lower on the page, in the section on Tor and China? --Keybounce 20:58, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

There is not a one in a million chance that I would ever, in my entire life, possibly even consider not opposing this proposal in the strongest terms. — Werdna talk criticism 04:57, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

No. — Omegatron 05:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, come now, the 15 or so of us that would be left after this passed could have a grand old time. Dragons flight 05:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that many people have the same real name. I suggest instead that we identify all people by their full mailing address and phone number. Deco 20:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Does that include dissidents in repressive countries? Anyway, no-one wants that hassle, certainly not me. ReeseM 00:17, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I was being sarcastic. Deco 07:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Can we list all sarcastic editors by their real names? Hmm. Or would that be ironic? Or s it ronic to list just those who did not "get" the sarcasm? Fiddle Faddle 22:22, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, I think using real names is a great idea, especially when I get such great appreciation already. Do you think I want to be stupid enough to give a guy like that my name? And that was just some idiot trying to keep a blatant hoax article. Fan-1967 00:23, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that this is a truly workable proposal. Firstly, as has been pointed out, it is to a certain extent a rehash of 'only logged-in users should edit', which is a bad idea for a variety of reasons. Secondly, it may expose our contributors to an inappropriate level of personal scrutiny. I edit Wikipedia and handle OTRS under my real name, and was recently personally threatened by a correspondent because we wouldn't delete a notable article (amongst other things, he tried to have my research funding suspended). This isn't a risk that every Wikipedian should be forced to take. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 08:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

If this were enforced, I would stop editing, and I am sure a large number of other editors also do so. It is completly unworkable, and WP:CREEP. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 12:30, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it would be unworkable. Drjem3 21:56, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Strongly oppose - I would leave wikipedia rather than reveal my real name. --Charlesknight 22:00, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Strongly Oppose:

Practical - how would you ever know?

Emotional - people behave well whether anonymous or not

Intellectual - it really makes no sense at all

Fiddle Faddle 22:16, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I strongly oppose as well. I can articulate detailed reasoning if desired, but I think it's already snowball-level clear that consensus is against this. Newyorkbrad 22:29, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

The suggestion is really only interesting in that it is founded on such a profound misunderstanding of how both the Internet and the Wiki function. Banno 00:18, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Accountability is one of the fundamental flaws frequently pointed out about Wikipedia. But I don't think that this proposal solves it. We already have a problem verifying the truthiness of real names. -- Malber (talk • contribs) 18:35, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't go so far as to require it, but I think there should be some encouragement for registering under your real name. Perhaps you should have to do that to become an admin, or to edit semi-protected pages. --John Nagle 19:07, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. At least, to become a regular contributor and discuss policy issues, deletion, etc. you should be required to provide your real name to the foundation. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 16:16, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Again, most people edit anonymously, and it's not discouraged because it tends to increase participation. There's almost no chance this will change soon. --Interiot 16:26, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I do all of these things, and I have no intention of associating this user account with my real-life identity, ever. Melchoir 16:35, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I found a particularly disturbing yet interesting comment buried in WP:AN/I

Admittedly this borrows a bit from the farming and selling of accounts for use in online gaming such as "Worlds of Warcraft" but I must admit that my idea is rather crafty: Employ several impoverished people (better yet children or students) at a pittance to register new accounts on Wikipedia. Have them make simple yet helpful edits to articles daily over four to six months. Start having them post simple votes on AfD and other forums to improve their visibiliy in the Wikipedia community. Once an account's edit count is 1500+, they will nominate themselves for adminship, and once a few are made admins, the new "farmed" admin accounts can nominate other prospective accounts for admin. Granting of adminship is almost guaranteed since all the new accounts have a substantial edit history both in article space and participation in Wikispace, with no controversial edits. Once adminship is granted, sell the account name and password on Ebay, a la the online gaming schemes. PROFIT!! A similar scheme requiring less time and investment would be the "farming" of "established sockpuppet" accounts, for sale in bulk . . . say, oh, fake accounts aged over a month with an edit count of 100 or so. Like put a lot of 25 to 50 of them on Ebay for sale to the highest bidder. Sockpuppets with a false history would be much less obvious than your "created yesterday with no edits" normal sockpuppets. Just use them from an open proxy and voila! And I'm sure you can imagine how much havoc could be wrought with the farming and selling of admin-level accounts en masse... Quite a lucrative and devious scheme I dare say.

Scheme removed per WP:BEANS. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:10, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Added it back in because it's sort of annoying trying trying to figure out the beginning of the movie from watching the middle. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 22:55, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Note: I did not write this, just stumbled across it. Courtney Simpson 18:33, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't work, chances are an honest soul would notice the auction and tip us off so we can shut the acount down. And that is asuming random edits by "sweat shop editors" will be sufficient to become an admin in the first place wich I kinda doubht. --Sherool (talk) 18:56, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Ha! That's just excellent. I must say whoever thought of that is certainly a creative fellow. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 18:57, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

yeah it would be very difficult to pull off and how would you sell them on ebay without identifying them as "bent" accounts? They'd be shut down before the auction had finished. --Charlesknight 18:59, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not economically feasable unless accounts go for a lot more than I'd expect. Account farming works because it can be done by unskilled labor. Adminship isn't just a matter of getting enough experience points: you need to make good edits and become part of the community, both of which require someone reasonably fluent in English, and English speakers don't come cheap. Further, because an admin needs to be part of the community, the personality change when the account is sold would clue people in. A back-of-the-envelope estimate is that an account would need to sell for at least $10,000 to be worthwhile, and would have a high chance of being blocked as a stolen/compromised account shortly after transfer. --Carnildo 19:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Look, don't you realize that the auction on Ebay wouldn't identify the account by name? Jeez...Courtney Simpson 19:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Worse case scenario, someone buys this and starts abusing it. They'll get found out quickly and the account will be disabled. They can't really do anything _that_ bad, and combining money with the scheme pulls this out of the range of all but the most dedicated, rich prankster/griefer. Beans beans beans beans, it's not that big of a deal. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 19:06, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Why would someone believe that the seller had a legitimate account, then? Blind faith? Besides, once one such account came to light, all the rest would get nailed by CheckUser. Meanwhile, the account buyer would effectively be paying the seller to make a few thousand good edits to Wikipedia. Go find something useful to do, Courtney—you shouldn't be using a new account to stuff beans up your nose. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:10, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I am sure it would take someone less time to get made admin then it does for someone to get to 60 in World of Warcraft, 312 hours of commited work. There is also the Rank 14 payers that pay for even more hours of work. Also while they will need to know English, the level of their work really isnt difficult, its a matter of scouring news and filling in information that is missing to take care of mainspace edits. --NuclearUmpf 19:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

• And just remember, its not just Chinese people, but anglophone students can be paid do to it too. Courtney Simpson 19:24, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Why on earth would someone pay money for an admin account? --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 22:57, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

But isn't this just how adminships on Wikipedia are gotten, by posting senselessly, but not destructively, all over the place to up your edit count, like the Wiki administrator who put up hundreds (or thousands) of expand tags on articles that already have stub tags on them? Oh, and also added expand tags on articles that don't necessarily need expanded, upon the theory that every article on Wikipedia always needs more, more, more? Then deleted, er archived, all references to this on his talk page? So you wind up getting adminstrators that are commercially interested with a scheme like this? Is that worse than getting people who have the time and the will to simply increase the volume of Wikipedia without any sense of what an encyclopedia is--it's not the Internet, more isn't always better on the Internet, either. It seems like the worry is just getting a new variety of folk on a system that already offers plenty of ways to do what they're trying to do. By the way, I always agonize before I save a page that I have everything correct, so I only have to do one Save page. Today, I made a little error that had to be corrected right away, did I get two edit counts for that? As long as it is about quantity not quality there will be tons of ways to get an adminship with little in the way of real contribution. KP Botany 23:13, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

This is interesting. An obvious market would be to banned users. So long as the seller didn't specify the account name on the auction site, it would be difficult to identify it once it had been sold. However, if there were a few such auctions, all we would need do would be to look at recent adminships (and there aren't a huge number to trouble us) and check for patterns. As well as that, I think that the changed pattern of editing once the proud new owner had taken up his admin account would be a bit of a giveaway. Just how many new admins immediately go from being quiet and productive beavers to obnoxious POV-warriors?

Er, that last was a rhetorical question. --Jumbo 23:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Another scenario

Expanding on the above idea, consider the following scenario (which is harder to track for meatpuppetry that the above one): A millionaire from a foreign country pays 150 people, each with a different IP adresses, to edit articles on Wikipedia a few times every day for three to four months. These users are told not to contact each other and that they should try to mantain different editing styles and attitudes. Then, on every week after the first four months, each of these 150 users are nominated one by one on RfA with most of the other 149 users supporting him. Eventually, this continues onwards until all 150 users are admins or possibly even bureaucrats and stewards. The accounts are then given to the millionaire, who uses it to influence articles related to him, whether negatively or positively. Since he controls over 150 admins (each still with their own IP adress), he can recieve a majority consensus in support from any of the debates he is involved in, with the other admins powerless to stop him... --TBCΦtalk? 23:44, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Again, do people really think that wikipedia articles are worth millions of dollars? (And do they really think that wikipedia is made by admins?) All sounds like a lot of paranoia to me, but maybe some didn't realize that our buddy Colbert was kidding (as comedians are often wont to do). --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 23:55, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think such mind control on such a massive level is likely to happen for a while. And if it does, I think we can wake Jimbo from his deep slumber busy schedule to settle it. Fagstein 05:27, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

All of these scenarios assume that a high edit count or even adminship is worth buying. I'm not an admin, but I can not picture anything that they would have that be worth paying money for. The "power" of an admin is tied into his/her reputation and that is only acquired through a demonstrated commitment to positively impacting the Wikipedia community--something that can not be bought or "farmed". Whatever trolling destruction the admin tools can do are short lived and would soon be reverted and the account banned. What a waste of time and money. Agne 23:59, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

If a millionaire wants to pour gobs of money into getting hundreds of people to make hundreds of thousands of good edits to Wikipedia, I'm not going to lose sleep. If a hundred-strong cadre of admins goes insane, Jimbo can start pulling sysop bits. Meh. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:21, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

If Bill Gates or Rupert Murdoch want to destroy Wikipedia and are willing to spend millions to do it, they can probably figure out a simpler way than that. Hell, it would be cheaper and surer to start your own competing project and add the paid minions openly. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:51, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

• I became admin after about 8 months of steady work. I wouldn't have paid for something I can get for free. Also, admins are trusted users of the community and anyone who buys such an account lacks the experience or trust to act as an admin. If they make enough stupid mistakes or get found out through Checkuser, they'll lose their admin account and basically lost their money. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:26, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with you here, although I am new enough that maybe I'm missing something. The administrator who put up all the "expand" tags on pages that already had "stub" tags appears, imo, to lack the experience or trust to act as an administrator. Her/his page is about editcountitis and number of pages "created". However, if you run through the new pages this administrator claims for the over 500 new pages count you will see that they're close to 100% stubs, or need serious work on their English, or are simply copied from other pages on the Internet, or were NOT created by this administrator according to their histories. This is a lot of pointless, poorly written, poorly conceived or unusable fluff added to Wikipedia by an administrator whose stupid mistakes are not getting found out and whose purpose is solely to increase his/her own edit count and pages created count. There are already plenty of means of becoming a poor administrator at Wikipedia, it seems to me, so that creating expensive ways to do so may just simply be a waste of money. KP Botany 18:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

It would never work. unless the average IQ of a wikipedia user starts halving any time soon. The same 150 people voting for each other on nominations is bound to rise suspicion. --Yaksha 01:37, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Infobox-only articles

What's the best way to deal with articles that have no prose whatsoever, and only consist of an infobox or a track listing? I run across a surprising number of these. (examples: [15] [16]) I've heard that some people delete them under CSD-A1 (Very short articles providing little or no context), though infoboxes usually make it unambiguous what the article is about, and infoboxes do take some time to fill out. On the other hand, these are extremely unsatisfying articles... a random visitor has to do too much work to figure out what the intro sentence should be, and it's not clear how long the article will be in a prose-free state, and the original author could have spent a very short amount of time to enter an introductory sentence. I usually tag them with {{context}} to try to urge people to add a single sentence. What do other people do in this situation? --Interiot 08:39, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

The first one looks like an article worthy of a Speedy, since it doesn't assert its notability. Not sure if the album itself is notable or not, but the article is definitely stubby. -Freekee 01:32, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

When is something a copyright violation?

I ask this question because I bumped on the article Piet Keizer, which in its first version was a literal translation from [17]. The text has been rephrased later, but some sentences still are a literal translation and it is very obvious what inspired the article. Taka 18:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

It's ok to literally translate certain things, especially relevant names or facts. As long as the article isn't a carbon copy it should be fine. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 18:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. That works the other way around too? I mean translating a wikipedia article, shuffle a bit with the text and then claim it as my own text? Taka 18:22, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't work that way in either direction. A translation is a derived work, and in most copyright jurisdiction is even explicitely named as an exclusive right of the copyright holder. Names or facts are not protected (by copyright, names may be trademarked), of course, independent from the language they are expressed in. Free paraphrasing is fine, translating is not. --Stephan Schulz 18:45, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Well I don't know the exact degree to which this is copied. It seems to be a little too close for its own good, and could probably use a rewrite. As for the other thing, Wiki is GDFL, so you could do just that. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 18:42, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Um, no, you could not...text licensed under the GFDL remains under copyright and derivative works must be properly attributed as stipulated in the license. You could not claim it as your own text. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:23, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Er, that's not correct. A translation is a "derivative work", and may only be copyrighted with the permission of the original copyright holder. Otherwise, it's still a copyright violation. However, with permission from the copyright holder, presumably a translation could be GFDL and the original version not. --W.marsh 18:45, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

True and false. If you got permission from the original copyright holder, you could copyright a translation or any other kind of derivative work, or the original work itself. The question here however is, when can you copyright a derivative work, *without* permission from the original copyright holder. The answer is when that work is an "original work of authorship."Wjhonson 18:17, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Newcomers

I'm going to say it because it is true. Wikipedia is crap if you happen to be new like me and here's why:

• I've twice started working on articles, and twice been mugged by all I can describe as Vultures descending to watch a newcomer struggling.
• There is no indication on the "start a new page" that tells you; you will be mugged for daring to start a page without being "in with the lads".
• The help facility is useless to me if I can't even search it. I've tried "search" at the left but it just returns articles on "stub". I can't see a search on the help pages.
• I can't find anything about the preferred style for reference quotes. I can't find anything about "needs reference", I can't find anything ...
• I've raised requests for help and advice in numerous places, not one has come back! How come a pack of vultures were quite ready to kick me in the teeth but no one will help when I ask it?
• As a newcomer, I'm struggling even to edit the pages. What I need is protection from these vultures to get an article to a stage where I'd welcome a few comments. Why isn't the facility to have "page under construction" even if it is time limited?
• Ok, the page was rubbish, but it was bound to be because I cut and pasted some stuff to get an idea of where things would go .... but, now everytime I go into edit there is a huge ... I mean absolutely huge mass of rubbish at the beginning of the article. My wife’s comment when I asked her to check the spelling was "I can't do that...".
• Why when I start a new page aren't I offered a series of helpful templates instead of a blank page (which as a newcomer I've got to fill with something)
• But most of all why is Wikipedia so hypocritical "come in an edit you say", when I do that I get beaten up ....
• I posted almost similar comments months, maybe years ago on an article on incrementalism which I left in disgust. What happened? Bugger all. Why?

