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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy).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

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New access class oversight

moved from WP:VPT

Are there any details of what this permission specifically does, and how it will be assigned? User access levels states "Allows user to delete previous revisions of pages" and that it will be individually assigned. meta:Help:User rights does not mention it at all, but it appears to be a valid (though unassinged) group on meta as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 05:28, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a work in progress, see meta:Hiding revisions. For the moment it's just me, but now with some logging instead of invisible database work. --Brion 05:33, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy answer, and straight from the horses mouth too! — xaosflux ^Talk 05:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I wish I had this permission, so that I can kill bad edits without having the FA (or anything else) see "this page was deleted" for a while.Voice-of-All^Talk 07:31, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

It won't be given out except to trusted users or developers; e.g. the arbitration committee on this Wikipedia have it. The scope for abuse is high, and it isn't quite like a straight deletion of one revision - it hides it from all users, including sysops. robchurch | talk 15:26, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

So I take it we'll be seeing Wikipedia:Oversight policy and Wikipedia:Requests for oversight soon?  :/ What would be wrong with allowing any sysop to delete a revision this way, but only "oversight" users to view/restore such deletions? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 08:03, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

If something is deleted with this function, it can only be viewed or restored by a database developer. — xaosflux ^Talk 05:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Apparently this is already in production, and being used, see the Log. As of this post, this permission has been set on 17 accounts. The meta page also is suggesting that "Draft policy needs to be drafted before use." — xaosflux ^Talk 05:29, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Its only been given to Jimbo, the Arbcom, Brion (who could do it anyway) and Essjay as far as I can tell. Seems like a pretty damn trustable set of users to me. I'm guessing the decision to give it to Essjay was made by the Arbcom, much like Checkuser, and is something I fully support. I agree that some form of documentation and/or policy would be good, but this is obviously still a pretty new thing. the wub "?!" 13:29, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Also see discussion at WT:RFA#Request for Oversight Prodego ^talk 14:27, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Or don't, since I've taken the liberty of moving it here :-) I knew this must have been discussed somewhere, but for some reason WT:RFA wasn't on my list of places I checked. the wub "?!" 15:12, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Moved discussion from Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

Perhaps we should think about having these go here, or should it go on meta, since thats were the stewards do promotions?Voice-of-All^Talk 14:00, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, on Meta it is requested that all discussions on any theme relevant to any given wiki (explicitly including how to handle any problems with administrators) be carried out at the local wiki, and not on Meta. Then, once a consensus is reached, it is requested that a member of the community post the outcome, with the resulting request for stewards, at Meta so that the decision may be carried out. But generally, all discussions concerning any wiki are to be kept at the local wiki, and not be held on Meta. So that kind of request would have to be handled here, and only the final outcome would be posted on Meta, with the final request. Redux 14:15, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

A minor note: I've just realized that I've written the worst edit summary ever. The comment is about the proper venue being this Wikipedia, and not Meta, and yet the summary says "on meta", as if it were announcing a comment in favor of having it on meta. It was meant to say "about Meta", since I explain how Meta works on this kind of process. My bad, sorry. :S Redux 14:35, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

It would be worthwhile to point out that about a dozen users have been given the oversight permission, and it was done by the Arbitration Committee. As there is of yet no proceedure for how it should be granted (at least, none that I've seen, and Jimbo was unable to give any answer when I asked a few days ago on IRC), my understanding is that it is being handled just as checkuser is handled: The Arbitration Committee decides who should be granted it, and then requests it on Meta. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 14:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

So in other words I won't be able to get it. Oh well...at least my JS helps speed it up individual regular deletions, though it still lags the server and leaves an annoying "Wikipedia does not have a page on..." message for a while :(.Voice-of-All^Talk 15:02, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

It's a pretty sensitive permission, the ability to remove revisions so that they can only be restored by direct intervention from a developer, so it's natural that it will be kept under tight seal. It's been suggested that a "Requests for revision removal/Request for oversight use" page be set up as a noticeboard for such, but in the meantime, I'd suggest checking Special:ListUsers/suppress and contacting one of us who is currently online via our talk page, rather than doing the manual delete; as you mentioned, it's a strain, causes some disruption (when visitors are unable to access high traffic pages, like Wikipedia), and still runs the risk of the information leaking if an admin pulls it from the history. Much better that you contact someone with oversight who is online. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 15:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Oversight permission, on enwiki, is granted by the ArbCom, same as CheckUser. This was decided when it was made available; I spoke to Brion on IRC when it was made available and that's how he explained how it was explained to stewards. I'm the one who initiated the discussion on the ArbCom mailing list. For the moment, if you want this permission, you'll have to convince the ArbCom to give it to you. I oppose the creation of a noticeboard; oversight deals with situations where privacy is likely to be important and a noticeboard will tend to draw attention to those situations. I would instead urge that requests be made through private channels. Kelly Martin (talk) 10:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I raised the same issue of drawing attention to such situations in the ANI thread on the noticeboard subjects, albiet in hindsight, after discussing it with others. The idea of a mailing list that anyone could send in to, but only those with the permission could read, makes some sense to me; it provides a central place for people to raise requests, where they don't have to ask on 15 different people's talk pages in order for it to be noticed right away, nor leave it on ANI to languish. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 15:14, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I understand that it is dangerous if misused, but here is a tool I could really make good use of. Over my short (only two months) adminship, I have removed private info twenty times, and this tool would be very useful. I manually removed some private info a little while ago, after I found that not a single person with oversight responded to a user's request. I checked the list of people with oversight, and I found none online. I was however. It took two hours for someone with oversight to respond, far too long when personal info is involved. I think that the growing tendency to give every new tool to 20 or so highly trusted users, rather then users who can most benefit by use of the tool is problematic, since it overloads this group with work, and makes this new function less effective then it could be. Prodego ^talk 15:42, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Who would misuse it? It is very clear when to use; you know it when you see it. I'm talking obvious personal info additions. If Willy adds "ALKIVAR'S NUMBER IS ####", why do we have to sit around and wait for one of 15 users to notice it or be available. The only way to misuse it is to go on an abuse spree (V Molotov style)...that is the question...which admins might loose it and go on vandal sprees. Suffice to say, I firmly trust a fair deal of admins to not do that. Maybe at least 50 Oversight users would do, as long as one is always available; really, trust is all that matters, not even that arbitraury 50. Whereas too many BCrats leads to edit conflicts/disagreement over steady moving issues, Oversight is good for any trusted user to have, as it can counter a sporatic event. Sometimes this starts to just feel elitist, because their is no other real reason not to give out this power. I did make "chack all revisions" script, I did make "revert all moves" for edits shown on a user's log page and "master rollback" for contribs page...I know how to not misuse tools. I've made over a dozen scripts and a bot...why am I still not trusted enough to have this limited use (but useful when the time comes every few days) tool? I am not saying that Essjay and other are "elitist" or any garbage like that, just that the system increasingly feels that way, and the lack of trust doesn't make me feel great :(.Voice-of-All^Talk 17:14, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

First, I'm not on the Arbitration Committee, so I'm not responsible for deciding who gets what permissions. Second, it's not about not trusting you, personally. While it may seem that way to you, you shouldn't turn not being given a sensitive permission into "They don't trust me"; that's no more accurate than saying "I didn't pass my RfA, that means nobody likes me." The Arbitration Committee is placed in a very difficult position of deciding who should and shouldn't be given restricted permissions, and making it personal is unfair; it's not as tough they went down the list of all 925 admins calling out each name, and had a vote of no confidence when they came to your name.

I realize it may feel to you as though you were deliberately denied. This is simply a case of a very limited issue of a brand new and untested permission to a small, known group of users. (They didn't even give it to all arbitrators, or all checkusers.) This is an alpha release, and it doesn't mean there won't be a larger beta release later. (Disclaimer: I don't know if there will or not, I'm not one of the people who decides that; I'm just pointing out that just because they didn't give it out to everybody right away doesn't mean they won't later. It took months for checkuser to be extended from just David Gerard to the other arbitrators, and months more for it to be given to former arbs.) Essjay (Talk • Connect) 04:25, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

My problem is the dismissal of even the possibility of RfO, to confirm the most trusted and categorically competent users. I definetely do think that it is because "nobody likes me" nor do I suggest that in any sort of way. I don't mind if I don't pass an RfO, but the fact that it is not even considered bothers me when combined with the fact that, often, no Oversight users are even around, and it would be useful for at least some others to have it. As long as the idea of at least considering non-arbiter oversight is open, then I won't feel that way. I don't mind checkuser, as arbiters are really the only ones who need it. This is different.Voice-of-All^Talk 23:53, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

A) Non-arbitrators have been given oversight: I have it, and I am not now, nor have I ever been, on the Arbitration Committee. B) Checkuser is not just needed by Arbitrators, as evidenced by the fact that the only non-Arbitrator to have the permission is the one running all the RfCU requests. C) Elections are not the best way to determine who is or is not "categorically competenet and trusted; the leak to Wikitruth passed RfA (in fact, most of the people on the suspect list are considered to be excellent and trustworthy admins). Essjay (Talk • Connect) 02:52, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

A)Fine, there are 1-2 other people selected by some group of some amount of arbiters (and I still can't find where the hell the discussions are). As for B)Yes you are right...I suppose any highly trusted and competent person can do RfCU, just like use oversight...C)RfO could be before a small committee, not just a bunch of random voters that don't know what the hell they are talking about half the time. If that committee is arbcom, then fine, as long as there is a clear place to RfO. In fact I'd rather have RfO be in front of a panel. I don't care if one person somehow got this tool by some undisclosed means, what I want, and have always wanted, is a clear, transparent, process to get it, even if it is very hard.Voice-of-All^Talk 07:35, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I think Arbcom should be a little looser about this privilege then others, but I definitely don't think an "Request for Oversight" based on RfA would be a good idea. Prodego ^talk 02:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

There may be a better place for this discussion, but since this is the first thread about this new power that I have seen, I am going to comment here. First off, I don't see why this is better than simply granting all admins the ability to selectively delete and restore certain versions. Having an action that it takes a developer to undo is fairly awkward, but perhaps that is just a temporary hack. I agree that if something is hard to undo / check, then it is reasonable to limit who has access to it, but I don't see why selective version deletion should be one of those things, unless we've stopped trusting admins recently? PS. I've also done personal info removal in the past, though no where near as often as Prodego and Voice of All apparently. Dragons flight 18:07, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

You probable have done more than I, as I think you've done quite a bit (using the page move method if I am not mistaken). I have gone through personal info removal "sprees", but they are not my sprees, it just comes up...and I remove it. I just want to be ready to remove it the next time, whenever that will be (likely June 6 at least). Maybe not all admins (900) can be trusted, and who knows whether an old account might get comprimised, but I know that I am active and willing to use such tools appropriatly. Maybe we can have RfO. Either way, admins should at least be able to regular delete a specific revision without all the hastle, though I would never misues oversight delete either.Voice-of-All^Talk 18:15, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

It is supposed to be temporary, but I am not sure admins will be able to delete one revision, possibly it will only be for stewards? (see [1]) Either that or it will need multiple levels of coding, in which case it should take a while. I agree with VoA that not all admins can be trusted with this tool, but I am sure quite a few can. Prodego ^talk 18:17, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

(3x Edit conflict - replying to Dragon's Flight) - The Oversight removal tool goes one level beyond selective version deletion: once the version is deleted with it, it's no longer visible to anyone on-wiki - neither regular users, nor admins, nor people with oversight rights will be able to see the version in the history (or the deleted history) after that. So, yes, I support that functionality being very carefully doled out.

That said, we really really need to get the functionality to delete individual versions "the normal way" into all Admin hands. That's a different feature though. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 18:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I have been aware of that, but I still think that giving this tool to the people who would use it most, who can be trusted not to abuse it, outweighs the risk. Even in the unlikely case someone were to abuse it, it would be visible in the log, and it would be noticed. Prodego ^talk 18:35, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I also agree it shouldn't be given out liberally, but there should probably be more editors that have it. Also, a link for those that missed the memo. It's clearly something that is developing and solidifying. - Taxman ^Talk 21:12, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

As it has been mentioned above, this is only a temporary feature. Brion has said on IRC previously that the entire deletion system has to be overhauled, and the Bitfields for rev_deleted page is the suggested plan to change it, to make Special:Revisiondelete operable. However, there's also SUL among other things that Brion wants to code, so if any PHP-knowledgeable admins want to help the devs coding, it would speed up everyone getting at least some sort of individual revision deletion ability sometime in the future. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 04:36, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The "normal admins can't retrieve it" point is excellent when it comes to libel, personal info, etc. As we should know, there are leaks from normal deletion. However, I think the implementation is slightly odd. Specifically, why not allow any admin to use this "special delete", but allow anyone with oversight to undelete (or view) a special-deleted revision? There would seem to be little mileage in abusing such a deletion tool, since it could be easily retrieved by any of a dozen very trustworthy people (whose viewing or undeletion would also leave logs, presumably unlike the current dev undeletion—although of course, devs could always retrieve without public logs). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 09:20, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Because there are other consequences, i.e. a compromised admin account deleting a major page and preventing it from being restored until a user with oversight was active. Worst case scenario, an oversight could always go back and hide it, as far as I know. Ral315 (talk) 18:25, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, a compromised oversight account would require a developer to manually undelete the edit, as other accounts with oversight cannot reverse the action. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 01:32, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

If an admin account is compromised, it would currently be possible for it to make the site entirely unusable (by adding insane things to Mediawiki: system messages) and install viruses in vulnerable computers (by adding malicious things to site Javascript), as well as deleting countless images perhaps irretrievably. All three would require direct developer intervention (because it would be trivial to break the site interface for undoing changes). If you think about it, having a few revisions be deleted for a few extra hours is worry entirely beneath consideration when it comes to an admin account being compromised. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:06, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Good points, I didn't even think of that.Voice-of-All^Talk 02:23, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

NPOV vs "mainstream"

According to Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales, NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable.", but there are still discussions about the interpretation of this policy.

In particular, some editors believe that anything is neutral if it is widely used in "mainstream" sources. I disagree with this statement. The neutral point of view should be "neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject", whyle any of these two attitudes may prevail in the society and this influences the POVs found in "mainstream" sources.

On the other hand, the very definition of the "mainstream" is unclear to me. How can one decide whether a certain POV belongs to the "mainstream" or not? Another problem: if something is a "mainstream", for instance, in Iran, it is not necessarily a "mainstream" in US or Western Europe.

More specifically, this question appeared in the discussion about using the word "liberate" for the restoring of the Soviet control over the territories of the present-day Ukraine, Belarus and Baltic States during the WWII. Using this term was clearly the "mainstream" of Soviet historical science. The modern Russia continues this tradition. Although some western scholars use this term as well, I am not, quite sure whether it belongs to "mainstream" in Western science. Two articles in Britannica that describe the subject "Ukrain in WWII" in details (History of Ukraine, History of WWII) avoid the word "liberate" and use neutral terms, but one still can find this word in othe articles where the WWII is mentioned in passing by.

