Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 82

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Village pump (policy) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy).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

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BLP query

Does BLP cover animals? Simply south (talk) 23:12, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Not directly but indirectly it is possible. BLP is short for Biographies of living persons. Now obviously an animal is not a person. However, it is possible that an article can contain biographical information about a person in relation to an animal. I can't find any examples using Cat scan, so perhaps none exist at this time. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 23:41, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Animals can be personified but i guess that's the closest it can be. Is there a guideline on writing animal articles? Simply south (talk) 23:44, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Not especially. Depending on the article's subject though, aspects of rights or protections through treaties may come into play; for instance, with non-human primates, like Koko. It might be worth checking out WikiProject Animal rights for resources, or User:SlimVirgin may be able to give some pointers. –Whitehorse1 00:58, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. In that case maybe i will suggest it at the proposals. I am going to try writing an article on an animal, of which i think the notabiilty is more established. Simply south (talk) 01:06, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

We have BLP to protect living people from damaging libel. It's rare that any animal would be damaged by libel. (Of course, if you see an article on a racehorse and someone is adding an unsourced sentence saying "The horse won the Kentucky Derby by cheating", I would call that libellous indirectly to the horse's owners/the jockey.) /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

No, it does not. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:21, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Idea

Thanks for the replies. In that case how about a new guideline is created on the biographies or notabilities of individual animals? This is not a joke. Simply south (talk) 16:38, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Why is the general notability guide not enough? Why do we need a specific guide on individual animals? Are there any case studies or examples that have prompted this? Fences&Windows 16:53, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Animals are not considered to be capable of the sort of moral character that can be attacked in an inaccurate BLP, so there is no need for this sort of special protection. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 17:49, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

However, a guideline on notability criteria for animals (named animals, i'm assuming, not species of animals) might be useful. Silverseren^C 01:45, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

See WP:GNG. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

There is no reason to create instruction creep. If a named animal has significant coverage (eg Hachikō) we can likely have an article about it. --MASEM (t) 14:50, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Potential need for something like BLP for companies

It occurs to me that we may need something equivalent to WP:BLP in strength for articles on existing entities such as companies, corporations, and such. This edit is the one that got my attention. Imagine seeing something like that in a BLP; here we have an uncited assertion that the company murdered someone to shut them up. Aside from the obvious ethical issue of needing to get this stuff right, using verifiable, reliable sources -- entities such as this have considerable legal resources and such edits put us arguably at greater risk than a similar edit to the biography of an individual. In the example, the anon editor is essentially accusing the company of complicity in a murder. Do we need a "WP:BEC" ("existing companies") policy, or is Wikipedia:Libel sufficient? Note that BLP specifically states that it doesn't apply to companies and groups. Has this been discussed before? Antandrus (talk) 20:46, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Such a thing would weaken our protection against spam and against legal threats. Unsourced information should be removed, but that is already a matter of policy. Corporations do not have parents, spouses, etc. They have no lives to be ruined. They are only their corporate existence. They do not need the special protection we afford individuals, and attempting to expand the protections afforded to them would reduce the quality of the encyclopedia. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 20:58, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Everything about WP:BLP is actually not significantly different from all of our articles. The only difference is in how poorly or unsourced statements are to be treated. In non-BLP situations, it is good form to tag the unsourced statement with {{fact}} or {{dubious}} to give people a chance to cite it; however statements which have been so tagged for a long time should be removed. In BLP-related statements (this is true even for statements about people in articles about something else) contentious statements are removed immediately. The difference is only in removing the statement now versus waiting a few weeks to remove it. Ideally, everything should be referenced; and eventually, if we're all playing by the rules, all of the unreferenced stuff gets removed, regardless of what it is about. There really shouldn't be something tagged with {{fact}} for years on end. --Jayron32 01:39, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I guess that's what I'm getting at. The edit I linked essentially accuses a large company of complicity in a murder, and has no reference. I'm reverting it, and will continue to do so, as though it were in a BLP. Recently I encountered an amateur historical researcher who accused a newspaper publisher dead for a hundred years of murder, but that one didn't seem as serious -- although eventually I took that one out too; but what bothers me is that this big company has a big legal department, and I see a risk here, one that casual editors, especially those without much life experience, may miss. Perhaps we don't need to change policy but I'd like to raise awareness of this somehow. Antandrus (talk) 02:37, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation retains lawyers for this so that we don't have to worry about such things. If they ain't worried, we ain't worried. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 07:21, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, he's right to remove it, and not necessarily because it has anything to do with BLP. Accusations of murder are likely to be so controversial they must be cited or removed. One must judge the type of statement before deciding whether to tag or remove. Something so inflamatory as a murder charge needs to be cited immediately or removed; and not because of BLP, simply because it is likely to be highly contentious. --Jayron32 15:08, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I wasn't saying anything about this particular case. I was just saying that we don't need to look into creating a new policy about this. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 16:14, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to discussion about Further reading sections

A new page, WP:Further reading, is under construction. Its purpose is to expand on the WP:FURTHER section of MOS:LAYOUT.

The MOS guideline currently says that ==Further reading== is "A bulleted list, usually alphabetized, of a reasonable number of editor-recommended publications that do not appear elsewhere in the article and were not used to verify article content."

Rjensen (talk · contribs) would like to ditch the long-standing (2006?) rule about not normally listing sources in both the ==References== and ==Further reading== section of the same article. If you have an opinion or want to comment about how the community uses/should use this section, please join the current discussion. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:52, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Voting status of unregistered users

Do the votes of unregistered users carry equal weight with those of registered users e.g. when discussing deletions or moves? --Bermicourt (talk) 17:53, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

• Undoubtedly. Unregistered contributors are able to fully participate in deletion or move discussions, and have been since since 2005. Please see WP:HUMAN for details. The intention of delete debates or similar is they be judged on the arguments themselves, and should not be calculated solely by the balance of votes. –Whitehorse1 18:03, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

To go one step further, an unregistered users !vote can actually carry more weight than a registered voter if the unreggistered user has a better argument. ~~ GB fan ~~ 18:10, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

And how do we know that an unregistered user isn't the 2nd vote of an unscrupulous registered user? This is the argument used for not allowing them to vote for e.g. Wiki admins. --Bermicourt (talk) 21:52, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

How do we know that two registered accounts on the other side of the debate aren't sockpuppets? How do we know you aren't the sock of some banned user who is just here to stir up resentment? We don't. There has to be some modicum of trust. Barring any actual evidence of bad faith all comments are weighted equally and should be judged by strength of argument and not raw numbers. That is exactly why we don't let them participate in some processes, because those processes are decided by percentages and it would in fact be very difficult to stop someone with a rotating ip or who is simply moving from one place to another with a mobile device. Beeblebrox (talk)

Bermicourt, if you do ask a question you do need to look at links provided for you in an answer. This was addressed in the above‑linked essay. IP editors are not second class citizens. You should read the story below, too. Well, I know I liked it. –Whitehorse1 04:26, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm reminded of a story: The hunters lived in an area with a notoriously active game warden, but they went out to shoot a deer before the season opened anyway. Dragging the heavy carcass up out of a ravine shortly after sunset, they stopped to rest and one said, "This is really hard work. I'm sure glad there are five of us to help drag it." Another looked around at the shadowy figures and nervously said, "There ain't supposed to be but four of us." The game warden boomed from the darkness, "Ain't s'posed to be nobody dragging it!"

You all aren't supposed to be voting anyway. Try counting reasons, not heads. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:23, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Deletion and move discussions are not votes. It's the quality of the arguments, not the numbers, that matter. If an unregistered editor produces a valid argument, their argument will carry more weight than will an invalid argument (such as WP:ILIKEIT) of a registered editor. Corvus cornix_talk 22:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Steel Panther

The person who wrote the article about ^ group seems to be a heavy metal fan... go check out the article to see why :D

-K — Preceding unsigned comment added by Miss Jupiter (talk • contribs) 16:23, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It is generally more helpful to specify the problem than allude to an unspecified problem. "Hey go find this problem I just saw" is, most often, a tiresome waste of time. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:38, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Question about the assessment of certain types of non article items

As I have been working more in talk pages I have noticed a few things that I think need to be clarified and corrected regarding the assessment of certain classes of non-article items such as Categories, Templates, Disambiguation pages and Redirects.

1) Non-article items not tagged with an appropriate talk page banner:

• Background - Many of these items are not tagged with any type of WikiProject banner. I know that some projects do not currently tag these types of items for various reasons but I believe they should be tagged somehow and accounted for. This can be done by a bot if the projects themselves don't want to and could use a Generic non-article template of some kind but I believe they should have something.
• Suggested change - That we actively tag these articles so they can be accounted for within a project (even if that project is just a generic non-article tagging project)

2) Non-article items tagged with an incorrect assessment:

• Background - Many of these items are tagged with a WikiProject banner but do not have a valid assessment. They are assessed as stub, start, C or whatever.
• Suggested change - I recommend that if these things are tagged that they be tagged as what they are (Category, Template, Disambuguation or Redirect). Even blanks cause a ??? to be displayed.

3) Non-article items tagged with an incorrect importance or priority:

• Background - Many of these items have the importance/priority set to low, mid, high, top or is missing. It is impossible to gauge the importance of these types of things so its inappropriate to tag their quality as anything other than the name space. Even blanks cause a ??? to be displayed.
• Suggested change - I recommend that if these things are tagged and the importance/priority is set to something other than NA that it be changed to NA.

Correctly identifying these things will allow visibility of them which is currently difficult at best. In the case of Redirects, there are a lot of redirects that exist because of accidental spelling errors or were created as a possible scenario link that is unlikely and tagging them will increase visibility of them so they can potentially be eliminated. --Kumioko (talk) 01:33, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Overkill and Project Creep... not everything in Wikipedia needs to be within a WikiProject. If it makes sense to tag a specific page under a certain project, fine... but I see no reason to to force it. Blueboar (talk) 02:47, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Although in theory that may be true of suggestion one I would counter with why not? IMO if there is a reason for its existence then its important enough to be counted in a projects scope if it pertains to that subject. The fact that we don't actively monitor these things is a contributing factor to why we have thousands of unneeded redirects, templates, Disambiguation pages and Category's. I am not inherently a deletionist but there is little reason to keep templates that are deprecated or dont link to anything, most empty categories (other than maintenance ones), redirects that exist for things like spelling errors or because the person who created it thought that someone someday might need to find ohio by putting in "US state of Ohio" or something equally unlikely. To me this falls in line with recent efforts to standardize and cleanup many of the things that we have let "creep" out of control for the last ten years. Aside from that what about 2 and 3? Also, as I stated above it could be a generic non-article project and use a bot to add the tag thereby eliminating the human time requirement since the assessment and importance are virtually automatic. Not too go on too far of a tangent I have thought for a while that there should be a project that kept an eye on things like the ones mentioned above. --Kumioko (talk) 03:28, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

• It would be nice if all project tags supported settings for non-article pages such as lists or redirects, but there is no reason to suppose that every article must fall within a project. Frankly, there seem to be fewer and fewer projects these days that actually do anything in a co-ordinated manner or do anything at all other than assessing articles that fall within their scope. It may actually be time to do a sweep of projects and root out and delete the inactive ones that have no active participants. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:10, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

As far you first comment there is. If you take a look at Wikipedia:Wikiproject United States the assessment scale can be setup (with a little effort) to support all types of classes. I agree that many projects have been tappering off and I find that somewhat distressing and is one of the reasons I decided to resurrect WikiProject United States. On the last issue I have also been cleaning those up as have several others. If you want to help on that I for one would greatly appreciate it. WP has accumulated a lot of crud over the years and its time to clean out the garage. --Kumioko (talk) 03:28, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Kumioko, you say "I believe they should be tagged somehow and accounted for."

Why? What practical goal are you trying to achieve by spamming a WikiProject banner to the talk page of a {{R from alternate spelling}} redirect? (Do you know why we have WikiProjects assess pages?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:31, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

The practical goal is identifying them so that if necessary they can be deleted. I realize that most users could care less about talk pages or tracking templates, categories, disambiguation pages or redirects. As I have more recentyl started to delve into these areas I have been surprised to find what can inly be discribed as a disorganized mess of interlaced redirects, templates that do nothing, categories that are uneeded and disambig pages that are incomplete, have only one link, have a page full of red links, are formatted incorrectly, etc. Part of the reason for this is that knowone cares enough to track them and occassionally take out the trash. If you cant measure it you cant manage it and right know we cant do either one. I realize that there are a lot of them and thats part of the problem. Here are a few examples of the problem and how tagging these things would help in the long term: When a WikiProject is deleted the subpages are frequently missed as are the categories and templates associated to them. If the project tagged them they could be reviewed too. Maybe there needed and can be switched to another project or maybe they can be deleted completely. Currently we dont know because there not tagged. Many of the redirects are holdovers from before the dynamic search box and users had to try and accomodate every concievable redirect possibility for an article. That is no longer the case. Know I'm not saying that every redirect needs to go but when you have articles with 20 or more redirects and only 2 or 3 have links and only maybe 5 more actually make sense then its likely that at least half of the ones that remain are uneeded. In the case of templates I have found piles of templates that aren't used, arer broken, have only one link, duplicate other existing templates, etc. Some of them are actually useful and should be used others are just crap that should be deleted. But right now knowone knows because knowone wants to know. Additionally, I have seen too many times where a template, redirect, etc was deleted and the project "didn't know" because "knowone told them" and they fight about how and why it was deleted until its restored. Usually there is no tag and thats another reason why tagging woudl help. --Kumioko (talk) 15:58, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Identifying redirects (etc) that need to be taken to MFD or TFD is not the purpose of the WikiProject banners, or the WP:1.0 team's assessment process. Slapping a WikiProject banner on the page will not help you find things that qualify for deletion. Additionally, WikiProjects are almost never deleted, so your first example is worthless. As for your second, if a group can't be bothered to tag their own work, then the lack of notice is entirely their own fault.

There are ways to find and fix these problems without abusing the assessment process. If you want to get a bunch of stuff deleted, then you need to find a good way to do it, without interfering with the existing process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:03, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Generally, it's left to the WikiProjects themselves to determine what pages they want to incorporate into their scope. As to the incorrect assessments, one possibility would be to have the banner template automatically assess based on namespace where indicated. Would that address the concern? --Bsherr (talk) 06:00, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

And the projects can continue to decide that but by not tagging it IMO they also limit any stake in the claim to its existence so if it should get deleted then IMO they dont have a leg to stand on when they come back and ask why it could be deleted without their knowledge or permission. Thats also why I suggested above the possibility of starting a generic project that could have some oversight of these rogue's. If the projects want the responsibility of managing the items in their scope then fine if not they will fall to this other project for review, maintenance and potential elimination. This would also make a good central place to notify of problems with them, etc. I like your idea of autmatic assessment and class of these types of items and I think thats something worth discussing. --Kumioko (talk) 15:58, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

It's a complicated template, but this isn't a very complicated change. It involves using a switch and the namespace magic word. It would apply only to the assessment class for templates and categories, since those are the two that can be determined by detection of namespace. The template is permanently protected, so the change would have to get consensus on the template talk page first. If you'd like to start the conversation at Template talk:WPBannerMeta, I'll back you up technically. --Bsherr (talk) 16:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Ill start that today and let you know once I get it started. --Kumioko (talk) 16:35, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

It can be done for portals and images too. It could be done for books, but the documentation for Template:WPBannerMeta doesn't show an assessment class for books. --Bsherr (talk) 17:11, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. For what its worth we have a class for books (and pretty much everything else) in WikiProject United States if that helps. For books we make the importance NA the same as for Cats, Templates, Redirects and Disambig's. --Kumioko (talk) 17:20, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

It would supercede manual tags on those pages, correct or incorrect. Once tagged as these classes, the template automatically disregards importance, I think. --Bsherr (talk) 17:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok thanks. I guess we cant do it those then since we have a special class for featured Portals and images. --Kumioko (talk) 17:20, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

• This is the remit of the projects themselves. Projects are there so that groups of editors can collaborate together in particular areas of articles, not to organise Wikipedia in minute detail. That this happens in practise is merely a side effect of that goal, in particular that projects work with Wikipedia 1.0. Also with the problems we've had just today on WikiProject Spaceflight with people attempting automated tagging I certainly don't support using bots. Either way, again this should be up to the projects concerned, it is those editors who will be organising things. I should point out also that most of the time a field is applied but left blank showing a "???" is because the banner was applied when mass-tagging articles. Because you can access tagged articles from the Wikipedia 1.0 console on each project page it makes it easier to mass-tag articles and then update quality or importance later. Again this is about how projects want to go about their activities and should be left up to them. ChiZeroOne (talk) 06:36, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

To essentially the projects don't need to care about these types of items quite frankly is a little silly but some reasons why they shoudl care are outlined above. To answer this comment most projects do very little with the editorial team or anything else, They tag articles and cuss when someone touches one of the articles in their scope but they don't do much else. This isn't true of all of them of course but I would say more than half. I have seen hit and miss problems and successes with bot tagging as well however this is pretty hard to screw up. There is no need to "assess" most of these and the class is pretty cut and dry. Problems like the ones you mentioned above would be rare if they occurred at all. --Kumioko (talk) 15:58, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that generalization is accurate. I know of plenty of WikiProjects that do a lot of things. They work on stub-reduction drives, put together newsletters to help let their members know what's going on, they work together to expand articles or create graphic content for the articles they watch. They maintain and update portals, and they even work together to review articles for comments, suggestions or improvement. I don't think there's any need to tag *everything* on Wikpedia, unless a group of people agree to tag they stuff they follow. Imzadi 1979 → 04:12, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

My momma said If I can't say nothin' nice then keep it to myself but I find it somewhat hypocritical that USRD would be making statements of working together given their rather isolationist history. As I said at least 3 times already. If a project doesn't want the responsibility then I can create a non-article maintenance and review project that can do it. But it needs to be done. --Kumioko (talk) 04:18, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about any one project in particular. Please strike or remove your comments. Imzadi 1979 → 04:36, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

You didn't mention it but given the history and your active involvement in the USRD project there can be no mistake the inference was there. --Kumioko (talk) 05:20, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Your inference, not my implication. MILHIST maintains a project newsletter which I see being added to the talk pages of editors I follow. The Tropical Storm project just as well. WP:GL, the Graphics Lab, is a project whose services have been very handy to me, and they work strictly in graphics. WP:SHIPS has been active in their Operation Majestic Titan to expand the coverage of articles on battleships. CRWP just created a portal, and yes, USRD runs an A-Class Review (like MILHIST and other projects) to review and critique articles. No, you inferred meaning to my comments that was not implied, and then called an entire WikiProject (I'm not the whole project, nor it's "spokesman") hypocrites. So, can you please strike your comments as insulting? Imzadi 1979 → 05:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Kumioko primarily seems worried that s/he'll get something deleted, and then some person who didn't know about the deletion discussion will come back and ask to have it restored at a later date, on the grounds that consensus can change, and thus Kumioko will have "lost" or wasted time. I think this is a really trivial problem: It happens every day for prod'd articles, and the world hasn't stopped spinning yet. Worrying about the occasional (what, one or two percent?) un-deletion request is really a waste of time and energy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:10, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Well that is one concern, but not the only one. Here is a better list of some concerns I have with these things not being tagged by something:

Redirects

1. Marking them will allow us to more easily identify double redirects
2. Will allow us to identify redirects due to unlikely misspellings (these are actually in use for Massachusetts: Taxachusetts, Masachusets, Massacheusetts, 6th State, etc)
3. Identify and eliminate nonsense redirects and redirects to non existent articles
4. Identify if a redirect needs to be added. (for example Ma. is the abbreviation for Massachusetts but doesn't currently exist
5. determine how many apply to a project

Templates/Categories

1. Determine categories or templates that are not being used/not needed
2. Identify categories or templates that might be needed
3. determine how many categories or templates apply to a project

Disambiguation pages

1. How many of these do we have
2. Identify some that are needed
3. Expand the ones that are missing links or only have one link
4. Identify the ones that are full of red links or have other problems like incorrect formatting

In general I just don't think we should have things scattered around in the shadows of WP completely unseen. If these things are needed and important enough to exist then they should be visible to the project. In the end if the project doesn't want to see them that's fine but as it is the majority of the active projects account for a lot of these things in one form or another. --Kumioko (talk) 02:11, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea. Discovered lately that Transportation (for example) while having great articles, had lost control of one segment of categorizing. If someone had spotted this earlier, it would have been addressed at an early stage and be easier to correct. As a result, I have been tilting at windmills getting pov mis-categorization addressed. The categorization (accurate for some articles, but inappropriate for others) have their defenders, and they have been there a long time. Kumioko's ideas would force review of categories and templates (and other stuff including redirects probably, some of which are pov and not under anyone's purview].

I can appreciate the other comment that Projects are formed with great enthusiasm and seem to slump into being supported by a dozen diehards who may not have the time they once did. But the Life and Death of Projects, it seems to me, is a separate issue. It should be (and has been) discussed separately.Student7 (talk)

I also want to point out that the majority of projects already track these items to some degree and some are doing it in a manner I think is rather backwards. For example some projects have a redirect such as Template:WPAbortion-category that allows the project to track the catergories that belong to that project rather than coding the template. Whether thats because they didn't know how to code it or didn't want to bother with it I can't say but in my opinion we should fix this and setup a proper category to track this stuff. I have a list of about 30 or 40 projects that do this by the way as well as doing it like this for templates and Files/images. This is another good example of some crud that should be cleaned up. --Kumioko (talk) 21:44, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Kumioko,

You're not talking sense. It's like you've already decided that you want to do this, so you're making up nonsensical reasons to support your decision. Here's your list of alleged benefits, with my comments.

Redirects

1. Marking them will allow us to more easily identify double redirects

   No, it won't, but even if it did, there's a bot that does that anyway.

2. Will allow us to identify redirects due to unlikely misspellings (these are actually in use for Massachusetts: Taxachusetts, Masachusets, Massacheusetts, 6th State, etc)

   No, it won't. Pasting {{|WikiProject Massachusetts |class=redirect}} on the talk page doesn't result in anyone identifying anything about the nature of the redirect.

3. Identify and eliminate nonsense redirects and redirects to non existent articles

   No, it won't. Pasting the wikiproject banner on the talk page won't tell you anything about whether the redirect points to a sensible target. (Also, there may be a bot that finds redirects to redlinks.)

4. Identify if a redirect needs to be added. (for example Ma. is the abbreviation for Massachusetts but doesn't currently exist

   How? How exactly do you go about pasting the wikiproject's banner onto a non-existent page's talk page?

5. determine how many apply to a project

   Yes, it will do that. This could be trivially accomplished by a bot (find a page tagged by a wikiproject, see what redirects to it, and spam the project tag to all the redirects). But nobody (except you) apparently cares how many exist. WP:Redirects are cheap, and moving them from the visible to the non-visible parts of the database (what we euphemistically call "deleting" them) is actually harmful.

Templates/Categories

1. Determine categories or templates that are not being used/not needed

   No, it won't. Pasting the wikiproject banner on the talk page won't tell you anything about whether the category is being used.

2. Identify categories or templates that might be needed

   How? How exactly do you go about pasting the wikiproject's banner onto a non-existent category's talk page?

3. determine how many categories or templates apply to a project

   Yes, it will do that. But nobody (except you) apparently cares.

Disambiguation pages

1. How many of these do we have

   WP:WikiProject Disambiguation should be able to tell you that already.

2. Identify some that are needed

   How? How exactly do you go about pasting the wikiproject's banner onto a non-existent disambiguation page?

3. Expand the ones that are missing links or only have one link

   No, it won't. Pasting the wikiproject banner on the talk page won't expand any disambiguation pages at all.

4. Identify the ones that are full of red links or have other problems like incorrect formatting

   No, it won't. Pasting the wikiproject banner on the talk page won't fix red links or formatting.

If you want to find double redirects or badly formatted dab pages or empty categories, then just go find them! You don't need to spam wikiproject banners to do these things.

If you want me to support this kind of spam, then you need to identify a worthy goal that cannot be done without creating hundreds or thousands of new talk pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:52, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

WikiLeaks - should we have a hatnote clarifying there is no association between WikiLeaks and Wikipedia?

Just wondered if I could get some more people to weigh in on this discussion. Thanks. --Dorsal Axe 11:44, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

It does seem unfortunate that the names are similar. When I said I was a Wiki editor today, I did get some strange looks until I explained there was no connexion. But let's not have a hatnote on every article please. On the main page only or in the banner only. --Bermicourt (talk) 17:18, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Gah! Don't call it "Wiki"! --Cybercobra (talk) 17:52, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

To clarify: Nobody is advocating hatnotes for every article. This somewhat unorthodox usage was arrived at because of the clear confusion about the relationship (or rather lack of) between WikiLeaks and Wikipedia. It clearly isn't ideal, but this isn't an ideal situation in the first place. It's purpose is to redirect those who misunderstand the relationship to articles that clarify this. Under normal circumstances, this could probably be explained in the body of the text, but it was evident from responses posted on the talk page (and elsewhere) that this needed to be explained as clearly as possible where it was most likely to be seen. If and when the article settles to a more steady state, with a lower viewing rate, we can probably remove the hatnote, and accept the odd bit of confusion that may result. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:52, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Policy on Classification by Ethnicity, Gender, Religion and Sexuality

Hi, I have a problem with the article White Argentine. In the article I mentioned many people who are Argentine by birth and by option (they immigrated when they were children and stayed in Argetnina until their death, or they are now living there). All those people mentioned in the article are perfectly Caucasian by phenotype, and all have European/Middle Eastern ancestry. To see the names, check this older version of the article, for they are now removed. This is because some users appeared criticizing the article and alleging that mentioning all those persons without a source that explicitly define them as "White Argentine/Argentinian" was a breach to Wikipedia's BLP policy. Is that true? Because I read the article of WP policy on categorization by ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality, and the topic "Race" is still under dispute. Besides, one of the users that criticizes the article is also involved in the proposal/discussion/RfC of the policy itself. If the matter isn't still resolved, can they apply a rule that it is not fully valid yet? If I provide sources that every living Argentine mentioned in the article is of predominantly European ancestry, isn't that enough to define him/her as White? Please, help me clarify this doubt.--Pablozeta (talk) 12:29, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Can I point out that Pablozeta has already raised the same point at AN/I. Perhaps someone uninvolved in this particular issue could explain to him why we discourage forum shopping? AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:56, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Minimum no of articles in a category

Is there a guideline or even rule of thumb that states a category should have a minimum no. of articles in order to avoid being deleted for being too small? My searches so far haven't found anything. --Bermicourt (talk) 21:58, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

No but it kinda depends on the category. Do you have an example of the category you are concerned with. --Kumioko (talk) 22:14, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there is any specific threshold, but if there are only two items there is little to be gained with yet another category. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:51, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

In many instances, a category with even one entry is tolerated if it's part of a comprehensive system, such as -by country. postdlf (talk) 23:53, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I would say that three or more would be best. There's no specific policy on it though. If there are too few articles in a category, you should probably take it to CfD and, if the consensus is to delete, upmerge the articles into the next higher category. Silverseren^C 23:53, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually 5-10 articles would be a better rule of thumb. But it all depends which is why there is no specific guidance. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:19, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, there are some categories that would be fine with only having three or four, if they are, say, the major works of some author or something like that. There are a few situations where that amount would be okay. But I agree, most categories have around 8 or more. Silverseren^C 00:26, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

• I don't think a minimum number is a good idea at all. Lately I've looking at some business categories and thinking about starting a "defunct" subcategory for these cats. Why should I have to have an initial number? Categories which start small often have plenty of room to grow. II | (t - c) 00:28, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks folks, that's useful. I guess also if there are fewer than say five to eight articles in a category, a key question is whether the category is likely to grow in future. I also understand that numbers are not the only criterion in deciding whether a category should exist or not. --Bermicourt (talk) 19:57, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Deletion of 500+ images for United States Department of Energy National Laboratories

There are currently 500+ images that I've listed at User:Smallman12q/DOE media which may be non-free, but tagged with a free license. Is it possible that the WMF could send a mass OTRS ticket to the the national laboratories to get permission for the images?Smallman12q (talk) 22:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I glanced at a few and although I don't claim to be an image guru I would say they are all ok because they all appear to be from a government agency on a government site. If you are concerned they are unfree however you could send them an OTRS ticket but I don't think you need too. I will say that there were a couple that I'm not sure meet the notibility requirmements but thats just my opinion. --Kumioko (talk) 22:16, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

After some quick research I found on both the DOE and State department sites statements to the effect of: "Photographs on this site are in the public domain unless a copyright is indicated. Only public domain photos can be reproduced without permission. Citation of this source is appreciated. Permission to reproduce copyrighted photos must be sought from the original source." This one came from the state department and the one for DOE has slightly different wording but the result is the same. --Kumioko (talk) 22:22, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

These images are the works of US Nation Laboratories (which are private, corporate entities that can hold copyright). See also Template_talk:PD-USGov-DOE#NOTE_ON_THIS_TEMPLATE.Smallman12q (talk) 23:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Some might be but the 20 or 30 I looked at were either from the State dept or from DOE so their good if they come from one of those 2 sources. --Kumioko (talk) 05:51, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I picked one at random (File:Formalhaut b.jpg) and looked into it. I believe that the copyright is okay, per this. In fact, I think you could safely presume that anything with hubblesite.org as a source is going to be okay. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:45, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Several of the first few images have been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Files_for_deletion/2010_December_10#File:Artsy_Parabolic_Trough3.jpg.Smallman12q (talk) 18:02, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Pictures of victims

• Pictures of mutilated bodies are included in articles, which may be read by children. Is there a mechanism to prevent childred from being shocked?
• What is your opinion about pictures included in the Holocaust article and the one in Rape during the occupation of Germany? For me there is a kind of a game running, which crime was the most terrible and the Rape... wins. Is this Wikipedia a playground to use victims this way? Xx236 (talk) 13:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

You may want to review Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 79#Photos of Executed Persons for a very similar discussion, and Help:Options to not see an image. In short, Wikipedia is not censored; when determining whether an image should be included in an article, we consider whether it is encyclopedically appropriate to include in a given article rather than any arbitrary standard of "offensiveness" to any particular group. If you want to raise the question of any particular article, the appropriate place is on that article's talk page, possibly with invitations to the discussion on the relevant WikiProjects' talk pages. Anomie⚔ 16:48, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Concur; in fact, sometimes (as in a Vietnam example, Phan Thị Kim Phúc), graphic images are the reason the article exists at all. A lot of these sorts of pictures are/were taken precisely to show what sorts of atrocities were occurring, and it's ironic that some people want to remove them precisely because they depict said atrocities. Besides, the text itself should be a pretty good indicator of how graphic an image will be; when reading articles on concentration camps, it's hard to believe people wouldn't expect images of malnourished people watching corpses burn, because that's exactly what's being described in the text. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:52, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

As far no comments about "we have more terrible images" championship. Nemmersdorf massacre "documentation" was partially fabricated. Xx236 (talk) 11:13, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Phan Thị Kim Phúc and many of the type and Wikileaks documents prove - US/European crimes are documented (sometimes produced) and disseminated, the totalitarian ones aren't. If you are against censorship, go to N-Korea and bring some photos.Xx236 (talk) 11:20, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I think you know it's not that simple; we have photographic evidence, for instance, of the sorts of torture the Burmese government engages in. And despite the efforts of the Chinese, we have plenty of footage of Tiananmen Square in 1989. I could go on, and if you'd like I will, but it's not that black and white. It's true we have more images of what goes on in the US and Europe, but that's just a result of this being an English-language project; it's not like we don't have any pictures of other totalitarian regimes. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:11, 8 December 2010 (UTC)Lest you think I'm all talk, I've seen a fatal car crash unfold in front of me, and I've seen a Latino drowning victim completely cyanotic. Life and death can be very gory, and no amount of hiding these sorts of images will change that; if anything, they serve as a graphic reminder of what people are capable of, which can be a very powerful message.