Mike 14:25, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

• I'd love a smell checcer as well!

Mike 14:28, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Mike. Wikipedia has a strict policy of not biting the newcomers, but unfortunately not everyone is completely receptive to new users. My suggestion is to start an article in your own Sandbox (which you can create by clicking here) so you can work on it at your own pace. Then, when you feel it's ready, you can copy or move it to the Wikipedia namespace. You can get the attention of helpful editors by placing {{helpme}} on your talk page with a specific question. I know that it can be frustrating to learn this new system, but please try to remember that the editors here are doing their best, and that includes deleting articles that don't meet Wikipedia's standards. Calling them "vultures" is a breach of our rule concerning civility. If you have any further questions, you can talk to me on my talk page, or you can put the helpme tag on your own talk page to get someone's attention. Good luck! -- Merope ^Talk 14:44, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The vultures in question can be found here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lords Reform Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 15:06, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi Mike. Unfortunately your first experience of Wikipedia is typical of what happens to newish editors contributing their first article. They are by far likely to run afoul of WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:V and WP:RS until they've spent quite some time here. I disagree with Merope somewhat, what happened to you was not a case of WP:BITE as you weren't targeted in your personal capacity. However the articles that were nominated were done so absolutely correctly. If you spend any amount of time on NP Patrol and saw the sheer amount of dross coming into the 'pedia you'd understand why some editors have a "shoot on sight" attitude. Most of the time, it is the only effective way to remove unencyclopedic content before it can "fall below the radar" of the community. Zunaid 12:07, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Have you seen Wikipedia:Tutorial and Wikipedia:New contributors' help page, Wikipedia:Tips. Rmhermen 01:28, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Point Three: There is no search facility just for Help pages.

Point Four: See WP:Cite

Point Six: See Template:Under construction but preferably use your own sandbox as described above. Rmhermen 01:34, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Jaranda Abuse

Jaranda blocked me without cause and refuses to discuss it.

All of the blockers are on the extreme left— Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.188.117.10 (talk • contribs)

What username were you using that Jaranda blocked? Fan-1967 17:04, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Likely an autoblock used by an AOL troll I blocked. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 05:12, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Combine stubs

A major problem with Wikipedia is that we have all sorts of stubs—some almost fancruft—floating around and abandoned. I propose a new guideline encouraging user to combine these stubs into a master article, and the way to do that. Think of it as Sumary Style for a bunch of articles, rather than one. For example, imagine how disorganized we were before a bunch of microarticles were combined into Apple Developer Tools. We should do that for a lot of articles. Instead of having lots of stubs, we should have (for example) provide summaries of the Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Some that are really tiny can be merged right in; otherwise, main article links are fine if it would take more than a paragraph or two. This allows consolidation and makes it easier for people to watch one article than watch a bunch. If they are sorted by year (that's one of the details we'd have to decide on) the reader could see the author's style progress over time, even if you only used a few paragraphs for something like the Works of William Shakespeare. And it doesn't have to be literature, either.--HereToHelp 12:22, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

So what exactly are you proposing? There is nothing that prevents you for doing this already. Just merge away (redirect the stubs to the main article), Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages and all that. Just remember that some stubs do deserve a life of theyr own, but as long as commons sense is applied and reasonable counter arguments that pop up are considered I see no need for any sort of new policy on this. --Sherool (talk) 12:45, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

A7 and G11

A discussion to fix an issue w/A7 and G11 is ongoing at the speedy deletion subpage. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:15, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Does the new spam policy prohibits AMG, Discogs, MusicBrainz, Last.fm?

Someone has created an account to delete all external links to All Music Guide, Discogs, MusicBrainz, and Last.fm, calling them "massive spam" (diff), hence its name of User:NoMass.

Personally I couldn't care less about MusicBrainz or Last.fm, but AMG and Discogs had always been valuable resources and external links for music articles, providing infos about stuff we don't or can't have (such as complete discographies with each edition and variant).

Are they now forbidden on Wikipedia? Is that a side-effect of the new tougher-on-spam policies and quick deletion of spam pages? 62.147.86.81 22:48, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Looks to me like that account has existed for 18 months, and has edited one article today (Contribs), and removed links from two others in the last month. No sign of any wholesale removals anywhere. Maybe s/he just felt the links in that particular article were excessive? Fan-1967 22:55, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

His talk page was empty with a "welcome" from 2006, and he deleted "massive spam" with a "NoMass" name, that was enough for me. I wouldn't waste hours investigating more for someone like this, who doesn't provide any actual edit-summary rationale for his wholesale deletions of valuable links. Since you seem to imply there's no actual new policy against AMG/Discogs/etc., it should be up to him and his ilk to delete links supposed spam one by one, with an refutable (Karl Popper) edit summary for each of them. Any troll or vandal can delete 4 useful links wholesale, claim a blanket "massive spam" in edit summary, and either waste hours of editors' time to figure out if there was a good reason to delete them, or have them stay wrongly deleted. 62.147.86.81 23:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I replaced the AMG link, as I think that's widely recognized as a valuable off-site resource. I'm not familiar with the other links NoMass removed, but unless they provide substantially different content from AMG four such sites was excessive. 62.147.86.81 (if that is your real name) needs to be cautious of crying wolf. Postdlf 22:58, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I put back the Discogs links [18] too, because they have what AMG doesn't have: an almost complete discography of each edition, version, variant, special edition, remix, etc., plus "lone tracks" that appears on compilations or somebody else's album. But my earlier point was about if sites such as AMG/Discogs/etc. are now forbidden by Wikipedia. 62.147.86.81 23:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Um, no. We just have guidelines about what links are appropriate. Postdlf 00:06, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Just to belatedly provide a better context:

• Usually, I would have simply reverted wholesale this guy's wholesale deletions, since he didn't provide verifiable rationales in the edit summary.
• But because of that recent article Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-10-02/More_CSD about new antispam policies, with some pretty martial rhetoric about "blatantly commercial - shoot on sight", I was unsure of the current rules, if Wikipedia considered the above sites are commercial, and it was now OK for someone to bulk-delete them as spam. Happy to know that's not the case. 62.147.86.81 00:50, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Postdlf: The vandal is back and deleted the AMG discog again as "link spam" [19]. 62.147.36.238 07:04, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

NoMass gave a pretty thorough justification on the talk page there for a vandal. It seems good-faith to me; why not engage the person in conversation about why or why not those links are appropriate, instead of handing out vandalism warnings? -GTBacchus^(talk) 07:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Although i agree that i initially made a mistake in deleting all 4 links wholesale, i must say i am quite gobsmacked to have been called a vandal. I am certainly NOT a vandal. Everything i did was in good faith, and complied with the rules and precepts of Wikipedia. Please excuse me, but going to a website (AMG) that has no more information than he actual wiki article, only to find the site to be selling the band in questions albums made me think that this was spam. I really don't mind website that actually do provide one with good information, and do not see my action as vandalism. I will, none the less, be more careful when deleting links. NoMass 13:47, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Poor Wording in Charizard Article

Moved to Talk:Charizard. 19:07, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Template policy.

Wikipedia:Mini Talkpage Template Dev920 (Tory?) 17:35, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposed naming conventions for articles on controversial events

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions: There is a set of proposed conventions for naming articles on controversial events, such as military conflicts and terrorist incidents. Discussion so far indicates that this proposal would codify what is already current practice. Kla'quot 08:57, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Signature Lengths

I'm guessing this is one of those items that comes up repeatedly. I know there's a recommendation of signatures being "one line while editing" (which I would say make 80 characters in HTML), but is there any policy? Been seeing more and more 200+ character sigs and would think a policy would be appropriate. Thanks. *Sparkhead 20:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Can you point to an example? I haven't found this a problem where I've been editing. AndrewRT - Talk 21:22, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather not shine the spotlight on any one individual in this context. There are two immediate instances of 200+ html character signatures I can think of, and I'm certain I could find a few more. I'm just curious with respect to any sort of established policy. *Sparkhead 23:51, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

If you need an example, there's always my joke signature at User:Carnildo/sandbox. As a more general case, any user with a color gradient in their sig. --Carnildo 01:26, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

As a matter of principal, I believe freedom of speech, and length thereof shouldn't be limited. --

JoeCamel Talk Contributions/Articles Email Cat's photo Hit list Watch list Shit list Hero list Favorite article Second-favorite Link-of-the-day Porno-of-the-day

20:27, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Hrm, that's a wee bit WP:POINTY. --Interiot 20:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I would say that setting a limit would be WP:CREEP. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 20:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

This is an example of an actual signature I have encountered "in the wild": [[Image:SigCommunist.png|15px]]<span style="background-color:#000000; white-space:nowrap; font-variant:small-caps;">[[User:Tom mayfair|<font color="white">P</font><font color="white">r</font><font color="white">e</font><font color="white">m</font><font color="white">i</font><font color="white">e</font><font color="white">r </font><font color="white"> T</font><font color="white">o</font><font color="white">m </font><font color="white">M</font><font color="white">a</font><font color="white">y</font><font color="white">f</font><font color="white">a</font><font color="white">i</font><font color="white">r</font>]]<sup>[[User_talk:Tom mayfair|<font color="white">T</font><font color="white">a</font><font color="white">l</font><font color="white">k</font>]]</sup>[[Image:RedPhone.jpg|15px]]<small><sub>[[Uncyclopedia:Folding@home|<font color="white">F</font><font color="white">@</font><font color="white">H</font>]]</sub></small></span>[[Image:Sucrose_b.gif|30px]][[Image:MUN.png|15px]]. I'm starting to think maybe a "rehabilitation" program of unsyclopedia users might be in order, they seem to love exessively long image laden transcluded signatures over there. --Sherool (talk) 20:46, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I've had a rant on this exact issue linked in my sig for a while. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:51, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Prevent recently registered users from uploading images

This would help to cut down on image trolling.--Rouge Rosado Oui? 22:27, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

It would cut down on most of Wikipedia's problems with images. Unfortunately, consensus appears to be that it's a bad idea. --Carnildo 05:08, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps consensuses can be wrong. To me it sounds a splendid idea. -- Hoary 05:10, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea also, prevents copyvios by a ton. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 05:13, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I also think it's a reasonnable restriction. As far as I know, we don't have much statistical data to study the question. That's unfortunate because it would really make the debate much more concrete. We have to weigh the benefit of anons uploading useful and uncopyrighted images against the cost of cleaning up the mess left by most. This is more problematic than anon vandalism precisely because of the copyright issues which I think we need to be particularly careful with. Pascal.Tesson 06:11, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I also agree that this is a reasonable idea. As for the possibility that it might prevent a newbie from uploading a useful image, I think we can work around that. Just encode into the error message a note that new users are restricted from uploading images for this time and to contact an admin for assistance with something like the {{helpme}} tag. If it is a useful image, I'm sure a admin would be glad to help (and could probably aid with copyvio & proper tagging). If it's a vandal, I'm sure they wouldn't bother. Agne 08:18, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Absofrigginlutely strong support etc! Idealy we should have a brief "e-learning course" about copyright and our image policy that people would have to pass first because sadly beeing a long time editor is no guarantee to get the uploads right. However the least we could do is to make sure people can't upload files before they are "old" enough to move pages and edit sprotected pages at the very least. This would hopefully cut down on the number of "upload & run" acounts who's only contributions are a handfull of unsourced images and then never edit again. If they hang around long enough to get a welcome message and hopefully read a couple of policy pages things might improve, at least a little bit. At At the very least they would learn how to edit pages so we don't keep getting questions like "how do I change the tag" over at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions all the time... --Sherool (talk) 08:52, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

The only "problem" is Commons, they can not reasonably restrict newbie uploads because -- well there is not a lot to do except upload there (newbies are unlikely to get heavily involved with translations and categorising before uploading anyting) -- and they get heaps of wierd uploads that can be used anywhere too. Hopefully this single login thig will materialise soon and aleviate some of that peoblem since people could rack up "experience" on the various other projects or something. There would still be the potential problem of some random person wanting to donate some great photos without having to edit a bunch of articles first... --Sherool (talk) 09:01, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

people uploading crap is a waste of time for us to clean up, but there's nothing we can do about it; since preventing newbies from uploading is pointless as they can just go do it at Commons. If we want to prevent vandalism to actual mainspace articles through pictures, it'd be better to impliment restrictions such as "newly registered accounts can only upload new pictures, and cannot make changes (or upload over) previously existing pictures" or "newly registered accounts can not add pictures to articles". Not sure whether that last idea is technically possible.

talking about uploading in general, i think the Special:Upload page needs a more obvious link to a page that gives more detailed guildlines on what is what and what can/can't be uploaded. Because the current instructions there are quite confusing to a new picture uploader. There's about a dozen links to various articles and guildlines, but nothing that really sums it all up on one page. And that's what we need. Because i can imagine many people just deciding it's too confusing, giving up, and deciding to upload first and let the admins deal with it. --`/aksha 11:26, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

You're thinking too hard. Newcomers don't know that uploading something on the Commons makes it appear here (unless they're a returning blocked user). And the Commons can deal with that stuff because they don't have an encyclopedia to work on! So with that out of the way, I say do it! Maybe have it be bundled with the privilege to edit semiprotected pages.--HereToHelp 12:01, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

umm "Unless they're a returning blocked user" being the key phrase? How often does this happen anyway? Are new accounts spam-uploading pictures very common? And more importantly, are they mostly from new people or returning vandals? --`/aksha 13:03, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Anything that will reduce the rate of problem uploads will help. Right now, we're getting at least a thousand copyvio and unsourced images uploaded a day. --Carnildo 19:50, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Commons has the advantage of not allowing fair use: any image from a copyrighted source that isn't clearly under a free license can be deleted immediately. The English Wikipedia doesn't have this advantage, and most people don't understand what does and does not constitute "fair use". --Carnildo 19:50, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with Heretohelp on this one. Whatever policies we have, malicious editors will be able to get around through Commons or sockpuppetts or meatpuppets. That's not the point here: we get a lot of newbies which either are well-intentioned but are uploading copyrighted material or are ill-intentioned but are, shall we say, casual vandals. In many ways, knowing about Commons shows that you're an experienced editor! Pascal.Tesson 19:58, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I referenced this thread on Bugzilla: bugzilla:7539. Dragons flight 21:57, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Honoring Nazi and Al-Qaeda copyrights

Why are we honoring Nazi and Al-Qaeda copyrights? Examples:

• Image:OctopusNAS1.jpg
• Image:AQ00105.jpg

Is it even legal under U.S. law to honor these? Does the Foundation have an opinion? - CrazyRussian talk/email 03:16, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

If the copyright holders are Nazis or Al Queda, screw them and use the pic. Terrorist organizations have no legal rights. Use the pic. It's legal. Tobyk777 03:52, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is supposedly not copyright paranoid, and I think that not using those images due to a potential lawsuit from Osama Bin Laden or Hitler's ghost is probably the highest form of copyright paranoia imaginable. --tjstrf 04:12, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Who owns the copyright on such works can be a complicated question. For example, some works (such as Nazi imagery) may well have passed into the hands of more enlightened governments/organizations who may choose to enforce the copyright specifically to prevent such materials from being republished. Nor is copyright automatically ceded just because the owner is currently associated with a terrorist organization, though it would certainly make it difficult to raise the issue in a US court while actively pursued for terrorism. Dragons flight 04:25, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

LOL I am sure it's a prosecutable offense in the U.S. to sell Osama a kg of apples. Is respecting his copyrights somehow different? - CrazyRussian talk/email 10:09, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's a civil matter. That's how it is different. More to the point, after he is dead any copyright he holds would pass to his estate/kin. Sooner or later it is entirely plausible that a non-terrorist will have control. Dragons flight 10:24, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Even more to the point, it's arguable if we are aiding him in any way by respecting copyrights...

