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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy).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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Talk pages for files on Commons

Is there a prohibition on creating talk pages on en: for files that are hosted at Commons? And is there a reason to tag such talk pages with Wikiproject banners? I would think not, but I can't find clear language on this anywhere. postdlf (talk) 15:59, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Well I would say that should be up to the WikiProject if they want to tag them or not. If the image is used on Wikipedia and has a Wikipedia file location (eventhough the file might be in Commons) then there are reasons why having it linked to a project are useful. For example:
  1. In the case of Featured media, it doesn't matter if its featured in WP or in Commons, its still featured media.
  2. It allows the projects to be notified of files if they are submitted for deletion, disussion, etc. be article alert bot. Otherwise the project has to watch all the for deletion pages and know that file is associated to the project.
  3. It allows the projects some idea of what images might be related to them and the articles in their scope
  4. It allows the projects to add categories and other items that may potentially be missing from the file.
These are just some I do it but there are others as well. --Kumioko (talk) 18:03, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
Re: #2, if the file is on Commons, then its possible deletion from there would not register on a talk page hosted on en:wiki. Re: #4, I'm pretty sure we don't use en:wiki categories for Commons files, particularly not since Commons has categories and they can just be linked to en:wiki articles or article categories by adding Template:Commons category.

But regardless, if there's not an established consensus against them, I'll just ignore them; I was looking for a reason to delete them. postdlf (talk) 20:30, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Re #2 - I'm not sure if User:CommonsNotificationBot currently adds a notice to an en.wp talk page, but it would make sense. Rd232 public talk 21:46, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
Judging from User:CommonsNotificationBot, it only places deletion notices on the talk pages of articles that use Commons files, Wikipedia:Commons Deletions, or Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous); never on file talk pages. postdlf (talk) 21:52, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

There's no rule against them afaik, but not all WikiProjects will tag them. One reason I do like tagging (at least some of them) is for tracking FP/FS/etc. for a WikiProject. This is useful for example in a portal's (e.g., Portal:Barack Obama) "Recognized content" section, which is often updated by bot and thus will only track the talk pages with a WikiProject tag on it. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:22, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

As an admin I don't delete them when a file moves to commons, as otherwise the information on them would be lost. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:05, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Admin edits

Hello every body, wikipedia has a big problem wich is the decreasing of edits (precisely articles) of users who have sysop rights. what are the reasons ? جمال الحجيلان (talk) 13:05, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

  1. What evidence do you have that this "problem" exists
  2. What is special about administrators (which I take to be what you mean by people with sysop rights) editing articles, as opposed to non-admins? As far as I'm aware, admins have no special powers, skills or experience differentiating them from the mass of (at least, experienced) editors. We can charitably assume admins are busy with mops & buckets whilst the rest of us spend a higher proportion of our time editing articles. Why is this a problem? --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:38, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
It would be nice if admins edited articles more, I suppose, but to ensure that we need to do one of two things to reduce the amount of time admins spend doing admin tasks:
  1. Make a significant number of new admins, probably something on the order of doubling or even tripling. I don't hang out at RfA, but I doubt that there are that many people qualified to be an admin who aren't (and who wan't to be).
  2. Alter human nature so that people do not behave so as to require admin intervention.
Since neither seems to be feasible, I'd recommend not worrying about it. Wabbott9 Tell me about it.... 21:54, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
Admins are volunteers and can chose to edit, or to perform admin jobs or both. So if they are happy it is not a problem. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:51, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
IMO this is a 2 part problem. There are too few admins to perform the multitude of tasks that only admins can do and in general the number of edits and editors are reducing Wikiwide for a variety of reasons. We have been working on the first problem by decoupling the variouso admin tasks into modules that individuals can get and use and we aer working on the second, in part, through marketting and things like the Campus ambassadors and Wikipedians in residence. --Kumioko (talk) 13:51, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

BLP in a user page

What's the policy on unsourced BLPs in User space? User:Marc26 has been there since March without sources. Is it acceptable to let it sit there without sourcing? The Mark of the Beast (talk) 23:47, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, the WP:BLPPROD page does not say application is limited to article space, I guess you could try that. Otherwise I think the only option is WP:MFD. Monty845 23:53, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
We're surely in the need of a policy forbidding vanity users from duplicating their deleted bios to user space. --damiens.rf 01:13, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Actually, Mark Batson exists in article space. This looks like a userspace draft from a user who doesn't know how to use subpages. The only question here is why all the later edits to this userpage come from User:Branddevo? It's possible that Marc26 forgot his password or something and had to create a new account. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 12:19, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I've welcomed the user and asked him what the deal is? --Ron Ritzman (talk) 12:26, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
If you read User talk:Marc26 you'd probably have a good enough idea. It's an article under development. Shame about the lack of AGF in this thread. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:27, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Where did I fail to assume good faith? I knew that it was a page under development, but it's still a BLP without any sourcing, which, to me, is a violation of WP:BLP. That's why I asked here, instead of raising any kind of concerns on the User's Talk page. If I were told that it would be okay to have an unsourced BLP in user space, then I would not have pushed the issue. I waited for more opinions after I got the first one from Monty845 to see what others said before I went further. I'm bending backwards to assume good faith, something that Tagishisimon seems to have forgotten how to do. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 18:36, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
You didn't. Why do you leap to the conclusion that you're at fault? It's not good for your blood pressure. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:04, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
If such a page bothers you in the future, just add {{NOINDEX}} or {{BLP}} at the top. OK.... moving on. -- Avanu (talk) 13:03, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Speedy deletion process broken

At 10.15 pm last night (local time), after I'd gone to bed, a note was placed on my talk page, saying that Voiceprint Records had been nominated for speedy deletion. At 5.18 this morning, while I was till asleep, the article, which I created, was deleted, giving me no time to contest the deletion or improve the article, which I originally created. We're not talking about blatant nonsense or spam, nor personal abuse or other such inappropriate content, so there was no need for such haste.

What can we do, to prevent such a thing happening again? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:24, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I can't see the deleted page (obviously) but if it met a speedy-deletion criterion, then (a) you shouldn't have made it, and (b) it should have been deleted. If it didn't meet any criteria, then you should take this up with the admin concerned, or go to WP:REFUND or initiate a WP:DRV. I don't see any systemic problem here. ╟─TreasuryTag►sundries─╢ 10:28, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
(In most cases) "speedy deletion" is supposed to be, well, speedy. (F4 and F11 are supposed to have a 7-day wait, and one of the subpoints of F7 has a 2-day wait.) Although the article has been around for 3 years, it apparently never has had a claim of notability. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:36, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
The article was tagged for notability in January 2011. "What can we do, to prevent such a thing happening again?" would probably be: make the notability of the subject much more evident in the article when it has been pointed out that the notability of the subject is unclear. Fram (talk) 10:45, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I intend to contest the deletion on the grounds that it did not meet those criteria; and have already asked the admin to undelete the page. However, my point here is not about that specific article; it is that while I was rightly and courteously notified of the SD proposal and invited to contest it; I was then then denied the opportunity to do so due to the timing. Furthermore, while I'm a seasoned editor and so unlikely to leave Wikipedia due to the resultant irritation, or the time wasted resolving the matter, it's the kind of thing which may have exactly that effect on newly-recruited editors, who we need to keep. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:51, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Here's a cache of the article. I really don't think that's A7 or Speedy Deletion material at all. A Prod I could understand, though I would go with a normal AfD route myself, but definitely not Speedy. SilverserenC 10:52, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree. While it is technically true that the article doesn't make a clear claim of notability, for an article like this that the author had obviously spent some time on (it had inline references, an infobox, etc.), I think that giving some extra time to fix things up is just common courtesy. Deleting through Prod wouldn't have hurt the encyclopedia.--Danaman5 (talk) 12:30, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
This is not the case of a New Page slipping through and getting deleted. This is an article that was originally created in 2005, a "major" expandsion (to include the info box) in 2008, includes a third party source (though how much about this company is in there, its impossible for me to tell) and tagged for improvement for the last 6 months. That is not saying that a CSD is the right solution, and perhaps not even PROD. --MASEM (t) 12:41, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I have restored the article, I would urge the creator (and everyone else willing to work on it) to improve the evidence of notability, as it may otherwise well be deleted soon via ProD or AfD anyway. Fram (talk) 12:44, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

AfD would be fine. Prod would not be appropriate at this point, given that we have quite a lengthy discussion here where the article creator is contesting deletion. :) (This is to express no opinion on whether the article should be kept or deleted; I have not yet looked at it. It is only a procedural comment.) LadyofShalott 18:35, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Nonetheless, it was PRODed, with a very non-AGF rationale. I` objected, of course. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:18, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
When the article was tagged for speedy, there was no assertion of notability in the article. There's _still_ no assertion of notability in the article. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:32, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Fram. I will attend to that as soon as I have a spare moment. meanwhile, I should like to return everyone's attention to my comment on the process, rather than the specifics of the individual article. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:10, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps this article didn't qualify for speedy deletion, but speedy deletion in itself should not wait for the article creator or other editors to provide input (otherwise there is not much speedy about it anymore). The process is correct, but whether the application in this instance was justified is debatable. Fram (talk) 15:14, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
The process might not have worked in this instance but overall the process works. Any process will have glitches where it fails but as long as the substantial majority of the time the process works, the process is not broken. The CSD process works almost all the time, but once in a while an article gets deleted that shouldn't. Those failures do not indicate that the process as a whole is broken. GB fan (talk) 15:35, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Agreed. We all know that mistakes are sometimes made in interpreting the speedy deletion criteria. All that has been presented here is one such error, not evidence of a systemic failure of the entire speedy deletion process. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:02, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that the overall process works that well. I've seen a number of articles both tagged and deleted that did not meet the criteria. Let me give you a recent example:
A brand-new account (very probably an employee) created an article on a major healthcare organization. It said, among other things, that its original location was the local jail, that the organization included five full hospitals and multiple clinics, and had some moderately interesting historical achievements (oh, the first medical facility ever created in that location, and the first place to do some particular, highly specialized surgery in the region, and things like that. I didn't read it very closely). The only "citation" in the first draft was a link to the org's website.
Naturally, it was tagged as "unambiguous spam" ninety seconds after the page was created.
Now I ask you: What's the odds that the largest healthcare organization over multiple counties, with five hospitals, is a non-notable WP:ORGanization? We could probably demonstrate notability for each and every hospital separately. Hospitals are in the newspaper all the time.
And is there really anything "unambiguously spammy" about saying that the organization has five hospitals or that it was the first place to do some particular surgery? (Note that the article didn't say things like "Have your surgery with us!" or "The best hospitals in the region!" It was all plain description of positive or neutral facts. We might fault it for failing to mention any complaints or lawsuits in the first draft, but that's really about it.)
Now I don't really care one way or the other about this particular article, because hospital articles generally bore me, but it plainly didn't fit the criteria, and I believe that our policies clearly indicate that WP:Deletion is not clean up, so I (=a person who had never edited the article) removed the CSD tag and explained why, and what needed to be done to improve it.
It got deleted anyway. The admin decided that even though it had been contested by an independent editor, who said it did not appear to be spam, that it was still somehow "unambiguous" spam. Something I thought was not at all spammy was, in the opinion of the admin, so obviously spammy that no one could possibly think it was anything except complete spam.
I started a discussion at WT:CSD#Procedure_for_contested_speedies because part of the problem is that the procedures given assume that since the NPPers (a group that contains an unfortunate number of inexperienced people) never, ever misunderstand the criteria, then nobody except the page creator would ever object to CSDs. I believe that we have a rough consensus to update the procedures to cleanly differentiate between "author objects" and "somebody else objects", and to normally treat an objection from other editors like we treat a contested prod. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:23, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Personally, I have always read it that way, but clarification couldn't hurt. Monty845 16:35, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

There is a broader issue that we may want to consider, the application of speedy deletion A criteria to articles that are months or years old. All of the A criteria except 5 and possibly 2, are primarily aimed at the deletion of new articles that are so deficient that they are hopelessly far from meeting the article guidelines and should therefor be deleted rather then saved or even given time for improvement. Perhaps we should prohibit the use of A criteria speedy deletion on any article more then x months old (1, 3, or 6?). Note, I think G criteria should always apply regardless of age. (except G11) Monty845 16:35, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're all rather missing the point of my original post: Notification after bedtime, deletion in the middle of the night. (Notwithstanding that SD wasn't appropriate in this case; and other issues with SD as raised above.) Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:50, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Meh. Mistakes happen, mistakes get corrected. Perfection is not possible. --Jayron32 17:42, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Since en.wiki has editors from all over the world, there's no such thing as bedtime or the middle of the night. 19:17, 4 July 2011 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by The Wordsmith (talk • contribs)
Funny; I have both. As, I suspect, do editors all over the world. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:48, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Talk about missing the point. So your assertion is that we should somehow incorporate the "bedtime" of the article's author into the CSD process? — Satori Son 13:07, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
No. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:23, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
To be blunt, then, your complaint has no merit. If we don't know what someone's "bedtime" is, we cannot determine when to wait. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 19:11, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
I have not come here to complain, and I am not asking that anyone's bedtime be taken into account. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:01, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Then what, exactly, are you asking for? — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 22:17, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not surprised this involved the A7 criterion. It has historically been the most heavily debated one out of all the other speedy rules -- over what exactly is sufficient to "indicate why its subject is important or significant". Zzyzx11 (talk) 19:26, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

The problem is hardcore deletionists like User:TenPoundHammer who abuse the CSD process, and admins like User:Malik Shabazz who enable those like him by deleting their nominations without question. We need to keep pushing back against such abuse. Fences&Windows 20:47, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
In reality, "speedy" means "let's see if it's uncontested." NOT urgent. If there are people who can't understand that, or pretend that they don't and run counter to the above, then, unfortunately, we need to write something to keep them from going against this spirit. North8000 (talk) 23:33, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Uh, no. In reality, "speedy" usually means "delete this as soon as possible". Of course, there is a difference between attack pages, copyvios and hoaxes on one side,and many other speedy deletion categories on the other side, in that the first three are truly urgent to avoid damage, and the others are only urgent to avoid things like being cached by Google and thus encouraging users to create pages, even if they know they will get speedied. The sooner A7, G11, and so on are deleted, the more discouraging this is for spammers and the like to create pages. If your page is deleted after 5 minutes, so that it hasn't been indexed by Google, you haven't had the chance to show it to your friends at school, ..., you will be less motivated to try this again. While we don't want to demotivate potentially good contributors, we certainly do want to demotivate spammers, vandals, pranksters, ... Fram (talk) 11:56, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
My mistake, I should have been clearer. I meant with with respect to situations like this one. North8000 (talk) 12:02, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
No problem. Even in situations like this one, if someone adds a speedy template with the idea "let's see if it is uncontested", they should have used ProD or AfD instead. With speedy, you have to be convinced that it is uncontroversial. Fram (talk) 12:12, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
There are two separate issues here. First, if you put work into an article and don't want to see your work lost then you have a responsibility to monitor it for cleanup tags. This is not a place where you get to write whatever you want and expect other people to fix the problems when you get bored, though it may appear that way at times. Second, when someone isn't responsible enough to take care of cleanup tags then it doesn't mean that people can be just as irresponsible by taking a lazy approach to dealing with the problem, e.g. deleting the article with no discussion. The system should work as long as at least one side follows the rules, but it will start to break down if people take the attitude they don't have to since not everyone does.
That being said, I agree with Fences that abuse of CSD should be monitored and checks should be in place to stop repeat abuse. I also think cleanup tags would work better if each article had someone who is making sure issues get fixed. In other words there should be monitoring and checks in place for serial "crufters". So while the saying the system is "broken" is a bit strong, I think the example the OP gave shows that it might pay to think of ways to lubricate it a bit better.--RDBury (talk) 05:58, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

To me the bigger issue at stake here is that of defining notability. What is notable to you might be completely and utterly meaningless to me. For example, I am very interested in making sure each Medal of Honor recipient has an article, others think this is a waste and spend their time creating articles for international Footbal(soccer) players which I care nothing about. The end state is, that notability is subjective to the reader and that, I would argue, is something that is very difficult to address. --Kumioko (talk) 20:17, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Amend WP:NFCC

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This isn't going anywhere. Other means to improve notification are being discussed elsewhere. Rd232 public talk 09:54, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I propose amending WP:NFCC. Current policy:

Enforcement

"A file with a valid non-free-use rationale for some (but not all) articles it is used in will not be deleted. Instead, the file should be removed from the articles for which it lacks a non-free-use rationale, or a suitable rationale added."

Add as an additional sentence at the end of this part of the policy: A file may not be removed for failing NFCC unless there has been prior notice of the issue on the relevant article talk page for 7 days. An exception to this is replacement of a file with an appropriate free equivalent.

I think the reasons for this proposal should be fairly obvious to anyone who's followed recent debates about NFCC, including Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Non-free content enforcement and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Betacommand 2011. (And to anticipate one complaint: no, this isn't about one user, since others often do similar things and broadly support that user's approach, though somehow discussion often ends up being about this one user. And for those who might nonetheless insist on saying it is about this one user: the community's serial inability to decide what to do about him clearly suggests looking at the big picture.) Bottom line: there is nothing so urgent about NFCC enforcement that notification cannot be made. Requiring prior notification should also somewhat reduce the evident community tensions on this subject. Rd232 public talk 12:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

  • So, under this proposed new text, I could not immediately remove a non-free file from an article that I believed was not necessary for that article (NFCC 8)? Or immediately remove non-free images from disambiguation pages or userspace (NFCC9)? Or an agency photo (NFCC 2)? I could go on. Absolutely not for the proposed new text. I'm not even sure the community has the remit to make such a change, as this may impinge on the Foundation's licensing policy. CIreland (talk) 12:34, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:BURO and the legal implications of our copyright policy. ╟─TreasuryTag►Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster─╢ 12:40, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • I think this is a good idea, but it might be an overly idealistic approach to dealing with copyright issues. I think when it comes to this legal issue, CYA is the best policy... and doing so quickly is usually a good idea.--Jp07 (talk) 12:46, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Since restoration of a removed (not deleted) image can be done by any editor, there is zero need to have any requirement preceeding its removal. Deletion, on the other hand, is appropriately given 7 days to be challenged/corrected before its removal. So this is unnecessary. Mind you, like all major changes one might do in text, such should be discussed on talk pages per all other standard policies, there's no reason to single out NFCC as a special case. --MASEM (t) 13:04, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - The Foundation Resolution regarding this exists for 4 years (of which 3 years unchanged), this policy is very clear what needs to be there, there have been notifications, there have been discussions, images have been tagged, pages have been tagged, uploaders' talkpages have been tagged, nothing has happened, and still, on a regular basis users (even very, very established) users misuse non-free material, sometimes knowingly. Enough notification given, though I can live with a 'try to repair/write the rationale first before considering removal', images on display for which there is not a rationale written on the image description page, all can be removed upon detection, and though I think that giving a notification is a noble idea, it should certainly not be a requirement. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:12, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Beetstra, I realize you are already opposing but I just want to drive this point home since your oppose only addresses a narrow aspect of the proposal. The proposed change is not just about NFCC 10c but an image failing any of the criteria except NFCC 1 would require a notification and 7 day delay. CIreland (talk) 13:17, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Heh, while I could consider the idea of leaving images for 7 days if the images only fail #10c and not other parts of the policy (though, I think that there has been enough notification), my answer does concern everything. If images fail NFCC, they should be removed from display, there has been enough time for editors to know that WP:NFCC is also part of our policies. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:26, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Completely contrary to the BRD cycle as well as the NFCC. What you are proposing would also mean that, for example, if a non-free image was added to a BLP, even one receiving a lot of edits, we would have to wait 7 days before removing it. I really don't think this idea has been thought out. J Milburn (talk) 13:43, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose I think what Rd232 was trying to get at was that an image failing WP:NFCC #10c (ONLY) will not be removed, instead a 7 day waiting period initiated by notification to the article's talk page will be used. There's a number of issues with even that stance. (1) We've tried this before, with a bot making notifications to article talk pages, and adding warnings to image description pages. As Dirk notes above, this failed. The problems do not get fixed. (2) This places an effectively impossible burden on 10c enforcers; Place a notice, then come back in a week. Seems simple, right? Wrong. How do you come back in a week? Do you record all your 10c warnings somewhere? Ok, let's say you do. Then what? You come back, but then you have to check the article talk page to see if there's been any response there. Then you have to check the image description page, its history and its talk page, and see if there's been any traffic in the last week. You also have to see if editors made any changes to the article where the image is hosted to see if they've made any changes to the image's use on the page. This effectively places the burden complying with 10c squarely on the shoulders of those trying to enforce the policy. Net result; 10c becomes unenforceable. Yeah, 10c enforcement causes some people to get upset about it. That happens with anything where people bump into a wall that undoes the work they've done. No, the proper response "get it right, here's how, or don't add it". Much simpler and easier to follow. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:11, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
    Hammersoft, if there is not a rationale after a week, whether or not there is a discussion about it, or the image was in the meantime removed, then editors still had 1 week to actually write the rationale (or repair it, for the cases where the rationale got broken in process). Notification, and if there is no rationale after a week it goes. You don't have to research why it does not have a rationale (except maybe if the rationale was there, but got vandalised inbetween - but that goes into the group of 'somewhat obvious broken rationales'). --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:37, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • The point is, it is exceptionally hard to manage 10c if notifications are required prior to removal, and such difficulties are thereby placed squarely on the shoulders of those seeking to enforce the policy, rather than those who seek to use NFCC material. That goes directly against policy. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • It of course gives more work, whether it becomes extremely difficult to handle - if a bot would properly keep the categorisation of the talkpages in place it might even help in finding the pages that need to be looked at that might even become easier. The bigger point is: it has been tried, it did not work, and also this is just going to have a marginal effect in others doing the work for us. The only thing is that people see the tags, and notice that afterwards their images get deleted, and hence, the tagger gets all the blame for the removal etc. etc. Where did I see this happening before ... --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:02, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose, of course. For every normal edit on this project that is a matter of normal editorial judgment, from the most trivial to the most fundamental one, we have WP:BOLD. But for an edit that is not just a matter of individual judgment but a matter mandated by policy, we are going to introduce new rules making such an edit artificially difficult? That's absurd. Instead, how about the reverse? Nobody should be allowed to add any non-free image to an article, without first posting a notification on the talk page first and allowing for discussion? Now, that would actually be in keeping with NFC principles. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:28, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment There are a number of difficulties with the proposal as worded, as have been noted. On the other hand, there is a particular area where I think there sometimes can be an issue, and does deserve to be looked into. That is if an image is tagged only on its file-page for a deletion process like WP:FFD or {{dfu}}, with no indication made where it is actually used. I think there is a strong case that for those circumstances, it might be appropriate to require that some sign of impending potential deletion is indicated either on the article page or the article's talk page, so people who have those pages but not the file page on their watchlist have the chance to be alerted. I think it might be sensible to write that in as a requirement; there is of course already a standard template to achieve this for the FfD case.
As for Delta, I'm encouraged that he has recently started applying his celebrated lightning-speed editing skills to the identification of rationales pointing to dab pages, and now appears to be quietly updating them to point to the correct pages. I think that is the right thing to do, even if there is an imaginable outside possibility of a use picking up a rationale for the wrong page. The broader issue, I think, is to recognise that it is not enough just to be right about NFCC position in a particular case. If someone is taking on to be the human face of Wikipedia policy, we need them to act like an ambassador for that policy and for WP itself -- helpful, positive, encouraging, responsive, assuming good faith or an honest mistake (no matter how unlikely), and generally doing everything they can to preserve the collegiality of Wikipedia as a good place where people will want to edit and contribute. A little sugar in the proceedings can make a huge difference -- even something just like having a second alternate standard edit summary for second removals, to give the appearance of being a bit more responsive. A little more visible caring that it's about more than just being right would, IMO, go a long way to reducing the temperature, and towards making everybody's life more pleasant. Jheald (talk) 14:58, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Future and others. The Δ problem is a matter of user conduct, not a widespread issue that mandates weakening a policy over. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:22, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose; at least until such a time as WP:OR and WP:V etc. are updated to say "unsourced, contentious or original material may not be removed from an article unless there has been a prior notification on the talk page for at least 7 days". Ahem. ;) --Errant (chat!) 15:25, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Unnecessary restrictions; the majority of users do not have problems with calmly resolving issues regarding non-free images; the few that do should be dealt with elsewhere, e.g., RfC/U or arbitration. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:58, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment: - yes, I'm primarily thinking of 10c (though there are also issues of interpretation with other criteria), and if agreement for the amendment were limited to 10c that would be better than nothing. Citing WP:BRD, as someone did, is a bit disengenuous when you take into account that NFCC has its own 3RR exemption; removal wins, and debate is not required (never mind notification). The Foundation resolution is alluded to - well it makes no mention of timescale, so it's up to en.wp to set its own, in the interests of preserving community sanity. As to Hammersoft's point about the difficulty of tracking notifications: as I said before, easy solution: just borrow the WP:PROD tracking technology. I reckon that shouldn't take a competent template coder more than an hour to copy and adapt. Also I have to return to a theme begun a couple of days ago: mild abuse of fair use is much less of a problem than uploading images with false licenses. It's a lot harder to do anything about that, but in terms of damaging the interests of rights-holders and of WP content re-users (and perhaps also the risk of WMF being sued), that is the elephant in the room. For some reason, the community prefers to spend its time arguing about how exactly to catch the mouse. Rd232 public talk 18:28, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
    • Strictly speaking, the Foundation resolution is of very limited relevance to 10c. As Kat Walsh clarified for the Foundation in August 2007 [1] what the Foundation requires is that a rationale for using any NFC image must *exist*; it is an en-wiki implementation choice to require that it must be *written down*. ("... if en.wikipedia wants to demand an explicit rationale, then it's free to set policy that way.") That's not to say that a written-down rationale isn't a very sensible thing to seek; but it is an en-wiki stipulation, for en-wiki to manage, rather than a requirement that the Foundation has demanded. Jheald (talk) 23:34, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. I think that Jheald identifies the issue exactly right in the first paragraph of his comment. I, too, would like to see 10c-related notification at the articles where the file is used. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:49, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Lots of sensible points made before this to which I can add nothing. Regarding Jheald's point endorsed by Tryptofish, this surely sounds like a job for a bot. Angus McLellan (Talk) 23:45, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Safeguards for Wikipedia editors

Hello. I would like to relate to you all an unfortunate incident that occurred in my native Albania. I was at a cafe talking to a friend about how I started on Wikipedia a few weeks ago. Our conversation was overheard by a group of teenagers behind us, and the next thing I knew I was being choked and dragged from my chair by one teenager while being kicked and punched by his friends. What little I remember of the attack was that my attackers were calling me a communist and anarchist for using Wikipedia and that I should be hanged with all the other wiki leakers out there. I blacked out from the assault and now have my jaw wired shut and two broken ribs to show for my association with Wikipedia.

I was wondering what may have prompted this attack and if it is common in the english speaking world to be beaten in public for being associated with Wikipedia. Are there any safeguards I can take? Thank you for your time and I apologise if I am posting this in the wrong place. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated. Brad Wingo (talk) 02:16, 6 July 2011 (UTC).

Wiki brah? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 03:55, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
That sounds a little far fetched and I doubt Wikipedia is the problem there if this is a true occurrence. Have you tried just telling the police? -- Avanu (talk) 12:41, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
Very sorry to hear of this. It appears from what you've disclosed that the attackers misunderstood Wikipedia to be associated with or the same as Wikileaks. This misunderstanding is not very uncommon (in fact at the Wikipedia:help desk we were seeing this often enough that this template was created). Anyway, I think that's what the attackers thought, given what you've told us. Feel better.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:10, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Precautions about WP dangers: There are some common actions which a person can take to reduce problems:
  • Avoiding talking about Wikipedia in public: Due to people being blocked from Wikipedia when they try to mention their companies or products, many people have hostile memories of WP. Try not to mention WP in public, unless you know those people have not been terrified when using WP. There are a lot of ill feelings about the English Wikipedia, as being a very hostile system.
  • Create 3 usernames with admin advice: It is possible to have multiple usernames, per WP:SOCK#legit, but it is safer to ask an admin for advice about how to use them; otherwise, you could get blocked for 1 month. When editing controversial subjects, or making a major change, use only 1 special username, so they will not wiki-stalk you (by WP:Wikihounding) to complain or hack your edits to other articles. One editor started hacking every article I had edited, when I asked why, "Well, you changed my article, so now I've changed all of yours". It is difficult to know when other editors are seeking major "revenge" for something you thought was a minor issue.
  • Help make WP respectable to adults: Psychologists warn that young people, up to age 25, are often prone to violence, so WP needs to be changed to reduce the powers which other WP editors have to block and terrify, or horrify normal people. Some highly qualified scholars have been insulted, hounded, slurred, banned, and blocked by people they called "insolent little twerps". Be aware that many people think that WP is a case of the "inmates running the asylum", so help to change policies to avoid all the rude, crass, and questionable behaviour which makes people think so badly about the project. Where the public is listening, let them know that Wikipedia is trying to foster a more respectable system, but the improvements have been very slow.

There are several other issues to consider, but those are some to focus the discussion on how to safeguard our editors. -Wikid77 16:36, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Two RfCs for allowing bureaucrats to remove the admin bit

Two related Requests for Comment are now open to discuss giving bureaucrats the ability to remove administrator user permissions under specific circumstances. Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Granting bureaucrats the technical ability to remove the admin flag proposes enabling the technical ability for bureaucrats to do this. Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Bureaucrat removal of adminship policy proposes the specific policy conditions under which they would be allowed to use that ability. Please visit both RfCs to give your input. Thanks. --RL0919 (talk) 20:12, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

RFC on inactive Bureacrats

Related to the above proposal, the issue of incactive 'crats has raised its head - so Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Remove_Bureaucrat_bit_from_inactive_accounts --Errant (chat!) 23:37, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia safety

I have wrote a essay on Safety of Wikipedia. I would like to see it made policy. You man can find the essay here: WP:Wikipedia safety, and its short cut is WP:ASSAULT. Your man coments welcome. Brad Wingo (talk) 03:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Not your best work. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 03:12, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Yawn. Not interesting, not funny, "first rule of X is you do not talk about X" snowclone is so 12 years ago. —chaos5023 (talk) 03:20, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
It's gawn. And so is the sock. Eagles 24/7 (C) 03:27, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Explanation of file size/storage concerns?

Could someone please explain to me why file size/storage seems to be a frequent topic of conversation? As far as I can tell, it seems that Wikipedia's storage is practically unlimited; I'm sure it has its limits, but could someone please provide some information on this that will help me to understand the need for frugality, if, indeed, it is necessary? Finite numbers would be great. Thanks.--Jp07 (talk) 21:52, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

  • I think the concern is mainly the size of each article being displayed, as just too, too much text and data, especially when viewed on a handheld device/cellphone. There is no concern having more than 4 million articles: Wikimedia Commons has 10 million images/audios. However, there are many size issues to consider (such as the size of images on a page). For each large article, there are obviously huge areas of text: those bottom navboxes (often more than 9 boxes of "creeping linkerism"), or hundreds of sources (even on major articles which have "90" subarticles to cite sources), or a list of "Further reading" with "40" books. For example, the popular huge article "United States" (viewed 45,240 times per day, ~2000 times per hour in June 2011) has 17 bottom navboxes, totalling hundreds of rare wikilinks. Plus, the U.S. article has 217(!) footnotes, when almost every phrase of text is verifiably covered within thousands of other articles about U.S. topics (which cite those sources). So, 45,000 people a day are spammed with those 17 navboxes and 217 references, as if it were a stand-alone printed volume about the U.S. rather being than a wikilinked page, with thousands of articles to clarify all the extraneous details. For those reasons, where common sense fails, then guidelines can be written to curb the gargantuan techno-data, and then reduce a highly popular article to a condensed, but broad, summary of the topic, knowing other less-viewed articles can prove sources and display 64-question navboxes about every known aspect of minutia for a popular sub-topic. Without rules to limit all the overkill of techno-data, an article such as "U.S." takes about 30 seconds to fully format and display all the tedious stuff which only 1-in-500 readers would bother to read. Then, get this, many articles are reformatted for most of the readers, to apply preferences settings for the display of the text and images. That is probably a major reason people often see, during busy hours, "WP:Wikimedia Foundation error" as the servers are overloaded in displaying tedious gobs of "tramp data" which is of little value to the readers. Stats show that most readers view a page for only 1 minute, then move on to other pages: hence, an article should show the key concepts in the top paragraphs, with well-chosen images to convey the subject fast. All of these issues are reasons to set guidelines to limit the data displayed to readers, especially when trying to view pages on small handheld devices. Hence, there is the Mobile Wikipedia to display articles for those users. Editors using handheld devices report that editing is very difficult, so they wait until using a laptop or desktop PC. The whole situation is an optimization task: where operation can be radically streamlined, once the customer "needs" are monitored as a major focus. A computer system can run "10x times faster" by optimizing out all the unneeded pork in each area. That is a simplified view of the size issues. -Wikid77 09:02, 2 July 2011, revised 23:42, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Should Casey Anthony have a separate article?

There is a discussion at Talk:Casey Anthony that could use some outside opinions on whether a separate article should be created from Death of Caylee Anthony. Angryapathy (talk) 17:13, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I recommend that article be renamed Casey Anthony trial. I have stated my reasons at that article's talk page. SMP0328. (talk) 17:44, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
The entire topic should be in one article, unless it is too long and needs to be WP:SPLIT, but don't create redundancies where its not necessary. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 15:49, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Trinidad and Tobago Wikipedians' notice board/Style guide has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Trinidad and Tobago Wikipedians' notice board/Style guide (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Is WP:BEFORE obligatory?