Wheter it is "mainstream" or not, it is not clear whether the "mainstreamness" has any relevancy in this case, because using the word "liberate" assumes sympathy to Soviets. Many people have the opposite view, because the "liberation" resulted in new repressions, one more artificial famine etc.

I (and a few other editors) propose to use more neutral terms instead of "liberate", like "take control", "advance", "reclaime" etc. But there is a strong group of users who disagree and insist on using the word liberate.

I would be very thankfull if experiencied WP editors could answer my question and help us to apply the NPOV policy properly. Thanks in advance.--AndriyK 10:10, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I would go with "liberate." The Soviet Union is a defunct system and its politicized historiography is discredited inside and outside Russia--it is no longer part of any mainstream. (Soviet historians were required to follow the party POV line or be fired (or worse.) Rjensen 10:17, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand Rjensen's comment (perhaps there is confusion between the 1940s and the 1990s)? Never mind. My answer (I speak only as an ancient/medieval historian!) is that 'liberate' is not neutral. 'Reoccupy' would not be neutral either. '(Re)gain control', '(re)take control', '(re)assume control', 'advance' -- these are all neutral. Naturally, it's perfectly OK to quote or summarise relevant non-neutral statements by others, so long as the source is made clear. Andrew Dalby 11:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

It was a Soviet territory before the Germans invaded, so it was indeed "liberation" in the sense that it returned to Soviet control. Pretty simple, really.Michael Dorosh 13:24, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

First of all, NPOV does not mean that Wikipedia endorses whatever is the mainstream view of an event! NPOV means that Wikipedia reports that a view is the mainstream, and will usually focus primarily on that view if there are too many competing views to report on all of them (no undue weight to fringe views). That said, I think the word "liberate" is not neutral. I'd imagine that not everyone who lived in those territories viewed the Soviet occupation as "liberating." --Ryan Delaney ^talk 22:53, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, many of those people probably have an 'international right' to self-determination. Intangible 23:02, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

The word "liberate" in a military context always makes me think of the People's Liberation Army liberating Tibet. Kusma (討論) 03:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Liberate, used to mean "conquer", is never neutral. It has a strongly positive connotation, even if its denotation is accurate. Use other terms instead. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 09:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

In the context of WWII libration means liberation from Nazism. In this sense the Red Army liberated not only Soviet territory but also half of Germany. Using any other term than liberation for the "retaking" of Soviet territory is pushing a Nazi POV. -- Petri Krohn 23:17, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

NPOV naturally gives equal status to Nazi POV, you are free to push it. You should however be prepared for the consequences: the humiliation of being publicly called a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer -- Petri Krohn 23:23, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Petri here. This discussion made me sick. Never knew that WP is a haven for pro-Nazi editors... Such views as above are liable to bring the project into disrepute. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 07:59, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Saying that the word conquer should be preferred to liberate is in no way related to having a "Nazi POV". For what it's worth, I'm an Orthodox Jew and know several people with numbers tattooed on their arms. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 09:03, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Than I have to formulate the hypothesis you did not learn anything from them ...  :(( -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 09:51, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Please do not insinuate that other editors support Nazism or Nazis in any way. That would be appropriate even if I was a Nazi (which I'm not), since the point of WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA is to avoid disruption rather than to avoid defamation (and true accusations are just as distracting and disruptive as false ones). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:34, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Ryan, your imagination is beside the point. Whether you would like it or not, the majority of the population in the occupied USSR territories, based on how they reacted at the time, were glad to see the Soviet army. This was not Soviet propaganda, this was the large-scale response by the population. See the recently published book "A writer at war" by Antony Beevor. Just because a 21st century occidental thinks otherwise does not make it false. And the other problem is AndriyK applies a double standard to Ukraine and other places (but that's another subject). -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 09:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Whether you would like it or not, the majority of the population in the occupied USSR territories, based on how they reacted at the time, were glad to see the Soviet army That is untrue. Were Lithuanians happy to see their former occupiers return along with NKVD executions squads ? Poles certainly viewed Soviets as just another occupation, especially as hundreds of thousands were mass murdered by Soviet policies. The term liberate can't be used in regards to Soviet actions. From wiki definition: Liberation is based on the word liberty, related to the word liberal, and it is often understood as "to be freed (or change) from not having freedom to having freedom" Soviet regime neither can be described as associated with liberty, nor did it give freedom. Using the term "liberation" in regards to situation where people were one occupation was replaced by another is very POV. --Molobo 12:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Can you read? Did I say All the people somewhere? I said the majority, and when you see the number of people fighting as partizans, it cannot absolutely be contested. Yes, some people considered Soviet Army as occupation, but not all of them. Don't think that your opinion is universal.

And who were guys from Armia Ludowa? Maybe they were they Chinese or Brazilian? They were Poles that fought alongside the Red Army too. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 12:16, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I said the majority, and when you see the number of people fighting as partizans, And who were guys from Armia Ludowa? Armia Ludowa had 6.000 partisans compared to 400.000 of Home Army and 175.000 from Peasants' Battalions. --Molobo 13:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Grafikm, no need to shout at the poor wretch about to be permabanned from editing Wikipedia. The possibilty of permablock is now higher than ever, considering that Molobo relapsed into massive spamming of user pages to recruit other POV-pushers in his support (see here or here). Such behaviour will not be tolerated by the community. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 12:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

An, another personal attack by Ghirla against Molobo. Shall we bring up your RfC, Ghirla, for balance?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 15:09, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Guys, why don't you focus on the topic rather than on personal arguments? As I said already in the relevant discussions, one can hardly feel liberated when he is bound to be expelled in a massive ethnic cleansing, as was the case of, for instance, several million Poles previously living in the areas conquered by the Soviet Union. Your arguments above prove that in this very case it is not a problem of "mainstream" vs "non-mainstream", but with Soviet POV vs. non-Soviet POV (which you kindly labelled as Nazi, thanks). I touched the subject at Talk:Lviv, where it's been argued that the term is quite controversial, especially that in 1941 the Soviets declared their pacts with the Nazis null and void (and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was their only legitimization of ownership of Poland's eastern territories), so they could not "liberate" what they did not own until after the war. I also touched the subject at Talk:Maładečna ([2] :) ), where the same set of editors to support the liberation of Lvov opposed the idea that anyone except the Soviets could liberate any place - even if it is mentioned in the only source provided there.

So, this one is a problem of not only the interpretation of wiki NPOV policy, but also of factual accuracy. If that's so, then why can't we agree to use neutral terms and move along? If there are non-neutral words in an article, why not make everyone happy and change them to more neutral? Is neutrality equal to Nazism? //Halibutt 12:37, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Halibutt, FYI the MRP was not a legitimization of anything and couldn't be because it was a bilateral act, and besides, the appendix was secret. The basis of the Soviet claim was their succesful annexation of the territory following the Soviet invasion (occupation) of it. The legal justification for the latter, as presented by the Soviets, was that Poland "seized to exists" with its government evacuated following the successes of the Nazi Germany. The claimed moral justification was the need to protect the Ukrainians and Belarusians. Now, this is all beside the point. I am not defending the Soviet action in '39. However, in '41 these territories were no doubt Soviet ones and the MR pact while largely a reason for it wasn't a "justification" of anything. --Irpen 07:59, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

And the other problem is AndriyK applies a double standard to Ukraine and other places. Any example?

Whether you would like it or not, the majority of the population in the occupied USSR territories, based on how they reacted at the time, were glad to see the Soviet army. How do you know whether it was majority or minority? There were no polls that could give the answer. There were no free elections that could show the real support of the regime. There are no information sources except the Soviet ones. Even if Western scholars address this point their judgements are based on the Soviet sources because there is no other ones. No independent researcher was allowed to study the attitude of the Ukrainian population towards the returning of Soviets.

And even if it was majority, does it matter? Should wikipedia represent the POV of majority or neutral POV? Thisy is the main question the present discussion was supposed to answer.--AndriyK 13:52, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia must represent the point of view of mainstream research. Otherwise, it is considered Original Research and is forbidden per WP:NOR.

I'll give you an example from economics: imagine that a businessman whose firm got bankrupted in during 1945-1973 post-war economic growth period in Western Europe. In this book, he explains that it was not growth but a crisis because his firm along with a handful of others were bankrupted. This will be considered POV and OR, because according to mainstream research, it was a period of growth. The facts he describes are 100% accurate, but their interpretation and his subsequent conclusion are OR.

What you're trying to do is exactly the same thing. You try to use quite real facts of abuses committed by NKVD and the Red Army to change a common historical consensus.

Most Western sources (and Russian too, of course) speak about liberation. This is a canonic term, which has a meaning that is slightly different from that dictionary entry you so stubbornly quote. Consequently, it has to be kept as per WP:NOR policy. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 14:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia must represent the point of view of mainstream research.

Wikipedia must represent the neutral point of view. If you disagree, please follow the guidelines how to create a new policy.

There are relyable sources that do not use the word "liberate". For instance two large articles of Britannica (about Ukrainian history and the history of WWII) do not use this word. So writing the articles without this word would not be OR.--AndriyK 14:29, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Using any other term than liberation for the "retaking" of Soviet territory is pushing a Nazi POV.

What does critical view on the Stalinist regime have to do with Nazi POV?

Morover, I did not even proposed to reflect the critical view towards the Stalinism in the article. The only thing I propose is a neutral wording.--AndriyK 13:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Neutral wording yeah, about how vile Soviets came to occupy innocent Ukrainians. Sure thing... If someone has doubts about who AndriyK is, please have a look at his RFAr file, it is self-explanatory enough. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 14:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I see, you lack convincing arguments therefore you decided to discuss my person instead of the proper interpretation of the WP policy.--AndriyK 14:46, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

And you, on the other hand, are absolutely not credible when you talk about NPOV... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 14:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I propose to continue the discussion about using the word "liberate" at the talk and reserve the present page for a more general discussion:

NPOV vs "mainstream": is anything what is taken from "mainstream" sources automatically neutral? and, in the case of the positive answer to the first question, What is "mainstream"?--AndriyK 14:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Mainstream research is a framework of ideas that is in use among serious academic research on a given matter. For example, Evolution theory is a mainstream theory in biology, and while there are other theories, they are not regarded as credible enough.

Is everything mainstream neutral? Yes, because it was peer reviewed, quoted and rechecked by countless editors from all over the world, therefore minimizing a potential systemic bias. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 14:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you consider those who wrote the two articles about the history of Ukraine and the history of WWII as serious researchers?

Do this two articles belong to the mainstream research?--AndriyK 14:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

It does not matter who is researcher. The mainstream view happens to be nationally supported by the Ukrainian state. Let us not forget on how many thousands of Ukrainians fought in the Red Army ranks from the soldiers to the Marshals. --Kuban Cossack 16:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Sources please. Do governments of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia view Soviet presence as liberation ? I can certainly give sources of Polish government that clearly speak Soviet's represented just another opressive occupation. --Molobo 17:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

"How can we decide whether a certain source is POVed?" This is an important issue and I recently proposed to start a list of sources judged by their reliability. See this discussion if you are interested in the project. Just an an example: EB has different reliability even in a single edition: if articles are not signed they were probably written not by scholars but by EB staff, whom I don't think are more qualified then we are. Regarding ths issue of liberate in that context, the problem is that with very few exceptions, where Red Army went, it stayed, quickly overcoming the welcome of the local population. Thus soon after liberation, RA become the occupiers themselves. My solution is to use the construction 'liberate from Germans' which is more precise and correct instead of just 'liberate', but I certainly prefer 'take control' and other neutrals terms, unless we are talking about ethnically Russian territory.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 15:09, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I think a lot of important arguments were delivered on the talk page. The real question is whether the absolute majority of the Ukrainian people felt that they were "liberated" or most of them/a significant minority of them felt they only changed the brutal Nazi oppression to a similary brutal dicatorship. We are speaking about Stalin now - can we say that Stalin meant "liberation" for any people? Especially for the Ukrainians, only ten years after holodomor? It is more-or-less accepted now that he committed genocidium against Ukrainians, so I dont think so.

But there is another point-of view: if the article states Ukrainians were liberated that's clearly POV in this disputed question. If the articles states they were "occupied" this is POV too, only the other side. But neutral terms as "reclaim" etc (as listed above) should be acceptable for anybody because they contain the possibility of BOTH point-of-view. Zello 23:57, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

This whole thing has started off the wrong foot. The issue here is not whether Ukrainians felt occupied or liberated, which is a related but a separate question (and I have an opinion on that but I will withold it for now since, I think, it is less relevant). The issue is whether we are allowed to use strong words in Wikipedia or we are not allowed to use them at all. Strong words are not only "liberated" but "occupied", "massacred", "murdered" as well as nouns, like "Genocide" (as opposed to "numerous deaths"), "massacre" (as opposed to an "incident"), "uprising" (as opposed to "mutiny"), revolution (as opposed to coup d'etat), etc. If all these words are banned, we should only use "killed", "died", "taken", etc. This, however, is not the case. No encyclopedia, book, writer, no matter how NPOV can be required to stick to PC language and no one does that, including the very respectable Britannica and Columbia which also have NPOV policy.

The issue is different. If the majority of scholars see something as NPOV and acceptable usage, we can use this here as well. That the Holocaust was Genocide, that creationism is unscientific (still doesn't make it wrong), October was revolution, Pinochet was coup, Bounty was "mutiny", 1939 was Soviet-German Occupation of Poland, and 1943-45 was liberation of Europe are the terms the scholars agree on to use.