Terrorist organizations have no legal rights. Say what? A copyright is a copyright. Period. We should respect those copyrights regardless of what one might think of the copyright holder. It's not about being paranoid, it's about respecting the spirit of copyright law. Shame on anyone who thinks that we can disregard it on political grounds. Pascal.Tesson 10:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Shame? This was a legal question, not a political one. The question was, is it permissible under U.S. law to honor copyrights held by declared enemies and terrorist organizations. - CrazyRussian talk/email 11:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• This discussion is a good reason why we should not rely on amateurs for legal advice. No matter how much you dislike someone, it doesn't make it legally safe to embark upon paths like this. --Improv 13:49, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Quite. Reparations to Germany were halted by the Petersberg agreement of 1949-11-22, and the only exclusions of 17 U.S.C. 104A are copyrights had once been seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act and which would otherwise be held by governments (this is not the case for German images, for which the copyrights are held by the original artist or photographer). Al-Quaeda falls within the remit of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which means that their copyrights (or, more strictly, copyrights which are owned by the individuals named) may or may not have been seized by the U.S. federal government. This shows the importance of the fair use tag: we may be (fairly) infringing the copyright of the U.S. government, not of some terrorist organization. It is simply wrong to state that these images are in the public domain for the sole reason that their authors are not to our taste. Physchim62 (talk) 14:57, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Note that the very point of the Trading with the Enemy Act is to allow the U.S. government to receive payments which it would otherwise be illegal to make! But in any case, WP doesn't pay anyone for copyrighted material :) Physchim62 (talk) 15:00, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• The issue of who has copyright in NSDAP generated material has been litigated. [20]. In Germany, Transit-Film, which is owned by the Federal Republic of Germany, has the rights to NSDAP film of that period, including Triumph of the Will. In the UK, those copyrights were extingushed by the Enemy Property Act of 1953. Not clear what the US copyright situation is. --John Nagle 04:15, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
  • The situation in the US is quite confused. At various times they have been honored, not honored, voided, or simply ignored -- and it's quite possible that different circuit courts have different opinions on the matter. I've got no idea what the status is right now. Best policy on Wikipedia's part: assume they're copyrighted just like anything else. --Carnildo 04:29, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

As other's have pointed out, in many cases we don't even know for sure who the copyright belongs to and it could easily change. It may not belong to Al-Qaeda or even someone who would be classified as a terrorist by much of the world. Perhaps more importantly Jimbo Wales has made it clear we don't just respect for legal reasons but moral reasons. Try reading Wikipedia:Copyrights specifically Regardless, according to Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia contributors should respect the copyright law of these nations as best they can, the same as they do for other countries around the world.[21]. Also, a lot of people don't seem to understand the goals of wikipedia. We want are supposed to be creating a free encylopedia. If we go ignoring people's copyrights willy nilly, even if we can't be sued in the US, what about people in other countries? They may have major problems trying to publish or make wikipedia available because we've used a bunch of copyrighted stuff which simply isn't recognised in the US. By accurately tagging and recognising stuff which is copyrighted, even if it isn't in the US, we can help prevent this. BTW, please don't bring up strawman arguments like what happens if some country starts to recognise copyrights for 1000 year old works or something like that. Nil Einne 09:25, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Recommendation: Expand Notability—companies from Fortune 500 & Forbes 500 to Fortune 1000 & Forbes 2000

You are invited to join a discussion whether we should expand Notability—companies from Fortune 500 & Forbes 500 to Fortune 1000 & Forbes 2000.

Background

The English Wikproject has 6,903,492 articles today. An English Wikproject Articles progress summary follows:

Date	Milestone	Comment
January 2001	100 articles
April 2001	1,000 articles
October 2001	10,000 articles
January 2003	100,000 articles
February 2004	200,000 articles
July 2004	300,000 articles	155 days since the 200,000th article.
Nov 2004	400,000 articles	130 days since the 300,000th article.
March 2005	500,000 articles	117 days since the 400,000th article.
June 2005	600,000 articles	Approx. 93 days since the 500,000th article.
August 2005	700,000 articles	68 days since the 600,000th article.
Nov 2005	800,000 articles	68 days since the 700,000th article.
4 Jan 2006	900,000 articles	64 days since the 800,000th article.
1 Mar 2006	1,000,000 articles	58 days since the 900,000th article.
26 Apr 2006	1,100,000 articles	56 days since the 1,000,000th article.
19 June 2006	1,200,000 articles	54 days since the 1,100,000th article.
6 August 2006	1,300,000 articles	48 days since the 1,200,000th article.
24 September 2006	1,400,000 articles	49 days since the 1,300,000th article.

The point— the English Wikproject continues to expand. There are a number of main articles that need to be written still (e.g., all Fortune 500 companies do not yet have articles); none-the-less much of the current expansion is coming in the form of specialized articles in relatively narrow fields based on individual contributor’s interests. Wikipedia is an important research tool because it provides depth in areas that traditional encyclopedias don’t; it becomes more important as it expands. The trend to more specialized articles is not only acceptable; it is desirable. May first come to Wikipedia when they note that “Googles” on obscure topics turn up Wikipedia answers. Many stay because there is information in the Wikipedia that can’t be found anywhere else (at least in English). The English Wikproject becomes ever more valuable as a research tool as it goes into ever more specialized topics.

At some point we will fill out all the Fortune 500 and Forbes 500 companies. At that time it makes sense to continue down to the : Fortune 1000 and Forbes 2000 companies. Although I’d like to see creation of a Wikiproject:companies and corporations with a concerted effort to complete the articles on the Fortune 500 and Forbes 500, articles on Wikipedia are normally contributed in piecemeal fashion and someone later comes along to systematize the structure with a Wikiproject. Hence this expansion of criteria can be argued to be just a continuation of the normal process.

Come join the debate & consensus building if you care about the topic—support and opposition are equally welcome, as long as the comment is thoughtful. Skål - Williamborg (Bill) 04:38, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Create the WikiProject, that will be a good way to discuss what is and is not notable (smaller companies can also be notable, big but boring companies are difficult to write articles about)! Many subject areas have similar problems! Physchim62 (talk) 13:11, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

As I was just writing on Slashdot, the rapid increase in the number of articles is a bug, not a feature. Look at the most recent 50 new articles at any time; most will be junk. Somewhere before article 500,000, we probably had over 90% of the subjects covered that actually deserve coverage. --John Nagle 03:34, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Doubtful. There is a massive depth of knowledge in the world. Millions of people and places and things to write about, and the best part is that you can learn about things you didn't even know existed, let alone thought worthy of coverage. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 08:01, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Notability of politicians - how far down do we go?

Just came across Robert Parkyn, a City of Calgary, Alberta alderman from 1926 to 1944. Someone is putting in the entire historical list of Calgary aldermen. Is this is a good thing or a bad thing? --John Nagle 05:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not see why it is inherently a bad thing to have knowledge about people being put into Wikipedia. Of course, if we only rely on web references for checking purposes people may be a little surprised about how much just isn't there. These people are likely to have a lot of written information about them.

Also, in what sense are you using the word "notability". Ansell 05:24, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not paper. Notability is just there to make sure we can meet verifiability and NPOV without original research. An alderman likely has enough written about him to ensure that. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:25, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is also not a junkyard. It's not just there for verifiability/NPOV - we don't want articles that are written about not-notable topics, even if they're verifiable and NPOV. Blocks of sidewalk in New York City, or for that matter, Bismarck North Dakota are not notable enough for an article. --Improv 13:51, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

O RLY? If a block of sidewalk has multiple non-trivial media mentions, I'm guessing it's a pretty special chunk of sidewalk. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:36, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

John Nagle has not told you the whole story. Robert was a City of Calgary Alderman for 17 years on and off, he was also a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for 4 years while still serving as an Alderman, he was chairman of the Calgary Public Library and helped found a Federal Canadian political party. If that is not noteable then what is. --Cloveious 16:12, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

i should note that in my statement above, I wasn't meaning to comment in particular on Robert Parkyn -- i was talking in the abstract. --Improv 17:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

In general I'm uncomfortable with the idea that we should document every occupant of every relatively minor public office. There is verifiable information about many of these people but I think we should establish WP:NOT [www.lexisnexis.com Lexis Nexis]. In specific, I'd probably say delete him: he has done a number of relatively unimportant things. The Land 19:20, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Atlas

This Portal seems to be at the heart of a massive project to build galleries of maps for every nation and continent (separate from the existing geography pages) that's against a basic tenet of wp:not -- wikipedia's not for galleries. There are over 200 articles involved here so I'd like to get more input before I take this to deletion. It seems like all the pages should be transwikied to commons and linked from the appropriate geography articles, so we can have a neat little box that says "wikimedia commons has maps of x" without filling wikipedia with pages that aren't articles. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• I think a map is a totally separate and different thing from a picture. On any geographical article or reference, a map is inherently useful, which cannot be said of most pictures. Even stub articles on geographic locations are vastly improved by a map that says "here's where it is." Fan-1967 17:41, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• I can see both sides of the argument here, though I'm leaning slightly more towards Night Gyr. Interestingly wp:not makes no mention of maps under 'Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files - points 3 and 4'. Perhaps clarifying whether maps fall under this policy is the way forward. Definately don't take Portal:Atlas to deletion before a lot more discussion. CheekyMonkey 23:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• A good map adds as much information as many paragraphs of text. While we don't need (say) 9 different political maps of Egypt in Egypt, I think they're appropriate as long as each map reveals new and different information, such as a political map, a topographical map, historical political maps from different times, and so on. To say Wikipedia is not a "repository of media files" suggests to merely that we should not be frivolously building up a database of images that have no immediate use in articles. Deco 23:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• There's also the issue that there are very few sources of good, free maps on the net. Wikicommons does a great job of collecting them, but I don't see harm in presenting them prettily here on Wikipedia, where more people who need them are likely to find them. — Catherine\^talk 04:52, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Vandals

If a vandal's real name, address, and phone number are known (such as if they put it on their personal website) can Wikipedia send a cease and decist or a restraining order to stop them from vandalizing? This is not hypothetical. Anomo 12:08, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but we wouldn't. In fact depending on how it was obtained, that information may need to be deleted (oversighted preferably). Could you point me to it? Prodego ^talk 13:50, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you referring to my aardvark? Essjay still isn't around so that particular page isn't going to get deleted for at least a month. MER-C 14:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Well yes for the obtained thing, Blu Aardvark just basically gives it out! He first ties all his online identities to his offline here and then from a link on that site, it gives his computer business here, which has all his info to mail a letter to. Anomo 15:03, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

And if Blu Aardvark does challenge the cease and decease request in court (and being the showman that he is, I have no doubt that he will), what exactly does the Wikimedia lawyers say before the judge? Can we prove any monetary damages incurred considering that we're all volunteers? Doubtful. --  Netsnipe  ►  19:43, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Civility and sarcasm

Hi. We're having a discussion over at Wikipedia talk:Civility#The use of sarcasm regarding the list of "petty examples" of incivility "that contribute to an uncivil environment". In particular, there's some disagreement over whether or not "sarcasm" is an example of a behavior that contributes to an incivil environment. Since there are two people seeing it one way and two people seeing in a different way, I thought it might help to request broader input. Thanks in advance to anyone willing to contribute their perspective to the conversation. -GTBacchus^(talk) 16:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Apparently sarcasm is useful for proving a point and WP:POINT is against that. Anomo 17:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm. WP:POINT isn't against proving points, just against doing it disruptively. WP:CIVIL is against doing it rudely or scornfully, which is what sarcasm is. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:51, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

At which point we have the question of what the appropriate response is to someone comparing everyone on a given policy page to torturers in dungeons, then telling them they've broken Godwin's law when they answer him sarcastically instead of telling him bluntly he's a completely insulting bloody idiot. Which is what actually happened - David Gerard 18:52, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Chips Ahoy! vs. CSD

Quick policy question. I notice that Chips Ahoy! was deleted by Improv (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) under the new G11 WP:CSD. In determining the scope of the new rule, can we differentiate between spamvertisements and legit articles about products that happen to be sold commercially? Improv's action seems to meet the letter of the policy, it's the spirit of it that I'm concerned about. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:06, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

BTW, I think Improv's actions were appropriate, it's the wording of the CSD that seems to be unclear on the subject. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:08, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Further update, Improv's delete log seems to indicate a widescale deletion targeting articles that are about commercial products, possibly without regard as to whether or not they are spam. This definately does not meet the intent I read in G11, and if the community consensus agrees, there will need to be a widescale undelete. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Here's a list of example articles that Improv deleted under G11 as discussion points. Some of them have been restored or re-created by other users, but all were recently deleted under G11. This is not a deletion review request, this is data intended to spur discussion about the G11 CSD and shaping it appropraitely:

• Pepperidge Farm
• Nilla Wafers
• Milano (cookie)
• Curly Wurly
• Famous Amos
• Toll House
• Teddy Grahams

Regards, CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:35, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

By and large, I went after broad categories of product-description articles that lacked encyclopedic value, that is, failed to say anything that suggested that they merited an encyclopedia article. I believe that there are plenty more that fail to state anything like "this is important", such as the plethora of articles on cellphones and similar, but as of recent I've been too busy with other Wiki activities to clean them out. In the end, I'll be disappointed if it is decided that G11 should be interpreted narrowly rather than broadly, but I'll accept it and push for more change in policy before going further if that turns out to be the case. --Improv 17:39, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you can help clarify which criteria you're using. For example, Pepperidge Farm contains a brief company history, then a list of products. Curly Wurly was a description of a popular product as well. If you're applying notability, then the deletion should occur under A7. But as G11 was employed, the fact that the criteria is this is relevant:

Blatant advertising. Pages which only promote a company, product, group or service and which would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic.

CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:49, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

These, along with the rest, have all been listed at deletion review. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

What really bothers me here is that I strongly believe that G11 is badly needed and I dismissed as paranoid those who believed that this would not be applied carelessly. It appears however that this is not quite the case so far. Maybe admins should be rebriefed about the intention here. In the Pepperidge Farm article for instance, two thirds of the article are a list of their cookies. That's advertising? No problem, delete that but there's no need to delete the article. Chips Ahoy! says these cookies are yummy? Well delete that but we're talking about a cookie brand that's almost part of North American pop culture. Please admins: don't give G11 a bad name by going on crusade. Actually, I think that we should have a few weeks where admins are strongly discouraged to G11 anything where the tag has not been applied by someone else. Pascal.Tesson 20:06, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I think not only was it applied carelessly, but that this does not meet the letter of the rule, in that the article showed no signs of being written in a promotional manner or being unencyclopedic - it's clearly written by ordinary Wikipedians who like the cookie. There's a reason for that "...would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic" clause. Deco 23:18, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Consensus

See also: Wikipedia:Consensus § Consensus vs. supermajority, and Supermajority

This is in response to some discussion I've been seeing (primarily at WP:RfA, but elsewhere as well.