We await your photos of the gulags in North Korea. What, you don't have any? And can't obtain any? And don't know where any are on the Internet? Then don't criticize us for lacking them. --Golbez (talk) 16:39, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I criticise "cheap" freedom. There is a basic difference between fighting against totalitarian censorship and instrumental usage of pictures of victims. BTW the picture in Rape during the occupation of Germany is a Nazi propaganda product, see Nemmersdorf massacre. Xx236 (talk) 14:31, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Which makes it a perfect tool for showing just how far the Nazis were willing to go to push their propaganda. Would you also like the pictures of Pot Pol's regime taken down, or are those somehow not as gratuitous? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:04, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

General Discussion

Offer a General Discussion tab for all topics! Where else would be a better place to have meta-discussions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.171.44.251 (talk) 14:03, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

No. We are not here to provide general discussions of a subject, but to build an encyclopedia. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:35, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Is Scientology boring? And should we make this policy?

As yet another debate about the CoS kicks off at AN/I, can I propose that Wikipedia declares as a matter of policy that such topics are unequivocally boring. Personally, I find religion in general an interesting topic, as I do many social constructs, but frankly, the sort of debate that centres around Scientology seems so utterly vacuous, and doomed to sink into tit-for-tat Wikilawyering and half-baked sock-puppetry, that it isn't worth the attention. Can I therefore propose that a new template be created to warn the unwary that they are about to be suckered into reading tabloid theology and prepubescent conspiracy theories (from all participants - the CoS at least attempts to pretend to be serious), and that such debates are only of interest to the terminally obsessive? This might allow the uninvolved reader to read something of more use, like disputes over the translation of Manga characters' names into Swahili, or whether the North Pole moves around while you run in circles around it... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:47, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Concur. We should totally make a template something like this:

{{notice|The discussion below consists entirely of [[WP:LAME]] fodder, and should be avoided at all costs. Please do not enter this discussion if you have anything resembling a '''''life''''', and don't want your brain to melt from '''''sheer fucking boredom'''''.}}

The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:59, 13 December 2010 (UTC)It should be noted that I truly respect those who go into the trenches and are willing to sacrifice their time to keep such kookery out; I don't know how you do it, but I really do appreciate it.

I have to say that Scientology is just about the most boring cult/denomination/religion/scifi [delete according to personal taste or prejudice] I've ever come across. DuncanHill (talk) 17:04, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

NO NO NO - Manga character names should never be translated into Swahili, they need transliteration instead. Unless they're produced in a Swahili-speaking nation, of course (where it is one of the top 3 official languages {as ratified in the Great Manga Debate #90210 subclause 42}). Or is it subclause 43? Shall we start an RfC, or just go straight for arb?  Chzz  ►  18:02, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

That's premature. We need first to create and then populate Category:Manga created for consumption in Swahili-speaking nations and/or by Swahili-speaking creators regardless of where situated, after holding three RFCs regarding whether the word "consumption" is offensive to those with tuberculosis. postdlf (talk) 18:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Nonsense! I once called Scientology the greatest show on the Internet, based on books like "A Piece of Blue Sky". Snakes in mailboxes. A woman trying to give birth to the Antichrist in a creepy old mansion. Dissidents locked up in the "chain locker" of a ship so that if anchor would accidentally get raised they'd be ground up, in weird non-national gulags in international waters. People breaking into the FBI and IRS to get their cases dropped - and succeeding! If this seems boring to you, Wikipedia must not be covering the topic well. Wnt (talk) 21:38, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

|}

Definition of consensus

Can someone please point me to the definition of consensus, as it is used here at Wikipedia? Anthony (talk) 16:44, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:CONSENSUS. postdlf (talk) 18:09, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Cheers! Anthony (talk) 02:31, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

That policy is not really a definition, but guidance towards finding consensus. See Wikipedia:What is consensus? for an attempt at definitions, but which fails to get away from "not"s. Consensus decision-making should be read. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:21, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, SmokeyJoe. Anthony (talk) 01:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Criminal–Crime-noted-for

Notice: I've posted a discussion on the wp:MERGE page's discussion page asking about how to determine when to create separate articles about both a criminal and the crime for which s/he is noted and when to combine them.--Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden (talk) 18:05, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/Guidelines has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/Guidelines (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, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Accident article notability has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Accident article notability (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, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Did this gain the kind of outside scrutiny needed for a guideline? Fences&Windows 02:34, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

From the fairly extensive discussions on the talk page, I would think they worked enough scrutiny in there for it. I mean, it's not like the guideline status happened automatically. Silverseren^C 02:56, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

No, not exactly automatically: The decision was apparently taken in a discussion involving two editors, and waiting two weeks to see whether anyone noticed. See today's diff. AFAICT, there were not WP:PROPOSAL-like announcements (e.g., a friendly notice to the main WT:N page).

This guideline contains exactly one sentence about WP:Notability. The entire rest of the page is concerned with WP:DUE weight issues. I don't mind it being a "guideline", but I am not really convinced that it should be categorized as a "notability guideline". WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:37, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I seems like instruction creep to me. Also it's clearly a content guideline and not a notability guideline. Taemyr (talk) 17:14, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

• I must be seeing something different than you. I'm seeing four sections on the page. The top three are all explaining different types of aviation articles and the criteria that they should meet in order to be likely to be considered notable. How is this not a notability guideline? It's written just like other notability guidelines. Take WP:ENT for example. Silverseren^C 20:37, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Here's what I see, using the very first words in the ==Airport articles== section as an example: "Accidents and incidents. Accidents or incidents should only be included in airport articles if:"
    This is not a notability guideline; it does not tell you whether the subject should have its own article. It's a due weight guideline: It tells you what kinds of things are important to include in pre-existing articles. "What to include in this type of article" is content. "This should get a completely separate, stand-alone article" is notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:06, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

More broadly speaking, there are 22 pages in the category Category:WikiProject Aviation guidelines, and I've been wondering whether or not these pages are claiming to be "guidelines" in the official sense of the word? It appears that most of them were written by a single editor (Trevor MacInnis), and they are often cited as representing consensus (I have recently questioned this point here). Is it okay for them to be using the word "guideline" in this case? Thanks, Mlm42 (talk) 21:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I've been wondering if we need to create a specific category for "Wikiproject Guidelines" or if being under a Wikiproject label is specific enough. That is, in the general !democratic ways around WP, policy > guidelines > wikiproject guidelines when it comes to resolving issues, and I would think most editors would recognize that. But we could simply create a new class to specifically call out Wikiproject guidelines, so that, for example, this very announcement wouldn't have happened because the scope of the Wikiproject should not affect VPP. --MASEM (t) 21:31, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

The reason it was considered to be a project guideline was that nearly all the content was copied over from already existing project guidelines. And to answer WhatamIdoing if your read the guideline it clearly discusses the notability of stand alone article in the section Stand-alone articles. The three airport/aircraft/airline sections were to set the scene, basically all the guideline says if it meets the article criteria it may be notable if it also meets some of the general notability guidelines not exactly revolutionary. I know it is not an excuse but I was unaware that this as a forum discussed guidelines at project level it would seem that consensus at project level was all that was required, perhaps Masems suggestion has some merit. MilborneOne (talk) 21:41, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Yup, just like I said: It contains one sentence about notability. The entire rest of the page is good advice (IMO) but it is not advice about notability; it is advice about completeness and giving due weight (specifically, avoiding overemphasis of routine and trivial events). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:13, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Page load time as argument in discussion

On Talk:Pain, Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs) defends the non-use of citation templates with the observation that apparently adding these can increase page load time by 50%.[1] I know the use of citation templates is not mandatory, but I have never seen this as an argument not to use a particular feature. I was wondering if there was a policy about this somewhere, and what others thought about this line of reasoning. JFW | T@lk 08:50, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

• WP:PERFORMANCE would seem relevant. --Cybercobra (talk) 09:13, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Hopefully with a second data center and more staff to improve software delays the slowdown caused by the cite template will be less of a concern. I would prefer to see the cite template used and will definitely keep using it myself.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:33, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
    • JFW and I are discussing this at Talk:Pain#Cite_ref. Anthony (talk) 16:47, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

• I'd have thought the obvious way to deal with this type problem is to have a cache of wikipedia pages with all the templates that aren't dynamic in some way expanded in them. It should be easy enough to figure out automatically which templates are safe like that and just churn the cache redoing the pages every day or so to cope with templates changing. Probably save quite a bit of compute power compared to expanding every time. With this it would be irrelevant to performance if cite templates were used or not. Dmcq (talk) 18:24, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Or, alternately, we could just make citation templates that don't melt the servers. This issue comes up probably once every other month, but no one seems interested in one of the easiest solutions that still allows us to use templates for citation formatting. Template:cite journal for example, supports, AFAICT, 92 parameters, including 9 authors and 4 editors, though some are mutually exclusive. From just a quick glance at the documentation, I can see at least 17 that are probably almost never used in practice, not including things like last9 and editor4-last. Mr.Z-man 21:46, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
    • I don't quite see the benefit of splitting the author names into so many parameters. I find author= sufficient to put all author names in. JFW | T@lk 21:51, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
      • You've clearly not used {{harv}} and {{sfn}} and the ref=harv mechanism. The first=/last= system is necessary for that. And of course {{harv}}, {{sfn}}, et al. are beneficial for articles where multiple pages of the same single source are used. Not least because they reduce the number of times that one has to employ the same citation template over and over! There's a huge helping of irony, here, more on which below. Uncle G (talk) 00:09, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

• outside opinion - The cite templates are ugly and cumbersome so I wouldn't begrudge someone wanting to write out their own refs, just as I wouldn't begrudge someone wanting to come later and convert it to the ugly templates. I would just hope that anyone who converts does the extra formatting work so that the cites don't look so cumbersome and take up half the view screen. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 22:09, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

• Citation templates shouldn't be added without consensus where a different ref format is already in use:

• Wikipedia:Citing sources "... templates should not be added without consensus to an article that already uses a consistent referencing style." And "Because templates can be contentious, editors should not change an article with a distinctive citation format to another without gaining consensus. Where no agreement can be reached, defer to the style used by the first major contributor."

• Wikipedia:Citation templates: "Because templates can be contentious, editors should not add citation templates, or change an article with a consistent citation format to another, without gaining consensus."

The reason is that they add a lot of clutter in edit mode, which can make the text hard to edit, and they slow down load time. See this discussion for an explanation of the latter. When there are lots of them, articles can become hard to open. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 22:17, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I looked through the history of the article, and it appears that the article Pain has an established style that uses cite templates. In any case, the established style should be preserved and whoever tried to change it should be handed a trout for starting the same conversation again. The general rule, as SlimVirgin says, is that the established style should be kept. There is no consensus wiki-wide about whether template citations, or non-template citations, are superior. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:25, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

While I honor SV's automatic defense of the virtues of manual citations, this article has been using citation templates since early 2006. Perhaps we need to change the guidance to say "editors should not add or remove citation templates...".

For myself, I don't think it's important one way or the other. I furthermore don't see any problems at all with having an article that uses both templates and manually formatted citations. What matters to me is what the reader sees, not what the editor typed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

This conversation is happening at two locations, here and Talk:Pain#Cite_ref. I am the editor arguing for handwritten citations on the article Pain and - for ease of following and to avoid duplication - I'm restricting my comments to that venue. Anthony (talk) 04:35, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Unless we are talking about post-expand include size limit, which causes transclusions to break after it's exceeded, WP:PERFORMANCE issues should not be used as an argument for or assistants using citation templates. Exceeding the post-expand include size limit happens rarely because most articles get spun-out before the limit is reached. And in cases where the post-expand include size is exceeded, the preferred method to deal with the problem is by optimizing the template instead of removing it from articles. —Farix (t | c) 20:06, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

The irony of the discussion here, especially what Jfdwolff writes above about not using first=/last=, is that looking at Pain#References I see at least one source cited multiple times just to employ different page numbers and several other sources cited with ranges of pages encompassing the entire source work, where the exact page number(s) supporting the content are not given. The irony is that instead actually using first=/last=, in conjunction with either {{sfn}} or {{harvnb}} (neither of which employ meta-templates and lots of parameters, note), would for starters reduce the number of citations of one of the sources from six instances of {{cite book}} to just one, and allow the provision of the specific page numbers for several others. Uncle G (talk) 00:09, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I was going to try to keep my comments to one venue (the article talk page) but it seems this is where the discussion of that article is happening. With regard to WP:PERFORMANCE, that policy seems to say, don't limit what you do on Wikipedia out of concern you'll slow down or break the wiki: I'm not worried that citation templates will overload or break the wiki. This is not a WP:PERFORMANCE issue. I handwrote the citations at Pain because, whether I'm signed in as an editor, or signed out like a typical reader, on my laptop at home, in an internet cafe or at university, the page opens 50% faster with handwritten citations. This is an accessibility and usability issue, not a WP:PERFORMANCE issue.

Also, you can worry about performance if you can tell the difference yourself. If you find that a page takes ten seconds to load, and takes only one second to load if you remove a particular template, and you can reliably reproduce this and other editors confirm they can too, then obviously the template is slowing down that page. If you would like the page to load faster, then by all means remove or simplify the template. (Bold in original.)

I didn't handwrite those citations because I love to type, because I hate templates, because I like to upset people, because I give a twopence what code I use, to make a point or for any reason other than to improve the reader's experience. Handwritten citations improve the reader's experience.

Re your observations about page numbers, Uncle G, can you please explain to me, perhaps on the article talk page, how I could have cited those so that the reader's experience would have been improved? (I habitually cite the entire page range for journal articles, and specific page numbers for textbooks.) I'd appreciate your advice on that. Updated Anthony (talk) 09:24, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Recommendation to change slightly the policy regarding the edits made by known copyright violators

Background of problem - A recent bot run by User:VWBot to revert hundreds of edits made to articles has, I believe, overstepped the bounds of how we should treat articles that have been edited by copyright violators. In this case, several hundred articles were reverted to a state prior to being edited by Accotink2, a known Sockpuppeteer and who was known to violate copyright on several occassions. The problem with this case, and I suspect others as well, is that this editor also made a lot of good improvements to articles such as adding references or citations. The bot however, based on current policy, assumed that every edit the user ever made was a copyright violation and reverted a lot of articles that didn't need to be reverted. This had/caused several problems:

1. Other editors to have to go through the bots contributions and revert the majority of the 800+ edits that it made
2. It damages the credibility of the CCI and its members
3. It damaged several articles that had passed through FA, A, GA or a peer review process since the offender edited the article.
4. The bot has a known bug that has not yet been fixed
5. When confronted about the issue the bot operator (and other members of the CCI project) dodged comments to fix the bot logic with counter comments like, "if more editors were helping with CCI it woudlnt be necessary", "why don't you help out too then" or "per current policy it can be assumed that all edits made by this editor were a copyright violation."

Its this last point that I want to draw attention too because I think this is the root of the problems we are facing with this bot run and with the overtasked nature of the project in general. I don't think that its necessary to directly assume that all edits are copyvios and I think we can make some logic to filter out some of them out getting to the ones that truly are the problem.

Recommendation - I think if we tweak the wording slightly it will reduce some of the workload of the project, it will reduce the unneeded reversions and will still meet the end result of making sure the Copy violation information has been eliminated. I think there are occasions were we can reasonably assume (although admittedly not 100%) that the violators actions were not harmful or that they have been overcome by events. Here are some things I think we should incorporate into the wording:

1. it can usually be assumed that all edits made by this editor were a copyright violation however if it is obvious that the change was minor or not a copyright violation then it need not be reverted. For example, if the edit added an inline citation, a reference, a link to external links, categories or portal links then there is no need to revert it.
2. Also if the article has gone through a GA, A, FA, FL or peer review process since that editor made the contribution, then the article should be manually reviewed and not edited automatically by a bot or automatically reverted. In fact I would suggest that if it has gone through any of these reviews the article is likely ok but I know there are specific cases where this is not true.
3. Its also likely that if the editor changed a very small number of characters (I'll say 20 for know but it could be a little higher or lower) then there is probably little chance of it being a copyright violation.

All three of the above suggestions could be "filtered and monitored" by a bot but I don't think that the bot should necessarily make changes to the article. I don't know exactly how this should be worded or incorporated but I think this would both cut down on the amount of articles that need to be reviewed and clarify the unnecessarily absolute and heavy handed wording of the currently policy. --Kumioko (talk) 15:04, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't have time at the moment to read your whole comment at this time, so I'll just ask that you please not confuse my bot trial with policy and make it clear which you are attempting to discuss here. Re my bot: it had a bug and was stopped as soon as that was noticed, it has now been fixed but the trial has been left uncompleted pending my review of the first ~half of the run. It would also be nice if you would correct some of your apparent misconceptions which have been repeatedly addressed such as "if the editor changed a very small number of characters (I'll say 20 for know but it could be a little higher or lower)"; such edits were not acted upon and it was never contemplated that they would be. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:18, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I also don't really have time to invest here but I feel I need too. I brought up the bot only to clarify the background of the situation and that the current policy is too absolute. The bot did revert a couple articles that I saw that had very few characters changed although Im not sure how many. My point was that the current policy dictates that any change by an editor found guilty of Copyvio is subject to immediate reversion without hesitation or deliberation and this to me is part of the problem that needs to be changed. --Kumioko (talk) 15:28, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Which policy states that? I have the strong suspicion you don't even know which policy you are proposing to change. Yoenit (talk) 16:42, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copyright violations states "If contributors have been shown to have a history of extensive copyright violation, it may be assumed without further evidence that all of their major contributions are copyright violations, and they may be removed indiscriminately." VernoWhitney (talk) 17:25, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

May is not the same as must or should. Dmcq (talk) 17:54, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

That's part of my point. That was exactly how it was treated. --Kumioko (talk) 18:02, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so we've established that you take issue with the way my bot was run. Since your list of recommendations reads (to me at least) like a list of things to change about my bot before it could even be considered for another run rather than general recommendations, let me see if we can focus the conversation: What specific change do you propose to make to the policy? VernoWhitney (talk) 18:20, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

We have over 40 open CCIs with tens of thousands (or more) articles pending review; if this was treated as "must", it would be a simple matter to clean them, and WP:CCI would be empty. Instead, those of us who work in this area painstakingly review edits for problems. This particular case is exceptional. The policy is specific that this applies only to those with "a history of extensive copyright violation" (emphasis added), and although I have worked copyright almost exclusively for years on Wikipedia, I have seen it applied only a handful of times--generally in cases such as this one, where we are dealing with a prolific sockpuppeting serial copyright infringer. This is a sound policy, and necessary to protect the project. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:24, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree that Copyviolations are extremely important and my problem isn't with the bot alone or the disasterous way it was implemented although that is what brought the issue into my line of sight. It is in the absolute manner in which the policy is written. Additionally this policy change would also benefit you and your team based on your comments MRG. You stated that there were tens of thousands of articles pending review. For example, A bot could be run against that group to identify and possibly flag the articles based on the level (maybe something like High, mid, low or Likely, possible, unlikely) of likelihood that they contain Copyvio. Certainly in your experience you have seen some qualifyers that indicate that an article likely has a copyvio and some that would say its unlikley, then you could work the more likely ones first. I would, in my limited experience on the subject say that some of the qualifyers I identifed above, as well as the ones you know, along with the VWbot, could perform this. I believe this would significantly reduce the amount of time and effort required by you and your team by focusing on the ones that are more likely to be a problem. Another possibility would be to group the problem articles by WikiProject and then notify those projects, via a bot, on the ones that affect them, via the projects talk pages. Then hopefully they could take at least some of them for action. This could also be done if the article talk page contained the Maintained template or determining who the major contributors are to the article and notifying them. These all are surely better than unleashing a bot and sending a dozen or more angry editors running to the talk pages of you, your project, the bot and the bot operators. In the end though the policy seems to be way way too absolute and needs to be refined IMO. --Kumioko (talk) 20:46, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I think the wording of the policy is fine. There are circumstances where we must and do assume that all major contributions are a copyright violation--most recently with User:Darius Dhlomo, whose CCI alone encompassed over 13,000 articles. (I'm happy to say, there's been good community support with that one, although there was dismay when a different bot blanked his articles.) We do routinely notify WikiProjects of CCIs; so far, this hasn't done much to elicit additional assistance, although two stand-out exceptions that occur are the gastropod project and the military history wikiproject. We have had some individuals from other projects pitch in, but no kind of concerted activities. We presume that people who are maintaining articles will be watching them, and the bot's talk page message was intended to invite those contributors to review the edits and help determine whether a valid problem exists. In other words, it trusts to the good faith of the community. As to the bot refinements, I have to leave that question up to people who understand bots (plus, I'm afraid, I'm a bit medicated at the moment--pretty much editing while intoxicated). FWIW, it is never my intention to "dodge comments." I understand the phenomenon of "bystander dismay". Even when there are verifiable copyright issues, I've encountered this. My goal is to educate the community about what we're doing and why and hopefully to get more people involved in fixing these problems so that we don't have lingering cases. I'm sorry to say that our oldest CCI has been languishing for nearly a year and a half. I think if I want to continue functioning, I'd better get off the computer now. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:57, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Thank you for your comments about the CCI process. Can I ask what your suggestion is for refining the policy? VernoWhitney (talk) 21:00, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually I might have a proposed change for the policy. Currently it says major contributions. I would suggest changing this to creative contributions. Major appears to refer to the size of a contribution, but as you are well aware copyvio's have been found in edits of slightly more than 100 bytes. Also edits such as creating tables, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)infoboxes and reference addition can be massive in size, but are not creative work and can't be copyvios. Yoenit (talk) 21:10, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for providing a constructive suggestion (I was beginning to think I had misread the page title). I think that "creative contributions" is probably an improvement on the current phrasing, since it is more precise and that's what we're really concerned about. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:32, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Works for me. Do you think people would understand that "creative contributions" includes images? I wouldn't want there to be any confusion that it meant only what they had created. By the way, now that my medication is beginning to clear, I do have to question some of the presentation here. If it damages the credibility of CCI and those who address it that the community is asked to review content, then there's a disconnect between how the community approaches copyright problems and how it should approach copyright problems. In reverting, the bot leaves a note inviting review, with the expectation that the community at large understands and agrees that copyright review (with a known serial copyright infringer) is worthwhile. I also would really encourage you to reconsider your view of earlier conversations, or at least your characterization of them. I think it is grossly unfair to describe Verno's response as dodging comments. He seems to have been fully open to discussion of the bot's activities, and we don't want to fall into the trap of blaming the messenger. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:20, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

We could make it something like creative contributions (including images) and just hope we don't get a serial copyviolater uploading sound files. Related to MRGs comment, I have just read User talk:VernoWhitney#Article tagging and applaud your ability to stay polite were any sane human would have resorted to screaming. Yoenit (talk) 23:57, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Glad your starting to feel better and and the Medicinal fog is beginning to clear. To be honest the actions done by the bot aren't what I was trying to get into here. I was trying to get some input on changing the policy so the next time we look before we leap instead of using the currently written terminology as a bludgeon. When Verno was initially confronted by myself and several other editors about the actions of the bot we got a mixed response of I welcome the input and "if you don't like it why don't you help out so we won't have to do this bot" (not an exact quote, just paraphrasing in quotes). This was followed by quotes from "the policy" that what the bot was doing was perfectly ok because it is allowed to assume that if an editor is found guilty of copyright violation then it can be assumed that all their edits are copyvio. Clearly in this case not everything was a copyvio and that is what started all this. If the policy is going to be held in that high of regard then we need to clarify when and how the hammer of Copyvio justice can fall. Since it was brought up though I believe, the actions (in this occassion and when it deleted 500 or so articles) did damage the credibility of the CCI project somewhat and I have gotten the impression that there is an err of Copyvio trumps everything else so we are above reproach when it comes to the determination to revert or delete and article. If it was just a message as you say it would have been fine but the result was much more than a message and caused (and continues to) a lot of work for a dozen or so editors. Since its clear that I am alone in the desire to clarify the instructions though I guess I'll just let it go. BTW just because you do not like the suggestions I am giving doesn't mean they are not constructive. --Kumioko (talk) 00:15, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

The work is always there and was not caused by the bot but by the copyright violator. If the bot had not run those edits would have been added to the CCI backlog and would have been dealt with in probably 2-3 years time, but the workload remains the same. Yoenit (talk) 00:34, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Its true that the violator is the one who created the original problem but this problem is because we didn't bother to take the time to properly format the bot. Thereby pushing the work on others rather than doing it right the first time. You can justify the end result anyway you want but the fact remains if the bot hadn't reverted these articles incorrectly we wouldn't even be having this conversation. If the bot can't be programmed to revert the article within reason then it shouldn't be used. Its actions like this that make editors dislike the use of bots and if it continues its actions like this that will get bot use banned completely. Again though we are distracting from the original discussion. --Kumioko (talk) 00:44, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

So far as I know, the bot hasn't deleted any articles, although I deleted several hundred articles contributed by this blocked serial infringer...manually, as I am not a bot operator. Aside from the recent few that fit within Special:Nuke, I checked every one of them first to make sure that they met the criteria of WP:CSD#G5. That said, there is no policy that says that "if an editor is found guilty of copyright violation then it can be assumed that all their edits are copyvio." Policy is quite clear, as quoted above, that this is a measure to be applied only when contributors "have a history of extensive copyright violation" (emphasis added). I realize it may be inconvenient, having to verify that content is free of copyright concerns, but when there is an extensive and documentable history of copyright violation on the part of a specific contributor, I would hope that others could overlook that, since presumably we share an interest in meeting the goal of disseminating free content. The bot's performance can be improved, and its maiden run in this task is a good opportunity to constructively note thatroom for improvement, but the essential function of the bot has already met consensus. There is now on table a tangible proposal to clarify policy. Does this meet your approval? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 04:40, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

In response to the latest suggestion: how about tweaking it to "creative contributions (including files)"? That should head off the possibility of overlooking sound file/video/etc. copyvios. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:47, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think this change to "creative contributions" is going to work for me. We'd have to make up a new wikidefinition of the word "creative". If the contribution is actually creative, then that contribution is not actually a copyright infringement. Copyvio = non-creative duplication of someone else's work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:28, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I see what you're saying. I think what we're trying to get across is that it may be presumed copyvio if they include any creative content, because it could very well be someone else's creativity they're including. Does that make sense? VernoWhitney (talk) 20:10, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I understand your goal. I do not think your proposed means will actually reach your goal. I think, instead, they will introduce a confusing layer of wikijargon ("well, when we say creative, we mean something other than what the dictionary says..."), add needless instruction creep (we can deal with this situation without changing the written policy), and promote a world of wikilawyering and mindlessness rather than thoughtfulness and common sense.

IMO, the existing policy is not so far from perfect that it needs to be changed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Outline articles

I was under the impression that WP:ROOT was rejected. However, WP:OUTLINE looks to be exactly the same thing and there is a veritable forest of "Outline of" articles in this encyclopedia. [2] Was there discussion about this that allows outline pages but not root pages? (this confusing discussion is the closest I could find.) If not, should some or all of these outline pages be deleted? A great deal of them look like synthetic amalgams better suited to something like DMOZ.

jps (talk) 04:28, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

See also: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Contents/Outlines

This deletion nomination refers to wanting to be rid of all Outlines, yet it is only nominating the Portal. No valid debate can be had with such a confused nomination. Fences&Windows 02:33, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the reasoning behind these outline pages, surely a portal page, something we already use and that has consensus support, is a better option? I think this is something a small group of user that wanted to do this just went ahead and did. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:50, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

FPC "voting period"

Surely it is not right that the standard FPC template refers to a "voting period" ? ╟─TreasuryTag►constablewick─╢ 08:51, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• Why not? Call it a poll or a shill but it's still a vote. Keep it simple. East of Borschov 10:41, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

  It's not a vote. Try reading WP:VOTE with your eyes open this time. ╟─TreasuryTag►voice vote─╢ 09:12, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

  Protip: Don't insult people. --Golbez (talk) 22:27, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

  Protip: if someone links to a a guideline explicitly stating, "Wikipedia decisions are not made by popular vote," then it is foolish and borderline disruptive to insist to the contrary. ╟─TreasuryTag►sundries─╢ 23:30, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Urgent appeal banner

I know this has been brought up before. Probably repeatedly. I don't care. It's becoming increasingly insulting that, despite having closed the banner multiple times, Jimmy Wales continues to bug me for money:

“ I'm a volunteer.

I don't get paid a cent for my work at Wikipedia, and neither do our thousands of other volunteer authors and editors.

”

Likewise, James Jimmy. I've given countless hours of my time researching, writing, and maintaining thousands and thousands of articles and images for Wikipedia over the last six years, not to mention the time I've put in protecting the articles from vandalism, or maintaining the processes of the site.

Yet, for some reason, he keeps reappearing to bug me for money. I don't recall ever having been paid a cent for my work here, work that has undoubtedly improved the site's standing with people who WOULD pay a cent. I, and many other thousands like me, are exactly the reasons WHY people will donate to Wikipedia. Because of our hard work, Wikipedia exists and needs money to continue existing. Just don't insult me by taking my labor for free, willingly offered and delivered, and then having the gall to ask me to donate further, after I politely said "no" by clicking the X. I'm getting tired of it.

There's two possibilities here, both annoying but only one malicious: either the programmers are so inept as to be unable to code the site to remember who has closed the banner, or someone is consciously restoring the banner ad to those who have closed it. I rather like the coders, so I hope that is not the situation, which leaves open the malicious option of someone choosing to annoy the kind volunteers of this site whom have already expressed no desire to donate at this time. This seems much more likely than inept programmers.

So here's a policy request: When someone closes a banner, don't roll your eyes and throw that out. Respect your users well enough to stop displaying it when they have closed it.

I will not be donating money to Wikipedia; stop asking. Haven't I donated enough already? --Golbez (talk) 20:05, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

The fundraising team (or the higher-ups) don't want anyone to be able to dismiss it for longer than 7 days, I believe. You can read more about it at m:Talk:Fundraising 2010#Length of dismiss button effect. As a side note, the source you quoted from is full of half-truths and poor logic! Killiondude (talk) 20:13, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, and I fixed your link. This quote is annoying: "I think it's going to remain at one week - however I don't believe clicking the X button 8 times in a campaign is an unreasonable burden in the grand scheme of things. If you disagree, you can change your user preferences to have the banners permanently disabled." It's not about the "burden"; it's about the disrespect the foundation apparently has for those of us who actually create something on Wikipedia. It's not that we're annoyed having to click eight times; it's that we're annoyed that, despite donating so much of our time and energy, that the simple act of clicking off a banner and choosing not to donate money at this time is wholesale ignored. You wouldn't exist without us. So stop harassing us. Respect us. --Golbez (talk) 20:20, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I think there's also a way of dismissing it permanently by editing your preferences or something, but it bothers me so little that I didn't take the time to do it. I find it faintly amusing, for the most part. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:16, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

His name is Jimmy, not James. And if you're logged in, you can easily disable the banners. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:25, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

So noted and edited. And that doesn't matter; the fact that they think they should harass long-standing editors who have already donated countless hours to making Wikipedia something worth donating money to because "it's not an unreasonable burden" betrays a lack of respect for us. We shouldn't have to click anything more than a single X to dismiss a banner, period. The fact that it returns - without, at the very least, explicit reasoning as to why or explicit instructions as to how to make the X actually do what Xs tend to do - just furthers that. Before today, I didn't care. But now that it popped again for the nth time, I'm seriously wondering what the Foundation sees in us that it simply does not care that we have denied to donate money at this time. --Golbez (talk) 20:34, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. Preferences, gadgets, browsing gadgets, Suppress display of the fundraiser banner. Respect. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:29, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Or, they could respect us when we click the X. If they truly were interested in having us close it, they would inform us when we click it that it was not a permanent solution and we would have to do these things. So as it is, it still reeks of a lack of respect. The presence of options to remove it doesn't change the fact that the single visible option is a farce. They could change that - either inform us when we click it that it is temporary and explain how to fix it, or make the dismissal actually work. Any less is an insult. --Golbez (talk) 20:34, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the foundation's fundraiser has been disrespectful towards it's editors. In fact, I am grateful for all their fundraising efforts. Clicking a small X a few times doesn't bother me; in fact I'm interested in how the fundraiser is going, and regularly check on its progress. Since the fundraiser is two months long, it seems reasonable to remind the regular editors, from time to time, that it's still going on. I don't see how that's disrespectful. Mlm42 (talk) 21:46, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Why do I, having told them multiple times that I am not interested in donating beyond my time and energy, need to be "reminded" of an ongoing fundraiser? Were I had money to donate beyond my time, I would be most interested in doing so. However, I don't appreciate being badgered to donate when I have clicked what, based on previous people's statements as well as mine, is something that is assumed to work. Dismiss it. Permanently, at least for this fundraising period. It's disrespectful because it completely disregards my actions and choices in the matter. They made a deliberate decision to periodically undo the conscious decision by the registered user to dismiss the banner, in other words putting their repeated (and ineffectual, since the question has already been asked and answered) demand for a donation of money above the decisions of those, especially long-time registered users who frankly have donated far more valuable material than money, who have seen it and chosen not to. It's akin to unsubscribing from a mailing list - I click unsubscribe, I'm right back a week later. Oh, it's a simple enough thing to add a rule to my mail client to block those mails completely, but I shouldn't have to. They should respect the decision of the user to unsubscribe, or to dismiss the banner. And it's even worse in this case because they're doing it to badger people to donate who, in many cases, already have donated a vast amount.