NPOV doesn't mean to give equal weight to the flat earth theory supporters, holocaust deniers and fringe nationalists with a russophobic tilt. Such views may be presented in the appropriate article as attributed and, generally, rejected POVs. That would settle it. --Irpen 00:12, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

You are absolutely right that strong words are allowed. But if we use strong words then the question should be fairly undisputed and obvious. This is not the case now as you can see from the long dispute. And you should take into consideration that some of the above mentioned stong words are related to factual things (massacre, coup) that are more easy to decide. But occupation and liberation is related to human feelings and they are very subjectives. Zello 01:16, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

That someone somewhere disputes something is not enough to call this a valid dispute. The discussion among Wikipedians isn't a proof of anything. Zundel disputes Holocaust and Kansas school board disputed the evolution. The existence of a disagreement among us, as wikipedians, has no meaning as we are no ones by ourselves to decide and we simply write based on what established sholars decide. Some, even established, scholars sometimes fall outside of the mainstream. In these cases, their views may be presented in an attributed form rather than alter the entire presentation of the subject. The unoversal usability of the term throughout the academic literature, Britannica and Columbia is what matter more than one Ukrainian nationalist coming here and telling what to do to the editor who wrote an article in a best way (that is based on an entire current scholarship) and dilligently (FA ready). So, please accept that the general position of the current state of the art in the field is crucial. --Irpen 01:27, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Personally I'm not really concerned in the question because I'm not a Russian nor Ukrainian,Pole etc. The problem was requested for comment so I tried to give an outsider point-of-view. I don't think this an obvious case like Holocaust or evolution. Ukrainian genocide in the 1930s is a fact, Stalinism as a brutal form of dictature is an accepted fact so the word "liberation" with its absolutely positive connotations are really strange related to these facts, especially that we are not speaking about the feelings of Russians now but of Ukrainians. Zello 01:42, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Zello, again, please stick to the subject. The issue is not what you think and besides, what you think is incorrect. Today's independent Ukraine officially celebrates the anniversaries of liberation (and calls it as such). Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) of 30s that killed millions is a fact but Genocide isn't a fact, while a possibility (see article), etc. The issue, however, is whether a dilligent and knowledgeble wikipedian should be allowed to write good faith articles fully based on the established scholarship and terminology without some fringe POV pushers roaming into articles purging some well established terms as they see fit and bringing the topic into havoc, causing the articles locked and lots of bad blood spilled. It also matters that such article wreckers do so without contributing a single idea either to an article they "join" or to Wikipedia, in general. Generally accepted versions of the events need to be represented as such. NPOV doesn't mean giving equal weight to what's generally accepted in the sholar's community and to what a lone wikipedian (or a couple) see as a "better" terminology. --Irpen 03:16, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

In Hungary there is a very similar debate about 4 April, the day when German occupation ended. It was called felszabadulás (liberation) until 1990 but when Hungary became independent, and the Red Army left the country, it turned out that a lot of people have horrible memories about the Soviet troops and they see this therm highly insulting. Nowadays it is not used too often although it was commonly accepted before the change. I think the sitatuation is probably similar in Ukraine and Poland. Zello 07:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Of course you are right that terminology debates are boring and unpleasant, but I think they are about real problems. After a compromise both parties can work again on the content of tha article as they like, don't you think? Zello 07:53, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Today's independent Ukraine officially celebrates the anniversaries of liberation Do Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Lithuania celebrate in their countries presence of Soviet soldiers as liberation ? and to what a lone wikipedian (or a couple) see as a "better" terminology. Well how about the president of my country ?: Lech Walesa [3]] Only now, in a free and sovereign Republic, can we speak of this in a distinct voice. To show the complex and ambiguous meaning of this anniversary. To bare its full truth. In the times of the Polish People's Republic, in enslaved Poland, a different version of history was compulsory. The official and "only correct" version. So we celebrated 9th May as Victory Day. --Molobo 03:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC) As you see Irpen the view of Polish government officials is rather critical of your "liberation" claim --Molobo 03:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Off topic, Molobo. Polish presidents, as well as most other presidents, don't get to writing respectable history books. --

fringe nationalists with a russophobic tilt Irpen the discussion is about Soviet Union not about Russian people. The view that Soviet presence meant occupation and terror is certainly the mainstream view in countries to which you try to apply the term liberation. Frankly as you see most editors that are Poles or Ukrainians oppose the term, so why not use a neutral one like "retook", "regained control". --Molobo 00:21, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Since when four or five Ukrainian editors were allowed to represent the whole Ukrainian nation?

The use of word "liberation" is confirmed by many scholars - all over the world. Not by nationalist journalists.

As for Poland, I'm the first advocate of using the word "liberation" only for territories that were in URSS possession on 22 June 1941. Poland does not belong there.

And I would also agree with Piotrus: 'liberate from Germans' is just fine for me. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 00:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Since when four or five Ukrainian editors were allowed to represent the whole Ukrainian nation? Since Wiki is an international project they do in some way represent Ukrainians, or at least they are the best that we got. :As for Poland, I'm the first advocate of using the word "liberation" only for territories that were in URSS possession on 22 June 1941. Poland does not belong there. What ? Are you unaware that Soviets occupied Poland in 1939 and were in possesion of Polish territory in June 1941(for example Bialystok) ? What about Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia which were annexed by the threat of force ? --Molobo 00:41, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Molobo, this is again, deflecting the discussion. The issue is not who considered what. The issue is whether the agreement of an entire mainstream scholarship that 43-45 was liberation, Flat Earth Theory is nosnense, the Holocaust was Genocide, Judaism is not Christianity, etc. is enough reason to say so at Wikipedia. What's yours, mine or even Jimbo's take on this things, doesn't matter. --Irpen 01:10, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Irpen. - FrancisTyers 01:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. Soviet "mainstream" was constructed for the propaganda purposes of the times and definitely cannot be considered NPOV especially that Ukrainians and Lithuanians continued to fight for their independence under Soviet occupation for years after WW2 ended. --Lysy^talk 10:05, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Your disagreement does not stand. During Cold War, where each and every incident, drawback and act of the Soviet regime was closely monitored and presented negatively (the same thing is true for URSS), precisely because it was propaganda on both sides. However, scholars' use of the word 'liberation' was as strong as before. As for Ukrainians and Lithuanians who continued to fight for their independence, they were a minority. If people would indeed support their partisan warfare, the Soviet regime would end up with a bloody warfare on its hands, like Germans did. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 12:18, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

The issue is whether we are allowed to use strong words in Wikipedia or we are not allowed to use them at all. I think there is no problem with using any "strong" or "weak" word if one uses the word according to its definition. If we look at the definition of Genocide: "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group ...", we see that the Holocaust conforms to this definition. STherefore, there is no problem concerning using the term Genocide when reffering to the Holocaust.

Now let's look at the definition of the word liberation: Liberation is based on the word liberty, related to the word liberal, and it is often understood as "to be freed (or change) from not having freedom to having freedom". There is a big doubt whether the post-war regime in the USSR can be characterised as "having freedom". Such a view can hardly be accepted universally. As well as considering Soviet republics to be occupied by Russia is very far from being a generally accepted view.

I would suggest the both sides of the dispute to find a compromise formulation.--Mbuk 22:09, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

The problem with using the word liberate here is that it's ambiguous. What does it mean, exactly? The USSR wasn't much less oppressive than the Nazis, in general, unless you were a Jew/gypsy/black/homosexual/etc. Certainly the residents of the newly-reconquered territories didn't have political freedom after they were conquered, which is one thing the term conjures up.

If you want to say that the majority of people in the reconquered areas were happy with the reconquering, say so. Don't use ambiguous terms to describe the reconquest and assume they're thus valid, because not everyone is going to interpret them the same way you do. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:47, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

There is not ambiguity whatsoever. In the WW2 context, "liberate" means rid the territory from Nazi control as established within the main framework of historiography. I find Lysy's entry that this usage is all due to the Soviet propaganda a hilarious one. So, Britannica, Columbia encyclopedias as well as all, or almost all anyway, Western books on the history of the subject represent the Soviet propaganda. If the whole historiography is written by Soviet propagandist, I think we should thoroughly revise the Senator Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism article because they seem to criticize the fellow who was actually right, infiltration of Soviet propagandists to the Western historiography is indeed amazing. --Irpen 02:01, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I've read the history of Ukraine in Britannica. They do not use 'liberate' in that article. Something like "Soviet troops 'reentered Kiev'", or "Ukraine was again under Soviet control" or similar. I would not insist the all serious Western books use "liberate".--Mbuk 03:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Read "Kiev" in Britannica. Read "Vatutin". Actually, care to read the archives. --Irpen 18:03, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I read also the article about Kiev, WWII is mentioned in a few sentences there. Indeed the word "liberate" is used in this article. But the article about the history of Ukraine analyses the subject in details and does not use this word.

From this I conclude that not all authors consider the events as liberation (although some do). There are different views even within the editorial boad of Britannica. I would not insist that "liberation" is mainstream or the most accepted view.--Mbuk 18:17, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, fine. People can figure out what it means, you're right. But it's non-neutral (yes, I'm shifting ground here a bit). The word liberate has a strong positive connotation; words with strong positive or negative connotations should be avoided unless necessary. Anything else is POV. (And no, I don't think the usage has anything to do with the Soviets, just with anti-Nazism.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:36, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Just stumbled upon this page here. I think a lot more analysis needs to be done by the Wikipedia community on what NPOV means and what's considered mainstream. Unfortunately the debate here seems to have only focused on issues related to Russia, the Ukraine, and WWII. I also followed the link to the Holodomor article and found it to be very POV, for what that's worth...

Proposal: Liberation of Europe

Maybe we should write a new article, possible called the Liberation of Europe discussing among others the post-Soviet controversy. It would then be possible to write something like "The Soviets liberated Berlin in 1945", without these edit wars. -- Petri Krohn 08:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that would help. People would argue that the title was POV.--Runcorn 19:51, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

It is impractical in many ways. Besides it is similar to The Soviets "liberated" Berlin in 1945 thus implying some ambiguity in the meaning of the word liberate.(Igny 20:39, 7 June 2006 (UTC))

Yes, that is exactly the point: it implies ambiguity. The ambiguity can be covered in the "liberation" article itself. -- Petri Krohn 02:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually by ambiguity I meant unintended sarcasm, as in Microsoft "improved" performance of Windows OS in ME. Imagine Microsoft improved performance of Windows (Igny 03:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC))

Some people believe, that "liberated" can only be said with sarcasm. Anyway, your example is not quite the same. This is like saying "The Soviets liberated Berlin in 1945". This is not NPOV, although this may be what some of the "pro Nazi" editors would want to say. The solution is thus to cover the meaning and interpretations of "liberation" now and in 1945 in the linked article

Yes, that is not a neutral title. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 00:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Indeed it is not. To liberate means to set free from oppression, confinement or foreign control1. Hence, what you would like to call a liberation was actually - per definition - the complete opposite, seeing as though Berlin (to use that as an example) was divided between no less than four foreign powers. Whether or not the nazi regime was oppressive or not is clearly a matter of discussion, but most would agree that to its own people, at least, it was not. To use the term "liberation" about the rest of Europe could be fitting, but for Germany itself, it would be outright wrong. Also, to point at how POV the term is, who would say the east bloc was "liberated" when the Soviet Union took over? Most likely, only Soviets themselves. See, this is basically all revolving around cultural bias. Smacking up "liberation of Europe" would only make some editors claim Germany was everything but liberated, other editors accuse these of nazi sympathies, while others still would yell that the east bloc first became oppressed after the soviets took over, while yet some others would say that no, they were indeed liberated. Insofar as the victor defines history, you could always say that the west became liberated, however, the myriads of nazi sympathisers at the time - and there were many more than these countries today like to admit - would clearly think otherwise. This particularly with regards to the witch-hunt like seek&destroy tactics in the civil communities to "punish" anyone clearly siding with the Germans during the war itself. In short, just let it be. It would do nothing good, and only cause controversy. --TVPR 07:13, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

You are refering to a number of diffrent and possibly conflicting views. There is nothing wrong with that, they can all be described in a NPOV manner. -- Petri Krohn 07:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)

Recently there have been a few proposed changes to this guideline but little discussion. Basically some users feel that the guideline doesn't cover characters from movies and video games in specific detail, which has led to confusion and lack of consensus on numerous AfD discussions. Please feel free to discuss the proposed changes on the guideline's talk page. Thanks. Reyk _YO! 00:13, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Suspending Requests for Adminship

I've proposed to suspend RfA and initiate a discussion of the merits of the existing process over on the Bureaucrat's noticeboard. Please feel free to participate in this discussion. Kelly Martin (talk) 21:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Guideline on current events articles

I've written a semi-proposal/semi-essay on the treatment of creation of articles for current events. It's based on a combination of existing policies/guidelines, but as an interpretation of how they applies to current events. Comments welcome at WP:DUST. Regards, MartinRe 13:51, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

subpages in the article space and List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people/A-E

Are we allowed subpages in the article space, I thought per Wikipedia:Subpages this was discouraged. Is this page out of date or does it still have consensus? Steve block Talk 11:14, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Out of date; should be moved to "List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people, A-E" or "List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people (A-E)". --Golbez 17:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

"There is no we"

(Originally on WP:VPM, though this is probably more appropriate) Is there an policy/guideline/essay which explains this principle as it applies on WP? I'm looking for an appropriate place to link to, but in the absence of WP:TINW I'm not sure which this might be. 81.104.165.184 20:31, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Have you tried out the idea here? SB Johnny 20:47, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Will somebody explain this for the benefit of us dummies? John Reid 18:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

.SWF File Uploads

This subject may have been (and probably has been) raised, but howcome wikipedia does not allow flash files to be uploaded? This format is very, very useful and versatile, I believe it could increase the quality of wiki greatly. Comments? Skaterblo 19:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

SWF is a proprietary format that doesn't permit the creation of open source players. For some in this community, that alone is enough reason not to include SWF files on Wikipedia. Dragons flight 19:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Asides the fact that it could be used for malicious purposes too. Creation of popups is a good example. Celardore 18:17, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

This open source player kind of works, but iirc it isn't packaged for any major distros, and it doesn't support sound yet. Also its very slow. I would not encourage allowing Flash to be uploaded. Is there an open format that could be supported instead? - FrancisTyers 01:30, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

GIF is not exactly open but Unisys seems to have given up holding the world for ransom; it supports very nice animations within its limitations. John Reid 06:23, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

The reason they're not holding the world for ransom is that the last of the LZW patents expired about six months ago. --Carnildo 09:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Indefinite IP blocking

(moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Indefinite IP blocking by User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:56, 11 June 2006 (UTC))

Movie vs. Film

A few people in the Film Project have decided that "movie" is an Americanism and therefore only the word "film" should be used in Wikipedia. They have changed many of the categories titles to reflect that but got rebuffed on "Road Movies" and "Disaster Movies". (The above discussion about google was started because someone used google to show that "Disaster Movies" had more hits than "Disaster Films").