There's currently a bit of a general ongoing debacle about whether or not WP:BEFORE is required, ie. whether nominating an article for deletion without having made the slightest effort to check out potential sources permissible [2] and I'd be interested in some input on this? Thanks. ╟─TreasuryTag►duumvirate─╢ 20:51, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I, too, would like to know the status of WP:BEFORE. Is an editor required to do an in-depth investigation of an article's notability before CSD or AfDing it? What if the article is one sentence long, has no assertion of notability and zero references, such as this article? Basket of Puppies 21:04, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
I don't interpret BEFORE as asking people to do in-depth research. In many (most?) cases simply Google-News or Google-Books searching the article title will suggest whether or not it's likely that sources exist: hardly arduous! ╟─TreasuryTag►cabinet─╢ 21:07, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
I agree with this. I'd say required but you need not spend more than a couple of minutes. If you are sending articles to AfD where lots of good sources come up at the top of a Gnews or book search, you should be chided vigorously. If you do it regularly, you are wasting other people's time and should likely be banned from XfD until you agree to actually follow WP:BEFORE. Heck, I feel strongly !voters should do a web search before they !vote. I know I've missed obvious sources (and more commonly claimed sources were reliable that aren't if you look more closely) a number of times. It's embarrassing. Hobit (talk) 22:26, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
Honestly, I'd be happy with 20 seconds in most cases. It's when I do the most cursory scan of Google Books and find twenty times the references needed to satisfy the GNG that I start getting irritable. —chaos5023 (talk) 00:00, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Required. Which makes a great deal of sense -- it saves the community what is otherwise wasted time, when a nom does a wp:before search prior to nominating an article for deletion. That allows the community to focus that time instead on more appropriate and helpful work at the project.--Epeefleche (talk) 21:08, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Absolutely. That's why it's the first thing you see on WP:AFD before instructions for listing an article at AFD. We don't delete articles for fixable problems. See also WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM, part of Wikipedia:Editing policy. postdlf (talk) 21:21, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
    • I'm not disagreeing with a lot of the comments below branded as "optional". Obviously WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY and all that. Best practice unless there's good reason not to might be a good statement then. As long as it's clear that "I don't have to" is not actually a reason for not doing it. postdlf (talk) 22:31, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
"I don't have to" is exactly what WP:BURDEN says. Without a source readers cannot determine fact from hoax which is why contested and unsourced material can be immediately removed. Statements written without sources are just as likely to need to be re-written to comply with sources found - that's a lot of work, and it is why the burden to write from sourced material belongs on the author, not the editor. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
Why does no one read all of WP:BURDEN? "How quickly [the removal of unsourced material] should happen depends on the material and the overall state of the article. Editors might object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references. It has always been good practice to make reasonable efforts to find supporting sources yourself and cite them." And WP:BURDEN has to be read in conjunction with WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM; both are part of policy. Yes, we want article creators and contributors to provide sources for the content they add. We also want article editors and deletion nominators to take the time and exercise due diligence to consider whether content can be fixed rather than just removed. Again, "I don't have to" is not itself a reason for not doing that, because we don't do or not do anything here simply because it is prohibited or required. postdlf (talk) 22:49, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Not required, but encouraged I've been on both sides of the debate on this one. On the one hand, I'll be looking through an article and notice how glaringly below standards it is, try to improve it, draw attention to it (by tagging with the appropriate improvement templates), and wait for someone to try to improve it. I consider that a "Due Diligence" in the fact that I tried improvement, people who are in that article's space were alerted of it's deficincies. Yet when it gets put up for discussion there's suddenly editors and IP addresses crawling out of the woodwork claiming that it can be improved and they will. In some cases it's blatantly obvious when even BEFORE won't help the article. In other cases having BEFORE applied has raised the article above my criticisim threshold. It really comes down to, I as an editor have my little niche where I am somewhat of a subject matter expert. I don't claim to hold any specialized information for other criteria, yet if articles are not improved when issues are pointed out, it shows me that there is little interest in the subject. Hasteur (talk) 21:22, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional but certainly should be done for courtesy towards others and to avoid cluttering AFD. The problem if it was made mandatory is that, if a topic does have sources (through Google, lets assume) but finding the sources using traditional search methods is difficult if not impossible, and I, the AFD nominator, did that and found no sources and thus AFD'd the article, someone will certainly game the mandatory nature and accuse me of "no, you didn't search *this* way to find these article...". Of if the sources are only in print journals, and me, without access to academic catalogs, determines there are no online sources, again, someone will complain "Well, you only had to go to your May issue of this journal to see it..." That said, even if optional, if an editor continually and regularly nominates articles without BEFORE and these have sources that are easily found by an obvious search, then there's a behavioral issue to take into account. --MASEM (t) 21:28, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
    • What would be the point to nominating an article for deletion unless one has determined to one's satisfaction that the article should be deleted? I think it should be a serious consideration taken upon oneself to nominate an article for deletion. One should only do so if one has thoroughly examined the topic of the article, and one should pay attention to and participate in the WP:AFD process. One should be prepared to change one's mind if other editors present arguments and present sources showing that the article should not be deleted. Bus stop (talk) 21:30, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
      • Lack of experience? Lack of clarity about what's required? (We do occasionally encounter people who believe that 100% of unref'd articles must be deleted.) Lack of understanding the subject (without realizing it)? Not every nom at AFD has the intelligence and experience that this group of editors does. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional, but highly recommended, especially when running through a whole list of items someone else is going to have to check after you. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:45, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional in regards to having go through the whole regime. Good practice to go through some of the points, though. I'm not a "deletionist" but somedays there seems to be a lot of stubby or inconsequential material out there, and the loss of some of that would be no big deal. To take the checking of sources, to put the burden absolutely on the reviewer (to give the nominator a neutral name) is unfair. It says in the guidance on writing your first article "Gather references both to use as source(s) of the information you will include and also to demonstrate notability of your article's subject matter." Even if sources do exist, that does not make something notable of itself - I could scour the archives of my local newspaper and pull together enough mentions of the village hall, or even the corner shop but they would still not be a notable subject for an article. GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:57, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional but recommended. Certainly it makes things go more smoothly if the nominator searches, but our verifiability policy says that the "burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material", and I would add that this implies also someone wanting to keep material that is disputed. An article that's AfD'd for lack of sourcing is, essentially, disputed material, and a !voter wishing to keep it has the final responsibility to provide evidence supporting that material. That said, I agree with many of the points Masem makes above. An editor who habitually refuses to perform good-faith checks before nominating would bear speaking to, if only for the sake of our collegial editing atmosphere; however, codifying BEFORE as a requirement will, I suspect, lead to assumptions of bad faith against AfD nominators, with !voters suggesting that if only the nominator had put forth effort of level X rather than a clearly-unsuitable level Y, we wouldn't be here, etc. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:05, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Let's make new bullet points and bold mark the first statement. BEFORE has been optional for years, etc. It's nice to do a cursory glance for refs but let's face it, sometimes we don't need to or sometimes people mess up and don't when they should. Let's use common sense. Killiondude (talk) 22:45, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional, BUT... BEFORE is part of a procedure, not a policy. Following it keeps you from embarrassing yourself and accidentally wasting the community's time with inappropriate nominations. Transparently following it—say, starting your nom with a description of your search strategy for sources—tells the community not only that this AFD is highly likely to be a legitimate candidate for deletion, but also that you are the sort of desirable, respectful, competent editor who takes reasonable efforts to avoid wasting everyone else's time. People who follow it get respect (and high rates of deletions); people who don't get disrespect (and, unfortunately, occasionally thoughtless "keep" !votes from people who have decided they're incompetent/jerks/etc). I wouldn't require it as a bureaucratic procedure, partly because some people are so familiar with a given subject area that they already know the state of sources. On the other hand, I personally don't believe I've ever nominated even one article without at least a quick trip to my favorite web search engine, and I can't imagine nomming multiple similar articles without doing my homework. But—your reputation, your nomination, your choice. If you like having your noms responded to with statements like "As anybody can see from the following basic web search results, there are at least hundreds of sources..." then I'm okay with that. I don't think that we have such a huge problem with this that we really need to put up a bureaucratic obstacle to AFDs when so many of them are actually valid (and when the others can be dealt with effectively case by case). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Required If you don't have time to do the research, then don't do the AfD per WP:DEADLINE. It's not like somebody else can't get to it who has the time, and the 'pedia won't explode if an article isn't nominated for deletion this very minute. Not to mention that any claim of non-notability has to be backed up by something. "I've never heard of it" is no better a reason to delete, than "I've heard of it" is a valid reason to keep. How does anyone make a claim that there is no coverage without looking outside of WP? Nominators should do their own homework. Jim Miller See me | Touch me 23:08, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
Unsourced and contested potential misinformation should be deleted immediately, regardless of WP:DEADLINE. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
  • Required modulo IAR, i.e. optional if you know what you're doing. So if you skip a reference check in a fit of exhaustion or pique, okay, things happen, nobody should burn you at the stake. But if you routinely skip reference checks or think that "good faith effort" means you don't have to do it and anybody calling you out for failing to do it is violating AGF, then you should be brought up short. To put it in the clearest possible terms, every time you make an AfD nomination that results in a keep because of references that were easily found, you have imposed needless busywork on other volunteers that achieves nothing more than to keep you from damaging the encyclopedia with your laziness. Doing so as an occasional accident is just the cost of human effort. Doing so as a matter of course is inappropriate. —chaos5023 (talk) 23:27, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
    To be clear, I do not support "procedural keep, WP:BEFORE not followed" becoming the new WP:ILIKEIT at AfD. The question of anyone ignoring BEFORE is a matter of broad patterns of editor behavior, as in Basket of Puppies's fairly exemplary case, not something that should be routinely brought up in individual deletion debates. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:00, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • It should be required for those that nominate many articles for AFD. Say over 10 nominations the nominator should have learned to do the before part to stop time wasting. For people new at this we can give them some more leaneancy in not following the recommendation. It should apply to people like Basket of Puppies for AFD. For A7 nominations the article can speak for itself. But for anything that is old, say over 3 months the nominator should check history and online references. We do get a fair amount of embarrassment through foolish nominations for deletion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:53, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional. If people want to suddenly make it obligatory they can throw a community-wide RfC, which I would be happy to comment on. Short of that, I'm not accepting its presence on a general community page as evidence it's a required read. I mean, Joseph Reagle can be found on internal pages too, and his book is shite. Ironholds (talk) 23:55, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Required to some extent (but a guideline, not policy) as I have been saying for years. Anyone can make mistakes, and the way of preventing mistakes is to go carefully. I this very month myself nominated an article for deletion that I should not have nominated, because I thought it so obvious that I did not search; fortunately others found the necessary references. There needs to be established procedure, because if in spite of all I have ever said I can let myself fall into this temptation, and use it unwisely, others can also, and so they do. The real question is a little more difficult: how thorough a search is necessary. The prescriptions in WP:BEFORE are considerably more stringent than is usually necessary or possible, and a full search in the sense I as a librarian consider a full search, will be rarely appropriate. In the exceptional case, the group at AfD can do it better than a single nominator. But a preliminary search to avoid discarding material careless and thoughtlessly, should be required. After all, the fewer articles we send unnecessarily for deletion, the more time for properly discussing the truly problematic and difficult-to-diecide deletions, and defintively getting rid of what we must get rid of. DGG ( talk ) 03:39, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Hell no can you say instruction creep? --Guerillero | My Talk 07:07, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Look, nobody is going to be blocking and banning people over BEFORE (well, if someone does I expect the community to overturn such action), but as others have said above it really ought to be a required checklist that you go through prior to nominating an article at AFD. This is one of those things that's not really policy, but it's certainly good procedure. We wouldn't be here (and at AN/I) if User:Basket of Puppies wasn't in the process of embarrassing himself and causing all sorts of unnecessary drama by following BEFORE.
    — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 07:21, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Following the essence of WP:BEFORE is necessary in order to avoid deleting articles that shouldn't be deleted, and wasting the community's time. Taking articles to AFD which could easily be sourced with a couple of minutes effort of Google searching could legitimately be seen as acting in bad faith. We all make mistakes but editors who make no effort to follow WP:BEFORE should expect to be criticized for it. --Michig (talk) 07:30, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional — 1., The burden of proof is on the article—not the nominator. Someone nominating an article for deletion should never have to be well-versed in the topic. 2. A requirement to "google for sources" would be unenforceable. 3. Policy is descriptive, not prescriptive. 4. Our policies are implicitly optional, especially so in this case. --slakr\ talk / 07:41, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
the burden of proof is on the nominator. "No adequate reason for deletion" is a keep. Under existing policy, a non-consensus is a keep. The need to show something notable is on the article is a prima facia case for non-notability is given, , but that's only part of the reasons for deletion. Why should someone be able to delete articles by saying merely "non-notable" without some reason, like lack of findable references. Otherwise it's "i don;tlike it." DGG ( talk ) 15:55, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • required but not as policy, written policies are things we require all editors to follow, we should keep them pared down to the essentials. Procedures and unwritten rules are the lessons people learn as they become experienced editors, we need to make sure they are well documented and we need to communicate them clearly otherwise we risk the community becoming closed and unwelcoming to new editors. ϢereSpielChequers 08:23, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Guideline WP:BEFORE seems to have guideline status per WP:GUIDES, "Guidelines are sets of best practices that are supported by consensus. Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.". Editors who flout this guideline can expect to have it held against them on occasions such as RfA — TenPoundHammer is a good example. In extreme cases, more serious sanctions may apply —TTN is an example. Note also that WP:BEFORE contains many steps and is not just a matter of searching for sources. These steps include sensible behaviour like reading the talk page to see what discussions are already underway and to check for previous AFDs. The problem now is that Twinkle makes it too easy to start an XfD without doing any of those things. Twinkle should be modified to give the nominator a reminder, just as article creators are now prompted to think about sourcing or whether the article has been previously deleted. Warden (talk) 09:13, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Guideline as pointed out by Colonel Warden. I tend to agree with DGG and Jim Miller that we can't completely ignore best practices established by hard-fought consensus; we'd be left with anarchy (or reboot). BusterD (talk) 13:44, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Highly encouraged but not guideline/policy yet. I would expect to see a cleaner version first. On the other hand, nominator saying that WP:BEFORE is not needed is just lazy and against AGF. I expect someone nominating an article to be sure that their nomination is necessary, not TWINKLE-stamping articles. On that regard, I would not mind TWINKLE including a reminder about BEFORE. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:22, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment on enforcement The method of enforcement that has always been suggested is by reject those AfDs that show no evidence of following the elements of BEFORE, without prejudice to their reinstatement. I do not think anyone is suggesting anything more drastic. (except perhaps that someone who insists on frequently repeated nominations without any trace of BEFORE, might be considered disruptive, but this has already been the case in certain extreme circumstances). DGG ( talk ) 15:59, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose - worst example of WP:CREEP imaginable - effectively this gives a licence for wikilawering and will severely discourage good faith nominations of inapproprate, unreferenced or damaging articles because of the implicit threat of punishment if one makes a mistake - which could be as simple as mis-spelling a Google search.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:10, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Encouraged and comment - perhaps a statement about whether an AfD nominator took steps to find or verify sources (or whatever) can be included in the Template. Something the Nominator can then attest to, like:
"Before nominating this article for deletion, I took the following steps to ensure this nomination was fully warranted: xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx (list of various actions taken)."
This would allow other editors to quickly see what steps have already been taken, quite a timesaver. If this is found to be blank, then it is a clear indication it was not followed at all. -- Avanu (talk) 16:28, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Strongly recommended (but not policy-force) – The community's time is a valuable resource, and before a deletion discussion is started, we need to explore other options before going to that. In general, the first steps are to see what can be done locally before moving up to higher community input, i.e. a deletion discussion. Applying WP:BEFORE is basically "doing one's homework" before going the deletion route. That being said, there are going to be cases in which requesting deletion may be the only viable and reasonable option (the term "polishing a turd" comes to mind) for a variety of reasons; that is where IAR comes into play. –MuZemike 18:29, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Its policy. That page is a Wikipedia policy page isn't it? They need to start enforcing it though. Stop people from using bots to automatically nominating a hundred biography articles at a time, knowing they couldn't have possibly have looked over each one themselves. And I haven't seen this in awhile, but I previously went through a rather large number of articles people said there were no sources for, and clicked Google News Archive search at the top, and got ample results proving they were. Dream Focus 20:34, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • It's policy. The policy doesn't say that someone making a wrong nomination must face "punishment" on the first try, but it should be clear that he has done something the wrong way. Like everything else, it's when it becomes a routine occurrence that it becomes a problem, and eventually, one way or another, he has to be convinced to do the right thing. Bogus AfDs don't just waste one person's time, but many. Wnt (talk) 20:51, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • WP:BURDEN trumps WP:BEFORE Big but - this project is a (hopefully) collegial community effort. It is courteous, polite, and expected for users to help other users. WP:V is a stricter requirement, and that requirement is not on the person nominating for deletion. Most AfD are short articles and deleting them should be no more dramatic than removing a paragraph or two of recently added but unsourced material to a longer established article. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
  • Optional- making it obligatory would open the door to "Speedy keep- nominator hasn't explicitly stated how they followed WP:BEFORE" kinds of bullshit. There's already way too much wikilawyering and attacks on nominators at AfD; we do not need a vehicle for more. As Schmucky says, WP:BURDEN is more important and I oppose any attempt to water it down with artificial roadblocks and obstructionist pettifogging like this. WP:BEFORE is best practice and good advice, but failing to follow it should not be a dealbreaker. Reyk YO! 01:17, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

The problem with this 'optional' business is that it leads to desperately POINTy behaviour; I currently feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall in trying to fathom out why editors deliberately choose not to do WP:BEFORE checks, optional or otherwise. ╟─TreasuryTag►cabinet─╢ 11:09, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, this issue is really a behavioral one that people want addressed, not a process one. There are editors that I am sure AFD articles all the time without BEFORE, but are well versed in an area, and which results in a closure that is appropriate due to lack of sources, or the discovery of difficult-to-find sources that would not likely be discovered from BEFORE - in otherwords, a completely fair result. These are not the editors that are the issue. It is the ones that nominate for deletion and more often than not, their noms are found as "keep" because sources were readily found. When this happens so many times with an editor, we should be seeking to get this editor to understand what AFD really is, and be prepared to take steps (such as banning him or her from making AFD nominations) if their behavior does not improve. --MASEM (t) 16:07, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional. Making it mandatory can only lead to arguments in AfDs about whether procedure has been followed, where the issue should be article content. This whole debate seems to be based on a dubious premise: that it is better to have an unsourced article that 'might' meet notability requirements in article space than no article at all. This attitude might have made sense in the early days of Wikipedia, but the project is now sufficiently mature that we need to emphasise quality more, and put the onus on the article creator to follow 'good practice', and ensure it is fit for inclusion in article space in the first place. If the creator of an article cannot be bothered to make the effort to establish notability, why should others have to do the work for them? Yes, it is 'good practice' to think before starting an AfD, and to do a little checking where practical, but making WP:BEFORE mandatory is effectively licensing laziness by article creators. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:59, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional, essentially mimicing AndyTheGrump. The important thing to do is to follow WP:V before creating an article: "base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." There shouldn't be a question of whether the article could be sourced: if it isn't sourced, or is sourced solely on primary sources, it violates WP:V. That's the article creator's problem, not the nominator's. Many of these protestations of "But I could find a million sources with a Google search!" neglect to note that frequently many or all of those results are completely unsuitable for being the basis of an article.—Kww(talk) 14:18, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Important, but can't be treated as mandatory because it would be unenforceable. Finding sources is an art, not an exact science, and can require specialized knowledge or access. Therefore, people should not be taking articles to AfD without going through some sort of effort to ascertain that the articles are truly deserving of deletion, but that does not mean that nominators can be castigated for failing to do the kind of insightful research needed to find non-obvious sources. As others have noted, the WP:BURDEN for doing thorough research falls on the article creator or defender. --Orlady (talk) 15:55, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
  • It should be obligatory. The number of times nominations are done without checking for sources or considering alternatives to deletion is staggering, and complying with WP:BEFORE would stop many poorly-considered nominations from happening. WP:BEFORE is generally expected other than among lazy deletionists (just because article creators are often lazy it does not mean one should ape them). Fences&Windows 22:32, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional, but strongly encouraged. AndyTheGrump is correct on all points. I see no point in making BEFORE mandatory, and I fear the results of doing so. Editors have varying skills and access to potential sources. We will not be able to distinguish someone who made a good faith effort to find sources that do exist and failed from one who did not even try. Warden's notion of supplying encouragement via twinkle is a fine idea, and we should pursue that. If we are to pursue a mechanism to curb the problem of unsourced articles, my suggestion would be to enforce the policy that articles require reliable sources even at their creation. --Nuujinn (talk) 22:53, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
I don't know how to use Twinkle, and I'm not sure what its purpose is. My impression is that its some sort of timesaver, but I also see people complain about it making certain things easier than they ought to be. If Wikipedia is too hard to use that you need a bunch of javascript or whatever Twinkle is in order to work it, maybe Wikipedia needs to be reworked. -- Avanu (talk) 00:18, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
It's just a tool, and like any tool, it can be used or abused. I don't mind editing in vim, but scripts are very useful and darn tasty, too. If twinkle disappeared, I'd wind up writing my own stuff to replace it, and if we're the encyclopedia anyone can edit, we should make things easy to use. The PROD is well done, you choose a menu selection and it prompts for rationale, which I believe is optional. My feeling is that if we dangle a rational text area in front of a user, they are more likely to use it than if they have to manually edit the raw wikiness. You should try it out, you might like it. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:37, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Is 'vim' just an expression meaning that you're editing in Wikipedia directly? -- Avanu (talk) 00:46, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Vim (text editor) is an old text editor. All you need to know about it is that it is obviously inferior to any form of Emacs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:55, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Every sane editor knows that Emacs is the devil because it includes everything and the kitchen sink. Real techies use pico or nano Hasteur (talk) 16:51, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Sir, that is a blasphemy of the Church of Emacs and will be cast down to the hedonites by St. Ignucius. –MuZemike 18:21, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional: Hasteur, GraemeLeggett, Andy, and SchmuckyTheCat express it well here. Editors ought to perform their due diligence, of course, but there is no reason to make this mandatory. I must insert here the page is called "articles for deletion" and not "subjects for deletion" for a reason: If an article could be notable but is in such terrible shape that it needs to be, for all intents and purposes, totally rewritten, than that article is indeed a good candidate for AfD, because the problems can't be fixed with "normal editing" within the reasonable meaning of "Before nominating" number 10. SchmuckyTheCat expressed it perfectly: WP:BURDEN trumps WP:BEFORE. Neutralitytalk 00:54, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Required  If random AfDs were good for the encyclopedia, we'd have a bot making more of them.  No, the force of reason applies, a drive-by AfD nomination fails the test of reason, i.e., it is not reasonable.  There is also the problem of enforcement—systems require feedback.  Are there metrics that exist to score the WP:BEFORE quality of an AfD nomination?  Unscintillating (talk) 06:13, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Required: I don't see any good reason why you would want to delete a page without ensuring (to the best of your ability) that the page should be deleted. It wastes community time. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 06:26, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Indirectly mandatory. WP:BEFORE is effectively a summary of many other policies and guidelines, including the alternatives to deletion section of the Deletion policy and the try to fix problems section of the Editing policy.

    Willfully not following WP:BEFORE can be seen as disruptive. While a first time offense can result in the swift application of a {{Trout}}, intentionally and repeatedly not following WP:BEFORE can and has resulted in sanctions and blocks, by either the community or ArbCom. More than once when an editor not following WP:BEFORE has ended up in front of ArbCom, they have been admonished or sanctioned for not following best practices. In effect, not following WP:BEFORE is akin to going swimming at a lake or beach where "Swim at your own risk" signs have been prominently posted. --Tothwolf (talk) 15:19, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Get rid of the tools I think WP:BEFORE should be at the very least habitual procedure prior to deletion. That said, I think deletion has become a lot easier than finding sources due to the tools. Without the tools like TW, dealing with the AFD template, notifying interested editors like the article creator, creating the deletion page, and transcluding the template on the log was a bit of a hassle. Sourcing an article was as hard if not easier than nominating for deletion. In our attempt to make the process easier, we've made the jump to the button easier. While I don't actually suggest getting rid of the tools, perhaps there needs to be some kind of reminder that just because the tools makes nominating for deletion easier doesnt mean that the decision should be made lightly. Perhaps a Wikipedia-wide "no automated tools day"?--v/r - TP 16:35, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Attack it with an axe As long as wp:BEFORE is a wall of text full of bullshit you can't expect anybody to follow it. Honestly, when is the last time you checked "what links here" before an AFD nomination? Oh, and don't forget you should know notability, reliable sources, what Wikipedia is not. WP:BIO, WP:COI, WP:CORP, WP:MUSIC, WP:WEB and WP:CLN before nominating anything (Yet the editor who started the article is under no obligation to do likewise!). Cut it down to the essence: 1) do a simple google search for sources if notability is in question, 2) check for recent AFDs and you have something useful, but the current wp:BEFORE is practically useless. Yoenit (talk) 17:32, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes it should be mandatory in its wording and intent but it should not be enforced by speedy closure or sanctioning the violating editor except in the most repeatred and egregious cases. That makes it in practice optional. It's like listing an AfD on the daily page. It is required for a valid discussion but if the nominator fails to so so for whatever reason someone else will do it for you. Eluchil404 (talk) 17:38, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional but strongly recommended per User:WhatamIdoing. Not following WP:BEFORE does not invalidate an AFD, and an article may be deletable even if alternate outcomes haven't been considered. However, even though BEFORE isn't required directly, the nominator has a clear responsibility to avoid silly and disruptive AFDs, whether it is from malice (in which case it can be handled as vandalism) or ignorance (which is not vandalism, but may be disruptive all the same). If an editor can't be bothered to consider alternatives, and rushes ahead with a silly and avoidable AFD nomination, he has only himself to blame. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:36, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Question - If we do require WP:BEFORE, what do we do if this requirement is not followed? Does the AfD follow its normal, ~7 day, course? Is it shut down immediately? Is the editor warned or get a certain number of 'strikes'? What happens if the nominator is just genuinely bad at finding references? I think it's important when creating a rule/law/policy/guideline to consider how it will be enforced and how the resources required to enforce compare to the resources currently in use to deal with the issue (assuming there is one). Also, are we sure that there's a problem to be solved or are we creating policy to make a point? Personally, I think that everyone should be checking but I'm not sure that requiring people to is worth the resources required to enforce such a policy (having editors patrol AfDs for nominations that have no proof that any reference searches have been made). OlYellerTalktome 17:01, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Answer, well okay, my answer. If a given user doesn't follow WP:BEFORE and it's really obvious (book or news search turns up good sources on the first page) we ask the user if they did follow WP:BEFORE and if they didn't we point it out to them. If they say they did, we point out how to better find sources. If a given user continues to nominate articles without following WP:BEFORE we warn them and if it continues we start a discussion at WP:AN to ban them from XfD for a month or two. I'm not asking that we beat the heck out of people. I'm saying we _should_ expect people to look for sources before filing an XfD. People will make mistakes, that's not a problem. Newbies won't do it, and that's fixable. But the fundemental idea is folks _should_ be doing this so as not to waste other's time.Hobit (talk) 17:07, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
      • Although it isn't the intention, what this will mean is that you will get people patroling AfD trying to get people who nominate articles (or possibly even vote for deletion), whether good faith or not, blocked. This will not improve the quality or depth of debate or the overall quality articles.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:20, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
        • If we have someone very frequently nomming notable articles, and that person refuses to make even a small effort to see whether the subject is notable before wasting the community's time on the nomination—or someone systematically nomming our quarter-million {{unref}}-tagged articles to make a WP:POINT or to use AFD as a lever to motivate article clean up—then blocking might be an appropriate way for the community to protect itself from disruption. In routine cases, I don't think that blocking over a couple of failed nominations is at all likely. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:26, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Neither handcuffs, nor an excuse - Is it absolutely mandatory to follow WP:BEFORE for every single article? No. Some articles clearly don't belong. That said, if you're throwing up CSD:A7 templates on half a dozen articles in 10 minutes and you justify yourself by saying WP:BEFORE is optional, then you're an asshat and you need to be slapped. If you're nomming articles for deletion after looking at the first page of a google search, especially if the article is on a foreign subject whose notability will likely not be apparent through an english search, then you're an asshat who needs to be slapped. We have wikiprojects and polyglottal editors to take care of these things. If you can't determine a subject's notability, then slap a category on the article and let someone else figure it out. Similarly, the lack of sources on a brand new article is not indicative of non-notability. Give it time. Add it to an "unsourced new articles" queue in your userspace and check back in a week. There's no rush. No prize for nomming the most articles except the Asshat Cup and the aforementioned slap. Throwaway85 (talk) 18:59, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
  • The thing is, there are people who have a history of wasting other users' time with nominations they clearly haven't researched at all. For those people, WP:BEFORE is mandatory. There are also users who consistently show good judgment, and for those users, WP:BEFORE is optional or in some cases totally unnecessary. The problem with this discussion is that users who don't show good judgment are never conscious of their own unwisdom or immaturity. My advice is, if you don't get "delete" outcomes from at least 80% of your AfD nominations, then you aren't yet ready to disregard WP:BEFORE.—S Marshall T/C 22:11, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Guideline best sums up where it is. The people who've cited WP:BURDEN above as a counterpoint to WP:BEFORE have failed to understand either. WP:BURDEN makes it easy to remove a particular claim, as it should be. WP:BEFORE makes it hard to remove an entire article, again, as it should be. Jclemens (talk) 08:04, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Optional, but some of it is common sense - The real problem here here are users, particularly the ones of an WP:ARS bent, who use WP:BEFORE like a cudgel in XfDs to berate the nominator or those who may !vote delete. Some even use it to try to call for speedy keeps. That is the junk that needs to stop. Tarc (talk) 00:12, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Existing Policy

The essence of WP:BEFORE already is policy. ' WP:Deletion Policy#Alternatives to deletion is policy, and includes the statement "the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion." Adding references is improving the article. WP:BEFORE can be regarded as an expansion and a explanation of the practical meaning of this, just as WP:RS is an expansion and a explanation of the practical meaning of WP:V. Just as we need WP:RS, so we need WP:BEFORE. DGG ( talk ) 15:55, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

With the difference that WP:RS is (a) actively linked to from WP:V and (b) has been actively and explicitly described as a policy or guideline. Your similes don't mesh. Ironholds (talk) 23:47, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
If BEFORE is mandatory policy then you've declared unsourced stubs immune to WP:V. There is no objection to removing unsourced paragraphs from established articles, but once you remove all the unsourced content from a stub the article is blanked - deleted. BEFORE values process and deliberate publication of unsourced potential misinformation to a world wide audience over our readers trust. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
I do not think any one is suggesting that BEFORE be mandatory policy, rather that at least the basic elements of it be a required procedural guideline. The reason it is unsuitable as policy is the same reason WP:RS is unsuitable as policy: it involves too many exceptions and special cases, and needs to be applied with judgement, not blindly, As for the technique of deleting an article by the gradual removal of content without any attempt to improve it or source it, I've said what I think elsewhere often enough. DGG ( talk ) 04:13, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
If this article didn't have a source I'd say delete it regardless of BEFORE. It says things that most readers could not and would not be able to source. Slightly changing the information, or leaving it without the sourced information, could be lethal as it may look like a designer drug analogue. That's why it's not the job of those proposing deletion to provide sources. After several years all the unsourced BLP, spam, hoaxes, and other crap I've seen laying around WP while AfD dawdles on a resolution have pushed me almost to the point of thinking lack of sourcing should be a CSD criteria all by itself.
BTW, I didn't say gradual removal, I said stubs. There isn't enough material to gradually remove it. The equivalent material in an established article would be reverted without question but a user writing a new article with the same material gets a week on AfD. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
Well, then you might like to actually go read the content policies. There are only four types of statements that actually require sources: contentious matter about BLPs, direct quotations, stuff that's been WP:CHALLENGEd, and stuff that you think is actually, in practice, WP:LIKELY to be challenged. Nothing in that four-sentence stub is about BLPs, none of it is a direct quotation, none of it has been challenged, and none of it seems to me like anyone is likely to bother challenging it. In the absence of these four conditions, citations are (very) nice, but not actually required. Unreferenced articles are not prohibited. (Bad idea, yes. Prohibited, no.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • If you don't think anyone is suggesting WP:BEFORE is mandatory policy, you should probably read the section above this one. You know, all the people declaring in bold "IT'S POLICY". Things like that are a slight hint. Suggesting that what renders something unsuitable to be considered policy is exceptions and loopholes is to make the common mistake of thinking that policy = law. Policy is a guide to best practise, and there being situations where what is normally best practise doesn't apply is about as surprising as the Pontiff being head of the Church of Rome. Ironholds (talk) 13:46, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

nullity: if you're not going to enforce it, it does not exist. we now have the spectacle of mass deletions of synagogues, since mass deletion of BLP's was withing admin "discretion". this speedy, prod, AfD article by the score and ticking time bomb, is not a productive quality improvement process: better to institute teams. how long will it be, until the article count starts declining? by increasing the scrap rate do you increase quality? the sanction should be mandatory civility transplant, i.e. mandatory civility programmed instruction, with a passing grade. i note DGG, that noone is listening to you. i nominate DGG to be instructor: he has ways of making you civil. Slowking4 (talk) 18:49, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Could you rewrite that and post it in the English language please? If nobody is listening to DGG it seems rather silly to put him in a role which would require people to actually pay attention to and agree with his comments. Ironholds (talk) 20:09, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
    • It is in English, if you want an ambiguity in it clarified then I'd suggest a polite note to Slowking on his talkpage rather than such hyperbole. As for your suggestion that nobody listens to DGG, I'm sure you are aware that DGG is highly respected (except perhaps by some of the most hardline deletionists). I for one certainly pay attention to his views, usually agree with him and especially in this case "if the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion." Of course there some exceptions to that such as G3 and G10, nobody is arguing that badfaith contributions be given the same courtesy as goodfaith ones. But we are here to write an encyclopaedia not to delete it, and it is important that editors treat deletion as a last resort rather than a first recourse. Sometimes I see "editors" whose contributions include whole screens of prods, speedy tags and the notifications thereof with out even the barest attempt to wikify, categorise or even fix typos in those articles, or even in the intervening articles they have come across in their patrolling. In some cases the tags are so close together they can't have had the time to check if the article has just been vandalised let alone make a serious attempt to source it. In the very worst cases I've come across taggers whose prods assert an attempt to source articles even though a Google search will easily find sources. Of course an editor who sources lots of articles may still on the odd occasion miss an obvious source, but there is a humongous difference between an isolated mistake by an editor who clearly does try to improve articles, and a tagger who makes multiple such mistakes or even the badfaith one of claiming they've looked for sources when they haven't. ϢereSpielChequers 07:00, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
      • Uhm, WereSpielChequers, before you accuse me of hyperbole and saying nobody listens to DGG, note that my comment was simply a reply to SlowKing's statement, on this issue, that "i note DGG, that noone is listening to you". If you have a problem with that statement I would suggest upbraiding him rather than me. Ironholds (talk) 12:52, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
        • i will gladly take the moniker hyperbole-king: (noone). but, look at his talkpage, the disregard for his reason dosen't inspire confidence; he has a balanced approach to deletion which falls on deaf ears. i agree with WereSpielChequers, it's the abusive deletions that are objectionable. hope you enjoyed the circularity: an upward spiral of listening to DGG, beats a downward spiral of deletion drama. Slowking4 (talk) 17:05, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
He/she means that since we don't enforce WP:BEFORE, it has no effect, i.e., it is a "legal invalidity"; and that we are now at a rate of deletion that he/she wonders when the deletion rate will exceed the creation rate of new articles; and that the deletion process would be better as a quality improvement process if replaced with quality teams; and that since we work without quality standards, we don't actually know that deleting articles increases the quality of the encyclopedia.  Also, that we should respect DGG and give him/her a title of teacher.  Also that civility should be given metrics and thereby enforced, so that editors that use words such as some of those in the previous comment would get low marks, negative feedback, and maybe sent to the DGG school for civility.  Unscintillating (talk) 06:10, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
chapeau, better than i could have said. in addition, mass deletion is systematic abuse of the deletion process which includes before, deserving of sanction. DGG was beginning to undo deletions without a reason; mass deletions deserve the same undoing. it is also unprofessional, (beneath a minimum standard of conduct).
online training is well established, with grades and tracking. therefore: suggest, enforce training in required subjects: human resource management, library science, quality control. a higher standard of behavior.
i see above and it's widely held that unreferenced articles should be deleted: "That's why it's not the job of those proposing deletion to provide sources." but i agree with DGG, the proper response to an unsourced article is to source it, not delete it. the sourcing policy was overdue, but incomplete without a plan to implement it on all the existing articles. the sooner we stop the wiki drama, and build the teams to work the backlog, the sooner we will have a better quality wiki. Slowking4 (talk) 15:15, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree with DGG - again, he's shown that he's a wise Jedi master. WP:BEFORE is a guideline, but based on the cited policy. Bearian (talk) 17:21, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Required or at least strongly encouraged. People put a lot of work into contributing articles, and rather than discourage them with AFD, it should be required to check up on the article a little more, and see if it is really should be. It should not be easier to delete a page than to add it. Wxidea (talk) 22:24, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - perhaps steps prior to AfD should be stressed, eg tagging with template:notability and template:unreferenced to give an opportunity for someone else to fix the issue. Then if noone comes out of the woodwork, or if attempts to fix the issue are still not up to scratch, take it to AfD. Some of the drama of AfD is that once the nomination is seen a whole slew of defenders turn up who hadn't been aware of the problem with the article in the first place. GraemeLeggett (talk) 09:29, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Encouraged or required - much of WP:BEFORE is duplicated by the editing policy, and a good-faith effort to follow WP:BEFORE would dramatically reduce the amount of fixable nominations, which would free up AFD for more truly liminal cases. On the other hand, if the nominator is not familiar with the subject or the potential sources usable, even if they applied BEFORE, some fixable nominations would still get through. --Malkinann (talk) 04:05, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Not required - although I probably agree with majority of those commenting as to the steps that should be taken before deletion. As some have tried to point out here, however, an attempt to strictly enforce WP:BEFORE in its current form is doomed to failure, because even good editors rarely will take all of the steps listed before nominating an article, and in the vast majority of cases, such a burden is unreasonable. I fully agree that editors have a duty to carefully look for sourcing before nominating an article for deletion, and I can probably support that editors who routinely ignore this step be sanctioned by being unable to nominate articles. But I can't see the point in have a "best practice" that even our best editors don't actually practice. It should be enough to state that any nomination for deletion should detail the nominator's attempt to source the article to give voters and closers information to evaluate the request. Xymmax So let it be written So let it be done 15:18, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Required would be my preference BEFORE part 4 for AfD/PROD, as a guideline, as per arguments by DGG, WSC, etc. I interpret "good faith" as not being "every outlet possible over months", but at minimum the usual array of Google searches (Gw, Gna, Gb, Gs), something on the other of "3-10 minutes", not "3-10 days" of research. I note that it was explicitly made *not* a requirement of BLPPROD, and while I have mixed feelings about that, right now I net to being sympathetic to leaving that as is. --joe deckertalk to me 19:40, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Experiment