The long story short is: I've donated thousands of hours to Wikipedia. I have dismissed the banner multiple times. But the foundation apparently doesn't care about either of those, undoing my dismissal without giving any reason why (I think that's my biggest annoyance here; if you're going to allow the user to do something they may think is permanent but is not, sack up and tell them so, rather than just coyly throwing it back at them a week later), and at the same time bugging me to donate more? How dare you. Respect my wish to stop asking (Or, again, at the very least, respect me enough to not lie to me by offering a dismiss button which doesn't actually dismiss it; inform me of this unexpected situation and explain how to remedy it), respect my actions as a long-time editor, and maybe next time I'll throw a few krugerrands your way. --Golbez (talk) 22:21, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh for heavens sake tick the checkbox in your preferences. What you're saying, to me, is "I'm not prepared to use the means provided to achieve the ends I seek, and would rather carp at great length about the fact that the method I'm using isn't achieving the end." Really; FFS. No sympathy. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:43, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Fundamentally, if they respected the people who make Wikipedia worth donated to, they wouldn't lie to our face in the same breath as asking for more money. They truly want to let me close the banner? Then either keep it closed, or inform me that what I just did didn't work. If they don't then be honest about it. --Golbez (talk) 14:32, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The public side of fundraiser development is mostly located on Meta (m:Fundraising 2010). I agree that a 7-day recurrence period is rather annoyingly short, but complaining about it here is unlikely to be effective. Dragons flight (talk) 23:09, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Any recurrence period is annoyingly short. --Golbez (talk) 14:32, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Double Standard application of rules

An "admin", posted on a front page discussion that I was violating personal attack rules. This is right. But what was also right, he was exercising double standards. This is because I was defending myself against someone that explicitly, clearly and unequivocally said that I blame ALL wikipedians to be Fascists (while that was ridiculous since I'm also a wikipedians since I post here. I clearly meant specific ones). He never said that to him. He let him attacking me. That was also done by someone else below him. Someone else tried to find "evidence" that I blame ALL wikipedians to be fascist. He never said anything to him either. I suppose, to be allowed here to do personal attacks, act like a gang and destroy discussion with bullying, you have to be "polite" about it. Just like how the British Empire would slaughter people in African Colonies. "But we are polite at least!". Hypocrites. --Leladax (talk) 07:22, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Calm down. In your excitement you are in danger of starting an entirely spurious argument as a result of your gratuitous criticism of the British Empire which some might find a little sweeping, superficial and one-sided, and does nothing to support your cause. And please note this is a policy discussion forum, not a dispute resolution page. --Bermicourt (talk) 08:25, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts is the place to go with complaints like that and they'll talk nicely and try and calm you down. They won't agree with you because as you say you engaged in a personal attack. This fuming is not worth it, one day if you're not run over by a car you'll be old and suffering from heart disease or dementia or crippling rheumatism or a combination with something else nasty. Have a walk, dance, skip in the sun, sing while you can. Dmcq (talk) 10:54, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

"Sing while you can"!!! ROFL OMG. Too good, dude. I'm already humming to Lady Gaga. I love that Poker Face. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 17:40, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Guidelines vs. Guidelines

This was discussed briefly above, but I'd like to start a new section because my concern is more broad than the specific guideline which was being discussed. Many WikiProjects have their own guidelines and style guides, created to ensure consistency across a large class of articles. I think this is a good idea. But there is a problem: A WikiProject guideline could be written by a single editor with no prior discussion, and possibly without consensus. Existing tags, such as {{essay}}, or {{Draft proposal}} seem inappropriate (and, indeed, are rarely on such guidelines).. and with no tags, editors may come across a WikiProject guideline page and think there is wide consensus on its contents (as is the case for real guidelines).. not realizing it was written by some guy four years ago with no prior discussion!

So I'd like to propose the use of a yet-to-be-created tag (maybe called {{WikiProject Guideline}}) which lets readers know the guideline may only be supported in it's entirety by a small number of editors, and possibly encourages further discussions. Of course, some specific issues in WikiProject guidelines have, no doubt, been discussed at length; so I think it would be nice if WikiProject guidelines were to include in-line citations of these discussions, to emphasize which points in fact do have broad consensus.. maybe in-line references to discussions could also be encouraged in such a tag. Does that sound like a good idea? Mlm42 (talk) 00:52, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

As one that suggested a similar idea above, I support this, even if it is obvious that WProject-level guidelines should be considered less binding than normal policy and guideline. When tag soup starts flying and I see some new letters that refer to a project level guideline, it would be a good helpful reminder that such are not necessary consensus of the broader editor population. --MASEM (t) 00:58, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

We have Category:Style guidelines of WikiProjects. (See also Category:WikiProject resources.)

On the one hand, I think this is a fine idea: If the advice enjoys support largely from "WikiProject Tiny Minority" rather than the whole community, then "WikiProject guideline" is a much more appropriate tag than "(Official) guideline"

On the other hand:

• I'm not sure what's wrong with tagging these advice pages as essays (ideally in some appropriate sub-category, e.g., by using {{Wikiproject notability essay}} rather than plain {{Essay}}).
• I'm concerned about people writing "WikiProject 'guidelines'" that directly contradict the community's consensus, and then imposing their views on articles within their scope (see WP:WikiProject Council/Guide#Advice_pages, which exists because of repeated prior problems).
• I'm concerned about other people saying "Well, that guideline has had widespread support from the community for years, but it really only applies to a single subject area, so it's "just" a WikiProject guideline, not a Real™ guideline." (This could be said of the overwhelming majority of the naming conventions, for example.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:27, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I actually wasn't aware of the {{Wikiproject notability essay}} tag, but that's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, but one that addresses article content rather than notability. I think it's beneficial to have something different from an "essay" tag, because I doubt many WikiProject editors would be happy with their style guidelines being tagged with {{essay}} - that tag really says: "You don't have to follow this guideline". But for the sake of consistency among articles, something stronger is desirable - like a tag suggesting "WikiProject consensus".

I think there are many editors who don't realise the "obvious" fact that WikiProject consensus is considerably weaker than Wikipedia-wide consensus.. I have only become aware of the difference recently, for example. It appears that the concept of "WikiProject consensus" is recognized by many experienced editors anyway, so it makes sense to tag these guidelines with something that alerts other editors, who not familiar with the concept, of what's going on. Mlm42 (talk) 06:20, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I just changed the formatting and tweaked the text for that template; I hope it's a little easier to read now.

If you don't mind the pages being technically called essays, then you and I could just go off and boldly create an appropriate template.

What kinds of "content" do you have in mind? Style? Verification? Article formatting? Something else? Can you identify a couple of pages that would benefit from such a tag? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, those changes look good. The pages I had in mind were "style guides" like Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Style guide/Layout (Airports); notice this also deals with article formatting. There's a whole category of these kinds of pages in Category:Style guidelines of WikiProjects (of which I have looked at very few).

I think WikiProject's are more likely to accept their guidelines being called essays if the wording of the template isn't as blunt as the wording of {{essay}}. Mlm42 (talk) 16:13, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I've taken a stab at it: What do you think of the brand-new {{WikiProject style advice}}? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for linking that WikiProject Council/Guide section, WhatamIdoing. Hadn't seen it before and <3 it. It's long settled that Wikiproject guidelines can be useful resources but individual wikiprojects can't make site-global community 'binding' Guidelines. As recently as last year I remember you'd see projects moving their member styleguides outside of being Wikiproject subpages and adding MoS tags (1 > 2 > 3 and 4 happened to be ones I saw), commonly with an aim to give it more "weight". Has that sort of thing all stopped now? –Whitehorse1 21:01, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
• I took a look at your new template. I like it. :) –Whitehorse1 21:01, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the template is good idea but it is a bit confusing that the term essay on style links to a category that discusses guidelines. Perhaps we need a new term for a project guide that doesnt use one of the terms that are used for non-project use policy/guideline/essay. Perhaps a new term would answer the problem about the confusion between what are local non-binding guides/consensus and the agreed wikipedia ones. MilborneOne (talk) 21:58, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

If you think that a "guideline" is "an advice page that was proposed to, and accepted by, the community", then none of these pages are "guidelines". (If you use the definition of "a guideline is anything anyone spammed the word 'guideline' into the top of," then you'll think the cat name is correct.) But fixing the cat name requires a trip to CFD and intervention by an admin, which is beyond my current goals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:15, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, the new template looks good. I agree with MilborneOne, that although these are technically "essays" in Wikipedia jargon, more casual editors may get confused by the use of the word "essay" here. But I don't have any better ideas, so I'm happy with it. Mlm42 (talk) 21:17, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Deleted page archives

I think we should make an "deleted page archive" type of thing, that archives deleted articles, excep those who are appearant vandalism and libel. Some people will have a trivial interest in looking at old articles, and it could be user for reference matters at a later time. MikeNicho231 (talk) 15:35, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

There are off-wiki sites which preserve deleted articles, you could try looking there. Otherwise there isn't much of a compelling reason to preserve them on-wiki, except in cases where someone requests that a deleted article is placed in their userspace so it can be actively fixed up. If something is worth keeping, it is worth keeping. If it wasn't worth keeping, then it wasn't. There's not much grey area here. See also this page which nicely outlines past responses to your exact question. --Jayron32 15:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Also see meta:Inclupedia, wikia:Annex, Deletionpedia. Fences&Windows 21:25, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

NOBOOMERANG

Based on what I've encountered in WP:ANI and other noticeboards, I'd like to suggest the following policy under the name WP:NOBOOMERANG:

1) Posting to a noticeboard to report another editor opens you up to inquiry regarding any of your actions that are directly related. There is no immunity for reporters.

For example, if you report someone for incivility, it is entirely relevant whether you were also uncivil or baited them. In the same way, if you report someone for WP:3RR violation, any edit-warring you are currently engaging in on that article is relevant.

The end result is that bringing up a problem that you are part of may result in you being sanctioned, perhaps even to the exclusion of the other parties, as your actions may have created mitigating circumstances for them.

2) The initial complaint defines and limits the scope of the report. A report is not an opportunity to bring up unrelated matters, although if such a matter is not stale, it may still be reported elsewhere. However, that additional report must be made separately and placed in the appropriate forum, where it will be resolved independently.

For example, if you report someone for incivility, it is not relevant whether you were yourself uncivil to someone else in a different article or at a different time. If you report someone for WP:3RR violation on one article, it is irrelevant whether you edit-warred on this article in the past or are edit-warring right now on some other article. Of course, the latter case would be a reasonable basis to file a separate report.

The goal is to prevent reporting editors from having unrelated matters piled on top of the report to distract from its goals and to penalize participants. Counter-reporting unrelated incidents is permitted but strongly discouraged, as such reports will be viewed more skeptically with regard to motive.

3) While any editor is free to comment on a report, extreme discretion should be used with regard to speaking against an editor when there is a conflict of interest or history of disputes. You must identify any of these factors and be especially careful with regard to keeping comments within the scope of the report. Third-party comments that violate this must not be deleted, but but must not be replied to, and may be hatted or otherwise minimized if they prove to be distracting.

For example, if an editor with whom you are engaged in an content dispute files a complaint about someone else's behavior and you wish to participate in the discussion, you must state that you are in conflict with them and avoid making undue generalizations. If, after you report an editor for edit-warring, someone who you've had a conflict with comes in and starts posting complaints about your prior behavior, it is be considered out of scope.

The goal is to prevent outside editors from ganging up and importing drama.

I would appreciate any comments, particularly constructive ones. Dylan Flaherty 19:57, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

What is this supposed to add to our existing policies? Seems like wp:instruction creep. I don't understand the name either. Yoenit (talk) 20:08, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for raising these clear concerns. I will do my best to briefly explain.

The suggested policy's name and purpose is related to WP:BOOMERANG, which is an essay warning about the risk of unwanted consequences from reporting incidents. While I strongly agree with the general premise that reporting an incident does not grant you immunity for your role in it, I have repeatedly found that attempts to report on a very specific item can quickly turn into a free-for-all, as third parties pile on unrelated claims, old grudges and sweeping generalizations. As such, I believe that this policy, or something substantively similar to it, fills a need and would improve the editing process. The primary benefit is that it would impose enough structure for reports to be resolved without distraction.

I hope this answers your questions. Please feel free to ask follow-up questions or make other suggestions. Dylan Flaherty 20:16, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I can see a problem with number 2, and that's that it doesn't let you establish that some behavior is part of a pattern unless you're the one starting the discussion. For example, if user A reports user B for edit warring, its certainly relevant if user B was also edit warring last week, even if that instance is now "stale." But if user A doesn't mention a pattern of edit warring in the initial complaint, is user C allowed to bring it up later? Also, if bringing up behavior of the other party in the discussion they start is prohibited, and starting a separate discussion is "strongly discouraged," you're creating a major disincentive to try to work things out, as the first person to file a report essentially "wins" and the other person is kind of screwed.

Telling people not to reply to comments without consideration for the content of the comment is just ridiculous. Either the comment is unhelpful, in which case it should be ignored, or its relevant, in which case the person making the comment isn't that important. I agree with Yoenit, except for the first one, which is just a codification of common practice, this seems like instruction creep. Mr.Z-man 21:12, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

That's an interesting analysis. I agree that item 1 is just a restatement of the status quo, except for the addition of "directly related". However, I'm not sure that item 2 leads to the situation you've described by example. I think that this hinges very much on the notion of relevance.

To go with something much like your example, imagine that A and B edit war in the first week of the month. This is reported and the page is protected for a week. In the second week, the protection is removed and the two editors continue to work on the article. However, A has learned their lesson and has sworn off edit-warring but B has not. As a result, A reports B.

I would think it's quite relevant that B is continuing to edit war after having done so previously, so it's perfectly fine if C brings it up. But if D comes in and argues that A is equally guilty due to having edit-warred, this would be exactly the sort of intentional distraction that WP:NOBOOMERANG seeks to limit. And then if E comes in and says A is being uncivil right this moment on yet another article, even more so.

Under my understanding, E would be asked to file a complaint in the proper venue, presumably WP:WQA or WP:ANI and D would simply be ignored. Additions such as C's would be allowed, unless they were made less relevant by factors such as age. For example, if B had edit-warred on the article a few years ago, I'm not sure that this is significant.

Putting aside, for the moment, the question of whether WP:NOBOOMERANG correctly codifies the rules, what would you think of the scenario I just outlined? In specific, do you believe that allowing C, ignoring D and sidelining E is the right way to go? If not, I'm especially interested in what you believe the right way would be. Dylan Flaherty 21:28, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

When any editor comments on ANI, it's possible that that posting is itself an incident worthy of being posted about on ANI, and there's no point in bureaucratic dissection of where the posting should be discussed - it should be discussed right there. Even without the other bureaucratic issues in your proposal, the fact that it would interfere with this sort of discussion is a big flaw. — Gavia immer (talk) 21:35, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I think you're bringing up a situation that's not accounted for in the trio above. Let me see if I understand:

In this scenario, A reports B for edit-warring and B responds by using a vulgarity. This response is itself something that needs to be dealt with, and ideally not by launching yet another report.

Is that what you mean? Dylan Flaherty 21:38, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

No, I mean the regrettably common situation where Alice posts on ANI something like "Please go interfere with what Bob is doing, because he's a big poopyhead", and there's plainly nothing actionable about Bob's edits even if he really is a big poopyhead. The fact that Alice is attempting to use ANI to interfere with Bob is itself worthy of immediate consideration on ANI, and rightly so. Any bureaucratic verbiage about how to "properly" consider Alice's actions is harmful nonsense. — Gavia immer (talk) 21:45, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Let me try to accommodate your points:

Version 2:

1) Posting to a noticeboard to report another editor opens you up to inquiry regarding any of your actions that are significantly related. There is no immunity for reporters, nor any immunity for statements made by anyone in the context of the report.

For example, if you report someone for incivility, it is entirely relevant whether you were also uncivil or baited them. In the same way, if you report someone for WP:3RR violation, any edit-warring you are currently engaging in on that article is relevant. If someone launches a false or baseless report, they may be sanctioned for it.

The end result is that bringing up a problem that you are part of may result in you being sanctioned, perhaps even to the exclusion of the other parties, as your actions may have created mitigating circumstances for them.

2) The initial complaint defines and limits the scope of the report. A report is not an opportunity to bring up unrelated matters, although if such a matter is not stale, it may still be reported elsewhere. However, that additional report must be made separately and placed in the appropriate forum, where it will be resolved independently. Note that a matter caused by a comment made in the report itself is handled as part of the report.

For example, if you report someone for incivility, it is not relevant whether you were yourself uncivil to someone else in a different article or at a different time. If you report someone for WP:3RR violation on one article, it is irrelevant whether you edit-warred on this article in the past or are edit-warring right now on some other article. Of course, the latter case would be a reasonable basis to file a separate report. If one of the participants were to hurl vulgarities, this would be dealt with right then and there, without a need to file anything separately.

The goal is to prevent reporting editors from having unrelated matters piled on top of the report to distract from its goals and to penalize participants. Counter-reporting unrelated incidents is permitted but strongly discouraged, as such reports will be viewed more skeptically with regard to motive.

3) While any editor is free to comment on a report, extreme discretion should be used with regard to speaking against an editor when there is a conflict of interest or history of disputes. You must identify any of these factors and be especially careful with regard to keeping comments within the scope of the report. Third-party comments that violate this must not be deleted, but but must not be replied to, and may be hatted or otherwise minimized if they prove to be distracting.

For example, if an editor with whom you are engaged in an content dispute files a complaint about someone else's behavior and you wish to participate in the discussion, you must state that you are in conflict with them and avoid making undue generalizations. If, after you report an editor for edit-warring, someone who you've had a conflict with comes in and starts posting complaints about your prior behavior, it is be considered out of scope.

The goal is to prevent outside editors from ganging up and importing drama.

For your convenience, here's the diff. Please let me know if this resolves your concerns. Dylan Flaherty 21:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

If the above was addressed to me, the answer is that your point 2, "The initial complaint defines and limits the scope of the report", is always going to be a concern, because it will frequently be the wrong way to discuss real issues. As far as I can tell, your proposal is all about that point 2, and so that issue will always be there. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:26, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that any one of the three is the most important, because I don't see how they could work independently of each other. But, putting aside the items and speaking of the goal, my concern is with the case of A reporting B and then B or C raising issues that have nothing to do with B's behavior. Note that if what B or C mention is relevant, then there's nothing stopping them.

Do we want irrelevant accusations brought up? Dylan Flaherty 22:32, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Point one seems to be entirely frivolous and should generally be left to common sense. Point two I honestly don't see the reason for. As has been mentioned, an initial report may not give the whole picture about the behavior of the user being reported. By only allowing discussion to be about what was initially reported will allow certain editors to game the system. Point three is completely unenforceable, in part because of problems with Point 2. None of these are worthy of making a policy, much less a guideline out of. —Farix (t | c) 23:26, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any way to game the system under these rules. Let me give you an example.

Imagine that A wants to game the system, so they report on B, limiting the scope to some things B did, out of context. Nothing stops B or anyone else from bringing up significantly relevant things that A did, preventing any gaming. However, if B decides to game the system by bringing up irrelevant things, they are stopped.

Which part of this is wrong? Dylan Flaherty 00:11, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Apart from hopeless instruction-creep? What is wrong is that questions of what is and is not relevant are nuanced, not black and white. Trying to legislate against "irrelevant things" is Canute-like in its conception. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:10, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Coincidentally, Canute was a good friend of mine. He taught he many lessons about legislating beyond our power. One of them is that you don't need to legislate common sense, you just need to legislate the opportunity to apply it.

In the case of relevance, we cannot and should not even try to legislate it in black and white. We can and should offer a few clear-cut examples, as above, but then we have to count on people to use that stuff between their ears.

The key is that, as soon as someone brings up a new issue, the first question will be "Is this relevant?" and if no relevance is found, then this can be dismissed as a distraction. To put it another way, if I had to cut down the full text of NOBOOMERANG to a slogan, it would be: "Don't get distracted." Dylan Flaherty 03:34, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

If the majority of the admin corps is incapable of doing that without being explicitly told to do it, then we have serious problems that no amount of telling people not to get distracted will solve. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:36, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to pointedly avoid that topic, but I'm thinking that maybe my entire approach is wrong. I went about this procedurally, coming up with a system that solves the problem. The reception has been uniformly negative, with a large does of what's-the-point. Perhaps I need to recast this in terms of goals. Dylan Flaherty 04:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

You'll find that the Wikipedia community is very reluctant to create new rules, when general consensus will do. We're more interested in results than formal procedure, only creating procedure when we find that people are reluctant to cooperate. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:22, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm personally not a fan of formal procedures and would not be suggesting these if there weren't a serious problem in the system. I'm therefore not particularly concerned one way or the other whether NOBOOMERANG gets traction. My concern is in finding a solution to a very serious problem. Any ideas you might have in that direction would be valued. Dylan Flaherty 18:37, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The serious problem is that people do not always agree on stuff. The community is relatively well settled in its belief that it has in place the necessary policies; and fairly well established procedures. The bar to the addition of new policy or procedure in the areas of dispute minimisation is enormously high. Your boomerang solution, to me, seemed to rely on people agreeing to stuff (e.g. what was relevant and what was irrelevant) in the course of a disagreement. That is to say, your solution to the problems arising out of disagreement is that everyone should agree. I trust you can see for yourself the obvious flaw in your expectations. Oh. And the name sucked. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:47, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I make no attempt to defend the marketing. :-) The current dispute resolution process also depends on people agreeing. For example, agreeing that someone violated a rule. My core suggestion is that we make it standard to at least ask whether a new topic is relevant. Right now, this seemingly obvious question doesn't come up, and attempts to bring it up are taken as hostile. That's the deep problem here. Dylan Flaherty 19:49, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I see plenty of instances of people questioning the relevance of strands of arguments; I don't think we lack the asking of the question. We lack, in some cases, the ability to come to a consensus about the answer, Mandating that discussions must be on topic only works to the extent that you can get consensus as to what is & what is not on topic. In an adversarial dispute, no assistance is lent by the proposed policy. At best, the playing field is tilted a little, in that there's one more policy stone to be lobbed by one side or the other. The dispute resolution procedures do not depend on complete consensus; few of those blocked agreed to that conclusion. So. Where are we going with this. I complain about you, there's a rule preventing you bringing off topic stuff into the discussion ... except you don't think it is off topic. All sounds like more fuel for the fire. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:23, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

As you said, consensus does not mean complete agreement, but the difference is in the default. Right now, the burden is on the party pointing out that the new topic is irrelevant, and this is often an insurmountable burden. I'm saying that the burden must be on the other side. If someone brings up a new point and can't make a strong argument for why it matters, out it goes. Dylan Flaherty 23:50, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

My proposed wording for NOBOOMERANG. Do not act in a manner that will give other users opportunity to use an unrelated retaliatory argument against you if you have reason to bring a situation to WP:ANI or other noticeboards. Seriously... --Onorem♠Dil 00:13, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I oppose this on all grounds. I find a total and complete lack of need to define the scope of discussions in this manner. --Jayron32 00:29, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Even if we defined the scope and prohibited introduction of any tangential topics, it wouldn't stop the undesirable behavior: Aggrieved editors would then just open "completely unrelated" discussions about the out-of-scope problems. We've got enough of that going on now, and we don't need to formalize that as the only possible approach to having your whole story heard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:34, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Yup. This proposal wouldn't prevent editors from doing what it's meant to prevent; it would just move the discussions around a bit. — Gavia immer (talk) 01:49, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

• Instruction creep? More like Instruction Gallop. Collect (talk) 01:54, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

If a relative noob can butt in here with a comment, doesn't this really just come down to 'keep discussions at AN/I on topic', and 'deal with the issue in hand, and don't rehash old conflicts'? And aren't these the same principles that should be applied anywhere? Not only does this proposed policy appear to me to add little new that might actually improve discussions, it looks fertile ground for further arguments itself. Disputes are best solved by clear and consistent application of core principles, not by formulating complex rules that can themselves generate tangential debates about what exactly is permissible. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:05, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

You might be a noob, but that's not a noob question. The reality is that those two quotes are not currently rules, and in practice, they are more the exception than the rule. If NOBOOMERANG comes down to "Stick to the topic and deal with the issue at hand instead of unrelated matters", then that would be a major improvement over the status quo. I urge you to take a look for yourself, to confirm what I've said. Dylan Flaherty 05:31, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I've been watching AN/I etc for some time (mostly on the basis that if you want to understand how something works, take a good look at when it doesn't), and can see the problems you refer to, Dylan. I'm just not at all convinced you can legislate away disputes by increasingly-complex rules about how they should be conducted. The whole system encourages a bureaucratic/legalistic approach over what is often nothing more than a difference of opinion. This isn't a court of law, and perhaps we need reminding that fighting battles as if it is, rather than just agreeing to differ and accepting that a flawed Wikipedia is better than no Wikipedia, is getting our priorities all wrong. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:03, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm convinced that the procedural approach I initially took is a lost cause here. Perhaps, instead of a bureaucratic/legal cure, the best solution is the rule I made by combining your two quotes. Dylan Flaherty 07:00, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

"You'll find that the Wikipedia community is very reluctant to create new rules"? Well, 2 years ago there were about 40 policy pages. There are now 56. And nobody seems to know how many guidelines there are. Hundreds. Nuff said? Peter jackson (talk) 15:56, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is more of a modification of existing rules than an addition. Dylan Flaherty 18:31, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Just call it a rebuttal essay and tag it as an essay. Gigs (talk) 16:54, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

If You Want Our Money...

I love Wikipedia. Or, more accurately, I love the IDEA of Wikipedia. I used to devote/volunteer upwards 30 to 40 hours a week to creating new and editing entries. That's as much as a paying job. And when I wasn't doing that, I was usually surfing the articles. I would sometimes find myself on a page and have to keep hitting the back button just to follow the "cyber trail" back to where it started, often laughing at just how esoteric the path was.

But I also kept getting frustrated and pissed off over inane, pointless edit conflicts where some bozo calling himself "Lord Zoltran" would come in after hours of work on a subject and with a single keystroke wipe it out while arrogantly claiming the rationale that it wasn't encyclopedic enough. I watched as many other smart, informed and dedicated editors would finally just give up and decide they had better things to do with their valuable time than deal with these types. Worst, they didn't seem to be any sort of real help from the staff to settle these things.

Much I felt stemmed from the the "good on paper, terrible in practice" idea that people could be anonymous. Fine if said editor was in Nepal, but not those of us in most Western Democracies. Does someone really need to protect their identity to edit the article on Banana Slugs??? Yet, there's Darth Sidious 2, TwistofCain and Diannaa in the history. It's even more questionable when it comes to those given the status of senior editors (been so long, can't remember the Wiki lingo for them) or Sysops.

And the type of people who were being driven out by this nonsense were exactly the type of person who gives money to Wikipedia. For last several years, I couldn't afford to donate to any of my favorite organizations. Now, I'm finally in fiscal position that makes it possible again, yet I hesitate greatly when it comes to heeding the appeal banners.

Something to consider when you look at that donation bar that is only half-way to the goal... RoyBatty42 (talk) 03:33, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

About Banana Slugs, perhaps not. About more contentious things like abortion, unsavory things like sex topics, and could-easily-be-misinterpreted things like pipe bombs, yes. What do you mean by "senior editors"? I assume you're not referring to self-awardable badge which carries with it absolutely no actual privileges. With regard to your unfortunately negative interactions with certain editors: Wikipedia is a volunteer project and thus wikijustice is rather self-serve in that one must learn the rules and enforcement venues oneself since there aren't paid wikipolice to constantly, consistently, and uniformly enforce the rules. I am sure people would be open to suggestions as to how the system could be improved. Wikipedia exists in reality, hence it's not perfect like ideals can be. But considering that, it does a pretty darn good job. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:40, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Regarding anonymity, there's no way to actually remove anonymity without creating significant barriers to editing. For one, we would have to require people to create an account. But, even if we ask for a real name, there's no way to verify that the name given is the user's real name without requiring some sort of physical proof, which would likely discourage a lot of people. This is (probably) one of the reasons that Citizendium is doing so poorly. Its impossible to simply start as a casual editor and make an edit or two just to see how it works; just the application to get an account requires a fair amount of work. Mr.Z-man 07:17, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Verification is a real problem. I've read, for example, that although Facebook nominally requires people use their real names, many people don't, whether for professional reasons (doctors don't want patients contacting them online, especially when they should be phoning for an ambulance rather than sending e-mail), personal safety (survivors of domestic violence hiding from abusers), or hassle (not bothering to update name changes after marriage or divorce). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:16, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

It is certainly true that only 10% or less of admins have "human" names - and who can say which of those are real? I am aware a number of people regret not using their "real name" and I think it might be more healthy. There is evidence (proper scientific research) that people behave worse when afforded cyber-anonymity, particularly in respect to cyber-bullying. Nonetheless, there are valuable aspects to anonymity too, I have seen may threats on Wikipedia, and more, and more violent ones on other fora, while I have not been on the receiving end of any, I can understand peoples reluctance to use their own name. Rich Farmbrough, 08:18, 20 December 2010 (UTC).

The reason I edit under the username I do isn't so much out of anonymity (anyone who knows how to use Google can find by trial-&-error within 15 minutes), but that posting under my real name ends up making people think I speak for my employer of the moment -- or my employer thinking that I am speaking on their behalf -- when I'm just writing what I believe at the moment. So I assumed this username -- instead of my real name (which happens to be the same one a used car salesman in Australia has) to avoid that confusion -- not to hide my identity so I am free to call people booger-heads or meanie-butts. -- llywrch (talk) 01:55, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't edit with my real name mainly because I haven't. Why start now? But, sometimes I wonder if I should. My work has been used in publications of the Australian government, and it's strange to have it cited to "Andrew Golbez". I sometimes justify remaining at my pseudonym as security, but then again, the only person who ever made substantive threats towards me already had my name, and address. So it's not like I'm making it harder for them. But hey, at least I was just able to grab User:Andrew. :) --Golbez (talk) 06:10, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Commercialization

I think wikipedia is one of the greatest contributions to mankind.and at the same time i feel that such a noble thing should not fall short of money in anyway.to ensure this i urge upon to you to have sustainable commercial exposure in the webpage which will create a fund required for the existance,maintenance,research and developement of this great effort.of course donation will also continue.the commercials may be selective that will not deter the main effort.seeing the angel like face of mr. jimmy wales,i feel that we cannot let wikipedia to wash off only for monetary crisis which is very much visible in this sort of noble works.long live jimmy wales,long live wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.49.58.58 (talk) 18:52, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

We appreciate your concern. Be advised, however, that the Wikimedia Foundation makes enough money through its regular pledge drives to avoid having to sell advertising. The Wikimedia Foundation chooses to avoid selling advertising because doing so would compromise the perception of neutrality, a cornerstone principle of Wikipedia and its sister sites. There is not much pressure to advertise, however, because other fundraising methods are perfectly adequate for Wikipedia's needs. See also Wikipedia:PERENNIAL#Advertising. --Jayron32 19:57, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Define what falls under the responsibilities of the Bot Approval group

An issue has been brewing over what constitutes a bot or bot type edit and we need to get this situation resolved so I am bringing it here for discussion.