Isn't this like the "Color" vs. "Colour" argument? And isn't it Wiki policy that neither the Americanism or the Britishism is to be favored? That editors are allowed to use whatever form they are comfortable with? --JeffW 17:54, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Normally, in the content of articles, yes. For article and category titles, more consistency is needed. -Freekee 14:37, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd have said that whereas "film" is preferred to "movie" in Britain, few would talk about "disaster films". --Runcorn 21:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Quite right. It's film in the UK except in "disaster movie", "road movie" and maybe one or two other obscure contexts. English is full of irregularities and we should be flexible enough to incorporate them into Wikipedia. Piccadilly 00:05, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles one may be personally involved in

I believe there is a policy I read somewhere that states that editors should try to not edit articles they may be personally involved with in one way or another. I can't seem to find it, however. Could someone point me to it if possible, please? Thanks. Cowman109^Talk 01:21, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:AUTO? Prodego ^talk 01:22, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

And it's not THAT strict a rule. As an extreme example, we don't ask Americans to steer clear of the USA article. AndyJones 12:40, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

That link isn't exactly what I was thinking of, but thanks. I was trying to think if there was a policy that says, for example, that a client to an employer perhaps shouldn't write an article about the company due to possibilities of biased edits. Oh, I managed to skip the line that says You should wait for others to write an article about subjects in which you are personally involved. This applies to articles about you, your achievements, your business, your publications, your website, your relatives, and any other possible conflict of interest.. That is indeed just what I was looking for, thanks! I see your point about not asking Americans to not edit USA though, hah. Cowman109^Talk 15:28, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

It is surely valuable for people to contribute to articles about which they know something, perhaps about people they know, as long as they don't breach WP:NOR and WP:NPOV.--Runcorn 21:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Or WP:OWN for that matter. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:40, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Editing an article about a company or organisation from which one had been fired might cause difficulty, if not with maintaing a NPOV on it, then at least it being apparent that one had maintained a NPOV on it. Making small edits to a large article about a company one works in is likely to be helpful - correct figures, names, areas of business or regulation etc. Midgley 15:13, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Such cases could also easily violate any post-employment contractual agreement between the organisation and the former employee. I do not think it is uncommon to include a severance clause that places a time-limited moratorium on public discussion of the former employer, something of a contractually obligated cooling off period. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:11, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Dummy-like account

Is there anything wrong with creating an account for the sole purpose of its watchlist? In order to monitor the changes of FAs after they become FAs, I want to make an account with all the FAs on the watchlist so that I can just link to it's Special:Watchlist page to monitor all the changes. Is there some other way that this can be accomplished/does the same thing already exist?  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  01:07, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. I just remembered that you can't view others' watchlists like you can their contributions. Darn. Freshofftheufo 01:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like "Related changes" from the WIkipedia:Featured Articles page, i.e. Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:Featured_articles. See Help:Related changes. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:15, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

You can also create a subpage of your user page, list all the pages you want to watch, and then look at the related changes. You don't have to create the page, as I have already done it for you. Just click on the links. -- Samuel Wantman 05:54, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Samuel's solution (if applicable in intended case) is definitely a preferable solution over creating a 'dummy-like account'. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:37, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Traumatic brain injury

I am astounded that the article on traumatic brain injury includes not one mention of neuropsychology. I can't imagine that it has not been added and this causes me to wonder if entries about neuropsychological assessment and interventions for people with traumatic brain injury have been edited OUT. Can you please let me know? This is a glaring omission and not in keeping at all with current standards of practice in neurological rehabilitation. Thanks - Nancy Hansen Merbitz, Ph.D. Email and phone removed to protect from spam TenOfAllTrades(talk)

• We would welcome your contribution to the article. --Improv 23:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

• • I agree - the omission was probably due not to a systematic elimination of content but to a lack of expertise such as yours, Dr. Merbitz. Please offer your insight in the article. Deco 00:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

• I cannot imagine why anyone would edit them out, and so this is highly unlikely. There are many "glaring omissions" in Wikipedia, as it is still a "little baby". It is very important that people with specialist knowledge add to Wikipedia, simply because it benefits the world. Wallie 15:17, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

expansion of WP:OWN

I have made some edits to WP:OWN so that it would apply across all content namespaces (i.e. image:, portal:, template: and category:). I have also edited the pertinent Mediawiki message in accordance. Any comments? Circeus 18:13, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:17, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Agreed — reasonable changes. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Natives to People

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)#Natives to People

Recently, "Greek exceptionalism" advocates (mainly 2-3 folks) were using the categories named "Native of Foo" to mean non-immigrant, excluding folks actually born in a place whose great grandparents had been immigrants or refugees. Nativism rearing its ugly head.

During the debate, it was mentioned that several other places use the "Native of Foo" in the same way:

• Category:Irish people by county
• Category:English people by county
• Category:French people by place
• Category:German people by state
• Category:Swiss people by canton
• Category:Italian people by region

While it's hard to tell, I don't doubt that there is some confusion, and that some folks are using those categories in that nativist fashion. The rest of the 'pedia seems to use the "People from Foo" form instead.

I'd like to standardize on "People from Foo" to avoid further confusion.

--William Allen Simpson 04:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, in England, "native of foo" means "was born in foo". Hence I am a native American in England but not necessarily in America. I believe Americans use "Native" to mean indigenous". I propose (initially) to use the word "indigenous" where possible, and "native" to mean "was born there", if this usage is also prevalent in other English speaking countries.. Stephen B Streater 08:10, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, you idea of avoidng the word "native" is much better - though is it true that Americans use "Native" rather than "native" to mean indigenous? I thing it comes from the Latin for birth. Stephen B Streater 08:12, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The word native can mean either "born in a place" or "descended from early inhabitants of a place", in any dialect of English. Mostly the first definition is prevalent nowadays, in America as well as Britain; Native American is idiomatic. Because of its ambiguity, the word should preferably be avoided, and indigenous to or born in used instead. (National terms are generally ambiguous as well: they can refer to people who were born in a place, currently live in a place, have lived in a place, or are citizens of a place. Those should probably be avoided too if they might be unclear, as with categories; in articles, something like "Louis Pasteur was a French scientist" will be clarified later on, but categories are only a few words.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 09:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Americans definitely use the word "native" to mean indigenous. "The natives are restless" is a common cliché meaning exactly that. There's a good example of this usage in the movie Fight Club, where Ed Norton describes his furnishings as "made by the natives of some country". Of course, anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, "indigenous" coincides with "Native American", so it's no surprise that the two are synonymous. When an American wants to say that someone was born in a place, but is descended from another nationality, they use combining forms like "Chinese-American", or "ethnic Chinese American". The noun "native" is not used in this context. On the other hand, Americans use the adjective "native" all the time, as in "I am native to Boston" which means you're probably Irish Catholic, not Algonquin. -lethe ^{talk +} 22:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you're right, the meaning generally depends on context. It's still often ambiguous, though, except in idioms or certain other very common constructions. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 09:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Since none of these categories are related to any American, that understanding of the meaning of "Native" is inapplicable. The problem is certain editors excluding persons born in England, France, Greece, etc., because one or more parents or grandparents or great grandparents were immigrants or refugees. We should not practice ethnic cleansing in Wikipedia.

This problem can be ameliorated by renaming the categories that are "Native" to "People". Then, we don't worry about the various interpretations of native. Hopefully, we can agree they are people! The rest of the 'pedia seems to use the "People from Foo" form instead.

I'd like to standardize on "People from Foo" to avoid further confusion. Is there any objection?

--William Allen Simpson 04:25, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Please don't use extremely loaded terms like "ethnic cleansing" to refer to other Wikipedians' naming opinions. It serves no purpose and is furthermore kind of silly.

I don't think moving them to "X people" will help. Make it "Citizens of X" or "People born in X", something completely unambiguous. Is someone who was born in Ireland, moved to New York and lived there for twenty years, acquired dual US/Israeli citizenship, and finally moved to Argentina and spent the rest of their life there an Irish person, an American person, an Israeli person, an Argentinian person, or some combination thereof? Try to be unambiguous. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 09:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

This is about categories. Removing people from a "territory" based on their ethnicity and heritage is ethnic cleansing of the territory. Removing people from a category here because they aren't "native" enough according to some nativist definition is ethnic cleansing of the category.

In your example, the categories added should be all appropriate subcategories of Category:Irish people (assuming they did something notable there other than accident of birth), Category:People from New York (again notability), Category:Israeli people (again, doing something notable there), and Category:Argentine people (again, assuming they did more than retire there). There's no reason to limit the categories.

And there's no reason to decide that they cannot be "of" Ireland, New York, Israel, or Argentina, just because their great grandparents were immigrants or refugees from elsewhere. We should not practice ethnic cleansing in Wikipedia.

--William Allen Simpson 00:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

"Ethnic cleansing" is commonly used as a euphemism for genocide. Connotationally speaking, you're associating other Wikipedians with genocide, which isn't fair or reasonable (in particular since removing, I dunno, Ravi Shankar from Category:Irish people would equally constitute "ethnic cleansing": removing someone from a list of people of an ethnicity because you don't feel they're of that ethnicity is, by your definition, apparently always ethnic cleansing—unless it's only when they meet your criteria?). Using highly negative terms to describe others here is basically uncivil no matter what their denotations, and at best certainly doesn't rise above the level of rhetoric (that you feel the need to boldface a statement that essentially does nothing but label the opposition is a bad sign). Avoid it.

As for the issue, all I'm saying is no person should in a category like Category:Irish people, because it's ambiguous. If you want to organize different Irish-person categories under that category, go ahead, but don't add articles to it, because you'll have all the same pointless disputes you have now. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:55, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Ethnic cleansing has nothing to do with genocide, neither by denotation nor connotation. It has to do with removing people from a territory. Your ad hominem attack on my motivation is not appreciated.

As far as I can tell, Ravi Shankar never lived in Ireland, and was never categorized as a native of Ireland, so your rhetoric is a complete non-sequitor.

Based on your comments, it is clear that you agree with declaring some people to be "native" and others "outsiders" no matter the number of generations they have lived there. I'm beginning to think a fork of the project is the only way to save the useful information in the face of such incredible biases.

--William Allen Simpson 03:26, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

First, the term ethnic cleansing is routinely used as a euphemism for genocide. Whatever our article on the matter says, authoritative descriptivist sources unequivocally term genocide a form of ethnic cleansing; for instance, the AHD entry defines it as "The systematic elimination of an ethnic group or groups from a region or society, as by deportation, forced emigration, or genocide." The term has a strongly negative connotation, and the fact remains that labeling something is not a reasonable argument by any standard.

Second, I made no attack on your motivations, anywhere. In fact, I never brought up anything pertaining to your motivations. I suggested that your criteria may be highly subjective, nothing more, although I will concede that there was some small degree of incivility there.

Third, my point was precisely that if your definition of ethnic cleansing includes removal of people from a category based on ethnicity, it should equally apply to removing someone from a category who clearly doesn't belong in the category in the first place. If your definition of ethnic cleansing applies solely to removing people from a category based on ethnicity when they don't belong to the group's ethnicity, that brings up the question of what qualifies someone to belong in a group, and you have not satisfactorily answered why your answer to that question is so correct as to justify terming all others' answers as ethnic cleansing. This was not rhetoric, but an attempt at logic, although I explained it rather poorly, the argument itself is rather obtuse, and you can debate my premises.

Finally, I am declaring nothing but the existence of ambiguity. Please clarify where I said, implicitly or explicitly, that I accept "declaring some people to be 'native' and others 'outsiders' no matter the number of generations they have lived there" (emphasis added). Such a proposition is plainly ridiculous, and I have said nothing of the sort. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 07:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• That kind of argument (over semantics) has nothing to do with the topic at hand, and belongs elsewhere. The point still stands: do we or do we not want Wikipedia to be a completely sanitized, politically correct work? I would vote not. The first reason is because free speech in the world is ultimately threatened when you cannot take someone who claims to be Irish, having lived in that country for an amount of time, being a citizen there, having roots, et cetera, and put them on a list of Irish people. Perhaps the category is not incredibly focused. However, it still serves its stated and inherent purpose: a category encompassing significant people from Ireland. This has practical value, too: one might want to prove an Irish influence on the world, or need information on any significant Irish man (perhaps for a school project). Ultimately, the definition of one who is of a particular nation is one who identifies with it through citizenship, residence, lineage, or culture. If one must have only native people in that category, why not create Category:Native Irish People? Falcon 20:40, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• I don't think the issue is whether we "want Wikipedia to be a completely sanitized, politically correct work". It's about how much ambiguity should be tolerated in category names, specifically in a case where there has been demonstrable conflict over the issue (which led to William bringing the issue here). If the category names were unambiguous, things would be simpler for everyone. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:10, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

New essay

Hi. I just wrote Wikipedia:On assuming good faith (terrible title, I know, please feel free to move it). It's a wiki-essay I've been mulling over for a little while about the relation between WP:AGF and WP:VAND. Feedback and constructive edits are quite welcome. Thanks! -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:07, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Google Earth screenshots

Do we have a policy on using Google Earth or Google Maps screenshots to illustrate place articles? --Ludraman 13:52, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes. They're copyrighted, therefore we cannot use them. User:Zoe|^(talk) 20:57, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Bear in mind, however, that it may be possible to obtain a freely-licensed shot of equal usability through NASA World Wind... Shimgray | talk | 21:10, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Left-Right dichotomy

Does the adherence to the Left-Right dichotomy constitute any POV on part of wikipedia editors? Clearly there have been alternatives posed, such as a 2D political compass or other variants. Since wikipedia editors cannot ascertain truth to any of these variants, but only verify that they indeed exist, the use of the left-right dichotomy is simply biased. Intangible 05:42, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Whatever is best at conveying the necessary information to the reader should be used. "Left" and "right" are statistical realities; social, fiscal, economic, and environmental conservatism are linked, say, as are their liberal counterparts. If a political party, say, tends to support 1) imposition of traditional moral standards, 2) a free-market economy, 3) comparatively low levels of civil liberty, and 4) comparatively great funding and use of military forces, it's simplest and most succinct to summarize it as being "conservative" or "right-wing". If something or someone doesn't neatly fit the mold, another term (such as "libertarian", say) should preferably be used.