I think we should standardise what we use to determine as consensus.

To start:

• A minimum quorum of 5 editors.
• A two-thirds (67%) majority.

I think the minimum of 5 should be required to prevent WP:BITE, and just any sort of bullying. ("Me and my two friends say what goes around here, in this here article.")

And I think the minimum should deal with issues which currently require the "higher" percents of 75-80.

Yes, I realize that many see voting as evil, but that's not necessarily what I am talking about. Counting heads is not the same as determining consensus.

Interested in hearing pros and cons. - jc37 19:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Pros: we have a simple way of determining consensus.

Cons: incentive for vote stacking, discourages discussion in favor of counting, does not take into account the quality of argumentation, removes incentive to find compromise, makes Wikipedia more bureaucratic. Pascal.Tesson 20:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

How does establishing a 5 contributor minimum, and lowering/standardising the percent at 67% do all of that? - jc37 20:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Jc37, if we decide that 67% carries a motion, then all someone has to do is have a large enough group show up and "vote". If people realize that numbers won't carry the motion, but only superior arguments, then there's less incentive to try and stack numbers. If it's about numbers, then what's the point in trying to persuade someone whom you could just outnumber? If it's about numbers, how does that allow for a situation where the superior numbers clearly have the inferior argument? Making decisions by numbers is anathema to NPOV because it subjects us to the tyranny of the majority. This proposal is unacceptable. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:46, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

This happens now except instead of just voting "keep" they say "Keep per nom". This is why I think a minimum and percent are necessary, because people have already game'd the system long ago. --NuclearZer0 02:49, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Since people game the system now, you want to give system-gaming official sanction? Is the solution to a broken system to break it completely and officially? -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Noone is stating that people shouldnt give their opinion, your point that some how they cannot win issues with just numbers alone is moot if you have visited AFD lately. You say Making decisions by numbers is anathema to NPOV because it subjects us to the tyranny of the majority what I am telling you is its how its done already, best to make some rules, then to continue ignoring the real wikipedia. --NuclearZer0 03:38, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I would prefer to raise awareness of a better way to think of AfDs. I would prefer for admins to go ahead and close based on arguments, not numbers. It does happen sometimes (need links?), and m maybe it should happen more often. I'm not going to support making the system even easier to game on the grounds that a lot of people game it already. Adding rules is not the solution here. That would just facilitate gaming, because it would guarantee gamers that they can win by getting a certain percent of "votes". Encyclopedia content must not be decided by majority. If most AfDs go to the majority, it may be because they're actually being decided on policy, and the majority of people tend to understand and correctly apply our deletion policies when making their AfD recommendations. Show me an AfD that was decided in favor of numbers and against policy, and I'll show you an AfD that's gonna get reversed. (That's a serious offer.) Here, check out my informal analysis of every AfD I'd participated in as of June. There were a few, very few, closed against the numbers, but most managed to attract numbers to the strongest argument. We shouldn't sabotage the few exceptions to that rule; they're a good thing. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Don't like it. Consensus is not a vote count, it's a reading of a discussion and sorting out where most people indicate agreement and also whether any applicable policy or guideline applies. Too many factors are involved to simply just add up heads. And in some issues a quorum of 3 can be enough to decide a consensus, some mergers or page moves for example, may not meet the standard, now would some deletion debates come to that. Steve block Talk 20:14, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

  As I mentioned above, I'm not saying that we need a minimum of 5 "supports" or "opposes", but just a minimum of 5 "talking about it". We could have 3:2, 4:1, 5:0 (and the reverses 2:3, 1:4, 0:5). In no way does this actually change consensus, except saying that we should have 5 or more people talking about it. Also, how can 3 people come to consensus in a situation where 75-80% is required? - jc37 20:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

  I know what a quorum is, I'm saying some issues can be settled in a 2:1 or even a 2:0 or 1:0 fashion, if we count votes. We don't need five people talking, we have WP:BOLD. As to 75-80%, um, what's 3:0 to carry on your ratio theme, although where on earth do we need 75-80% consensus outside rfa? Which is bureaucrat's decision anyway, and up to them how they call it. Most other issues there was a time we used to set a bar before discussion, but that doesn't happen so much now. It's going to be impossible to get five people talking about some issues. Have you followed a request for comment lately? We have a request for a third party page, that indicates the idea that three people can solve a problem has legs. Steve block Talk 20:31, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

  This in no way infringes on WP:BOLD, WP:IAR, or any other guidelines/policies. This is only concerning Wikipedia:Consensus. And 3:0 sounds good until you tell someone else that you're reverting their change due to "consensus". Which actually makes that 3:1. Which is still 75%, but I think you understand the point. 2 or 3 people shouldn't be able to bully a single voice. That wholly goes against the spirit of consensus. The more I am reading old and new policy discussions, process "fixing" proposals, numerous WIkiProject discussions, and just ongoing processes like RfA and XfD, I really think we need a 5 person minimum. I know I'd be more comfortable with several things if we did. - jc37 20:41, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

  People who have reverted in a manner should then build a new consensus. That's why we have the idea that no consensus is binding. Consensus can change. If 3 people make a decision, and then one person comes in and wants to change it, the consensus needs to be rebuilt everytime. That's how consensus works. And bullying isn't allowed per our civility policy, so I don't see your concerns as posing any real concerns for Wikipedia. Steve block Talk 15:11, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

  I have participated in bullying in the past, I wouldnt call it that, but me and 3 others overruled the user on a edit they wanted to make, actually sweepnig changes to all operation articles. A decision that was made by a small group that should have been made by a larger one perhaps. I think it was the right thing to do, and technically they were going against consensus. Consensus is basically a worthless word when its defined so porous, I think a minimum will be better at least to claim consensus by Wikipedia standards. You can say majority, but not consensus. --NuclearZer0 20:47, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

  And that's an example of 5... I seriously considered proposing 6 or 7, but I went with 5, due to something I was reading about de-sysopping on other language wikipedias. - jc37 20:53, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• (after edit conflict) I don't think it is advisable to codify numerical values for consensus. Some very general (and deliberately flexible) guidelines for specific situations like RfA or WP:RM might be appropriate, more in the sense of providing models for bootstrap guidance rather than rigid prescriptions. For example, in low traffic articles, consensus might consist of asking about something on the talk page and if no one objects, then going ahead and doing what you suggested. In such cases, there may be only one or two responses or even none. Also, the opinion of a single editor who can present the case persuasively in terms of applicable policies and precedents should generally carry more weight than dozens of pile-on votes. older ≠ wiser 20:15, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

  In theory, I agree with everything you said. However, I think that a fair portion of it doesn't relate directly to what I am suggesting here (such as your comments about being bold in article discussion/action. - jc37 21:23, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• I agree with this, I think most people who think consensus is not a vote have not been on Wikipedia or are seeing things through rose colored glasses. I have almost never seen a AFD go against the "vote", I hear talk of the best arguements, but have never seen that actually carried out. I think this is best since it prevents people from blocking changes crying no consensus is to define minimums for consensus. --NuclearZer0 20:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
• I think it's most sensible, and increasingly necessary, to require consensus to mean discussion and judgement, not votes. It's otherwise too easy for people to not make arguments based on policy and expect that to mean something. --Improv 20:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

  Not specifically directed at you, but has anyone actually seen many AFD's or anything else that involves consensus through 3 decisions (ie keep/delete/merge, relist,delete,overturn), go entirely against the majority of the people because of a better arguement and not the numbers? I would honestly like this pointed to me because I have yet to see it other then in the case of sockpuppets. --NuclearZer0 20:36, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

  I think I've seen it occasionally over the years. I think it should happen far more often, and that it's sorely needed to fix recent problems with an influx of new people. --Improv 20:39, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

  Yes, though not often, including the recent rather controversial Carnildo re-sysopping affair (Which this proposal is not a result of. I am merely answering a query for an example.), though the Carnildo situation was more because it was felt at the time that he should have just been re-sysopped, rather than go through RfA. Just the fact that it was so controversial (60% I believe) shows how much editors seem to rely on votes. Read User talk:Kbdank71's talk page for more examples. (Btw, I want to, again, show my great support for Kbdank71, by the way, he does what can be seen as a difficult and sometimes controversial job.) - jc37 20:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Expert opinions and consensus

Perhaps this is a little off-topic, but what I really dislike here is that when things are decided by general consensus, expert opinions -- especially in the sciences -- are given no more weight than anyone else's. You get situations where a majority of rather clueless individuals basically ends up dictating how specialists can organize and write their articles. It's like the arts department always gets a say in how things are done in the chemistry department; not very efficient and rather depressing for the chemistry department, even if the arts department means well. Why can't this situation be improved? Frankly, I believe Wikipedia looses a lot of potential editors this way who might otherwise be writing fantastic articles for us. --Jwinius 02:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

It is very off-topic. And i don't think it's a problem. Your situation assumes that people just debate it out, and then get consensus. Where as in debates concerning factual topics - people don't just debate amoungst themselves. References to other websites and variafiable sources and so on. Someone who is truely an expert will be heard if they've had books or papers published, because the books and papers themselves would be a reliable source. Similarly, someone who is an 'expert' in a field will be able to find sources to back up their arguments, where as the "clueless majority" will not be able to back up their arguments if their arguments are wrong. --`/aksha 03:51, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

He's not really that off-topic, just disagreeing about what consensus is used here. Anyhow, I agree, consensus seems to work fairly well since there're always outside sources to fallback on works well for content. However, I can see the point about organizing, there it's simply opinion, and it's hard to figure out if style should be dictated by customs for that area or made to be universal. --Prof Olson|talk 19:57, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, here's a test case for you: if a couple of biologists and some like-minded individuals were to come along and petition the community to change the current most popular common name first policy in favor of scientific names for article titles related to biological organisms, do you think people would listen? The current policy really crimps their style (and no, redirects are not a solution). --Jwinius 20:44, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, i'd have to disagree. I happen to be bio student, and i really don't understand how using common names can cramp style. I'm not here to write a science textbook, or make a science encyclopedia where the target audience for science articles is scientists/science-students. Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia. You sort of implied in your first edit on the topic that when the majority is going against (and wins) over the so called expert opinion, it's a bad thing. I don't see how this case can be considered 'bad'. This isn't even about 'expert opinion', it's not about the biology, it's about how to write an encyclopedia. No one is disagreeing that the names we are using are common, and therefore unscientific. The issue is about which one is better for a general audience encyclopedia. The biologist may have 'expert opinion' on the actual biology, but their opinion is far from expert when the topic is the best way to present an encyclopedia. --`/aksha 22:41, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

You're a biology student? Well, pardon me, but from your contributions it looks like you've only been busy writing about video games. If you ever try describing a corner of the natural world, you'll get a better idea of what I mean. Regarding the "Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia" argument, it seems to me that's at odds with what it says on the Wikimedia Foundation's homepage: "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge..." Well, that's not going to happen in the biology department if Wikipedia insists on ignoring the way biologists have described the natural world for over 250 years. Instead, we get these endless arguments about which common name is best, while taxonomy takes a back seat. That's what I call sad. --Jwinius 00:45, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, so? The point is, your argument makes it sound like as if every person who's involved in biology in the world wants to have scientific names, but they can't since the majority of people here are not involved in biology. Which is misleading. Wikipedia isn't ignoreing the way biologists have described the natural world, from what i can see, all articles about living organisms have an info box at the very start of the article which gives full taxonomic classification, as well as links to articles about all the previous levels. HOw is that ignoring the information? Taxonomy is at the beginning of all articles, in very visible and well presented info boxes...i can't see how you would say taxonomy is taking a back seat. The title of the article is just...the title. The decisions about what to name articles is a question of how to present the encyclopedia. The article itself does still includes all the knowledge regarding taxonomy, taxonomic levels and 'proper' scientific names. Could you explain exactly how changing the name of the article will help convey the sum of human knowledge any better, or how it will make the article any better full stop? On the other hand, changing the name of the article will mean more people will be redirected to the article instead of actually reaching there...since more people use common names when they hit go on the search box. It also means more pipped links, since in most articles, scientific names just aren't appropriate (as in articles not to do with biology, linking to articles for a species of living organism). Although neither of those problems are major problems, i don't see any major benefits from changing the titles either. Neither is wrong, or changes the encyclopediac content of the article, so as far as i can see, it's just a matter of presentation. --`/aksha 04:34, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

An article title is important at Wikipedia because it puts one name above all the others. If it's a scientific name, you tend to get more meaningful discussions about which taxonomy to follow. On the other hand, if it's a common name, you frequently end up with stupid fights about whether it should be called Puma or Cougar. Yes, there's the taxobox, but too often you see that its pretty much ignored (no redirect for the scientific name, misspellings, synonyms lacking or absent, conflicts with other members of the same group, etc.) even though the article has many edits. If we were using scientific names for article titles, people would certainly pay more attention to classification.

Then there's category pages: fantastic if you're trying to organize thousands or articles (how's this for an easy overview: Category:Cyatheaceae), but useless if you're forced to deal with common names (what a mess: Category:Sharks). Regarding wlinks, I wonder if there's even 100 our biology articles that have over 1000 links each, but I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of these exist only for themselves. Therefore, in by far most cases the current policy is counterproductive, as well as bad for internal and external continuity. It promotes more confusion than it prevents and teaches our readers nothing. At best it shows that we are disorganized, at worst that we have little respect for science.

Anyway, let's remember that this discussion is really about consensus and whether we should give the experts more influence in matters of policy. I think it's clear that you are not (yet) an expert in biology, but that you would nevertheless like to have something to say about how the biologists organize their department. Unfortunately, you are hardly alone, which is my point. Folks, I think this is one of the main reasons why there is interest in Citizendium. If we were to give our experts more influence -- a real say in matters -- and not just pick and choose, only paying lip service to the idea, then I'm sure we would succeed in taking much of the wind out of the sails of that particular project. --Jwinius 15:27, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, if things like the Taxobox is ignored...what makes you think it'll be less ignored if the article title is changed? For all we know, changing titles of articles to scientific names could make the article in general more ignored. Either way, it's just speculation. The bottom line is, this isn't about biology. Biologists may know their biology, but they don't nessasarily know how to write an encyclopedia. Nor do they nessasarily know how to organise or present information in a wiki environment. Does remaning the article make editors take it more seriously? readers? teachers? are the public actually confused by the use of common names and not scientific ones, would using scientific names actually make it easier for everyone? Although using scientific names would make organization easier for those familiar with taxonomy, but wouldn't it make organization far harder for those who are NOT familiar with taxnomy? (which is the majority of editors here.)

Let's say in a school, the biologists run their department and their expert opinion is respected, but they will probably still have to consult the finance people when it comes to money issues, and listen to the maintainance folk when it comes to their building, because they're not experts in that area. Similarly here, experts may be experts in one area of knowledge, but they are not nessasarily experts in running/organizing/maintaining an encyclopedia, if anything, the long term editors here know more about what makes a wiki work than so called experts.