Background: Rich Farmbrough has been consistently blocked and badgered over his high speed edits using AWB and was recently blocked for 48 hours by RD232 because he determined that Rich's creation of 300 articles using AWB constituted a breach of bot policy as a "bot-type" edit.

Clarification needed: There are a couple of items that need to be clarified here relating to Wikipedia:Bot_policy#Mass_article_creation

1. Does AWB use require BAG authority since it is "bot-like"? Currently AWB use is granted by established and longstanding rules here and access is granted, removed and maintained by the AWB developers. RD232 indicated on Rich's talk page that BAG had authority over AWB since AWB can perform "bot-like" edits as well as true bot activity. I think this is a stretch and overburdens BAG (who are busy enough IMO) and would like clarification.
2. We need to clarify what consitutes a "bot like" edit. The instuctions make the determination extremely subjective and indicate that edits of as few as 30 to 30 could warrant BRFA approval.
3. We need to clarify what constitutes "Creating" an article. Current policy doesn't differentiate between article space, talk space etc. For example is "Creating" talk pages by adding a WikiProject banner or creating redirects using AWB a violation of the rules?
4. We need to clarify the requirement fo BRFA approval with regard to the number of articles for creation here. The instructions indicate as few as 20 - 30 which seems ridiculous and I recommend we set this at 100 or higher. If we are creating 20 articles why woudl I bother with a bot if I had to go through BRFA and wait a month. I could be done in a day doing it manually so there is no need for such a low number.
5. I think we should put in some verbiage that it should only be done by established users. --Kumioko (talk) 01:44, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

1. For AWB, no. If used correctly, AWB in manual mode should make no more mistakes than completely manual editing.

2. There's really too many factors to quantitatively describe it without opening up loopholes or mis-classifying things. Its not just number of edits, but the edit rate, and the content of the edit. For examples, if someone makes 4 edits per minute for 2 minutes, that's not really bot-like. If they do it for 2 hours, it probably is. Someone doing vandalism reversions or simple MoS fixes could probably maintain a fairly quick edit rate even by fully manual editing. However, if someone is making half a dozen or more minor changes throughout large articles, and is doing it quickly, they're probably using some automation.

3. Its really a case-by-case determination. I would say Wikiproject banners would be the only automatic exception since they're of a known value to the project and there's well-defined procedures for doing it. IIRC, some bots to create redirects have been denied in the past because the redirects were determined to be of too little value.

4. That portion of the bot policy only applies if you're doing it in an automated way. If you're doing it entirely by hand, it doesn't matter, because it means you're checking every edit. Doing one article every 5 minutes, you could do 100 articles by hand in a day, nearly 300 if you worked 24 hours straight. The problem with article creation vs. normal edits is that they're a lot more difficult to clean up if something goes wrong. They can't just be rolled back by anyone. If they're still new, an admin will need to delete them; if they've been around a while, people may need to manually go through all of them. And if its automated, there's going to be a lot more articles created before someone notices the problem and stops it.

5. I don't think this is really necessary. AWB requires 500 edits or a good reason, and any experience issues will come up during discussions. Mr.Z-man 02:15, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks you for clarifying those. Your responses are consistent with hwo I understood them as well. Just FYI though, that is not how some users are perceiving them. --Kumioko (talk) 02:21, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

All of this is already perfectly clear in the bot policy, and specifically in WP:MEATBOT. High speed editing with reduced supervision is subject to BAG, no matter what the tool. Semi or fully automatic article creation requires a BRFA, full stop. This "request for clarification" seems to me to be more of a "request for an exception for Rich Farmbrough‎". What happened to him wasn't "nonsense", it was a proper application of policy. Gigs (talk) 03:36, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Umm, there clear to you maybe but to the rest of us mere mortals the policy is extremely vague and subjective. Although I disagree that the actions against Rich in this case was appropriate this is actually clarification to cover my own hide before I get blocked as much as anything. As I mentioned on his talk page I have maintained an edit rate of 1000 edits a day average for the last month and will keep pace with that most likely for the next month or so. This includes "creating" a couple thousand talk pages to add WikiProject banners, creating some broken categories, creating some redirects and DAB pages, etc. Rich got blocked for a run of 300 DAB pages but the bot rules themselves are totally unclear indicating that it could be as low as 20 but then states that knowone opposed it. That doesn't make it policy just because knowone opposed it. So what my point is above is that we need to clarify it. If I need to get BRFA approval to do a few stupid talk pages and redirects then so be it but that seems like a pretty big waste of mine and BRFA's time to me. Rich got blocked for creating DAB pages so do DAB pages require BRFA?

As for the Rich issue, the guy has just shy of a million edits so IMO if he creates a couple hundred articles (with only one error as far as I can tell) without BRFA approval its not the end of the world. I read through the bot policy and the mammoth discussion about requiring BRFA for article creation and requiring a BRFA for what Rich was doing was not in the spirit of the discussion. HE was creating some dab pages, not stubby little articles or spam. NRHP is discussing a bot to create about 50, 000 articles. It probably won't happen for a variety of reasons but that is absolutely a BRFA request. But not 300. IMO this is only an issue because every edit he makes is watched by a couple of users who will block him if he doesn't have 100% perfect editing and he did it using AWB. If he had created the articles manually I believe they probably would have still blocked him for some other reasons. Why should someone go to BRFA and wait a month when they could do the couple hundred articles in a couple days by hand. All were doing is slowing the editor down so creating the articles aren't worth the time or they suck it up and do them by hand. Regardless of how the article gets created, the end result is the same , more articles in WP. So maybe the rule should be that knowone can create more than 25 articles a day whether by bot or by hand unless they request a BRFA. But I would caution against setting that rule. I would argue that someone creating the article manually could do just as much harm to the article as if they did it by bot. And lets be honest there's a lot of garbage articles out there. BTW, it was also mentioned several times in the discussion about BRFA consent for article creation that the bot rules are too vague.--Kumioko (talk) 04:37, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

If you really are doing everything by hand and checking your edits, you have nothing to worry about. The part about "bot-like edits" is so that we have a way to deal with people misusing or abusing semi-automated tools, approving edits without checking them and making mistakes that a properly approved bot or an attentive human wouldn't make. The problem is that we have continually made exceptions for Rich, allowing him to bypass the rules and looking the other way. Would you be saying the same thing if he only had 1000 edits? Or 100? Why does having a million edits mean he gets to sidestep the rules that the rest of us have to follow.

"All were doing is slowing the editor down so creating the articles aren't worth the time" - No, we're slowing the editor down so that he'll pay attention and not make blindingly obvious mistakes.

"someone creating the article manually could do just as much harm to the article as if they did it by bot" - Unlikely, they'd have to be completely careless, but if they're doing it manually, they won't be doing it several times per minute.

"there's a lot of garbage articles out there" - That doesn't mean that creating more is acceptable.

"more articles in WP" - There's no hurry to create articles. Poor articles don't help readers, they just make WP look bad. WP:DEADLINE works both ways. There's no hurry to create articles. Mr.Z-man 05:53, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well, to address the issues raised above:

• Whether AWB is used is irrelevant to whether a BRFA is necessary. AWB can be used in modes ranging from fully-manual to fully-automatic, while a particular activity would need or not need a BRFA regardless of whether it were done via AWB or via any other method. There is a correlation since that AWB is well suited for bot tasks, but it's only a correlation and not any sort of hard rule.
• What constitutes "POV pushing", "incivility", or "reliable source"? Just as with "bot-like edit", the definition isn't a black-and-white distinction that everyone agrees on; it requires a degree of human discretion, and trying for a bright-line definition will probably just get you bogged down in endless debate and too many details. Or to use a non-Wikipedia example, consider the threshold of originality in copyright law: the bottom line is that the only way to know for sure is to have a judge rule on it, then appeal it as high as the courts will accept the appeals.
• The discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 66#Proposal: Any large-scale semi-/automated article creation task require BRFA seems to have considered only articles, so no specific permission or restriction is in place on creating talk pages due to that decision. DABs, redirects, and lists are a bit of a grey area, being in article space but not articles by the strictest definition. Reader-visible categories and content-bearing templates used on articles are a grey area for a different reason, as they aren't in article space but are still reader-facing content. Personally, I'd include all of those as "article creation".
• It seems like you are unaware of the history of automated article creation: far too often has someone created a large number of articles and caused a big mess for others to clean up. Even creations with wide support are usually far from uncontroversial. So the community seems to have collectively decided to err on the side of "officially" strictly restricting large-scale article creation—the community may or may not apply WP:IAR to any specific case, but an editor should think twice before relying on that. If you think consensus may have changed, feel free to start an RFC to that effect.
• Regarding Rich Farmbrough specifically, he certainly gives the impression that he believes the rules shouldn't apply to him. He's not the first such maverick, and he's not the first to run into trouble for it, and if he winds up exhausting the community's patience (beyond a few die-hard supporters) and getting himself very strictly restricted or outright banned, he wouldn't be the first for that either. It is certainly true that Rich is closely watched; that tends to happen to editors who gain a reputation for causing problems, and particularly editors who gain a reputation for running error-ridden bots in article space.
  It may or may not be true that his latest block goes against the spirit of WP:BOTPOL#Mass article creation, and it may or may not be true that the given reason is just a last straw on top of other issues. Fortunately for me, those are issues for someone else to sort out.
• Regarding WP:MEATBOT, I see it being rather severely misrepresented from some quarters, not least of which is Rich Farmbrough himself. It does not "give BAG authority over human edits", in fact it doesn't give BAG authority over anything at all. It merely points out that if someone is making a series of edits that include errors an attentive human editor would not make, it is irrelevant whether they are in fact using some sort of automation or are doing it 100% manually, as disruption is still disruption either way and they need to either stop or face the consequences. Its purpose is to eliminate the time-wasting arguments over whether something is really a poorly-done bot, a user blindly confirming every edit in a script-assisted run, or even an editor who just can't be bothered to check his copy-pasting; the end result is always the same, although not always explicitly stated: "stop or be blocked for disruption".
• Note that, while WP:No vested contributors is more wishful thinking than actual fact, it is still a completely invalid argument to use "the guy has just shy of a million edits" as justification for anything.
• If you are worried that your actions might get you blocked, perhaps that's a sign you should stop and seek consensus for your actions. WP:VPR is a good place for that.

HTH. Anomie⚔ 06:14, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I still don't like the fact that the rules are written like a blank check so that when we feel like it we can enforce them on editors that we don't like but if other editors do it well that's no big deal. Take VMbot for example, it went storming through a couple weeks ago and wreaked all sorts of havoc and knowone was screaming. In fact when I complained all I got was comments like "if you don't like the bot why dont you help with with Copyright infringement and we won't need to do a bot" and "the bot didn't cause the problem the editor did". If Rich would have done that or said that he would have been banned for life and just because he creates a couple of articles then hes violating BRFA. The whole things stinks of favoritism (in a negative way) and vigilantism and no it has less to do with the edit count then him being an established editor. There were some valid arguments against him I grant you but more harrassment and badgering than anything else. Now the guy can barely making an edit without Fram and RD following him around. I'm not saying he hasn't made his mistakes but many of the arguments against him are even more petty and stupid than the unneeded edits he did. Frankly the whole situation with him made me decide not to start running bots of my own but this really isn't about Rich or me. I just don't like having open ended rules that let Admins and other editors on a power trip twist them to how they want for the situation at hand.

In regards to item #3 Rich was creating Dabs and that's what got him blocked for 48 hours. In regards to my own edits I think I am within concensus and for the most part knowone has challenged the edits I have made (other than the occasional mention of tweaks to my edit summeries, mark it as minor or its filling up their watchlists) however the rules are so vague its impossible to know for sure if I am breaking the rules. They seem to apply when we feel like applying them so I guess I'll take my chances and go from their. If anyone has a major problem and they mention it I will do everything I can to support the request or concern. Regarding AWB use you might want to take a look at the conversation regarding Rich's block on his talk page. A couple of editors there made the case and are following it that BAG controls AWB use because its "bot-like" whether manual or not. Regarding item #4 I am roughly familiar with article mass creation and the positives and negatives of doing it. I don't think that 300 articles is mass though. --Kumioko (talk) 06:44, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Assuming a million edits and a charitable 99-percent success rate that is 10,000 problematic edits, which is one thousand times as many chances as your common vandal would be given and twice as many as all the edits I've ever contributed in several years. Kumioko: if you are acting outside consensus, people will tell you on your Talk page(s)—enforcement blocks for acting against policy do not come "out of the blue"; so if you (like most editors) are responsive to those who take the time to notify you of concerns or errors they have spotted then everyone is productive and happy (no complaints/notifications means you are doing the right thing!). You can knowingly operate under WP:IAR if you get no complaints, but if you get a complaint then it was not a correct use of WP:IAR and one needs to pay closer attention to the policies in subsequent similar cases. —Sladen (talk) 10:07, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

"You can knowingly operate under WP:IAR if you get no complaints" I am told otherwise. .Rich Farmbrough, 15:04, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

That's the point Rich; you have been told many, many, times. You need to learn to operate within the Wikipedia rules and within Wikipedia:Editing restrictions#Rich Farmbrough. —Sladen (talk) 15:36, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I get approximately 1 message per 1000 edits, despite the attempt to characterise my talk page as "full of complaints" by some people, relatively few are, and a goodly percentage of those are unfounded. The majority of the rest are dealt with and everyone goes away happily - until September, when people started spamming the threads on my talk page, and things went from bad to worse. The editing restriction is a direct result of that sabotage of my talk page by two editors, matters that would otherwise have been dealt with were catapaulted into a feeding frenzy on AN/I. Whether this was malice or stupidity doesn't really matter. Rich Farmbrough, 08:04, 20 December 2010 (UTC).

And if VMBot hadn't been operating under BAG approval after gaining consensus in the community, it would have been blocked too. You're comparing apples to oranges. Anomie⚔ 14:33, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

[My block is irrelevant to this btw. I raised the issue at BOTPOL before that happened, and was not blocked under this provision.] OK, the thing is WP:MEATBOT is exactly what is being challenged here. That and confusion over the various "bot-like" aspects of behaviour. My contention is that MEATBOT is creating problems for the future, while simply saying "apply the DUCK test to edits" seems an easy fix, in fact it moves the contention to whether DUCK is passed. If this is by fiat of BAG then BAG may define anyone to be a bot and hence subject to BAGPOL. While I don't suggest that this will be abused, it is bad policy. If it is by consensus discussion, then not only have we not resolved the problem that MEATBOT is intended to solve but if we err in one direction we alienate editors, if we err in the other cases are thrown back to the human editing rules, which therefore need to be able to deal with them (and usually, and historically can). Essentially the reason to stop something happening is because it's a bad idea, not because it's being done in a way that is reminiscent of a bot. And that does not mean speed - I (for example) have been chastised on that very basis "It's not the speed it's the bot-like nature of the edits." BOTPOL/BAG/BRFAs have done a great job in getting productive bots accepted by the community (despite shortfalls and various widely publicised incidents), there is, however, no reason to think that extending their purview to human editing ha any merit. Rich Farmbrough, 15:04, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

"Essentially the reason to stop something happening is because it's a bad idea, not because it's being done in a way that is reminiscent of a bot." That's what WP:MEATBOT is trying to say, for the case where people are about to start debating over whether some series of edits is a bot or a user being careless. I'm not sure how you're misreading it so completely. Anomie⚔ 17:41, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Exactly my point. This simply moves the debate "over whether some series of edits is a bot or a user being careless" to "whether the series of edits fall under MEATBOT." Moreover I have seen some otherwise sage users adduce the most contradictory evidence in support of something being "botlike". "high-speed or large-scale edits that involve errors an attentive human would not make" - when you are editing many thousands or articles you are going to make mistakes - arguably ones that "an attentive human would not make". To beat someone up over that, when the number of human errors is Wikipedia is so massive seems particularly obtuse behaviour. What we should be concerned about is 1. is the work a net benefit to the encyclopedia? and 2. is it disruptive~ Over and above that, certes, we can advise, cajole and suggest improvements. But this is just another bit of fluff in another policy, yet more instruction creep, no-one should have to bother themselves with BOTPOL unless they are running a bot. As it says at the top of my talk page says, quoting Orwell "a therefore can become a wherefore". Rich Farmbrough, 07:52, 20 December 2010 (UTC).

We seem to have broken off on several tangents, and it appears that there is no interest in clarifying this policy. Perhaps the intent is to leave it overly vague so it can be interpreted loosely when needed. Not sure I agree with that logic but ok. Anomie: just because it was approved doesn't mean it can go making a mess out of articles above reproach and it doesn't give the operators license to use it as a recruiting tool (if you don't join and help out well run the bot again...sign here) and this was only a recent example. I have seen several others recently that had serious problems as well. Sladen: No editor is perfect and its generally understood that even bots will make some mistakes. The law of averages states that the more edits you do the higher the edit rate will be. Its part of the cost of doing business and part of what makes WP work. If I make a change in error any other editor can and should go in and fix it. Although we should keep that to a minimum of course. Back to the point of the comment if there is no intent in clarifying this policy then we may as well close this discussion. --Kumioko (talk) 15:39, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Kumioko: We are able to go and fix each others' accidental mistakes because the error rates are low and the speeds (frequencies) of those edits manageable. Increase the error rate, and/or increase the speed of edits and the whole mutual oversight concept exceeds the human resources and their Watchlists sizes on Wikipedia. If a bot or meatbot were to require half-a-dozen editors just to review the edits because they can't be trusted as reliable by default then we'd have a problem, and to avoid that situation is why we have BOTPOL et al (to prevent exhaustion of the finite body of human reviewers by having them baby-sit edits from just a handful of bots/meatbots). The mechanisms used to make edits is less important that what is done with those mechanisms; AWB enabled on a main account with all the safeties off and never used is not going to be performing "bot-like" activity. Whereas, AWB enabled on a main account with all the safeties off and executing ten edits per minute is clearly bot-like activity. It is impossible for a single editor (the owner) to review the edits and that's why we have BOTPOL/BRFA/BAG. The lack of individual editor oversight on their own edits could either stem from impossibilities (speed of edits, scale of edits) or because the owner simply doesn't bother to check (eg. apathy, wanting to chase editcounts, or considering themselves above having to check edits made in their name). "An edit that is unlikely to be reviewed because it is assumed to be good" basically sums up bot-like for me. —Sladen (talk) 16:09, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

The rate at which edits can be reviewed is wholly dependent on the nature of the edits, and what they are being reviewed for. Simple one-piece search and replace (Say confuse=> distinguish) would be much faster than AWB can save the edits. On the other hand something that simple would not really benefit from the review. Furthermore it is not true that even, or perhaps especially with bots a significant error rate on a run is a major problem. If some fast editing human, doing non-bot like work, makes 10% errors over 1000 edits, that's hard to pick up. If a repetitive automated task is involved it is actually a lot less harmful, in the short term there is the option of revert/re-run, and there is usually the possibility of running a fix-up, since any errors are likely to be systematic. This is all by the by, though the real point is BOTPOL is made for bots, it is (or was) intended to be stricter than human editing, to appease the doomsayers as much as anything. If someone is exceeding the error level for human edits, then the human policies can deal with them - if thy are using automated means to do it, it is still capable of resolution without invoking BOTPOL. BOTPOL is not really designed for that, it is designed for automated tasks that are relatively well defined. Rich Farmbrough, 07:52, 20 December 2010 (UTC).

• Without delving into this particular user, I would like to discuss point number 3. Missing talk pages are a problem. While unregistered users can create talk pages, this seems to be an abnormally high expectation for a new user to participate in discussion about an article. A redlinked talk page on an article suggests that discussion is not even welcome on that article. No article should exist without a talk page if we expect new users to be able to fully participate. And adding WP banners is a perfectly legitimate reason for creating a talk page. Most wikiprojects have clearly defined scopes that correspond to certain categories, and placing a WP banner on pages within those categories should be one of the least controversial edits a person can make. This should not require a bot flag regardless of the speed/volume of edits involved. I know this has been dismissed before as a non-issue by many editors, but I do not believe that any article should exist without a corresponding talk page. Starting the talk page for a pre-exiting article/file/category/redirect/dab should never be counted as "page creation" for any policy reason. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 13:47, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Huh? Needlessly bluelinked talk pages with no content are much worse than redlinked talk pages with no content, because you lose the information that there's nothing there. I count a "WikiProject Talk Page Breakage" banner as equivalent to nothing, because for everyone other than the WikiProject it is. We ought to be bot-deleting such talk pages, not creating more of them. — Gavia immer (talk) 15:28, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I disagree, those wikiproject banners are used for classification and categorization of pages and are certainly more important than the random comments made years ago which you find on most inactive talkpages. Deletion of talkpages because they only contain a banner is beyond ridiculous. Yoenit (talk) 15:43, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Jim Miller and Yoenit that the WikiProject talk page banners provide valuable information about the state of the article. Not just to the project but to others who may be interested in working on that article or topic. Having a blue linked talk page, even if only a banner for a project, is better than a red link. Red links are bad. They look uninviting and make the article appear as though its been abandoned in the wastelands of WP. There are a couple reasons why a blue linked talk page are better than a redlinked one. We definately don't need to be bot deleting them.

• New users and casual readers are much less likely to create a page and leave a comment. If the page is there and not just a red link then its more inviting to newbys and casual readers
• If the article contains a project banner then it is hopefully assessed and has a project tracking its progress. We all know that this is not true of all cases but it is an indicator. Regardless of the project if the article has a red linked talk page then it definately has not been assessed or its importance/priority classified. Not to mention the other templates which could apply such as Article history, DYK's, image needed, etc. That means among other things we have almost no visibility of what condition the article is in. --Kumioko (talk) 15:56, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I have to say my experience as someone who is not involved in projects much is different. When looking to fix an article, the first thing to check is the talk page. Since the massive explosion of project banners I have found myself flipping time and again to empty talk pages. Moreover the entire edifice of rating, bannering classifying has consumed a vast amount of energy, effort and edits (not to say disputes), for an unquantified benefit. To give an example, WP 0.8 was recently created based on this, yet thousands of the selected articles had spelling errors. (I was fixing these in September but apparently it is more important to retain invisible spacing than to fix visible typos, so I was blocked.) In my opinion any article selected for WP 0.X should at least be free from basic errors of spelling, grammar, layout and fact. The system designed to do this failed. Rich Farmbrough, 21:48, 21 December 2010 (UTC).

Children of celebrities

I just wonder, does being the child of a famous person(s) make you notable for Wikipedia? I think it should'nt be that way, as having a famous parent(s) does not automatically make that person famous. MikeNicho231 (talk) 21:11, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

No it shouldn't. Notability is not inherited, in this case literally. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 21:14, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Nope. As I understand it, under WP:BLP, you shouldn't even give the names of the offspring of notable persons (unless of course the offspring are themselves notable in their own right). AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:17, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

That's an overly strict interpretation of BLP. We can and often should include names of non-notable relatives, but we should consider the privacy implications. Gigs (talk) 17:34, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

"We can and often should include names of non-notable relatives". Why, if they aren't notable? AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:52, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Notability covers article creation only. It does not cover article content. Article content is regulated by a mixture of coverage by reliable sources, editorial decisions by contributors, and consensus-based negotiations between contributors. Notability covers whether an entity merits enough coverage outside of Wikipedia to support a stand-alone article. It does not have anything to do with how an entity is covered within Wikipedia articles, either its own or those of other entities. --Jayron32 17:57, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't answer the question of why the non-notable people should be named though. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:02, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

And your point doesn't answer the question of why they should not. Decisions about what referencable material should, and should not, be included in an article are handled on a case-by-case basis by individual editors, and where there is a disagreement, such disagreements are settled on the article talk pages via consensus-building discussion. There is no universal policy regarding what referneceable content should and should not be included, beyond "work it out on the talk page". There certainly isn't any universal policy that says we should not name people in Wikipedia articles who themselves are not the subject of Wikipedia articles. That's just silly. --Jayron32 18:06, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

For example, consider Barack Obama's children. Neither Malia nor Sasha have their own article, although there has obviously been enough reliable sources to justify notability. (Their names redirect to Family of Barack Obama.) However, Obama's dog Bo has his own article. Go figure. RoyGoldsmith (talk) 18:13, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Bo has written his own account of his role in the Presidency. When Malia or Sasha start playing a similarly active role like that, maybe they'll get an article. :) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:10, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

As I say below,they are significant. That is the criteria for content, otherwise we would have only article names, since all content would be promoted to article status. Rich Farmbrough, 21:50, 21 December 2010 (UTC).

No, however if the person is sufficiently famous it makes you significant. Rich Farmbrough, 08:22, 20 December 2010 (UTC).

Copyright by-lines

Is it normal to add copyright by-lines to images as done in the photograph in Posy Simmonds? I thought we didn't do that on Wikipedia but don't have a guideline to hand saying that. WP:WATERMARK seems to almost, but not quite, say it. SpinningSpark 15:01, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

A lot of various views on the whole issues will be laid out I'm sure, but here is the one I stand by. It depends on the license used and *if* there are attribution requirements. Wikipedia does allow/accept Creative Commons Licenses and that license allows for Attribution to be specified. The image in question is claimed to be licensed via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license so if any attribution requirements exist than it may have to be given. However, the Flikr account given as the source seems to belong to "ana rachel" and this image doe snot seem to exist on that account. The actual photographers account, however, has the uncropped image, but marked "All rights reserved". In this case it appears to be a null issue anyway. Soundvisions1 (talk) 15:32, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:CREDITS? Anomie⚔ 16:41, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Problem is with that is it is a bit outdated. Since all new CCL's are now attribution licenses there could very well be requirements laid out that were not required in the past. The "It is assumed that this is not necessary" wording is not an accurate reflection of the actual CCL that is now preferred at Wikipedia. For example read the What happens if someone misuses my Creative Commons-licensed work? section of the Creative Commons FAQ. And read what happened with images donated to Wikipedia by the German Federal Archives at German Federal Archives won't extend collaboration with Wikimedia, this is due, in part, to "a disregard of the CC license in re-use outside Wikimedia projects" part of which included "re-users who had violated the license by not naming the photographer". Soundvisions1 (talk) 17:10, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Your link and argument are not really relevant, mainly because you are assuming that the CC requires (or allows the copyright holder to require) a credit in the image caption. Note that we can't really do anything about re-use outside Wikimedia projects, and whatever we do regarding WP:CREDITS will have no real effect on re-users.

According to CC's own FAQ, in the normal case our standard attribution on the image description page seems to be fine. And even if the copyright holder does want to specify how they be attributed, they still can't require a credit in the caption (it says "they are only able to require certain things", and location of the credit isn't one of them). As far as I can decipher the legalcode, there's nothing in there either that allows the licensor to override the "implemented in any reasonable manner" clause. They could, perhaps, require that an embedded watermark remain in the image under the "If the work itself contains any copyright notices placed there by the copyright holder" clause, in which case we could make a case for treating the image as non-free (ignoring completely that the image is CC licensed instead of "all rights reserved").

I see you seem to feel the CC FAQ writers are not accurately representing their own licenses, but neither your personal opinion nor mine your own personal and idiosyncratic interpretation nor my interpretation has any real weight here beyond however we each might influence community consensus. If you want a real legal opinion go ask a lawyer. Anomie⚔ 19:20, 21 December 2010 (UTC) Edited 20:24, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Wrong.

1. The CCL's provide a copyright holder to specify attribution, among a few other items.

2. You did not fully read the FAQ you cite. What if I change my Mind? says (Bold added for emphasis) "This means that you cannot stop someone, who has obtained your work under a Creative Commons license, from using the work according to that license." To understand what "according to that license" means in relation to "terminate" one also needs to read the What happens if someone misuses my Creative Commons-licensed work? section of the same FAQ. The very first sentence is "A Creative Commons license terminates automatically if someone uses your work contrary to the license terms". This is followed by an example that state end users "for example, fail to attribute your work in the manner you specified, then they no longer have the right to continue to use your work."

3. Your last comment is off base as well. What I cite in regards to a CCL is not my "personal opinion" and "community consensus" at Wikipedia does not dictate the wording of the Creative Commons License. And nowhere do I say that wording found in the FAQ is incorrect. If you actually read what I said there, and have said here, is that editors such as yourself have to read "the next line of the FAQ to better understand the full context" You apparently failed to read the full text of what I said, or even the Section Break of my post you linked to. Beyond that I find it somewhat futile to try to explain contract law or copyright law to people who are not involved in the industry. Soundvisions1 (talk) 19:51, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe I am just some noob who knows shit about image copyright, but the wording in the creative commons faq seems quite clear in limiting the attribution demands a copyright holder may make and requiring us to place a copyright notice below the work is not among them. We don't violate the license terms if the copyright holders attribution demand is not allowed under the license in the first place, so I don't understand why you are bringing up this stuff about termination of the license. Yoenit (talk) 20:14, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No, you're wrong. Not that I expect to convince you.

1. Please show me where.

2. "What if I change my Mind?" is irrelevant. "What happens if someone misuses my Creative Commons-licensed work?" is also irrelevant. "[I]n the manner you specified" would refer to the features of the attribution that the licensor may specify, specifically the other party or parties in 4(b)(i) and the URI in 4(b)(iii).

3. You have your own personal and idiosyncratic interpretation of the FAQ and the legalcode, which I referred to as "your opinion". I will strike that and replace it with "your own personal and idiosyncratic interpretation" if that would suit you better. Just because I find your interpretation of said next line of the FAQ incorrect, your citation of Susan Chang v Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons irrelevant, your reference to the article AutoWeek: Oh come on irrelevant, your quoted (possibly offhand) comment by Lawrence Lessig rather vague, doesn't mean I didn't read what you said.

Personally, I find it futile to try to have a reasonable discussion with anyone who feels they know The Truth and that anyone who disagrees with them somehow just doesn't understand The Truth. So I will bid you good day now. Anomie⚔ 20:24, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

If you add additional clauses that remove or restrict rights always granted in the CC text, it is no longer that CC licence... You can add additional clauses that grant additional rights (no credit required) but you can't remove the commons rights as that would make it incompatible with other works under the same licence. —Sladen (talk) 20:23, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Not sure who is responding to what but overall:

• Suddenly case law that deals with Creative Commons license is "irrelevant"?
• I am not talking about adding clauses that "remove or restrict" rights, only stating what the license, "as is", explicitly says.
• "implemented in any reasonable manner" applied to *all* items that can be copyrighted and licensed via a CCL. What that means is that, for example, a book might have the authors name on the front cover. A song on a CD might have the copyright notice, the performer, the musicians, the printed html to the full text of the CCL on the back cover, or inner sleeve. A motion picture might have a large list of credit requirements that should either go at the head of the film or at the tail of the film. An a photograph may require a photo credit appear with the image.
• "What if I change my Mind?" is not "irrelevant" when so many people cite one section of it without understanding it fully.
• The comment about being a "noob who knows shit about image copyright" is, really, "irrelevant". Copyright law, at least in the U.S, does not include any "moral rights", which includes the right to attribution. As of 2.5 all CCL's include an authors "moral rights", even if some Wikipedia editors want to ignore them.
• Creative Commons - Marking Image - For images, a CC marker — a graphic or line of text stating the license — should be displayed on or near the image.