As I'm sure we'd like to come to some sort of consensus, I picked a article from the back of the New Page Patrol Backlog, The Black Book (TV programme) and applied the criteria to it. I put my statement evaluating the criteria on the talk page. What would have taken me perhaps 5 minutes took 30 to do. Obviously some things are a judgement call, but if we're going to put full force behind WP:BEFORE, let's go through the motions of applying the criteria without needing to do it to see if this is really a good idea. Hasteur (talk) 17:39, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Here is another take in the same direction.  This is based on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Temple Sinai (Portsmouth, Virginia):

WP:ATD and WP:BEFORE quality analysis

  • Number of words in nomination: 3
  • Nominator's constructive edits on the Article page: none
  • Nominator's constructive edits on Discussion page: none
  • Point  1: not scored
  • Point  2: Fail. Note that nominator has stated in archives at WP:ANI that the articles were read.  So the score here reflects not the action but the failure to report the action.
  • Point  3: not scored. Nominator has not indicated that the talk page has been read, but the talk page has no discussion.
  • Point  4: Fail. Requires objective evidence, such as a search algorithm that can be repeated by other editors, and analysis of likely offline sources such as reliable local newspapers in libraries.
  • Point 5a: Fail. Nominator has not refuted the possibility of a redirect.
  • Point 5b: Fail. Nominator has not refuted the possibility of a merge.
  • Point  6: Fail. No tags.
  • Point  7: Fail. No evidence that nominator has checked "What links here".
  • Point  8: not scored.
  • Point  9: Fail. Nominator has not disclosed in the AfD the relevance of WP:COI, given that he/she is reported to be a rabbi of a different Jewish denomination.
  • Point 10: not scored (Duplicative)
  • Point 11: not scored
  • Point 12: not scored, Template:Not Ballot, no evidence that this was or was not done.
  • Point 13: not applicable
  • Incubation: Fail, Nominator has not refuted the possibility of incubation.
  • Other Wiki Project: Pass was no need to mention other Wiki projects
  • Check for Deadlinks: not scored, no evidence that these were checked, and no evidence that they were not checked.
  • Has the nomination prevented "duplication of effort": Fail
  • Nomination is inoculated "from being labeled as spurious or thoughtless": Fail

Unscintillating (talk) 05:47, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Yes; I find analysis based on a single example interpreted and selected by somebody with a clearly biased opinion on the subject to be simply de rigueur for accuracy. Ironholds (talk) 14:11, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I have spent about 8 man-hours today in researching the topic and improving the article.  Given that a redirect does not require an AfD discussion, my analysis here is that there was never a possibility that this material was subject to deletion.  A plausible argument could be made to create a List of Jewish congregations in Portsmouth, with this material merged there, but the place for this conversation is on the talk page of Temple Sinai (Portsmouth, Virginia).  Note that the nominator is now pursuing a deletion review which by coincidence happens to be about Temple Sinai (Portsmouth, Virginia) at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 June 28.

Possible improvements:

  • Point 4, expand to include Gnews and Gscholar.
  • Point 5, expand to include Delete, and restore redirect
  • New points: how long did it take to prepare the AfD nomination, and how long has the nominator been working on the article.

Unscintillating (talk) 22:56, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Where do these fit in the above?

I realize that nomination is only 1/2 of deletion but where would the following fit in. Based on a quick guess from going through random articles, I'm guessing that there are about 1,000,000 stub and short articles on cities, towns, provinces, obscure species species of plants and animals where the ability to meet wp:notability is presumed and probable, but it has not been established in the article. And most of these articles would have no "defender". Something to protect them from mass mindless AFD nomination would be good. North8000 (talk) 17:12, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

They would survive AFD so not sure why your suggesting or what the point would be If you nominated lots they would end up being speedy kept and you'd get lots of comments about WP:before. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 01:18, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
Yes, they would survive a challenge. Notability has never required that an article contain even one citation. We only require that WP:Independent sources have been WP:Published on the subject.
We don't have an actual problem with people trying to delete these articles, so we don't really need something to protect them. If we develop this problem, then we have mechanisms in place to handle it. Among our "defenses" are deletion sorting (which calls articles to the attention of people who are interested in, and usually familiar with notability standards for, a general subject) and blocking editors for disruptive nominations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:18, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Summary

I wonder if some brave soul might summarize the above discussion to the optional or required nature of WP:BEFORE? Basket of Puppies 04:50, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

From my reading, there's a general consensus that BEFORE should be guideline-ish. Sceptre (talk) 00:17, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Seems about right to me. There also seems to be some disagreement about the meaning of "should". --Nuujinn (talk) 00:31, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
  • A late thought, but why is it that we've set up this system so that the burdon doesn't lie on the editors creating the articles? I personally believe we've come to the point where a new article should NOT be created unless it is sourced and longer than three sentences. Now before a bunch of people jump in and say "but some of our best work came from progressive adaptations on what may have originally been a three sentence stub. If a two sentence article is created, with no refs, and three sentences, then it should be the creator's obligation to go find sources when someone prods or AfDs the thing, and not the person that looks at it and says "this is terrible, why do we have this?" Articles must indicate their notability and be verifiable as per our core policies; nominating for deletion shouldn't put the backwards onus on you, the nominator. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 15:46, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
    • Currently the burden is they could be sourced if challenged. Everyday there are many new article created that are completely unsourced, here is a selection of them:User:AlexNewArtBot/URTBLPSearchResult (Unsourced at time of last bot run and may later be sourced, although checking at randon most of them are not, BLPs being the exception). Regards, SunCreator (talk) 21:53, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
      • hell no. increasing the hurdle rate for new articles does not increase article quality; rather, institute training of new editors. it does nothing for the backlog problem; rather institute stub improvement teams. putting the onus on the nominator to follow the deletion process including before is consensus. enforcing hurdles, merely makes work for admins to delete articles, and tagspan editors; better to train the editors to produce better work. Slowking4: 7@1|x 19:21, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Proposed change Currently the WP:BEFORE is part of the procedure for AfD, so whether it is policy or not it will certainly be read as policy by most people. So the question is whether the wording should be changed to so make it read as a recommendation rather than rules that must be followed. As a rule it's pretty wishy-washy and unenforceable, plus good-faith is supposed to be assumed already and making a rule that requires people to make a "good-faith effort" seems to assume that people would act in bad-faith if there wasn't a rule against it. In addition, the AfD process is painful enough without the WP:BEFORE club to beat people with. (I have a few lumps from it myself.) On the other hand making it read as optional may mean that articles that could obviously be fixed by editing will go to AfD instead, so no pain avoidance there. To me, WP:BURDEN comes from WP:Verifiability, one of the WP:Core content policies, while WP:BEFORE is a civility issue, basically saying "don't waste people's time or harass people with spurious AfD's." Both seem equally important so it makes no sense to try to make a blanket ruling on which trumps the other. So the change I would propose is to include at the top of the section:

"The following steps should be completed before nominating an article for deletion. This is to ensure AfD nominations are made appropriately and that they conform to Wikipedia policies of WP:Civility."

I have used the word "should" instead of "must" here, which is the core of the whole previous discussion. But I think the interpretation is the correct one in that an editors who decide not to follow these steps have taken upon themselves the responsibility for ensuring the AfD nomination is appropriate and civil. In other words replace the "No Swimming" sign with "Swim at your own risk".
I'd also like the WP:BEFORE club to be added to Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. If an AfD seems spurious then say why in your Keep comment, if you are correct then the nominator will hopefully realize the mistake and know better next time. Denigrating comments such as "The nom obviously didn't follow WP:BEFORE," really don't help anyone.--RDBury (talk) 21:01, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Should users be allowed to remove information relevant to a current block from their talk while they are requesting (or re-requesting) an unblock?

It's clear that a lot of people think block notices are not necessary all the time (particularly if an user is moving on or sitting the block out), but there's an unresolved question.

There was a recent case where a disruptive IP was requesting an unblock but removing the specific diffs which were relevant to why the block was imposed. This resulted in a problem because we were sending off reviewing admins to look through a contributions history to identify what was already clearly listed on the user talk. (The IP's block expired and the lack of administrator intervention led to the need for the Community to, in an unprecedented move, vote on a Community ban to address the IP. This did not reflect well on any of the admins patrolling at the time.) Things can become even more problematic in other situations, such as times where there is off-wiki evidence, and other pertinent information which is not readily obvious to others, cannot be expanded in the block log entry. This can also occur at times where all of the information was not written in the rationale initially (eg; it was included later but removed by the editor on the basis that they're permitted to remove anything from their talk page).

And as for admins who should be desysopped, the Community should already be fully aware of how many hoops it needs to jump through to effectuate a desysop. Where genuine disruption is being prevented, should we manage the risk of genuine disruption occurring where misleading unblock requests are made and relevant information being removed?

My question is this: if the user is requesting an unblock while the block is in force, should they be allowed to remove relevant information which did not fit into the block log entry? Ncmvocalist (talk) 20:26, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Let me state first of all that I have a very narrow view of what blocked users should be allowed to do while their block is active. However, I also recognize my view is not the consensus view, so what we need to do instead is to come up with alternate means of solving the problem, while still working within the consensus view that blocked users may blank their own talk page. They cannot, however, blank your talk page, hmmm? So pragmatically, there are ways to preserve evidence if the user refuses to leave it on their talk page. Just leave the diffs on your talk page, or perhaps on the talk page of the blocking and/or reviewing admin. Though some people believe that a user would be instantly unblocked (in error) if a reviewing admin is faced with a blank user talk page, I seriously don't know a single administrator who would do that. Indeed, at minimum, every admin is supposed to at least contact the blocking administrator for input in undoing any block. Let me say that again: there is no impending disaster coming to the Wikipedia should a blocked user blank their talk page or remove diffs to their disruption, or anything else for that matter. Admins aren't stupid and careless, and we check on these things. If keeping a record of things is important for you, there are workarounds that don't involve using the blocked user's talk page. --Jayron32 20:34, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't believe any wording regarding "relevant information" should be included in WP:BLANKING; instead, common sense should apply on a case-by-case basis. Eagles 24/7 (C) 20:48, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
I have been very strongly emphasised this point about common sense and case-by-case basis, but a lack of a clear guideline on this point will be a source of unnecessary disputes in the future and will cause a mockery (especially in cases where the sanctioned user is not an established one). In the case I referred to above, the IP threatened to take that admin to ArbCom over this sort of pettiness. I don't intend on letting agenda-driven single-purpose-disruptive users to make yet another mockery by exposing the vulnerabilities of this site and the lack of clear guidance on what each user thinks they should be entitled to. My other primary concern is that there is a "limited resources" issue (one of the reasons the Community banned that IP and one of the stated considerations for why an admin was recently not desysopped). If there's a willingness for workarounds that do not waste resources unnecessary, I'm all for it (but I have not seen anything like this emerge in practice so far; this seems more theoretical than anything). While I've given admins as much of the benefit of the doubt as sanctioned users, there are certainly users out there who won't agree with Jayron's second last sentence based on their own unpleasant experiences (which although may have been occasional in the grand scheme of things, is critical seeing it is they who were adversely affected in one form or another more than the admins in question). Ncmvocalist (talk) 21:04, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
Interesting topic, but I find your comment about "off wiki evidence" quite disturbing. What exactly is this "off wiki" evidence of which you speak? Are you saying that the wikipedia management and bureaucracy is collecting "evidence" on us, like DNA, fingerprints, photographs, electronic surveillance, or intercepted email? Where is this information being stored and how can us regular users take a look at it? Is there a file on me somewhere? I would like some clarification on this. Brad Wingo (talk) 23:10, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
Details will obviously vary from case to case but one example I have seen was a chat room on another website being used by several newly registered users to coordinate efforts to write a hoax article. Even after the URL was listed in the block summaries it took the better part of a day before the pranksters realized that several Wikipedia admins were reading the chat to learn what new stunts the pranksters were planning. Sometimes you will be amazed at what a quick search engine test can turn up. --Allen3 talk 23:36, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Of course they shouldn't remove stuff while they are still asking for an unblock. But we don't need a special rule for this; that's instruction creep. This is simple common sense and standard talk page etiquette: You don't remove pertinent parts of a discussion while the discussion is still ongoing. If you are requesting an unblock, then everything that led up to it, including the block notice, is part of the pertinent discussion context. If a blocked user has removed such stuff, simply reinstate it: most blocked editors will be clever enough to figure out that it's not a good idea to revert-war against the admin you want to get an unblock from. In special cases like the disruptive IP alluded to above, if a user actually insists on removal while still ostensibly requesting unblocks, that's just a sign of trolling and disruptive wikilawyering, and the clearest sign the user ought to stay blocked. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:00, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Agreed - it's generally fairly obvious when removing stuff is disruptive, and it should be handled accordingly. One option is to make use of the new facility to annotate the block log: basically, create the page User:Example/Blocklogannotation (can be protected if necessary) and its contents will show up when someone goes to Special:Block/Example. Rd232 public talk 08:20, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Some users think a block notice is a scar on user-talk: I tend to leave my block notices, in place on my talk-page, to get a better sense of the suffering imposed on blocked users; however, many users want to hide them, as if removing a posted insult, and that seems reasonable. I have advised, "No one cares about your wiki-reputation" but there are some who do, without considering this is a volunteer project, of misguided judgments by novices (no one is a "certified" WP-expert judge). The last time I was blocked, I was on wikibreak, so I tried to make the wikibreak-notice be seen as the more obvious note, to users who wanted to contact me. Plus, the block notices, as left in place, help to decode the unfair blocks, by noting the surrounding messages. What I learned is that the block-log constitutes a form of "multiple jeopardy" where future "punishment" is increased based on prior blocks, so a user should have unfair blocks expunged (ya right) to avoid massive punishments in the future. The reality is that having a block log cleared is very difficult, so the knee-jerk sanctions at WP:ANI add up to be "gunnysacking" of negative information. Hence, I have advocated changing to a more professional system of total demerits, offset by earned merits, where a person is sanctioned with multiple demerits, which can add up to a block, or earn positive merits which reduce the demerits, such as 100 demerits for a noted WP:NPA attack, but 50 merits for a clear apology for the attack. A person's log would be an NPOV-balanced record of negative-offset-by-positive demerits/merits, and no longer a "mark of shame" used to crucify a user. WP is currently designed as a hate-mongering system, which ignores the massive accomplishments of many editors, and instead, treats them like worthless trash, kicked down by the self-appointed elite class. This situation is not news, but changing a user-log to include positive, as well as scarring, comments would help reduce the slanted view being forced into block-logs. Some former vandals have become very productive, positive editors, no longer putting jokes in articles, but their block-logs likely tell a different story. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:19, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Surely the purpose of a block notice is to inform the user that they're blocked and should be treated in the same way as removal of warnings—evidence that the message has been read and understood. Any admin considering an unblock request will make the two clicks to find the block notice in the history in case there's anything in it that would affect the request. I'm not sure how the guideline came to be how it is (last time I read it, you could remove anything except declined unblock requests), but I always thought the principle was essentially "is this worth starting an edit war over"? If someone removes a notice, it does no harm, but you can bet your bottom dollar someone will restore it "because the guideline says you can't do that". Then we have an edit war, which benefits nobody. So I would say the guideline should go back to the way it was and users should be allowed to remove what they like from their own talk page, with the exception of unblock requests. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:02, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment I do agree that anyone intentionally removing the particular diffs showing why they are blocked while in the meantime attempting to get their block reviewed and removed has shown they are not mature enough to be unblocked. Should this mean we should encode this into policy or guideline? Probably not, because this would be down the slippery slope to one day making it "illegal" for anyone to remove a block from their talk page. Maybe if it was worded such as–"If you are attempting to get your block reviewed please do not edit the block. This is to ensure a proper review is entailed with no prejudice. Block removal may be denied solely based on editor tampering with the block and not based on the true merits of the case. If you are not appealing the block then you may delete the block notice from your talk page and wait out the period of your block." Would anyone disagree if this was included in policy?Camelbinky (talk) 23:41, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
  • It sounds unnecessary to have any more rules on this to me. If evidence is removed from talk pages it makes it that much harder for someone to consider an unblock request, so makes it less likely for a requestor to be unblocked. So removing talk page messages is just another way to soil your own nest. The benefit of the doubt is not the same as acting from ignorance. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:00, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Citing documents such as college degrees, other

My question is how to verify associations, degrees and awards of a living person? Would they scan information such as this that could be uploaded to an archive site as the reference link? Thanks. -- Suzwriter — Preceding unsigned comment added by Suzwriter (talk • contribs) 02:10, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

No, that is the job of people like journalists. Wikipedia isn't designed for that sort of original research. What you need to find is not a person's college degrees, you need to find a reliable source where someone else has gone through the trouble of vetting their college degrees. You know, like books, magazine articles, newspaper articles, that sort of thing. --Jayron32 04:52, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
So the person having the information on their own site... beyond just saying 'i have a master's degree from University of X', actually having documentation from said 'University' would be a step in the direction - but is still a 'primary source'. Really what you want is the organization in question to substantiate the degree, award, etc.Cander0000 (talk) 05:32, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Jayron is wrong on the point of WP:OR, it does not mean that you cant do research on your own and find new documentation, it means that you shouldnt come to your own conclusions and take x and y and come up with z. A primary source can and should be used it adds relevant information to make an article more complete. In the end- IAR justifies using a primary source if it makes the article more complete and accurate. Especially if a primary source shows a secondary source to be outright wrong, eg- someone says they have masters degree in x from y university but the university has documentation showing that the person actually only has a bachelor's in z, such "research" causes a big change in how we present our article from being "So-and-so has a masters in x from y" to being worded as "The NY Times claims so-and-so has a masters in x from y, but y university has documentation that so-and-so only has a bachelors in z from their university". That's a big difference and completely legitimate. When writting an article you should ALWAYS do thorough RESEARCH of all available sources where you can find them to find accurate and complete knowledge.Camelbinky (talk) 16:45, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
College degrees are not publications. --Jayron32 16:49, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, Jayron32 is right. Basing article content on unpublished primary sources definitely constitutes WP:OR, and is likely to produce erroneous results if not done by the knowledgeable. If the university publishes a statement that 'X' has a degree in 'Y', it can of course be cited. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:25, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm really not seeing it. Degree conferrals are public information in that anyone can communicate with the granting institution and verify whether so-and-so received a degree in X year, yes? That has a strong smell of WP:V to it, to me. I don't think there's any need to excessively fetishize print publication. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:02, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Agree with that. It is primary information but there is no requirement for anything to be in a book or newspaper. This is like a sign in a museum which is similarly okay but even less accessible to most people. Dmcq (talk) 18:25, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm guessing you've never worked in Human Resources or journalism, have you? Finding out whether somebody really has a degree in X from school Y can be like pulling teeth; and definitely falls in the category of original research. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:27, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Show me the sentence or paragraph in WP:OR that says this falls under it... I dont see it. You totally dont get the idea of or meaning behind it. And pulling teeth? Funny because every university puts out the names of its graduating class every single year, not that hard to find it if you go to the university library. In fact I just googled my name and the university I attended and bam, there's several sources proving that I at least attended the school and if I went through each one I'm sure I could find one that mentioned my graduation. There was a weatherman from CBS6 in Schenectady, NY who claimed to be a meteorologist, well the the JOURNALISTS at his own station got suspicious after about a year and did some digging and discovered he never graduated from ANY college and was not a meteorologist, he was fired of course. So I dont buy your claim that it is that hard to discover if someone graduated from anywhere.Camelbinky (talk) 20:55, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
So, by your own anecdote, we shouldn't simply take the subjects word on this & should wait for a third party source. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 20:18, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
It's not unusual for us to cite the subject himself on such non-contentious points. Many BLPs have posted a résumé containing such information online, and you can cite it directly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:55, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
The only problem with that would be if the accuracy is disputed, it's not uncommon for someone to claim a degree that they don't really have. WP:SELFPUB covers how we use self-published information as a source for the subject, and either item 1 or 4 might apply in such a situation to demand a third-party source. -- Atama頭 00:43, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Discovery could be the identification in a Wikipedia article of a reliable source reporting the conferral of a degree. That's a good thing. Saying "I found it in Google" (i.e. "discovery") and adding it to an article without a citation to a RS is original research. Discoveries have to be verifiable. I also dispute that colleges are obligated to disclose on demand to anyone who got what degree when. patsw (talk) 00:45, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Huh? I dont follow and I dont think Patsw was following anything when commenting. First- no one ever says "I found it in Google", Google is a search engine, you FIND sources through Google or Google books then cite the source, you dont cite Google even though Google helped you find the information. Second- No one as far as I can tell ever said colleges are obligated to disclose anything, but they do happen to put out pamphlets, booklets, lists, etc in different formats that are out there on every graduating class, the information exists, is accessible at least at the university library if not online or elsewhere. And since WP:V says something must be verifiABLE it doesnt have to be accessible to EVERYONE EVERYWHERE at a moment's notice for free. As long as SOMEONE is able to access it and verify it, it does not matter if it is one booklet in one library that you must be a student to acceess. And if you disagree with THAT you can take it to the WP:V talk page, the WP:OR/N, and WP:RS/N and all three can tell you what has been said in numerous discussions numerous times.Camelbinky (talk) 00:57, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
So we agree there's a difference between the informal assertion of a discovery and citing a verifiable source into an article. patsw (talk) 01:41, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Ok... I guess but that has nothing to do with this discussion and no one ever was talking about anything like that. Unless of course you are talking about my informal assertion of discovering on Google that you can verify I at least attended my university. In that case NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I will not be citing a verifiable source as that would be outing myself and I sure hope you arent implying that a talk page comment needs to be cited with a verifiable source or else that user's comment is invalid, because that would be not only ridiculous but also rude.Camelbinky (talk) 01:46, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Editors to require autoconfirmed status to create new articles -trial

Following the recent consensus to limit new article creation to autoconfirmed users, a discussion is taking place on a sub page here to determine the duration of the required trial. It is emphasised that the current discussion is only about the duration and not about the technical implementation or system of post-trial evaluation - they will be discussed on separate pages. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:43, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Flooding the recent changes list

Hi, what are you doing guys when a newbie constantly modifies a page and doesn't use the Preview button, even if warned with {{uw-preview}}? --Gikü (talk) 13:39, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Considering how many established editors, even admins, do it....I imagine almost noone cares, despite how annoying it is to some of us. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:04, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
Mobile devices make previewing less likely also. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 17:41, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
Is this newbie's lack of previewing being unnecessarily disruptive? Even in that case, maybe a friendly explanation of why using the preview button is a good idea will make more of a difference than slapping templates on her/his Talk page. And the Recent Changes List has been flooded with edits for years, many years. One newbie taking ten or more edits to get a revision right is not going to break Wikipedia. -- llywrch (talk) 06:30, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
Sometimes (many times?) no matter how often I use the preview, that one glaring typo just creeps in. You know, the one that you notice just after you've hit the "Save Page" button? It happens to all of us, some days more than others. If it's not actually disruptive, be lenient. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 07:31, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Also using preview is of no help in spotting errors in cites, because preview doesn't show you the references section unless you edit the whole article rather than by section, which is undesirable for all sorts of other reasons. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 17:20, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Er, you can always just insert {{reflist}}, preview, and then remove it before the final save. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:54, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
So I'm not the only one who uses the temporary reflist template? I'm not so special after all. :( But then again, sometimes I hit "submit" before I remember to remove that template, and then have to make a second edit to remove it, defeating the purpose. Meh. -- Atama頭 00:51, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Not really a policy issue and WP:BEANS says it's better not to mention it. The "Please note:" section says "When you click Save, your changes will immediately become visible to everyone. If you wish to run a test, please edit the Sandbox instead." Maybe something like "Consider previewing and proofreading you text before saving" could be added. I do worry about people who make hundreds of edits a day. Quality writing is hard to do and research takes time even if you're familiar with the subject, so it's difficult to see how people can do either in a non-stop typing session.--RDBury (talk) 21:36, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Policy creep - sometimes editors make mistakes while editing, and not all edits are perfect on the first glance. After all, we editors should go ahead and improve the encyclopedia anyways, and sometimes fixing typos that one notices after the fact is not really disruptive per se. Some Wiki Editor (talk) 00:16, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you all for feedback. I had such a problem at ro.wiki when I warned an user with {{uw-preview}} and he kept saving the page every minute. I was wandering how such problems are solved here at en.wiki. Gikü (talk) 13:17, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Reforming the WP:Cat/gender policy

I feel like this policy would do a world of difference to be changed for these reasons:

  1. Research. It would be easier to conduct research for gendered history if they are separated into gendered categories. And people do conduct gendered history research. When they are scattered around in different areas, research is less simplified.
  2. Future use. Younger people of other genders will be able to see the accomplishments of potential role models of their own gender.

I am someone who researches a lot, I do it not only for a past time, but I use it in my work life too. I know what makes research easier. Sometimes creating more categories does make research easier, because more specific, popular categories lend to this categorizing. There is possibility of over-categorization on Wikipedia, but I feel that gendered categories will not lend itself to that. This is solely about creating databases for gendered research and not about race, sexism, or any other topic out of subject that might come up. I might also suggest that there be some sort of reform to the policy for historic purposes, or modify it in some way--not do away with the policy completely. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 17:01, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Could you be more specific about what categories, or kinds of categories, you'd like to see? Maybe with a few examples? Cynwolfe (talk) 17:36, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
These are American-centered categories, but this is simply due to my being American myself, not because I believe only American subgroups should be recognized (or that those of any type of European descent should not be recognized). These were only two I actually created and worked on before I was told that these types of categories were against Wikipedia policy. As someone who is very enthusiastic about women's history, and does research in it quite often, I felt like Wikipedia should have adequate ways to easily look up women in these ethnic categories. There are other people who agree with me on this, but due to canvassing policy I am not informing them of this discussion. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 17:55, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Are you aware of this category? Is it helpful? Category:Women by nationality USchick (talk) 18:25, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Actually I find that extremely helpful! So I'm still a little unclear why the categories I created would then be up for deletion if categories like those you posted are allowed to exist. If it's considered useful categorize women by nationality, why is it not useful to categorize women by descent or ethnicity? --Shakesomeaction (talk) 18:34, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
WP:Cat gender contains the unhelpful guideline separate categories for actors and actresses are not needed, but a female heads of government category is valid as a topic of special encyclopedic interest. Since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences disagrees about the need for separating actors and actresses, as do other professional performing arts bodies that present awards separately to actors and actresses such as the Tony Awards, it's unclear to me why the first part of the statement is valid. It seems to me that if you can present multiple works of scholarship that deal with "African American women" as a topic of historical or scholarly inquiry (my search is limited to "university" publishers), you have verified a topic of special encyclopedic interest. It may, however, raise questions under WP:DIFFUSE and require subcategories. Has it not been that simple for you? Or have (ahem) behaviors perhaps unduly roiled the waters? I've seen a bit of flailing about by both sides on this elsewhere. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:54, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
This sort of explanation was not given at any point by any person, and it probably would have prevented a lot of headache if it would have been given. This helps me a lot. Perhaps the WP:Cat gender should be reworded, because at this point it's a bit confusing for people to understand in that context. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 19:18, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
"Women by nationality" can be determined either by birth or by citizenship. Race categories are discouraged on Wikipedia because they can not be determined and can not be referenced by reliable sources. In the US, race is a voluntary declaration by the individual, there is no official document, no proof, and most people are multiracial. See American golfer Tiger Woods – half Asian (one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Thai), one-quarter African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch. He refers to his ethnic make-up as “Cablinasian” (a syllabic abbreviation he coined from Caucasian, Black, (American) Indian, and Asian). To complicate matters even more, why is Charlize Theron not considered African American? She was born in Africa and is now an American. Yet, dark skinned Americans who haven't been in Africa for many generations are African Americans. See Category talk:African-American people #4 Blacks only? (section). USchick (talk) 21:33, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
You may very well be right about these issues, but the topic at hand here is about creating categories for women (or creating gendered categories). Considering that people are already separated by ethnicity, all that would be done is place the women into the women category. The only issue that could possibly come up is if the person is transgender or intersex, and in that case one would categorize in the gender as the person identifies. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 22:26, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
These are the kinds of thorny questions that do arise. For historical women, scholarship should verify whether the subject has been treated as an aspect of the encyclopedic topic "African American women." This may sound like splitting hairs, but there's a difference between a WP editor inferring that a subject should be placed in a category, and having a body of scholarship that treats a particular woman as a subject of African American women's history. One of the things I object to with categories is placing a subject in a category when the article doesn't explain why (Cicero is categorized as a Trope theorist, perhaps correctly, but the word "trope" isn't used in the article, and there isn't even an article on trope theory); if the categorization isn't verifiable by citations in the article, this strikes me as OR or synth. But if the identification has been made within the article by means of sufficient RS, I don't see the problem with this kind of categorization. I recognize there's already been a lot of discussion on this in general elsewhere, but I'm not sure where, and apologize if I'm covering old ground. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:31, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
The term African American was coined by Malcom X, who used it to encourage black Americans to be proud of their heritage. That is generally a term reserved for black people. To me that's a nonissue. Also, I don't think this is just about African American women, it's about any women of any culture being recognized.... Due to pickiness of some editors, people have resorted to making pages with lists of women because people will simply not recognize their historical significance. I don't know any of the arguments that have been brought up, so nothing is old ground for me. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 22:39, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
USchick, I completely disagree with your claim that race "can not be referenced by reliable sources". We have done so in thousands of articles. While it's true that we can't prove that any individual is a True™ <racial label>, we mostly certainly can and do report that they are verifiably <whatever racial label the reliable sources use>. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:22, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Personally I don't like categories which have more than one criterion for membership. I know Wikipedia doesn't do this at present but I'd much prefer that one be able to specify logical conditions on category inclusion like in a database. That way we don't get people setting up arbitrary numbers of intersections of attributes like sex and nationality and profession and whatever else strikes peoples fancy. The current way of doing things just doesn't work properly. Dmcq (talk) 23:44, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

I suppose my point is only that "African American women" is, per WP:Cat gender, a topic of special encyclopedic interest, as demonstrated by these search results, so I'm unclear why the category doesn't meet the criteria. Cynwolfe (talk) 00:06, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