Giving experts a say when there is a content disagreement may well be a good idea in theory, but there are still major problems with that (who is an expert? how do you prove someone's an expert? All it takes is a few idiots pretending to be experts and messing things up for the community to lose all trust in the claim of expertise); but giving science-experts the say in how to organize and how to write an encyclopedia? Sorry, but i can't agree. All the problems you have outlined are not biology problems, but organization and presentation problems. And i suspect this is often the case when experts (or when people such as you) are advocating for experts to have more say - it's more say in how to run the place. And not so much more say in content. --`/aksha 23:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Naming doesn't really seem like a great example of the problem. I mean, you can always have redirects from more technical terms. However, the style of what's in the article might be important to the experts, they might well have a certain way of presenting something. I know for computer science I'm looking at the articles in Wikipedia, and the formatting on some of them is rather foreign to me. It seems to me that something like this is hard, I can't cite a source easily saying a given style is *wrong*, but as an academic there are certain styles that are conventionally followed. --Prof Olson|talk 00:00, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Concensus is not an English word!

...and not one in any language I know. It actually hurts my eyes. Can you please try to spell it correctly? It is a very basic principle in Wikipedia and deserves this tiny bit of respect. Thanks. --Stephan Schulz 22:44, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Done, by a simple replace. : ) - jc37 23:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Much better, although people may wonder what I ranted about ;-). --Stephan Schulz 23:21, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Now that that's resolved, did you have an opinion on the discussion itself? - jc37 00:02, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Didn't you mean to ask whether Stephan had "an opinion on the diskucion itself"? :*) --Richard 16:35, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Please - anyone can make a typing error. Let's not make fun of another user.--Runcorn 19:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Creative Commons credit

I was discussing whether we legally need to give credit to the photographer of a creative commons Attribution-ShareAlike on the article page. I can't imagine we legally need to do so. If so, we need to edit a whole lot of articles to credit photographers. Garion96 (talk) 22:34, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

'Attribution' means you must credit the source. Tra (Talk) 22:40, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

True, but credit is already given on the image page. Garion96 (talk) 22:46, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see the bit where you mentioned 'article page'. Yes, putting it on the image page is fine because it's still available for anyone who wants to look. Tra (Talk) 22:50, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I thought as well. Garion96 (talk) 13:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

External link spam - adding to list

How do I get a URL added to the automatic block list? --ArmadilloFromHell 04:37, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

meta:Talk:Spam blacklist --  Netsnipe  ►  05:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:DAB

Hi everyone, I would like to know whether there are any guidelines for disambiguation pages about the country names, such as Italy (disambiguation) or Germany (disambiguation). There is a revert war on Russia (disambiguation): one opinionated user attempts to list all Russian states throughout history, such as Kievan Rus or Republic of Novgorod. Such a list would be endless. I don't think anyone would search for "Republic of Novgorod" under "Russia"; there is really no ambiguity here. Furthermore, he adds to the article numerous "see also"s, leading to irrelevant articles such as Rugians. User:Mikkalai tried to talk with him (without avail); I hope that a wider discussion of the issue will be productive. Please share your opinions. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 09:12, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Disambig pages are for routing backlinks to the right place, rather than creating a list. If there are existing backlinks that refer to the new entries, then they could be kept. If there's no possibility that backlinks would ever refer to them, then they could be deleted. --Interiot 09:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Yup. One can create something like "list of Russian states throughout history". It could be linked to from the DAB page but even that is not really part of the intended use of DAB pages. Pascal.Tesson 10:39, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

frustration with possible Vanity article

I have looked through Wikipedia’s Help Section but have not found it very useful (I’m sorry) in dealing with this, so I am asking for help here…

I have been frustrated trying to edit what may be a “vanity” post, and one with what I thought is a particular noticeable POV. The article in question is on libertarian author Jim Powell. The original author keeps making and remaking the same changes and undoing other's edits.

He deletes references to Powell’s current publisher. The current publisher is a conservative political press, not an academic one. Since Powell contends he is a historian I think this is relevant information and did my best to add it without any POV.

The original author keeps adding what could be considered “puff words” about all the libraries Powell uses. Anybody can use a library. Does it make the author more believable if he lists the many he visited? Judging from his book’s footnotes he relies on secondary sources and not archives.

The original author keeps re-added phrases about how great Powell’s writing is. Fine, but there is no sourcing and no reference to any possible negative reviews.

FYI: I noticed the IP address that wrote the article and that continues to edit it can be traced to a Travel Agency in new York City. Powell used to write for travel magazine in NYC. Possible sock-puppet??

I started a talk page on the original article but the original author has ignored it. Hanover81 14:34, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

First Person Accounts

Are first person accounts appropriate for Wikipedia? I was in a train wreck a number of years ago. When I found an entry for it I posted a first account of my experience which was pretty remarkable (I was shot out the train and landed on the tracks). Another person, a very experienced Wiki contributor, deleted it saying that first person accounts are inappropriate. Is this correct?

Taganwiki 21:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Wikipedia is a Tertiary source. All information must come from, and be Verifiable from, independent Reliable Sources. First-person accounts are not acceptable. Fan-1967 21:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Actually, Wikipedia, like most encyclopedias, is both a secondary and a tertiary source, since we provide summaries, comparisons, and superficial analysis of primary and secondary sources. Deco 23:11, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

First person accounts of that sort probably do not meet "encyclopedic" standards so it was probably right to remove it.

The policy is less strict than Fan-1967 says above, however. Primary sources are acceptable material if using them is non-interpretive. There are raging flame wars all the time about primary vs secondary sourcing, so I won't explain that any further. SchmuckyTheCat 21:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

However, just to be clear, an eyewitness or participant editing an article to add material that is otherwise unverifiable is not accepted practice. Fan-1967 21:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

• You need to post your account somewhere else, and then we can reference it here. Wikipedia doesn't have inherent reliability or credibility of academic peer review or eyewitness knowledge; instead we have the verifiability of having our sources open to anyone to check. If you post your primary souce elsewhere, it can be cited in the article to flesh out details and linked as further reading. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. This would come down to "own research". I've gotten to the point where I've even been deleting perfectly believeable stuff that I myself wrote before, but didn't supply any references for. I've also been telling other people that if they have some interesting experiences to share, just publish it somewhere else first -- your own hope page for all I care -- and then perhaps we'll quote and reference you (alas, most of them suffer from writer's block). In this case you could do it all on your own -- just don't try to plagiarize yourself, as that would set a bad example! :-)) --Jwinius 22:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

If you want to supply original research, Wikinews allows original research. Tra (Talk) 23:43, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks all for the clarification - I am new to this. Actually most of my account was recorded in TV interviews and newspaper articles right after the accident. So I would need to reference those shorter peices rather than the longer and more complete summary that I just wrote. Incidentially some of those articles had errors in them so sometimes the secondary sources are not as reliable as primary.

Taganwiki 23:59, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

A word of caution. Publish it somewhere on the web you can well do, but I doubt very much that it would be considered a reliable source, and any other editor would be justified in removing it. It is preferable to use news articles and the like, as these are mostly considered to be reliable. In response to your last argument, we are after verifiabily, not truth. Zunaid 10:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

You have FPS with games and FPA in encyclopedia authoring. How to :

• Just upload some media (picture, drawing, audio) and tell that you did it yourself. Try it and be happy (hint : fake a newspaper page and upload a pic : your text is primary and may stay. Do not tell that I told you.) -- DLL ^{.. T} 19:48, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Ook!

I see that Ook!_programming_language has been deleted. When I read Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ook! programming language I see that there was no consensus. Does "no consensus" mean delete an article? -- SGBailey 22:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• No, but an article can always be nominated again, especially when there isn't a clear keep. Here's the renomination: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ook! programming language (second nomination) In the seoond discussion, some months later, the result was Delete. -- Fan-1967 22:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

How can you do a "what links here" on a deleted page? -- SGBailey 22:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Silly me - you go to the empty edit page and there is a "What links here" in the margin. -- SGBailey 22:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Concerning AOL users

As AOL uses a system where multiple users have the same IP address, we end up with the rather bothersome situation where people are being locked out of Wikipedia for the actions of other user on their IP. In effect, a thousand people are being punished for the acts of one.

Might I suggest that AOL users be made to create accounts if they wish to edit wiki articles? I know that seems somewhat unfair, but as stated, so many people are using the same address simulataneously that if one user gets punished, the rest get punished unfairly. If AOL users were made to create accounts before they were allowed to edit, then instead of blocking the IP, only the accounts that were causing problems would get blocked. HalfShadow 02:36, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• Please see WP:AOL. AOL is making some changes that are beneficial to us. >Radiant< 09:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to replace NOR and V

All editors with an interest in good sourcing are invited to review a proposal to replace Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Verifiability with one policy: Wikipedia:Attribution. The proposal picks up the key points from NOR and V, and has some additional allowances regarding the types of sources used in pop culture articles, to make things easier for editors working in that area. The proposal cuts out the fluff from NOR and V; and having one policy rather than two should reduce the potential for confusion and inconsistency. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 10:30, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the concept of merging those two policies into one is a really good one. However, I think some of the language of the proposed policy could use work. I think some of the examples could be a lot clearer, and I'm not sure relying on Jimmy Wales quotes is really a good idea. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 14:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

"Block Immunity" of Certain IPs

What's the policy/procedure regarding the blocking of IPs that are of an institution with multiple computers using the same IP? Take for example 193.171.151.129. Do we keep blocking the school for 24-hour periods and hope one day it'll stop? And what does the "efforts will be made to contact [school] to report network abuse" mean? Who will do this? -newkai t-c 14:31, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I usually block repeat offenders like this for a month (or more) if I think no one's watching. If the school wants kids to edit, then they can police their kids. --Golbez 21:57, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense. If they are serious about contributing they can create an account or ask for unblock. This is not a life support system. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 00:08, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Now that we have the tools to do so, we can cut down on collateral damage by ticking the two checkboxes – block anon only, and block account creation – when placing such a block. Blocking anons only will cut out the majority of vandalism, and blocking account creation will get pretty much all of the rest (nobody creates an account just so that they can go to school and vandalize Wikipedia). Meanwhile, established editors can log in without any trouble. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:39, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Do editors notify schools of vandalism?--Chris Griswold (☎☓) 03:18, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

That anon-only blocking sounds like a good solution. -newkai t-c 09:39, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, blocking account creation for school computers seems like a really bad idea to me, unless we could somehow be in touch with the school administration in case they had a class project involving wikipedia and needed the block lifted during the signup period. Besides, if the kids really want to vandalise during school hours they could just sign up a bunch of accounts from their ("unblockable") AOL accounts at home. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 21:22, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

That's true but I think that, in most cases, vandals are not that motivated. Especially high school casual "look what I wrote on Wikipedia" vandals. Vandalizing Wikipedia is one way to face the boredom of being in the school library, this simple solution simply makes it a slight hassle to do so and should be well enough to drastically reduce the problem. Pascal.Tesson 21:39, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Class projects that involve editing Wikipedia can be problematic for us, by the way. See Wikipedia:School and university projects and its talk page for some thoughts about it. FreplySpang 22:05, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

For "efforts to contact [school]", see WP:ABUSE. You can report repeated IP vandalism there, or volunteer to help contacting schools. (Apparently it's currently backlogged.) FreplySpang 22:05, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

What are they going to do? Hold a meeting with kids not vandalize Wikipedia!? If the administrators are patently interested in lifting a block, then that's a different story. -newkai t-c 00:18, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, you asked what efforts are made to contact the school. That's the one I know about. Personally I have no objection to just blocking school IPs. FreplySpang 00:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

That is true, I did ask that, my mistake... Didn't mean for it to sound so harsh. I guess I am just asking a further question... I don't see schools seeing vandalism to Wikipedia as abuse. I think they're more worried about hate mail, pornography, copyright vios, etc. -newkai t-c 00:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

No problem :-) I think different schools have different levels of tolerance. Sometimes the school admins are genuinely interested in finding out exactly when vandalism occurred so they can compare it against their usage logs, and track down the individual offenders. Also, one way these things can work out is that a school admin says, "Don't bother with these little 1-week blocks, just block us indefinitely." FreplySpang 00:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem is a group of kids will get a certain free or library time every day, during which they'll vandalize Wikipedia, get blocked for 24 hours, right in time for them to do it again. I don't see why editing can't be blocked for a week. The school network can still view articles. -newkai t-c 00:16, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Article Deletion Policy

An article I was watching was recently proposed for deletion. I replied about this on the talk page, but was ignored and the article was deleted without any arguments to counter mine. Is this how it's supposed to happen? The article in question was QDB.us. Peaceduck 16:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

No, that's not how it's supposed to happen. There are 3 different deletion methods; Speedy deletion, Proposed deletion, and Articles for deletion (AFD). By your comment I'm guessing it was either Proposed deletion or AFD. If it was Proposed deletion, then if you didn't think it should have been deleted, then you should have removed the template and commented on the talk page. If it was AFD, then you should have followed the link in the template to a seperate talk page just for the deletion debate and commented there. The way you did it, I imagine no one even knew you commented. If you think it should be restored, you might want to comment at deletion review. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 17:01, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Follow-up: It seems it was AFD afterall. Here's the debate. Now you know for future reference. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 17:05, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• You can go to WP:DRV if you believe a deletion to be in error. >Radiant< 15:36, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Accumulated Blocks Policy

I had the idea of a policy on Wikipedia, in which if a registered user accumulates a certain number of blocks (100?) of any length and/or form, he/she is permanantly/indefinitely banned from ediitng Wikipedia. The fact is, there are some users that just never learn. I'm not going to point any fingers, but I have seen some users with incredibly long block logs and warnings, but that keep going at it (whatever it may be: vandalism, pushing POV, disrespect for other users, etc). Of course, this scenario is very unlikely and most users do eventualy stop if they have accumulated enough blocks, but in some cases this might sort out some problems. Any comments? --NauticaShades 19:57, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be a bad idea. A good "line in the sand" would be 25 blocks. Rama's arrow 20:34, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

To add, maybe after 20 blocks the user should hauled up for an RfC and subsequent mentorship/probation. An indef block should only happen if a 24th block is exceeded. Rama's arrow 20:38, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

100 blocks? I think Wikipedia is too tolerant for its own good if there are people still around after that many offenses. --tjstrf 20:41, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

This plan seems silly and not thought out. If someone is causing enough trouble that they have a hundred blocks, there should be a RfAr or other determination to ban them altogether. However, some people have been editing for over four years, and some blocks have been acquired for trivial or mistaken reasons. A raw count doesn't take into account any of this, and banning of a consistently disruptive user shouldn't be dependent on the number of blocks the user has had before. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:42, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

If you note my second comment, I did ask for an RfC/RfAr/mentorship/probation process to begin after say, 20 blocks. Rama's arrow 20:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Count is the wrong metric. Frequency is the right metric. Wikipedia has been around for years, and hopefully will be around for years longer. Even the best editors occasionally lose their cool, and may need a temporary block to calm down (never mind mistaken or trivial blocks). If someone only had a short block every few months, who cares how many they have had. GRBerry 20:58, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

True. It would also be wrong to create a new policing category just because of a few rotten apples that are unlikely to spoil the bunch. The present system does its work in a way that keeps the overall project healthy, even though many individual cases may create heartburn. Rama's arrow 21:06, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Pointless idea. By the time someone accumulates a hundred blocks, they'll either have been here for decades, or they'll have been banned for exhausting the community's patience. --Carnildo 01:18, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