The key question was this "Is it normal to add copyright by-lines to images as done in the photograph..." And the answer, for anyone in the real world, is "Yes. It is not only normal but expected. To those in the industry the answer is "In most cases it is explicit in the rights usage and is most likely spelled out in the contract/license/agreement." In Wikiworld it is just a "personal and idiosyncratic interpretation" where the real world is "irrelevant." Take your pick. Soundvisions1 (talk) 22:47, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

• I'm sure I'm missing a lot of detail here but the phrase in the CCBYSA boilerplate that says "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author" seem to cover the above dispute supporting Sound, while section 4c "The credit required by this Section 4(c) may be implemented in any reasonable manner" seems the opposite. Rich Farmbrough, 03:44, 22 December 2010 (UTC).
  
  • The problem with section 4(c) is that it doesn't define who may implement it in a reasonable manner. If read in line with the boilerplate it does mean a manner specified by the licensor cannot be unreasonable - however currently it is commonly used to mean any reasonable manner specified by the licensee. The problem is that the CC cannot and will not make any attempt to advise on the intention of any wording as a court may read the wording differently - see their debates on the intention of "Non-Commercial". As a long time CC user I find myself siding with Sound's interpretation here. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 04:37, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

"in the manner specified by the author" is part of the human-readable summary, not the binding legal code. The legal code says in the relevant part (section 4(d), emphasis added):

If You Distribute, or Publicly Perform the Work or any Adaptations or Collections, You must [...] keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author [...]; and, (iv) consistent with Section 3(b), in the case of an Adaptation, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Adaptation [...].
The credit required by this Section 4(d) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors.

Given that our medium is a wiki, the page history and/or the image file's page seem attribution places which are quite "reasonable to the medium" and sufficiently prominent. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:24, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

However the areas you have highlighted appear to be in relation to those in which no existing attribution has been made. Let me emphasise a different part of part d):

If You Distribute, or Publicly Perform the Work or any Adaptations or Collections, You must [...] keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author [...]; and, (iv) consistent with Section 3(b), in the case of an Adaptation, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Adaptation [...].
The credit required by this Section 4(d) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors.

can we explicitly say that:

1. No watermark removal on Wikipedia has removed a Copyright Notice as defined in the U.S. and U.K. by the use of the © mark or word "copyright".
2. That no territory where Wikipedia content has been added from, has copyright legislation that defines a Copyright Notice as being any signature by the creator of the work.
3. That if Wikipedia were to be taken to court in a Berne Convention signatory country for removing the watermark - the judge would not find that the creator's intent in adding the watermark was to be as a copyright notice despite the lack of a © mark.

If we can then there's no problem, however I think it's unlikely that we can rule out every possibility and erring on the side of caution is prudent when it comes to removing watermarks.

Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 10:52, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

This discussion hasn't been about watermarks, it has been about whether credit in the image caption (as was done here, for example) can be required under the CC license by the copyright holder. I do sadly agree with you about the watermarks; above, I mentioned that we would have to treat many watermark-bearing CC-licensed images as non-free due to this restriction. Anomie⚔ 12:22, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, the first image was deleted by the time I saw the comment and thought the caption was in the image - particularly when the German Federal Archives was mentioned which did relate to watermarks in the image. If the creator specifies the external text caption as part of their work - particularly if they add the image to the article with the caption then it's possible that in the same way as a watermarked caption it could be considered a copyright notice in court and require retention (or removal along with image). I don't think these should be considered non-free however, they are free with a restriction which is the case of all CC images and like the ambiguity over "non-commercial" (which may be acceptable for WMF use or may not but CC can't say) we just have to be careful. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 12:54, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

No problem. I look at "you can't remove the watermark" as being along the same lines as GFDL with invariant sections, which we already consider non-free.

But there is the question of what exactly "keep intact" means; does it really mean you can't remove the watermark or just that the text from the watermark must still be attached to the derivative work in a reasonable manner? If an mp3 has an id3 tag with a copyright notice, and you use that mp3 as part of the soundtrack for your (non-digital) film, you can't exactly keep the id3 tag in there; you'd have to move the notice itself somewhere else, in that case probably into the credits at the end of the movie. Could the same be said for a copyright-notice-as-watermark, can it be "kept intact" by moving it to an EXIF tag or an image description page? I see that Commons specifically instructs to do this for watermarked images, using the template Commons:Template:Attribution metadata from licensed image. Anomie⚔ 16:56, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Our rule on Commons at least is that any license which could possibly prevent us from removing a visible watermark from an image is also a license that restricts derivative works, and so is not permitted. If you think about what a typical "mash up" or "remix" of free works looks like, it's pretty clear there's no room for retaining such elements. Usually we move visible watermarks either into image metadata, into the image description page, or both. Invisible watermarks are also okay, as long as they accurately reflect the license and it's okay to remove them in derivative works (but I don't recommend them, because they cause minor image distortion). Dcoetzee 04:44, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (geography) has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Notability (geography) (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, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I see no evidence of any discussion on making this essay into a guideline, and it seems to me to be bad practice to WP:BOLDly promote an essay in this unilateral fashion. I suggest that it should be reverted to essay status, pending a discussion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:36, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree, BrownHairedGirl.
Edited to add: I also think the page title is completely inappropriate. Use of the naming convention of pages that have official recognition through high level of proven consensus from the entire community on other pages is confusing, liable to misinform, and implies recognition/status for which they are not eligible. –Whitehorse1 12:27, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree too. I'm not sure I even agree that notability should be so heavily based on "legal" definitions (what does that mean and where do we find them?), especially for historical places or less-developed regions. Certainly needs discussing. --Bermicourt (talk) 12:36, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

<aol>me too</aol>. I'd like to see where this was discussed. Alternatively, how about some examples of AFDs that were argued and closed based on the principles of this guideline even if it wasn't quoted. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 12:51, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's had no discussion on its talkpage. Ever. Beside the single editor that created it , the number of people who've edited it, excluding seealso/interwikilink or cat/tag changes, before the above-linked promotion is zero. Even they only edited it once. And they've been retired for years.

As for AfDs, I went through its whatlinkshere filtering to projectspace, and found a paltry amount for a supposed community-backed page. Here are the highlights.

I have never seen such a glut of vague "yeah it, like, exists or is there, so like obviously keep; it's 'self evident' that it's notable; mumble someone's unsupported personal essay mumble; "I don't have any sources so have some 'truth by assertion' about their existence instead" handwaving. Oh, and spot the sock and "vested interest" participants. –Whitehorse1 16:38, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

A further risk—due to the topics sphere it covers is direct contravention of the community position on large scale creation of stubs and sub-stubs agreed (1|2) by massive consensus on this very page. –Whitehorse1 13:09, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I've reverted to an essay. Notability is such a fickle issue that major change (including a new guideline) needs to be peer reviewed to gain consensus. I don't disagree what is written is likely true, but this is also equivalent to basically what WP:OUTCOMES gives for geography. Given that another geographic notability guideline had been tried to be promoted and failed to gain consensus, one editor being bold is not sufficient. --MASEM (t) 16:44, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

My-bold ;) I've commented on Masem's talk and poked DGG about that and this. Seems I have plenty of links to go read.

<opinion>The nutshell is that we're an encyclopedia and we're not paper. Topics such as a real place, a real river are inherently things we should be covering. The id:articles that were n-tagged need work; they're mostly little stubs. That's how articles start.</opinion>

A while ago, I attended a speaking engagement that Jimbo gave. He spoke of the sense of accomplishment one felt when you started a new article for the project. The example he used was Africa and he said something along the lines of:  Done, got that one ;) See the first version of Africa. While it does have an extern link, it is to a page asserted to be 'biased'. And I do wonder if our founder knew who started Africa ;) Anyway, the next step was not to tag it for notability; what has happened is that it was expanded, improved, and referenced.

There is a huge dollop of irony here; I'm a user that is frequently cast as an Evil Deletionist. O RLY? ;) Watch me argue to keep such things if they're taken to AfD or CSD'd. Merry Christmas, folks, Jack Merridew 11:09, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Merry Christmas, Jack. –Whitehorse1 11:22, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Something very off-topic

Boring admin collapses rather silly discussion

Fences&Windows 02:36, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

When is an edit summary offensive enough to be oversighted?

I've seen plenty of edit summaries with dirty words, but until today I never saw one get oversighted. I just happened to click on a link for a diff when the offensive edit summary still existed. By the time the diff came up, the edit summary had a line through it, which I recognized as oversight, which I saw for the first time after requesting the removal of someone's personal information.

In looking at the contributions of some vandals, I saw this again and again. One blocked vandal had a contributions list consisting entirely of oversighted edit summaries.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:17, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Chances are it was RevDeleted—by an admin (any admin will be able to still see it). The criteria for that can be seen here. –Whitehorse1 06:21, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe I missed something, but edit summaries aren't normally changed in the oversight process, are they?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:46, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

If a rev is suppressed then the edit summary is as well. Gigs (talk) 20:21, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

This must be new. On the page Wikipedia:Revision deletion the edit summary is still there after oversight.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:39, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's a feature that's been available for a few months now. It's a better option than the previous delete facility which can be problematic with articles with a large number of edits and histmerges. It also allows the option of deleting the edit summary only and leaving the edit itself place. SpinningSpark 00:24, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

So back to my original question--what does it take before an edit summary itself is deleted?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:46, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Two years later, can an IP vandal's warnings start over?

It's reasonable to assume that an IP which hasn't had a talk page warning in two years is not even the same person. The previous warning said the IP would be blocked for the next vandalism, but that didn't happen for two years.

I've seen guidelines on this somewhere, but I don't remember where.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:59, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Generally, they "reset" every month or less. I don't know the guideline, but blocking an ip is typically only done for a string of vandalism done within a few hours or days. If you report an ip to WP:AIV, they'll usually tell you if it's appropriate or not. Jess_talk|_edits 17:56, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, WP:AIV said it "MUST" be vandalism. I have reason to doubt. It may have been a good faith edit but it was misspelled and someone reverted it. My guess is it was wrong information. It's not blatant, but I did put a message on the talk page.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:03, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Two year old warnings are definitely stale and should be ignored. If there is doubt whether or not an edit was vandalism you are expected to assume good faith. Do not give templated warnings in such cases - if necessary write an individual message apropriate to the situation. Whether or not subsequest vandalism is to be considered the same person is a matter of judgement. A Whois search can give you some guidance; if it turns up a school or other institution it is likely not the same person editing each time, likewise dynamic IPs. Editing style and habits on the other hand can indicate the same person. Again, if there is any doubt, AGF applies and the editor should be given the benefit of the doubt. SpinningSpark 18:48, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Guide to administrator intervention against vandalism#Why hasn't the user or IP address I reported been blocked?. Sufficiency of warnings means the anonymous editor is presently editing, and warnings are sufficiently recent. There are no hard rules on what recent means to avoid sneaky vandalism and per WP:BEANS. It's a fact-sepcific inquiry. But I agree that in most circumstances two years is too long. That doesn't mean you need start from an assumption of good faith, though. No faith (level 2) may be more appropriate. --Bsherr (talk) 20:35, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Promote Wikipedia:Namespace?

Should Wikipedia:Namespace be promoted to a guideline? Join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Namespace#Promote to guideline. Regards --Bsherr (talk) 20:24, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Why is 'original research' such a sin?

I have long been mystified by the doctrine that 'original research' is deemed to be fault in a Wikipedia article. In the wider world of learning, excavating truths from primary sources - in which, perhaps, only an uncommon mind and an equally uncommon diligence could have perceived them - is usually considered a far higher form of activity than merely rearranging and recycling what is already known. It seems willfully perverse of the Wikipedia administration to reverse this attitude and actually to bar the deepest thinkers and the most devoted scholars from its pages, as if they stood on a par with bigots, charlatans and commercial hirelings.

Perhaps this principle was intended as a restraint on the insertion of 'facts' which are based on unverifiable authority or no authority at all. This is certainly a persistent problem, and it is entirely understandable that the administrators should wish to install safeguards against it; but is the present formulation of the law truly the best way of doing so? It seems to me that, as long as a statement of fact is supported by a properly specified and verifiable source - one which third parties can consult for themselves, either because it is in printed circulation or because, if it consists of a manuscript, it is held by a public or academic library or else can be viewed in facsimile in printed material or online - then that statement is entirely worthy of insertion in Wikipedia; it should not matter in the least that the writer of the article has himself or herself discovered the source, as opposed to learning about it from some other work of reference. (The same applies to cases where the source is non-verbal, e.g. where it consists of a building or a natural object. The point is that, here too, others can inspect the source and satisfy themselves that it exists and that it justifies the conclusions drawn from it by the writer.) In short, primary sources should be as admissible as any other, provided they can be validated. Speculation and unsupported assertion are faults; 'original research' is neither the one nor the other, and is no fault at all.

Is there any hope that this issue can be reconsidered? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oliver Mundy (talk • contribs) 17:26, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:No original research explains this in detail. As it says there, "Research that consists of collecting and organizing material from existing sources within the provisions of this and other content policies is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia." This is not going to change anytime soon.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:30, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I would hope that the "deepest thinkers and the most devoted scholars" would be able to find another venue to publish their work before Wikipedia. Though perhaps those who believe most strongly in the depth of their own thought and the devotion of their own scholarship find it strangely hard to convince others of their superb qualities. Alas. postdlf (talk) 17:41, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

'original research' is misnamed. The policy really means don't make things up. No hoaxes etc. Today if we have two(or more) conflicting sources a decision is made about what to choose, how to explain the contradiction etc. Same with images, the captions are most times original research but it's such a basic level that rarely do issues arises over what the image shows (there are exception to this however and some images are not used because of such problems). I imagine in the future that OR will be lossened such that certain things are identified as original research but agreed in a formal way. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 17:45, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

If two or more reliable sources conflict, it is not the place of WP editors to choose between them on the basis of such considerations as, e.g., which is considered to be more believable by the editors involved. To do so would be offend the WP:NPOV policy. See WP:DUE, which requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:49, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Citing primary sources isn't inherently original research; it's when you nontrivially interpret them that you run into trouble. And our sister project Wikiversity welcomes original research of all kinds. --Cybercobra (talk) 17:49, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

bar the deepest thinkers and the most devoted scholars from its pages - The problem is that most Wikipedia editors are not real experts and their research isn't peer reviewed or fact checked before publishing, so anything they produce is inherently an unreliable source.

others can inspect the source and satisfy themselves that it exists and that it justifies the conclusions drawn from it by the writer - The problem is that different people can draw different conclusions. If the second person draws a different conclusion, does that mean the first person was wrong? Should we just allow any random person to stick their own interpretation into an article? Mr.Z-man 18:14, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

The easiest explanation is this -- Wikipedia, being a tertiary source, isn't FOR 'original research'. It's just like if you go to Memory Alpha you wouldn't submit Star Wars stuff because it's not for that. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 19:25, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

(ec)Allowing "any random person to stick their own interpretation into an article" is exactly what we do ... provided' that they cite a reliable source for that interpretation. Where different sources offers different interpretations, we we try to include all major viewpoints, per WP:NPOV, in proportion to their WP:WEIGHT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:26, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Er, if you are "interpreting" sources to come to a conclusion not clearly obvious from the sources, you are creating original research. WP editors are organizing, sorting, and compiling numerous sources into non-novel summaries, which requires original research in how best to present the information, but does not allow for original research in the content of the information. --MASEM (t) 06:11, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind that one of the reasons for the "No Original Research" policy was to come up with a rational "rule" that could be applied to keep UFO "research" and conspiracy theories off of Wikipedia. Prior to Wikipedia, and even to a certain extent on places like the Citizendium, such sort of fringe science has been quite typical even to the point that it overwhelmed much of the early efforts to build a community-based encyclopedia effort. Many of those involved with this kind of fringe science are so desperate to get their "results" published that they are willing to even "manufacture" authentic looking papers and even create scientific journals with the pretense to support their theories. Wikipedia is often seen as a place to legitimize such efforts and certainly as a place to publicize their theories.

In this context, the "No Original Research" policy was established as essentially a polite excuse for why such content is being deleted. The fact that the policy as a general rule of thumb also helps to improve the overall quality of Wikipedia is seen as a major factor to not only support such a policy but to slightly expand its scope to ensure that Wikipedia isn't the place to act as a repository for original research.

I should note that on the Wikimedia sister project, Wikibooks, a similar kind of policy has been adopted as it was essentially a spin-off from Wikipedia. One particular VfD discussion on Wikibooks involved a laboratory who was using Wikibooks as a repository for some of their experimental data. I personally thought it was an amazing concept and it was something I really wished had a place on the Wikimedia sister projects, but unfortunately the original research restrictions forced that data off of that project too.

If you do want to be involved with original research and still be somewhat associated with Wikipedia, I would suggest that you get involved with the Wikiversity community. There is at least a door available for some original research with that project, and the participants are much more open to legitimate scientific enquiry. On the other hand, such efforts do have some significant restrictions even there, but at least it is a place to look if you feel inclined to engage in original research discussions with a wiki-based environment for exposition. If the policy on Wikipedia is ever softened, it will come from that sister project first at least on an experimental basis... experimental in terms of governing policies rather than the original research itself. --Robert Horning (talk) 11:52, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I think Robert Horning above has provided a good rationale for why original research is prohibited. The other fundamental exclusionary policies (WP:V prohibiting unverifiable material and WP:NPOV prohibiting material which compromises Wikipedia's objectivity and neutrality) are closely related and overlap frequently. I don't entirely agree with SunCreator's post, but he does make a valid point because much of what we euphemistically call "original research" are really things which were made up one day, and which also violate the verifiability policy. As per Horning, the prohibition against original research prevents the pushing of fringe theories, which would be a violation of NPOV as well.

For "pure" and "good" and "sincere" original research, the prohibition may look a bit strange at first, because in other contexts, such as writing academic papers or PhD theses, original research is a good thing, indeed you are supposed to present original research those contexts. However, determining good original research from bad original research requires a lot of resources and expertise. Academic papers and PhD theses are evaluated through a rigorous system of peer review where experts in the field can use several weeks evaluating the work. Wikipedia does not have those resources, and since most of its editors are anonymous amateurs, it usually does not have that kind of expertise either. Therefore, it is preferred that the original research is scrutinised and published somewhere else before being posted on Wikipedia. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:30, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, genuine experts publishing their original research is probably just as bad, maybe in some ways worse, than the stuff made up in school one day. The genuine expert probably has good reasons for believing what he note: this is the "unmarked", sex-neutral he says, and can make them convincing, but this may leave the impression that the work is well-accepted when in fact it's not (or, at least, not yet). Encyclopedias aren't supposed to do that. --Trovatore (talk) 22:44, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

It seems the original poster is asking why *good* original research is not welcome. My point is that it often is, one example being captions[edit:alt more often] on images which is nearly always original research. It does seem possible that some original research would be useful to Wikipedia in some instances, not just captions but when sources conflict, when sourced information is illogical. Obviously currently policy forbids original research in theory but in practice it is allowed through the uncontested(WP:CHALLENGE) part of WP:V. My point is that we should stop pretending that *good* original research is not welcome and work towards clearly identifying it. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 23:23, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Making a selection among sources — deciding which are the most relevant and reflect the views in the field — is not original research; it's one of the most important services provided by expert editors. Sure, this can be abused. Not every possible problem can be fixed at the level of policy.

And no, good original research is not welcome. Publish it somewhere else and let it sit a while. Are there occasional exceptions? That's what IAR is for. --Trovatore (talk) 23:37, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

OR can be effectively used in other ways.

For the original poster: there is some use for OR in Wikipedia. OR cannot be included in the encyclopedia, but OR can be effective in deciding that some bit of information should be excluded. As writers and editors we use OR everyday and it always appears on talk page discussions, about content. While it is a key point of the verifiability policy that truth is not an issue, verifiability is, we also make common sense editorial decisions that verifiable bits of information that conflict with truth can be excluded, often using OR to make that decision. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

It isn't a key point of the verifiability policy that "truth is not an issue, verifiablity is." The first line of WP:V seems to say something like that, but it immediately contradicts itself later on, by saying that veriable sources must be "likely to be true" ones, and that (with the exception of BLP) an unverified (but true) statement doesn't have to be removed unless there's some controversy over it. In a sense, WP takes "judicial notice" of obviously true but uncited writing. And I'm not just talking about "the US has 50 states" stuff, but things like

The real vector space of all n × n skew-hermitian matrices is closed under the commutator and forms a real Lie algebra denoted ${\mathfrak {u}}(n)$. This is the Lie algebra of the unitary group U(n).

Go to the article on Lie algebra and start removing uncited stuff, and see what happens. The problem is that the policy pages of wikipedia, WP:V first and foremost, don't actually describe how Wikipedia is ACTUALLY written. I'm sorry about that, but it's the truth. Do I need a citation for it? SBHarris 02:35, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:V does not require verification but verifiability. Content is not required to have sources (unless it is a quote, controversial, or contested), but it must be sourceable. Mr.Z-man 04:17, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so the "content" can be "looked-up" in a "reliable source," if you want to. But what does that really mean? I don't really know. Suppose the NYT prints something-- does that mean they stand behind it? That they believe it? Or one of their reporters just heard it from some government person we can't find the name of? Is the NYT the "source"? Where is the "verifiability," if I can't talk to the same government source the NYT claims they talked to?

This is not hypothetical. Just to take an example that affected many lives (it's probably the single most believed evidence that pushed the US public into supporting the 2003 Iraq war), see the article on Iraqi aluminum tubes. Just as the NYT was loudly claiming in late 2002 that the government was telling them that these tubes could not be used for anything other than nuclear programs, everybody from the Sec Def to Sec State to the VP and the President was saying the same. But-- none of them gave THEIR sources. So what is there to "verify"? If you look here (Oct 3, 2004, NYT): [3] it appears that the DOE knew in 2001 that Iraq was using these same tubes for rockets, with the exact same specs, and had been for years. But one guy in the CIA who had once worked for DOE years before, didn't believe it, and he was the source for the idea that these things had no other believable use but for uranium enrichment. But (alas) the government didn't tell anybody before the 2003 war that only one guy named Joe at the CIA had this idea, and that it was already known as of May, 2001, that Iraq was using exactly these tubes, same specs, for rockets. No mystery. And the government also knew that the other people at DOE who were uranium enrichment experts didn't think the tubes would be good for the job (these people did NOT know that they were already being used in rockets by Iraq). This info was kept that info from Colin Powell himself, because he'd never have been able to face the U.N. with a straight face, saying as an old military man that he couldn't imagine Iraqi weapons specs were so good for mere one-time anti-tank weapons. So-- all this comes back to the idea of what is a "reliable source" for information. Is the NYT a reliable source for the military uses of aluminum tubes of a certain type, in 2002? Clearly, no. Is the CIA? Clearly, no. (Not that the CIA is talking). Is the US government realiable? Clearly, no. The actual experts on gas enrichment won't talk, and they don't publish on this question in open forums.

Wikipedia, were it doing what it is supposed to be doing, would have concluded in 2002 that none of the sources it actually had for this information were reliable. In context, none are appropriate. So where is our "verifiablity"? Who do we ask who knows what they are talking about? Is the NYT reliable in 2004, but wasn't 2002? Quite possibly. Or, is it reliable on this matter, even now? And how would WE know? I'm merely using this matter as an example-- I don't want to go into a discussion about the 2003 Iraq war, rather I want to use this bit as a springboard to discuss issues of sourcing and reliability. If it's so simple a matter, just explain to me how WP's WP:V and WP:IRS policies would or should have dealt with this particular issue, in February, 2003. SBHarris 06:07, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

You actually addressed this in your last comment. Verifiable does not necessarily mean true. We don't need to be able to verify everything back to the original primary sources, just to a "reliable" source. If every reliable source says something, we report what they say; as a tertiary source, that's what we're supposed to do. Unfortunately, if reliable sources are wrong, then we're going to be wrong too. If another reliable source comes along later and says everyone else was wrong, then we report that too. If the earlier sources say they were wrong, then we can just change it, its a wiki. Obviously, if in 2003 we could find a source more reliable than a newspaper (which, even the NYT, is generally one of the least reliable types of sources we allow), then we should use that. But in the absence of a great source, we go with a good one, or we say nothing. Hindsight is 20/20, for a "general purpose" source like a newspaper, we have no idea what topics they aren't reliable for until they prove themselves unreliable. Mr.Z-man 06:50, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

As a bi of aside, it is interesting that no original research was one of the first policies on Nupedia, although, as I recall, (I have a source covering this, but would need to dig it up), the reasoning was a tad different. Nupedia was to be developed by experts (including academics), and naturally original research is part of what they do, so the rule was in place to prevent them pushing their own pet theories. Which makes sense from the point of view of an encyclopedia, which should be a neutral retelling of current research, rather than a chance to present new work. Now I agree with the above statements: the main advantage is limit content to verifiable material, which is an essential process when you move away from a reliance on acknowledged experts in a field to people who may lack the expertise, as you can no longer rely on the author as a viable source, and instead need to rely on where the author gained the information. - Bilby (talk) 13:17, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

The simple reason is that Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought--it's a compendium of all documented knowledge. Others do the original research and we cite them. WesleyDodds (talk) 09:50, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Find a grave and IMDB

Excuse me for the following sarcastic comment. Its been almost 3 months so its time for another weeks long discussion on the status of Find a grave. Here is a link to the discussion that is currently taking place, Again. on the external links noticeboard. Find a grave and IMDB.--Kumioko (talk) 15:10, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Voting has begun

A vote is currently being held at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard as to wether we should ban the use of the Find a grave site and remove the thousands of links we have to it on articles. Please take a moment and place your vote. --Kumioko (talk) 16:14, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

• WP:VOTE. --Whitehorse1 17:42, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I agree however this site is discussed repatedly every couple months with no clear concensus either way. I recommend you add that to the discussion as a comment even if you feel a keep or delete vote is inappropriate. --Kumioko (talk) 17:45, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
    • I added a link to the WP:POLL/WP:VOTE community Guideline. --Whitehorse1 18:03, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
      P.S. It sounds more like that's WP:PEREN territory (fails to gain consensus (to ban Find a grave)).
      • It is WP:PEREN but yet it still keeps coming up and I expect in a couple more months well see it again. --Kumioko (talk) 19:15, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't this be forum shopping? I brought up the question at the link above. It is my first time asking about it and the discussion imho is going quite well. There needs to be an end to this question about these two sites if it is questioned every few months by different editors. One problem I see is and I'm not the only one, is that there are inconsistancies the way we handle both of these sites. Having these sites spammed to multiple articles like they are is shameful. They are put in EL whether they bring info to the articles or not. There are other sites too that are constistantly added to EL that usually bring the same material as our articles have plus what other EL's have. This was just recently put together. As you can see, nothing is consistant in these sites that are added. I thought Facebook and Twitter were both not acceptable links anywhere now this new site says they are, sometimes. What is going on here? I'd appreciate some clarifications at this point. I went to the wrong place to ask these questions, and other questions, please advice me where the best place would be. My personal opinion is that both sites should be white listed, so should I go there with my opinions and see what is said there? I'd really appreciate any help I can get on this because sections like EL and Filmography are getting quite messy and the rules are getting strangely inconsistant. Thanks if advance, --CrohnieGal^Talk 21:27, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

• Hi, Crohnie. A brief cross-post of a link to a discussion asking all comments be made there to keep everything in one place is generally okay. Facebook and Twitter use would, typically, come under WP:SELFPUB, which is part of the Verifiability core content policy. Thank you. –Whitehorse1 22:52, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

About the ((uw-username)) template (curly brackets replaced with round brackets due to user shortcomings)

Hi all.
First of all, I'm aware this is probably the wrong place to ask this question. In my own defence, I would suggest this is the right place to ask for the right place to ask this question. Please feel free to advise me where I might move it to a more appropriate place; I would also most appreciate your feedback about this and any other possible... If this is the wrong place, just move it to the right place.
The current {{subst:uw-username}} template generates

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username (foo) may not meet Wikipedia's username policy. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. As an alternative, you may file for a change of username, or you may simply create a new account and use that for editing. Thank you.

To my ear, "you may file for a change of username" sounds like legalese, like there's some sort of legal process involved: pleadings, documents in triplicate "indorsed" and served, subpoenas and prolly lots more. Just one simple change would ameliorate all this. How about

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username (foo) may not meet Wikipedia's username policy. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. As an alternative, you may ask for a change of username, or you may simply create a new account and use that for editing. Thank you.

Just sayin'--Shirt58 (talk) 11:54, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

You should probably go change it. The change makes sense. The template isn't edit-protected, so you should be able to go right ahead.

Incidentally, quick tip: in case you didn't already know, you can link to a template so it's clickable and displays with those curly brackets, using the tl template ('l' for lap); like this: {{tl|uw-username}} which gives {{uw-username}} (tlx does the same but in a different font).

Or, if you just want to wikilink to a template and give that link a friendlier piped name, you can do this: [[:Template:Mfd|this is a link]] (the important part is the colon at the beginning, which stops the page you place the link on from going into the category attached to that template--in this case, without the colon that link would place this page in the 'misc. pages nominated for deletion' category). –Whitehorse1 12:48, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

A colon is not necessary for template links like that. IIRC, the only times you need a colon are:

• When trying to wikilink to a category, instead of placing the page in the category.
• When trying to wikilink to an image, video, sound file, etc., instead of displaying the file inline in the page.
• When trying to wikilink to a page on another language Wikipedia, instead of creating an interwiki link.
• When trying to transclude a mainspace page, as {{foo}} syntax transcludes Template:Foo rather than Foo.

Anomie⚔ 17:32, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Anomie. (Shirt58, ignore what I said!) Guess I confused templates used without cat suppression and category links categorization suppression; the way inline interlanguage links behave differently by namespace was a problem I ran into before, so I think I got into the habit of using the colon when I wanted a regular wikilink to an irregular page. Appreciate the heads up. –Whitehorse1 18:39, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Not that we can't discuss it here, of course, by if you're looking for the best place to do so, it's probably WT:UTM. I think your suggested change is great. --Bsherr (talk) 18:43, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

 Done Thank you for all your wise words, help and guidance! --Shirt58 (talk) 13:21, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Publishing public transport schedules on wikipedia

I'm curious about at template, Template:Metlink Display. It is designed to display the bus route, times of operations, and bus company in Melbourne, Australia articles. For example, the Melbourne Airport is served by 4 different bus routes, and includes these in the text after discussing public transport.

A shopping mall article contained this list of buses, including a broken template:

{{Metlink Display|201}}
{{Metlink Display|205}}
{{Metlink Display|207}}
{{Metlink Display|279}}
{{Metlink Display|280}}
{{Metlink Display|281}}
{{Metlink Display|282}}
{{Metlink Display|284}}
{{Metlink Display|285}}
{{Metlink Display|293}}
{{Metlink Display|295}}
{{Metlink Display|305}}
{{Metlink Display|307}}
{{Metlink Display|902}}
{{Metlink Display|903}}

The display template includes links to other templates coded to fill all of the parameters. For example, the Timetable template holds 347 external links to www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au routes. The origin, destination and hours templates wikilink the same number, 300+, of articles in a switch to provide these parameters according to the timetable. There's a via template with another huge switch that will then list the route cities, hundreds of parameters in a list for type (circular, clockwise, etc.), then finally another switch template with hundreds of bus operators.

I deleted them in one article, the list above, as it seems inappropriate to display huge lists of bus routes to destinations in urban areas. It's not really the purpose of an encyclopedia, but of a tourist guide to a city. Then, when I looked at the template, it turns out many articles link to it.