It seems to be to me that people keep confusing this as a race issue, as the conversation quickly went that way above. And that's where people get mixed up about criteria. A gentle reminder (although I admit I have not been all that gentle in my past) that this is simply about recognizing a group for historical significance can be made. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 00:20, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
One thing that needs to be made absolutely clear: we NEVER categorise individual people by 'race'. (see Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality). We allow categorisation by ethnicity, but that isn't the same thing. If people don't understand the difference, they should keep away from the topic entirely. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
We have Category:African-American people. If a woman's notability is based in part on her importance as a figure specifically in African American women's history, as indicated by RS (examples again) cited within the article, I'm not seeing how the categorization wouldn't conform to WP:Cat gender as a topic of special encyclopedic interest. It may be the case, however, that it's a category to be populated only by subcategories such as "19th-century African American women". There's something about the reasoning I'm not following. Cynwolfe (talk) 06:57, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
As I created Category:African American women, I discovered many "first African American woman to..." I think these are all notable, and some of them were the first African American in general to reach whatever accomplishment. While I did put all African American women in the category, I believe paring it down to these women of historical significance would make sense. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 13:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
In that case, perhaps it's appropriate to adjusting the category name to include "first." USchick (talk) 14:20, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
The problem with that is not all of these notable women are notable for being a first, unless someone could propose a category for them. Maybe "notable" could be used... Although that is very subjective. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 14:33, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Any Wikipedia category of 'X persons' only includes 'notable X persons' as a matter of policy. If a person doesn't meet the general Wikipedia notability criteria, they shouldn't be included. On that basis, we don't use the word 'notable' in criteria. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:44, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
The usual thing to do is to give the cat a relatively plain name, and then write a description on the cat page that tells people what kinds of articles ought to be listed. So you could have "20th century African-American women", and then recommend listing people who were notable because they were African-American women, rather than people who were notable for some other reason and "just happened" to be women of that ethnicity. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:44, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
For women in history we have Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's History. Creating a category for one race from one country is something we do in America, but it falls apart very quickly outside the US. What about "first" black people from France, like Surya Bonaly? Or "first" ethnic minority from Yemen? USchick (talk) 15:28, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
If those groups are the subjects of substantial scholarly research, like African-American women are, then we could easily have such categories. If they aren't, then we won't. Just because women of a particular ethnicity in one country are a notable group doesn't mean that women of every single ethnicity in every single country have to be given matching categories. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:46, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree with WhatamIdoing. We already have Category:African-American people (which has a great number of subcategories); Shakesomeaction wants Category:African American women. The issue is therefore gender, not the label "African-American," which is already used in a great number of categories. Nobody's addressed my point of policy in reference to the wording of WP:Cat gender, which makes exceptions for creating gender categories when gender constitutes a topic of special encyclopedic interest. These search results indicate that university presses regularly publish books on African American women's history; how are you then defining "a topic of special encyclopedic interest" to exclude "African American women's history"? The point is that the category "African American women" is too diffuse; its existence is supported by the language of WP:Cat gender, but the question is whether it should be populated only by subcategories, which I believe Shakesomeaction was trying to say made sense to her/him. If you think no categories with the label "African American" should exist, that's a different argument, and you have a lot of categories to delete. I'm not arguing in support of "African American" categories; I'm saying that if they exist, "African American women" is permissible under WP:Cat gender as "a topic of special encyclopedic interest." Cynwolfe (talk) 15:54, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I understand about scholarly research on minority groups and the importance of including the contribution of all people in history. WhatamIdoing said this category would include: "people who were notable because they were African-American women, rather than people who were notable for some other reason." What would be an example? When is someone notable because of their race instead of their accomplishment? USchick (talk) 16:05, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
The first African-American woman to become a licensed physician. The first African-American woman to be appointed as a tenured professor at a "white" university. The first African-American woman to be admitted to the bar. Most doctors, professors, and lawyers aren't notable. These women would have been notable because of their ethnicity and gender, and would very likely not be notable if they had been white men with the same accomplishments. As an example, there's not really anything remarkable about Rebecca Lee Crumpler's career as a physician, except that she was the first African-American woman to earn an MD, and she did so at a time when the vast majority of women (of any race) and nearly all African-Americans had little hope of attending high school, much less university and medical school.
Not all cats are restricted this tightly; it would not be unusual to include also iconic figures that are both notable for their identity and for their other accomplishments. For example, US Senators are always notable anyway, but it would not be unreasonable to include the first (and so far, only) African-American woman senator in such a category. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Again, my point is that if "African American" categories exist, I'm not understanding why a properly subcategoried "African American women" isn't supported by WP:Cat gender as "a topic of special encyclopedic interest." As far as I know, the other African American categories weren't recently targeted for deletion; therefore, the policy issue is gender, not "race." What I was agreeing with was WhatamIdoing's explanation that not all groups as described in terms of gender/race/ethnicity would be the subjects of extensive and specialized scholarship, so that (sorry to repeat myself) the question is whether the subject at hand is "a topic of special encyclopedic interest." Cynwolfe (talk) 16:47, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes this is exactly what I'm trying to say. You have put it better than I did--I get frustrated very easily at the subject. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 17:06, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Hmmm, I'm torn on this issue. The fact that editors think this category is necessary is very important and should be respected. For that reason alone, if the users need to have it, it should be available as a tool. On the other hand, we NEVER categorise individual people by 'race'... except Americans. Are we making rules that only apply to Americans? Again? This is why the rest of the world hates us. USchick (talk) 17:15, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
As far as Wikipedia is concerned, African-American is not a "race". It is an "ethnicity". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree with this.... There are black people from other areas who are not African American. A person chooses to identify as African American, and African American is only a ethnic identity in the United States, much like Native American. I don't consider it changing the rules for Americans. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 17:28, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I was assuming that within the context of American history and culture, "African American" had been construed on Wikipedia as an "ethnic" category. Therefore, "race" has nothing to do with this. So if "African American" is a valid way to construct a category (again, see all the African-American subcategories), the question is whether "African American women" meets the gender exception for "a topic of special encyclopedic interest," based on the existence of scholarship that deals specifically with "African American women's history." I'm not arguing for the necessity of the category, only that the current language of WP:Cat gender allows its existence, as far as I'm able to understand what's meant by that phrase. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:51, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Those are excellent points to include in the description for the category. USchick (talk) 17:56, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Unintended consequences: Category:African American women will be separated from Category:African American people as though women are not people. Not at all a minor detail, considering how long women had to fight for inclusion. USchick (talk) 18:23, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
I was under the impression Category:African American women would be a subcategory of Category:African-American people. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 19:02, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Exactly! And what's the next step? Once you create a category for men, what will be left under people? Labeling and separating women from the rest of the population is a very dangerous slippery slope. Proceed with caution and at your own risk. USchick (talk) 19:11, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I think that USchick raises a very important point. There may be sound reasons to create a category, but it can have negative consequences. Regardless of policy, people are likely to take this as a precedent. If African-American women merit a category, do Irish-American women? Though you can argue that the latter category isn't as notable, how do you decide where to draw the line? And what if someone objects to being classified by gender, rather than on the basis of whatever they derive their notability from? (we have a classic example of this type of problem in regard to the List of Jewish Nobel laureates article - Richard Feynmann is on record as insisting his Jewish ethnicity is nothing to do with his Nobel Prize, and he objected strongly to being included in a book about Jewish Nobel winners - but he is still included on the list). It is precisely these issues, plus the way such categories tend to be abused for point-scoring (like attempts to include Jared Loughner in our List of Atheists) that have led me to the conclusion that we'd be better off without categories for people alltogether. We can of course have articles about such things, where the topic can be discussed properly, without attempting to shoehorn people into questionable categories that often encourage stereotyping. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:37, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I've never noticed a man being recognized for being the "first male" to reach a certain achievement or recognized just because they were men. So in that area, I can't imagine having a conflict. I also agree of course with the man you mentioned his ethnicity had nothing to do with his receiving the Nobel Prize, but the fact remains that he is of Jewish ethnicity and has won a Nobel Prize (although it's my belief that publishers should respect his wishes of not publishing his name). I would think that if there is any ethnic group that has any historical significance that is documented like African American women this discussion would apply. At least that is my view. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 20:44, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
First man on the moon, First man in space, First man to die in space, The first man to walk in space. And every ethnic group has historical significance that can be documented! – I'm not here to tell people what category they should or shouldn't have. I'm guessing that the people advocating for this particular category belong to it themselves. And if this is how people wish to self identify, their wish should be respected. However, one person does not make a consensus. What would be the reason for separating an entire group of women from the rest of the population (in only one country), especially if the women themselves are not notable? If anyone else tried to label another group of people in this manner, there would be an outcry of "discrimination" from the international community, because this is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany – gays, gypsies, Jews, and intellectuals were labeled, removed, and executed, first in their own country and then in other countries. It took women hundreds if not thousands of years to be considered as "people" and now someone wants to separate a certain group of women from the category of people? Seriously? And you want to do this to yourself? What could possibly be the reason? What are you trying to accomplish by creating this category? In any case, I'm totally against having a category of Category:African American people and a subcategory of Category:African American women. If this direction is acceptable, then it needs to be thought out to the end and either change Category:African American people to Category:African American men or something along those lines that makes it more humane. USchick (talk) 23:52, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Are you seriously comparing this to Nazi Germany? --Shakesomeaction (talk) 00:12, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Are you seriously saying that any group of women are not people and require their own category simply for being female? USchick (talk) 00:18, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Actually, this seems standard practice on WP Category:Spanish people, Category:Spanish women, Category:Spanish men, Category:French people, Category:French women, Category:French men. Am I the only one who thinks this is ridiculous? Maybe it's just me, or maybe we need to rethink this policy. USchick (talk) 00:34, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Christ no one can argue when you go to an extreme arguing that this will turn Wikipedia into Nazi Germany, and by default, calling me a Nazi. I mean several editors cited this good faith stuff to me, and then you bring up an argument like that? Are you aware of Godwin's Law? --Shakesomeaction (talk) 00:43, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
No I wasn't aware of Godwin's Law, but it's pretty funny! And I wasn't calling you a Nazi, I'm just saying that to single out a group of non notable women in any culture and separate them from "people" is something that we did a long time ago. Well, guess what, apparently it wasn't that long ago, since it's happening right now, today! And everyone seems to be ok with it, so who am I to question that? Seriously? I can't believe this is happening! :-) Is it really just me????? USchick (talk) 00:52, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Anyway, I think it would be useful for us to try to think of a way to either rename these types of categories so they are not abused, or find a way to explain that these are for women of particularly historical importance. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 03:06, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I seriously think you have discovered something here! If you're looking for Spanish people (or any other people), and you go to the Category:Spanish people, you won't find any women there because they have been excluded (and listed under "Spanish women"). Unless you really understand the intricacies of WP, you don't know to look for Spanish women separately from Spanish people. See the discussion below along with other problematic categories. If this is not the appropriate place to discuss this topic, I'm sure somebody will let us know and redirect us. USchick (talk) 03:48, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I keep having to repeat myself here. Women are a subcategory. People would be able to find it in the "(Whatever) people" category. As they can now. Any woman doing research on African American women knows where to look for these categories. I'm not sure what is hard to understand about this. We go from this to talking about how this is like Nazi Germany to this again. I think I am stopping for tonight on this. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 04:07, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Well, given the deteriorating tone here (once the Nazis arrive, it's time to leave), I won't be participating in this discussion any longer, but my final point is this: this page is to discuss policy. My question is: does the wording at WP:Cat gender allow for this kind of category as "a topic of special encyclopedic interest"? There are abundant sources indicating that African American women's history is an established field of scholarship. I thought we were supposed to determine notability and neutrality on the basis of sources, not our personal feelings. If the guideline is misleading, it should be changed, but as it stands it seems to support this category. It might be better here to focus on the guideline. Cynwolfe (talk) 04:42, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, if deletion comes up again, I will be making these points (and working to control my frustration with the topic). --Shakesomeaction (talk) 14:38, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
USchick, in most of the categories you give as examples, there isn't supposed to be anyone in the "people" category if we can avoid it. They only get listed there if there isn't an appropriate subcat for them. For example, Category:African-American people contains a serial killer, because there is no category "African-American serial killers" (a cat that would, BTW, be disproportionately small) to list him in, or even a general "African-American criminals" category. The same is true for several African-American pioneers. If such a cat existed, then that article would not be listed in the "people" category, even though, as a matter of law and morals, both pioneers and criminals are actually still considered "people", just like women are still considered people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:02, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
That's exactly correct. Top-level categories are meant to direct users to sub-categories where the articles are actually kept. It's only the article subjects that don't fit into any of the subcategories that are kept in the top level category. SilverserenC 05:09, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation/PrimaryTopicDefinition has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Disambiguation/PrimaryTopicDefinition (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

promo

See this. Please answer: why is it that you cannot promote anything on Wikipedia however you can promote Wikipedia on Wikipedia? I thought everyone needs to have this? A person who has been editing Wikipedia since October 28, 2010. (talk) 01:27, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Can you point to something specific from the article Wikipedia which you think violated WP:NPOV in a promotional manner? --Jayron32 01:51, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
This: you can promote creating an account on Wikipedia on Wikipedia, but you cannot promote other companys, names, affiliates, etc A person who has been editing Wikipedia since October 28, 2010. (talk) 03:41, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Oh, you though I meant the article Wikipedia? No I meant the promotion of Wikipedia here, on Wikipedia. A person who has been editing Wikipedia since October 28, 2010. (talk) 04:02, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I am truly and utterly confused by the problem you are having. Maybe you can indicate some text which you find is problematic and quote that text and explain what you think the problem is. Because I can't figure out what you find inappropriate. --Jayron32 05:33, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
There are a couple reasons you can "promote Wikipedia" on Wikipedia. First, users only encourage IP's who have made edits to create accounts on Wikipedia. In this way, they are only promoting people who have shown an interest. Second, any of the "promotion" is done in User talk space, not on articles. Finally, the policy you point to refers to people who try to use Wikipedia as free advertisement. Some users spam any page related to what their company does with links to their companies. Others create pages that do nothing except advertise for their companies. Asking users to create accounts does not fall under these categories. Ryan Vesey contribs 15:53, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia does not permit you to advertise or promote non-Wikimedia work. It makes no restrictions on promoting itself. The "advertisement-free" encyclopedia even runs advertisements for itself. It breaks no rules in doing so. Wikipedia does not prohibit itself from promoting itself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Is there a reason for that? A person who has been editing Wikipedia since October 28, 2010. (talk) 21:17, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Because the Wikimedia Foundation finds that promoting Wikipedia on Wikipedia is an effective means of reaching their goals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:56, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
To put it simply, all activity on Wikipedia should in some way improve Wikipedia, and not in any way harm Wikipedia. When Wikipedia promotes itself, both requirements are met. When something outside of Wikipedia is promoted, both requirements are not met (since spam harms Wikipedia's objectivity and credibility and provides no benefit to it). Is Wikipedia self-serving in this way? Of course it it, it's supposed to be. It's an intentional double-standard, and a good one. -- Atama頭 00:04, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Isn't that against WP:NPOV? A person who has been editing Wikipedia since Thursday, October 28, 2010. 23:52, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
No it is not. NPOV is what articles need to follow. If we are promoting Wikipedia through the Wikipedia article, then there is a problem. That article needs to be written in a NPOV, but other spaces within Wikipedia don't need to be. GB fan please tell me what you think of my editing 00:13, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
 Got it. Thanks, A user who has been editing Wikipedia since Thursday, October 28, 2010. 23:22, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Why? - Dank (push to talk) 02:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
It appears to be copied directly from Wikipedia:Article titles which is a policy. But I'm not really sure why it was copied. Monty845 02:15, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Principal naming criteria in subpage regarding the appropriateness of placing key elements of a policy into a separate sub-page so as to allow it to be transcluded in various places. older ≠ wiser 14:58, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Plant names

In the interests of the first 2 criteria of this policy - recognisability and naturalness - can we therefore reconsider the widespread use of largely unintelligible Latin names for plants, except where there is no English name at all. I realise there are several English names for some species, but that can be resolved by a) using regional precedence and b) using agreed authoritative sources. The latin name can be a redirect and recorded in the lede. --Bermicourt (talk) 16:03, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't really bother me. I'm a complete ignoramus when it comes to Latin names for plants, but that doesn't stop me from finding the article I'm looking for. When I look up foxglove, and get redirected to digitalis, all I think is "oh cool, so that's what it's really called". I am far from being an expert about plants, but it seems to me that colloquial English names for plants are difficult to pin down, as so many plants have multiple names, and it would be difficult in many cases to give an authoritative title to a plant article unless you use the proper scientific name. I think this is a good WP:IAR exception. -- Atama頭 18:46, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
I think it would require changing WP:NC(flora). But I think a good case can be made for that the naming conventions there are violating the principal criteria and WP:COMMONNAME. WP:COMMONNAME does have a line about not using inaccurate or ambiguous common names, but it's hard for me to see how common names of plants are any of those. At least not always.TheFreeloader (talk) 23:29, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Exactly right. Whilst there are two or more names for some plants, in most cases there is an obvious or primary English common name. But as you say there is a strict naming policy that states "scientific names are to be used as article titles in all cases". So the "dandelion" article is called Taraxacum and you will find "ox-eye daisy" under Leucanthemum vulgare. Even serious field guides prefer the English name to the scientific one in headers, although scientific names are always given and indexed. It's time this was gripped - Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia for everyone, not a scientific reference manual. --Bermicourt (talk) 15:36, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Revising the WP:Cat/gender policy

I am bringing this up again because I'm really having an issue with how people seem to handle this gendered categories thing.

I kind of wonder if this rule was made as a try at political correctness. But as we can find in many different nations there are gendered categories and its a bit subjective if they are an exception to the rule.

I also don't buy the argument that if we do this crazy things could happen next, AKA, the "gay marriage" argument. We have found so far in the history of Wikipedia that people have used it for good. I don't think it would lead to horrible instances of misuse just because a rule is revised. There are already various instances on Wikipedia of this happening, 2. It's just a matter of revising the rule.

Hopefully the conversation will not crash in the way it did last time.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Shakesomeaction (talk • contribs)

  • I am confused. Can you concisely explain, with examples, what you believe the problem is that needs fixing, and what you think a possible solution may be? --Jayron32 05:42, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
I am saying that this "rule" is outdated and could perhaps revised to be more precise, or even done away with. I don't exactly see the point of it. I don't understand why it is a bad thing to have "actors/actresses" categories. This seems like some outdated notion where people are afraid to upset some group of people, so they've ignored it altogether by making a rule that genders will not be separated.... Which makes research harder. I don't see why people cannot make research more simplified or customize it on Wikipedia, and then people will thwart your attempts by citing this rule if you try to make gendered categories. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 14:41, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I think that the use of many terms (whether you mean race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexuality, etc.) is overused in Wikipedia. Some large majority of biographical articles start with a first sentence like "John Doe is a Malaysian-French Muslim Basketball player" or stuff like that. Such crap doesn't belong in articles, excepting when the classifications make sense for the subject at hand, for example noting that Maimonides was a Jewish philosopher seems entirely appropriate even if noting that Kevin Youkilis is a Jewish baseball player in the first sentence of an article wouldn't be. The problem is that people don't seem to have the sense of the nuance between the appropriate use of these labels and the overuse of them. Some seem to be arguing we should make any mention or use of the labels at all in any article, and others seem to want a person's arbitrary and irrelevent ancestral ethnic heritage mentioned prominently in the first sentence in every biographical article. Clearly there must be some way to do it right without resorting to an "all or nothing" false dichotomy. --Jayron32 05:57, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
… "that Maimonides was a Jewish philosopher seems entirely appropriate even if noting that Kevin Youkilis is a Jewish baseball player in the first sentence of an article wouldn't be." This is the most sensible thing I think I've read in this entire discussion. But you're right: it depends on editors exercising judgment. Cynwolfe (talk) 23:18, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Clearly your point about the importance of ancestry is on point. I have always wondered how many generations this needs to be carried forward. If one identifies with their ancestors, then that should be mentioned in the article and perhaps categorized. But if that are classified as say, American, and their great grandparents were the last ones from the old country, then it is time to no longer mention or categorize that fact. The question is how to do that in way that makes the decision more objective then subjective. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:42, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree there can be some overcategorization with this stuff, although I am of the thought than anyone should be able to have their heritage recognized no matter what--nearly everyone around the world is highly mixed of many origins these days. I think with more modern people is a matter of if they identify as these origins. Making mention of them in the article is a little ridiculous, though, because I describe myself as an American, not anything else, though my heritage is Irish. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 14:51, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Explanations of categories would be extremely helpful. The difficulty stems from how terms are used on official documents in different parts of the world. On a US passport, all US citizens are listed as "American" under "Nationality." On US documents, "Race" includes a check box for African American, even though clearly it's not a race. In other countries "Race" is not used at all, instead, they use "Nationality" which is assigned at birth and listed in their passport. USchick (talk) 15:35, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm confused are people here actually saying that African American is NOT a race? Really? Seriously? Yes, like all people African Americans have some where in their history family geneology the possibility or extreme probability of an ancestor of another race. But being "Black" is a race. I would like, if someone does not mind doing this for me, finding a country who puts on their passport that one of their own citizens is of a different nationality, someone in Canada is a Canadian, may ethnically be Japanese, but if they were born in Canada their nationality is Canadian, not Japanese, though they may identify as a Japanese-American as their "nationality" but in reality that is simply their geneology.Camelbinky (talk) 22:06, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, African-American is not a race. It's an ethnicity. "Black" is a race. "Black person born in or immigrated to America" is not a race. It happens that most of the Americans who are Black are also African-American, but it is possible for someone to be one without being the other. There are many Black people in the world who are not African-Americans, including some Black people who are living in the US. Also, there are a few people who identify themselves as some race other than Black, but consider themselves to be African-American. The Census department has not caught up with the scholarly sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:13, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
BTW, EGRS has been significantly changed in the last week. People who are interested in it could probably do more good by sharing their opinions on specific changes and making concrete suggestions from improvements at WT:EGRS, rather than chatting here.
Debresser's done most of the heavy lifting, and he's a good, thoughtful editor who is easy to work with. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
To answer a country who puts on their passport that one of their own citizens is of a different nationality – Just about every country in Eastern Europe does this and it creates a lot of problems, as you can imagine. Yulia Tymoshenko, former Prime Minister of Ukraine received a lot of media attention on this issue. Her father was born in Dnipropetrovsk, Soviet Union and according to his passport, his nationality was Latvian. Even today, Russian citizens have a multitude of nationalities listed on their passports. When editors from other languages come to English WP and attempt to translate articles into English, they have a very difficult time understanding why it's not appropriate to say in English that someone is a Russian Ukrainian (Russian citizen of Ukrainian nationality), even though it's perfectly acceptable to say this in many other languages. USchick (talk) 00:03, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm always for letting the person themselves choose their label, if we can verify anyway. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 00:05, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree, but this is why it's important to explain categories, because the same term can mean something very different in different parts of the world. Even if the word translates the same, the concept can be totally different. USchick (talk) 00:10, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Notability guidelines needed for plays/drama

Hi, there is an WP:RfC at WT:WikiProject Theatre#Notability guidelines needed for plays/drama on what would constitute notability standards for articles on plays. Jezhotwells (talk) 15:40, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

WP:BLP and tabloid journalism

This was added on May 11 2011 to Wikipedia:Biography of living persons

Particular care should be exercised when the only source that can be found for the material is tabloid journalism.

I recently added on the discussion page:

For the purpose of this policy how is tabloid journalism defined?

I bring it to the community's attention here because the question remains unanswered. patsw (talk) 00:30, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

I think you've gotten an answer on that talk page, from several people. As they wrote, "journalism with a reputation for sensationalism". That certainly leaves room for debate in specific cases, but most definitions do.--GRuban (talk) 14:08, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, the strength of that comment is in its vagueness and its encouragement of discussion in individual situations. Off2riorob (talk) 20:50, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Strength in vagueness -- Oh, irony! patsw (talk) 23:36, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Council&oldid=440106903
Does Wikimedia ban words? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timl2k4 (talk • contribs) 15:51, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. What is that all about? --TimL (talk) 15:52, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Izno said in his edit summary in the diff that he thought the section should have a more descriptive title. I don't think this is strongly condoned or prohibited (my best guess would be generally/mildly discouraged), though perhaps it would have been courteous to let you know on your talk page in case someone had trouble finding the section under the old name. I am also curious about why you replied to your own question. —Akrabbimtalk 16:41, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
It's actually explicitly permitted. :) WP:TPO: "Because threads are shared by multiple editors (regardless how many have posted so far), no one, including the original poster, "owns" a talk page discussion or its heading. It is generally acceptable to change headings when a better header is appropriate, e.g. one more descriptive of the content of the discussion or the issue discussed, less one-sided, more appropriate for accessibility reasons, etc." That said, it is recommended to discuss with the original editor if it is likely to be controversial and, as Akrabbim notes, there can be issues with locating threads, for which reason anchors are recommended, too. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
sorry, should have been explicit. The problem, which seems to no longer exhibit itself is that the section header was disappearing if it was just the word Advertisement. It happened there and here, but no longer seems to be the case. Wanted to make sure it wasn't a policy. strange bug! --TimL (talk) 18:55, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Offhand, I'd guess that you're running Firefox with AdBlock Plus. Am I right? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
I am, and I don't see the level 2 header. Any way to turn that one piece off? Sven Manguard Wha? 19:32, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm at the wrong computer to test it, but I believe the best you can do for this is to turn it off for all of wikipedia.org It seems like turning it off for wikipedia.org would be a fairly safe move. You can also report it as a bug/misfeature (which IMO it is: it eats the heading in articles, too). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:57, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Disable Article Feedback Tool and Discuss

The Article Feedback Tool (see example at the bottom of Denial_of_Death) is being rolled out on the English Wikipedia with what looks like little or no discussion on the English Wikipedia. The only discussion is occurring on the tool's discussion page. This is an attempt to open up a discussion here on (or move it to) the English Wikipedia. I suggest reading through the talk page there first and than adding your thoughts here. According to Arthur Rubin, "Hidden in the documentation is a way for en:wiki to disable the feature, if we so desire, by adding a hidden category Category:no Article Feedback Tool, marking it as an exclusion category, and authorizing a bot to add it to all articles." He suggested I moved it from RfC to here and I have thus done so. --TimL (talk) 18:38, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

So, do you actually have a reason to disable it? Beeblebrox (talk) 18:45, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
His reasons were given on the MediaWiki talk page, which is almost unreadable, because of the LiquidThreads formatting. I'm not sure I can find them all. In any case, my reasons for exclusion is that it has little value (to readers or editors, and even the results would have little value to readers or editors, without a "friend"-based rating), takes up a lot of real estate, and is slow to generate and download, even if display is suppressed. At a minimum, a single click to remove all display and generation of these boxes should be in the box, although it would probably only work for logged-in editors. The results might have value to the Foundation (although I doubt it) if whether an article was excluded was up to the local Wiki, not to the editors of that article. However, that would be impossible to implement on this wiki. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:01, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, there has been no discussion of the tool on the English Wikipedia, anywhere. --TimL (talk) 19:03, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
I hate liquid threads now that I've used it, because it takes so many clicks for me to see the latest posts or all the posts. A search with Ctrlf doesn't work because of that. Anyway, one of the main problems is the lack of discussion before implementation and what appears to be lack of discussion of the pilots before a rollout. I'm concerned it will lead to gaming the system and more drama, and if the ability to leave text comments is implemented many more problems ranging from BLP violations to stopping our pages becoming forums. Some posts make it look as though the main purpose of this is to get more editors. Dougweller (talk) 19:35, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
A fix for this LQT problem was requested on Bug 29769. You can vote for it if you want. Helder 19:55, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
"No discussion of the tool on the English Wikipedia"? So the last three or four discussions about it that I've personally seen and participated in were... what, exactly? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:39, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Ignored. Wasbeer 21:28, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
And I searched on the wrong page. (AfC? I don't remember) Mea culpa. --TimL (talk) 21:35, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
As I understand the Article Feedback Tool is supposed to serve two purposes: (1) To assess the quality of the articles and (2) to encourage readers to become editors. Both of these purposes are, in my opinion, better served by other solutions: (1) Better internal evaluations of articles and (2) to better welcome, encourage and help new users. I'm also wary that readers using the AFT are not aware of the second purpose when they start to use it and some might perceive this bait-and-switch/foot-in-the-door technique as manipulative. Some might not care, or are used to it, because this is how one might expect a large company to treat it's customers. But we are not a company and our readers are not customers. Establishing such a company-customer relationship might be damaging in the long run. --Bensin (talk) 11:52, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
Seems like a mis-fire to me. Extra clutter that doesn't serve much a purpose. There are far better ways to accomplish those objectives. North8000 (talk) 12:47, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
I say let it run a few months, see if it provides useful feedback. If it does, continue it, if it doesn't, fix it or abandon it. Let's not make this a bigger deal than necessary.--SPhilbrickT 14:09, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
Are you saying carry on with the rollout or wait before adding any more articles to see if it works? Dougweller (talk) 18:10, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
Frankly, I hadn't thought that through, but not that I have, I would support continuing with the rollout. I don't see the potential of immediate ham which would justify interrupting it at this point.--SPhilbrickT 21:34, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
If those stars will show up on the Talk pages I have not much of a problem with it. In articles I see very few advantages compared to possible (likely?) irritation to me and others. I prefer not to do it. Never change a winning team... S.I. Oliantigna (talk) 07:52, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
According to the replies to mw:Thread:Talk:Article feedback/Please stop/reply (13), there is no intention to move the tool to the talk page. Helder 20:29, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, what are the other locations this discussion is being held? --80.101.191.11 (talk) 12:16, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

One place, as linked to in the first post in this section is here, mw:Talk:Article feedback. GB fan please tell me what you think of my editing 12:41, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
There is also Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Ratings poll a distraction?. Helder 20:29, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

birth dates of living persons

I am in an ethical quandary and would like some feedback. I recently discovered that a notable living person with an entry in Wikipedia is 14 years older than he claims. The source is reliable (birth records from the city where he was born) but not easily accessible (i.e., you have to pay to see them). The subject works in an industry where being older could be considered a liability. Do I correct the birth date on his Wikipedia entry? I'll check here for responses, but you can also post on my talk page if you prefer. Thanks -- MinervaK (talk) 19:39, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Could you give us the name of the article and what the source is for the current birthdate, is the information actually coming from the individual, perhaps the article has vandalism that never got caught or a source was used that had a typo. In most US states I was under the impression that the birth certificate can not be accessed from someone other than the individual (at least getting a copy of my own birth certificate required I showed the city I was born in my licence and social security card to prove identity). If this site is accurate and reliable for the birth records, being a paid site and limited accessibility is NEVER a problem, all that matters is accurate information from a reliable source. Bring it to the RS/N may be a better place to bring this question.Camelbinky (talk) 19:53, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, what is RS/N? On the birth record, I have access to it via a paid genealogy site -- it's not actually a birth certificate, just a record of the birth and the date. I guess you could call that a secondary source, right? MinervaK (talk) 19:57, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Generally, I don't think we should be using primary sources such as government records to establish biographical facts, particularly when it's a living person and no secondary source has disclosed what would ordinarily be private (even if obtainable). Are you talking about Ancestry.com? I have a membership; let me know what database you're talking about and I'll take a look. I also know from my experience on that site (if nothing else) that even using "reliable" government records, there is often a large degree of assumption regarding who a record is about given the possibility of shared names, transcription errors, or reporting inaccuracy in the first instance. postdlf (talk) 20:03, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, you can go there anytime and ask a question about whether any site, newspaper, book, anything in the world, is a reliable source allowed by our policies here in Wikipedia. And Postdlf is correct about Ancestry.com and the problems that can occur with such sites, though I disagree that an official verified birth certificate should not be used. I am of the personal opinion that a primary source that shows a secondary source is a flat out lie makes the secondary source no longer a reliable source and must be removed from Wikipedia. Non-BLP example- secondary sources say a city was incorporated in such-a-such year, but the official law stated that the city became incorporated on March 1 of the next year (to synch with existing laws of swearing in politicians or something we'll say), we must then change the article to say "XY state passed the law incorporating YZ city in June 1890, taking effect March 1, 1891" we cant say the city became "incorporated in 1890" because it clearly factually didnt in the eyes of the state because until the city had a functioning legal government it wasnt incorporated. Not the best example, first I could think of.Camelbinky (talk) 20:19, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
The problem is that determining that something is "a primary source that shows a secondary source is a flat out lie" is often not straightforward. This is something we leave to others better qualified than ourselves to do. Even something as apparently simple as a birth certificate may be misleading - how do we know it doesn't refer to another person of the same name? We have WP:OR policies for a good reason, and making exceptions because our own research shows that something is obviously 'wrong' is likely to lead to endless arguments, and a deterioration in article quality. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:27, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Aside from the technicalities of determining whether information from sites like Ancestry.com are reliable secondaries or what, I'm curious about the ethical dilemma of "outing" someone who may be lying about their age for "good" reasons -- i.e., in the entertainment industry it's commonplace to say you're younger because it gets you more work. Does a person have a right to privacy that extends to lying about their age? MinervaK (talk) 20:47, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

IMO the emphasis Wikipedia puts on birthdates is misplaced, especially for BLPs. Unless the person's age is strongly related to their notability (e.g., youngest person to climb Mt Everest), then I wouldn't bother including it—certainly not more than the year of birth.
But the technicalities are significant here: It would be nearly impossible to prove that the record really refers to this person, rather than someone unrelated with the same name, a cousin, a deceased older sibling (some families will name a subsequent child after one who died very young), etc.
As for the dilemma: de-bunking sources isn't Wikipedia's job. I hear that The National Enquirer likes to do things like that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:52, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Respectfully disagree about the importance of birthdates in biographies -- it's always a point of interest, to me, to know how old a person is, because it bears on their sheer quantity of life experience. I realize that's a bit touchy-feely, but my guess is that most people want to know the age of a notable person as much as other biographical details. In this particular case, though, it's a question of whether the apparently bogus birthdate is a legitimate part of the subject's public biography, and whether or not it should be respected, given that it's quantifiably inaccurate. I understand that WP isn't an investigative journalism site, but isn't it within the WP spirit to be as accurate as reliable sources allow? How do we parse this with issues of privacy, is my central question, I guess. MinervaK (talk) 21:11, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree that birthdate is always relevant, because when someone lived and at what stage of their life they did something is always important biographical information even if it isn't the reason why they merit an article. But trudging up a birth certificate from public records is a different matter than relying upon a news story or citing to a law (as Camelbinky analogized above). Without specifics as to your contrary sources and who the subject is, we can't really judge. postdlf (talk) 21:32, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
"Trudging up a birth certficate" doesn't accurately describe how I came upon the information; it's something that anyone with an interest in genealogy and the subject in question might easily happen upon. MinervaK (talk) 21:41, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree that age definitely matters some instances, and might be worth mentioning in others (or at least alluding to: you might not say "born in 1948", but you might say "grew up during the 1950s" or "graduated from college in the 1960s"). However, I really can't imagine myself caring about the full birth date for any living person outside of my family. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:55, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

OK, just found this over at the reliable sources discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_69#Ancestry.com_as_a_reference.3F. The birthdate in question has not been 'widely published by reliable sources,' so I'm going to leave it as-is. Thanks for everybody's input on this. MinervaK (talk) 21:49, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

A variance of 14 years is rather hard to explain away when related to other biographical details like hometown, schools attended, college graduation year, military service, etc. A year or two I could understand, but 14? Also, all other things equal, the correct year of birth is better to have in an article as opposed to an incorrect year of birth. patsw (talk) 23:31, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Pat, that's actually what made me look him up. In the biography published on his website, he gives a short personal history with highlights that don't jibe with his birth date -- i.e., getting a bachelor's degree before doing a music video that aired in 1982; being the oldest of five children, all of whom are in their mid to late forties; a filmography that extends back beyond the date when he would have been a kid, even though he's obviously not a kid in the cited performances; etc. It surprises me that no one else has noticed these discrepancies. It's kind of a sad commentary on the industry he's in that a person's age matters more than their skill level. MinervaK (talk) 00:42, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
Have you checked numerous sources to make sure that this is not a typo? Like Patsw says, 14 years seems like a big difference and if he was sloppy enough that he didnt bother to update his personal history to jive with it, then it seems unusual that no one else noticed. And just so that everyone knows for the record- a primary source that contradicts a secondary source makes the secondary source unreliable and unable to be used for that information that is contradicted, clear as that, no interpretation needed, that's not my opinion that's how we work. We are not a regurgitator of secondary information, we do make opinions regarding what we do and do not use, this bull about OR is just that–bull.Camelbinky (talk) 02:47, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
Camelbinky -- Yes, I've checked numerous other sources, although I wouldn't call them all reliable. One is his Wikipedia entry, the others are 'fan pages' and the like. I can't find a source in which he, personally, gives his birth date. MinervaK (talk) 05:44, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
Nope, "a primary source that contradicts a secondary source" doesn't make anything automatically unreliable. We may need to make a judgement call on occasion, (best done by noting that sources differ), but we cannot automatically give precedence to primary sources that we may not be in the position to validate. Primary sources are often wrong. Indeed they are probably less likely on average to be right than secondary sources, for the simple reason that a secondary source implies that more than one person has been involved in the sourcing process. This is basic stuff, implicit in Wikipedia sourcing policy, and it isn't up for negotiation here. Yes, this may entail articles being 'wrong' some of the time, but the alternative implies that they will be 'wronger' more often. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:02, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
The RS/N and village pumps covered this topic many times and you are incorrect. I'm sorry you werent around for those discussions. Your "interpretation" is wrong. A reliable secondary source does not need a another secondary source to outright say that other source is wrong. We do make judgement calls all the time and we do not knowingly put wrong material into an article just because a secondary source states something. If you want to bring this to the village pump (policy) and see if they agree with me, let's have the Community decide in a good ole fashion !voting session. Just literally reading a policy is terrible and should not be done. A policy is not prescriptive of what must or should be done, it is a description of current practice as best can be described at the time of the writing of the words, and should be taken with a grain of salt and used with caution as current practice of using the policy will vary with time and the policy itself will always lag. Much like computers and iPhones, they are all out of date before you get them home (We're on iPhone 4 now? In how many years since the original?!).Camelbinky (talk) 03:20, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
So what is it about what I've just written that you are suggesting is incorrect? I say we sometimes need to make 'Judgement calls', you say the same thing (along with a great deal of totally-irrelevant waffle). What exactly would anyone be voting on? AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:39, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
Actually, we have guidelines that explicitly reject using a primary source to de-bunk a secondary source: "Individual primary sources should not be cited or juxtaposed so as to "debunk" or contradict the conclusions of reliable secondary sources".
But the thing is, it's not clear to me that any of the sources are really secondary sources. It's not just a matter of counting up the number of sources in a chain, and WP:Secondary does not mean independent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