"Of course, this scenario is very unlikely...". Well, that just about says it all. It's just not worth our while to create policy for situations that don't happen. If someone makes it to an absurdly large number of blocks (forget a hundred—there are vanishingly few editors who hit even ten non-indefinite blocks) without finding himself banned outright (by the community, by the ArbCom, or by Jimbo) then there's probably something unusual about the circumstances. We don't want to get hamstrung by a fixed, inflexible policy that didn't anticipate those unusual circumstances. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:46, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Keep in my 100 was just an idea. It could very easily be anoter number. Besides, it is possible, I've seen somebody with a number of blocks in the 60s range. NauticaShades 05:57, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• Such people usually end up banned by either the ArbCom or the community. We don't really need a formal policy for a cutoff point, which would be gamable. >Radiant< 15:35, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

administrator behavior

I have a question - if an editor is an administrator on another language Wikipedia or sister project, but there is evidence that he/she is breaking WP policies and behaving in a disruptive and boorish fashion on the English Wikipedia, can action be taken against that editor on the project where he/she is an administrator, based on this evidence? Rama's arrow 20:32, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Ultimately, that is a question for the other project, based on that projects standards. But I'd doubt it. Last I knew, usernames are project specific. So there isn't even a solid basis for saying they are the same person unless they have said so on their userpage on both projects. GRBerry 21:00, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - yes it does look a bit murky. Even enabling email only goes so far. My worry comes from the fact that while English WP composes of many nationalities, other language WPs are far narrower and may suffer from deeper systemic bias. Admins there may not be mentally educated to not spread such bias or POV. Rama's arrow 21:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Please remember each community is self-governing. What is against a policy at en.WP may not be so in another language of WP. It is hard to remember the subtle changes policy when switching communities. A kind reminder as to what the specific policy at en.WP may be a better response than starting a campaign to desysop them in another community.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 17:48, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Problem with autobiography nutshell

The nutshell version of WP:AUTO appears to be confusing and too 'agressive'. Comments appreciated at Wikipedia_talk:Autobiography#Confusing_nuthsell.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  20:35, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

external complaints

Browsing through random articles, I came across a rather strange dispute: Joko Beck. I've read the debates (here, there, and everywhere), and I was quite suprised by the power that a complaint made directly to "those above" has. Although I understand the reasoning behind the removal of the content, I can't help thinking that if there had been no threat, no-one would have considered the content a problem (especially since it could have been phrased: "Beck claims to have these clients: ..."). This lead me to think that we should have a tag for saying that external complaints or legal threats have played a part in making the article what it is. At least we'd know when the content really is community-based, and when it's been decided by the powers that be. Any ideas? yandman 21:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I've been watching that article for several weeks, as it goes through a revert and POV war, (it does not say much for enlighted beings), and this latest censorship is very upsetting. I think any article that's censored like this, should be reduced to a minimal one sentence description, tagged with a censorship banner and locked. If the "bad" is censored, that the article should not have any "good" either. --ArmadilloFromHell 21:42, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

It wouldn't have upset me as much if I had known right from the start. It's disappointing to start off thinking this is a community project, and then see articles like this hit a brick wall because someone's lawyers have complained. yandman 21:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

See WP:BLP. Simple thing. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:32, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Exactly: WP:BLP#Using_the_subject_as_a_source. "When information supplied by the subject conflicts with unsourced statements in the article, the unsourced statements should be removed.". The statement "Beck claims to have these clients: .... " is sourced, by his statements, and these are reliable in that context. To sum it up: A statement made by a person is a reliable source concerning that statement. How can that not be so? yandman 11:56, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The statement "Beck claims to have these clients: .... " should be sourced by reports in reliable secondary sources including the claims (see wikipedia:reliable sources). A statement directly made by a person is a primary source, which (unless the statement is quoted by a secondary source) is very hard to verify. The guidance from WP:BLP reflects this. Summing up slightly differently: A statement made by a person is sufficient for deleting conflicting unsourced statements, but is not sufficient as a source for adding content. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:40, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I see what you mean. I still think that we should be shown the complaint, or at least told that there was one. I prefer transparency. yandman 14:11, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:User page

Should we semiprotect Wikipedia:User page? It looks like it gets destroyed a few times a day by some new user trying to create their own user page. Fan-1967 20:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Requests for page protection should go to WP:RfPP, not here. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 22:03, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't requesting it; I was proposing the idea for discussion. This is the right place for that. Fan-1967 22:06, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it's been established previously that high traffic isn't cause for protection or semi-protection. We could, of course, add a note to the top of that page's source warning users of this problem. Fagstein 07:48, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I added a note at the top of the page source (visible only if they edit it). Hopefully, it will discourage users who get that far. Fan-1967 12:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Semp'ed for now, but please add requests to WP:RPP in the future. In response to Fagstein, it's been established that high traffic is no cause for protection of articles. Wikipedia:User page is not an article. >Radiant< 14:42, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Edit limit

I am sick and tired of seeing fanatical POV-pushers taking over wikipedia articles. A detailed explanation of this is at User:Nikodemos/Asymmetric controversy and User:Infinity0/Wiki disclaimer. What I suggest is simple.

• Any user may only make x edits to an article* per 24 hours.

*in the article/template namespace and any others prone to dispute, but not talk pages

My first proposal for x would be 10. See, this does not harm normal people in any way, since 10 edits is quite a lot, and there is always a preview button. But, this would really slow down disputes, where two or more people keep editing against each other. -- infinity0 23:02, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

And I don't mean "If they make x+1 edits they get blocked", I mean "it is technically impossible to make more than x edits to the same article in one day." -- infinity0 23:07, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. What if you've made 10 edits, and then the page is vandalized, then you can't revert it! —Mets501 (talk) 23:12, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Ownership of articles.... this is a terrible idea. -- Steel 23:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems like a bad idea. What about fast-moving articles like Cory Lidle that had multiple edits per minute. Also, what about WP:AIV, etc. It also would severly limit vandalism reversions. Naconkantari 23:15, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this idea does have its flaws, and thanks for pointing them out. However, the aim is to improve the idea and remove these flaws. Fanatical POV-pushers is certainly a problem on wikipedia. You may not have come across any, but for the people who have, it is hell. A few further thoughts:

For reverting vandalism, edits made directly after an IP edit don't make the counter go up. If someone happens to edit the article just before you revert (and this happens enough times in one day to make your counter run out), well, get someone else to do it.

For "Current Event" articles, an admin could have the option to mark the article as "open" so that these counters don't apply.

-- infinity0 23:20, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

This edit limit thing is not going to happen in a million years. -- Steel 23:25, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, yeah. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it. ;) I assure you, fanatical POV-pushers are a far worse problem than vandals. Vandalism is obvious. Fanatical-POV pushing isn't. -- infinity0 23:31, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• We just had this discussion here. Look a bit further up this page for the section on POV Pushers. --Improv 00:04, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

What happens when someone just starts editing anon then? after the 10 edits. Ban them for sockpupptery? even if their edits are sensible? What about anon users? You can limit registered users to x edits per account, but an anon user who's ip keeps changing (as in they're not doing it, their internet connection is just that way) will be able to edit the article 20, 30...100 times? How can we enforce this rule? What if it's a relatively unknown article, but for some reason...on one day, a bunch of people start vandalising it. Every revert is one edit. And if the article is a relatively unknown/small article, not many regulars will have it on their watchlist. So when the 11th vandal attack happens, would we need a specific place for people to post revert-requests because they've already done their 10 edits per day? What about ip addresses that are shared (i.e. by a school)? So does that mean the whole school can only edit an article 10 times a day? Now you can say people at the school can just create their own accounts, so their 10 edits a day does not overlap with the school IP's 10 edits per day. But then how do you know when an account is a genuine new account, and when it's just someone needing more edits per day? Regardless of whether this proposal is good in philosophy, it's impossible in practice. Which makes it almost useless. --`/aksha 00:26, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually Wikipedia adopted a new guideline last month to deal with disruption. Check out WP:DE. Regards, Durova 19:39, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

To expand a bit on the current articles issue. Even if we allow admins to mark an article as open (which is going to add unnecessary work and delay articles) what about new articles which aren't current events? Some users write the whole article somewhere e.g. in a subpage on their usepager (or in a text editor) but others prefer to slowly work on an article on wikipedia. With this proposal we will basically force users to use their userpage. Also, even non-new articles, a editor might find a stub or some other article in bad need of work. Again while some will use the subpage, many will edit the article directly. While editors should use the preview (and a subpage might be better), many forget and in many cases an editor may keep finding their is stuff they need to correct or improve. I'm sure you can come up with numerous proposals to try and work around this like more admin tagging, excluding new articles, excluding stubs, even making special editors who are excluded from the limit but all this is just creates more work and in the end some editors are going to be discouraged by all the complexity. The key problem with the proposal is that just because an editor is majorly changing an article doesn't mean their a POV-pusher. In many cases major edits should get consensus but in other cases an editor can majorly change an article well and it's not necessary to ask first (e.g. because it's a stub or is so bad anything is better then what's there). Therefore any attempt to limit edits to try and stop POV pushers is also going to stop legitimate editors who are drastically improving an article and removing POV! Nil Einne 09:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Consensus II

For the previous discussion, see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Consensus.

This is in response to some discussions I've been seeing (primarily at WP:RfA, but elsewhere as well).

I think we should standardise what we use to determine consensus.

I am breaking the earlier suggestion into two separate groups for discussion. - jc37 00:06, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Quorum

See also: Consensus

• In order to claim concensus, a minimum quorum of 6 editors in the discussion is required.
  

(Originally I suggested 5. I would be interested in discussing rationales for quorum numbers.)

I think the minimum of 6 should be required to prevent WP:BITE, and just any sort of bullying. ("Me and my two friends say what goes around here, in this here article.") - jc37 00:06, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• While we don't need a strict cutoff point, a consensus of a small group of people is not representative of the consensus of a larger group of people. It is relatively easy to make a decision with <10 people, it gets progressively harder if more are involved, yet also more important. >Radiant< 14:40, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• I honestly am not sure what you are trying to say, could you please elucidate? - jc37 20:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• • • I mean that if five people agree on something and call it consensus, it's possible for ten other people to join the discussion and have a wholly different opinion, thus swaying consensus in the other direction. Of course, consensus among a large group of people is more important than consensus among a small group. Ideally, we want consensus of the whole wiki, but since that's a practical impossibility we'll settle for a well-advertised discussion amongst whoever wants to join it. >Radiant< 09:23, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

• Nah, per my previous objections. Basically, issues are fluid in size and outcome and there are already policies in place to prevent bullying. Basically, you get two mates who ride in and say, yeah, well how about dispute resolution then. And it isn't even going to solve the problem. Some issue don't get 6 participants. Period. That's why we have third opinions. People who feel they have been bullied should go the usual channels, WP:RFC, WP:DR and other venues. Raise a stink, build a better consensus. We don't do binding decisions so we don't need to be bound on how many people make any non-binding decision. Steve block Talk 15:14, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• While I would honestly normally agree with you, that's not been my experience. The problem (as even stated as the last line on the consensus page itself), is that the word "consensus" is thrown around, and often incorrectly. I think that enacting a minimum quorum should deal directly with this issue. Imagine you and a friend made a decision 2 months ago. And 3 newbies show up with an idea, and you tell them that it was already determined by consensus that we do things this way... (And that goes on a lot.) Is that accurate? At least with the minimum quorum, I would feel more comfortable stating that a consensus was determined. Can 2 or 3 people be bold? Of course. And does a third party opinion help with that? Of course. A third party opinion isn't to determine consensus, it's for dispute resolution. I do find it interesting how in the last discussion, and in this one that "dispute resolution", "being bold", "supermajority", and "consensus", are all being melded and merged together as if they are the same thing, when each seems to serve a different purpose. Part of what I'm trying to suggest here is that we need to clarify all of this. Yes, We could "be bold" and make the changes to the various guidelines and pages, but I think discussing it here (and possibly following it up with an RfC, once things have coelesced somewhat) is the better way to go, since I would prefer consensus, over being bold in this case. This is all about choice: Do we look for consensus? Do we act and be bold? Do we ignore all rules? (and for that matter: Do we do nothing?) I think that we have many project pages discussing around these topics, but I think we lost the clarity, hence the confusion. - jc37 20:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• What you do is you judge the situation, and then you discuss, and you keep on discussing until a consensus builds. The idea in all of this is that everyone in the discussion is interested in reaching an agreeable solution. That's the basic premise of all our policies. You can be bold. You can ignore all rules. But you have to discuss those instances where people are bold or ignore all rules in reverse. Consensus is just a fancy way of saying we reached an agreement. Say in your example 3 people reach an agreement and one person shows up an disagrees. Now obviously, the three people are first off going to say, look, we just discussed all this, here's a link, have a read through see what you think. That's not bullying. The one person can read it all through, see if he feels it's something he can sign up to or discuss his own view. But this one person has only a few options. To change the other three's minds and get a new consensus, to argue but fail to change their minds and accept it as a loss, to reach a new compromise or to expand the discussion with outside views. That's the nub of it, and I don't think it matters how many people you get in a decision, a way of doing things is a way of doing things and I don't think you're going to be able to tell three people that have all agreed the same thing that they haven't reached a consensus. I don't think the word can be put back in the bottle like that anymore. All our policies do eventually amount to the same thing, at least from my point of view: they're all part of a chain which says that this is a collaborative effort and that we have to work together. Whether we work together in groups of one, two or many, it doesn't matter. We have to work together. Steve block Talk 00:05, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

---

I would have to disagree that any minimum number is necessary to achieve "concensus". I think logically thinking individuals who understand the basic 5 pillars and general policies of Wikipedia can come together and bury their POV axes to come to a concensus with most articles. I have done this numerous times with just one or two other editors on so many occasions that my head spins to think of when this didn't happen.

Where I came under the worst sorts of problems are the relative newcomers who have a general understanding of project policies to become policy lawyers invoking all kinds of rules and exceptions, and try to put you down (especially newcommers.... like said above see WP:BITE) I my case I either lay off for awhile and let the idiot try to damage the article until he/she burns out, going back to fix it, or I pull up my "credentials" as a long-time Wikimedia user and tell them to go take a hike. But that is usually a last resort.

The problem I do see, and think is reasonable, is to assume too quickly that you have come to a concensus when in fact you havn't given enough time to the "community" of people interested in the content to achieve concensus. Generally speaking, one week is hardly enough time to reach a major conclusion, even though this is very common here on Wikipedia to consider the one week to be sufficient time to reach a conclusion. For very minor things of no consequence, and that can be easily reversed later, that isn't so much of a big deal.

In other words, if you want to make sure you have concensus on something, just be a little more patient. If after awhile only you and one other editor come to some agreement to do something and nobody else has even added their $0.02, go for it. That is part of being bold. How long "awhile" is, of course, up to personal interpretation. --Robert Horning 00:10, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Supermajority

See also: Wikipedia:Consensus § Consensus vs. supermajority, and Supermajority

• For situations which require a supermajority, a two-thirds (67%) majority is necessary for success in determining concensus.