Do these really belong in wikipedia articles? And, haven't we essentially downloaded the bus routes and time-tables to wikipedia? Do we need permission? --Kleopatra (talk) 06:13, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that this is encyclopedic information. I think it should be removed, and the template sent to WP:TFD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Unsourced geocoords

I have been concerned about the addition of unsourced geographical coordinate information to articles for some time. Now, it has reached a new level with a bot adding unsourced geocoordinates to a massive number of articles. Most of these geocoord edits fall into the realm of original research with some editors going so far as to search databases for features with similar sounding names (see one such discussion here). The bot appears to be using coordinates from interwiki articles which are unsourced. I am not too worried about adding geocoords for locations which are public and protected; but, some geographic locations are sensitive. They may be located on private property; have sensitive, fragile, valuable resources and be extremely difficult or impossible to protect. Publishing geocoordinates for these sensitive locations is highly irresponsible and serves to tempt (in the vein of the familiar essay WP:BEANS) the unprepared, the ignorant and possibly the unscrupulous to trespass, and to possibly do great damage to a valuable cultural or private resource. While WP:NOR and WP:V clearly cover it, some editors (and even some bot ops) seem willing to use maps, databases, unsourced interwiki articles, or even GPS devices to add coordinates to articles which are otherwise not verifiable from reliable sources. I would like to see more editors enforcing policy and removing unsourced geocoordinates especially from sensitive locations. I have brought this here to bring wider attention to the problem. Thanks and comments? WTucker (talk) 02:45, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Can I ask if even sourced geocoords belong in an encyclopaedia? In what way does this add useful content to an article? AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:57, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

You can so ask, Andy. THe answer, from my perspcive, is yes. I find it very useful to be provided with a link from a geolocatable article, to a map showing the subject of the article. Indeed, so obviously useful and uncontroversial a thing as that makes me wonder at the basis of your grumping. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:14, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

As to WTucker's complaint. I come away with the feeling that you're deliberately misusing NOR in relation to Conkling Cave / Cavern, simply because you do not think its cordinates should be made available. You say as much on your talk page. The source was the US Geological Survey; that would tend to qualify as reliable. The so-called OR was to notice that they list the feature as a cave not a cavern. At this point, consideration of the issue needs to bifurcate. Questions 1 to n relate to standards for sources for geocodes on wikipedia, and whether or not recognising a name changed in a minor way relates to the same feature. Question n+1 is, for me, far more interesting: that is, is there any policy which argues for the suppression of information deemed by, err, in this case you, to be damaging? BEANS is a humorous essay on editing behaviour, as far as I can see; something light years away from your use of it to bolster your argument. I'm not willing to trade our freedom to publish information to meet your concerns about the possible effects of publishing information already clearly in the public domain. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:37, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

While the editor claimed the source as USGS, it was uncited (the claim was in the edit summary only) and unverifiable especially under the name of the location in the article as a variation of the name was used. Even knowing that, it is unverifiable as feature names are not unique especially in USGS database. I do not believe I am misusing WP:NOR, certainly not deliberately. WTucker (talk) 03:54, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Why are maps unsuitible as sources for geocoordinates? I should think they are a perfect source...--Jayron32 03:42, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Having a geographic feature clearly labeled on a map is one thing; but, trying to locate a feature by following a description of its location is straying into WP:NOR. And, locating a feature by finding it in something like an online map because you "know where it is" has clearly fallen headlong into WP:NOR. WTucker (talk) 03:54, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know, most of these sort of things sound like they are on-par with routine calculations in terms of the likelyhood of being uncontroversial to that level. I agree that there is currently no policy guidance one way or the other which guides the addition of coordinates to articles, and that should definitly be remedied, but I think that the eventual policy should be that the coordinates are usually self-evidently valid as their own source; a person could check the location on any of a number of maps and/or visit the site itself and confirm; and such confirmations are often no more difficult than checking a source in a print-only book. I can see where a contested geocoordinate should be removed if it is contested in good faith, but for the sort of stuff like a building on a public street, I don't see where the coordinate is not its own source, and perfectly valid as such. --Jayron32 04:08, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, and with due respect, I doubt the good faith of the Conkling challenge. WT is clear that he does not wish to see coords for this location published, fullstop. I find his concerns regarding the verificability of the Conkling Cave entry on a USGS database unconvincing. Backspace says of the coordinates "the location fits the article's text description of the site just about exactly". I'm convinced that WT accepts that the coordinates are accurate, and is using an OR claim to further his primary objective of non-publication of the coordinates. In this case, the "OR" seems no more extensive than my knowing by context that the factette I add to a Henry II article is indeed related to this Henry II and not that. I remain far more concerned about the arbitrary suppression of publication than I am about angels on pinhead arguments about verificability of USGS data. --Tagishsimon (talk) 04:35, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

With regard to the specific coordinates in question, why aren't the USGS coordinates a good source? The USGS is likely a scrupulously good source regarding this sort of thing, likely the best kind of source! I am confused as to an objection about that! --Jayron32 04:39, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I am not arguing that USGS is not a good primary source; but, it is just that, primary. Look, if this were a person and someone had done a public records search on a variation of a plaintiff's or defendant's name to publish contentious material about that individual, would you argue that such should remain without a verifiable, reliable source? This material is contentious for some locations and a verifiable, reliable, secondary source with a citation should be required with no hint of original research. I am not being pedantic here. I realize that some locations are not harmed by having their coordinates published, they may even benefit; but, some locations are threatened and greatly. When an editor requires a citation from a reliable secondary source for material like this, it should be required. WTucker (talk) 05:06, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The location is contentious? Do you claim that the USGS is wrong in this case? I am not claiming that the USGS is infalible, but in general we require a second source to refute an already established source. And primary sources are allowed for reporting the exact content of the primary source. There is no analysis needed to extract meaning, so I don't see where the USGS source should be disallowed on the grounds that it is primary. The USGS source says "The location is at Lat XXXX Long YYYY" and the Wikipedia article says exactly the same thing. Thats a perfectly legitimate use of the primary source. Are you claiming that the USGS is wrong? What is your basis for that claim? --Jayron32 05:11, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

In the words of WTucker himself (or herself), "this cave is fragile and publishing the geographic coordinates would only serve to invite the unprepared, the ignorant and possibly the unscrupulous to visit and maybe do damage" [4]. He goes on to add, "I would also like for you to reconsider your practice of adding geographic coordinates to sensitive locations such as wild caves, and unprotected historic sites." As such, his (her?) claim that USGS coordinates are OR appears to be obfuscation at best. — Kralizec! (talk) 05:20, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

We should not censor geocoords on the grounds that a location is "sensitive". Our encyclopedic purpose is to inform; what people do with the information is beyond our concern. See also: WP:COMPREHENSIVE. --Cybercobra (talk) 05:28, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

We should not censor information about Cybercobra's personal life, or his bank account, on the grounds that this is "sensitive". Our encyclopedic purpose is to inform; what people do with the information is beyond our concern... Ok, a bit of a strained analogy, but aren't we talking about a situation where stretching the principles of WP:BLP to a 'living planet' is actually more in the spirit of Wikipedia ethics than the disclosure of 'personal information'? If the data isn't available in external reliable sources, our disclosure is not only potentially OR, it is also potentially harmful. If "what people do with the information" doesn't concern you, it concerns me. This isn't censorship, this is ethics. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:43, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Bad analogy. This isn't a bank account number, and this isn't a living person. Its a cave. And its coordinates which are already availible at the USGS. To take your reductio ad absurdum arguement further, if someone set of a bomb at the White House, is Wikipedia complicit in that because Wikipedia published the geocoordinates of the White House? All coordinates can be used for good or evil, I see nothing ethicly wrong with describing the location of a cave. Even a really sensitive one. Even if the cave's feelings get hurt easily. You cant take the arguements for a BLP issue and overextend them to a clearly non-applicable situation. --Jayron32 05:51, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

If you think that this is a debate about the ethics of hurting caves, then yes, this is non-applicable. It isn't. It is about the ethics of accepting responsibility for your actions. Wikipedia is sufficiently large now that we don't just write about the outside world, we influence it, if only in minor ways. We need to consider this occasionally. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:04, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

True. I have considered whether or not publishing the coordinates of a cave is an ethical question. The end result of my considering that possibility is that it is not an ethical question. Merely considering a possibility does not mean we must accept it. Just consider it. I don't see where this is an issue at all. I agree that some information should be kept out of Wikipedia, even if it is publicly availible, because of WP:UNDUE or because it is entirely inappropriate. The latitude and longitude of a geographic features does not, in my thought-out opinion, fit in that category of data. --Jayron32 06:09, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Personal bank account information is unverifiable (unless some investigative journalist takes a sudden interest or the bank experiences a security breach); we don't even need to consult BLP because such info already fails WP:V. Coordinates, on the other hand, generally are verifiable. --Cybercobra (talk) 10:49, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello! I'm the bot operator behind the bot making these edits. Of course, I'm sure it was merely an oversight on WTucker's part not to inform me about this discussion, but I would have certainly greatly appreciated if if they had done so. I'll try to read the above when I have a moment, and respond. -- The Anome (talk) 15:14, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

OK. I've had a chance to read the above. Firstly, I'd like to say that Tagishsimon has already said most of what I wanted to say, and other commenters have said much of the rest.

I'd just add a few more points to clarify my stance on this:

• regarding the wisdom or otherwise of keeping these locations secret, I have no view on this one way or the other, apart from believing that the default should be openness unless there is a good reason to keep a location secret.
• the bot is not adding any information that is not already in Wikipedia, and thus in the public domain already: it's just copying it from one Wikipedia page to another corresponding page in another language.
• the bot makes no attempt to hide the source of the information it is copying: indeed, it is coded to add an (albeit slightly cryptic) source: parameter to the {{coord}} tag so that the data can be traced back to the original Wikipedia page it got it from: this is deliberately done so that it can then be used to investigate the provenance of the data further. I do similar things, where possible, for data sourced from GNS, GNIS and other relevant sources. (By the way, I'm very much in favour of good source information for all coordinates: I think we can and should do better here than we do at the moment with source:, and would like to see the source: parameter upgraded to a full template paramater, so we can use free text including URLs in that field.)
• the bot already makes some effort not to add geocodes to ancient sites, on the grounds that coordinates for such locations are often inaccurate or dubious: this one slipped through the gaps, and I'll see if I can tighten the filter further based on this case

Finally, if WTucker really wishes to remove this information, they can do so on all the various relevant interwiki'd articles, and the bot will not put any it back again. -- The Anome (talk) 15:28, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the others here who do not see adding coordinates without a specific source to be original research as the coordinates themselves are a straightforward fact which can be verified any number of ways quite easily. I think The Anome is doing a fine job of updating the coords on various articles and I don't see any reason to stop him. If there are concerns about a specific article's coords, those can be discussed on that talk page (or with The Anome, in the case where his bot added them). ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 18:46, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, The Anome. I did not begin this section on this page to discuss the edits of your bot but to discuss the more general question of adding unsourced geocoords and to bring awareness of the problems this practice can cause. I was hoping possibly for a policy change or clarification which might make editors more aware and careful. I don't think we would let a bot copy birthdates, say, citing only an interwiki link (in the edit summary) which turns out to be completely unsourced. Why then do we let a bot copy unsourced geocoords from an interwiki article?

As to your specific points:

• We seem to have something in common. I too believe the default should be openness but for sensitive locations, the default should be not to locate even going so far as to oversight and revdel those edits.
• I don't think anyone has argued that you did not have the right to copy from one wiki to another.
• Thank you for indicating from where the information was copied, but an interwiki mention in the edit summary is not a reliable source nor a proper cite. I think I might like your ideas of adding the template parameter if it would improve the sourcing and if it discourages unsourced coords I would really like it.
• O.K. you have some concern for coords which are likely to be inaccurate. How about some concern for sensitive locations?

Finally, I have defended a few sensitive locations and have been successful at having some edits oversighted; but, I was remiss in checking all of the interwikis for these unsourced geocoords. I was hoping for a change of some kind which might help. WTucker (talk) 19:38, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The oversight policy and the revision deletion policy do not cover this sort of information, and it would be improper for anyone to apply those techniques to geographical coordinates. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:44, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with CBM. We generally don't apply oversight to unverified, unpublicized street addresses, and everyone agrees that those don't belong here. For material on which there's no agreement that the location is "sensitive", oversight is surely not appropriate at all. — Gavia immer (talk) 19:58, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Which article are we talking about? I was able to look up the location of Conkling Cavern in the GNIS system with no difficulty, so that particular set of coordinates is neither unsourcable nor secret. The information provded by the GNIS was:

Conklings Cave, ID: 916143, Class: Mine, County: Doña Ana, State: NM, Latitude: 321124N, Longitude: 1063507W, Elevation: 4806, Map: Bishop Cap

— Carl (CBM · talk) 19:55, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrary deletion of coordinates

WT has vouchsafed as as follows: "I have defended a few sensitive locations and have been successful at having some edits oversighted", but I see no policy supporting such actions. Nor, from the example of Conkling Cavern, any mention whatsoever on the talk page of the application of the non-existent policy on suppressing geo-codes. I'm troubled that an editor has set himself up as the authority on suppression of geocoords for a subset of articles, with little or no transparancy nor any accountability. I'm troubled, too, that in the one example for which we have most of the information to our fingertips, Conkling Cavern, the coordinate is, as Carl shows, above, easily accessible and in the public domain. It is difficult to understand why, under such circumstances, we would not publish this coordinate; and it is easy to suspect that other of the suppressed coordinates are of the same ilk: in the public domain, easily accessible from USGS, missing from wikipedia merely on the (however well meant) whim of WT.

Whereas WT and I may well disagree as to which geo-locatable subjects should not have coordinates, I'm prepared to accept that the possibility exists that there may be articles for which suppression of the coords is, on the whole, desirable.

I'm not prepared to accept that suppression of such coords be done in the way in which WT seems to be going about it - with nil or minimal attempt to gain consensus for the suppression, with no community oversight, with no disclosure on the article talk page.

If it is to be done, let us do it out in the open, so that we can all see what's going on. Let us declare in the talk page that the coordinate has been suppressed, state the reason and record the consensus. Let us not suppress unless we can show consensus. Let us put the articles into a (perhaps hidden) category so that we have a central location at which all such articles are listed.

I invite WT to start this process by notifying us to the articles on which coordinates have been suppressed, so that each can be considered by the comunity, and the actions taken recorded on the talk page of each.

To the extent that any policy change is required, I suggest that it be on the lines set out above: that we handle the suppression of publication of information in a very public way. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:20, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

In particular, if we were going to intentionally not put coordinates on some page, we should add some invisible {{nocoords}} template, which would give accountability and would tell bots that it is OK not to have coordinates. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:01, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

As Wikipedia is not censored it is difficult to think of any location where public domain co-ords should be removed, certainly not a cave. I would expect the list to be extremely small if not any. But as has been said if any have already been suppressed then they should be discussed in a forum any other candidates discussed, although it hard to think of any that need protection from public domain information. Particulary concerned by the fact that this information is oversighted which appears to be an abuse of the system. MilborneOne (talk) 23:26, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I think some people are misinterpreting what WP:NOTCENSORED means. Wikipedia is censored, just not for "offensiveness". The question is appropriateness (and in some cases legality) and this is a case by case basis. I can perfectly see some instances where it would be inappropriate to include very accurate (and potentially wrong) geocoordinates, even if public domain, just as it would be inappropriate to add other information or statements on an article even if one can verify them, like addresses and other personal information.

I am not aware of any current policy/guideline (aside from BLP) justifying the exclusion of verifiable, relevant, useful information on the grounds of "appropriateness". These are not people; analogies to BLP are misguided (like the failed proposal I recall regarding extending BLP to corporations). --Cybercobra (talk) 01:09, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

How about What Wikipedia is not? And I quote "In any encyclopedia, information cannot be included solely for being true or useful.". As I said point 3 of subsection WP:NOTDIRECTORY backs up my point on contact information, it has nothing to do with BLP. As for WP:HARM, as you can read from the very page, it was rejected because it wasn't considered compatible with with WP:NPOV, i.e that statements that may be negative of the subject may be required to maintain neutrality. It was not rejected because anything verifiable is necessarily appropriate in a given article, many policies discuss whether added information is appropriately educational, informative, notable, due weight etc. Editing decisions about whether or not information is appropriate are made all the time, it's common sense. ChiZeroOne (talk) 01:47, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I think the question of the appropriateness of many geocoords, and bots applying them, is a serious issue. But I agree with Tagishsimon that discussion of articles, or sets of articles, where they are not appropriate needs to be done formally. ChiZeroOne (talk) 23:51, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Although I dont disagree with you just to note I was not invoking NOTCENSORED just the statement that it is not censored in that some people dont like the information being available should not be the overriding state. MilborneOne (talk) 00:06, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Let's start with Lechuguilla Cave as that is one that the bot copied unsourced from an interwiki with no citation. As far as I can tell, coordinates for this cave are not available through GNIS. The cave is on National Park Service property and access is strictly controlled. It is deemed "significant" according to the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act and you will be hard pressed to find a NPS employee who will give you coordinates for it openly. I have never seen the coordinates published in a reliable source, just general location descriptions. The cave is well known and clearly notable so an article on WP is appropriate but coordinates are not appropriate. If it is possible to mark an article with a hidden category or something like that to prevent coordinates, this is where I would start and I was able to get an edit oversighted on this article some time back albeit with some effort. Verifiability would be difficult without visiting the site with a GPS device but I see that as something along the lines of conducting a scientific experiment to verify a statement -- in other words, OR. WTucker (talk) 01:18, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree completely with removing the coordinates from that article. A little searching shows that the U.S. government does keep the location information confidential; it's even exempt from Freedom of information requests. As long as the information remains unpublished, it should be out of the article for verifiability reasons. Although I was able to find a map to the entrance without too much trouble, the coordinates do seem to be unverifiable as far as I can see. If someone does find a reliable source for the coordinates, then we need to reassess the matter.

On the other hand, I can't see how oversighting is appropriate. I'll raise that at the oversight talk page, since it's somewhat separate from this discussion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:46, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Assuming you are talking about the edit on 28 march 2009, that one was not oversighted but revision deleted, which is definitely not the same. I do think revision deletion was both inappropriate and useless in this case, as the edit summary is still visible and provides a link to the disputed coordinates. Yoenit (talk) 01:57, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

While I agree with the exclusion of coordinates based upon original research and verifiability guidelines, there are other considerations to make here. Other rationale for exclusion such as to protect "vital natural resources" or because it is "classified material" (such as the location of a "secret" military based like Area 51) is something that shouldn't be happening without at least some sort of standard policy arrived upon by consensus with the Wikipedia community. I also find it highly unlikely that anything other than the most strict sort of exclusions as some very exceptional and narrow exclusions would be permitted through consensus as well, although the preservation of caves and fragile natural resources might be among those. I'm a fence sitter on that argument leaning to keeping coordinates of that nature in spite of any sort of impact the knowledge of the location might damage the environment of the place being talked about on Wikipedia. Security through obscurity generally is a bad thing and only tends to keep the stupid away as well. The point of an encyclopedia is to spread knowledge, not to restrict that knowledge to just a handful of gatekeepers of that "precious knowledge". --Robert Horning (talk) 02:06, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I have started a thread at Wikipedia talk:Revision deletion#Environmentally sensitive locations about edits when there are no reliable sources. I think that there are really two different questions here:

• When there are no reliable sources, of course we can remove the coordinates from articles. Our verifiability and original research policies already say these coordinates should not be in our articles. Should they also be hidden from view in the article history? This should be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Revision deletion.
• When there are reliable sources, should we still endeavor to keep the coordinates out of our articles? I don't think that trying to do so is a good idea. This is a good topic for this thread.

If we conflate these two issues, it will lead to a lot of talking past each other, I think. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:37, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Accident article notability no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Accident article notability (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

You put your guideline tag in, you put your guideline tag out, you put your guideline tag in, and you shake it all about. You do the Wiki-Pokey and you turn yourself around.... --Jayron32 03:18, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Indeed.. I should point out the reason this notice appeared is because the page was moved; the guideline tag is still there. Mlm42 (talk) 04:12, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

All of which suggests that neither bots nor human editors (or possibly even chimpanzees with typewriters) should be let anywhere the scene of a potential aircraft accident. To err is human, to really foul things up takes advanced technology... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:05, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

The "false positive" here is useful - I did change the title and tag on a guideline (it's not a notability guideline, it's a content guideline, so it was misnamed and tagged), so this notice invites outside scrutiny of my edit. Fences&Windows 18:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Policy re: removing non-free images from main space

Thoughts re: possible policy change on how this is done. When an image is removed from a page, many editors at various experience levels work with it, most not being the original uploader. Newer users may not know that a rationale is needed and/or how to go about providing it to get the image back. It's possible for these images to fall into "redlink" in backlog and be deleted because of lack of a rationale. If the policy was to place a notice on the article's talk page with notice to all what's needed and that the image may be deleted in X number of days if not done, it would seem to give all who edit a page adequate opportunity to correct the problem. (first try at this so please excuse any mistakes) We hope (talk) 17:52, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Aircraft accidents and incidents has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Aircraft accidents and incidents (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, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I think this should probably be tagged with {{WikiProject style advice}} rather than as a content guideline. Mlm42 (talk) 03:15, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Or we could create a {{WikiProject content advice}} template, if that seems more appropriate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't sure whether to call it a style guide or a content guideline, but it seems to be more about what content goes into articles than how to format them. Fences&Windows 20:35, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I've created the template {{WikiProject content advice}}, simply by rewording {{WikiProject style advice}}. Shall we replace the guideline tag with this template now? Mlm42 (talk) 20:05, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

RFC on the allowance of cover images per NFCC

I've opened an RFC to determine what the current consensus is on the use of non-free cover images on articles of copyrighted works per current treated of the non-free content criteria policy. The RFC can be found at WT:NFC#Appropriateness of cover images per NFCC#8. --MASEM (t) 16:50, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

What policy governs paid editing?

I'd like to persuade a professional body to pay an expert to edit some medical articles and review them twice a year, but there seem to be conflicting views about the appropriateness of this. My view is that, provided they follow WP:V, WP:RS and the other essential policies, there is nothing to prevent paid editing. Am I wrong? Anthony (talk) 07:59, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

There is WP:PAID that points to some proposed policies that have failed to gain consensus. It is a topic that can open up a can of worms that you may not want to deal with at the moment, although for myself I don't have any problems with somebody who is paid to edit Wikipedia, provided that they follow all of the guidelines and standards of Wikipedia, most especially WP:NPOV and WP:OR, which seem to be the most frequent problems with paid editing. The point is that unless you openly proclaim that you are editing for pay, there is no way of identifying those who have been or haven't been paid and there are often motivations for people to write article for Wikipedia that go beyond financial incentives as well.

If you or a group are trying to hire somebody, make sure that the person you are hiring has a good reputation and make sure they have an existing account on Wikipedia that you can check and verify before giving them any money. Don't just go to some website that says "yeah, we write Wikipedia articles", but rather evaluate the writer just like you would any other writer... and Wikipedia gives you a chance to see their portfolio along with skeletons that perhaps you wouldn't want to see on a resume. Finding a contributor to Wikipedia who keeps within guidelines and is generally friendly to the other Wikipedia contributors (including the purely volunteer contributors especially) is very useful and essential if you expect that the edits are going to "stick" or be around past any sort of editorial review of the article. Be especially wary of any sort of "advertising" service or some group proclaiming they are "professional Wikipedia authors" without being able to at least communicate directly with the authors you intend to hire. --Robert Horning (talk) 12:14, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that link and the detailed response, Robert. Anthony (talk) 12:55, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Robert summed it up well - there is no active prohibition on paid editing, but any editor's first priority should be the quality of the project, even if it's counter to the interest of the person paying them. For example, if a drug company pays an editor to edit medical articles, that editor should be free to add criticism concerning that company and their products. If you are paying an editor, you should be prepared to accept this kind of thing. Dcoetzee 14:54, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Also of interest is the reward board. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:02, 2 January 2011 (UTC).

Thanks everybody. That's exactly what I needed. Anthony (talk) 07:31, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Allow/encourage use of Talk pages for non-maintenance discussion?

I think it would be beneficial to allow Talk pages to be used for the discussion of the content of articles, as well as just their maintenance. By this I mean not only discussing problems in formatting, citations, etc. but also what the article is talking about, e.g. people's opinions on and arguments about the pros and cons of certain philosophies.

I say this because I spend a lot of time reading philosophy articles, specifically ethics, and I think that in this field especially Wikipedia could allow for excellent discussion and advancement of thought in certain areas. Sometimes on these articles I see [by whom] or similar superscripts (indicating `weasel words' I believe. I apologise for my lack of knowledge as I'm not a contributor.) next to certain points, which aren't necessarily in need of a citation: they are points that are perfectly valid and could be attributed to the contributor. It appears that points are only likely to be added to an article if they can be referenced to an external source and/or if the author is famous or an expert in their field, when many points just as worthy could come from Wikipedia's contributors (the most notable examples come under `Criticisms' headings, where someone has replied to an argument. Often, there may be points in these replies which could just as easily be critiqued.). As such it makes sense to me for Talk pages to be used for the discussion of an article's content as well as maintenance, so that knowledge may be refined and enhanced.

This may apply primarily to philosophy articles (where thought and discussion are the means of forwarding argument, in contrast to science where research is just as important), but it is definitely useful in at least this scope. I believe that encouraging this behaviour would increase the development of ideas and thought, and the penetration of said ideas onto Wikipedia's article pages, which would be highly beneficial to both Wikipedia and it's users.

217.155.230.238 (talk) 23:03, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Been suggested before. Wikipedia is not meant to be a forum nor are we here to "advance thought." We're here to report what others have already advanced, not to drive opinions. You might find more traction at Wikiversity or a philosophy-related forum. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 23:07, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I searched for ``Talk'' before on the Village Pump page but nothing turned up. Also I can't find anything related to my idea on the Perennial proposals page, which one did you have in mind? I'll look at Wikiversity, thanks. 217.155.230.238 (talk) 00:07, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

This suggestion would be within the scope of wikiversity. You could, for example, do this at v:Historical Introduction to Philosophy. Let me know if you need help getting started. --mikeu ^talk 00:54, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

The "no original research" policy comes to mind. You appear to be saying that some "Criticisms" sections contain original research, that is, statements which are attributed only to the Wikipedia editor. Such statements should be removed. Only statements with reliable sources are suitable for articles. Mlm42 (talk) 23:21, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

No I'm saying that only ``statements with reliable sources'' are allowed in the `Criticisms' sections, but we should allow criticisms that can be attributed only to a Wikipedia author: the lack of an external source does not subtract from the validity of an argument in the senses that I am talking about. Utilitarianism#Criticism and defence gives a good idea of what I'm on about: points in contrast to the original idea, with appropriate counter-points (most of which are attributed). In such cases the lack attribution doesn't invalidate the point, as a competent reader can see if such a counter-argument makes sense, rather than assuming the counter-argument to be valid because of who has made it. Regarding ``no original research'' and verifiability, yes technically my suggestions are in contradiction to the policies. However, I am proposing to allow only new content that is directly verifiable due to its nature (I said `opinions' before, and this is an incorrect and invalid use of my proposal. My apologies.). Because of the nature of philosophy, any new research is instantly verifiable (by thinking about the argument's content and analysing the logical structure of the argument), and so this doesn't contradict the verifiability policy. I suppose my main quarrel is with the no original research policy, as I don't think it should apply in cases where said research is immediately verifiable (it is no different than saying ``the sky is blue''). 217.155.230.238 (talk) 00:00, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

This proposal is still a bad one, because it turns us away from our sole proper role of aggregator of previously-published information and towards a role of blog/forum site, one for which we are not suited. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:07, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the naysayers. The sole purpose of this project is to build an encyclopedia. There are countless other websites that exist to host freeform discussions.   Will Beback  talk  01:14, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

"The sky is blue" still needs a reference. Take a look at the article Sky.. there are 4 different references for this fact, the earliest being a paper from 1868.. and that is why Wikipedia is awesome. Mlm42 (talk) 01:23, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I think this is generally a bad idea. More work on the articles. Less playing around. And I think in general, we don't want to post OR in the sense of original research. Referring to primary litarature is fine (if you do it right), not POV gaming. But hitting a point. But we don't want someone publishing a 10 line solution to Fermat's Last Thereom here. Even if he is right, we don't want it here. We are better off without it. And the world is better off if he gets it into a math journal. Also, you know we won't have the above problem (correct research), but instead perpetual motion machine crackpots publishing here. Well, let them struggle with the journals or blog their stuff.TCO (talk) 01:32, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

One exception is on photos and maps. In essence here we are doing primary research. But its very targeted and done for a good reason and worth it.TCO (talk) 01:34, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I feel I should clear up my proposal slightly. I think that there should be:

1. A place for users to discuss Wikipedia content in an academic manner.
2. An easy way for new research from these discussions to be included in Wikipedia articles, providing said information is useful and verifiable.

I am aware that my second point violates NOR, but from what I have read of its history this usage doesn't contradict its reason for existing. Furthermore, in these cases verifiability is also upheld. I am aware that Wikipedia is not a place for discussion, and Wikiversity's reading groups looks to provide the framework for 1, and also places this discussion into an academic environment. Technically this also gives a source, and means that Wikipedia isn't publishing original research (as that research was conducted through discussion at Wikiversity), although I'd like to reach a solution based on sensibility rather than technicality. The discussion about my proposal on Wikiversity can be found at Wikiversity:Wikiversity:Colloquium#Allow/encourage use of Talk pages for non-maintenance discussion?. Point 1 is sorted as far as I am concerned, but I cannot see any reason why Wikipedia would deny allowing sensible, new research from these discussions into Wikipedia articles. I am aware that NOR serves to help prevent crackpot research from coming into Wikipedia, but doesn't discussion in an academic environment such as Wikiversity credit the usefulness and non-crackpotiness of this research. Basically, we can use a policy of sensible, academic discussion at Wikiversity to ensure only sensible, good ideas develop which means that any resulting ideas would be fit for re-insertion into Wikipedia. A nice academic cycle. 217.155.230.238 (talk) 12:40, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

"Re-inserting" into Wikipedia articles wouldn't be appropriate, since WV projects are not peer-reviewed in the sense we'd want for a source. However, you could simply add a link from the article using the sister project template to let people know it's there. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 15:18, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

The crux of my argument is that (at least in the case of philosophy) discussion and debate does act as peer-review and is sufficient to validate the content. For example, if someone posted a (counter-)argument with logical fallacies, then other people could post a (counter-)counter-argument pointing this out (or even edit the argument, as this is the nature of wiki). As such I, personally, believe that this would be sufficient, although I can see that the current policies are more rigorous than my views, and I accept this. I am aware of the existence of the Wikiversity template, but I don't think the link between Wikiversity and discussion is as obvious as it should be: personally I would not have thought of following the Wikiversity link to find a discussion on the content of an article, and although discussions serve as an educational tool (especially for philosophy), they are slightly distinct. Perhaps we could put some form of ``header'' (I don't know what the Wikipedia term is) to the top of article Talk pages stating that Talk pages are not for talking about the content of an article, and that discussion of article content can be done on <appropriate Wikiversity page>? (This is mainly a usability issue now if people agree with me here, so I must ask does anyone else think we should do something about making the link between Wikipedia articles and Wikiversity discussion spaces more obvious?). 217.155.230.238 (talk) 15:35, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

This just isn't going to happen, both because it fundamentally conflicts with our mission to build an encyclopedia and because it would draw many resources (e.g. admin time) away from improving the encyclopedia. The "peer review" 217.155.230.238 envisions would probably not be sufficiently rigorous to accomplish anything useful, and even if it were it would still be a complete violation of WP:No original research. I don't know whether this would have a place at Wikiversity or not, but here is not the place to discuss it (take it to Wikiversity). Since this keeps coming up, I've added it to WP:PEREN: WP:PEREN#Allow discussion about the topic of the article. Anomie⚔ 16:50, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

@217.155.230.238, I don't know enough to comment regarding philosophy, but I strongly oppose the idea of anything but peer-reviewed published sources for medical articles. Regarding the first proposal, though - I like it. I'd like a forum attached to each medical article. It would be a very good thing. Anthony (talk) 17:21, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

No, it wouldn't. I can imagine the intellectual level of discussions on Anus already. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:19, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I see no reason to expect any more vandalism at Forum:Anus than at Anus or Talk:Anus. Try imagining the intellectual level of discussions on Forum:Oligodendrocyte or Forum:Breast cancer. This could be a very good thing indeed. The huge moderation burden is imaginary. Anthony (talk) 18:27, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

But can you imagine the problems at Forum:Julian Assange? It has been hard enough keeping unsourced speculation, original research, synthesis, and violations of WP:BLP off the talk page. Trying to moderate a forum would be a full-time job, I'd imagine. If you allow OR on a forum for contentious issues, it will likely degenerate into a slanging-match. Who would volunteer to moderate that? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:38, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Why would the forum have to be moderated? 217.155.230.238 (talk) 18:53, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Why would we need to moderate a forum thread on Julian Assange? Libel laws, for a start. More generally, an unmoderated forum is liable to be used for all sorts of dubious purposes, and is hardly the sort of thing that Wikipedia would want to be associated with. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:58, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah fair enough, I didn't think about that. I would suggest that self-moderation due to wikiness would be sufficient, but I think the increased throughput of a forum compared to a wiki would make this difficult, or would remove editors from more important jobs. However, I can see no benefit to Wikipedia from discussion about Julian Assange, nor any other topic where evidence is required to back up a point. I would suggest allowing editors to create discussions on Wikiversity, which are linked from the article (perhaps a ``Discuss this article'' or a ``Discuss this topic'' tab?). This way, we can provide a forum for intellectual discussion, but only in cases where this discussion will lead to information that can advance an article's content, whilst also limiting the burden of moderation. 217.155.230.238 (talk) 19:35, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem I see with that solution is, there isn't a Wikiversity article on oligodendrocytes. There isn't even one on breast cancer. Anthony (talk) 19:55, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

``editors [...] create discussions on Wikiversity'' 217.155.230.238 (talk) 20:19, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

You could have policies and sanctions governing content on Forum:Julian Assange just as you have for Julian Assange and Talk:Julian Assange, like "no libel," "no personal attacks," "stay on topic." I see no problem. Anthony (talk) 19:30, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

• Doesn't the Wikipedia:Reference desk really already serve this purpose? Fences&Windows 03:41, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

More forum suggestions (semi serious)

How about renaming the admins as "moderators". Calling a block a ban. And having a system for private messaging. Also, enable some sort of ubb-like forum method for talk pages. I mean, REALLY, why they heck do I have to feel like a computer programmer writing those silly colons? And in the edit view everything is run together. Blech! Don't tell me cause it's always been that way! And having other people edit my talk posts? Whiskey tango foxtrot? TCO (talk) 23:41, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

mw:Extension:LiquidThreads? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 03:17, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Blocks and bans have different/distinct meanings in Wikipedian jargon. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:53, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Aircraft accidents and incidents no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Aircraft accidents and incidents (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Image tags pre-2004

Resolved

 – Magog the Ogre (talk) 07:31, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I recently noticed that File:Bled lake.jpg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was uploaded in 2003, but overwritten in 2004 with a different image. That second image is now moved to commons, so I've reverted to the 2003 image (we don't like to delete good images). However, the old image never had a license, which I understand this was common in the early days of WP.