OK, what if I changed the article to say "born on Month Day, 1966 or Month Day, 1953" and note that sources differ? Or is that just unnecessarily confusing? MinervaK (talk) 05:48, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

FWIW I don't know about the US, but in the UK birth, marriage and death certificates are public information that anyone can pay to have. --Bermicourt (talk) 06:06, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
I think the use of public primary sources in general can be problematic. There is no editorial control over what is pushing a POV or is just plain irrelevant. For example campaign contributions are public information but they may be used in a campaign to discredit a subject (as actually happened on WP a few years ago). Birth dates are a bit different in that it's expected information, but I think putting information in an article that you wouldn't normally find in published material is to some degree an invasion of privacy and it falls under our OR policy. We probably shouldn't have information that's known to be false, but it falls to journalists, authors, etc. to discover what the truth is, not us.--RDBury (talk) 06:41, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
Some people might be reading judgement call here and wondering what we are talking about. Assume here we are talking about a verifiable primary source item. We have to make a distinctions between the things that are neutral in terms of shaping public opinion about a subject and which typically are not subject to a dispute such as a middle name, the date and place of birth, etc. and the things that could influence public image such as a record of a complaint, violation, arrest, etc. for a minor crime, political affiliation, contributions, etc. These influence items need a corroboration of their significance to the biographical article, and the only indicator we've accepted for that has been appearance in a reliable secondary source. patsw (talk) 16:47, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
I think what you're basically saying is follow the "there are no rules" rule if it applies, which I agree with. Keep in mind though that POV pushing can come in less obvious forms. Some people have there own personal axes to grind on issues so trivial that it's hard to believe anyone would give it a second thought, so it may be hard to tell if some fact is added as an attempt to influence opinion in some way. We can only guess what an editor's intent is, but the way the OR policy is phrased removes the question. An example might be adding hit counts on a YouTube music video; certainly publicly available and verifiable, but the info might be added in an attempt to promote the band by fan or it might be someone just trying to fill up article space.--RDBury (talk) 17:35, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
@RDBury. I think we need to be careful about giving journalists too much credibility - they are not well-known for being rigorous in the pursuit of truth. On the other hand, a birth certificate is a public record and an unbiased primary source, so it's perfectly legitimate to cite it. If people choose to lie about their birth date, then they need to stand by to be exposed! --Bermicourt (talk) 19:18, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
It doesn't sound like the person in question has made any statements about his/her birthdate, so the "exposure" here would be "exposed as a victim of bad reporting by fansites", not as a liar. Furthermore, you're not dealing with the biggest problem involved in relying on birth certificates: They don't say "John Smith, who grew up to star in movies". They say "John Smith, and, by the way, there are forty-five thousand Americans named John Smith, so I hope you're not looking for one of the other ones". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:42, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
Dont think that using a primary source like a birth record for factual information is wrong the main problem is as WhatamIdoing says it (the primary source) gives no evidence that it is the correct "John Smith" so really cant be relied upon unless you have colloborating secondary evidence. MilborneOne (talk) 15:04, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Adopt an Article

There are several dozen projects that support some kind of "Adopt an Article" program, e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Richard Wagner, Wikipedia:WikiProject Poker. From what I can find (though perhaps I'm not looking in the right places) the individual projects are doing this under their own respective initiatives, though there is a lot of borrowing in terms of the language. In general it appears that the projects are encouraging the use of template:Maintained (or some derivative of it) and are careful not to come into conflict with WP:OWN. Was this ever part of a wider initiative? If not, should there be some sort of wider initiative to encourage best practices and avoid conflict with existing policies? There was a suggestion, Wikipedia:Suggestion box/Archive 2#Suggestion for Article Author Accountability (ca. 2005), in this direction though many of the ideas given there would not be practical.

I personally would like to encourage a trend away from new article creation toward article cleanup and expansion. Currently over 90% of assessed articles are either Stub or Start class and it's difficult to make a case that our coverage of important subjects is incomplete. So if article adoption can help turn some of the Stubs and Starts into C's and B's it should be encouraged.--RDBury (talk) 21:55, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

It seems to be happening informally already (I know the few articles I've done substantial work on, and other than me they're essentially unedited, so I watch them very carefully), so codifying something would be a good idea. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:45, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

RfC: DYK quality assurance and archiving

An RfC has been launched to measure community support for requiring the explicit checking and passing of DYK nominations for compliance with basic WP policies, and to improve the management of the nominations page through the introduction of a time limit after which a nomination that does not meet requirements is archived. Tony (talk) 03:40, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Articles on chemicals inclusion of space-filling or ball and stick models

As a chemist, this is something that's bothered me for quite some time. Why do articles on chemicals include a picture of space-filling or ball and stick models in addition to (or even worse, instead of) just the skeletal formulae? These three dimensional models are "cool looking" but useless or confusing in actually portraying the chemical makeup of a molecule. Anyone who actually needs a 3D model is likely capable of generating one fairly quickly. Is it just the cool factor that perpetuates this?

(I posted this at the help desk, too, but I think this may be a more appropriate place for it.) chihowa (talk) 15:30, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Actually, neither place is likely to generate good answers for you since most people don't work on chemistry articles and aren't likely to be aware of (or have an opinion on) the standards form chemistry articles. The better place to ask would be at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry which has a "structure drawing workgroup" who also may have some better answers for you. --Jayron32 16:10, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
A space-filling image is currently a FPC nomination and I think what appears in the chemistry articles is the business of anyone who has even a passing interest in chemistry, not just the experts who patrol the Chemistry Project. I'm not sure that the Policy forum is the the right place to post but given the diverse and often overlapping array of Wikifora from which to choose it might be better to say "might as well be here" rather than giving someone the run-around. The OP seems to have some background in chemistry and I suppose it's true that to a chemist the structural formula tells you everything you need to know. But WP articles are written for non-chemists as well and the 3D images convey information that would not be apparent to someone unfamiliar with bond angles and conformations. I've found the 3D images helpful in understanding things like crystal structure. Space-filling models are woefully incomplete in some ways, for example they misrepresent the modern understanding of double and triple bonds, but they do add value overall as an aid to understanding. As a matter of policy I agree that images placed in articles because they look "cool" even though they don't aid understanding (EV in FPC parlance) don't belong in Wikipedia, but I don't think that is the case here.--RDBury (talk) 19:56, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia intended for non-specialists. Chemists use models in the course of both elementary and advanced instruction to aid visualization, which is not something that comes naturally, and the same rationale holds here. Our chemistry articles are supposed to be accessible to those who have a minimal college education in science, and, as someone who has both studied and taught chemistry, everything helps. And chemists do use models in research--the classic example is Watson and Crick's structure of DNA, a discovery which depended on correlating the model building with the crystallographic data. And space filling models are real in the special sense that they correspond approximately to the actual occupancy of space by the molecular orbitals. DGG ( talk ) 03:43, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Categories for tractors and agricultural machines

I have created Category:Ford tractors as a sub-category of Category:Ford vehicles. I was going to do the same for other makes of tractor but this may not be the best system because some manufacturers e.g. Massey Ferguson produce combine harvesters as well as tractors. Please give your opinions on the most suitable system of categorization. Biscuittin (talk) 18:19, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

The parent category for tractors is Category:Agricultural machinery. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:59, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Pop-culture trivia lists shouldn't be in articles. And only culturally significant topics should have "Cultural impact" sections.

I have begun going through a large number of articles and attempting to remove those "In popular culture" sections that are just big disjointed lists of unsourced, unencylopedic trivia. Soon after I had started several users came in behind me, and began reverting, saying that they could find sources for the trivia items.

However, my main issue with these sections was not simply that there are no sources for the material. The primary issue is that these sections are just a big blob of unencyclopedic trivia, and/or are contained in articles on topics which have not had a significant enough impact on popular culture to warrant such a section in the first place.

I've never seen an encyclopedia that has a big list of trivial "This appeared in Episode 3 of a Super Mario Brothers TV series" references. Since we are purportedly trying to write an encyclopedia, I don't think we should compile big lists of pop trivia in our articles (with the exception of "List of pop culture references to ..." articles). What I would like to propose is that this type of garbage is removed from the encyclopedia altogether, en masse, per WP:INDISCRIMINATE.

Only topics that have had a significant impact on popular culture, as evidenced by the existence of sources that review their broader cultural impact should have an "In popular culture" section (better still a "Cultural significance" section, so we don't end up with a load of cartoon references). Samurai or Vampire are examples of topics that warrant "In popular culture" sections, due to the fact that works have been written on their broader impact on popular culture. I'm not talking about newspaper article that make passing mention of some anime character dressing up as a samurai, or that you fight vampires in level 7 of some video game. I'm talking about sources that discuss the significance of these topics in popular culture in general (in film, literature, etc.).

Whole-body transplant (one of the articles that someone reverted me on, saying he would find sources for its trivia) is not worthy of such a section, because no sources talk about the cultural impact of this topic. Yes, you can find pop-culture trivia about whole-body transplants for which reliable sources exists to back the individual trivia items. But Wikipedia is not a random collection of factoids. It's an encyclopedia. The article whole-body transplant does not warrant an "In popular culture" section, because it has not had a significant enough impact on popular culture that reliable sources talk about this impact. Adding an "In popular culture" section here would be analogous to adding a "Fashion" section to Diane Sawyer's article because a few random sources have commented on what a pretty dress she was wearing. Yes, I can find sources talking about her clothes. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to create a section that contains a list of random comments about her wardrobe. I don't feel like this sort of thing is fitting for an encyclopedia.

What I propose is an addition to WP:INDISCRIMINATE regarding "In popular culture" sections that states something along the lines of this:

4. Random lists of pop culture trivia: The only time an article warrants the inclusion of an "In popular culture" section is when reliable sources exist which describe the overall impact that the subject has had on popular culture (or some important subset of pop-culture such as film, literature, etc.). Just because you can find a source for a trivial pop-culture reference to the topic, does not mean that it is worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia is not a collection of disjointed pop culture references (consider making a list article of pop-culture references to the topic, if there are enough of them), it is an encyclopedia. Articles should discuss the broader cultural impact of the topic in a manner similar to other encyclopedias. If no sources exist describing the broader cultural impact of the topic, then the article should not have a section on cultural impact.

This is poorly written, and surely has many flaws -- but I'm just slapping it together here as something to get the discussion started. Is there anyone who would have objections to adding something like this? Trivial "In pop culture" sections are a plague that affects thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of articles on Wikipedia, and are one of the single largest sources of unsourced, unencyclopedia material. I think that adding something like this into policy would go a long way towards fixing this problem. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 08:34, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

This is all old news - and wheel re-invention for years there were debates about this - and it is why http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Popular_Culture exists.
viz: (1) WikiProject Popular Culture aims to preserve "In popular culture" and "Trivia"-type information in Wikipedia in a manner that does not compromise Wikipedia's core principles or its quality. - and noting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Popular_Culture#Information_salvage.
And who or how can anyone from any one culture determine significance without massive edit wars?
And only culturally significant topics should have "Cultural impact" sections. - can be quite a tricky issue SatuSuro 08:48, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
"And who or how can anyone from any one culture determine significance without massive edit wars?": One can determine significance by when you find a reliable source that claims that it is culturally significant, or talks about the wide impact it has had in art, literature, film, etc.
WikiProject Popular Culture aims to preserve "In popular culture" and "Trivia"-type information in Wikipedia in a manner that does not compromise Wikipedia's core principles or its quality. ... note the bolded part. Random lists of trivia are both compromising core principles (giving undue weight to trivia, for example) and seriously detract from its quality, which is why you will never see such junk in real encyclopedia (or just about any serious reference or scholarly work for that matter). ~ Mesoderm (talk) 08:54, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm sorry you don't feel that such sections belong, but they have a pretty well-established precedent on-wiki. If you wanted to ban them you'd have to get it through an RfC. Throwaway85 (talk) 09:07, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, there certainly is a precedent, but it's not based in policy. Rather, it's based on a bunch of users who don't understand our policies going around and inserting lists of trivia into articles (frequently without sources). Then other users to see them and say "Oooh, I can add Pokemon trivia to the article on Taoism". You very quickly end up with the nightmare we have now, with thousands of unsourced trivia lists containing absurd TV show and song references that don't belong in an encyclopedia article. I certainly plan to file an RFC, but before I did so, I was just curious if anyone had any objections that actually addressed problems that might be caused by the policy amendment I suggested besides (a) "Some people like random collections of trivia" and (b) "There are a lot of them and have been for a long time". ~ Mesoderm (talk) 09:23, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
 Do entries in such a list need sourcing if they refer to articles which are themselves sourced? It seems overkill to remove (for instance) a reference to the film adaptation "Misery" from Misery (novel) as you did just because it appeared in a list called "In popular culture". I think some other criteria should apply rather than simply removing such lists. Stephenb (Talk) 09:32, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

StephenB: You are correct, my removal of that particular piece from Misery (novel) was a mistake (I did not remove it because it appeared in a section called "In popular culture". I was working too quickly, and the fact that it was buried in a load of garbage caused me to accidentally overlook it). However, it does not belong in a "In popular culture" section (considering that the entire article is about something "in popular culture") but should rather be integrated into the article. Regardless, it was a mistake on my part to remove it. But I'm sure that the few mistakes I made in removing these dozens of overwhelmingly unsourced, and completely unencyclopedic trivia lists are far outweighed by the benefits of me removing them. And that said, my points regarding these lists in general still stand. My error on Misery (novel), and any other errors I've made, have no bearing on my arguments above. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 10:11, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
And again, StephenB, the issue is not whether each trivia item cites a source. The issue is whether or not encyclopedia articles should contain lists of random trivia (sourced or not). I don't think that random lists of trivia belong in encyclopedia articles. One reason that I do not think they belong is that I have seen dozens of encyclopedias, and not a single one contains random lists of South Park trivia. Another is that it is giving undue weight to trivia, which is a violation of a core policy WP:NPOV. And another is that things like having a paragraph about Pokemon in an article on Taoism seriously detracts from the credibility of the encyclopedia, making it look like a joke. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 10:18, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Lists of trivia are to be avoided in our articles. In accordance with WP:TRIVIA, relevant bits of information should be relocated to other parts of the article where they fit best. Bits of information that aren't relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject should be removed (and entire irrelevant sections blanked, if need be). So Mesoderm, you are doing a good service here. Thanks for going through and cleaning these articles up. Throwaway, I don't see why you are interfering with this valuable cleanup effort. Trivia sections have been actively discouraged for several years now and it is the goal of the (largely dead) Wikipedia:WikiProject Trivia Cleanup as well as the trivia cleanup template to bring the remaining sections under control. ThemFromSpace 09:36, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Since we are voting, I'd support anything to curb the problem of uncited, indiscriminate trivialists. The wording needs tweaking, but the measure has its heart in the right place... to encourage high-quality articles and to discourage the formulation and expansion of low quality ones. ThemFromSpace 09:49, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree that unsourced lists per se are not good, but neither do I agree with blanket removal which swept up sourced material as well. Also, some of the subjects removed were quite notable. In any case, I have recommended to Mesoderm to give some of us a bit of time to try and source material rather than get in yet another tiring delete/include cycle. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:41, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Please see my response to StephenB above. The issue is not just about unsourced lists (although these are, of course, worse and more common than sourced lists). The issue is about whether we should have lists of trivia at all whether or not they have sources. This is an encyclopedia, and encyclopedias don't include random lists of Family Guy and Star Wars trivia in their articles, ever. Take a look at what I'm suggesting we add to WP:INDISCRIMINATE. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 10:46, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree with the thrust of Mesoderm's argument. We are not supposed to have any "trivia" sections in articles, let alone stuff like "Foo Heavy Rock Band sing about Little Snodding in the 3rd track on their 5th album". --Bermicourt (talk) 11:37, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Mesoderm, have you ever been in a university library and see the depth of which discourse gets to on all sorts of subjects? There exist loads of material which doesn't necessarily need to be binned because you haven't heard of it or have not seen a source (but looks like there should/would be one). In any case, if you want to armwrestle over this issue for the umpteenth time you'll be expending alot of effort. Yes optimally we can find covering statements and analyses of themes of pop culture material but that may not always be the case. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:16, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
A list of mentions of an article's subject appearing in popular culture without explanation as to why they are notable instances of the particular theme come under challenged material, and are subject to removal and the burden is on the contributor to adequately source to prevent this. (And where example material is in list form, it is preferable to render in prose.) If we can't write encyclopaedically on these pop culture uses then we shouldn't be including them. Some projects have a better grip on this than others. WP:Aviation, for instance, dealt with a lot of Transformers triva by banishment to the outer wastes GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:43, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Casliber: Yes, I have been to a university library, and was also impressed by the volume of information available on all sorts of subjects. And I am not arguing against inclusion of that enormous volume of information here. Nor am I arguing against including lists of trivia because I "haven't heard of it or have not seen a source". It's fine if you don't agree with my position, but please don't misrepresent it. I have said repeatedly that my issue is not just the fact that the large majority of these trivia sections are unsourced. Even if ALL of it was sourced, it still wouldn't belong in most places for the same reason a section called "Hairpiece" wouldn't belong in Donald Trump, consisting of random references in popular culture to Donald Trump's hairpiece. (And it should never exist as a random list of disjointed factoids) WP:V is only one of our policies. Just because a piece of information has a reliable source that verifies it, does not automatically imply that it should be included in the article. Again, because I have been misrepresented so many times, I will reiterate: I am not saying that popular culture influences are not important, or that they shouldn't exist. What I am saying is that we should only have a section on culture influence for topics that have had a significant cultural influence (as evidenced by claims to that effect in reliable sources). ~ Mesoderm (talk) 20:36, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
(ec) This is a very complex issue. First, citations from good sources are required, to keep out real trivia and advertising (Amazon is not a usable source itself). After that, I'd look case by case, and be slightly on the liberal side. For example: Dinosaur has a "Cultural impact" section; Food web may scope for a "Popular culture" section, as the song "Ilkley Moor Bar T'at" is an old, pre-scientic illustration of a food web; and I could probably find excellent examples at Dog (Greyfriars Bobby, Lassie, etc.), Ape (King Kong), etc., and even Spiders (e.g Robert_the_Bruce#Legends). --Philcha (talk) 13:16, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Some of my example are historical, but I have no prejudice against current examples, if supported by good sources independent of the creators (excludes advertisers). --Philcha (talk) 13:16, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
I suggest the retention / removal of cases should be reviewed by editors who have some knowledge and sympathy for the topic, to avoid a reviewer's prejudices (which we all have) influencing the outcome. --Philcha (talk) 13:16, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
I've never seen an encyclopedia with infoboxes, categories, or talk pages; please remove those as well as the "pop culture" sections. I've never seen Family Guy, the Simpsons, or Norfolk, Nebraska in an encyclopedia, please delete those articles. Your arguments are on the same exact level as those I just gave, hope you can see that. Regardless of what people !vote here, your arguments suck. Anything other than "it doesnt exist in other encyclopedias" is needed. I think some people here just have bugs up their arses and if they dont like something being in articles then they should just not have them in the articles they write. Wholesale removal of information with no attempt to salvage the information and integrate it into the article and no research to source the information results in the sloppy work that was done, with Misery as the prime example of what can happen, per admission that it was "sloppy" work by the editor. We are, per our highest policies–a work in progress, your contributions need not be perfect, someone can fix them. What matters is that people, usually the newest people, are adding information of some sort and getting interested in Wikipedia, per WP:IAR. Clean-up their work, dont discourage them and remove it wholesale. I dont agree with the "notable persons" and "in popular culture" lists either, but when I clean them up I add the information, with a source, to the body of the work!!!!!! If you can't take time to do that, then DO NOT REMOVE THE INFORMATION!!!!! Fundamentally WP:PRESERVE. So you can state all you want that these lists are against policy, but per policy they are better than nothing and those adding the lists are actually doing more of a service through IAR in adding information than those who would remove information. Policy is NOT on your side in this arugment.Camelbinky (talk) 16:07, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Camelbinky:
Regarding categories and talk pages: other encyclopedias do not have these because the print medium does not make it possible or useful. (However, many encyclopedias do have "infoboxes" of sorts -- i.e. floating sidebars of information.) The reason they do not have articles on Norfolk, VA is that they do not have the human resources to write articles on every subject imaginable, and thus can only write about a limited range of topics. I think this is one of the strongest points about Wikipedia -- that we can write professional-quality articles on things like Norfolk, VA and Pokemon, because we've got an enormously large number of editors and no publication deadline.
However, it is possible for them to include random lists of trivia in those articles that they do write - but they don't. The reason is that they are trying to write articles that broadly explain the topic to the reader in an effort to increase their understanding of the subject. They try to focus on those aspects of the subject that are most significant. In the case of Zombies, talking about their role in popular culture is extremely relevant, and sources have been specific written analyzing the Zombie film genre, it's history, etc. A popular culture section is highly warranted there. But how does a paragraph about Pokemon characters in the article Taoism, a 2500 year old religion with hundreds of scholarly works available on the subject, help the reader to understand the subject matter better? (I'm not saying that this information doesn't belong anywhere on Wikipedia, but I don't think it belongs at Taoism. I think it belongs at Pokémon Black and White - assuming sources are found that feel it is relevant.)
You stated that "Anything other than 'it doesnt exist in other encyclopedias' is needed." Well, I provided plenty other than this. For example, it is also a violation of WP:DUE to include trivia lists in articles. Take my Diane Sawyer fashion example. Another example would be including a section called "Hair" in the article Celine Dion composed of a random assortment of quotes about her hair. Another example would be Jewish banker conspiracies. Why don't we have a list of those in the Israel article? I find it amazing that in all other cases, throughout the encyclopedia, we apply WP:DUE and remove information that is not relevant to a broad overview of the subject, yet we make a special exception for "In popular culture" sections. Articles are supposed to focus on those aspects of the topic that reliable sources deem important. Since reliable sources on Taoism, for example, almost never say anything about Pokemon, we should not mention them here. This is really, to me, the most important argument: I think we should apply WP:DUE to Transformers trivia just like we would with "Random Jewish banker comments" sections. We don't include random lists of information in articles, just because we can find sources for each of the items. WP:V is only one of our policies. We take other things into account, like: "Even though we have a source, should we be giving this piece of information weight in this article?" In many cases, the answer is no, even when we have a source.
Also, I do not agree with your statement that editors are "doing a service" by ignoring our rules and adding trivial information to articles without sources. I would agree with you if our goal was simply to aggregate a random assortment of as much information as possible. But our goal is to write a free, online, high-quality encyclopedia. Adding random lists of disjointed tangential TV-show references to articles is not conducive to this goal. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 17:57, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
First- I said Norfolk, Nebraska, not Virginia as many encyclopedia's do indeed have an article on the very important city in Virginia, two different Norfolk's over 1,000 miles apart. Second- Random Jewish defamation is not in any way comparable to trivia, I once asked Jimbo how it was different that some could not state something in an article that would be considered a BLP violation even if sourced if said about one individual but if they said it about an entire race then it was ok, Jimbo if I recall correctly stated there was no difference and sourced or not such a violation is not ok, so there is why we dont have random Jewish anti-semitic trivia, has nothing to do with it being lists of trivia And frankly I find your analogy to be highly insultive. Third- READ OUR FREAKIN' POLICIES, I listed several that show that We are a work in progress, you're contributions need not be perfect and the very heart of WP:IAR. Adding information that is accurate is always a service. Someone can always come along and format it correctly. When you remove that information you are leaving it harder for those who want to clean-up and make these articles complete to know that the information is out there. Fourth- I SAID I AGREE THE LISTS SHOULD NOT EXIST. But if you want to clean them up, the burden is on YOU to FIRST fix the information, deleting it is a last resort only if it can not be cleaned-up. I know because I was a party to several such discussions on the meaning of WP:PRESERVE two years ago.Camelbinky (talk) 21:38, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
And if I may quote from WP:Preserve - "As long as any of the facts or ideas added to the article would belong in a "finished" article, they should be retained and the writing cleaned up on the spot, or tagged if necessary." This is where Mesoderm differs in opinion from you - as to what facts or ideas or suitable. And this is not AfD, material removed still exists in the version history. GraemeLeggett (talk) 22:01, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Camelbinky: Try to tone it down with the screaming and "your arguments suck" comments. I have "read our freakin' policies", and don't feel that giving undue weight to trivia is in line with WP:NPOV, nor do I feel that lists of trivia are in line with WP:TRIVIA or WP:INDISCRIMINATE. I'm glad you agree with me that lists of trivia are inappropriate. But that's only part of what I was saying. Even if you put a bunch of Pokemon and Star Wars references in paragraph form, and added references, I still don't think they belong in Taoism per WP:DUE. Also, nowhere did I say that I don't believe that Wikipedia is a work in progress, or that contributions don't need to be perfect. However, I do believe that adding lists of cartoon trivia to articles like Taoism is not progress, for the reasons I've described above, and saying that something doesn't need to be perfect isn't free license to include content that is terrible (unsourced, off-topic, disjointed, and/or irrelevant). My main points, which very few people opposing the change have actually responded to, are that (a) Popular culture sections should only exist for subjects that reliable sources claim have a significant cultural impact and (b) these sections should not just be disjointed lists of tangential pop-culture references, but rather should be in the form of prose that discusses what reliable sources say about their overall impact on culture. I'm just trying to gain feedback on my proposal before I file an RFC, so that I can understand what problems, if any, people see resulting from inserting this into policy. So please don't start screaming and telling me my "arguments suck" just because you don't agree with me, and try to focus instead on explaining what problems you see with the proposal I'm making, and how you would improve it. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 22:31, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Agree with Mesoderm, and the proposed policy (or something similar) would be a welcome addition. --Saddhiyama (talk) 22:21, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm rather sick of having opinions attributed to me when I do not hold them, so I'm going to place this in bold, since I've repeated it so many times: I am not opposed to popular culture sections. I am only opposed to including them in articles which have not had a significant impact on popular culture, and do not think these sections should be composed of disjointed lists of trivia. It is also false that I have "blown them away wherever I found them. As I've said before, I left the sections in several articles I came across, such as Samurai and Zombie , because of the myriad reliable sources that discuss their widespread impact on popular culture. See above for more on how I think this is different from the pop-culture sections in, say, Whole-body transplant. Please try to not use falsehoods and straw men to denigrate my arguments. Do you have a response to the actual proposal I am making (reasons why you oppose it, how you would change it, etc.) rather than to these straw men you have concocted? ~ Mesoderm (talk) 22:39, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Please tone down the screaming Mesoderm! Though I find those that say "screaming" about a written media tend to be childish, it is reading and if you raise your inner voice when reading bold or capital letters then that's your problem, I dont and those who tend to be of mature age (Gen-X and older) tend not to either. As for what "sucks" about your proposal we've already stated it!–it is not needed, it is instruction creep, it violates our policies, and you have a stick up your arse on what you dont like. And yes you are indiscriminately removing information without attempting to incorporate it into a "finished" article as required by policy, and it is required not optional. I had the optional part removed long ago. Quote policy all you want, but in the end there is nothing to justify your wholesale destruction of information and may find yourself brought to AN/I if an administrator finds it annoying enough, which I'm sure there are enough who already do and I encourage them to bring your actions before the Community to see if sanctions to stop you are forthcoming.Camelbinky (talk) 01:50, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
By all means go ahead and take me to ANI, if you feel that I've done something that is worthy of administrator intervention. I don't agree with you regarding your misinterpretations of policy, for the reasons I've laid out above (your need to cite IAR to justify your position is illuminating), but I am done responding to your comments: You are not addressing what I am proposing, are misrepresenting my positions, are being incivil for no apparent reason, and are unwilling to budge from your position regardless of what is said. I'm not concerned with whether you think "my arguments suck" or that I have a "stick up my arse" or that I am "childish", and will from here on out dedicate my efforts to talking with people that can provide more calm and reasoned criticism of what I am actually saying. Until you have something to say that actually addresses what I am saying, I will no longer respond to your posts. Bye. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 03:11, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
If you don't want to be called a WP:SPADE, quit digging holes in the ground. —chaos5023 (talk) 04:22, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
The comments I made to Camelbinky regarding misrepresentation, rudeness, and lack of any connection to the actual topic of this thread apply to your comments as well. I will no longer be responding to your posts either, unless you say something that actually addresses my proposed addition to WP:INDISCRIMINATE, and what problems you see with it. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 05:36, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Camelbinky: "I had the optional part removed long ago.". So you alone are making the policies? That seems a bit contrary to procedure, but it does make sense of your seemingly very passionate engagement here. --Saddhiyama (talk) 11:10, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

One gaping hole in all of the policies is a little more guidance on relevancy/notability/usefulness/significance criteria for CONTENT which would kick in only where there is a dispute. The most common place this shows up is in wp:npov issues (i.e. a gaping hole in that policy) but this is another example. I actually ran into an example where I felt the pendulum had swung too far the other way at the USS Missouri article. (a friendly difference of views, not a dispute) That an overly strict project standard ruled out significant, notable, relevant material just because it was culture related. So a bit more guidance in this area would be helpful. Probably not a rule, just a "please take the following factors into consideration:" type thing might be best. North8000 (talk) 10:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

That's true, but there's an easy solution for all of this. Sourcing. I'd say that requiring a source for every trivia, culture, famous people lists, or whatever woudl be over the top, but... if there's a question about whether or not specific items should be excluded then just find a source or two that mention the point. Seems like an easy solution, to me (even if abiding by that requires a bit of work and study. Horrors!).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, but as I've pointed out several times, WP:V is only one of our policies. Just because you can find a reliable source that verifies a particular statement does not automatically imply that that statement should be in an article. For instance, I could find dozens of reliable sources commenting on Donald Trump's hairpiece, but that doesn't mean that we should include it in his article just because there is a source. We also have to take other policies and guidelines (including [[WP:DUE] and WP:INDISCRIMINATE) into consideration. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 00:50, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
Agreed. I guess that I just don't see a need to legislate this any more than is already done. I mean... people have a tendency to come here (or to talk pages, or policy pages) and rather severely over-think these things. There's a "feel" to these sorts of lists and content, you know? How much is appropriate is relative to several issues (the amount of other content, the relative importance of the topic, things like that), which makes attempts to delineate of exactly how many items to cover in all cases basically impossible.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:59, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
That's actually a very good point that I forgot to address: i.e. Yes, it's clear to most people that our current policies do not support the inclusion of random trivia. So why another rule? Why not just enforce the current rules?
The reason we add things into policies and guidelines is to express the WP:CONSENSUS regarding what to do in situations that frequently arise here. When arguments come up repeatedly over something (such as improperly quoting song lyrics or adding information without citing a source), we often write something into a policy or guideline that gives guidance on how we should generally deal with the situation, and why. Often these things are clear to most people. For those that cannot grasp the apparent consensus laid out in the current policies, we need to make the message more explicit: "No. An assortment of trivial Captain America and South Park references do not belong in the article for New York City". Then we just point to this guideline instead of having to repeat the same arguments over and over again ourselves.
"In popular culture" sections composed of lists of (often unsourced) trivial and irrelevant information are extremely common. I think it is a serious problem. Some people don't think that lists of random trivia are a problem, as long as they have sources for each bit of trivia. I think they misunderstand that this is an encyclopedia, and not an indiscriminate collection of information and that we shouldn't give undue weight to irrelevant information like trivial anime episode references. I don't understand how they can't see this; but for whatever reason, they don't, and so I have to explain it to them.
I shouldn't have to waste time explaining to people why we shouldn't be talking about Pokemon in the article Taoism (although maybe Taoism in anime would be a good place for the information), but right now I do. Such a large majority of people agree that random lists of trivia are not encyclopedic and are a serious and widespread problem here, that I'd like to make it explicit in WP:INDISCRIMINATE that these sorts of things are not desirable here. Instead of having to spend an hour arguing with someone about why a Captain America movie reference doesn't belong in the article for United States history, I can just say "See WP:INDISCRIMINATE", and go back to writing an encyclopedia article.
I agree with you that rule-creep is an issue, and that policy should not be added frivolously. But this is a problem affecting thousands of articles, and which takes up a lot of community time and causes a lot of unnecessary conflict. I think that it is worth dealing with through a policy or guideline, so we waste less time over it. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 07:54, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Comment - Popular culture is a significant topic in its own right and we are an encyclopedia about the real world, not an ivory tower. Sometimes the effect and relation of a thing to popular culture is relevant to the subject of an article, sometimes not. Sometimes popular culture sections are encyclopedically written and sourced, other times not. For example, Tom Lehrer sang a notable song, The Elements (song), about the Periodic Table, but that is too trivial in weight and faraway in relevance to add to our article about the basic building blocks of the universe. On the other hand, the popular culture section in Santa Claus is relevant to what Santa Claus means, because he is largely a historical pop culture phenomenon. - Wikidemon (talk) 23:35, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm kind of at a loss for words. I've stated over and over again that I am not opposed to popular culture sections. I've even placed it in bold text so that people couldn't miss it (although I don't know how they would have gotten the idea that I wanted to remove all pop culture sections if they had actually read my proposal). Yet this assertion keeps coming up over and over and over again. What could I possibly say that would motivate people to focus on my actual proposal rather than this oft-repeated straw man? I have already stated repeatedly that I and my proposal here support the inclusion of "Cultural influence" or "In popular culture" sections for articles like Samurai or Zombie (or your Santa Claus example, which is equally apt) that have reliable sources which cover their cultural impact. Please go and take another look at what I am actually proposing.
You stated that sometimes popular culture sections are encyclopedically sourced, sometimes not. I am saying that since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, we should remove those sections which cannot be encyclopedically sourced. I understand that some people like trivia. But this is not a trivia project. (Although I would fully support the creation of an official WikiTrivia project). Some people like dirty jokes. But we don't include those either, even if we can find a source for them, because Wikipedia is not a joke book. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and we should only include information that can be encyclopedically sourced. However a very large number of topics, such as Santa Claus, CAN be encyclopedically sourced, and should be. But again, because I've been misrepresented so many times in this arena as well: my issue is NOT with the availability of sources to verify individual pieces of trivia. My issue is with whether topics that do not have anything written about their cultural impact should have a section devoted to their cultural impact. I do not think they should.
Wikidemon -- I think that you are mostly in agreement with me, judging by your examples (i.e. that Periodic Table shouldn't include the aforementioned trivia, while Santa Claus should have a Cultural Impact section because of his enormous impact on popular culture). My proposal would have precisely this effect of removing said trivia from the Periodic table article while promoting the inclusion of a high-quality "Cultural significance" section in Santa Claus. Please do me the favor of actually reading over what I am proposing. I think you'll find that, although it could use some work, that it is precisely what you are suggesting with your examples, and that it would greatly improve the quality of an enormous number of our articles, which currently contain large chunks of sometimes sourced, but irrelevant and trivial, references to pop culture rather than analyzing the cultural impact of the article topic. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 00:50, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
I've changed my !vote to a "comment" for now, and think your proposal merits more consideration than I can give it. Certainly, random lists of disjointed material, of the sort that might be called "trivia" on a site like IMDB. From "fight club": In the short scene when Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are drunk and hitting golf balls, they really are drunk, and the golf balls are sailing directly into the side of the catering truck. That sort of thing amuses some people but so what? Even if we wanted to, Wikipedia isn't an efficient or useful place to collect those things or any indiscriminate list. That's not how we're built, what we're here for, or what the reader needs to know. We do have to be careful when removing stuff just because it's in trivia form, because some of that stuff truly is relevant. For example, the following piece of "trivia", also from IMDB, says something that may be be fairly significant to the film: Author Chuck Palahniuk has stated that he found the film to be an improvement on his novel. If that relevant and significant fact happened to be mixed in with a randomly ordered bullet point list it ought to be worked into the prose, any citations found or improved, etc. - Wikidemon (talk) 01:16, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