If it's relevant to note correlations with political affiliation in an article, that would be fine too; "proponents of measures designed to counteract global warming are disproportionately liberal" would be a succinct way of saying "those who support measures designed to counteract global warming disproportionately support such goals as reduced military spending, international aid, strong government regulation of the economy, and the securement of civil liberties". The terms are pretty well understood and not at all POV, although they may not always be useful. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 08:05, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I am not against using labels such as conservative, libertarian, royalist or any of that. My criticism is more against the ambiguous definitions present in right-wing or left-wing. How is a wikilink to those articles NPOV if the definitions set forth in those articles contradict each other? Intangible 17:50, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I think you'd get a better response regarding this concern on Talk:Right-wing politics and Talk:Left-wing politics. Deco 20:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll give an example: "Frederic Bastiat is a left-wing politican." Intangible 21:18, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

The labels are usually neutral because they're pretty vague. I don't think much of anyone would dispute that Ralph Nader is left-wing, say. If people might object to the label, it shouldn't be used; Dennis Kucinich should be described as libertarian, not right-wing. The definitions are ambiguous, but that doesn't make them worthless. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:17, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

It is essential that any categorization is not ambiguous. Saying that Ralph Nader is a left-wing politician would conflict with saying that Frederic Bastiat is a left-wing politican. Actually they are pretty much each others opposites. Although the addage can correct when looking at each individual article when no wikilink is used. This all of course is easily avoided by saying that Ralph Nader is a green politican and saying that Frederic Bastiat is a classical liberal politician. This is what all wikipedia editors should do. Intangible 04:01, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, fair point. More specific characterizations are generally available. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:13, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Certainly in British politics, left and right wing are getting increasingly muddled. Some people feel that the Labout (or New Labour) Party is beginning to be to the right of the Conservative Party in some respects. Also, many policies are completely outside the simple left-right continuum; some right-wingers oppose immigration on "Keep British values" grounds, while others support it on free market grounds. --Runcorn 21:25, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

In some countries, though, it's very different; in France for example, the terms "la gauche" (the Left) and "la droite" (the Right) are extremely common in news reporting, common discourse, and parliamentary debate; politicians are identified as being on the Left or Right as often, sometimes more often, than as being a member of a particular political party. Most politicians openly identify themselves as "right-wing" or "left-wing," whereas this is relatively rare in the UK or the U.S. I believe France's situation also holds for countries like Spain and Italy. My point is that this sort of thing should be settled on a case-by-case basis rather than by setting a universal policy; calling Ségolène Royal or Romano Prodi a "centre-left" politician is more justified than applying the term to Hillary Clinton or Tony Blair. Andrew Levine 00:26, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

How about defining people based on how they define their opponents? Folajimi 00:36, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

set minimum age limits

Some users are so young they have not been around long enough to be able to accurately perceive the short or long term consequences of their actions. Therefore I think a minimum age limit needs to be set for users and sysops and bureaucrats, etc. so we do not have to waste so much time having to educate them on our positions that have years and years of experience behind them like the portion of an iceberg below the surface. ...IMHO (Talk) 05:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Um, no. "Not been around long enough to be accurately perceieve the short of long term consequences of their actions"? That's a massive and absurd overgeneralisation.--Sean Black 06:48, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Not that massive and not that absurd, I should think. --LucVerhelst 07:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

It is true that some young people have difficulty perceiving consequences, however we already require people to demonstrate suitability for sysops, etc., so why is this a problem? As for users, there are vandals at every age and people with good intentions at every age, so again, what's the problem? Brian Jason Drake 06:15, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Moreover, how would you institute such a thing? Based on having a credit card? There would be no other way to enforce it. Not even worth considering IMO due to the impossibility of implementing it.Michael Dorosh 06:21, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I can think of one user who frankly we would be better off without. He's in elementary school and pretty much incapable of any real contributions (his grammar, spelling, et al are on an elementary level, understandably). He does a lot of goofing off and needs a bit of babysitting ... literally, babysitting. He's not violating any particular policies but an age limit would help to remove kids like him. --Cyde↔Weys 06:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

And I'm sure one can come up with a long list of people of advanced age who have also shown themselves to be unable or unwilling to make productive contributions here. What would be the point? *Dan T.* 14:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

The most exceptionally annoying and time-wasting contributors I can think of offhand have been middle-aged... Shimgray | talk | 15:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

How would you verify a person's age? Blaise Joshua 07:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

We've had respected members of the community at least as young as 13, so any bar would seem to need to be lower than that, at which point there is almost no one left to exclude. Which is not to say that I would want to anyway. I welcome any child who can make productive contributions. Dragons flight 07:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I would go so far as to say that it is one of the wonders of the modern Internet that people so young that you'd never trust them face-to-face can be judged on their merits and actions alone. We are enabling these people to take responsibility for something that matters. If a minimum age limit were set for Wikipedia, I would quit the project in protest. Besides, it's technically infeasible. Deco 08:02, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Definitely a non-starter for users. Firstly, it's absolutely unenforceable. Secondly, each editor and indeed each contribution can be assessed on his/her/its merits. I've seen rubbish from people who seem to be mature adults. Admins and bureaucrats are different, but it would require careful identity checks to enforce, and again being 18 or 21 is no proof that you are mature and sensible.--Runcorn 08:31, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Strong agree. We've had very young respected admins (I've actually been surprised when I found out their age), and we've had fully grown and elderly assholesnegatively productive users. Moreover, if we want to collect all the world's knowledge, a kid's perspective can be rather useful, I think. --Stephan Schulz 08:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Not that this should have any weight relevant to our goals on Wikipedia, but allowing youth to take responsibility and contribute to projects in society gives them a stake in society and helps build good character and habits to support it. Rather than hiding from the destructive actions of a portion of irresponsible children, we should engage as many as we can in our project, because in the end it will do both our project and those involved a lot of good. If we aim to help society with our project, the more people that have a stake in our project, the better off we are, even if we have to deal with some roughness along the way. --Improv 14:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Dear people from Wikipedia,

I wrote an e-book about the War in Yogoslavia and some of the historical facts exposed in the book ( may be visited at www.peev.org ) I wanted to share with you. I started the edition on the Bosnian page, and I gave the historical facts about the Vatican implications at the Balkans (also to see im my e-book), but there is a 16-years old boy who accused me for vandalization ?! Please, I want that my message be re-examend by the people who knows and loves history and not by those who have a hobbis like this 16-years old boy. And I want to hear excuse, because I wrote you with all my respect and love. I just wanted to share the knowledge with you...nothing else..

Dr. med. Jasmina Peev —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Peev (talk • contribs) .

You raise various issues here, but I'll stick to the accusation of vandalism. A 16 year old or a hobbyist is no more or less eligible to accuse you of vandalism (a serious charge, of course) than is a 56 year old or a historian. If you specify the diff (or at least the article) in question, then somebody here will take a look at the accusation and judge it on its merits (if any). -- Hoary 14:38, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

It appears Peev is peeved that this nonsense/attack/vandalism was reverted, and then a (self identified) 16 year old left a message on the user's talk page properly warning them to stop vandalizing, and gave some constructive advice on how to participate. That probably shows the value of having a 16 year old. --Rob 14:40, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

A 16-year-old who cleans up vandalism is certainly more useful to this project than an older person who creates it. *Dan T.* 14:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

• There are going to be no age limits on Wikipedia. --Osbus 15:01, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I would have been an amazing contributor if Wikipedia had existed when I was a kid =). I oppose any general criterion to exclude editors; it should always be done on a case-by-case basis. Ardric47 23:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

• There are numerous examples of flame wars involving apparently middle-aged adults. Likewise, there are teenagers who contribute much to the project, especially technically. --JChap 03:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

This question has me wondering... for US users, doesn't COPPA prevent anyone under the age of 13 from posting on a wiki? It provides the same sort of communication capabilities that any message board would, and PhpBB "requires" US users to be over 13 to register in compliance with COPPA. Of course, that legislation is a terrible piece of crap, and I wouldn't consider advocating that WikiMedia follow it, but... just wondering. ~ Booya ^Bazooka 00:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Most forums require an email address, which could be considered personally identifiable information. Wikipedia doesn't require you to provide any information at all to edit. --Carnildo 07:46, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

COPPA does not apply to nonprofits such as the Wikimedia Foundation. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:01, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

• Although it is in theory possibly easier to prevent people who are exceptionally immature from editing in Wikipedia, this is neither practical nor really justifiable. The latter is very simply because Wikipedia is no exclusive community. The former is because there is no real direct correlation between an editor's age and their intelligence, capability, or comprehension of consequences. Surely you are aware of the number of adult criminals, or perhaps terrorists? I, for example, am only 16 years of age. Clearly my intellect is greater than some absurd commonly-held stereotypes, most particularly that of the essentially selfish, oblivious, loudmouthed, aggressive brute. I strongly feel that the same should go for any administrative priveleges regardless of magnitude: these are decided on merit. If someone is obviously lacking the maturity necessary for such a position, regardless of age, as much will show up quite clearly to those who have interacted or observed that user. It may be overly idealistic of me, but I don't think that it is in anyone's interest to destroy what ought to be a community of equals by adding ageist policies which restrict users in any way due in any part to their age. Falcon 20:29, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

As much as I'd like some of the more childish users to be kept from editing, it's an unfeasable proposal that would only hurt the project by removing decent contributors, such as Falcon here. It's about as stupid as any webpage that asks if someone is above above a certain age, as if that person would somehow be prevented from lying to the page. There's no way to verify someone's age over the internet unless you're charging them for access, and Wikipedia certainly isn't going to be doing that any time soon. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 20:39, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Childish does not = child. I would argue that there are just as many childish and idiotic 30 or 40 year olds, as 12 and 13 year olds. Perhaps that statement is more for rhetorical effect, but my point is that children can be good contributors, and banning them is just a way to discourage people from comming back. My roommate for example thinks all of you are pompous assholes, so he refuses to edit! Fresheneesz 00:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I thought this was an OPEN project, allowing EVERYONE to contribute. marc4991

• I think that the problems that "Age Limits" tries to address are more significantly related to mental maturity rather than physical maturity. We have some excellent contributors here who won't be able to drive legally for several years...and some editors who are old enough to vote but couldn't be trusted with a goldfish, much less an encyclopedia. The good ones get better, the bad ones get bored and drift away. IMHO, of course (YMMV) Doc Tropics 04:35, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Getting a Barnstar for good work

If a user has made many contributions to an atricle or project in particular in a very good way and also helped it get improved should the user get a barnstar for good work or do they have to do something major that has improved the article such as adding new tasks for the project or coming up with a great idea for the project. I am not being greedy or anything but I feel I can get something like this. Anyone can look at my contributions and see I have made MAJOR contributions particularly for the Wikipedia EastEnders and Indian Cinema projects and feel sometimes I am not being appreciated for it. (Shakirfan 20:15, 16 June 2006 (UTC))

I assure you that your work is appreciated. Frankly, Barnstars are little more than a friendly gesture made by people who know you that has become rather out-of-style. I've never gotten one and I've been an admin since 2003 and have many thousands of edits and dozens of new articles under my belt. Also, Barnstars are generally given for cleanup work, rather than writing new content. Deco 20:20, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Barnstars are handed out at the giver's discretion. They could be given to anyone, by anyone, for anything, so long as the giver feels it's justified. I suggest you visit WP:ESP if you're feeling unappreciated. There are plenty of good people there who are more than happy to help. MightyMoose22 ^{>Abort, Retry, Fail?_} 20:27, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Wow. I've never seen that before. Deco 20:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I only stumbled upon it when curiosity led me to click on a random little green thing in someone's signature a few months ago. That's why I've got one in mine now. MightyMoose22 ^{>Abort, Retry, Fail?_} 01:22, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

AfD's of Current Events

I propose a moratorium on deletions of current event articles. Case in point How NOT to steal a SideKick 2. While this article may eventually be deleted (and or relegated to WikiNews); whether or not it is currently notable isn't the point (as the event and coverage is ongoing that is difficult to assess). What I believe the focus should be, is on Wikipedia's strengths. The long tail, not being paper, being up to date and relevant to what people want to research; and such articles serve as an ideal introduction to new users. To delete it quickly is unnecessary and contrary to those strengths, it also ignores that the article will be recreated, poorly, but other good faith new (potential) contributors. As such, they (new current event articles) shouldn't even be put up for AfD consideration, until such time as their ultimate notability – and their impact can be determined. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 16:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I would disagree. A subject has to be notable before it gets an article. You can't just create an article and argue that it should be kept because it might become notable in the future. We have to draw a line somewhere. What other criteria would you suggest on whether a current event is worthy of inclusion or not. Ydam 17:05, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I would say that WP:V would be a fair guideline. "Widely published", if an event is widely published and followed then it might be worthy of an article, whereas an event which is covered by 2 newspapers for one day would not be. Terryeo 22:58, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm concerned with "current events" not "an article"; the point of the not allowing an AfD is to avoid speculating on its future notability, which is exactly what people are trying to do by deleting it now. Once it is no longer a current event, then an AfD can be created. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 05:29, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

We are here to write articles. Even when something is part of a current event, we shouldn't be altering our standards or presentation because of that. Let Wikinews cover the news. Dragons flight 05:40, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia remains the first and typically only source the public will consult. If we linked/redirected the deleted article to its WikiNews coverage (assuming it exists), that would be fine with me, and is different from an all out delete. But I would add people come to Wikipedia for a summarized account; rather than another telling of the story from WikiNews; which is almost akin to another blog. Furthermore, I again see little harm in allowing the article to progress during the current event, then being moved to Wikinews. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 17:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

This won't do at all. If deletion of current events articles is banned anyone will be able to post articles about cats stuck up trees in their street. The best time to catch an inappropriate article is when it is new, and if a few errors are made, that's a small price to pay for clearing up a lot of bilge. Osomec 23:47, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with labelling them for future AfD consideration; based on verifiability... a cat up a tree simply wouldn't qualify as it couldn't be verified. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 13:36, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Why on earth should anyone be expected to take the trouble of noting them and then remembering to come back after a gap of time that suits you? It's a massive effort for people to nominate all the rubbish by a one-stage process, so switching to a two-stage process would be folly. Osomec 04:05, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

They don't have to remember. A bot can do it automatically, after a set amount of time, or when the current event tag is removed. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 15:12, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Even wikinews has standards. "People come here looking for this" does not mean "we should have this". Is there a demand for a wiki where you can post whatever you want? sure. Is wikipedia the place for that? no. Also, generally things can not be moved to wikinews because of licensing conflicts. Kotepho 13:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

You're right about licensing problems - the GFDL is much more restrictive than cc-by-sa - but I wonder, is it possible to move content in the other direction? I'm not sure if they're mutually incompatible or whether cc-by-sa is strictly more liberal. Deco 20:13, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

All sharealike schemes are mutually incompatible, unless they specifically exempt other licenses. GFDL works can't be redistributed as cc-by-sa, because that removes restrictions placed by the copyright holder; cc-by-sa can't be redistributed as GFDL, because that adds restrictions that the copyright holder has prohibited. Any sharealike license must prohibit the addition of restrictions beyond its own license, because otherwise it wouldn't be sharealike: a redistributor could just add restrictions saying no one could copy it, for instance.

In the case of cc-by-sa, the relevant passage is "You may not offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter or restrict the terms of this License or the recipients' exercise of the rights granted hereunder." No exemption is granted for GFDL. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:05, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Reverts to remove inflammatory comments?