I think the minimum should deal with several issues of cases which currently require the "higher" percents of 75-80. - jc37 00:06, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't particularly like either of those suggestions. Consensus by defintion means everyone agree. Even though 100% is impossible, it's still what people should look towards. That's the spirit of it - consensus means you try to get a solution that everyone agrees on. Setting a numerical percentage, whether that be 60% or 80% is just sending out the wrong message. It's as if saying "if we achieve 80%, then that's good enough, that's a consensus, we can stop trying and just go ahead". It makes 80% the 'goal', and not 100%. Sure, 100% is not practical in most cases, so people set rough guilelines to help decide when consensus has been reached. But the rough guildlines are just rough guildlines, making an actual hard policy of "consensus = x-percent" is just wrong. Same with the quorum bit. A three people agreement can be a consensus if only three people are involved. 10 people can still gang up on a few new people. If anything, this will only allow people to manipulated and game what a consensus is. Do we currently have a problem of being unable to agree on when a consensus has occured? Because if not, i don't see why we need to fix a non-existant problem. --`/aksha 00:17, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Setting arbitrary, hard numbers is a bad idea. Consensus is about discussion, and we should leave room for judgment calls to counter any attempts to game the system. Fagstein 07:54, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

While I don't necessarily disagree with you, that's not how things entirely work. Note what I say above: "For situations which require a supermajority...", not "In all situations which require consensus". Check out RfA, for example. If someone has 83 supports, and 37 opposes, do you think that that person should be considered to have concensus to be an admin? If you say that you would like to see what was said, what if there were 20 support comments, and 3 oppose, and the rest just said support or oppose, with the occasional "per so-n-so". Now what do you think? Under our current system, I don't believe that that person would become an admin. We have similar situations on XfD. Should only 3 comments (or less) on an XfD (especially since they are under a time constraint) - even if unanimous, be enough to determine deletion? What I am suggesting is placing these in order to replace any other arbitrary supermajority requirements which may be higher. - jc37 08:11, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

...exactly what is XfA? The problem with setting wikipedia-wide guildlines on what a consensus is that differnet types of disagreements/problems need to be treated differently. I've noticed how requests for adminship seem to be very much of a calculate % support. This is different to say, articles for deletion, where sometimes an article can be deleted even if it doesn't have so much support...because there are very good reasons to get rid of it. Actual disagreements about article content is even more complex. There are usually many possible solutions. If we say 80% is consensus, then it means we consider 80% good enough. Which means when people get 80% support for one solution, they may stop looking for alternatives. Where as in truth, a better alternative may exist that pleases even more people. It's not black and white, not like RfA...where it's basically either oppose or support. Setting a hard number on how much support constitutes consensus is fine for something like that, where there are two obvious options. But for actual disagreements on articles - consensus should be as close to 100% as practically possible. I think if RfA currently has problems, then it needs to be addressed specifically - as in some discussion is needed specifically about consensus in RfAs. I don't see trying to set general consensus guildlines for everything as practical at all. --`/aksha 09:28, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Maybe he meant "XFD". I wish people would stop citing "requests for adminship" as an example for consensual discussions, as it's pretty much the odd-man-out in that it is about editors rather than content. At any rate, the problem with putting any numerical line to consensus is that it discourages compromise and addressing concerns, and encourages simply rounding up more people that agree with you. A good consensus is usually a compromise. A supermajority usually isn't. >Radiant< 14:39, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I meant XfD (I changed it in the text above). Again, please note that I said "situations which require a supermajority". I didn't say "situations which require a consensus". Or are you saying that we shouldn't have any (except perhaps RfA) situation which requires a supermajority? - jc37 20:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Please define explicitly which situations you think require a supermajority. >Radiant< 09:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

• Again, I'm going to oppose. I think basing it on RFA is a bad idea, not least because the idea that a supermajority as defined by numbers is the pass mark appears to have been disregarded by those who make the call. Steve block Talk 16:07, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Can you give an example of them disregarding the numbers? (AFAIK, the carnildo resysop was because they felt it shouldn't have been in RfA in the first place, rather than a statement about consensus.) - jc37 20:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• I have to agree with this, I have seen one too many articles where 1 or two people hold up the majority of editors and keep stating its not a concensus because 2 of 10 don't agree. A good example is the Iraq War article where an outstanding 24-3 in favor of keeping "war on Terror" in the infobox still got reverted because "concensus means everyone" and "it cant be included if there is no concensus", While I applaud Wikipedia for its play nice rules, it has to understand that with a bigger community not everyone is gonig to agree, no matter what the topic is. --NuclearZer0 16:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Those people should understand that consensus does not mean unanimity. The reality is that on certain controversial subjects, people will keep filibustering until the last straw. >Radiant< 09:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

• What I have noticed is the word 'consensus' is used by some 'closers' of discussions when there was no consensus whatsoever. The closer counts up the votes, votes on the side he/she likes and says 'consensus' even if the total votes were only 1 more for his/her side! Trying to appeal such nonsense is not worth the trouble when you are up against WP lawyering experts who know every WP rule and how to get around or ignore every rule . Hmains 21:21, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• From my experience

1. Some issues are minor enough (like layout, sectioning) that a simple majority will do and people tend to understand that.
2. On complex issues, most editors will thrive for compromise to achieve consensus and will only start arguing that they have a majority/supermajority/consensus when no compromise is able to satisfy everyone.

In almost every case these simple rules are working fairly well. Yes, it does lead to odd compromises or stalls progress but I think that trying to codify the whole thing will make things worse. Pascal.Tesson 21:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• What Pascal said. Also, if you disagree with a closure, you can bring it up on e.g. WP:DRV; people aren't supposed to close a discussion that they were involved in, unless the result is blatantly obvious. >Radiant< 22:28, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Biased Intermediate Website as a Reference

There is currently a debate within the Quebec bashing Discussion page dealing with the propriety of using Vigile.net as an intermediate source. [22] Of the 56 unique references currently cited, 21 direct the user to the Vigile.net website. The debate began with my objection. In short, my argument is as follows: 1) Vigile.net appears to be posting newspaper and magazine articles without permission, as such the accuracy of the transcriptions is called into question; 2) Vigile.net is a website with a clear political agenda, meaning the user is being directed not to the source, but to a biased intermediate website. It is my opinion that this runs counter to WP:RS guidelines; in particular that covered by the "Partisan, religious and extremist websites" section. I'd be interested in the views of others on this issue. Victoriagirl 02:19, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

List Namespace

I have made a proposal for introducing a seperate namespace for lists. Please suggest your views. Your response to the proposal is invited on proposal page. Shyam ^(T/C) 19:03, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Prod's

What's the policy for signing your prod's? Are you suppose to, or should you just let the history do the talking for you? -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk) 20:43, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

• Prod should focus on the article's content, not on the editor who wrote it or tagged it. Thus, you are encouraged not to sign your prods. >Radiant< 08:59, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Using quotes from a website that is the Wikipidia subject in order to illuminate the subject

If there is an Wikipedia entry about an entry and there are few outside references in order to explain it, Can one use various in context sections from the site and juxtapose them with contradictory quotes written by the same author in order to give readers a better understanding of this entry.

I ask because a casual visitor to the site may not notice anything but more indepth research into the many articles gives a clearer picture of the biases inherrant in the site.

I want to do this as objectively as possible and this seems to be a way.

Can one also take assertations from the site that are presented as facts and juxtapose them with facts from a objective reliable source. Of course this would be all done with links to the subject matter and references quoted.

I would like to write this but want to do it objectively. As an example one can juxtapose recorded words and actions by a politician that are contradictory to give an accurate portrayal of who they really are. as long as what you write is true.--Robbow123 00:19, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Quotes in general go on WikiQuote, not here. Other than that, I'm afraid I didn't quite follow what you're trying to say here, could you please give a concrete example or two? >Radiant< 09:01, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
• I think I understand what the question is and I was and am involved in such a case regarding a heavily controversial article i.e. Prem Rawat who made contradictory statements regarding his divinity. The detractors of Prem Rawat tried to insert many quotes emphasizing claims of divinity, while proponents tried to insert many quotes emphasizing claims that he was mere human. The subject has spoken a lot and hence the predictable result was that the article became very unwieldy. The solution was to move all the quotes to wikiquote and resort to scholarly summaries, but when the scholarly summaries are not available in a dispute between factions then, I think, there will be a huge problem. SeeTalk:Prem_Rawat#Context and Talk:Prem_Rawat/Archive_19#Questions_for_P.Jacobi_and_should_we_refrain_from_editing.3F

Andries 10:13, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

In an article about an entity that has a website, presenting the entity's own view of itself is certainly appropriate. Quoting from the website is a good way to accomplish that, because it uses the entity's own words but the quotation makes clear that this is what the entity itself says rather than what Wikipedia is asserting as fact. The availability of WikiQuote shouldn't mean that quotations from or about the article subject are barred from the text. JamesMLane t c 11:19, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I understand, but please re-read what I wrote, What to do when a subject has made contradictory claims? Should we fill an article with these contradictory quotes to present a balanced view? If not, how should this be done? Andries 11:33, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Put the quotes in Wikiquote and link to that page. User:Zoe|(talk) 21:02, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

If it's a controversial issue then it's probably worth a section on the article with a couple of brief representative examples and citations or links to more comprehensive material. If possible, present some context to show whether this person's statements changed over time or varied according to circumstances (such as which audience was likely to encounter the material) - rely as heavily as possible on previously published material for this sort of analysis because it can bleed into original research. Also note the extent to which such contradictions are explainable as verifiable misquotes, typographical errors, or editing mistakes. Durova 01:32, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Use of foreign language on talk pages

I would like to know whether it is appropriate for several wikipedians of the same nationality, involved in a content dispute with wikipedians of another nationality, to use their native tongue for communication on their talk pages. When I requested them to provide a translation, my request was dismissed as "insulting". Is there any policy on this? I recall that in the past, when most people on Romanian and Polish noticeboards spoke to each other in their native languages and ignored requests to translate their communications into English, their conduct was reprimanded as stimulating evolution of national cliques. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 13:47, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines says basically that, that it's a "good practice" to prefer English on talk pages, and to provide a translation if use of other languages is unavoidable. Though private non-logged conversations can and do happen, so I don't know how that squares with, say, use of IRC for Wikipedia:Spotlight. --Interiot 14:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 14:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I also want to know what meausures I can undertake against somebody who explicitely insulted me of being a conspirator. Let's say that a X user who has no idea about the FA criteria, gets involved in a FA review, gets exposed by me because of his ignorance and then desperately tries to get revenge on me. As a result, he explitely accuses me of being a "conspirator", without any evidence. I really want to know if I can file an official complaint against him for this humiliating and unbacked slanders. I also want to know what punishment this user may face.--Yannismarou 14:07, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Yannismarou, your accusations are both irrelevant and insulting. I'm not involved in any conflict with you. Please cool off. I have no idea what you are talking about and this is not the place to vent your anger. As best I know, Wikipedia is not supposed to be a battleground and use of native languages in the English version of the project is discouraged. I just want to make it clear whether we have a certain guideline and whether adopting such a guideline would be reasonable. Happy edits, Ghirla ^-трёп- 14:07, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Your insult against me was totally inacceptable. We can clarify anything you want, but first I'll learn in detail how can take Wiki-legal actions against you. I don't allow to anybody to question my ethos. And those who do it face the consequences of their actions. These things are not under negotiation!--Yannismarou 14:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Wiki-legal action? Is that a threat? Martin 14:20, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

As for the original comment, I could not initially find a policy or guide on the use of foreign languages on talk pages, certainly if it was used a lot it could be considered anti-social and is likely to reflect badly on the users involved, if users were using non-english to deliberately confuse another editor then this would more serious. Martin 14:25, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I did not say "legal". I said "Wiki-legal", meaning what procedures within Wikipedia I can follow. Were did you see the threats?--Yannismarou 14:27, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The only reason why I decided to seek advice on the policy (without mentioning names involved in the dispute, mind) was because you asked me to: "I want you to provide me eith specific rules and guidelines that oblige me to do what you ask me." I hope that you will realize your umpteenth threat and finally "report me to more than one administrators", providing a diff where I called you a "conspirator". Thanks, Ghirla ^-трёп- 14:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Yannismarou, we should all write in English. Consequently, you should either communicate directly in English or provide a translation of what you say (for instance, if quoting an author or something that you cannot translate well (a pun, a proverb and so on). Ignoring this rule is a basic incivility, since anyone should be able to read you and to reply you. As for attacks, either you have evidence, which you can bring to administrators, or you don't, but please don't make general statements like the one you did above. Thanks, Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 14:27, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

My accusations are specific. They are agaisnt Ghirla who called me a "conspirator". Ghirla can have the translations, if he wants them, but he'll be definitely reported by me for his unproven insults.--Yannismarou 14:31, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

His comments don't look insulting to me at all, your comments however are aggressive and confrontational, please calm down. Martin 14:35, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Clarify please: _IF_ you provide him with translations, _THEN_ you will report him for something? What does your providing the translations have to do with whether or not you report him? Is that a threat against him? I don't quite follow. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 14:37, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I have rephrased.--Yannismarou 14:50, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Ghirla's comments are aggressive elsewhere. Yannismarou is an excellent new editor, who has managed in very little time create Wikiproject:History of Greece and three (four?) Featured articles. Accusations for conspiracy, however, are not an excuse for strong language. Indeed, it is considered good 'wikiquette' to write in English. Ghirla, it is considered good 'wikiquette' not to accuse anyone (of conspiracy or whatever) unless there are solid proofs (diffs) to support it. On the other hand, WP cannot and has not forced English in the talk-pages. Furthermore, if someone indeed wants to 'conspire', they can do it via the perfectly the untraceable e-mail feature (in any language they feel like). Please try to solve this between yourselves, and keep WP:AGF as well as WP:AAGF in mind. My talk is welcoming for your further comments (this is not the place). •NikoSilver• 14:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Come on, NicoSilver, could you provide a diff where my comments are "aggressive" or where I called your friend a conspirator? I just noted that interactions in native languages just below the comment of a person, with whom you are in a serious edit conflict, may be interpreted as conspirational activities against him. Once you and Yannismarou adopt English for your conversations, there will be no room for suspicion on the part of your opponents (of which I'm not one, because I totally ignore details of your dispute). As a general observation, I do not like the climate in the Balkanese section of Wikipedia and I urge wikipedians from that part of the world to keep the level of their discourse above that of a sandbox. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 14:57, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yet another case where too short nerves lead to a havoc. Frankly, I blame Yannis for lightning the spark, and I fail to see the purpose of this ridiculous wikilawyering on his side. Ghirla's initial request for translation perhaps wasn't overly filled with AGF, but it was stated politely and quite in line with WP:CIVIL. Yannis's outburst of this magnitude was IMO not justified. As a remedy, I suggest that two of you stay away from each other for a while, and that Niko provides the translations. Duja 15:03, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

"I assumed it was not your intention to use your talk page for hosting what looks like conspirational activities, but your defiant response seems to prove that I was wrong." When I'm accused of hosting "conspirational activities" without any proof, I'm not insulted? Ghirla does not have the right to assume facts. He has to prove them. Make as many translations as you wish. You' ll see no conspiracy. And I still think I deserve an apology from Ghirla for this unproven slander ("host of conspirational activities"} against me!--Yannismarou 15:12, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

"If you see that your enemies are multiple and you are alone, it's not worth it. You can't fight a tsunami, can you? I'm sure there are many Romanian editors who would help, if the conflict was that fundamental (but it was not)." Enemies Ghirla?! Enemies!!! Tsunami!!! Do we have enemies in Wikipedia?I I only strive for historical truth nothing else. I'm really sorry for your comments! Really sorry!! See my last edit in Talk:Phanariotes to see if am an enemy of Dahn or not. You don't have a clue about the historical backgrounds of these debates in Talk:Phanariotes and, nevertheless, you make such comments. I always tried to be NPOV and I alway tried to serve truth, although I had sometimes to disagree with other Greek Wikipedians. I don't deserve this attitude and I donot deserve these insulting comments and these implicit ironies. I'm happy you assume good faith! (And this is irony, yes!)--Yannismarou 17:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I really appreciate Ghirla's last comments in my talk page [23] and I also apologize for the tone of my answers to him.--Yannismarou 18:13, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Blanking of article talk pages