There are some interesting ideas in the proposal, some good, some bad. ¶ The only time an article warrants the inclusion of an "In popular culture" section is when reliable sources exist which describe the overall impact that the subject has had on popular culture (or some important subset of pop-culture such as film, literature, etc.). Either I don't understand, or I don't agree. First, I don't see any reason to separate "popular" culture -- meaning recent culture from the infotainment industry? -- from any other culture. Secondly, if, in an extreme case, the subject of the article verifiably had an interesting echo (one about which people have been able to write) on just a single television program (or novel, or game, or album, or whatever), then I see no reason why a the lack of any impact elsewhere should rule out a description of this one particular echo. ¶ Let's look at the part that's been boldified above: I am not opposed to popular culture sections. I am only opposed to including them in articles [on subjects] which have not had a significant impact on popular culture, and do not think these sections should be composed of disjointed lists of trivia. W H Mallock has I think had no effect on recent popular or other culture other than via Tom Phillips (for artistic and also musical ends); but if his works were also to be picked up as punching bags by Julian Baggini or some other two-fisted atheist (i.e. in a way irrelevant to art, music or Phillips), they would still have little impact on culture (popular or otherwise) over the last eighty years -- and yet I think a section on "Later appearances of Mallock" would be justified. ¶ I too used to say that lists of appearances in popular culture appeared in no printed encyclopedia and therefore did not befit this one. This argument is poor, in that WP is fundamentally different from any printed encyclopedia -- as we know very well. ¶ The argument against including lists of appearances in popular culture (even when sourced) is that such lists generally tell us next to nothing about the ostensible subject of the article. ¶ There are also miscellaneous absurdities. For example, we have "Mermaids in popular culture". Its content isn't all bad. (The snippet on Zemlinsky's symphonic poem Die Seejungfrau is my own contribution.) But mermaids in popular culture as opposed to where? They've never had any physical existence; the mermaid is a cultural artifact, no more. -- Hoary (talk) 09:06, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

  • Agree - with the limited scope as originally proposed for discussion. Mesoderm has made it clear this is a good faith attempt to gather input to make a planned RFC high quality in its initial argument, which seems to me to be the essence of good faith. I'm surprised at the lack of flexibility in re-considering ideas that have been previously discussed, especially in not listening to his repeated attempts to refocus the discussion on his original point. His proposal may not be perfect, but he knew that when he made it - and basically, I believe he's right in that the project is becoming less an encyclopeia and more a blog. There is increasingly too much crap that is tolerated for too long. Kilmer-san (talk) 21:26, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Content in thousands of articles is at risk here for insignificant benefit. This is pernicious WP:CREEP. As editors and policy writers we are constrained by the content of the encyclopedia as it was created under policies which editors conformed to at the time of their creation and expansion in good faith. It is an intellectual betrayal to their effort to delete this material. It is vandalism and unencylopedic. The work to be done here is to attempt to organize it and to cite it better. patsw (talk) 00:57, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. I think this is already pretty well-covered at WP:TRIVIA and WP:POPCULTURE. I don't really think everything needs re-debating, we just need help cleaning up articles that have gotten a bit crufty. In general, I use the rule-of-thumb of checking for sources. The vast majority of trivia lists don't have sources, so they're easy to thin out. But if there's a reliable source explaining why a particular piece of trivia is culturally significant, then I leave it in. That takes care of 95% of the problems. Or to put it another way: Are there particular articles where the existing guidelines are insufficient? If so, they can usually be handled on a case-by-case basis. --Elonka 01:32, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
  • I oppose what Mesoderm has been doing purely because, from the examples I saw, he wasn't doing it carefully enough. I only cited one example above but I reverted, or partially reverted, some others - as far as I could tell, he was simply blindly removing any section which contained "in popular culture" whether it contained useful information or not.[3] As for the general idea, I agree that lists of indiscriminate links under whatever section heading are a bad idea, but where there are justifiable reasons for including some links ([4] might be an example), we should first consider whether some rewriting might be required instead of equally indiscriminate removal. Stephenb (Talk) 09:22, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose every topic should have this considered on its merits with no policy or guidelines restricting what is put in, and local consensus on each article can determine if the content is suitable. Any article could have a cultural impact section if there are sources which cover it and it adds value to the article. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:33, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose - noting very carefully that what Elonka says above is simply re-iterating what I said high up at the beginning of all this - its all been through before - and both Elonka and Stephenb and Graeme Bartlett bring up salient issues - case by case is far more effective SatuSuro 10:07, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment I think its worth considering how the inclusion of the marginally relevant pop culture information that the OP objects to affects our public image. I think its important to remember that many people feel that an encyclopedia relying on user generated content is inherently unreliable. Using the example of information about pokemon in the Taoism article, if a wikipedia skeptic were to see that, their opinions about wikipedia would likely be reinforced, specifically, that anyone can come here and post whatever they want, with no editorial oversight. I have been continually bothered how this issue has seemingly never entered into any discussion on standards for inclusion. RadManCF ☢ open frequency 20:02, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
    We should not be changing articles or making policy in order to convince people that Wikipedia is a reliable source, because the people that consider an encyclopedia based on used generated content to be unreliable are right. Wikipedia is not a reliable source, as our own sourcing guidelines indicate. Wikipedia is an open wiki and so can never be considered reliable, and we should be discouraging people from treating it as reliable, to say nothing of actively trying to convince them to. Wikipedia is where you go for a summary of what reliable sources say and references that enable you to find those reliable sources, and if trivia sections help people recognize this, then they're doing a public service. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:15, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
    I would argue that we are, in most cases, just as reliable as a print encyclopedia (Reliable in a colloquial sense, not according to WP:RS. The main exceptions occur in areas not well covered by print encyclopedias). When I talk about people thinking we are unreliable, I'm talking about arguments such as "since anyone can edit wikipedia don't believe a word of it" as opposed to wikipedia is a tertiary source, so it should not be used as a source for a research paper. I agree with the latter view entirely. I feel that in the scenario you suggest, where a casual reader of the encyclopedia comes across an "in popular culture" section, and decides to take everything they read with a grain of salt, to be somewhat unrealistic. I think its more likely that they'd stop reading, and never come to wikipedia again. I do think its important to inform readers of our limitations, but I think that the manner that you suggest could easily backfire. That's why we have the disclaimers. RadManCF ☢ open frequency 21:53, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
    Also, when you say that that trivia sections may help people recognize our limitations, it seems to me that you are suggesting that we tolerate low quality material. I understand your motivations for doing so, but I don't think that compromising the quality of the encyclopedia, for any reason, is a good idea. RadManCF ☢ open frequency 22:03, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. I reiterate the key is improvement and not deletion. I have gone through articles without cites for the popular culture entries and added them. I oppose policies that will make that impossible by preemption. New articles and new content can be policed a bit better for WP:V. The Wikipedia is only as reliable as the source material cited and the diligence of editors to check on the accuracy and relevance of its contents. So it is the unsourced or poorly sourced material that needs that grain of salt and improvement. patsw (talk) 23:26, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Popular culture is the strength of Wikipedia. It was the strength at the beginning, and it continues to draw people here, both to read and to write. In most cases, they go on to other things also. The level of coverage should be the same as for everything else: the fullest coverage a general non-specialist reader might want to know. We are not paper, and need not limit ourselves to the scope of a condensed encyclopedia, I interpret "the sort of generalist coverage as meaning the ability to discuss the work intelligently with a true specialist, though not able to participate in the sort of specialist fan discussions than involve exhaustive knowledge of each detail. Essentially, scene by scene analysis, but not frame by frame analysis. for an actual example, I realized yesterday that I had accidentally skipped one episode of Grey's Anatomy. I expect the encyclopedia to tell me as much of what happened as if I had seen it, on the one hand not the academic analysis of every shot and every nuance that would take repeated viewings to absorb, but much more than the sort of summary teaser printed in newspapers and on DVD inserts.In terms of related works and cultural references, the actual interest of a fictional work depends on these. The experience of fiction is not the bare following of plots--its the revelation of significance through the relationship between not just the characters an, events and situation in the fiction, but to those outside the fiction. To use my example again, the appeal of that series is the very close relationship to the actual practice of medicine, and to the social and psychological issues that granscend medicine. The appeal grows as the show becomes part of the assumed cultural background for later works. (I give this one example, but it applies equally to the novels of Steinbeck and Bellows and Dickens and Tolkien and Rowlings or to fine arts or to computer games -- not that I consider them artists of equal merit, but that both the internal components of the fiction and the relationship of other fictional and RW events to it gives them their importance.
So what about the works that are of relatively trivial intrinsic merit as seen by most intelligent adults? We're not the judges of literary merit--if people take them as seriously as that of established artists, then they deserve equally thorough treatment here. We are not here to teach our theories of literature, but to show what others think.
Is there a limit? A single xkcd cartoon strip could in principle be the starting point fora book length cultural and (sometimes) scientific analysis, but that's the sort of excess that becomes OR; a page of text on each might get it right. A mention of the use of the strip in every notable work is relevant; an analysis of the use in every findable work in the world is not.
What about unbalanced coverage? I came here, after all, to improve the coverage of the traditional academic subjects. The answer is not to cut back the coverage of what we do well, but to expand all the other areas equally. Let us cover every pokenmon figure--and every chemical compound and asteroid, every battle in every war, both the wars that shaped the destiny of the world and the ones that to us are more obscure, every individual painting of Rembrandt—and Warhol; every song by Schubert—and the Beetles.
And finally to answer directly the proposal: popular culture lists should be expanded into detailed discussions of each elements, and all notable topics are by their inherent nature culturally significant and should have as full cultural significance sections as the evidence warrants. DGG ( talk ) 21:10, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
Nicely said.--SPhilbrickT 21:42, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
I really hope you aren't suggesting that all articles deserve an IPC counterpart. That is certainly not the direction we should be heading. Cited, prose summaries of popular culture are acceptable, while exhaustive indiscriminate lists (of anything, not just popular culture references) are hardly ever considered to be encyclopedic writing. ThemFromSpace 09:49, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
No I am saying that if the topic is notable enough to be covered, the sourceable popular culture aspects of it are, in an appropriate place. I'd guess that for 80% of Wikipedia articles there are no such relevant sourceable aspects, for 19+% there are, but they should be covered in the article, either in a separate section or where more specifically relevant, and for considerably less than 1%, would there be enough good material for a separate article. I am not and never have been in favor of needlessly multiplying the number of articles, juyst of increasing the content. DGG ( talk ) 00:52, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose and endorse DGG's response above. The proposer insists that they're not opposed to trivia sections as long as they're sourced and relevant, but this is already covered in existing policies and guidelines. The WP:TRIVIA guideline says 'this guideline does not suggest removing trivia sections, or moving them to the talk page. If information is otherwise suitable, it is better that it be poorly presented than not presented at all' (emphasis mine). In other words, improve (and only failing that, remove) material if it isn't suitable (per verifiability, due weight or any other standard criteria) and keep material that is. No changes are needed here. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 03:05, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - there are some bad lists of trivia. Many, actually. But amputation isn't the answer. For now the best answer we have is that they should be sourced. If anyone has any other answers to improve quality without totally destroying our coverage of popular culture I would be open to hearing them. Dzlife (talk) 18:29, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Is it acceptable for an encyclopedic article to reinforce only one side of a controversial issue?

In the Conspiracy Theory article, vested contributors seem to feel no responsibility to write for the opponent based on assumptions that no reliable sources exist.

Making such assumptions, and disregarding any need for diligence, about generalized issues such as conspiracy theory might reflect a systemic bias. What has resulted is writing that is unnecessarily judgmental, dismissive or otherwise negative in tone. Vested contributors then insist that the article has neutral point-of-view – based on technicalities rather than any basis in fact.

Information about where this issue has been discussed would be appreciated. Tsnuemuozobh (talk) 00:02, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Not sure where this particular issue might have been discussed, but I think this sounds like an issue to bring up at NPOV noticeboard. I see that editors have engaged in conversation on the talk page, what sources have you brought to the discussion that you feel are not being given sufficient weight? --Nuujinn (talk) 00:08, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
I am asking about policy in general. I only used that article as an example.
It shouldn't be hard to find reliable sources for both sides of a controversy if one makes a good-faith effort. Tsnuemuozobh (talk) 00:21, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
Hence my question. If such sources exist, they should be findable, have you tried to find such sources? --Nuujinn (talk) 00:28, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
That's a good question to ask someone who writes a one-sided article. Tsnuemuozobh (talk) 00:33, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
WP:NPOV says we should include all significant points of view, giving weight in proportion to their prominence in secondary sources. Points of view that are insignificant or barely significant are covered by WP:FRINGE. We don't necessarily give equal space to both sides of a controversy, and we might even cover the controversy in a separate article, such as Myth of the Flat Earth.   Will Beback  talk  00:35, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
Tsnuemuozobh, Nuujinn's question is also a good question to ask someone whom you hope to be able to absolve of laziness or bossiness. As a general rule, I'd be slow to tell other WP:VOLUNTEERs that it was their duty to spend their time finding sources to prove "my" side for me. If it's not important enough for me to spend my time finding those sources, then maybe it's not important enough for anyone to spend any time finding those sources.
Naturally, whether reliable sources can be found depends on whether any have been published. There are no reliable sources advocating that 2+2=22, or that Time Cube is a brilliant solution to the mysteries of the universe. We do not try to pretend that all sides in any controversy are equally valid, even if that means that our articles seem "one-sided" to children who do not want to agree that two plus two equals four. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:37, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
As a general rule, I'd be slow to tell other WP:VOLUNTEERs that it was their duty to spend their time finding sources to prove "my" side for me.
That, I understand, would be in the spirit of writing for the opponent. WP:VOLUNTEER says nothing about editors picking sides in a controversy.
Is an editor is free to start a new article from scratch and post it on Wikipedia under the assumption that all opposing points-of-view are unimportant? Tsnuemuozobh (talk) 01:00, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
VOLUNTEER says that if you don't want to write for the enemy—or correct typos, or fix formatting errors, or expand an article, or do anything else on Wikipedia—then you are 100% free to let someone else do that task.
WP:Content forks are prohibited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:06, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
(ec)In regard to enemy, no, the point of that is to try to understand an editor with whom you disagree. In regard to starting a new article, sure, but if you don't include reliable sources that provide significant coverage of the topic, it will likely be deleted. And other editors will have to option to edit same to balance the article out, or suggest a merge, and what stays and what goes will be decided by consensus informed by reference to reliable sources. So you'll need to produce sources pretty much in any case. Now, if you don't know how to find sources, if you ask nicely, I'm sure some of us will help learn you how to find 'em. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:08, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
WP:VOLUNTEER says nothing about letting someone else write for the enemy. WP:ENEMY says nothing about understanding another editor.
There aren't any recent requests to delete the Conspiracy Theory article, despite the attention that it has attracted. The article is written in an overly negative tone, while vested contributors insist that it has a neutral point-of-view. I've read the Myth of the Flat Earth article. It describes, for the most part, a systemic bias on the part of anti-Catholic Protestants with a political agenda. Tsnuemuozobh (talk) 01:35, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
Actually, VOLUNTEER says everything about your right to refuse to do anything that you don't choose to do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:33, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
It is entirely possible to refuse to write from a neutral point-of-view. Tsnuemuozobh (talk) 06:46, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, and you are allowed to refuse to write a neutral article, just like you are allowed to refuse to write an article with good grammar. You are allowed to work on another article or to quit entirely if you don't want to write a neutral article. You are not allowed to interfere with someone who is fixing the biased mess you made, but you cannot be forced to clean up the biased mess yourself if you do not choose to write a neutral article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:08, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
With all due respect, you're not listening, and you'll need sources to convince anyone to include your points of view. Sorry, but that's how it works here. Best of luck! --Nuujinn (talk) 01:47, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't have a gripe about including unsupported statements in any particular article. I am asking about Wikipedia policy concerning articles of controversial topics that present only one point-of-view. Tsnuemuozobh (talk) 01:54, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
It seems like the answers been pretty clearly laid out, but I'll try a summary: articles that are non-neutral are bad (they violate WP:NPOV). The correct solution is to edit those articles to make them neutral. In a few very rare cases if an article is fundamentally non-neutral (like a theoretical article titled "Proof that 9/11 was caused by the New World Order") that there is no way to make it neutral (i.e., that it's a WP:POVFORK), then the correct solution is to delete or merge the information into a parent article. Barring that extreme situation, if you find an article that is non-neutral, you should try to fix it, or at least start the process by discussing it and, if necessary, bringing it to the attention of a message board. If you're asking if something should be done to stop such editors; well, if you could show that they routinely edited in a non-neutral manner to push an agenda, you could conceivably request that admin action be taken at WP:ANI or somewhere similar, but to do that you'd have to show, at a minimum, that you (and probably other editors) tried to fix the problem and they absolutely refused. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:10, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
My question is not about whether an article can be improved, but about assumptions concerning the availability of reliable sources. For example, "Proof that 9/11 was caused by the New World Order is fundamentally non-neutral" reflects a systemic bias. Tsnuemuozobh (talk) 06:46, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

To be clear this almost certainly is related to this discussion on the conspiracy theory article Talk:Conspiracy theory#This article is full of judgmental statements since the user that made this request also made another request on the NPOV noticeboard with exactly the same title which linked to that very discussion. I though some context would be good in this case.--76.66.188.209 (talk) 05:10, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Someone who responded on that noticeboard basically said that it should only be used to request admin action, which is not my intent. Tsnuemuozobh (talk) 06:46, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
I think you need to go read what Johnuniq actually said. He said that it's not normal or good for an editor (you) to jump straight to a noticeboard after spending less than one day in discussion on the article's talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
NPOV deals with this pretty well IMO. Otherwise article topics should always be framed in a way that allows multiple valid perspectives to be included. But if the topic has a good foundation it should be possible to work out the POV issues in time. Dzlife (talk) 18:48, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Sources

Is it unusual or undesirable to have a "Further Reading" list of five items, all by the same author, and none other? Is this mitigated by adding a single additional source, by a different author? The article in question is Americans in Hong Kong. DOR (HK) (talk) 05:47, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Without looking; it could be possible that the author is an expert on the subject and written several books on the various aspects of the topic. Having looked; it seems more likely that these are all short articles the author? has but two books listed on Amazon. This is one of the futher reading items Conference proceedings perhaps? GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:07, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
I'd say so; it's the parallel to "External links", in which, instead of external links, it's other (non-online) print sources in which people may want to read more upon. –MuZemike 03:35, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikimania 2011 - Is Israel really an acceptable place to be hosting the Wikimania conference?

this is not an issue that can be dealt with at en.Wikipedia

Hi Folks,

I think this is about the right place for this discussion to be had on policy regarding Wikimania locations.

First off, I'm an agnostic defender of Human rights (that's a brief description to try and highlight my agenda here). I was quite saddened to read earlier on in the year that the very popular Wikimania gathering is to be hosted in Israel this year. I want to keep this brief but my view (which I am sure that I will share with the majority of the free world here) is that Israel is a country that is at a very stark contrast with the core principles of Wikimedia of freedom and equality. Israel does not allow freedom (as you or I know it) for the majority of the Palestinian people it is responsible for as an occupier of their lands under the Geneva conventions. Equality is another major downfall of the Israeli regime, it is transgressing far beyond the inequality of the South African Apartheid regime, I mean there are separate roads for Israeli's and separate roads for Palestinians - There were no separate Roads for Black people and White people in Apartheid South Africa (although there were separate buses for White people and separate ones for Black people).

As a defender of Human rights, I am calling on Wikimedia to rethink your decision to host Wikimedia 2011 in Israel as to do so would be to take a political stand in favour of Israel and show the world that Israel is a normal law abiding country. This is not an issue in which indifference will be accepted by the world. Come August, Wikimania will already have taken sides in this most contemporary of major world problems and that is a position you do not want to be in as it will be a view which history will not take kindly to.

Kind regards, Abu-bakr. t (talk) 18:40, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The above is similar to a message I have sent to Jimbo. There is a question to answer here, how do we find the answer and what can be done about this? Abu-bakrUK (talk) 20:58, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Oh please. Must we have a political speech here? Bus stop (talk) 21:11, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Pounds to peanuts he has misjudged the "majority of the free world" he mentions. Moriori (talk) 21:18, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Somebody linked to False consensus effect the other day, and I think it's a fascinating concept. It deals with humans' inability to easily determine the difference between what "the majority of the free world" thinks and what "the majority of my corner of the free world" thinks. This would explain why a UK Muslim (for example) might believe that practically everyone believes that Israel is horrible, and a middle-class white Southern Baptists (for example) would believe exactly the opposite. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Moot anyway. This decision was made last year, and it was not made here on Wikipedia but rather over at Meta. There is a very long, involved bidding process each year. The time and place to object to this selection is long past, and not on this wiki anyway. The conference starts in only nine days. If you don't like the choice of location, don't go. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:51, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Is late July the best time to start asking this question, especially by someone who is not a Wikipedia participant? And does this sound like a threat? a position you do not want to be in as it will be a view which history will not take kindly to. USchick (talk) 21:56, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Considering Wikipedia's track record of predicting revolution in the Middle East (since Wikimania a few years ago was in Egypt), shouldn't you be supporting it, figuring that a revolution will follow? :P --Golbez (talk) 21:58, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Surname clarification at top of article

We have a wide variety of surname clarification templates for use where the subject has a non-English-style name. These messages appear as a hatnote above the article and look like this (for example):

In this Dutch name, the surname is Van den Hoogenband, not Hoogenband.
In this Chinese name, the family name is Hu.

In my opinion this is completely unnecessary and only takes up space, distracting from the lead and presenting a slightly aggressive tone to the reader. If the family name is not obvious from the name alone, it will be immediately obvious within the first few sentences and throughout the rest of the article, because that is how we will address the subject. I don't understand, then, what these messages do.

I saw such a message at Salva Kiir Mayardit, who is referred to as "Kiir". I tried placing it in a footnote but it was reverted because (apparently) it was inconsistent with the templates. I think a footnote is a much more reasonable location for this kind of message. The lead is for the most critical biographical details, and an explanation of the subject's name order is trivia at best. Non-English name formats don't require what appear to be warning messages to the reader. —Designate (talk) 21:32, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

My personal opinion in a nutshell:
1) Users shouldn't have to read any part of an article to figure out that it is the wrong page.
2) A note for a redirection:
2.1) is definitely not unnecessary,
2.2) is not distracting,
2.3) does not present an aggresive tone to the reader,
2.4) should not be placed at the absolute bottom of an article,
2.5) carrys the purpose of guiding the reader.
3) I hope this helps.
My personal opinion unnutshelled: 1) users shouldn't have to read the first few sentences or even words or in fact, anything at all, of the article. It needs to be visible immediately so the user can redirect themself to the appropriate disambiguation or article. 2) 2.1) I am going to contradict what you said, in fact, directly, because it is definitely completely necessary from what I stated above, contradicting “this is completely unnecessary and only takes up space”. 2.2) And also contradicting “distracting from the lead”: it is definitely not distracting, with a small stub-style note at the top. What I think is maybe slightly distracting is templates at the top. 2.3) Also contradicting “presenting a slightly aggressive tone to the reader”: I have absolutely no clue how it is. Please elaborate. 2.4) Also contradicting, “a footnote is a much more reasonable location for [a redirection]”: It is not, because viewers are forced to scroll to the absolute bottom of the page for a mere redirection. Also explaining: 2.5) The purpose of these messages is to help and guide the reader to a redirection to a disambiguation or article page. Also, 3) I hope my comment may help you improve your knowledge on such templates. Thank you, and sorry if I had previously offended you by (directly) contradicting your text, quotes, comments, etc. Thanks again, A person who has been editing Wikipedia since October 28, 2010. (talk) 04:34, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Ah, I'm not talking about redirection templates. —Designate (talk) 05:28, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I know: a redirection to a different family name. A person who has been editing Wikipedia since October 28, 2010. (talk) 21:31, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I am baffled. —Designate (talk) 22:09, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
In many biographical articles, it is anything but "immediately obvious" which is the surname. This is especially true with new articles—often written by the subject himself or herself or a close associate or fan—whose authors use given names throughout, contrary to proper style. For those of us (and I think it's most of us) who aren't experts on the order of full names in a given language, these hatnotes seem to be the most efficient, least intrusive way to determine surname. The only alternative I can see would be a parenthetical note immediately after the boldface name in the lede itself. Now, that would be clumsy and distracting. Rivertorch (talk) 10:06, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
The "least intrusive way" is a footnote. This is putting undue weight on a style issue when the lead is supposed to focus on content. —Designate (talk) 18:40, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
WP:ACCESS demands that disambiguation notes like this be placed before content. It is particularly important to people who use screen readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:05, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm not talking about disambiguation notes. —Designate (talk) 18:40, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Right. Nonetheless, the principle is similar. Why should someone have to follow a footnote or scroll to the bottom of the page to discover one of the most basic facts about an article's subject? As well as summarizing the body of the article, the lede is supposed to state clearly, succinctly, and unambiguously what or who the topic of the article is. This template, rendered in one line of text, allows that obligation to be fulfilled. Rivertorch (talk) 19:03, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree that these notices are intrusive when formatted as hatnotes. A footnote makes information easily available to those who need it and does not distract everyone else. I don't see how this has to do anything with accessibility.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 14, 2011; 19:18 (UTC)
  • I agree with the OP that these are not disambiguation templates (even though they, IMO, incorrectly, use the disambig metatemplate style). I agree with others that this sort of content should be addressed in the article, perhaps with footnotes. older ≠ wiser 19:37, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
  • These are not disambiguation hatnotes, but they do share with dab hatnotes the feature of possibly informing readers whether or not they have landed on the right page. I see no reason why their style should be any different from a standard dab hatnote. I disagree strongly with the proposal to turn these into footnotes - it is useful to have this info at the top of an article, and I do not find it "intrusive" at all. I can see how notes of the form "name is X not Y" might appear "aggressive", but this can be dealt with by rewording. It's a content issue, not a style issue. --NSH001 (talk) 01:11, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
    • I'm trying to picture how someone visiting Ban Ki-moon would think they were on the wrong page, for example. Even if someone thought his family name was "Ki-moon", they would still end up at the same page, wouldn't they? —Designate (talk) 01:46, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Delete or Reduce I propose either reducing in size or Deleting. Distracts from the Lead and is just an interesting fact about naming customs, not dealing with the subject at all. If the reader wants more information on the naming conventions used in a particular subjects demographic, he should be guided to the wikipedia article on the naming convention subject (i.e. Spanish naming customs). Readers want to reach the history, living era, and accomplishments of the articles subject, not be bombarded with facts in italic type face as the first thing they see. Adding as a Footnote would be the same as deleting to me. QuAzGaA 01:34, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Keep hatnotes on the basis that they are informative and are immediately available to help a reader understand the structure of a person's name. You raised four points in opposition of these hatnotes. You said "only takes up space"; we are not a print medium, we have no space constraints, and frankly one line of text is not occupying much space to begin with. You said "distracting from the lead"; I do not find this to be the case at all, sorry. You said "presenting a slightly aggressive tone to the reader"; I cannot see how an informative line of text about the nature of a person's name can possibly be taken as aggressive. You said "if the family name is not obvious from the name alone, it will be immediately obvious within the first few sentences and throughout the rest of the article, because that is how we will address the subject"; this may be so, but it does nothing to educate the reader on why the subject is addressed as such. On the article Salva Kiir Mayardit you mentioned, it appears CycloneGU has removed the information altogether, and there is now no explanation whatsoever as to why he is referred to as 'Kiir' during the article. A footnote is certainly better than 'not there at all', but I don't see any compelling reasons why a hatnote is unsuitable in the first place. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 03:21, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
    • Space is constrained by principles of good layout, which apply on the web just as much as print media. Simplicity is a universal principle (see Google vs. Lycos, Facebook vs. Myspace, etc.). The issue of what is "distracting" is debatable, but if it's in italics and has the word "not", it looks like a warning or an important message with a negative tone, and the reader's eye is drawn to it first. Screen "real estate" needs to be used judiciously: ideally the reader's eye would be drawn to the first sentence of the article before anything else, because that's the most important part of the entire article. If there's a good chance the reader is on the wrong page, a hatnote to a disambiguation page is unavoidable. It obviously can't go into the article body because it has nothing to do with the subject. But this hatnote, which is a minor note about the subject, is only at the top of the article because it doesn't fit comfortably into the text. That's not a good reason for prioritizing it, and a more subtle placement would be more appropriate. —Designate (talk) 21:33, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
      • A single line of explanatory information is in no way, shape or form a layout or space concern in an encyclopedia where the transfer of information is its primary purpose. And I believe you're wrong; the reader's attention is drawn first to the title of the article; then to a small line of explanation about the title; then to the opening paragraph. If you have concerns about the wording of the template, I would think suggesting alternatives would be a better course of action. While I don't like falling back on arguments from credentials, from my experience in the web development industry, I believe your concerns about layout and screen real estate are making mountains out of molehills. We're talking about a single informative line of text in a prominent location relative to the title of the article that it seeks to help clarify. It is most certainly not space wasted, nor poorly occupied, nor poorly positioned. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 00:34, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Keep hatnotes. I agree wholeheartedly with TechnoSymbiosis' responses to the nominator's concerns. I believe it is important to alert a user that they may be misinterpreting the subject of an article as soon as possible, and this is certain true with names (especially BLPs). I disagree with the nominator's sentiments that hatnotes are "aggressive," and ask that they provide some evidence that these could potentially be disruptive, because I'm just not convinced by the current line of reasoning. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 05:54, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
  • They are mostly unneeded and obtrusive, giving undue weight to a technicality, not relevant for the biography itself. If someone misuses the subject's name, then correct that use; in the few cases when highlighting the family name is important, then add it to the lead, or a to section. All in all, it is highly unlikely that the name structure is the first and foremost information sought in a biography - Nabla (talk) 19:30, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
Note: This kind of hatnotes is pointed as an example of improper use at WP:Hatnote, since early drafts back from 2005. - Nabla (talk) 21:21, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
This is a valid argument, though I would respond that there appears to be unspoken consensus across numerous articles that name templates are a reasonable exception to the guideline you linked to. It may be worth mentioning that guidelines are typically seen as suggestions and aren't prescriptive. It does, however, suggest that this debate may be better placed on either WP:Hatnote or on the template talk pages themselves, as I don't think it will get enough exposure on the village pump. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 00:46, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
My opinion is independent of WP:Hatnote's content, and I was using it not (as much) to strengthen my argument as to point the inconsistency. These hatnotes seem to be kept in use ever since! If that is the usual action, then policy should reflect the use. I'm all for discussing it. I add, to those arguing it is "interesting and useful" that I agree they are, the point is not that, the point is if that interesting and useful information should be highlighted as the first thing you see about a person. Clearly not I say, it is something for the body of the article, not for the top. - Nabla (talk) 22:23, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
I listed this discussion on the template talk pages. If you have any other ideas of where to list this, I'll do it. I'd like this to get as much attention as possible, although certainly it's a minor issue. Designate (talk) 03:55, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Lose from articles - having looked for an example at "Lucky" Leif Ericson, the hatnote on Ericson not being his family name seems a pointless promotion of what is a side issue to undue prominence. On authors do we add a hatnotes "This is a pseudonym or pen name. The person's real name was.....?" GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:25, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
(Arriving here late). re OP: Category:Hatnotes for family names should be tight and well-tested; dunno about Category:Surname clarification templates, which could be wide. Anyway, if the family-name is not clear or not English-structured, it should be clarified either in a hatnote (not preferred) or in the persons's infobox. -DePiep (talk) 00:58, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • As I said before, these notes do not disambiguate anything and should not be formatted to look like hatnotes, which serve a separate function entirely. IMO, this is article content and not hatnote content. older ≠ wiser 01:14, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Right. Once you understand, as we all do, you get it. So, Wikipedia separates (but not disambiguates) names (spelled X) from words (spelled X), and then even surnames (spelled X) from family names (spelled X), disambiguation is clear as it can be. Once you get it. Then there are of course articles for a singer's nickname (spelled X). (So we have X, X, X and X, which not a single uses would confuse with X. And that is without the disambiguation page: X, nor the lookalike page X, (which is not a disambiguation page as we all understood right away). Why explain names? Everyone understands their meaning & nuance at first glance & type. Everyone can see that X is a given name (here) or a surname (there) and a whoop whoop anywhere. All clear. Thank you for explaining me. It's just those stupid other wikireaders who don't get it. -DePiep (talk) 02:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

  • Keep As it happens, I was thinking about these hatnotes after following the VietNam story on the front page. They are useful - remember, there may be school-children, the less aware, or generally uninformed readers who would find that little extra bit of information useful. They may go on to read about surnames of the world after reading the main article. It acts as a further step along the path of the project, reason enough to keep. doktorb wordsdeeds 05:05, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • These hatnotes are not disambiguation hatnotes. They are information about the person's name, for the information of readers and the guidance of editors - who might otherwise "correct" the usage in the article, incorrectly, or who might want to add a DEFAULTSORT. This is English Wikipedia, and the norm in most English-speaking countries is that a name is made up of "Given-name Family-name", with or without additions, so it is helpful to readers and editors to alert them to variations from this. It might be preferable to make this hatnote less conspicuous or more obviously distinct from navigational hatnotes, but I can't see an easy way to do this. Smaller font would have accessibility problems, shaded background might look like hightlighting rather than the opposite... I suggest we just stick with what we have. PamD (talk) 08:19, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • I always did find these notes to be trivial information, and kind've irrelevant. But I must admit that without them I probably would've remained ignorant about family/given names in other cultures. I do think that putting them in the infobox (where applicable) is a good idea however, and really should be considered. -- œ™ 09:28, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
Agree with OlEnglish: if not in a hatnote, it should be in the article (indeed preferably in the infobox). We don't want to throw away that information. And to be clear: even if something is not disambiguating, it still can be a hatnote. -DePiep (talk) 21:45, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
That is redefining a hatnote to be something other than what is described at WP:Hatnote. older ≠ wiser 21:52, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
No. WP:Hatnote does not define a hatnote as being a disambiguation thing. Not. -DePiep (talk) 22:06, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
From WP:Hatnote (empasis added):

Hatnotes are short notes placed at the top of an article (hence the name "hat"), normally to help readers locate a different article they might be looking for when they arrived at the article in which the hatnote is placed (this may happen because of redirects, because the article they are looking for uses a more specific, disambiguated title, or because its name is otherwise similar to that of the article with a hatnote). They [hatnotes] accomplish this by providing links to the article in question or to a disambiguation page.