I'm helping keep things calm on a controversial topic that was listed on the front page. Someone just put an obviously inflammatory anonymous comment on the Discussion page. Is there any policy on reverting to remove flames, or do we just let it all hang out? I have no problem either way, I was just curious if this is ever done. I can imagine a controversial article drowning in flames otherwise... :) Anon Y. Mouse 19:39, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I would personally let it stand if it provides any constructive criticism. It's on the discussion page, not the article - readers understand that it's just the opinion of one person. But others disagree with me. Deco 19:42, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:WIAGA rule 5

I was part of a debate over that rule about wether constant vandalism qualifies as instability or not. Thoughts? False Prophet 02:26, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

No vandalism per se doesn't mean an article is unstable (it probably means it is just popular). A threat to stability would be the addition or alteration of a substantial part of the prose - that would qualify as instability. Davodd 04:48, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Categories of administrators by country

See: Category:Wikipedia administrators... Is it a good idea to have subcategories of administrators by nationality? What is that saying, exactly? Has this been discussed before, and if so where? Pointers gratefully accepted. Something just seems a bit "off" by doing this, even if it's been round a while... or maybe it's me. ++Lar: t/c 17:36, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this should be encouraged. Divisive and inflammatory? Oops - wrong debate. Stephen B Streater 18:30, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Is it not OK for admins to say on their user page where they're from? If they can say that, what's the difference if they add a category? Many users have categories saying which English county they're from.--Runcorn 19:53, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Why devisive and inflammatory? No one care where you are from these days. The internet is cutting down the big fish, and giving small fish a chance. Wallie 20:45, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I think they grew organically from the old lists we used to have, which then grew into categories. The australian one was first, coming off of the old Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Australia, where it was added without discussion in April 2005. Declaring bias as creator of Category:English administrators, I can't see how they are divisive or inflammatory, and they seem a logical intersection of Wikipedians by location categories and Wikipedians by Wikipedia status categories. What is it saying? That I'm an admin from England. What's the problem with that? Steve block Talk 21:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

What should it matter where you're from? Surely you should be impartial and neutral regardless. I think that's the the OP is hinting at. And i'd agree - I see no need to categorise where admins are from. I mean, should be have Category:White Wikipedia administrators, Category:Black Wikipedia administrators, Category:Christian Wikipedia administrators, Category:Muslim Wikipedia administrators... ?? /wangi 21:46, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

It's called community building. You meet someone in a club or bar, you ask them, what's your name? Where are you from? Do you enjoy pumpernickle? Just getting to know one another. Don't worry about it. Deco 22:07, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

• This is more akin to a workplace, in that with a bar you can decide not to get along with someone and you likely won't run into them, so you're more likely to say things that might rely on being on the same side of divides in society. In workplaces, people and workplaces typically try to avoid that kind of thing, which is why talking about salary, religion, etc are typical taboos there. While deeper ties with others on the Wiki is useful, it should be entered into carefully, with more care taken not to offend or emphasise difference. --Improv 22:46, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Um, maybe where you wrok is like that, but don't generalise. Where I work, that sort of stuff is the main source of conversation. Perhaps my workplace is more diverse and that therefore stimulates conversations on such subjects, I don't know, but those topics certainly aren't off limits. We just can't harass anyone for their views. However, it's unlikely your workplace needs categories like Black supervisors, since you can easily identify that. Why would you imagine categorising by race or belief would be such a problem? If they aren't mandatory, I don't see where the problem lies. Next we'll be told we shouldn't use our real names for fear of offending someone. Steve block Talk 23:03, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I wanted to know if it had been explicitly discussed before or not because I was curious. Just like with other things that let you find people quickly, there might be concerns if people were using a category as a way to unduly influence things... not sure that's really very likely? ++Lar: t/c 22:36, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if that's a legitimate concern. An admin who is going to abuse their powers is going to do so one way or another, and I don't see such categories increasing the liklihood, nor do I see the community solution being impeded by the existence of the categories. However, if this descends into another Userbox type mess I'll quite happily vote delete here and now just to settle the issue one way or the other. Steve block Talk 23:03, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't do that! I was just wondering about it and whether it had been talked about before... ++Lar: t/c 04:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The only issue I see with the categories is that unless some sort of 'bot is used to add people to them, being listed in under a category has to be seen as a voluntary thing, so the category can never really be considered complete. I'm an admin and I'm not listed under any categories (and wasn't even aware the categories existed until just now). One possible risk is that a vandal or someone with an axe to grind could decide to be juvenile and add someone to, say "Gay administrators" who isn't, etc. But that said the first page any Wikipedia editor should add to their watchlist is their userpage. 23skidoo 23:14, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

ISTR this was supposed to be a practical thing, helpful for finding admins who would be awake at a given time. FreplySpang 00:11, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Now THAT'S a great idea! but maybe time zones would be an even better way? ++Lar: t/c 04:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, I think the best solution to "I need an admin right now" is to encourage more admins and users to participate in the IRC chatroom. Deco 10:40, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, Lar, "Why not use time zones" was my reaction too. Deco, God knows I like IRC, but I don't think it's feasible for everyone. It would be better to make the on-wiki admin request pages (WP:RAA, WP:AIV) more responsive. FreplySpang 14:47, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The problem with timezones is that it only tells you what time it is at the admin's location; without knowing what time that person is normally on, you're not any more likely to reach them, and even if you knew that you couldn't be sure something else didn't come up. At least on IRC the people who are there really are always there right now, and we could have an easy-to-use Java applet that connects up to a channel reserved for admin assistance. Too often we try to poorly duplicate other technology using wiki. Deco 00:35, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Are fonts notable?

I recently tagged Everson Mono Unicode for deletion per WP:NOT, writing "Wikipedia is not a font catalog". Should it be? Realistically, the trouble with putting fonts into Wikipedia is that you probably can't show font samples without having copyright problems, and a font catalog without font samples is worthless. --John Nagle 05:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm Michael Everson and I didn't know that Tarikash had put up an article about my font until today. There are a number of other Unicode fonts which do have articles (Arial Unicode MS and Gentium for instance), also adding mine wasn't a new sin by any means. I'll be happy to improve the article, if you'll remove the tag for deletion. As far as notability goes, Everson Mono was one of the first fonts to try to have a large repertoire of characters, and in glorious monowidth. Evertype 07:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

If the font author will add an image with font samples, it will probably be an article worth keeping. --John Nagle 07:45, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

It's not necessary for the font author to make such an image, in fairness; any user of the font could do so. Shall we take this up on the article's Talk page? Evertype 07:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Scalar font samples would be legal to use in the United States, because of the rather insane fact that typefaces are uncopyrightable here. (Vector-formatted fonts may be different.) Fonts can, of course, be encyclopedia-worthy (I don't think anyone argues Times New Roman shouldn't exist); as an opponent of notability standards, I wouldn't have much problem with even non-notable fonts having well-written and -sourced articles here. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 07:53, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely! Of course; many fonts are worthy of articles. This is a question that could only be raised in an unthinking, teevee age. Fonts are the soul of the printed word. It is only in this brief time we now are forced to spend so much time staring at text on low-resolution screens that render fine type so poorly. Our fathers read and respected the word printed lovingly on paper; our sons will read from high-resolution screens. Only our debased generation is ignorant of the immortal beauty of fine typography. John Reid 06:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

If a particular font is not notable itself, surely it is a fit component of an article on fonts, or fonts of a particular sort. Midgley 21:41, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

People with knowledge and opinions on fonts can come to a consensus on whether a particular font merits an article. What's the problem? patsw 01:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposed change to MOS/Biography

I have proposed a change/clarification in the handling of royal honorifics at the MOS (biographies) page to state that honorifics should not be used inline (but should be mentioned) for royalty. Please comment at the link above. Thanks. --Improv 14:48, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

New proposal about Music samples

Hello everyone. I made a guideline proposal about music samples used in music related articles in Wikipedia:Music samples, to regulate there use and prevent copyvios. But we need users who know enough about copyrights and fair use in one hand. and audio formats in other hand. Thank you. CG 07:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Linkification of Years and Decades in Articles

I'm not sure if there is already a policy on this, but I propose that the first instance of a each year and decade in an article should be linkified, and that the instances after should not be linkified. --Shanedidona 03:14, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual of style (dates and numbers). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:15, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Deleting Articles without General Utility

Wikipedia:Utility is a new guideline/proposal, and an alternative to the Not Notable essay. Please take the time to review or edit it.—Pengo 01:29, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

A new policy/naming convention/directory tree/etc.

Offline I am currently typing up a proposal for a new policy which includes a naming convention, directory structure, and more. The proposal is getting long, so I don't want to post it here, as it would get cluttered with the more specific issues. Would it be acceptable to put it on its own page for discussion, expansion, contraction, etcetera? I would like to have comments and additions from various users interested in related topics and from users who are not that interested. It needs to be discussed at length before implimentation just to make sure that once done, all parties will be happy with the result.

Another reason I need to know where to put this is so that I can inform users through various articles talk pages. With a central discussion arena, a lot can be accomplished.

And in case anyone is interested, the subject of my propsal is Locations in fiction and Fictional locations. If you are not interested in the topic, but interested in the proposal, I will try to post the wikilink here too, once I know where to put it.

Its current length is 7838 bytes.
&#151;Lady Aleena talk/contribs 22:37, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Put it in the Wikipedia: namespace, such as Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fictional locations), or a less permanent name such as Wikipedia:Naming conventions change proposal, and add {{proposal}}. See Wikipedia:How to create policy. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:14, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

It's important to note also that we probably should not have a lot of these articles because the fictional locations are, in themselves, not often encyclopedic. --Improv 14:26, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The proposal is much larger than just fictional locations, but also real locations used in fiction, and dismbiguating settings. Fictional locations is only a part of the overall proposal. I hope you participate when I put it up. It is hoped that a uniform system will be adopted from this, and many people from many disciplines will join in the discussion. The reason I would like a seperate place for it, is the fact that it is so large.
&#151;Lady Aleena talk/contribs 19:53, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The proposal is at Wikipedia:Locations in fiction, fictional locations, and settings (talk).
&#151;Lady Aleena talk/contribs 20:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Copyright Rules

Is there a table that lists the various copyright types according to the rules or sets of conditions that apply to and define each type? ...IMHO (Talk) 15:22, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

There is some good info at Wikipedia:Copyright_problems, and Wikipedia:Fair_use ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 15:48, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

As I mentioned on my talk page, the copyright status of various works (i.e., whether they're public-domain or copyrighted) is summarized in a handy chart here. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:11, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Qualifiers

Currently, there is a serious discussion going on about the use of qualifiers in titles, especially (epithet) after various political loaden terms, such as:

• Islamofascism (epithet)
• Wall of shame (epithet)
• Israeli apartheid (epithet)

I do not yet have an opinion about it myself, but I would like neutral input from editors and admins not involved in those pages on whether these qualifiers violate WP:NPOV. Thanks. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 03:18, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation policy specifies that qualifiers should not be used except where necessary for disambiguation or clarity. We have plenty of articles with names offensive to their subjects - if it's the common name, that's what we use, and they really just have to live with it. Deco 17:15, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Word. Islamofascism (epithet) has already been moved back to its correct title, Islamofascism. The others, I expect, will follow soon as well. -Silence 18:15, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd have said that all these violate NPOV. --Runcorn 21:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Parenthetical qualifiers should not typically be used except for disambiguation. It's unambiguous, so leave it at the correct title. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:18, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

See the page Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(slogans). This page is inactive and kept for historical reasons, but there was discussion about the idea (and I can't even figure out from it what the final decision on the subject was, if there was any). I think there's some support for using qualifiers in such cases. Ken Arromdee 16:18, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

How to enter measurements

Does anyone know of any previous discussion which lead to a consensus of how to state measurements. I've seen it done many ways. It seems that the majority of articles use the metric system first (either meters or metres) and then have English units in parenthesis. I am also aware of articles having the cited measurement first and a mathematically converted measurement second in parenthesis. I'm sorry R'son-W did not like the comment on his talk page. I was truly trying to find out if there has been previous discussion on this topic. -- Samuel Wantman 09:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Use the system provided by the source you are citing as the primary measure, then provide a conversion in parentheses if desirable. This ensures that the first figure given is the most accurate representation of the source being referenced. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Interwiki references inline

There are a few articles (most likely translated) that include an inline 'see also' or 'references' link to other language Wikipedias, for example François Cavanna, Wolfgang Schäuble, and Peter Harry Carstensen. Normally I'd just remove them per WP:ASR, but discussion on the talk page of one of those articles suggests that they serve a useful function. I can't find any specific policy information on the appropriateness of these links (specifically as it relates to ethics of citation and translation procedure), but hopefully someone here can clarify this point. Ziggurat 21:32, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

These actually aren't really self references - they're linking a Wikipedia as a source or reference, which I should hope is something we don't mind people doing. Of course it shouldn't be their only source or reference, ideally, or given excessive weight over other references. It's still seemingly redundant though, when there's already software support for specialized interwiki links with a standard interface. Deco 23:59, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, WP:RS indicates that "Wikipedia itself does not currently meet the reliability guidelines." On the other hand, there's also a section that says "Where editors use their own English translation of a non-English source as a quote in an article, there should be clear citation of the foreign-language original, so that readers can check what the original source said and the accuracy of the translation." Whether that applies to translated Wikipedia articles, I dunno... Ziggurat 00:13, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I support this kind of links. We should give the source of translations in a way that is as obvious as possible, to not violate the original-language authors' copyright. Kusma (討論) 00:16, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I think interwiki links should still be kept in their place. Crediting the original language version is better done in an edit summary. Wikipedia shouldn't be its own source, and any mere translation from another Wikipedia article should be seen as temporary. It needs, sooner or later, to be checked with reliable sources. I have seen articles translated into English which were uncited and not that great in their original version (heck, I've probably done it myself a couple of times), but this should not be seen as a permanent solution. At some point every language version of an article has to become directly reliant on external sources; at least for the English Wikipedia, where we have people reading a large variety of languages, that shouldn't really be a problem. Otherwise we risk ending up with circularity, where different language versions are "improved" based on the assumption that another version is better. People should not assume that the "native" version of an article is correct just because the authors presumably have access to good sources – far too often the good, native sources haven't actually been used. Tupsharru 01:31, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

As a minimum, the translation can surely copy over the reference list from the original. --Runcorn 21:21, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

If an article is present in two languages, couldn't the other language's article be referred to in a "further information" or a "see also" section? This would prevent circularity because it would allow each article to be developed independently. Yet it would allow a reader who uses both languages to read (or edit) both sets of information. Some topics are viewed quite differently in different areas of our globe. Terryeo 16:06, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

There are interlanguage links at the left of every page that has equivalents in other languages, below the toolbox. This page, for instance, is linked to pages on the ko, zh, and zh-yue wikis. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:51, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Userbox collectors

This is the 2nd time I run into a case of this. Can't remember the first user. But I would likt to mention User talk:Wootking. It seems this person is adding himself to any type of WikiProject he can find, and collecting userboxes of projects and other UBX. However he has not made ONE single edit to an article. His account was created only 2 weeks ago. Now the fact that he collects userboxes i can care less about, but the fact that he is adding himself to all those WikiProjects is annoying, in that it clutters up the Project. It's not a real problem, but I was wondering if other people have seen similar problems lately. It almost seems like a bot (considering the bad formatting of the page). - The DJ 14:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

• • Not to mention that the user also claims to have six batchelor's degrees, five masters', a doctorate and a law degree, and is studying medicine. Completely bogus, all of it. Wikipedia is being invaded by the mentally ill, the stupid, and the sociopathic. \ Fnarf999 \ talk \ contribs \ 20:22, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I've not seen this particular problem. From looking at this user's page and writings, it appears that he may actually think he has to sign up as a participant in a WikiProject to make use of the articles. He mentions his research and doesn't generally seem to be going anything in bad faith. This may just be an opportunity for communication and understanding. Aguerriero (talk) 22:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe he's the Walter Mitty type. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 03:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Looks completely harmless to me, unless it's significantly increasing server load.--Runcorn 19:35, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

he collects userboxes i can care less about, why do you care whether they collect them or not? What's it to you? Markb 13:02, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

"Avoid needless interference" Stencil it on your wall, if necessary. --Wetman 15:53, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Tell him that Wikipedia is for people to cotribute to writing an encyclopedia, not for lamez0r userbox hogging. -- Миборовский 20:59, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

copyright question.