Someone just added a "history" of the city of Scappoose, Oregon on its talk page. I was about to commend the editor for his or her addition and point out that we would need better citation, etc., before the material was added to the main article. Then I read the whole thing and noticed this fine piece of creative writing moved from history to POV to patent nonsense. I am tempted to blank it, but I'd like some opinions first. Thanks! Katr67 16:00, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Blanking someones comments on talk generally only leads to escalation of conflict. Merely post a response saying that the above is nonsense, etc. Why deliberately provoke someone ? Wjhonson 16:05, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I just read it, and while some parts in the middle have a definate anti-environmental point of view, and some parts near the end desend into the relms of questionable notability, I don't think any of it is patent nonsense. I would not blank it. I would, if I were you, leave a comment about the first part being good and needing better citation, and then point out any specific concerns you have about the rest. Let them know that if good citation is provided and all the concerns are addressed this bit of history will be in the article. Try to work with them. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 16:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

If it's a temporary content fork just to work on it a bit, it might be more productive for everyone if it was worked on in userspace, or at least not on the talk page (though a link to it could be left on the talk page so people are aware of it). If it's a permanent content fork (eg. they don't intend to follow our core policies and don't intend to ever integrate it back in), then that's discouraged, and speedy archiving might be appropriate. --Interiot 16:22, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Believe me, the bit about albino nutria saving the town of Scappose is nonsense. :) BTW, when searching on "albino nutria" I got a google hit on this talk page, so apparently this has come up before... Katr67 16:27, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Text of old Village Pump discussion is here. Katr67 16:32, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I thought that was the part you were refering to as nonsense ;). I did a quick search for nutria and came up with this redirect Nutria, so it apparently is a real animal which, while native to South America, has been introduced into Oregon and is considered a pest there, so there is at least a tid-bit of truth to that part of it. As for it saving the town from flooding... some people get some strange ideas into their heads. The person doing the writing may actually believe this. Insisting on a proper source should keep it out of the article as I doubt one can be found. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 16:43, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, nutria are indeed real. Albino nutria are indeed real, but sentient albino nutria that worked to save a small town in Oregon...that's a bit of a stretch. :D I don't think the editor in question acutally believes this. I think this is in the fine tradition of an Oregon tall tale and s/he is pulling our legs. Katr67 16:48, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Endemic Wiki-foolishness

It seems to me that in most articles that give information on how to pronounce a particular word, a bizarre, esoteric code is given. What kind of people use such a code, dare I ask? And how high are their ivory towers? And more to the point, what proportion of the English-speaking population would understand such a code? One in a million might be generous.

Example, from Zeitgeist:

Zeitgeist ((audio) (help·info)) is originally a German expression that means "the spirit (Geist) of the time (Zeit)". It denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era. The German pronunciation of the word is [ˈtsa͡ɪtga͡ɪst]

ˈtsa͡ɪtga͡ɪst??? Oh, now I understand!

Why not just use a simplier code? Perhaps 'zIt-gIst" -- or just say that it rhymes with, oh, I don't know, "mice fight".

Cheers. Chris 20:33, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

It's the International Phonetic Alphabet. The problem with ad-hoc phonetic systems or "rhymes with" is that ad-hoc systems are just as cryptic as IPA but without the advantage of standardization, while "rhymes with" only works for one specific accent. --Carnildo 20:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Besides, at least in my accent, "zeit" and "mice" use different vowel sounds. --Carnildo 20:38, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, if there's no reliable system of conveying proper pronounciation, I feel that it is a hideous joke, a slap in the face, to choose a standard code that has a high degree of complexity (bars, curves, dots, bolding, fonts etc. that virtually no one understands). Better to provide no pronunciation, than one that's so esoteric that you get English-speakers like me confused and angry about it. Chris 20:41, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

And then you get people like me who don't have special characters enabled and just see a bunch of squares. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 20:50, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Well actually, if you really want to know the pronunciation you can look up the details of the phonetic alphabet. You're making it sound like a horribly complex thing but it's actually pretty easy to pick up and has the advantage of universality. Moreover, a number of articles also give a more accessible "rhymes with" sort of guide or better yet a sound file. As for not enabling special characters, well... why exactly do you not enable them? :-) Pascal.Tesson 20:56, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Well for me, it's a point of pride not to learn such things. Anyway, I give up. I certainly won't write any articles with IPA pronunciation, and I guess that's all I can say. Chris 21:11, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

While I certainly don't believe that all people are obligated in any way to learn every technicality of every specialized field (that's impossible within a human lifetime), I also find it rather perverse that anybody would actually be proud of being, and remaining, ignorant of a particuar point. Ignore the stuff that you don't know and aren't interested enough to learn, fine... but why take pride in it? *Dan T.* 22:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I also find it perverse, but accept that a pride in not learning is a major strand in anglophone, er, culture. I've just finished reading a book about polar expeditions, in which many of the Brits and not a few of the Youessians come off like fools compared with, say, the Norwegians: they didn't want to learn (from lesser races [!], etc.) even lessons that would have increased their own chances of survival. ¶ But back to the initial outburst: what proportion of the English-speaking population would understand such a code [sc IPA]? One in a million might be generous. That's highly unlikely for at least three reasons. First, more than one in a million anglophones study linguistics to at least some degree (even as just one course in a liberal-arts year), and that most introductory linguistics books handle IPA. Secondly, more than one in a million anglophones are likely to use a dictionary that employs IPA, and to pay some attention to this. Thirdly, this page of WP (lacking a title or even a section heading that indicates that there's anything about linguistics or pronunication) is unlikely to attract a crowd particularly linguistics/pronunciation, yet several people have demonstrated that they're familiar with IPA. ¶ Yes, IPA is a good thing. Get over it.-- Hoary 05:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

If you take such pride in not learning it, why are you asking for a change? -Freekee 01:15, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I support using IPA to illustrate pronunciation because ultimately, there are no better options. However, I think we should go for phonemic rather than phonetic transcription. This makes the learning curve much easier for those unfamiliar with IPA, illustrating the pronunciation while allowing for dialectical differences. There's no need to go into absolutely precise detail. For example, a transcription doesn't need to show that initial "t" is generally aspirated in English, or that vowels preceding nasal consonants (like m or n) take on a nasal quality. szyslak (t, c, e) 21:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

This comes up fairly often. I recommend linking the IPA transcriptions to accurate sound files so that (at least online) people can hear what it sounds like, which is better than any system of transcription. Deco 22:15, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm terribly sorry if this comes accross as incivil in any way, but the following discourse just made me pull a spit-take (with a partly chewed bagel, nontheless):

• Chris: "Better to provide no pronunciation, than one that's so esoteric that you get English-speakers like me confused and angry about it."
• Pascal: "you can look up the details of the phonetic alphabet."
• Chris: "it's a point of pride not to learn such things."

Did it ever strike you being just ever so slightly absurd to willfully remain ignorant on a matter when you're attempting to co-author an encyclopedia? We should all be willing to learn new things here. --tjstrf 22:20, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• It's also worth noting that this discussion comes up very frequently. It's easy for people unfamiliar with the issues involved to think that there are better ways to do this for everyone, and it's easy for more established users to find this question coming up frequently irritating. It's important to note that while IPA remains the best thing we have so far, we should try to be careful in how we treat each other on this (frustrating to everyone) topic. --Improv 03:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I think I've seen it come up 2 or 3 times myself. If it's really that bad, we could put it as a perennial proposal, but I don't think anyone actually reads those before posting their complaint. Makes the whole idea of having a list of perennial proposals rather useless... --tjstrf 05:29, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

As long as the schwa is included, I say, go ahead and use any alphabet you want. --Badger151 04:43, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

If we're throwing around ideas, why not just add schwa as a letter and deprecate X to symbol status? --tjstrf 05:29, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

THe schwa represents the "generic grunt" vowel used by about 75% of all English words. "X" is a consonant. --Carnildo 06:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I know that. The idea I intended to express was the following: Since the schwa sound is so widely used, why not make it into a proper letter? Similarly, the letter X is an alphabetic redundancy and could be eliminated to maintain the alphabet count at 26. Basically I was giving an example of a random idea for changing the writing system, with the intended connotation that Wikipedia really has no place to be determining some of these things. I really need to be more clear sometimes. --tjstrf 06:26, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

And 'c' is pointless because it can be replaced by 's' or 'k', which would be less ambiguous anyway. And there are lots of other reforms of English orthography that would make sense, but are unlikely to ever happen because people are too hideboundly traditional and even throw hissy fits over the few spelling differences between varieties of English (e.g., "color" vs. "colour"). *Dan T.* 13:12, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't a very simple solution to this be to make a bot to convert IPA into standard English dictionary-style pronunciation guidelines and add it into the article so that both are available? — Dark Shikari ^talk/_contribs 13:52, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

That's a good idea, but maybe better to have the bot add the dictionary-style phonetics, rather than replacing the IPA versions. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 14:10, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

spoilers

I think there should be a waiting period for adding spoilers to an article - maybe like a month after it's release/showing/etc. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl is rife with storyline spoilers. it's impossible to help edit the article without uncovering a spoiler. --172.163.213.41 05:24, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Pokemon games have plots? I never noticed. They certainly don't effect the (imo very good) gameplay... Anyway, if you don't want spoilers, don't read the article. There's a spoiler template right there on the page warning you about it. --tjstrf 07:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem posed is that it's complicated to edit, not to read. But I think that if you didn't finish the game, you shouldn't try to edit the plot (or any spoilerising section) anyway.--SidiLemine 10:10, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's a problem. There are enough editors who really don't mind. For things where spoilers are more important - like movies, people who actually content edit rarely do so until they have actually watched it. For things like games, spoilers aren't that big a deal. And plenty of us really don't mind it and edit anyway. So if you want to edit but don't want to be spoiled, just wait until you finish the game.

Not to mention, it's really impossible to impliment such a rule. The purpose of such a policy would be to protect editors from spoilers. But in order to implement the rule, editors would have to remove spoilers when people add them during the waiting period, which involves editors reading the spoilers and then deciding they're spoilers, which defeats the purpose of the rule in the first place. --`/aksha 10:37, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Indian caste system article is under threat by biased users

I have been falsely accused of personal attacks and threatened with account blocking by a user named Hkelkar. This user has taken control of the article above and removes any discussion he disagrees with. The lates case, a comment I entered in the Talk:Indian caste system with teh title "Inextricability from Hinduism", which has been removed twice in an arbitrary way. Please be aware that this sort of things are happening in Wikipedida.--tequendamia 07:44, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Plz ignore this user. He has made personal attacks against me and has made extremely hateful comments in the talk page.See WP:PAIN for report[24].He refuses to discuss and only revert-wars. I have tried to reason with him very politely and with WP:Civility but only get a cold silence.Hkelkar 08:00, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

None of those edits linked to on the WP:PAIN board are personal attacks, nor would I describe them as hate-mongering. This a POV/content dispute. --tjstrf 08:18, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

He refuses to even discuss with me, only edit-war and disrupt.Can somebody at least get him to calm down and discuss civilly with other editors?Hkelkar 08:26, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Request for policy and structural modifications for transwiki to wikibooks

Wikibooks now has Special:Import enabled for transwikiing from wikipedia. We're not quite ready for the big show (we want our "Transwiki:" pseudonamespace turned into a true namespace first for smooth interwikilinking...material in that namespace will now be permanent redirects so wikipedians can find things they're looking for), but I have begun to transwiki recipes into the "Cookbook:" namespace (keep in mind there are very few wikibooks administrators, so clearing the wikipedia backlogs will take some time).

The most recent discussion about this is here, which was where we voted for it, but transwikis from wikibooks have long been a contentious issue for a lot of the wikibookians, because in the past things tended to just get dropped there willy-nilly (often without pagehistories, etc.), sand more often than not just ended up being deleted.

So we're hoping a few policies can be changed here on wikipedia to take full advantage of our shiny new tool. First, we'd like to call an end to copy-paste transwikis (the current mood is to ban copy-paste in lieu of import on the wikibooks side, so the policy here should probably reflect that). Any wikipedian wishing to have something transwikied to wikibooks can simply make the request at Wikibooks:Requests for Import. I personally will bee keeping an eye on Category:Copy to Wikibooks and Category:Articles containing how-to sections, but most of the other admins aren't particularly interested (with the exception of Uncle_G, who I believe is also an administrator on wikipedia).

Second, I'd like to have a few templates/categories we can use to inform both the authors of the articles and the "WP:NOT" patrollers that the transwiki has taken place, and the article can either be switched to a soft redirect, cleaned up to remove how-to/textbookish material, or just deleted. I had made some templates for this a month or so ago, but a bot came through and cleared them out (I never could figure out why), so I'd prefer to leave this part of the work to some more experienced wikipedians (also, the onus of the actual importing and cleaning up on the wikibooks side will most likely be squarely on my shoulders, so I'd rather just watch the policy than try to take part in it).

Templates of the following ilks would be useful:

• 1. A template for articles tagged with {{Copy to Wikibooks}}, along the lines of {{Copied to Wikibooks}} (which is the one cleared out by the bot... it affixes a new category to the page which I hope will be helpful for wikipedians on the cleanup detail).
• 2. A template for articles tagged with {{Howto}}, which would inform any interested party that the article has been safely copied, and the how-to material can be removed. Maybe a category for this too, as a subcategory of Category:Articles containing how-to sections.
• 3. A template for articles imported for forking purposes (i.e., to be used as source material for a book or a chapter of a book). This would be affixed to the talk page of the article in question. This should also be affixed to the talk pages of articles that are copied and then rewritten in an encyclopedic style, so that the contributors whose contributions were removed will (hopefully) find comfort in the fact that they are still being put to good use (and thus hopefully avoid some heated disputes).
• 4. A "no thanks" template for materials that would not have a place on wikibooks. Quite a few of the articles that are tagged for moving to wikibooks are either too stubby to be worth importing (wikibooks is rather unlike wikipedia in the sense that stubs are rarely adopted and developed), aren't appropriate (some stuff seems to actually be transliterations of PD texts, which should go to wikisource), or would clearly not survive our deletion process. Please note also that Jimbo has banned video game guides from wikibooks, so those should go to one of the wikimedia sites (the majority of the ones formerly on wikibooks have gone here).

I should point out that I'm a wikipedian also, and part of why I'm doing the importing is to help the cleanup process here, as well as preventing mess-making there. I'm also a follower of the ism that wikipedia is not doomed, but in some topic areas, wikipedia is more or less done: the only way to improve a lot of the articles is to actually make textbooks out of them, which definitely goes into realms well beyond the limits set by WP:NOT. Wikibooks can be nearly anything, as long as they're NPOV, instructional, and factual: hopefully wikipedians who've already written all they could on their areas of expertise might want to bring it a step further. (Yes, I am plugging a bit here, but after spending a bunch of time wikifying, there is a certain perverse pleasure in de-wikifying :-).) ----SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 11:34, 17 October 2006 (UTC)