That seems to make a pretty strong association with disambiguation. And I can attest that disambiguation is the reason hatnotes were invented. It may be that their use has drifted over time, but the text at WP:Hatnote still reflects the original use. older ≠ wiser 22:16, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Please take a look at the article Raul Julia, it has this hatnote: The title of this article contains the characters ú, and á. Where they are unavailable or not desired, the name may be represented as Raul Julia. This to me is just plain dumb idea and detracts from the article. Does this qualify as a "name clarification"? It still has no place infront of the Lead and does not meet the fundamental premise and spirit of hatnotes... which is: Hatnotes are short notes placed at the top of an article (hence the name "hat"), normally to help readers locate a different article they might be looking for when they arrived at the article in which the hatnote is placed (this may happen because of redirects, because the article they are looking for uses a more specific, disambiguated title, or because its name is otherwise similar to that of the article with a hatnote). They accomplish this by providing links to the article in question or to a disambiguation page.. This surname clarification does not meet this definition and should not be a hatnote...IMHO. QuAzGaA 20:07, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree with those who would lose these hatnotes. Particularly the "where these characters are unavailable or not desired..." ones; in most cases they're just stating the blindingly obvious. But I'd lose the "this is the surname" ones as well, though for a different reason - in this case the information is important, but a hatnote is not the place for it. Information about the article subject belongs (somewhere)in the article - not above it.--Kotniski (talk) 22:03, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I have changed it from a policy to a guideline: [5] It was nominated for a guideline and subject specific naming conventions are guidelines so I guess the policy designation was a misunderstanding. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:36, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Racial and sexist profiling in Wikipedia categories

Based on the "category by gender" discussion above, I went looking at categories to see if I was crazy, and I don't think I am, but please help me decide. Let's compare categories that we have, (which means as a community we think they are acceptable) compared to categories that we don't have, (which means that either they are unnecessary, or we don't think they are acceptable):

Jews/Christians/Muslims
Nazis
Men/Women
Racial profiling

As a community how do we determine categories? Do we find this list acceptable? USchick (talk) 01:55, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Frankly due to the facts of history a "men in war" category would be unneeded because until quite recently it was EXTREMELY beyond rare to find women in war, which is why articles on specific women who fought in wars like the US Revolution exist, if it was common back then, then those women wouldnt be notable in the first place, they are notable because it was something notable to be a woman involved in war. Many of the other categories are along the same lines. As for no "Muslims in..." anything, that should be taken care of and hopefully is, you just have to find an editor who wants to take the time to find the relevant articles for such categories and take the time to add them in, but if no editor feels like doing it, then the category doesnt get made and it does NOT affect the legitimacy of the Jewish, Christian, etc articles. A category not existing does not as you suggest mean that it is unnecessary or illegitimate; it can in many cases simply mean–no editor cares enough to make the category.Camelbinky (talk) 02:11, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I am going to answer your question in two different but related parts.
    • The culture and society at large has made women in XXXX or Black people in XXXX noteworthy by excluding them systematically from XXXX historically speaking. That we wish this was not the case doesn't necessarily make it so. We can wish for a world where gender and skin tone do not play a factor in determining one's role in society, and we can work towards it, but we cannot accurately portray the history (and indeed in many ways, the current world) as it exists by pretending such inequalities do not exist. Taking the gender role: The reason why it isn't noteworthy to make special mention of men doing certain things (like being soldiers) is that it is expected, by society at large, that men would do those things. When women do them, it is considered out of the ordinary to the point of being worthy of taking special note of it. Again, working for a world in which this is not the case (which we all should be doing) is not the same as accurately reporting the world as it exists. Thus, because the world in which we live makes special note of women doing certain things, Wikipedia reflects that as well. When men do the same things, it is considered commonplace and not worthy of making note of, which is why Wikipedia does not.
    • That being said, I do think there is too much reporting of things like gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, and the like. Wikipedia articles should only make special note (whether by text, category, infobox field, etc.) of the arbitrary categorization of a person where such categorization is intricately tied to the reason the person is notable. Thus, an article on Jackie Robinson may need to prominently note that he was a Black baseball player. One cannot accurately tell his story without noting it. It is intricately tied to that story, and to "skip" that part would make telling the most important parts of his life story impossible. However, merely because the Jackie Robinson article makes special note of the fact that he was Black, doesn't mean that every article on every black person needs to do so. Dontrelle Willis is a black baseball player, but there's no special need to deal with that fact in his article, because that fact isn't part of the narrative of his baseball career. There was never a time when white players were excluded from Major League Baseball, so there is never a time when whiteness is something that needs noting in an article about a baseball player (see my above point). The point of this is that sometimes, in order to accurately report something, mention of a person's race (or religion, or gender, or sexual orientation, or national identity, or whatever) is by necessity prominent. That does not mean that either a) every person who shares the same race (or gender, or religion, &c. &c.) needs to have that fact noted or b) that every race (or gender, or religion, &c. &c.) needs noting. It is only because Wikipedia strives to accurately describe historical (or even modern) events as they were that such noting is needed.
  • In summation, I generally disagree that it is never appropriate to describe people at Wikipedia by gender, race, nationality, &c. However, I do agree that in many places, such descriptions (where irrelevant) are overused. Also, the fact that society made it unusual (and thus noteworthy) for women (or blacks, or Jews) to hold certain roles means that that attitude needs to be reported accurately by Wikipedia. Since society didn't necessarily hold that a different gender (or race, or religion, or &c.) was unusual in serving that role, it isn't necessary to make special note of it at Wikipedia either. --Jayron32 02:19, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your answers, I guess this is more complicated than I thought. Maybe we should take them one at a time. USchick (talk) 03:40, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I think that it's beyond complex because it is a double standard driven by political correctness. No categorization allowed in "hot" areas unless it is to laud PC-favored groups or diss PC-disfavored groups. North8000 (talk) 12:47, 15 July 2011 (UTC)


Nazis

Because historically South America was a big destination for German Nazi's fleeing prosecution (or worse from the Soviets) at the end of WWII, there was a plan to relocate to Paraguay and set up the Third Reich-in-exile and exist from a new S. American "empire". It's a notable topic that is researched by historians.Camelbinky (talk) 05:04, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Descriptions in categories are not common. However, this is a case where adding a description which explains why the category is relevant would be useful. Another option would be to avoid categories where categorization would not be systematically complete but use lists instead. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 10:42, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
This isn't "people native to South America who happen to hold Nazi beliefs". This is more like "High-ranking, mostly German, Nazi officials who decided to hide in South American countries with limited extradition treaties after WWII, for the purpose of saving their own skins". People know even a little about the history should have no trouble guessing the likely criteria, but I think that adding a description would be perfectly fine, if anyone wanted to do it.
Also, the redirect Nazis in South America should probably be listed in the cat. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:04, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I realize that this is 8 days old now, and all, but... "People know even a little about the history" is no small thing, unfortunately. Sorry, but I just couldn't let that one go by without comment. I agree though, that a description for the category would be a good thing. You know, there's really no reason that category pages do not contain content. Not that they need full articles, but the lack of content on category pages is really just laziness, and adding descriptions generally could help resolve a lot of these types of issues.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:53, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

For some reason, I did Nazi that one coming. –MuZemike 07:46, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Tracking people

According to policy: Categories should not be based on religion unless the belief has a specific relation to the topic. There are too many categories that single out Jewish individuals and track them by location. Category:Jews in the Land of Israel, Category:Jews by region, Category:Jews in Jerusalem. There are no other religious or cultural groups being tracked by location, perhaps these categories should be reclassified in Category:Jews by country, which is a container category that lists various subcategories or Category:Jews and Judaism in Jerusalem. USchick (talk) 03:40, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Judaism presents a particularly tricky situation, since it is BOTH a religion and an ethnicity, and in some historical contexts, a "race", and the term represents a group of people which have been historically singled out specifically for being "Jews" and persecuted as such. To my points above, would you rather that the article about Elie Wiesel made no mention of his jewishness? Society at large cast "Jewishness" as a category unto itself which deserved special attention (especially historically), and that makes it quite different from other religions, like say being a Jain or a methodist or a daoist. Again, it shouldn't be this way, but it has been and to ignore the special way that Western culture has treated Judaism (as a classification of people) is to not cover the full story. Again, that doesn't mean that the label is always applied correctly at Wikipedia (or even that it happens correctly most of the time), but rather you need to take Judaism as somewhat different from many other religions. The article Who is a Jew? is particularly salient to this issue, and it is indeed very complex. --Jayron32 05:15, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Your premise is false. "There are no other religious or cultural groups being tracked by location"—except for Category:Christians by continent, Category:Muslims by continent, Category:British Hindus (and many more), Category:Indian Bahá'ís (and many more), etc. There are whole trees under Category:Ethnic groups by continent, and every ethnic group is (by definition) a cultural group. We have hundreds of these categories. You just didn't search thoroughly enough to find them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:17, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Jews in Jerusalem seems a superfluous category to me. Same as Germans in Berlin, French in Paris, Swedes in Stockholm or Dutch in Amsterdam. SpeakFree (talk) 23:45, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Using race as a category

According to policy Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality, Category:Race is never applied to subcategories of Category:People.

Let me point out to you this is not racial profiling. So please stop using that term in accordance to this. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 03:51, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Agree the name "racial profiling" should be changed for this section, and its further use in discussion stopped. African Americans (Blacks) are not a nationality. Asians are not a unified culture, Turkey is Asian, Iran is Asian, India is Asian. Even the "oriental" nations are not unified in culture, Japan and China and Korea and Vietnam and Indonesia are all quite different in culture. You gave bad examples.Camelbinky (talk) 05:09, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I changed the title of this section. USchick (talk) 14:04, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Your first proposal indicates that you don't understand the simple description at the top of the category. We can no more merge "Black people in art" into "Art by nationality" than we could merge commons:Category:Bananas in art into "Art made by bananas". That category is for works of art that show black people, not works of art created by black people.
"Asian", by the way, can be used to indicate race, ethnicity, or location. It is not as clear-cut as "white". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:23, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

What about this relatvely small category. In my opinion much more articles could (should?) be categorized here... S.I. Oliantigna (talk) 07:47, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Men/Women

There is no category "Men by culture." I understand about women's contribution in history. If you're looking for Spanish people (or any other people), and you go to the Category:Spanish people you won't find any women there because they have been intentionally excluded (and listed under "Spanish women"). Unless you really understand the intricacies of WP, you don't know to look for Spanish women separately from Spanish people. It took women hundreds if not thousands of years to be considered as "people" and even today women are excluded from the category of people on WP. There has to be a better way. USchick (talk) 03:40, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Women are considered people when they are a subcategory of people. If you do not consider women people under these terms, then people separated by occupation, whole families, and slaves are not considered people because they are included as subcategories. Men usually have a category by default. That has been true since the beginning of time. I would assume someone who is interested in women's history would be aware of that. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 04:01, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Women have always been considered people. Dont mistake the legal situation Blacks were in, in the US with the status of women in the US. Women were always considered people and citizens.Camelbinky (talk) 05:14, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I think you are confused by my examples. I used those examples purely to show those are sub categories in the African American people category (or any "people" category) , which has been discussed with this user in another conversation. Not because I am comparing either group's struggle. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 14:42, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I wasnt making that comment about your comment Shakes, I was talking about Uschick's. Sorry about that.Camelbinky (talk) 15:33, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Um, yeah USchick, I don't see any women listed under the category Category:Spanish women, and the sub-categories are fairly sparsely populated, all things considered, as I would expect them to be given the policy you keep citing. On the contrary to your assertation, I see MANY women listed on the page Category:Spanish people. Women haven't been excluded from that page, as you keep claiming. Women are also well represented in the subcategories as well. Just on the main "Spanish people" category, without going any deeper, I can see Estrella Archs and Infanta Cristina, Duchess of Palma de Mallorca and Sonia Martínez just to pick three at random. So I am going to call "bullshit" at your assertion that, and I quote you USchick, "you go to the Category:Spanish people you won't find any women there because they have been intentionally excluded (and listed under "Spanish women")." That is complete and utter bullshit, because it is demonstratable not true at all. --Jayron32 05:24, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Category:Spanish people is too diffuse and should be populated by subcategories, not individual biographies. I'm not following UShick's argument. Does it dehumanize Category:Spanish billionaires or Category:Spanish royalty to be subcategories of Category:Spanish people? The question is whether Category:Spanish women is a verifiable category. (I'd say if it exists, it should be populated only by subcategories for which a body of scholarship exists, for example Category:Spanish women writers.[6]) As I said in another discussion, WP:Cat gender permits the creation of gender-based categories if gender is key to "a topic of special encyclopedic interest." That's why "women's history" exists as an academic discipline. From some feminist perspectives, it may irk to have Category:Spanish women and not Category:Spanish men, because it may imply that maleness is the norm for "people" from which women depart. But categories exist to aid users' research, not express individuals' political sentiments or a philosophical stance. The discussion should be framed by the wording of the relevant guidelines. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:31, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Ok, I guess everything is fine then. FYI, the US Supreme Court only recognized women as people in 1971 in Reed v. Reed. And in 2010, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that corporations are "persons" protected by law, but women are not. [7] [8] USchick (talk) 14:59, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
That case had NOTHING to do with women being a person. A non-person can not vote in the US and women already had the right to vote. And the US court case did not exactly say corporations are people. You taking things out of context and drawing wayyyy to much conclusion from things. Women still dont make as much as men, but they are still people. Drawing arbitrary lines like that and saying women werent considered people because they didnt have all the rights men had is not the correct conclusion. You can be considered a citizen and not have all the rights of other citizens, to be a citizen you MUST be a person, so if you are seen as a citizen you are a person. Just ask the people in DC, Guam, and Puerto Rico if they are people, they are citizens without the full benefits of citizens in the 50 states.Camelbinky (talk) 15:33, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Uschick, you seem to have a major problem with misrepresenting information to serve your own purposes here. Reed v. Reed doesn't contain any language which seems to agree with your assertion that "US Supreme Court only recognized women as people in 1971". I cannot find any information in the article itself, in the text of the court ruling, or in commentary about the case which asserts that. This, coupled with your above misrepresentation, indicates that you are either grossly negligent in actually checking facts before you make statements, or you are deliberately bullshitting us and making false claims on purpose to try to make some point. Which is it? --Jayron32 15:37, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps he's simply reading the journalists he's linked? [9] says, in relevant portion, "The Supreme Court didn't get around to finding that women are people, too, until 1971...."? (Not a good idea to rely on a journalist's interpretation, really, but not bad faith necessarily. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Fair enough, but I still hold that it is somewhat intellectually lazy to rely on someone who's only qualification is they have made a statement in public, without any attention given to the quality of that statement. I can write any old bullshit I want in a blog, and that doesn't make me any more correct than anyone else who is bullshitting as well. That the buck gets passed one level back isn't particularly great. So, instead of making something up that confirmed his preconceived notion of what he was trying to say, he dug up someone else who did the same thing instead. Big whoop. It is still wrong. --Jayron32 16:02, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I wouldn't normally point this out, but seeing as the discussion above has to do with women being recognized, it's worth noting that USChick is a she (although it seems pretty obvious from the username alone). But that issue isn't limited to Wikipedia. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:21, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
She can be whatever she wants to be. It doesn't give her a free pass to make stuff up just to make a point. --Jayron32 21:58, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
No disagreement there. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:40, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
I thought we established that she didn't make it up? Relying on a single (possibly incorrect or biased) source is an academic problem of one sort, but making stuff up is an entirely different kettle of fish. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:14, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Not made up: The Bill of Rights included white men only [10]] excluding most Americans and all women [11] until Reed v Reed [12] ruled that the 14th amendment applies to women, in 1971 [13]. See Timeline of Personhood [14] (this is posted further down, but some didn't read that far, and I don't blame them because this is ridiculous.)USchick (talk) 14:20, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
OMG. In the United States women got the vote in 1918. Feminism was founded off of the philosophies of early American suffragists--who were actually more extreme than 21st century feminists are in their thought, because they had to be. It might do you well to start reading all the feminist history articles in Wikipedia as well as this.--Shakesomeaction (talk) 16:21, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Are there no administrators to point out that this is not a forum for individuals' political views? The discussion should be focussed on whether or how the wording of specific guidelines should be changed. I haven't seen any suggestions on that. What on earth does the fact that my grandmother was born without the right to vote have to do with whether a Wikipedia category is a useful research tool? Injustice can't be cured by deleting or creating Wikipedia categories, and historical injustice can't be cured at all—it can only be studied and (one hopes) learned from. Which includes accessing information in an encyclopedia. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:02, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I think you are right, although I believe this user is getting things really confused in the idea of women's history--she keeps mentioning things related to women's rights--and that is why I spoke about it. It was just sheer frustration on the my part at the moment. I don't try to convert people to my political philosophies, but if someone seems obviously misinformed by them I feel I have to set them on the correct path. That was my only reasoning. --Shakesomeaction (talk) 17:51, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
The Bill of Rights included white men only [15]] excluding most Americans and all women [16] until Reed v Reed ruled that the 14th amendment applies to women in 1971 [17] [18]. See Timeline of Personhood [19] The suggestion being discussed here is not to treat the category of Women as separate from the category of People. USchick (talk) 17:08, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Apologies in advance if I sound exasperated, but have you read WP:Cat gender? What wording do you object to, and what do you think it should say instead? I don't like the supposedly positive example of "female heads of state" as "a topic of special encyclopedic interest," but at present I hesitate to state that too strongly because I haven't researched my suspicion that "female heads of state" isn't a clearly defined field of intellectual inquiry. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:21, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I discovered only yesterday that this is standard practice on WP. I'm simply inquiring to see if anyone else thinks it needs to be addressed. USchick (talk) 17:35, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
WP:Cat gender discourages Male and Female categories, which is probably what led to the existing category structure. There has to be a better way to categorize women's contribution in history than to separate them from the category of People. USchick (talk) 17:43, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Fair enough. Propose something then. Claiming that "there has to be a better way" is completely meaningless. If the way we are doing it is so obviously poor quality, then you must have a picture in your mind of what good quality must look like, no? If you have that picture in your mind of what a proper categorization scheme should look like, then please share it. Otherwise, if you don't have something better in your mind, against which you are comparing the current system, what is the point? If what we have isn't good enough, you must have an idea of what good enough looks like. Would you care to share that with everyone else so we can actually improve Wikipedia? We'd all like that very much. --Jayron32 17:59, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Or to put it another way: I think you may have had it backwards at first, UShick: it explicitly is not standard practice, but WP:Cat gender outlines circumstances in which an exception may be made for a topic of women's studies or women's history as such. Which is what I'm taking Shakesomeaction's point to be with "African American women". Cynwolfe (talk) 18:13, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
AndyTheGrump had stated it very well earlier: 'we'd be better off without categories for people alltogether. We can of course have articles about such things, where the topic can be discussed properly, without attempting to shoehorn people into questionable categories that often encourage stereotyping'. --87.174.2.178 (talk) 23:49, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
We'd be even better off if the category system were converted to a series of database-searchable fields of metatags, with the "types" of fields determined by the software as dictated by consensus, but the field metatag "values" directly editor-determined like any other . Every biography, for instance, would have field types for sex, birthdate, and deathdate, and fields that can handle multiple values for religion, ethnity/race, places of residence, educational institutions, occupations, military ranks, awards, etc.; and then you could search from any article for others that shared however many fields you want to check off, or from within a field index. There would be a centralized process for creating or removing fields, so that way individual editors could not decide that "shoe size" or "breast size" should exist as fields, and field values could be tagged as equivalent so we wouldn't have arguments about whether British or American spelling should be used. Then and only then would we not have arguments over whether we should have categories for women but not men, intersection categories for religion and a particular occupation, or whatever.

Just a thought. It may be completely unworkable. postdlf (talk) 19:48, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

That's a brilliant idea if it's doable. Where is the appropriate place to propose this suggestion? USchick (talk) 20:45, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, you're thinking of Semantic MediaWiki, basically. I think most people agree that we should do it, just we have to accept it's a massive technical challenge when there is lower-hanging fruit. - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 09:29, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
Tags might make a lot more sense than categories. Seems like a huge change. Worth doing if it's possible. Dzlife (talk) 18:31, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Unreadable colors

Do we have a template to flag unreadable color combinations like here? Vegaswikian (talk) 21:15, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Be bold and change it. Templates are often ignored. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:35, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. Or, if it's a widespread problem, leave a note at the WikiProject page and WP:ACCESSIBILITY. Designate (talk) 00:08, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Seems to be school colors so how to change is the question. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:04, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
{{Overcolored}} or {{Overcoloured}}.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:19, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:04, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia, and it will never become one unless

the professionals become professionally motivated to edit Wiki articles in their respective fields. Which may not be an impossible project, because of a truly amazing achievement Wiki has already attained: no matter how unreliable its articles are, Wikipedia has become one of the most frequently visited/cited educational resources on the web.

Therefore, it is not unthinkable that individual contributions to Wiki articles (under full name, of course) may become recognized as a professional reference among educators, which would provide an adequate career-wise motivation for them.

Presently, I have no clear idea how to proceed towards that goal. But if the Wiki community should agree on the urgent need to increase contributions by the professionals, I am sure that appropriate strategies can be designed (not necessarily limited to or even encompassing the above professional reference approach).

Of course, there already are many excellent articles in Wiki, but they mostly deal with highly specialized topics that could have been written only by professionals anyway. However, the articles that are closer to more general knowledge/interests tend to be miserable (which is unlikely to change without professional intervention). And it is very likely that growing awareness of this fact will eventually lead to decline of Wikipedia usage. --Ilevanat (talk) 01:14, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:20, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
On every account, or more specifically? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilevanat (talk • contribs) 01:53, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
I also disagee with the opinion put forward by Ilevanat. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:40, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

NOTE. This page is for WP policy discussions not for the airing of opinions. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:40, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

This isn't a policy issue, it's just a general lament. Unless you have a real proposal for solving the problem, it's just the nature of this project. We're happy to accept contributions from experts but there's no incentive for them to bother with our arcane syntax, labyrinthine policy, and aggressive harassment of new contributors. Maybe as we approach the "1.0" release we can find some expert-level reviews which can polish our best FAs. But that's a long way off. Designate (talk) 07:26, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Well, since you say yourself that "labyrinthine policy" is one of the deterrents, it would seem that this is (at least partly) a policy issue. Why don't we set about making policy less of a maze? --Kotniski (talk) 07:55, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
The policies I've seen "the professionals" strongly objecting to include WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. If diluting these is what it takes to get the professionals on board, then we don't need the professionals. Ntsimp (talk) 13:22, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Professionals are already exploring methods of electronic publications. Experts in their respective fields can and are encouraged to contribute so long as they adhere to policies. The last thing we need to do is become a venue for an ambitious expert to try to make a name for themselves professionally. --Nuujinn (talk) 13:33, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
One smaller scale partial solution. The policies are often misquoted in a way that makes WP hostile to the application of expertise (in ways that that do not violate policies). Cleaning up / clarifying the wording those policies in that respect to avoid such mis-quotings would help. North8000 (talk) 13:38, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
I very very partially agree with North8000 here: The issue is not in being an expert, the issue is in using claims of expertise to win disputes in an environment where such claims cannot be verified. Wikipedia is very much against anyone wandering in and acting WP:DICKish under a guise of "I'm an expert in this field so I know better." when no one here can readily verify such a claim; or that somehow being an expert can excuse a person from writing within Wikipedia's sourcing guidelines, or anything else like that. "I'm an expert, I don't need to provide sources". Yeah? How does the downstream reader know that? Wikipedia isn't hostile to experts, it is hostile to people using claims of expertise to circumvent our standards. --Jayron32 19:36, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
One example is you have an expert who actually authored key RS's. If they don't cite themselves, they violate wp:ver, and if they do, someone is going to say they have a COI. So they can go get paid $1,000 an hour to give a speech on it and get applause, or they can come here and contribute for free and be "under suspicion". Tough choice. North8000 (talk) 19:58, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Another is is if they participate in expertise-based advocating for removal or exclusion of inaccurate wp:"rs" 'd material. Unless it is a npov-balancing type situation, there is no policy against that, but people will (wrongly) tell them that knowledge-based discussion for the removal are against policy. North8000 (talk) 19:58, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
If an expert was published by a reliable source, he should certainly be able to cite himself (in moderation). Anyone who considers that a violation of COI ought to be smacked, in my opinion. Designate (talk) 00:13, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Well, one thing that for sure happens is that via reading or misreading of wp:coi, the mere fact that they are citing themselves gets defined as a COI (a COI, not a violation of wp:coi) which in real world common usage is a scarlet letter term, generally meaning mis-behavior. North8000 (talk) 00:43, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, the people who enforce COI remind me of TSA agents. You're presumed guilty and any attempt to assert your rights makes you guiltier. It's awful. We should be challenging bad articles, not trying to preempt "bad" users. —Designate (talk) 01:11, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
It's not just that he "should certainly be able to cite himself"; experts are explicitly permitted to do so, in the very COI guideline that some people falsely claim prohibits it. The problem we have is that WP:Nobody reads the directions—especially people who find the presence of bona fide subject-matter experts to be inconvenient for their POV pushing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:01, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Nuujinn said "The last thing we need to do is become a venue for an ambitious expert to try to make a name for themselves professionally". That certainly is the last thing that can ever happen. And even if that should happen (perhaps a hundred years from now), I do not quite see why that would be the worst fate for Wiki. I thought the worst fate would be that Wiki never becomes an at least moderately reliable encyclopedia (but I might be the only one around here with that view). As for "the ambitious experts", for many years to come their contributions to Wiki could at best be counted as a minor item in the list of references needed for regular career advancements, and even that only if their career is in education.

P.S. My only real involvement in the English Wikipedia were some very cautious contributions to the article "Work (physics)" (as you can check at the article discussion page), motivated by the fact that its quality was far below my article on work in the Croatian Wiki. And my involvement in the Croatian Wiki is aimed towards the very far away goal that some day I shall not have to begin my physics lectures (at a community-technical college) with the warning "do not use Wikipedia", but I shall probably retire before my contributions can make a difference. (As it happens, in each generation of students some poor souls fall for the "free encyclopedia" banner - oh, if only a proper disclaimer would be included at an appropriate level, something like "free encyclopedia in making"!)--Ilevanat (talk) 01:00, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I think "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" captures that fairly well. postdlf (talk), attorney-at-law 01:04, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
@Ilevanat, in regard to That certainly is the last thing that can ever happen, unfortunately, it already does happen. If you like I can point you to some examples where researchers with an apparent COI have attempted to build walled gardens highlighting research that fails to meet notability guidelines. Experts are welcome here, as WhatamIdoing points out, and all we ask is that they follow the rules and use reliable sources for the information they wish to add, just like everyone else. The internet is a big place with lots of places to post whatever one wants. I think the appropriate academic use of WP is to tell students, "Start there, but remember that anyone can edit WP, so go further back to the sources and read them carefully, and then read the academic publications in order that you might learn that an encyclopedic summary may not correctly reflect the source materials". I am indebted to my undergrad Genetics prof who on the first day told us that everything we'd been taught so far was a lie, and what he was telling us was a lie, because Genetics was too complicated for students in high school or college to understand, and if we stuck with it, we'd be seeing glimmers of the truth in grad school. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:16, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
@Postdlf: Fully agree! Indeed, that would be a pioneering example of proper web behavior for a trustworthy site.--Ilevanat (talk) 02:29, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
@Nuujinn: Although I do not fully understand what you mean by "to build walled gardens", I fully agree that publishing "research that fails to meet notability guidelines" is unacceptable practice in Wiki. Yet, I am quite sure that such people cannot "make a name for themselves professionally" through Wiki, the well-known rules for professional recognition in scientific research are very different (CC citations etc.). Besides, such people are not professionals in any sense of the word, particularly not in the sense I had in mind. As for the sources for further study, my students certainly do not need to consult Wiki or web, as I offer them much more than they will ever read (this frequently claimed purpose of Wiki is far too feebly excuse for the "encyclopedia" title). As for genetics, your teacher was generally right (I happen to be familiar with the field), but the elementary concepts of the introductory college physics are reasonably well-defined building blocks (though not quite so in Wiki) that will be needed for understanding technical applications for many years to come.--Ilevanat (talk) 02:29, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
I also disagree. I'd like to see more experts here, and that might mean giving them more usable tools. But a lot of great articles have been written by people who are not formally accredited experts. All we need are more editors who appreciate the value of featured articles. Dzlife (talk) 13:52, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
The difference of opinion probably reflects differences in the experts that people have encountered. We have some college professors who have done incredible work on basic subjects. Geometry guy (talk · contribs) is a subject-matter expert, and we're blessed to have him. I know that Nuujinn would be delighted to have a thousand more experts like him.
But we also get "experts" who are nothing more than sales people, WP:FRINGEy self-promoters, and quacks. My experience with alternative medicine "experts" has been pretty negative, especially if their expertise is in a particular product. "Expert patients" with Multiple chemical sensitivity or self-diagnosed Chronic Lyme disease or similarly disputed conditions fairly often try to gut articles. And we've got a history of basic fraud among people who claim to be experts.
So, yes, we want experts, but we don't want all "experts". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:36, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, I did try... and I give up. This may not be the right place or right time. I did not say experts (much less "experts"), I said professionals, and my only specific example were teachers, who could hardly keep their jobs if they wrote quack articles that could not "meet notability guidelines" (under their full name). I said my main concern was how it increase the reliability of this web resource, which (perhaps I should have said: unfortunately) is so widely used; perhaps I should have been more explicit: how to reduce the dammage Wikipedia is doing to many of its readers. But, except for the excellent proposal by Postdlf (which received no attention, probably because such option had been considered previously and rejected in the name of some "higher" Wiki policy goals), nobody in this Village pump section appears to really share my real concern: NO INFORMATION IS BETTER THAN FALSE INFORMATION.--Ilevanat (talk) 01:10, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

A person who sells products the rest of the world considers quackery is still a "professional". We have professional activists, professional political campaign managers, and many other professionals whose interest in making Wikipedia more objective is suspect. "Professionals" are not necessarily better for Wikipedia than amateurs.
Even teachers can cause problems. For example, we occasionally find teachers over-simplifying articles to be appropriate for their young students. If you haven't looked at a typical science book for children recently, then you might like to do that, and reflect on why we tell lies to children when they're just starting learning a complex subject. Parts of Wikipedia's articles reflect the same appropriate approach: a big-picture article should identify the big picture, not every single nuance in the picture. It may be "false" to omit the details and caveats, but it is still appropriate. For example, it is technically false to say that autoimmune diseases and heart diseases cause fatigue (medical), because a very small number of these diseases don't, and many only cause fatigue in a proportion of patients. But it's far more appropriate to tell the reader that these classes of diseases cause fatigue than to list the hundreds and hundreds of specific conditions that have been documented to produce fatigue.
Having said all that, what each of us can do is to fix errors when we see them, and to encourage our colleagues to do the same. If you're interested in physics, you might like to talk to the people at WP:WikiProject Physics about how to improve articles in that area. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:16, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

My post was taken down...I wonder.

Hi. recently I posted on Wiki about my website Surveyjet.net. I know, I know. But let me explain. I wouldn't do it before some research first. I looked up YELLOWPAGES.COM and there it was. Its a directory. Surveyjet.net is a directory as well, a survey site directory. YELLOWPAGES.COM has advertisements so I don't think that's the issue. Why existance of my website is not important for Wiki if I have about 4000 visitors a month? Was my post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveyjet.net

Surveyjet.net is an Internet web site operated by Webjet Enterprise LTD. Surveyjet.net offers to its viewers simple to understand guide to online market research online surveys. It main pages contain general guidelines for participants of such market research as well as extensive information about rules and mechanics of online surveys.

Here is the mesage I received from moderator:

A tag has been placed on Surveyjet.net requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

Was my post delited becouse the post itself was not created correctly? Would it stay if I would indicate how or why the subject is important or significant?