Is it okay on wikipedia and also is it legal to link to from a wikipedia article to a TV show for download (or sections of the show? The show is very much a reference for part of the article and notable and needed and all that. I'm asking about copyright rules and such. Basically the article has a show as a reference source and then there's places online that for one give clips of the show that relate to the subject of the article. Another since the whole episode relates to the article, there's a whole show to download. DyslexicEditor 15:07, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Our style guide at Wikipedia:External links discourages linking to pages which contain copyright violations, but doesn't prohibit it. User:Zoe|^(talk) 15:23, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I've editted that page. There are at least three cases where knowingly and intentionally directing others to websites hosting infringing content was found to be a violation. I know of nothing to contradict that. Simply put, we should not be directing people to content if we believe that content is a copyright infringment. Dragons flight 16:05, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I would argue that linking to obvious copyright violations is more than discouraged. It does not do any good to Wikipedia's reputation if we do so. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 15:53, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Referencing something doesn't mean that you have to link to the full version online - many books and articles are referenced without such a link, and a reference is only supposed to provide a 'signpost' for how to find the source (online or offline). While WP:REF/ES is a little vague on citation styles for TV shows, there are APA guidelines for doing so that could probably be followed here. Ziggurat 20:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Abbreviation of United States

According to Wikipedia policies, which abbreviation of United States should we use? US, U.S., USA, or U.S.A.? CG 13:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy is to not abbreviate. --JeffW 16:33, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

But when we use it in tables or as a small indication between parenthesis, which one should we use? CG 17:24, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

See WP:MOS#Acronyms and abbreviations. User:Zoe|^(talk) 17:56, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

U.S. Rich Farmbrough 09:29 14 June 2006 (GMT).

The policy is to use the abbreviation most common to the location being abbreviated. So, "United States" becomes "U.S." while "United Kingdom" becomes "UK" - Davodd 23:55, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Bots

Who has the right to create bots? And are bots subject to the 3RR ruling? Wallie 18:43, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Bots are subject to the 3RR, but they don't realise that they are.--Runcorn 19:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Anyone can create a bot, but running it is another matter. There is a whole page set in the Wikipedia namespace devoted to this; you might start at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals considering your question. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 21:32, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I would say start reading at Wikipedia:Bots. Stefan 13:59, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

When several editors insist on a wrong action

What is the appropriate action when several editors insist on a wrong action ? User:Futurix, in an edit summary, states: "rv ... for the very same reasons as Wikipediatrix, Stollery, and other editors." [4] That is accurate, User:Wikipediatrix has similar reversions: "rv ... - for the same reasons as all the other editors." [5] and "rv to previous edit, for reasons already discussed ad infinitum!" [6]. All of "the other editors" are citing a personal essay on a personal website as a secondary source of information. The editor who is following WP:RS is moving that information to "Exterior Links". The several editors are no longer discussing. They are simply reverting, quoting and citing a personal essay on a personal website into the article Suppressive Person. The link they are insisting on (without discussion) is titled, "Operation Clambake present: Fair Game". Obviously it is a personal essay on a personal website. When that information is moved to be an exterior link then the editors go wild, they refuse to discuss and revert again and again. What is the procedure to deal with this kind of editor behaviour? Terryeo 08:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Wrong action?

User Terryeo was banned indefinitely from editing Scientology-related articles (including the article in question) as result of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Terryeo#Log of blocks and bans. During the arbitration the website "Operation Clambake" was found to be worthy quoting source - while technically it is personal, it does contain important third-party publications (and no references to personal opinions of the website owner were ever made by editors). Terryeo and several other fellow Scientologists continue to twist official Wikipedia guidelines when it's convenient for them and continue to ask editors to explain their actions again and again and again and again... while completely ignoring all previous explanations. Futurix 09:13, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

If some user has been banned or not is not the issue here. Address the issue he discusses. Where does it say: "During the arbitration the website "Operation Clambake" was found to be worthy quoting source - while technically it is personal, it does contain important third-party publications (and no references to personal opinions of the website owner were ever made by editors)."? I interprete the above as that the third-party information (if valid material) may be used as source referencing, but this does not include the personal opinion utterings of the holder of that site. What you propose here is that when some holder of some website puts a lot of third-party material and such on his personal site, that all of a sudden the personal pages of the webdesigner are also valid reference sources? That deduction all by itself is quite manipulative and in fact absurd. --Olberon 10:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That deduction exists only in your imagination - I never said anything like that. The point is that third-party information from xenu.net is perfectly acceptable as Wikipedia source. Personal opinions of xenu.net webmaster are obviously not acceptable and were never used on Wikipedia (despite Terryeo's claim).

And Terryeo's ban is part of the issue - his history of ignorance and Wikipedia abuse make his claim (on the very same subject) very dubious (while he presents them as proven fact).

Futurix 11:54, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That is a major issue Futurix. "Third Party" information is not published when appearing on xenu.net. Hundreds of personal essays are held on xenu.net's servers. They are unpublished. They have never been published. Someone writes an essay, a website owner puts it on his website and it is not published. A personal website is not a source of publication, it does not fulfill WP:V and it does not fulfill WP:RS (this guideline). "Third Party" information is not published because it appears on a personal website. That is probably the major issue in the Scientology articles. WP:RS says one thing, editors read it and do another thing. It isn't appropriate no matter how many editors do it. Terryeo 18:50, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

If your arguments are sufficient you do not need any discrediting of some person. Where are your arguments? --Olberon 10:55, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

What Terryeo is saying here once again is, "I'm right, everyone else is wrong, and I want them all taken down because they're all wrong." Terryeo was reprimanded, warned, and banned as noted above, but he still insists he is right and everyone else reverting his edits to the Scientology articles -- and by everyone else I mean dozens of different Wikipedia users -- is wrong. --Modemac 19:53, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Address the arguments forwarded, do not attack the person. Wiki rules are pretty clear about that! --Olberon 10:51, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Please don't raise article-specific conflicts in the form of a barely abstracted policy question. This kind of thing is what consensus-seeking and, as a last resort, RfA is for. Deco 23:16, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I raise an issue. "What to do when several editors are convinced they are right but are doing a wrong action?" WP:RS discussions have made clear that personal websites maybe be used for repository, already published books. Clambake has unpublished essays and personal opinion mixed with documentation. It is a mix of a lot of information. That site is a mix of pages, it is always better to include the original publisher. Furturix refuses to reply to the issue but attacks me. Modemac refuses to reply to the issue but attacks me. Deco refuses to recognize the issue. The issue is present at Suppressive Person, has recently been present at Fair Game, has long been present at Template:ScientologySeries. Several editors state their POV and revert, revert, revert. They refuse to discuss the issue they are reverting on the discussion page. Their edit summaries hardly describe their edits. In the Template article those editors refer to a gesture in a court case as supporting their edits. Against that gesture is a large number of scholarly articles by Doctors of Divinity, scholars and people who testify before governements about the issue. But they won't discuss the issue. Much as is done here, the editors attack and refuse to discuss the issue which is driving their attack. They simply revert, revert, revert and use edit summaries as above, things like "revert POV". What is the appropriate action to take when a group of editors refuses to discuss and takes such actions? Terryeo 07:48, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:RS has no problem with citing unreliable sources if you acknowledge them as unreliable (i.e., don't repeat what they say as fact, just say "X says Y[source]"). See WP:RS#Partisan websites. The edit here, as far as I can tell, was therefore inappropriate, because it cited xenu.net without noting the source's possible unreliability in the text. (And I'm with Olberon on the irrelevance of Terryeo's ban to the validity of his claims. Argumentum ad rem, please.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:10, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Simetrical. Terryeo 19:09, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:RS recognizes that "published to the public" describes an action which a newspaper or a book or a court document does. A newsgroup, a blog or a personal website does not fulfill "Published to the public". WP:RS addresses that every day. The issue I'm raising is "What to do when several editors are convinced they are right and won't discuss". What to do when Several editors revert and call anything BUT their consensus vandalism, but won't discuss. This happens in several Scientology articles Terryeo 22:12, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Why do you think "published to the public" doesn't include websites? Obviously published doesn't mean "published in print", and websites are more publicly-available than any print publication is. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:39, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't follow how your question leads to an answer to the issue I raised but I'll answer it as I understand it. Personal Websites are not published by Wikipedia standards because they are not fact checked, they are not necessarily substantial, they are not necessarily legally sound, they might in fact be pure fantesy. There is no professionalism beyond the individual who creates the site. Whereas books and major newspapers and court documents have layers of fact checking, spell checking and (often) legal responsibility between the primary source and the published document. That's an issue for WP:RS, why do you ask my understanding of that guideline? Terryeo 05:50, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:RS explicitly allows partisan or otherwise unreliable sources as primary sources only. By this logic, Xenu.net can be cited, but only as evidence of Xenu.net's views, which may or may not be correct. Yes? No? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 07:50, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that is correct, as I understand WP:RS. With one single, additional exception. If Xenu.net has on their servers, an accurate copy of a published book or other publication, that link may be used when attributing that book or other publication. But it can't be a small part of a page and the rest of the page full of Xenu.net's opinion about that publication. Terryeo 18:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

As a further response to Simetrical, Xenu.net's views could be placed in an "exterior links" or "further reading" section. But their views could not be quoted within an article because their view has never been "published to the public". That is, their view doesn't meet the Wikipedia standards of having been published. But as an exterior link, perhaps even a subsection, "Exterior links, Xenu.net's views", that would fulfill Wikipedia standards, I think. Terryeo 18:57, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

The solution here is in WP:Consensus: get more users to look at the problem; most of the existing system of dispute resolution is intended to do this. At that point, a little group of willful editors will be unable to impose a false consensus. On the other hand, if Terryeo finds his facts and PoV excluded by a large group of editors, he "should at least consider that he may be mistaken". Septentrionalis 17:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh believe me, Septentrionalis, I have sure thought of that. A lot. They are beginning to use their favorite personal website, Clambake.org, as a secondary source of information a little less now. That's one thing. But it isn't the only wrong action. They communicate together on alt.net.scientology and are convinced that scientology is bunk, it colors their every edit but not every edit is plainly wrong. Only a few edits are plainly wrong by wikipedia standards. Terryeo 04:15, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Commas in headings

This does not seem correct: The Revolt, 1915 as a section heading. How can I convince the page writers of this? They see nothing wrong with it and changed their headings to include commas. KarenAnn 15:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with it. Official Battle Honours, for example, include the comma - ie "Somme, 1916". To do an article on the named Batle Honour, you would need the comma.Michael Dorosh 16:04, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, you might have provided a link for us. Is this in fact a British Army Battle Honour of some kind?Michael Dorosh 16:05, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

O.K., you are right. It just looked odd to me. The link incidently is Armenian Revolution which probably is an example of what you mean. KarenAnn 16:25, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Guideline template

I think that the current wording of the template underemphasises the importance of guidelines and encourages wikilawyering, and so I have proposed an alternative wording based on the definition of a guideline at WP:POL. See Template talk:Guideline for discussion. --bainer (talk) 01:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Page statistics

Can't we have some way of displaying a page view counter, I have no idea whether certain pages are being seen by one person a week, or a thousand day. A simple page counter would do the trick, though being able to link to a more sophisticated statistics package would let us see from which pages people come from, and go to, and provide averages, referrals etc. --Iantresman 19:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

That would probably take a rewriting of the Wikimedia software. You can always use the history page and see how frequently the page is edited to get an idea of how popular a page is. Cowman109^Talk 23:18, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

This is a good idea. It would be interest to see how many people view WP, and by article. No doubt the top 10 articles would attract vandals. I do notice the response on the article for Lindsay Lohan is slower than for some others... Wallie 15:09, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Page views are impossible to do. MediaWiki software allows it, but because of our cache servers, etc., it wouldn't be accurate. Ral315 (talk) 17:43, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

It would be better than nothing. --Iantresman 00:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

This is somewhat inaccurate. To decrease processing overhead, En has enabled caching of static versions of articles for anonymous users. One consequence of this is that if the hit counter were visible, it would appear to not update for anonymous users, but registered users should still see it updating (I think?). You can read more about it here. En has made the hit counter invisible and I'm not really sure why. Deco 19:56, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it is worse than that. A static version served from one of the squids (as opposed to the database cache, you mention) would not be counted as a hit at all (which is most of the traffic). Those page loads which are counted would add an extra database hit for every page load, which is presently regarded as an unacceptable burden on the servers. Dragons flight 20:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, you're right of course. This information could be derived from the squid logs in bulk and used to update the database periodically, but nobody really cares enough. Deco 01:52, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Some smaller Wikis show page view counts.--Runcorn 19:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

• I personally can't wait for the inevitable "delete, no one's reading the page anyway." --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:48, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

American Spellings/Measurements be given preference in articles pertaining to the United States. Commonwealth English/Metric be given preference for articles pertaining to other nations.