What was the practice at the time for tagging and/or delete such images? I don't want to blindly tag it with {{subst:nld}}. Also, I note there were two different authors (they would both need to agree to the license, unless the latter improved version were removed).

Note: there is currently a version on commons of the 2003 file, but it doesn't give proper attribution to either author. Magog the Ogre (talk) 23:41, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The original uploader is still active. I've dropped a note on his/her page. Surely the second image is merely a derivative work bound by the original license? --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:49, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Of course; we normally just assume the second work is the same license as the first, because the second uploader writes over top the original image with the license attached right on the page for him/her to see. However, in this case, we can't assume that because this uploader didn't attach a license to his/her derivative work, and there's no way for us to assume the second uploader would agree to the license which the first uploader should shortly give. Magog the Ogre (talk) 23:57, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Although the GFDL warning on submitting content was in place in 2004 when I started, and presumably was in 2003. It is not unfair to assume that the GFDL was understood by both editors for both versions of this image, even if the necessity to tag photos was not in place at the time. T'other editor most recently edited late in 2010, so an enquiry in that direction might not go amiss. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:52, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

• • I uploaded a higher resolution version of the original picture into commons File:Lake Bled.jpg~, with a correct license. Feel free to delete the older versions. Donar Reiskoffer (talk) 07:24, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Magog the Ogre (talk) 07:31, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

SuperEditors should be required to know something

The idea of Wikipedia is excellent. The Internet should have a comprehensive encyclopedia of academic and pop culture topics.

It doesn’t work in the real world, unfortunately.

The most common complaint is that it is open to any one to make a contribution. However, since it is continually peer-reviewed this is not the problem that it may appear to be. Bad information is corrected and may indeed lead to a more informed article/essay after editing and discussion.

No, the real problem is the designation of a score or so “SuperEditors” who have the authority to delete or change an article although they, generally, lack any knowledge base from which to make such decisions.

My expertise, lies in the history and operations of religious denominations and sects, and of comparable political parties and ideologies. I can tell anyone more than they want to know about Hardshell Baptists, or Free Will Baptists or Primitive Universalist Baptists and can equally account for the activities of Gold Democrats, Loco Focos, Hunkers or Mugwumps. Religious or political oddities are a specialty of mine.

With this background, I happened to note that while Wikipedia had articles on the Salvation Army and Volunteers of America, they lacked one on the third such church-based social welfare organization, American Rescue Workers. I, therefore, posted such an entry.

A “SuperEditor” speedily deleted it, he felt that it wasn’t important enough. The SuperEditor obviously didn’t know that the ARW was organized in 1884, that it operated many charitable programs, enlisted the assistance of thousands and served hundreds of thousands annually. Indeed, the “SuperEditor” didn’t bother to read my article. It was deleted, quite frankly, because the “SuperEditor” was woefully ignorant and unwilling to learn.

Interestingly, I also discovered that the Wikipedia “SuperEditors” approved of an article about a political organization that really doesn’t exist. Or rather to be precise, a “organization” which is the creation of one person operating out of his apartment. When informed that this organization probably doesn’t deserve its own entry due to lack of importance, the “SuperEditor” informed me that it must exist because it has a website! Anyone can have a website.

So an organization that serves several hundred thousand people a year out of six major headquarters with a 130 year history isn’t important enough for Wikipedia but one that has only one-member with his own website does.

Silly? Absurd? LAWinans (talk) 05:28, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't see the article that was deleted, but I see that the deletion comment was "Article about a company, corporation, organization, or group, which does not indicate the importance or significance of the subject". What this means is that new articles have to "prove the worth of their subject" by referencing reliable sources that mention the articles. (For example, books, television reports, newpaper articles, etc.) Google News seems to pop up a number of possible reliable sources (especially if you choose the year from the list on the left). If you think that the deletion was misguided, then you can ask for it to be overturned at Wikipedia:Deletion review. Bluap (talk) 08:09, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

What you call "SuperEditors" are only "administrators" and no one claims that they are able to know everything. Nobody is. In this particular case, unfortunately, your article does not specify all those claims you make here, so the administrator was not able to judge the article based on this. I have reviewed the deleted content though and I think it did not meet the criterion for speedy deletion cited for deleting it, so it's most likely simply a mistake on the deleting administrator's part. As such, you should go to their talk page and ask them to restore the article, pointing out that you have specified a reliable source that indicates significance and that you have more reasons why this subject is significant. If you provide more reliable sources when doing so, even better. Regards SoWhy 08:55, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

New articles don't have to prove the worth of their subject by referencing it, they just have to explain it. CSD A7 is very clear about this. References are not required, an assertion and explicit claim of importance is. And this is a problem that arises with new editors unfamiliar with wikipedia policies: they write about a topic, often at length, but say nothing about why the topic is important or encyclopedic. Unfortunately wikipedia gets 100s of new articles each day with no assertion of importance, and there are not enough administrators around to delete the bad amidst the good articles. This criteria for speedy deletion puts the burden on the editor creating the article to immediately assert the importance of the organization to prevent deletion.

If this article had any claim whatsoever to the importance of the topic, then simply ask for it to be restored, as, if it claimed the importance of the organization its deletion was in error.

All this time spent here could have been spent reading the policy which is linked on the article's deletion page and either correcting the deficiency in the article by recreating it with a proper assertion of importance or by requesting it be restored. So, either the article is important or discussing it is. Your choice. --Kleopatra (talk) 16:47, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I requested that the deleted article be restored to my user space. I will edit it there, if there is any usable content, then move it into article space. --Kleopatra (talk) 16:57, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

The article is now edited and restored to main space. American Rescue Workers. --Kleopatra (talk) 17:48, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia! Although Einstein's notion that there is no absolute inertial frame of reference is widely accepted, the equivalent in Wikipedia (there is no absolute measure of an article's "notability") is firmly rejected. Folks in Wikipedia insist they can assess the significance of a subject, when there is no absolute measure of that. More important, there IS no need to assess significance. There is no technical limitation to the number of Wikipedia articles, or to the length, or to the list of references. Either the article gets a lot of hits, or it doesn't. Articles with few hits are invisible and should not be agonized over.

This is the approach of Google. Google doesn't assess anything about the worth or notability of a web page. A page rises to the top of a search based on a computer algorithm with no editor and their ego getting in the way.

All utopias come to an end, and Wikipedia is no exception. It has morphed from a lot of people adding to a knowledge database (albeit not perfectly), to a very unfriendly site where nothing new can be added, and emphasis is on perfecting existing articles. An editor actually told me that about all the articles worth writing already appear in Wikipedia. (Like the patent office official that said all inventions have been invented.) Another insisted that cleaning up an article was more work than originally creating the article. (Yeah, like vacuuming a room is more work than building a room.)

So all these folks reading your work, agonizing over its "worth", hitting the delete button until you grovel and jump through a lot of hoops, etc. is just a monumental waste of everyone's time. Wikipedia has gone from how can we retain as much data as possible within some generous rules, to how can we find some reason no matter how capricious to reject new data.

It is fun, easy, and safe to review other's work, stomp on it, criticize it, and say it is never quite perfect enough. You end up with call-out boxes from an amateur editor promulgating yet another made-up requirement, on about every single article.

So get your own web page, publish your stuff on the internet, and call it a day. If you went to all this trouble to create an article based on your subject matter expertise, it is significant. Don't let the amateur volunteers at Wikipedia get in your way. And don't bother fighting Wikipedia bureaucracy, spend your time creating more original works.

Any questions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oracle2wiki (talk • contribs) 15:25, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Umm, yes. Which bridge do you live under? --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Obviously under the one with the nourishing food. --Kleopatra (talk) 17:48, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Perhaps you need to brush up on your understanding of the definition of encyclopedia. The goats won't go anywhere. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 17:11, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, if I may troll here a bit, how would looking up the definition of encyclopedia help the cynic above? Or the complainer before him? An encyclopedia "has to do" with being a reference summation/summary of knowledge. Okay. How are we helped? The kinds of knowledge that WP is (supposed to be) limited to sumarizing are in WP:NOT, but this is not very helpful, as WP:NOT should really be called WP:NOTSUPPOSED, as it contains a lot of NOTs that WP often really IS (and worst of all, the list of NOTs is quite arbitrary).

And none of this has to do with the definition of encyclopedia. So we come to "summation and summary." Those are hard words to define, except they presumably refer to works SHORTER than the original. But how much shorter? Jimbo Wales said that WP was aiming to place the SUM of all human knowledge in the hands of everyone. He might have meant SUMMARY, but he said SUM, and that has caused very much confusion, since the Sayings of Jimbo are blindly followed in some ways like the Sayings of Chairman Mao.

In any case, none of this helps us with what to summarize and what not, except for the rule that it must be something already published after decent editorial review first, elsewhere (basically). So now, it's your turn. How does any of this help our two disgruntled persons? If it doesn't help, then how-about you contribute something other than a two-sentence brush off? Let's see you think. SBHarris 21:59, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Kleopatra helped LAWinans by incubating and wikifying the article for the user and offering a lot of help. With the snarkiness of Oracle's statement, which was obviously off-topic, I don't believe it was necessary for anyone to pretty much defend Wikipedia to a person who isn't happy that we don't have more garbage articles with subjects with no note of notability. Angryapathy (talk) 22:19, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

For me, every article covered by WP:ROYAL is a garbage article. But one man's opinions are not those of another, and there exist people to whom the slightest hint of "royalty" is like catnip for my siamese. And the same goes for BLPs of sports players on minor teams, which to me equal even more garbage. Wikipedia, remember, has decided that all high schools are intrinsically "notable." But junior high schools are not. With a policy like this, I would indeed be very glad (were I you) that I didn't have to defend it, because this sort of policy has no rational defense. The truth is that Wikipedia was thrown together without any advanced planning about what it would be and what it was about and how it would be vetted, and survives today mostly by in the loosely anarchic arcane interests of its editors, which tend toward pop-culture. Thus, a person complaining about too many (or too few) "garbage articles" should be recognized as somebody who has touched on a subject which has not been solved on WP, and may be unsolvable. So they deserve respect for at least getting to there, as it took some of us quite a lot longer to make it even to that much wisdom.

A comment above is also worthy of thought:

Folks in Wikipedia insist they can assess the significance of a subject, when there is no absolute measure of that. More important, there IS no need to assess significance. There is no technical limitation to the number of Wikipedia articles, or to the length, or to the list of references. Either the article gets a lot of hits, or it doesn't. Articles with few hits are invisible and should not be agonized over.

. You have to admit that there's something TO that, at least. WP:NOTPAPER, after all. SBHarris 22:35, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm reminded of the introduction of the book "Movie Hound's Golden Video Retriever" where they explained that they did not use the same criteria to rate different types of movies. For example, Dr. Zhivago was not judged the same way as Weekend at Bernie's 2. There is not and will not ever be a perfect system for determining what is notable and what is not, but I think we make do ok with the framework we have. If I had it my way I would nuke thousands and thousands of articles on Pokemon or what have you as being of no lasting importance to the human race. I'm sure a lot of the users who create those type of articles couldn't care less about Portage, Alaska, my latest creation. But they are both still here, whereas the profile on Johnny's garage band from down the street that has never had a paying gig is deleted. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:01, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

There's long been a bit of a problem on WP regarding new articles. Quite often, a new article will be marked for deletion w/in 10 minutes of initial posting. The original editor must be awake to this so they can change the template added by the Deletionist and save their article. It's a PITA, and major reason that new editors stop trying. Myself, I'm an Inclusionist. - Denimadept (talk) 22:53, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

The bigger problem is that we practically encourage new users to start new articles, despite it being a relatively advanced editing task. Then we act surprised when they do poorly at it. Not deleting the articles created by new users isn't a solution, its just creating a different problem, since most of the articles deleted really are rather poor. A better solution would be to try to gently discourage people from wasting time creating an article that has an 80% chance of being deleted and encourage them to add their knowledge to an existing article, a much easier task editing-wise. Mr.Z-man 00:06, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

About that 80% deletion chance, did anybody ever make some proper statistics about it? I took a sample (50 pages) from special:New pages a month ago, including 16 articles by new editors (defined as less than 25 edits). 11 were speedily deleted, one was redirected and two were deleted by prod, so less then 20% of them is still a proper article 1 month after creation. Of the articles created by users with over 25 edits 90% still exists. Plan on taking some larger samples (1000+ articles) once I have some free time, but these initial results are quite worrisome. Yoenit (talk) 18:52, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

But it is now a nice example of a community-written stub, and that is due to a bunch of real super editors who do know something about writing and sourcing an article. --Kleopatra (talk) 18:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Essay about splitting and naming articles relating to crimes

I've done a userpage draft of an essay: User:FormerIP/Crime. Please take a look if you have time and feedback comments on the talkpage or here, good or bad.

I think the essay would be useful because it seems that any crime that is in the news gives rise to deletion discussions as editors create separate articles about victims, suspects etc.

Thanks! --FormerIP (talk) 20:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

You seem to be recreating the former guideline, which is now redundant to WP:EVENT and Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Criminals and crime victims. Fences&Windows 02:18, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay it looks like you may have a point. I will look at those links. --FormerIP (talk) 02:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks F&W. For info, I have now posted a suggestion for changes to Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Criminals and crime victims here: Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(people)#Wikipedia:Notability_.28people.29.23Perpetrators. --FormerIP (talk) 20:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions

See Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Apparently the subject page upon which these branched Wikipedia guidelines sprung out of was moved to Wikipedia:Article titles per this requested move proposal. I'm wondering whether we should move these pages to the new "Article titles" pages instead? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 08:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Sounds sensible. File a move request. --Cybercobra (talk) 08:44, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Practice vs philosophy: Balancing AGF, IAR, POLICY, and BITE

Question One: In the event an edit is challenged on the basis of the letter of a policy or guideline and it is clear that under the letter of the rule the edit is improper:

• is it the obligation of the person making the edit to assert the argument that the edit is proper on the basis that the edit is in keeping with the spirit or underlying principles of the rule or on the basis that an IAR local exception to the policy, or
• is it the obligation of the person challenging the edit to first consider whether or not the edit might be proper on one of those basises?

My feeling is that the common sense answer to this ought to be that since policies and guidelines are the consensus of the community that they ought to prevail over any attempt to edit in contradiction of them:

• unless the application of the spirit of the rule or the need for a local exception is so obvious that no experienced editor could reasonably fail to see it, or
• unless the editor making the edit, after receiving the challenge, expressly asserts and explains a spirit of the rule or local exception reason to not follow the letter of the rule.

(If the editor making the edit is a newcomer, I also think that the challenger should also have the obligation to at least provide links to the specific rule in question, to WP:IAR, and to WP:POLICY#Adherence.)

Corollary Question Two: If a challenged edit clearly violates the letter of policy, but the editor making the edit asserts that the edit is proper in accordance with the spirit of the rule under WP:POLICY#Adherence or that a local exception should be made under WP:IAR and, in either case, offers non-trivial reasons to support their position, does the proposed edit:

• fail unless consensus is obtained to allow the edit to exist or
• stand unless consensus is obtained to strike the edit?

My two cents is that it should fail, first, because all edits to Wikipedia must be made by consensus if challenged and, second, because the letter of policies and guidelines is the standing consensus of the community until changed.

If this has been determined at some previous time, I'd appreciate (and only need) links to those discussions, especially if they represent consensus on the question. Best regards, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 22:37, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Luckily we're not lawyers. We would decide on a case-by-case basis, resolving it through discussion and dispute resolution if there is disagreement. Fences&Windows 23:06, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

But what happens if no one cares to take it to DR? Or if a Third Opinion Wikipedian (like me) is asked to give an opinion on who is right and who is wrong what's best for Wikipedia (ahem)? (3O is not mediation, it's giving a non-binding opinion about which way a dispute ought to be determined.) Oh, and BTW, some of us aren't that lucky (see my user page) . Best regards, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 01:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

WP: no being judge Judy

I think there should be a rule or statement on wikipedia about people trying to be Judge Judy-like. I've gotten statements like that sinse I was an IP, and I don't want anyone to get that kind of message. I think it's time for those with authority to quit trying to Judge Judy people, because that will just ruin comunication, which woulden't be good. Only the real Judge Judy is Judge Judy, and I don't want me or anyone to feel that they are in a Judge Judy situation when they do something mialdly wrong because an admin or other user decides to be a Judge Judy-esk figure. Time for this to stop, that's why i'm suggesting a rule or write up about that. Even if a rule has a shortcut like WP: Judge Judy, that will do the trick as well. Thanks for your time, N.I.M. (talk) (redacted) 10:52, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

"Judge Judy-like" What do you mean specifically? --Cybercobra (talk) 11:10, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

(EC)It would help if any of us had a clue who or what judge judy was. I don't. Bottom line is, people do dumb stuff on wikipedia, and need to be reminded about our policies and guidelines. It is not easy to do that without making a judgement about whatever it is they've done. We have adaquate (in my view) policy on such things as courtesy and no personal attacks. I judge that your proposal is half-baked and inadaquately considered, and I guess that you're less familiaar with the body of policy and guidelines than you need to be in order to mount a serious proposal in this area. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:14, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

See Judge Judy, the users have left me messages that appear to have the same kind of attitude and personality as Judge Judy, and it seems like they're just trying to be authoritative in the wrong way. This has happened to me in the past, and i'm sure to others. Even if a shortcut to a policy is WP: Don't Be Judge Judy, that's alright too. I'm 100% serious about this, i promis you. I know my grammar and spelling is bad, but i'm still completely serious. N.I.M. (talk) (redacted) 11:26, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I thought you were going to let it go? Beware of WP:BOOMERANG. APL (talk) 21:36, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I just looked at this person's talk page. They come across... poorly. I expect this person is getting comments about grammar and spelling. If the person can't handle English grammar and spelling, they should expect to get a lot of comments and reversions. The nature of WP requires knowing how to communicate. - Denimadept (talk) 21:52, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Digital diplomacy (what I call it) can be a challenge. It's very easy to misinterpret the tone of a digital message, so sometimes you have to go out of your way to be extra nice in order to just to seem like you're being polite. This can be difficult to do, especially when you perceive the other person is being a jerk. I still have to force myself to practice being extra diplomatic even after a couple of decades on the net. So, I guess what I'm suggesting is, it's good to try to interpret a message in the nicest possible way, at least until the other person confirms that they are indeed a jerk.—RJH (talk) 21:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

No, that has nothing to do with it, Back when i was an IP editor, I got accusations about me that were absolutely false, and the people would not hear anything contrary to their accusations. Even when i created an account, i was accused of making those vandelism edits in august, cut-off ties thinks i'm the one who made those edits, when it was my former friend (let's call him george,as i don't have permission to give his real name), who actualy made those edits to wikipedia while using my computer to "play a game." My spelling and grammar has nothing to do with it. I don't care what people think of my grammar, that's not what i'm talking about. I'm talkking about disputes i've had in the past, where the accusers give me a Judge Judy-esk mannor of responding. N.I.M. (talk) (redacted) 00:15, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Bad stuff was done from your IP, and your IP got upbraided by wikipedians, and you're surprised? and would rather that people just didn't judge such things? The solution is really easy. Don't do things which wind people up. And if you do, and get warnings, don't whine. Best of all, read those admonitions and think about why they're being made. If you could (but really, please don't) point to specific inappropriate warnings there might be some meat to your complaint. Even if so, you're better shrugging it off than wasting more of our time here. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:21, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

MOS: prose vs bulleted lists (notable residents)

A discussion is currently taking place about the MOS recommendation that bulleted lists should be rewritten as prose. It specifically concerns making a possible exception for sections on 'Notable residents' in articles about towns and cities. Your comments are welcome at: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (embedded lists). Thanks. --Kudpung (talk) 02:33, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Community, help me resolve a copyright image question!

I have a sweet photo that I was using in Painted turtle. I thought I was all clean having gotten the proper release, yada yada. However, an issue has come up regarding the artwork of the sign itself, the black drawing of a turtle. I have now been through a bunch of discussions of Freedom of Panoroma, de minimus, fair use; have read Canadian copyright law and parsed US and Canadian traffic manuals, etc. I would like to get some community input to see if the image can be "saved". At this point, I cut it out of the article, and even put in an AFD at Commons (killing my own child!) And of course, now someone doesn't want to delete it at Commons. Haha...can't win.

Seriously, though, I am just reaching out. Sometimes more minds help solve a problem. I don't want opinions like "looks fine to me" OR "someone raised an issue, therefore it must be wrong". If possible I want to save the image. But if not, then still useful for me as an editor to understand, better, the boundaries and reasons for them. Also, not looking for any agitation or canvassing or dramah. Just want people who have head-scratched on this stuff before to advise.

FYI: I went to a fair amount of effort (calling a naturalist) to get the image and the release, not that that matters, but, OK. As far as the usage, I think it is a very "adroit" image for my story. It's a well constructed photo. It's the right species, the right location, the right selection (didn't want something hokey like a turtle on the road). Also, it's a photo that I could see using in an article on turtle road mortality (and strategies to prevent it). that said, it is not as crucial as a cover photo of a book for a book article or the like. It's just a thoughtful additive image. Not decorative fluff OR do or die, vital.

See here for previous discussions:

• FAC: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Painted_turtle/archive1&redirect=no
• Commons village pump: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Need_copyright_advice_on_a_photo_of_a_Canadian_traffic_sign_.28turtle_crossing_in_Vancouver.29
• Canadian roads project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Canada_Roads#HELP.21_trying_to_understand_the_copyright_situation_for_a_BC_turtle_crossing_image
• Commons AFD: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Turtle crossing sign, April 2010.jpg#File:Turtle crossing sign, April 2010.jpg

TCO (talk) 22:06, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Well the first issue is that it is hosted at Wikimedia Commons so any sort of discussion here may not relate to there. Having said that - Wikimedia Commons does not allow non-free images, so if there is any chance that artwork is under copyright it will be deleted because of that. As for the image itself - obtaining permission for an image in one thing but it always boils down to the content of the image. On the most basic level a photo that you take is yours and you can do what you want with it as far as *your* copyright goes. However if you take a photo of a, say, painting, you most likely do not own the copyright of that painting. In the same way that purchasing a DVD of the latest Harry Potter film would not transfer copyright to you taking a photo of something does not automatically transfer copyright of the item you photographed to you. Going on the basis the sign is under a Canadian copyright one way to "save" it would be to use the image here via a claim of fair use for the copyrighted parts - however the issue would become if it could be freely replaceable. And I am afraid the answer would be "yes" for many reasons. Anyone could take an image of a sign - in this case it would have to be, say, along the lines of File:HK Peak Guildford Road Mansfield Road 2.JPG. On the other hand one has to consider the "context" of a non-free image's use as well and I am guessing your use was to illustrate the "Another significant human impact is roadkill—dead turtles..." text, more specifically the "...and inexpensive crossing signs" text. I don't feel there is a need to show the sign anymore than there would be a need to show the "roadkill" that helped lead to the sign/s being erected. Again, going off the Wikimedia Commons discussion where it is suggested the sign in under copyright i don't think there is a way to save it for your current use. Soundvisions1 (talk) 15:42, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

You are right on and thank you for the thoughtful summary.

Just stepping back to a meta level for a sec: I do feel that this is "fair use" in a moral and legal and practiced sense. NOT "fair use" according to WP. But definitely fair use in the real world. For one thing the media is SO different--I'm not going into the sign making business and am making commentary rather than trying to hold my WP article at the side of the road to warn drivers. And I'm not talking about blowing off rights either. I have seen MANY newspaper articles where they used an image like this to discuss turtle conservation or highway modifications or the like. Obviously its not needed in the same way a copy of a logo is needed if you are writing an article on the logo. But it's additive. The article is an ounce less enjoyable for the replacement of that image with the Gervais textbox.

WP loses something when we have less effective images or rely on text more. There is an experiential loss. Again, it's definitely not something I want to push a test case on, and I realize WP draws the boundaries tighter than law requires. That said, I think there is a determimantal effect, article by article when we do things as extreme as not allowing a picture of a sign for commentary on human actions to save animals. And it's noticeable. It's one of the things where you really can pretty clearly see how WP falls short of professional publications.TCO (talk) 17:57, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

The fact that anyone can take a picture of a sign does not mean that the image is replaceable. Those images would suffer exatly the same problems. It's more the relevancy criteria that makes the use difficult. Taemyr (talk) 11:44, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I cut it out of the article AND I voted to kill it at AFD in commons. It will be gone from the project soon. All I'm saying is step back from the Wiki policy and try thinking like a copyright lawyer. The NYT is PROTECTED and so is a book publisher or whoever if they snap that sign. Also, I beleive it IS relevant to the article. It's a very visible representation of human interaction with the turtles. you can say, who cares about an image, but I would argue thousands of magazines and newspapers would run it and thing it relevent. It's not like it's some picture of a bikini girl holding up a turtle. It's ON TOPIC. Is it do or die? No. Is it relevent and additive. Uh-huh! Anyhow, that's really kind of a meta point on wiki though. think we are more restrictive than we need to be...and it adds up...article by article. TCO (talk) 12:09, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

The most common mis-conception (I was guilty of it too when I first came to Wikipedia) is that Wikipedia is the real world. It isn't, and even though most of the policies are rooted in US laws they are, in most all cases, far more strict than the real world. In the real world I could write an article on Beverly Hills Chihuahua and use this image from Wikimedia Commons as the sole image if I wanted to. I could also use a studio provided promo shot as well, or no images at all. There is no real world requirement to use, or to not use, any image however at Wikipedia "consensus" is that readers would never understand that the marquee of a movie theater showing Beverly Hills Chihuahua is relevant to an article about the film (Nor would a studio provided image of the dog if the dog is still living - and even if the dog were dead it could be argued that anyone can take a picture of the same breed of dog to show the same thing - either way though an image of the dog, free or not, is not seen as representative of a film in which the dog stars, in an article about the film) so we are "required" to use only non-free content (i.e - a one sheet from it's release) in all such articles. While the real world would disagree, and while I may disagree, that is what happens when "consensus" sets the rules. Soundvisions1 (talk) 12:46, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I think you are really getting wrapped around the axle here on copyright. The sign is deliberately placed so that people will notice it. Whatever is publicly displayed outdoors may be photographed without asking permission. Period. (That is why we have spy satellites.) Now whoever took the photo owns copyright to the photo, and can provide permissions etc. when others request to use it. The design of the turtle is likely under copyright, and if so you could not use it for other purposes without permission. If the Canadians have an issue with this, they can take it up with the US Ambassador. I recall that IBM's original BIOS software for their pc was under copyright, that Canada completely ignored. Their clone makers just copied the software. So don't feel you need to cater to Canadian sensibilities in the copyright arena.