Thank you for answers and ideas. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sylwester kopec (talk • contribs) 15:49, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Let me respond to you with another question: Eric Clapton is a guitar player. I am a guitar player. Why does Eric Clapton have a Wikipedia article written about him and yet I do not? If you can answer that question, you will know exactly why the article about your website was deleted. --Jayron32 16:51, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Yikes, WP:BITE much? RxS (talk) 18:30, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Hey, Sylwester kopec, I'm sorry you had a negative experience at Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and we do have certain standards regarding the content of the articles covered here. Your article looks like it may have run afoul of those principles. One of the things about a good quality encyclopedia is that what is written here needs to be verifiable to reliable sources and that the material is presented in a neutral point of view. The main problem with your article is that there doesn't appear to be any reliable, independent sources (see Wikipedia:Reliable sources) about your website. Since there isn't any sort of independent writing about your website, Wikipedia can't really have an article about it, since how would a reader know to trust the information written in Wikipedia if the reader can't verify it. Do you see my point? Now, perhaps those sources of information exist and you simply didn't know how to include them. If that is the case, we're more than willing to work with you to see that a good, quality, neutral article about your website gets written to Wikipedia standards. Perhaps your best course of action is to ask that an experienced Wikipedian review your source material and write an article for you. You can request for this to happen at Wikipedia:Requested articles. If you have any further questions about Wikipedia, you should feel free to ask them. I am always willing and availible to help new users work through their problems, and if you have any specific questions you may ask them here or drop a note at my user talk page, which is located at User talk:Jayron32. Again, so sorry that you are running into trouble, and I hope that we can help you work through these issues. --Jayron32 18:51, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Please review the policy docs on Advertisment,Conflict of Interest, Notability, Reliable Sources, and Verifibality. Your article was deleted because it did not express a significant claim of notability (as judged by the standards for web sites). In addition your own admissions of SurveyJet being your own company introduces a Conflict of Interest in you creating the article. Hasteur (talk) 16:56, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Jayron32's answer is good. Editors can get carried away with hostility toward new users, but we do welcome content that fits the scope of the site. In short, Wikipedia's purpose is to summarize information from secondary sources. If your site has been written about by reliable sources (who aren't affiliated with you), there's a good chance it will be considered notable and will qualify for its own article. If your site has not been covered by independent sources, then we generally don't consider it "notable" in a Wikipedia sense. We're not really concerned with hit count or popularity (as we love to have articles on obscure subjects), just the quality of the sources you have. Has your site been covered in a newspaper or magazine? Or a major business website? —Designate (talk) 19:16, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Personal image filter referendum

Hi, guys. Though this is not local policy, the dates are approaching, and I wanted to make sure that this is not overlooked--as it is certainly far-reaching. :) As previously reported:

The Wikimedia Foundation, at the direction of the Board of Trustees, will be holding a vote to determine whether members of the community support the creation and usage of an opt-in personal image filter, which would allow readers to voluntarily screen particular types of images strictly for their own account.

The referendum is scheduled for 12-27 August. You can read more about it at m:Image filter referendum/en; you may especially want to review M:Image filter referendum/FAQ/en. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Should users be allowed to remove current block notices?

The discussion was closed by Bwilkins (talk · contribs):

Although there are very good arguments on both sides from both a technical and behavioural perspective, the arguments towards not allowing users to remove active block notices appears to have more consensus. Much as serial sockpuppeters can't remove notices about their socking, current block notices should not be removed. As arguments suggest - and policy has long held, declined unblock requests for a current block also cannot be removed, and this keeps the entire sequence of events together (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 17:44, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

The closure was contested by uninvolved editors on the closer's talk page (link). The uninvolved editors were HJ Mitchell (talk · contribs), Ohms law (talk · contribs), Gwen Gale (talk · contribs), Floquenbeam (talk · contribs), and RL0919 (talk · contribs).

HJ Mitchell (talk · contribs), who intended to close the discussion wrote:

I'm afraid I quite strongly disagree with your close. After reading the discussion, I think if there was any consensus, it was in favour of users being allowed to remove current block notices. The opinions were split pretty much down the middle, but the arguments for forcing users to keep block notices on their talk page made little sense—they seemed easily countered by the suggestion that one just look in the talk page history or the block log, and that the notices are there for the information of the user rather than gawkers. Certainly it would be due diligence for any admin reviewing an unblock request to look at the block log and the history. What convinced me, though, and why I was about to close the discussion entirely the opposite way to you is that the vast majority of admins—who post block notices in the first place, review unblock requests and are responsible for enforcing this policy—were opposed to this requirement. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:46, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

RL0919 (talk · contribs) wrote:

As someone with no preference either way (I came across this when I noticed what seemed like a potential edit war on the the guideline page), I'm afraid I agree with others who are concerned about this close. "No consensus" appears to be a more appropriate evaluation of the discussion. I hope you will consider modifying your close based on this feedback. With a "no consensus" close, I believe the language of the section should be restored to the wording from this version that preceded the changes that led to the RfC and does does not specifically mention removal of block notices one way or the other. (Note: I will be making a similar comment to the discussions on the guideline talk page and at the the Administrators' noticeboard.) --RL0919 (talk) 23:28, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

The closure was reverted by Camelbinky (talk · contribs) on 1 August 2011 with the edit summary: "removing close. completely inappopriate and in complete disregard for what the actual consensus was and done in a conflict of interest."

The discussion was archived by MiszaBot II (talk · contribs) on 11 August 2011.

See also

Cunard (talk) 08:34, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

WP:BLANKING has seen a change recently to include active block notices on the list of items that can't be removed by users from their talk pages. (Recently as in a couple months ago, but without recent discussion.)
For reference, there is now a discussion at Wikipedia talk:User pages#Change to WP:BLANKING, but I'd like the discussion to take place here on the Village Pump so that it receives input from a wider audience.
Thanks ahead of time for any input you have on the subject. --Onorem♠Dil 20:34, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

  • My own opinion hasn't changed since last June..."I also don't think current block notices need to be shown. The block notice is there for the benefit of the person being blocked. If they've seen it and want to remove it, I see no reason to revert them. Unblock requests, ban notices, sockpuppet tags...those are there for the benefit of the people who may be dealing with an ongoing issue." --Onorem♠Dil 20:16, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal (My rationale is the same at WT:UP#Change to WP:BLANKING) Why must we force a user to keep a scarlet letter on their talk page when this notice in regards to a user's block automatically appears at the top of the talk page to inform other editors when it is being edited? Declined unblock requests are necessary while a user is blocked, but a notice for the user letting them know they have been blocked should not be forced onto the talk page when a user has read it (hence the blanking). These notices are only posted for the blocked user's notification, not other editors who happen upon the talk page. The last time I checked, block notices don't say "Hey all editors who come to this user's talk page: he or she has been blocked! FYI." It tells how long an editor has been blocked and why so that they can appropriately appeal by posting an unblock request. Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:43, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Don't allow removal of block notices. If users wish to not have block notices on their talk page, they need to not behave in manners which get themselves blocked. --Jayron32 23:43, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
    • What is the purpose of the notice in this situation? I wish people would not behave in manners that get them blocked. That would be great. What exactly is the benefit of forcing the notice? It's a good thing that nobody ever gets blocked for good faith reasons...or doesn't take the time to reflect on their edits until after they are blocked. Those scarlet letters will surely fix everything. --Onorem♠Dil 03:20, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Don't allow removal of block notices, Per Jayron. Also this was decided a few months ago, and if I remember correctly, it leaned heavily towards disallowing removal. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:47, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - since most of the block notices don't say "This must remain until the block has expired", it is kind of open for people to think they can remove it, since we typically let people modify their Talk page however they wish. Maybe it would be useful to modify the Templates. -- Avanu (talk) 23:52, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Don't allow removal - allows users to game the system. Also, this is helpful if a user is trying to get a hold of a blocked user and doesn't realize they're blocked. --Rschen7754 00:33, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
And when you edit the talk page of a blocked user, you get a message "This user is currently blocked", so you will necessarily realize that they're blocked. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:06, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Do not allow removal by user but there can be a note in the request unblock info that the blocked user can ask for the notice to be removed, and if an established editor thought that it was desirable, that third party could remove the notice. There would be no need for any bureaucracy (i.e. do not require a discussion with the blocking admin), but someone other than the blocked user should think that removal would help the encyclopedia. If it is a short block, the time will soon elapse and removal would be pointless fiddling. If it is a long block, there is a reasonable likelihood that someone will visit the talk page (without necessarily wanting to leave a message), and it is helpful for the situation to be apparent. The recent change to WP:BLANKING simply clarifies what the old wording implied (obviously an active block is a sanction). Johnuniq (talk) 02:07, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Or, you know, we can just allow removal of block notices since nothing is gained from forcing a user to keep it on their talk page. Is it that big of a deal that an uninvolved user would have to approve of a removal of the notice? Eagles 24/7 (C) 02:48, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal (possibly with exceptions in circumstances which it's really necessary.) Because there's something inherently unpleasant about a community which insists on forcing everyone we've ever kicked out on wearing a dunce's hat in perpetuity and I'm not convinced there's any adequate reason to do so. I think this applies especially in cases of controversial blocks and blocks of established users, where enforcing block notices through edit warring is likely only to create ill will and the appearance of grave dancing. Bob House 884 (talk) 02:09, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
I think a lot of the arguments against are more applicable to expired blocks and warnings than to active blocks. It's very easy to tell if a user is currently blocked (if you don't know - click 'edit' on their user page or talk page), but it's more difficult to tell if they've previously been blocked (which requires accessing their block log - which isn't built in to the standard skin) or have recieved a final warning for something (which means going through the archives or edit history). Bob House 884 (talk) 02:09, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

It would be helpful to know whether we're talking about removal of the notice during the period of the block, or after the block has been lifted. Different contributors, above, seem to be talking about one or other of these. Clearly they're not the same. The policy, as I recall it, deals only with notices during the period of the block. So. Are we talking about "dunces hat in perpetuity" or merely keeping the notice in place whilst the block is in place? --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:17, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

"WP:BLANKING has seen a change recently to include active block notices on the list of items that can't be removed by users from their talk pages" (emphasis mine). I've taken that to be the scope of the discussion. Bob House 884 (talk) 02:18, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
Just to clarify, my comment was based on the block notice covering an active block. That is, you get blocked, you get notified by the blocking admin. Don't remove that notification until the block expires or is lifted. After the block expires/is lifted, you can do whatever you want. --Jayron32 02:29, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
This discussion is about my change to the "Sanctions that are currently in effect" item. The edit introduced "notification of a currently active block" as an item that may not be removed by the user. Almost everyone agrees that a user may remove notices of expired or revoked blocks. Johnuniq (talk) 02:30, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal. Why not? What good will removing it do them anyways? What good does the template serve to those other than them? If they continue to vandalize after the block and require another block, the blocking admin will be able to see past blocks in the block interface, and if they ever apply for rights the admin there will obviously take a gander and their block log. This is a solution searching for a problem... Ajraddatz (Talk) 03:58, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal. Admins should use some method of keeping track of who's been blocked (such as the logs) which is not possible for the user to change. The mere fact the talk page can be played around with is why it shouldn't be relied on at all. The user page should be to communicate with the user, not to signal admins, not to be a Scarlet Letter. Wnt (talk) 04:12, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Do not allow removal While it may be the habit of some users who don't review things properly to just glance at the block log and pass judgement, a proper block notice (and any relevant discussions/information which indicate a more complete rationale for the block, including diffs) should be retained for the purpose of assessing whether a block is warranted, justified, and/or necessary. We have limited resources and if an admin or other users have already gone to the trouble of providing a rationale (be it for the user, for other admins, or for the community as a whole), it's not so that it can just be removed and then some admin can come along and then miss something crucial to the block. A block log is limited in the information it provides (more often limited to a general scope of the issue). We've already had one situation where an IP was causing trouble and pointing out how susceptible the system is to abuse and misuse of this kind; it was an embarrassment to pretty much all admins that the Community needed to invoke a site ban in that case in order to address the issue. We don't need more of the same for some misguided and unjustified belief that it is some scarlet letter; if we were forcing users to retain it after the block is expired, that may warrant such a belief, but the reasons are pretty clear cut for keeping it in view while the block is in force. I certainly will not support a view that encourages a deliberate and/or persistent gaming of the system. Note: this does not prevent users who are gravedancing to be dealt with appropriately, but this is different to providing information regarding why a user was blocked, or what other pattern of behavior or incidents exist in a particular case. Ncmvocalist (talk) 06:24, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Instruction creep. We don't need special rules for this. The only type of situation where enforcing block notices to stay on the page is really worth the trouble is while a blocked user is seeking an unblock; if he prefers to just wait it out and move on there is no reason why anybody else should ever need to care about the notice. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:38, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Q. Would it be possible to modify the code to allow for something like a red notice at the top of the page that shows the log entry of the latest block? It's a quick solution that would be quite helpful to admins who might not have caught on to the block due to any blanking or a tedious, indirect back-and-forth on the talk page. ˉˉanetode╦╩ 06:48, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
    Such a notice is already displayed when editing the page, and someone could write a script if someone wanted it shown at the top the page when simply viewing it. –xenotalk 17:58, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal. The blocking information is available anyway to anyone who tries to contact the user. The rationale behind enforcing the notice is not clear, as it suggests that editors are encouraged to restore removed notices, which is a sure way of creating problems and tension for everyone concerned. Established practise per Wikipedia:Don't restore removed comments is that if a user removes a notice, then it is clear they are aware of the notice - job done, no further action needed. The reason we established that practise, is because restoring notices leads to edit wars and conflict, and is inclined to push a frustrated user into a nasty corner. If someone has a temporary block it is because we wish them to return. They may not return if we push them too far at a low moment in their Wikipedia career. Blocked users are not evil - they are just people who may have erred in some way, and some previously blocked editors have gone on to become admins. SilkTork *Tea time 10:16, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal - I see no reason that block notices need to remain on a talk page. If anyone is interested in when someone was blocked, it is there forever in the block log. If they are interested in more than the information in the block log, all the information is available in the history. I do think it is appropriate to leave the block notice on the page if the editor is asking for an early unblock. Then it is pertinent to an ongoing discussion and should remain otherwise they acknowledge they have read it and it has done it job and can be removed. GB fan (talk) 12:27, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal, nothing is gained by edit warring to keep them. If you want to outlaw something, better outlaw edit warring on other people's talk pages by re-adding warnings or block templates. —Kusma (t·c) 12:29, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Disallow removal, If you've been blocked, your block notice needs to remain in place so administrators (and other editors) can get the context of why your editing privileges have been suspended. Even if the editor acknowledge their mistakes and elect to sit the duration of the block, they probably received warnings prior to the block reminding them of what the community saw wrong with their actions. Once the sanction is no longer in effect, the editor is perfectly free to remove the block notice. In response to the arguments about remaining for an early appeal, it's nearly impossible to know if and when a user might early appeal their restriction. Is it reasonable to expect a restricted editor to restore the block notice before they make their early appeal? In response to the "Scarlet Letter" arguments: This is not a permanent branding, this is like anklet based house-arrest. After the period of the sanction is complete, the editor is perfectly free to return to the anonymous mass of the community. Hasteur (talk) 13:29, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Disallow removal. There are numerous reasons why it is convenient, if not 100% essential, for a block-notice to remain visible to all on the page of an editor while they are blocked. On the other hand, there are no reasons why removing it is a good idea. Therefore, the balance has to tip towards disallowing such behaviour. ╟─TreasuryTag►Acting Returning Officer─╢ 13:31, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Do not allow removal per above comments. I'm also not sure this is the appropriate venue to be rehashing a discussion that very recently had clear support somewhere else. In any case, I see plenty of reasons that active block notices are useful for others (transparency, context on the reason for the block, context for unblocking admins on unblock requests, etc), and the only major argument I'm seeing against that is "why not?". I've seen users try and remove previous unblock requests prior to requesting an unblock, which could "game the system" by tricking the unblock admin into thinking there was no previous context. I've also seen users remove active block notices, only to have others add content to their talk page, unaware the user couldn't participate. I've also been in situations where active block notices would have been useful to me, personally. Furthermore, my experience has been that this is currently the community's thought on this issue, as I've seen it pointed out to blocked users repeatedly, and our policy page should describe that, not prescribe a new rule by which we expect it to change.   — Jess· Δ♥ 15:37, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
    • I think I might unwatch this page for the duration of the discussion so I don't end up responding so often that I appear to be badgering...so this will hopefully be my last comment here. I don't think it's inappropriate to request discussion on the page designed to give the community a place to discuss changes to policies and guidelines. 27-17 or so in a !vote 8 months ago isn't so recent that I think it's inappropriate to discuss again, especially when it's a change to a practice that's been discussed many times and enforced in a different way for years and when the previous discussion didn't actually lead to the change. I agree that unblock requests shouldn't be removable while a user is blocked. (unless maybe if it's indef and they just want to blank their page completely) That's not part of this discussion. If users are adding content to blocked users talk pages, they should hopefully notice the big red 'this user is blocked' edit notice and realize they can't participate. Can you give a specific example of a situation where the block notice would have been useful? When I'm dealing with a specific user, it's probably unlikely that I wouldn't check their talk page history, make an edit to their talk page, or check their recent contributions...all things that would pretty quickly indicate their current editing status. If I understood what purpose past shaming the blocked user these notices were supposed to have, I'd likely change my stance. --Onorem♠Dil 17:53, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
      • re: "I've seen users try and remove previous unblock requests prior to requesting an unblock, which could "game the system" by tricking the unblock admin into thinking there was no previous context." Any admin who looks only at a blocked user's talk page without looking at contributions before reviewing an unblock request is not competent and should be desysopped. Eagles 24/7 (C) 01:57, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Disallow removal If you're blocked and it's not overturned or amended later, then it's proooobably your fault. And as we're all adults here (wait, lol), I'm sure we can all live with a little notice or two. It's not shameful, that's just psychological. Removing would make it more of a hassle to determine if a user is blocked. For example, if I want to ask a user for immediate help with an article when they've actually been blocked for a week, I'd like to know that before going ahead and asking them, because they won't be able to do anything. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 18:14, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
It's actually very simple to see whether or not a user is blocked - just open the edit screen for their talk page. And depending on the situation, the user may keep an eye on their talk page for the duration of the block, and be able to answer you there. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:09, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal - Blocking isn't a scarlett letter. Leaving the notice there is in no way preventive, it's punitive. Removal of the notice has been OK and standard for some years, and admins reviewing blocks have long had to (and expected to) go check the old talk page versions if there were any removals. It's not that hard. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 18:34, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal otherwise Wikipedia would be in breach of the license that applies to the addition of the notice. This license allows any one to modify the text and warns if you don't like people changing it don't put it there. However since it is intended as a communication to the blocked user, the blocked user should at least read it before removing. Once they have read it the blocked user can safely remove the notice. Others who care if the person is blocked will see the notice when they edit the talk page. Side effects on twinkle are the twinkle users problem, and the twinkler should use another method to edit if there is an issue. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:11, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal Users should continue to be allowed to remove all template trash from their talk page. The wp:own problem should most definitively not be expanded onto user pages. There is no need to troll and stalk (former) editors. It has nothing to do with the project. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 01:17, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal - user talk pages are for communication between a user and the rest of the project. Once the communication (notification of a block) has been received and read, the user should be free to remove or (at the end of the block) archive it. The matter of recording the present or past existence of a block is dealt with by block logs. Editors and admins wishing to see the history of an editor's block log or the history of that editor's talk page should consult the block log and page history. User talk pages are not the correct place to look for a record of such things and moving in that direction encourages admins and editors to be lazy and not look in the right place (i.e. the block log and page history). The matter of notices placed on a blocked user's user page is a bit more tricky, but that isn't being discussed here. Carcharoth (talk) 14:19, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal as doing otherwise may encourage pointless revert wars in a user's own edit space. — Kralizec! (talk) 22:06, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
    As in, allow vandalism because that might also lead to revert wars? ╟─TreasuryTag►Captain-Regent─╢ 22:07, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
    Vandalism? I don't think so. Eagles 24/7 (C) 22:11, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
    No, but I don't get this. Kralizec! (talk · contribs) appears to be reasoning that we should allow pointless, unconstructive edits in order to prevent edit-warring over them. That's ridiculous. ╟─TreasuryTag►tortfeasor─╢ 08:12, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment: if removal is allowed, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Block_log_annotation may be of interest. Rd232 public talk 00:14, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal - this template is for the blocked user; the actual information is in the user's block log, which the user can't remove (nor can any other user, unless using WP:REVDEL). Very frequently, if a user has ever been blocked before, the previous blocks are as necessary for an admin reviewing the block as is the current block reason; and we definitely don't want to tell a user to never remove the block notices! עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:35, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
You seem to have misunderstood. This discussion is about removal of current block notices meaning the block is still active. Once the block expires they are free to remove the notice at any time. TMCk (talk) 12:08, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
You seem to have misread this argument which you are dismissing offhand. They're saying a) that the block warning is for the benefit of the blocked user, whilst the block log is the official record of blocks and b) that it's arbitrary to force users to display active blocks but not inactive ones as any sort of due diligence which must occasionally be done requires consideration of both. Theres no element of 'misunderstanding' in this, they're just pointing out hipocrisy in the 'do not allow' camp. Bob House 884 (talk) 13:23, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Don't allow removal.Users could be unwillingly engage in editing by proxy while not being aware that an editor is currently blocked. TMCk (talk) 12:01, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
    • If someone asks on their user talk page for an edit to be made, the obvious question (why can't they make the edit themselves) should be answered by looking at their block log. Editors shouldn't need a block notice on a user's talk page to tell them of this. They should learn to consult the block log instead. Carcharoth (talk) 13:10, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
      • I can only think of two possible reasons why any user would do an edit requested on the talk page of the requesting user:
        1. The request comes as part of an on-going discussion between theusers in question. In this case, should the requesting user get blocked, the other user would probably know about it.
        2. The requesting user is blocked, and has a request whgich is urgent enough to override the rule against proxying. Note that this clearly is a possibility - I once did such a thing, although I don't want to state the reason for this publicly.
      • עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:19, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal – Unlike unblock requests, if they wish to remove block notices from their userpages, that is not going to deny users quick information on the status of the user as removing an unblock request would (as one can see the block rationale while looking at the blocked user's contributions). –MuZemike 04:14, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow You can always see the block log. ~~EBE123~~ talkContribs 13:03, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Disallow removal - It makes it easier as an administrator if I can see the reason for the initial block when trying to determine whether or not to honor an unblock request. Often the block template has more information than what is in the block log. Sure, I can and do look into the history of the talk page if the block template is missing, but that takes extra time to look up and it's possible to miss it. I don't see that a block template is any more of a "scarlet letter" than the pink box you already get when editing the talk page. If leaving the block template doesn't do extra harm, and it's helpful to admins, I believe it shouldn't be allowed to be removed while the block is in effect, the same way we don't allow editors to remove declined unblock requests or ban notices (which again are no less "scarlet letters" than the block template). Keep in mind I refer to active blocks, editors should always be allowed to remove block templates for expired blocks. -- Atama頭 20:03, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
    • And how can you confirm that the block message is, in fact, the original one left by the blocking admin, without looking into the history? It's quite simple for a blocked user to replace the block template with a different one, and if the blocked user knows what (s)he's doing, he/she can use this to trick an admin into accepting the request. The real methods to know the background is to look at the revisions of the talk page leading up to the block, the diff of the revision where the block message was added, the block log entry, and communication with the blocking admin. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:04, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
      • The same argument can be made for declined unblock templates and ban templates, so should we allow editors to delete them as well? I'd say no. Any editor can make up bogus info on their talk page to trick an admin into unblocking them, but often that leads to a discrepancy which does nothing but raise suspicion and prompt the admin to look deeper into the editor's actions. When that reveals that an editor has been refactoring their talk page to fake their innocence, that would backfire and if I was the reviewing administrator I'd probably extend the block duration (if it wasn't indefinite) and almost surely revoke talk page access. -- Atama頭 22:14, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
        • First of all, block messages are easier to find in the page history, as they are frequently added by semi-automated tools which leave appropriate summaies automatically - not to mention the fact that they are left by the blocking admin around the block time, and both of these can be found easily in the block log. Secondly, the poiint is that the block message isn't the best of evidence for the block reason - the block log is better; responded unblock requests are the best evidence for the reason for their own rejection. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:29, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  • This seems like a complete no-brainer to me. If we disallow removal, then we'd need to create a new process for block notice removal requests. Who wants to help police the WP:TPBNRRN (Talk Page Block Notice Removal Request Noticeboard)? Actually, this being Wikipedia, we'd probably find a group of people who're anxious to take time off from writing an encyclopaedia so as to run the process, but it strikes me as a whole lot simpler just to allow removal as we've always done.—S Marshall T/C 11:37, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Enforce with software, the block notice, however it is implemented, should not be removable.  It is pointless to enforce this with admin or editor effort.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:14, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Use common sense when deciding whether or not to allow the notice to be removed. If the user is removing the block notice in good faith, let them do it. WikiPuppies! (bark) 14:44, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow I don't think I've seen a single real reason these should be required to remain during the blocked period. Anyone engaging with the editor will see they are blocked, and can look back to see why. The only possibly valid reasons of having any policy here are those of being aware of bad behavior after the block has ended. There might be something to that in that vandalism right after a block can be grounds for a new block and someone mentioned being able to see that there's been a final warning. But keeping it up after the block is not being discussed here, and that would need a much broader policy discussion. If we're not requiring it after, there's no reason to keep it during. ‡ MAHEWA ‡ • talk 15:26, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal–Since these discussions are decided upon based upon the quality of the arguments and not on number of !votes I'd like to ask those that want to stop the removal to come up with one good reason why it benefits the ability of editors to create a better encyclopedia if editors are not allowed to remove the block template? If there isn't a good answer, and I havent seen one yet by any of those !voting here, then allowing for its removal should be allowed. A blocked user is blocked, they can not edit articles, it has achieved its purpose. A block or ban is NOT a scarlet-letter or informational for the Community-at-large as "badges of dishonor". Talk pages are not to be used to ruin the reputation of editors, mistakes are made, emotions get out of control, things happen. And yes vendetta's occur and editors get blocked for 24 hours because an admin has a bug up his arse, basically "shit happens". Who cares?! If someone is blocked, and it's not you, then it is none of your business why or when or how long they will be "out". Keep to yourself, keep the drama low, and stop with the instruction creep that is intended only to shame someone, and is in fact against the very ethos of our policies and has nothing to do with our purpose- to write an encyclopedia, not to create a society. Based on arguments, not !votes, in my opinion this discussion was decided long ago.Camelbinky (talk) 23:50, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal Removing it doesn't change anything. Neither does edit-warring it back in, which I am ashamed to say I have seen admins do from time to time. Policy has been long established that users may not remove declined unblock requests, as those are needed as reference for admins reviewing any subsequent request. That makes sense and should stay as it is. The block notice itself is not needed once it has been read by the blocked user, therefore they should be allowed to remove it the same as any other talk page notice. Forcing them to keep it up is pointless and demeaning, whether they deserved to be blocked or not. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:50, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Do not allow removal though noting this only for active blocks. Allowing them to remove block notices or declined unblock requests could allow an editor to post an unblock request with misleading information, and there's always the chance that an admin might not check very closely before unblocking. Most do, but there's always a slim chance an admin might look at an unblock request at face value. No, no change here is required. There are no negative aspects to keeping active blocks listed on a users talk page, and I can't think of any benefits to doing so. Steven Zhang The clock is ticking.... 21:51, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
    • I honestly don't see the logic here. Of course, we don't want them to remove block notices while they are still asking for an unblock. But declaring a prohibition on removing notices won't practically stop people from removing them. The danger that some notice might have been removed and a reviewing admin might be seeing a misleading page remains the same, and admins will always have to check for such manipulations, whether there is an "official" prohibition in force or not. Of course, if I come to respond to an unblock request and find that the block notice is missing, I'll simply silently restore it together with my response, as a matter of course. Obviously, if the user then decides to revert-war over it and remove it again, their chances of a positive review of their unblock request are going to be slim. But that still doesn't change the fact that if a user opts for not raising an unblock request but simply wishes to walk away, wait out the block and be left alone, forcing them to keep the notice against their will is nothing but institutionalized WP:DICKishness. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:09, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal. the block notice is for the benefit of the editor, Jewishprincess (talk) 20:37, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow blocks are not punitive. They are to protect the project. The intent of any message on the user's talk page is to communicate with that user; that's what talk pages are for. If they have read the notice, then they should be allowed to remove it. The record of the block is maintained. jsfouche ☽☾Talk 14:59, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow per above, the preventitive block becomes punative when a user is forced to display the notice against their wishes. Joefromrandb (talk) 03:32, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Meh allow. My first thought was do NOT allow, (easier to see the current status), but really, as someone above said... "It doesn't change anything". We're not here to embarrass folks (scarlet letter thing). I'd say keep the ban notices, and allow the block notice removal. People make mistakes, hopefully they learn, and everyone moves forward in a productive manner. — Ched :  ?  23:30, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal. There's nothing there that can't be seen in the block log of page history, and as mentioned many times above we're not out to embarrass people needlessly. TotientDragooned (talk) 20:15, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Do not allow removal. The presence of the notices is quite important on IP talk pages, where there is the potential for multiple users to be confused by a sudden inability to edit. I'd prefer (grudgingly, with some misgivings) to allow removal by autoconfirmed users because there are cases where blocks are misapplied and later overturned but nonetheless carry a degree of stigma while they last. But if the choice is either allow or disallow, I'd choose the latter.Rivertorch (talk) 23:03, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
  • No, because some people would find it easier to go to the talk page to check whether the user has been blocked before. General Rommel (talk) 08:10, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Do not allow The notices serves two purposes, to let the blocked editor know he's blocked, and to let other editors know he's blocked. It saves everyone's time, especially those who think the editor might not be blocked, thus requests another block. Or adds now-useless warnings to their page. Or ask people to review the editor's edits because they aren't sure if they are inserting weird nonsense or weird (but legitimate) science. So a resounding no from me.Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:49, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Do not Allow: Note: This only applies to active blocks. Jayron32 stated, "If users wish to not have block notices on their talk page, they need to not behave in manners which get themselves blocked.". When a user is blocked there is usually a reason (and advance notice), but there are exceptions even though some people believe all cops are good and "everyone" arrested is guilty anyway right? I was auto blocked (misapplied as per "Rivertorch" above) for no apparent reason -see my talk page under "Unblock". The problem was solved in short order and the block notice is still there. I leave it there in case someone ever mentions me being blocked although I did hide it during some maintenance.
    • I can not imagine why a user should be allowed to delete a current block notice. So they will not have a "scarlet letter"! I have not checked to see all the reasons that can lead to a person being blocked but I understand that it is "usually" after repeated warnings for doing something against policies. Wikipedia does not want to run editors off but being very liberal with no actual "rules" it is a serious matter to be blocked (accidents or mistakes notwithstanding) and all editors should be aware of this and the consequences. I also see repeated statements, "And when you edit the talk page of a blocked user, you get a message "This user is currently blocked"; so we have semi hidden scarlet letters? I have to remember to check to see if there is a notice that a user is blocked which is a waste of time. If a user is blocked, possibly because of an incident I am about to communicate concerning, I would like to know up front and I do not have to go any farther. Why should I have to be inconvenienced? I was auto blocked for no reason and I --still-- do not support an editor removing a "current" block notice as per "Headbomb's" comments above. According to some of the comments an admin can investigate to see what is going on. I guess admins have nothing really to do but "investigate" when it shouldn't be needed so lets put the burden on them? I guess it is better to make everyone else do more, work harder, and waste time than to just require active block notices to remain. Otr500 (talk) 11:51, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow User should have their own freedom, even if blocked.--GoldenGlory84 (talk) 22:32, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Do not allow: As someone who has been blocked in my time, I have to say that this notice is simply an honest statement of the situation at hand. Anyone finding their way to a user's talk page is sophisticated enough to know that there are many reasons for a user to be blocked, some more trivial than others. The notice will disappear as soon as the block is over, meantime it's quite valuable to contemplate the results of one's actions. The talk page is not, unlike the user page, a personal page completely ruled by the user; it is a page that serves interaction with the community - and invariably reflects the community's feedback on the user's activity. hgilbert (talk) 14:40, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
Wrong. Talk page etiquette is same as user page. It is indeed the USER's page, not the Community's. It is specifically NOT a place to post what people think about a user or their feedback on the user's activity. It is only for use of communication with the user on collaboration of improving the encyclopedia. If you would like I'd be happy to post on your talk page what I think about your comment and you can decline to have an admin sanction me for it and then keep the comment up for all eternity and then maybe you'd get an idea of what it's like to have an insult on your talk page that you cant remove but know is wrong. 50% at least of all blocks are such.Camelbinky (talk) 15:16, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Do not allow. It's akin to deleting other editors' comments in a discussion. An editor's talk record should be archived, not manipulated. --Bermicourt (talk) 19:09, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal Sanctions are to protect the project going forward, in an effort to restore an equitable editing environment, so "enforcing" the visibility that notice to the blockee seems to contradict that. The notice is for the benefit of the blockee, in case they wish to appeal, and not for the wider community, so they should be able to remove it if desired. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:20, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Do not allow Blocked users aren't supposed to be editing anything with the sole exception of unblock requests. No other editing should be permissible while blocked, not even this. A block is a block. Jim Miller See me | Touch me 22:20, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal. Many users acknowledge talk page messages by removing them, knowing full well that the talk page history is available to anyone. If I block a user and my block message is removed, I assume good faith and interpret removal to mean that the user has accepted the block and its rationale. There is no harm in that. Disallowing such removal strikes me as punitive, rather than an attempt to prevent disruption. We already have a policy prohibiting removal of declined unblock requests. That is sufficient. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:27, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
If prohibiting a blocked editor from removing a block message from his user talk page is unjustifiably punitive, why is it justified to prohibit such an editor from removing an unsuccessful unblock request? SMP0328. (talk) 23:47, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
This is not a vote, if you would care to provide some reasoning for your position that would be helpful. Thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:07, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal. The culprits know they are blocked, and so will Wikians who edit their talk pages. Moriori (talk) 00:47, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Allow removal - Reducing the "scarlet letter" aspect of talk pages outweighs any convenience established by mandating a keep of the block notice. If there are concerns that removing the block notice would reduce the quality the review of a subsequent unblock request, why not just include a requirement that the block notice be left up if an unblock request is created? VQuakr (talk) 01:02, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
  • By way of reply to the argument that disallowing removal makes it easier to see when a user is blocked and why, there is already a handy user script that does this for you. Blocked user's names are struck through, and their sig will roll over to show the block reasoning. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:07, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Skimming through most of the comments above, it strikes me that there may be something of a sub-cultural divide at play, here. Is it just me, or does it seem as though those who tend to participate in the vandalism patrol area are those who are more vocally supportive of the "don't allow" side to this? If vandalism (and other) patrollers are having difficulty with this sort of issue (which I could reasonably see as being an issue), wouldn't a more thorough and purposefully designed technical solution be more appropriate than a new (and rather draconian, in my opinion) rule?
    — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:30, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Noting that I, as of the timestamp of this post, do not yet hold an opinion on this matter (except perhaps leaning to the initial stance I had back in the previous September 2010 discussion) I would like the people here to consider the similarities between two scenarios: Why we choose to place a block template on a user's talkpage when the block rationale is given in the log, user's edit interface, and available in the user's contributions; and why we choose to sign our posts when the author of a post is available in the history of a page. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 16:30, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Subsection with compromise proposal

Would like to see if a compromise that was suggested above has support and consensus from the Community–allow removal of a block notice as long as it is not under a review request, if so then it must stay. Remember this is not a poll and these are not votes, they are weighed based on clarity and consideration of comments on WHY, so please put your full reasoning; and let's not devolve into arguing with others over their !votes as it often doesnt ever change anyone's opinion. Let's see if this resolves anything because editing continues at the policy page regarding the wording even though the thread kind of petered out.Camelbinky (talk) 07:14, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

This discussion was closed in a completely different way than how the discussion was going and I see there are three different places for it the closure is being talked about. However that may be, this should be simply reopened and I encourage my compromise to be discussed.Camelbinky (talk) 04:06, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Alternate compromise proposal

As I have written on Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Should_users_be_allowed_to_remove_current_block_notices.3F_and_Require_all_new_articles_to_contain_at_least_one_source, active block notices + unblock requests related to active blocks, as well as warnings given within the past X hours/days should stay. - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 05:51, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

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