The easiest thing for you to do is get a camera, go to the site, and capture your own image under your own copyright. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oracle2wiki (talk • contribs) 14:29, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

"Whatever is publicly displayed outdoors may be photographed without asking permission." Transformativeness#Photos_of_sculptures, for instance, say's you're talking out of your arse. Not to put tool fine a point on it. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:07, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Retaking the photo would not help me if this is felt to be infringing on the sign design itself. and I have a perfect release for the photo. There is not challenge on the image as a photo. Just duplication of the work (sign design).TCO (talk) 19:21, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

This exact same scenario came up at my second RFA. Oddly enough we were just discussing it at the RFA talk page today. The answer, as you have already discovered, is that there is no definitive answer. It might be ok and it might not. The image I took of a road sign that was brought up at my RFA is still here and unchallenged a year and a half later despite all the concern at the time that it might infringe on a copyright. Most road signs are not sufficiently unique to be subject to copyright, but very specific ones like this with a more original and unusual graphic might be an exception. Or not. The bottom line is that there is only about a 0.0001% chance that the whatever entity that owns the design used here would ever bother trying to stop it from being used in this manner. As has been mentioned Wikipedians are far more cautious than we actually need to be about this sort of thing. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:14, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks man. Someone at Commons raise the point that perhaps the de minimus could be invoked. I had shot that down as I felt the SIGN was prominent and crucial to the image, although not the only element, a needed one, in the photo. His points was that yes, the SIGN was prominent, but the actual TURTLE, the black design in issue, was very small in the photo. It was not a closeup or emphasis of the turtle design. And pretty much any turtle design would do. not like I was "taking a picture of a painting" or a picture of a sculpture for experiencing the sculpture, but more like, hey this courtyard has a sculpture, or this room has a painting or the like. I realize this is a total subtlety and sounds like I'm weaseling, but hey...maybe interesting to think about.  :) TCO (talk) 05:30, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I think this probably does qualify for de minimis. The turtle image is not central to the photo, and is largely incidental to it. The main purpose of the photo is to show a stretch of road and a warning sign, not to showcase that turtle image. There's a tremendous difference between that kind of incidental inclusion and a photo of a sculpture that's clearly intended to include only that sculpture. I'm very conservative on nonfree content, but it looks to me like we're quite in the clear as this one goes. It's a free photo that only incidentally includes a potentially copyrighted image. That's exactly the type of scenario de minimis is intended to cover. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:18, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

IANAL, & I admit I'm spit-balling here, but if we all are agreed that there is no legal issue to publishing a photograph of a given portion of woodland or wilderness, then the only barrier to this image being considered legally unencumbered is the sign. In that case, since the sign is presumably a government creation then copyright/licensing issues depend on the law in the country this picture was taken. Some countries --such as the US -- hold that all writing or images created by a government employee are in the public domain, so the turtle on the sign would be arguably in the public domain; some countries hold that the government retains the rights to the image & it should be treated like any other creation under copyright law; still other countries have set forth specific rules how government creations eventually end up in the public domain (IIRC, this is the case in the UK, & thus may also be the case in other Commonwealth countries); & lastly there are countries which are not signatory to the international treaties on copyright, & apparently Wikimedia's policy is to thumb our collective noses at them & treat the material as public domain. TCO, does this response give you any further guidance? -- llywrch (talk) 01:27, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

No, but thanks for the thought. The government angle doesn't help as it is British Columbia, Canada. De minimus is the place to hang saving the image on. I think this is clearly not taking a photo of a sculpture to enjoy the sculpture. I didn't even notice the prettiness of the segmented shell design until we started having this whole discussion! That said, IANAL either and we would really need some guidance from Canada specifically on the issue (even the wikipolicy stuff doesn't seems sufficient...at this point I've read the Act and think you would even need to get into case law to nail it). I really doubt we are infringing. Note, I'm not saying "no one would sue us", I'm saying even if they did, that a court would rule, on the merits, against them and for us. But like I said, IANAL and the issue is not even one of US law, and I'm probably biased.  :( TCO (talk) 19:52, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Commons discussion about copyrightability of security camera recordings

Editors who work with copyright issues, and lawyers, may be interested in the discussion at Commons:Commons:Village pump#Copyrightability of security camera recordings.  Sandstein  20:27, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Standardizing the format of citations

User TCO started a conversation about standardizing the format of citations used on Wikipedia. Also to include a requirement to use inline citations. All interested parties are encouraged to join the conversation is at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/example style#why not standardize on one format? -      Hydroxonium (talk) 23:22, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Unified login issue

Hello, I'm not 100% sure this is the right place for this, but any help would be appreciated. Recently I was reading an article, and on the left in the languages list I saw that one language (which I had never heard of) had a star beside it. I didn't know what this meant but when I hovered over the star it said that it means that it's a featured article in that language. I was curious about what constitutes a featured article in this obscure language so I clicked it. Thinking nothing of it, I left. Fast forward to today and I get an email from wikipedia in this same unintelligible (to me) language, and from what I can discern it is updating me on some kind of change to my user or talk page. Apparently merely clicking the language link set a bunch of things in motion that I was not notified about.

I would like to know: A.) How did the individual who posted on my foreign-language talk page become aware that I had clicked the link?

B.) What other information about my browsing habits are recorded, and who is notified about them and why?

C.) How can I erase that language from my global logins and erase the foreign-language talk page? I want to retain my English-language user/talk pages, but I don't want to have anything to do with that other language whatsoever.

I don't think it's a good policy to infer a bunch of things about a person's intentions when they click a language link, and it certainly bothers me that an individual was notified about this and that I received an email in reference to it.

The new page is Here.

Thanks, LuftWaffle0 (talk) 21:30, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

A.) I am not 100% sure of this, but I think you auto-created an account on that wiki when you clicked the link. Probably due to you using global login. The guy who posted on the talkpage was apparently just welcoming new users (though I don't speak the language either).

B.) As long as you don't edit, nothing is publically visible besides account creation. Your IP adress is logged, but only wp:checkusers can access that by using a special permission. Nobody is notified of anything.

C.) Deletion of that talkpage is probably not an option. Please note that on that wiki it is apparently standard practice you receive an email everything somebody posts on your talkpage. You can turn this off by going to i mè preferenz (preferences) and unchecking "Mandem un messagg e-mail quand che gh'è di mudifegh a la mè pàgina di ciaciarad". If you also uncheck the option to receive mails from other users ("Permèt a i alter druvat da cuntatàm per email") you will never be bothered by anything from that wiki again. Yoenit (talk) 22:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Yoenit. LuftWaffle0 (talk) 22:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Huh.. accounts are sometimes created merely by viewing a page? That seems a little odd. Mlm42 (talk) 22:34, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

It's the SUL system; if you want to opt-out you could ask a steward to delete your global account. –xeno^talk 20:11, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I an the above sentence through [5] it thought it might be Italian, but possibly Tagalog or Portuguese. Google translate couldn't parse it out either. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:44, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Follow the link to its main page & you'll find it's Lombard, presumably an Italian dialect. Peter jackson (talk) 11:15, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Aye, I've come across this. I don't like it, but it's practice on several of the smaller Wikipedias, probably to encourage more people to come back. Fences&Windows 23:58, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes - if you have Unified login, it will automatically create an account for you on any Wikimedia project you visit while logged in. Some projects do automatically welcome all users (often by bot) - apparently including the Lombard Wikipedia - hence the effect that LuftWaffle0 has noticed. Pfainuk talk 23:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Backup policy

Is there a backup policy in Wikipedia? I wonder, as in: Wikipedia_talk:Bot_Approvals_Group#Mediation_Committee_bot:_any_writers.3F and User_talk:AGK#Mediationbot1_fix. Policy is needed. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 21:44, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are backed up at the article's history, or in the form of the giant Wikipedia Data Dump. Bots which run on Wikipedia are not actually part of Wikipedia, so their source code isn't covered by Wikipedia policies regarding transparency and copyright. Basically, if the bot works as intended, and is approved, people can run it. There are some spectacular bot coders out there, so if a useful one goes away, you could contact someone else to make a new bot. I suppose we could make publishing the source code a prerequisite for bot approval, but on the other hand that may be too much of a hassle; bot operators tweak their bots all the time to work better, as long as their output on Wikipedia is approved, it would be a complete hassle to have to republish the source code every time the bot is tweaked, or to get new approval for the same. --Jayron32 21:52, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, now I understand it as the reverse of "if it is not broken do not fix it". I guess this is: "wait until it breaks, then hope to fix it - somehow". Cheers. History2007 (talk) 00:55, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Occasionally the source code is requested to be released before approval, though this is typically done because there are concerns about the how will work, rather than the importance of the bot. We do encourage bot operators to make their code open source though. To avoid problems like this, the Toolserver admins also added an option to allow people to specify a default license for all their code so that when a user leaves, others can see if their code is reusable. Unfortunately, in this case, ST47 didn't set a license. Mr.Z-man 01:28, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks I will leave it there. But in general, I would like to see more security and protection in Wikipedia. There were the early freewheeling days, but times have changed, and there is valuable content that needs more protection. Bots are but one example - pun intended. History2007 (talk) 02:55, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

There seems to be a growing delay in having a Wikipedia Data Dump. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 02:58, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

What, exactly, are you worried about? What "valuable content" "needs protection" any more than we already have? — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 16:18, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

That is a separate discussion and I should really not get on my soap box about it, but I would like to see that in 5 years there is automatic "multi-level protection" so featured articles can not get edited by new IPs all of a sudden, etc. as the number of IPs increase etc. But that is really a separate topic, yet part of my overall desire for more protection in general against IPs, computer crashes, corporate PR agents using home computers, sockpuppets, etc. etc. E.g. in 5 years it would be good to have bots that randomly look around and make guesses about what may be puppets, generate reports of that, etc. But those are really separate discussions. History2007 (talk) 13:50, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

In that case, you're not talking about "back ups" at all. Hence my confusion. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:52, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Regarding Featured Article

Whats the policy on featured article? How is a particular article selected as featured article? I am raising this question as today's featured article "Homer's Enemy" seems too specific and would be of little appeal to the general public. Having the "The Simpsons" as a featured article would have made more sense. Featuring a specific episode/season of a particular TV series spoils the professionalism of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Sampalex (talk • contribs) 04:21, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I think there is a happy medium of specificity (and agree with you). Doing an FA on "Chemistry" is insanely difficult and probably less interesting than an article on Polonium. That said, giving the front page, (unless we are out of candidates) to an article on "bromo-chlorinated polonium compounds" would be wasting the front page of the newspaper. Obviously we are a volunteer project and people may work on what they want, as obscure as can be. That said, even though it is a value judgment, it's reasonable to think of what the reader wants and every media in the world does so. One can use google ranking or a vote (perhaps helpful for more history stuff or to overcome some popculture bias) or a panel or what have you. If the front page more often had interesting stuff rather than obscure or boring (same issue with DYK), I would read it more often. And many others would read it more too. And then this "draw" to get on the front page can be used as a tiny reward to motivate the unpaid volunteers slugging out the content.TCO (talk) 04:34, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

• For an overview of featured articles see WP:FA, for the specific process see WP:FACR. Only about one of every 1,100 articles ever makes it to featured status. As TCO mentioned, somebody has to put the work in to make it a feature-quality article. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:01, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

• • It also bears mentioning that the process for choosing the main page featured article is known as "Today's Featured Article" or WP:TFA. The entire process of selecting which articles will display on the main page is managed by a single Wikipedian, User:Raul654, and has been for almost 6 years now. He takes input from the community, and sometimes even listens to it, and also IIRC has an occasional assistant who helps out, like when he's on vacation or something. But it's pretty much a one-person show. --Jayron32 05:10, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Great insights and I have no idea the current process, really. My only "feeling" is one of wanting to look out for the reader, as the non-voting participant and the purpose of our work. Yes, people should work on what they enjoy, what they know about. And everything adds. That said, when we decide on what runs on the front page of our newspaper, we need to be reader-advocates. Not handing out candy to whoever worked hard. But putting what we think readers want to read. It's a limited resource and the priority should be on the customer, wrt this one tiny thing. And who knows...maybe it motivates a teensy amount of work in areas that the public has a desire to know.TCO (talk) 05:20, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

"today's featured article "Homer's Enemy" seems too specific and would be of little appeal to the general public. Having the "The Simpsons" as a featured article would have made more sense". Sorry, but I have to disagree. An article on the Simpsons would be of little note to anyone who had seen series, and probably give little information to anyone that hadn't. 'Featured articles' aren't featured because they tell readers things they ought to know, or things we think important. That would be pushing a POV. Instead, they give a glimpse into the recesses of Wikipedia, and why one can find articles that make you think in the most unlikely places. In it's way, the "Homer's enemy" article tells us more about Wikipedia (and Humanity in general - of which Homer is of course the embodiment), than most 'general' articles can ever do. Don't underestimate the intelligence of our readers... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:28, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I know what the Simpson's ARE. I like em even! But I sure don't have an FA of depth of knowledge about the series. Their commercial import, comparison, deriviatives, creators, ec. I would want that before going in depth on a single series. For that matter, there are hundreds of episodes. If they are intrinsically valuable and more so than the series, do you propose running them all? how many lifetimes, can I spend processing that? If you poll people, or just give them the choice, I bet you (Bayesian bet!) that they will prefer Simpsons to Homer's Enemy. Feed the market, prioritize. This doesn't rule OUT doing a less popular topic. Just it goes to the back of the line.TCO (talk) 06:11, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes, to understand what a wood is, you have to look at a tree. We aren't trying to tell people about the Simpsons. We are showing them what can be found on Wikipedia. You don't need to know about the creators of Homer Simpson to appreciate him, any more than you need to know about an earlier Homer's creator to appreciate him. This is a random(ish) glimpse into the depths of Wikipedia, not an essay on what it is. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:25, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

And then this "draw" to get on the front page can be used as a tiny reward to motivate the unpaid volunteers - That's already a draw. To use yesterday's TFA, Mangalore, as an example: Last month, the article averaged less than 600 views per day. The day it was featured, it received over 21,000, not to mention the 5.3 million who saw the abstract on the main page. If you restrict the types of articles that can be on the main page, its just going to discourage people. It took 3 years between the first and last FACs, including 4 peer reviews, 2 GANs, 5 FACs, and 1 FAR (it was promoted for a few months, then delisted) to bring the main Simpsons article up to current FA standards (it was featured on the main page December 17, 2007). Most users don't have that kind of time to invest in a project. A smaller article like Homer's Enemy takes "only" a few months. Mr.Z-man 07:01, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

It's really easy. The subject matter of the FA is of no regard in deciding whether the article makes it to FA or not. FAs are articles which are of the highest quality, irrespective of their subject matter. You are entitled to your view, of course, but for me it is a nonsense to suggest that we "spoil the professionalism of wikipedia" by selecting as FAs articles which deal with a subset of a wider subject area. As it happens, The Simpsons is also an FA and appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on December 17, 2007. So it rather looks to me as if you're merely late to the party, and woefully ill-informed. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

That's OK, that we allow people to do FAs on whatever topic (many obscure and never to help world of readers much, since never read much, since obscure) they choose. We don't rule on subject (pop versus history) nor on granularity ("hurricane" versus "some hurricane from years ago that never even hit land"). But what we run on the front page is NOT the same thing as "what can be an FA". The front page has limited slots. And I reject the argument that we need to run an obscure topic to "show that WP has obscure topics". Come on! I think people can get their on their own, by just results on their google searches. Imagine the NYT or WSJ or NPR deciding that they would do the most obscure topics on the front page to "show that we can" or to "educate by the particular". TCO (talk) 14:52, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a newspaper. Personally, I usually find the FA of the day pages interesting usually, especially when they are obscure. Sure, there's no reason to post something obscure on the front page, but neither is there a reason to post something non-obscure. Just post something really good and hopefully somewhat relevant to the date in question. Good enough! The one FA page I helped with, Columbia River, will probably never be on the front page because it doesn't have a date associated with it, whatever. A recentish front page FA I enjoyed was totally obscure: Aylesbury duck. Pfly (talk) 10:46, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Why does it have to have a date associated with it? The Columbia is a major river with a fascinating geology and history. How about Washington State's statehood date? Other than some articles that might be in bad taste for a general audience (porn articles that reach FA status), I can't see that FAs on the main page should be limited to anything other than FAs. I hope the main page shows a diversity of the excellent group research writing that goes into making a wikipedia FA, from the focused little audience of people who might read about a Simpson's episode or a specific fungus, to the entire country of Australia reading about Banksia articles. --Kleopatra (talk) 14:59, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

This whole discussion is predicated on a false premise, namely that today's featured article "Homer's Enemy" seems too specific and would be of little appeal to the general public. Here are the hit counts for Homer's Enemy, and the three FAs before and after it:

• Jan 3 - Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark - 17,800 hits
• Jan 4 - Antbird - 13,500 hits
• Jan 5 - Mangalore - 21,700 hits
• Jan 6 - Homer's enemy - 65,200 hits
• Jan 7 - Princess Charlotte of Wales - 40,700 hits
• Jan 8 - Like a Rolling Stone - 33,700 hits
• Jan 9 - John L. Helm - 8,900 hits

Conclusion - Homer's Enemy was a highly popular choice and our readers found it more interesting than the other choices of that week. Raul654 (talk) 18:22, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Picking today's featured article

Is this correct that a single person picks today's featured article? Why? --Kleopatra (talk) 14:59, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

No, it is not. Please read up on WP:TFA/R; if you have concerns about that community process, they can be discussed there. Raul has made changes there that give even more feedback to the community, and that option is frequently underutilized. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:26, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I did find a 6 1/2 year old vote where 16 people ratified the appointment.[6] The wikipedia community is a lot bigger now. --Kleopatra (talk) 15:10, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

See WP:BURO. The process works just fine, so what is the impending need to change it? Has Raul done something that you so profoundly disagree with that you wish to remove him from his job? --Jayron32 15:15, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

That seems like a heated response to my question, an assumption that I "profoundly disagree" with something Raul did, because I asked if it was correct that he alone picked the today's FA as you suggest above.

I find the entire FA process to be a closed community. Although I have worked on articles that have been on the main page as an IP, I find my comments and contributions to FA to be often ignored. A few times this has led to problems that have been resolved after the article has been on the main page, and sometimes not at all. One article I commented about a while ago had major plagiarized text in it. And the plagiarism wound up with its article on the main page. A recent example, the main page introduction to the Archaea article, is about prokaryotes, not Archaea. This has occurred more than once, where the lead section is not about the topic.

Wikipedia is a community of editors. With few exceptions, a featured article is the effort of a lot of editors, and I would think that selecting articles for such a prominent position would be a community process. I am curious to learn that it is not. I am even more curious now that the question is such a target. --Kleopatra (talk) 15:36, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Generally correct, but not entirely. Raul654 schedules Today's Featured Article, but many of the ones he does schedule are discussed at WP:TFAR. Resolute 15:15, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, true. I would say a good third of the articles that appear are community recommendations, which Raul rarely turns down. I would also not advise tampering with a working system. Raul does a fine job, and the bottom line is, some one individual has to make a call, this is not good to be done by committee or consensus. Why not the guy who has done it for almost seven years with few complaints?--Wehwalt (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I disagree that one person having to make a call is "not good to be done by committee or consensus." See all the FAs created by wikipedia and the millions of other useful information articles created by committee or consensus. --Kleopatra (talk) 15:53, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

In truth, almost all content placed on the main page is done by individuals without community discussion. DYK, for instance, is reviewed by an individual (comparable to FAC), and added to a queue by another individual (comparable to TFA). I would agree with Wehwalt that scheduling is best done by an individual, as forcing the need to build consensus to post something to the main page would only bog the system down unnecessarily. It seems from your comments above that your concerns rest not with how FAs are posted, but how we deal with problems. Now, I don't know the history of the plagiarized article you reference above - did you raise that as a concern before it was scheduled? After it was scheduled but before it was posted? Or after it was posted to the main page? If there is a breakdown in process, or a spot where we can improve, it is certainly worthy of discussing. Resolute 16:03, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Kleopatra's plagiarism comment is a reference to Rlevse's Grace Sherwood article, where the plagiarism went undetected until a day or two before it hit the main page, and didn't become public until it was on the main page, at which time it was taken down and steps were made to flesh out and fix the problem.

Kleopatra's other comment (about Archea's description on the main page being about protists) is just plain wrong -- the first two sentences of the blurb (are a group of single-celled microorganisms with no cell nucleus nor any other membrane-bound organelles. They show many differences in their biochemistry from other forms of life and have an independent evolutionary history.), which were copied word-for-word from the Archea article, were ambiguous in that they could apply to both archea and protista; the rest of the blurb was specific to Archea. There is no requirement that the first sentence or two be uniquely identifying. It's generally a good idea, but sometimes something is too nuanced to do that in a single sentence. Raul654 (talk) 17:45, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

It would have been wrong if I said protists, but I said prokaryotes. The first sentence is about prokaryotes, and the second about all life. The Archaea have unique metabolic pathways and a diversity of metabolic pathways that lead to a diversity of habitat exploitations that set them apart from both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, this is just an aside at the end of the entire section. And that's what they are.

No, it wasn't the Grace Sherwood article, although the editor Rlevse contributed a lot of copy right violations to wikipedia articles, material mostly ignored by the entire community, so I was thrilled to see him/her get caught, but sorry it had to happen in such a manner. I think wikipedia should take plagiarism much more seriously. It's an insult to the hard work of editors who can and do write and research their own words to create articles.

A few years ago an article was on the main page as a DYK, an article about an athlete. I posted a note about the plagiarism at DYK, after my removal of the plagiarized material was reverted, and I was threatened with a block. Yes, I used an edit summary to explain what I was doing, and I posted a link on the article talk page to where the original text could partially be found. The material was taken from a book, but a google books search allowed for enough material to be seen that DYK editors should have been concerned. It was a couple of paragraphs of material. I do know what plagiarism is. I was not the mistaken party. The article eventually wound up as a FA on the main page. I posted my concerns about the plagiarized portion of the article at some time before the article was on the main page, but this was ignored, and everyone was so hostile at DYK that I didn't go any further with it. --Kleopatra (talk) 05:11, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Could you explain how that relates to FAC or TFA? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:40, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

This discussion needs to be added to WP:PEREN so we don't have to keep educating each time a new editor who doesn't understand or follow WP:TFA/R comes along. Until/unless someone finds an actual problem with Raul's exemplary handling of the mainpage or the functioning of WP:TFA/R, there's little to discuss, and we just end up re-educating over and over. Kleopatra seems to be confusing the WP:FAC process with WP:TFA/R; what is the plagiarized article you refer to, Kleopatra, and where has your input at FAC been discounted? I just reviewed all of your contributions to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates subpages, and can find no such occurrence. Neither of those issues have anything to do with Raul's choosing of Today's Featured Article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:13, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Sandy and I often disagree. We do not disagree on this, I support her statement wholeheartedly.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:14, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I might understand why we have to keep having this PERENnial discussion if 1) there were problems demonstrated in the mainpage selection process (there aren't), or 2) Raul was still promoting FAs as well as choosing TFA/R's (he's not). Raul hasn't done most of the promotions at FAC for three years: I've promoted 40% of our current FAs, Karanacs (talk · contribs) has probably promoted around 30% of them, and Laser brain (talk · contribs) is also promoting now. Raul almost never promotes, and is called in when all three delegates must recuse, or there's a big kerfuffle that needs his attention. TFA/R is functioning quite well, with broad community input and oversight by Wehwalt and others. Concerns about promotions can be discussed at WT:FAC and concerns about TFA can be discussed at WT:TFA/R, but these discussions usually amount to education rather than a policy problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:30, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree again, though modestly abstaining from Sandy's personal praise, and would also note that Raul, and certainly Sandy deserves major kudos, for taking FA and TFA/R from a nightmare which no one wanted to touch to an effective, clean process. Raul has governed the process well. I'm reminded of the story in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, after the revolution in the story is successful, some of the revolutionaries are appalled to find how low in the hierarchy they were. They immediately want a new structure, themselves at the top of course.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:54, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Having an article you contributed to on the main page is quite a reward for the hard work of writing an excellent article. It's such a prestigious award, that I don't see how it can be justified that one person be in charge of deciding who gets it. I don't buy any of the arguments that it can't be done by committee because it would be easier to do by committee, select a great article for the main page, than writing the article in the first place. The community can do the latter very well. Perennial closure for outsiders? Why? --Kleopatra (talk) 05:16, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I think you'll find many of those writers disagree that enduring mainpage day vandalism is a reward. One person doesn't decide; see WP:TFA/R. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:42, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is primarily a project to build a free and open encyclopedia. It is also an experiment in some form of online democracy, but there is no reason to be fundamentalist about that. Hans Adler 16:43, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a big difference between democracy and anarchy. Assigning individuals specific responsibilities isn't a demonstration of lack of freedom; it is a demonstration of the need for efficiency. Anarchy in decisions might seem like freedom, but it is also horribly inefficient. Also, the layout of the content on the main page doesn't seem like the big is - the issue is with the content itself. If a bad article somehow becomes a FA, that's not the fault of Raul, it is the fault of the entire community of editors that allowed it to happen. Psu256 (talk) 20:13, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

And yet these inefficient anarchists have managed to write a million articles that are accessed by millions of people every day. Quoted in the news. Read by students, consulted by researchers. Anarchy in decisions has created the featured articles that go on the front page. --Kleopatra (talk) 05:16, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

A totally irrelevent point for this arguement. You are seeking a solution for a problem that does not exist. Wikipedia, first and foremost, seeks the things that work the best, regardless of why they work. To put it bluntly, Raul works, and so there is no need to replace him. You speak in hypotheticals, and vague ones at that, in seeking to upset a system that even you admit has no problems except that it lacks some sort of "aesthetic democracy" which might make you feel better about it. I challenged you above to name any concrete problem that you have with how Raul does his job. You scoffed. Yet that is the crux of the defense against your arguement: unless you can show where Raul isn't doing his job right, there's no need to change anything. --Jayron32 06:05, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Seriously dude, yourself. I asked a question. You assigned me to be seeking a solution for a problem that does not exist. You even made up the problem, that my asking my question was seeking to upset a system, before assigning me to seeking a solution to the problem you made up. Very defensive, you who first brought up that Raul is the sole selector.

Very weird and strong answers to what seemed to be a question. But weird for Raul, and I know nothing about him that I should allow this to continue. So, I bow out of this weird-festation. --Kleopatra (talk) 06:28, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

You stated " It's such a prestigious award, that I don't see how it can be justified that one person be in charge of deciding who gets it." That is not a question, it is a statement. --Jayron32 06:50, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Another way to view this: there are two ways articles are picked for front page: one is specific date requests, but these only are granted by community approval, with more weight given to "educational" topics. The remains picks are from a random pool of yet-appearing articles.

If you want to improve the types of FAs that appear to more "educational" ones, build up more articles to FA that are from educational topics. --MASEM (t) 06:26, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually, in my experience Raul does take more informal requests than the official "Save the Date" list at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests that is open to community approval. He also maintains a list of long-term "suggestions" for specific dates, see Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/pending, and in my experience as long as there aren't conflicts he generally will use these suggestions too. It's better to think of Raul as a coordinator than a dictator. His job is to see that the TFA gets updated every day in a timely and orderly manner; he does so in consultation with the community, and has set up processes to accept suggestions and discuss and vote on them as necessary. --Jayron32 15:42, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

While your statement is correct, to my knowledge, Raul does not use the pending template, nor does he "maintain" it-- I started it (I think) to help track upcoming possibilities at TFA/R, and again, it is a community function used by editors who work at TFA/R. Also, in fairness to Kleopatra, who says on her user page (which is very hard to read, BTW, see WP:ACCESS), "For some reason, I am treated by other wikipedia editors as if I am completely stupid. I am not", when I first encountered this thread, I (wrongly) assumed that she was another relatively new editor bashing Raul (who is frequently bashed, in spite of doing a very good job at TFA). On closer examination, I see that she did not start this thread, and she did merely ask a followup question in the beginning. Where she went after that is another story-- she might contemplate that in terms of understanding the statement on her userpage. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:57, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I have personally made several updates to the "pending" template which have later showed up as TFA's, often without any formal discussion. I'm sure its not an automatic policy, but obviously Raul (or his stand-in) is influenced by such suggestions; he may not hold himself to it as a matter of policy, but it is clear that he doesn't ignore it either. The last I remember is What'd I Say. I'm sure such occurances are someone saying "Hmmm, that seems like a fine idea" and using such articles when they have no better alternative. --Jayron32 18:32, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Where I went after being asked this, "Has Raul done something that you so profoundly disagree with that you wish to remove him from his job?" by the person who posted the comment that led me to ask my original question? Or where I went after the other zillion accusations that I'm trying to hang the entire community or Raul?

I've commented a few times on WP:TFA and been completely ignored, when I saw the comment that one person ran the show there, I wondered if that were true and could explain why my concerns are always ignored. TFA requires a lot of maintenance, the article, even if not controversial takes a lot of damage while on the front page, and I was thinking in lines of learning more how the decision process is structured, and if there were a particular policy that makes it so that many comments about TFA are ignored, and if there were a policy way that I could help out to make sure not only my, but others' concerns are not ignored. Thank you Sandy for going to my user page and accusing me of being the cause of the CF here in response to my question. However, I posted the question while reading the TFA/requests page and not finding much useful information, only a weird link to an ancient and small approval process that explains nothing. It's very difficult to find correct and accurate information about how things work on wikipedia without knowing all the places to go. Sometimes I have asked questions places and got useful answers. Many times on wikipedia, though, an outsider asking a question leads to instant hostility accusations. ::::Oh, you want to know if what I said is true? Then you must be trying to take Raul down. Really?! OMG.

While I have been editing and creating wikipedia articles for about 6 years, I don't know who Raul is. The answers, accusations and weird comments, now going 100% personal, about me, for asking a question are uncalled for, but they are not unfamiliar of my experience on wikipedia. There's an in-crowd. I work more than full time. I create and edit boring obscure technical articles, and I'm never going to be part of the in-crowd on wikipedia. Also, although I've used an IP to avoid being identified as female on wikipedia, I am female, and I've opted now to edit using my name. Strike one: I don't live here. Strike two: I don't work with a lot of other editors because I work in obscure areas. Stike three: woman. Strike four: I asked a question seeking information, then got lost in the flinging of random accusations against me for the first three strikes. An initial assumption of good faith or even neutrality and explanations of policy in response could have gone far.

Can we go back to editing now? --Kleopatra (talk) 16:14, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, let's do go back to editing; I, at least, wrongly assumed you had started this thread, and may be another Raul-basher. However, "Thank you Sandy for going to my user page and accusing me of being the cause of the CF here in response to my question", I have not done that, and you may find that improving your own tone and AGF factor will go a long way towards diminishing the factor you mention on your user page. Your responses have been overly defensive, and many editors who respect Raul's work will be quick to jump on that. Lessons learned, and I recognize now that you were initially only asking a followup question here, but asking it either at WT:TFA/R or on Raul's talk page would probably have yielded a more positive reaction. And there's an "in crowd" in every aspect of Wiki-- GAN, RFA, CSD, AFD, ANI, etc. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

PS I am going back to editing. Please feel free to accuse me of additional bad intentions on my user page. Thanks. --Kleopatra (talk) 16:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I've not done that, but if you have any further questions about how the processes work and the history behind these processes, you're always welcome on my talk page. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:24, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

What if a radio station changes frequencies?

I don't know where I was told this to begin with, but I asked again here and one person agreed that the article should be about the radio station, not its frequency. WSYN, WOMG, WLXC, WAZO and WSFM (FM) are examples of where I fixed articles where the call letters and format were moved to a new place. In the case of WLXC and WOMG, as well as WAZO and WSFM, they were swapped. When WSYN moved to its old frequency, WYAK essentially went off the air, but since a new station (WLFF, on the former WSYN frequency) had basically the same format, I considered WLFF to be a continuation of WYAK since the formats were swapped. I did this because at least one person started putting older information about WSYN in the WSYN article, even though that station's early history was with WLFF.

There is a frequency move that has taken place. What was WUIN is now WMYT (FM) if you go by frequency and WSFM (FM) if you go by format and name. The discussion is on Talk:WSFM (FM) and what to be seems the sensible approach is being opposed. I'd like some clear guidelines. So far WSFM has not changed call letters, which doesn't help my case.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:26, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to add WORD (AM) to the list of stations which simply changed frequencies. WOLI (AM) was WSPA before it moved, but the change to the current letters came long after the swap.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:01, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean, "I considered"? That sounds like original research. What do reliable sources have to say about this - in this case, a primary source such as a regulatory document or station website would probably be fine to show continuation of the same station at another frequency. Fences&Windows 00:35, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Having dealt with a couple radio stations in the past, I can attest that the terminology used by various news sources can become muddled and confused at time. When in doubt, remember that radio stations are (almost always) business entities and follow the management/chain of ownership. This means that frequency changes become equivalent to moving the business to a new street and a new call sign are equivalent to a corporate name change. --Allen3 ^talk 00:58, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

In the case of WLFF, I just didn't want to start a stub article on a station with very little history other than being the former frequency of WSYN. WYAK would have a better article. Did I do something wrong there?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:36, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd appreciate comments from those who posted here on the relevant talk pages--Talk:WLFF and Talk:WSFM (FM).Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:35, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

In some cases I wonder whether this might be akin to a professional sport team moving to a new city and changing its name? The underlying corporate entity might remain the same, but the public face is so drastically different that it still has a new identity. That seems like an easier case to me than radio stations moving around within the same city, though I still remember a rather contentious merge discussion years past involving whether the Expos and the Nationals should have separate articles. But in any event, the point is that mere continuity of legal formalities might not provide the best or final answer as to how article content is best organized. Good luck sorting it out.  ; ) postdlf (talk) 14:58, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I just made a discovery. WUIN moved from 106.7 to 98.3 but now the call letters on 98.3 have finally changed to WUIN. This suggests to me that the history of The Penguin needs to be in the new WUIN-FM article. Yes, it should be WUIN (FM). I didn't think anyone would do anything so bizarre as to change the AM letters to WUIN only to change them again, which they have. Meanwhile, since WSFM no longer exists, except for the AM that probably will have no connection to the old WSFM, I think there should be a merge of the content from the WSFM article to the WAZO article, since both stations were once on 107.5. Discussion at Talk:WAZO.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:03, 13 January 2011 (UTC)