Well, I thought this was obvious enough, but aparently, the Administrator Samuel Wantman didn't think it was. My proposal (which is largely in place anyways) is that if an article pertains to a certain part of the english-speaking world, that country's spellings and measurements be given preference. e.g. An article about a Canadian painter would talk about the "colour" of the paintings and the size in "centimetres" (and inches in parentheses). An article about the an American paiter would talk about the "color" of the paintings and the size in inches (and "centimeters" in parentheses). As I said, I thought this would have been pretty clear already, but I got a message from a certain admin on my talk page like I were five, so I guess I have to submit this. I apologize for the waste of time this may seem to be. R'son-W 09:55, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

It's not as simple as that. Many people in the UK (probably most people actually) still prefer Imperial measurements, and I understand that many people in other Commonwealth countries do as well. The USA/everyone else split is certainly not as clear-cut as our governments would like to think. And certain uses of Imperial measurements (e.g. road distances, speed limits, pub measures) are still enshrined in British law and have to be used in preference to metric equivalents (you won't see metric measurements on British roadsigns). It still seems incongruous to me to prefer metric measurements on British pages when many British people don't like them and don't use them. -- Necrothesp 10:27, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know anyone under 60 in Australia who uses Miles/Inches and I don't know anyone who spells using color and not colour. So your generalisation about "many" in other commonwealth countries does not seem extremely clear to me. Ansell 11:20, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

If you care to reread my post, you will see that I said "I understand that many people in other Commonwealth countries do as well". I understand this to be the case since I have heard a number of people from other Commonwealth countries say that it is and feel that they should probably know. Anyway, do you exterminate everybody when they get to 60 (a sort of delayed Logan's Run)? No? In that case, there are many people who do use the Imperial system in Australia (or don't older people count?)! And as for color/colour, I think you'll find I didn't mention this at all (although an Australian colleague of mine did once swear blind, against all evidence to the contrary, that Australians pronounce the rank "lootenant"!). -- Necrothesp 12:37, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

How about the incongruity of using "Imperial" measurements when the only remaining empire is American and when many Brits (e.g. me) are happier with the metric system? The continuing use of "Imperial" measurements is [rolls eyes] understandable for intranational (parochial) British purposes, but WP is international and all the Brits I've met are conversant with the metric system. I think even Youessians manage to digest it, though I wouldn't know about the paleoconservative booboisie. (As for spelling, I really don't care either way.) -- Hoary 08:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Wp:mos#National_varieties_of_English - but I should add that in general, editing articles solely to change units, national spellings and so on is really frowned upon, unless it's as a result of discussion and community consensus. There are more important things for people to be doing than worrying about whether imperial or metric units come first, and given the multinational nature of Wikipedia people are just going to have to get used to the fact that sometimes it says "metre" and sometimes "meter". --ajn (talk) 11:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

regarding measurements IMO where known the original/exact measurement should be given first and conversions afterwards. An good example of this is the jack plug page. Plugwash 15:28, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Where? Exploding Boy 15:35, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

With regard to American or Rest-of-the-world English spelling, I have come across a number of articles which had words with spellings partly in one and partly in the other system. The spelling should of course be determined by the subject matter - if it is an American, a British or an Australian subject, for example, then the spellings of that country should prevail.

However, if a supranational subject is being discussed, such as philosophy, the sciences or general cultural items, then the spelling should be governed by that of whoever started the article - nothing worse than seeing a hothpotch of different spellings - and it is up to subsequent editors to make sure they continue in the same vein as that of the original.

If, however, an article of supranational content has already been compromised by mixed spellings then a quick count of the differently spelled words should determine their ultimate spelling in that the greater number of words spelled in a particular way should determine the rest of the article. That number of each different spellings should be given in the edit summary and/or discussion page by the editor who does the edit. If this has been decided elsewhere already, then there is no harm done reiterating it. It's not really so difficult, all it takes is a bit of co-operation and good will. Dieter Simon 23:25, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't quite see why it's necessary to count the words. Just look at the edit history to see which system the originator of the article (or the first editor to use a word with differing spellings in American/Commonwealth English) used and stick with that - if that involves changing many words back then so be it. Incidentally, in some articles divided into sections by nationality (see beret, for example) editors have used American spellings for the section on American usages and Commonwealth spellings for the sections on Commonwealth usages, as well as a mixture of spellings for usages by non-English speaking countries. Personally, I think we should apply the "one system" rule throughout (except for proper names, obviously, which should always be spelt in the way they're actually spelt). -- Necrothesp 00:15, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Also be aware that certain spellings, such as Canadian and Australian, are a mix of British and American spelling and these are just as acceptable as British or American. - SimonP 16:07, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Regarding Necrothesp's "I think we should apply the "one system" rule throughout...". That of course begs the question, whose "one system" you mean, doesn't it?. That is where the problem is. I suspect, you mean American spelling? I think, a lot of English speakers would find this very hard to swallow. Dieter Simon 01:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Er, why do you suspect I mean American spelling? I'm British, as a simple glance at my user page and indeed the post you replied to (how many Americans use "spelt"?) would have told you, and I'm the last person on earth (trust me) who would advocate switching to American spellings. But I actually meant throughout the individual article, not throughout Wikipedia, since that's what we were discussing. I have no desire to change the spelling of the entire Wikipedia to one system or the other (unless it's British - just joking). -- Necrothesp 23:17, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, Necrothesp, I have only just noticed your latest. What made me say the above was that I felt, it wasn't clear what you said (or I read it wrongly) "...Personally, I think we should apply the "one system" rule throughout (except for proper names, obviously, which should always be spelt in the way they're actually spelt)". Ok, point taken, you mean "within an article", and I agree. I am a Brit myself but haven't got my St George's flag out just yet at the moment. However that's by the way. Dieter Simon 23:38, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

And -- obviously -- Hanzi characters and the Lunar calendar should be given preference in all articles pertaining to China. John Reid 06:49, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

If someone has written an article using one spelling convention or set of units, I would consider it less than polite to alter the spelling or units just for the sake of it. Thus if an American had written an article about a British artist and said "color", I'd leave it. --Runcorn 21:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

In reply to the actual point you are making, Runcorn, yes, on the face of it, there is something in what you are saying. However, if this is an article about a British artist and someone has spelt certain words in American English, it is very likely subsequent editors, most likely British, will spell their contributions in British English unless they are very disciplined and routinely check how the same words have been spelt previously in the article, and we are going to be back at the very mess I have described in my later contributions: some words spelt in American and some in British/Commonwealth English, See below. Sorry, Necrothesp reminded me of answering your points. Dieter Simon 01:02, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. The article Mercenary had half the spellings organized/organization and half the spellings organised/organisation, so I changed it on 17 Feb. to all -ized/-ization as it had been started with the former, and subsequent editors used the latter spellings. That's what I meant in my contributin on 7 June: some kind of unified spelling within an article. Dieter Simon 22:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC). Dieter Simon

Not the same case though. Mercenary is a generic term, and therefore should use the system used by the originator of the article, but an article about a British person should use British spellings. This is quite clearly and unequivocally stated in the Manual of Style: "If an article's subject has a strong tie to a specific region/dialect, it should use that dialect." -- Necrothesp 23:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

That's exactly what I said in my original contribution to this subject on 07 June. I wish you'd read some of these things before you reiterate what another person has already said: "The spelling should of course be determined by the subject matter - if it is an American, a British or an Australian subject, for example, then the spellings of that country should prevail," I said. You are talking to the converted, you know.

I am also saying the same thing as you: someone had started the "generic" article with one type of spelling, and others subsequently added spellings of a different kind which I then changed to that of the original writer's. Are we on the same line, after all? I think we are.Dieter Simon 22:59, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, did not sign my amendments. Dieter Simon 23:11, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Before you have a go at me, maybe you should take your own advice and read the post you were responding to. Runcorn said he believed that it was wrong to change American spelling to British spelling in an article about a British subject. You responded "exactly". Er...so what do you believe exactly? Since you now seem to be arguing for both points of view! -- Necrothesp 01:05, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I am not having a go at you, Necrothesp, I agree with what you are saying as I said earlier. And I did reply to Runcorn, by giving an example of the article "Mercenary" where subsequent editors added material spelled/spelt differently from the original: "organised/organisation" when in fact the original editor(s) spelt it "organized/organization", half American and half British/Commonwealth spelling. However much I would have liked to keep the British spelling, it was only fair to the American spelling of American editors who were first. I didn't probably put it very well. Yes, ok, I only changed the additional differently-spelt stuff and not the original American-spelt stuff but for the sake of unity within the article, it should have been spelt "American" all along once it had been started that way. Phew!

Mind you there is another way, and I am not sure whether this has ever been broached, how about creating a prompt or template to insert in articles to the effect of warning readers that they may find a mixture of American and British/Commonwealth spellings due to diverse editorship. Dieter Simon 23:58, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Deleting bad articles about notable subjects?

I know about Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Problem_articles_with_alternatives_to_deletion. But what if a cleanup tag is still present after more than half a year and the article is still not in a usable shape? In AfDs people vote keep and expand even in such cases. Is it really the goal of Wikipedia to keep really bad articles about notable subjects? I'm talking e.g. about The Seven Worlds in it's current state (the state of the article might be better when you read this). It really annoys me that people say in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Seven Worlds Keep, but needs cleanup as noted on the page. (the article hasn't improved although it is tagged cleanup since half a year). And someone said in the AfD Keep until someone can tell me if this is true or not (the article doesn't cite it's sources). Is there really no lower limit on the quality of Wikipedia articles? And is this really intended? Adrian Bunk 00:38, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

There is a philosophical disagreement between immediatists and eventualists over this topic. In your specific example, it seems that people don't want to throw away potentially useful information, but nobody is sure how to best use it. So we tag it and hope that somebody will come along who knows what to do. The cleanup backlog is currently one year, so half a year is unfortunately a pretty normal waiting time. You can help and {{sofixit}}. For some articles that are really bad, one way to not delete them is to cut them down to short verifiable stubs and note that there was more info before on the talk page. Kusma (討論) 01:25, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems Extreme eventualism has taken control of the English Wikipedia....

More than 16,000 articles are already waiting for someone addressing their cleanup tag with an increasing tendency and many other with other tags.

I might do the following: Players of the second German soccer league are considered notable in the English Wikipedia according to WP:BIO and their notability is verifyable e.g. through [7]. If I create a few hundred articles about players playing there in the 1980s only consisting of the unwikified text Foo Bar was a German soccer player, how much value is in this articles about the notable people?

I might be crazy enough to actually add such articles only for having a good laugh... Adrian Bunk 01:40, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree, Adrian. I get fed up with Keep votes for some absolutely awful articles just because the subject is notable (or semi-notable). Is this what we want for our encyclopedia? Is there no lower limit for quality? Apparently not. Disappointedly yours, Madman 16:36, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Note also that some articles are deletable through WP:PROD that would be kept at WP:AFD, for example machine "translations" (Although this is an abuse of process). In my experience, these are never cleaned up. However, stubbing them and listing them at WP:TIE usually produces a decent article in less than 4 months. Kusma (討論) 02:13, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

If something would be deleted WP:PROD but kept at WP:AFD that's a serious flaw in the deletion process. Adrian Bunk 02:17, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:PROD is slightly more random and less even less consistent in what is deleted than WP:AFD is (which itself is pretty random and not consistent on borderline articles), especially since we don't have a centralized prod listing anymore. Kusma (討論) 05:55, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

What is wrong with Category:All articles proposed for deletion? Adrian Bunk 10:01, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't show the reason for the proposed deletion, unlike the old listing on the toolserver. Kusma (討論) 19:29, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Please oh please wipe them all from the slate! I've argued many times on AfD debates that Keep and rewrite votes should be counted as Delete unless rewritten. IMHO FAR TOO MANY articles survive AfD on "Keep and rewrite" without the rewrite susequently taking place. If an article is extremely poor/almost unsalvageable to begin with, it is better to delete it and start over. Zunaid 15:00, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Why must there be a time limit on when articles become good? Some articles might remain shitty for 5 days, until a mass of people come and spiff it up to pristine quality in a week. Why not let that process trancend months or even years. Deletion is not the answer, as that subject will come up again sometime, and the information will instead be lost. It is much better to use tags to mark the page as crap. There are many many such tags, and they not only let editors know that the page needs cleaning, but much more importantly, it lets readers know which articles to trust and which not to. Not to mention, readers can usually see crap - I know I can. Its those pages with no headers, science pages with no equations, badly formatted pages, and articles that read like text-books. A shitty article is not a reason to delete - its a reason to make it better. Fresheneesz 00:55, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Vandalism as a natural sub section of Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish anonymous users. Steve block Talk 22:38, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Use of American v. British/Commonwealth English

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Use of American v. British/Commonwealth English, since it has come up numerous times since I have been here. Steve block Talk 22:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Metric versus American/Imperial measurements

See also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#SI/Imperial measurements --Philip Baird Shearer 22:36, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Since this language's version of Wikipedia is the only to cover a country which does not use SI measurements (and in fact, a supermajority of native english speakers do not), it should be the policy of Wikipedia for all articles to include both metric and American units in all pages where measurements are used. If there is a page lacking in this, it should be noted by a template. R'son-W 07:14, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to very reluctantly agree. As horrible as the customary units are, Wikipedia can't change popular usage. On the other hand, I think that there are large categories of articles that do not need customary units (even if this proposal were implemented), such as those in astronomy. Ardric47 07:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm fine with people adding adding a conversion, but I don't want a new template, as it would just be needless clutter. People wishing to add conversions, can easily do so themselves. I don't want to see hundreds (even thousands) of pages tagged with a new template. --Rob 07:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

To clarify what I said above, I'm agreeing with the policy to include both units, not to have a template. Ardric47 07:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Since when did the US not use metric units? What is habitual and what is actual policy are two different things entirely, and the US government deisgnated the SI system as the preferred one 18 full years ago. Further, go right ahead and tell me the speed of light in feet per second. We all know it moves at 300.000km/s, meaning 300.000.000m/s, meaning 300.000.000.000mm/s. Now, equally swiftly, without a calculator, tell me what this is in miles/sec, yards/sec, feet/sec and finally, let's not forget the smallest (and my, how accurate it is too) unit available; inches/sec. To put some more emphasis on the great accuracy of the CUs, how many inches is an average sinarapan? Over a span of 3 unit denominators, it's 12,5mm, 1,25 cm, and 0,125m. How many inches, feet and yards is this? My points are; 1: If you want to trawl all Wikipedia articles for occurances of units not provided in customary units, go right ahead. However, the sheer volume of Wikipedia, and the complete lack of logic in finding the lesser unit of what you currently have, means you've got a nice life's work cut out for you. Enjoy. 2: In an encyclopedia, accuracy - not the habits and quirks of one user group (which by the way happens to claim majority (which is equally false, as you clearly know, and that cleverly adjusting your statistics to show native English-speakers won't change the fact that most of the world still uses BrE, having been, as it were, under British rule or influence for longer than the US has been a country.)) - should be priority. --TVPR 08:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually it's 299,792,458m/s. Fagstein 17:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

That's not the only thing (s)he's wrong on. Actually, the US gov't has supported the metric system since La Convention du mètre. But, the government isn't the same as its people, and only a negligable minority of Americans want to switch to metric. Also, "everyone" knows that the speed of light is 300,000,000 m/s? One, I didn't know that (and you were wrong about that anyways), and I doubt if you stopped anyone on the street, in a metric country or in America and said, "Hey! What's the speed of light?" I doubt they could respond. But that's beside the point. No, Americans don't use the metric system. R'son-W 00:27, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

The term "American units" is a misnomer. Most British people still use them in everyday usage as well, despite Britain being "officially" (and generally reluctantly) metric. And many things in the UK, including our roadsigns, are still officially in imperial units (it's actually illegal to use only metric units on roadsigns), so let's not have any false claims that it's only the United States that uses these units. -- Necrothesp 09:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Does Britan use US customary units? I realize they're similar, if not identical, but still. Starting 3 years from now, any product marked with non-SI units will be banned from import into the EU. That ought to help. --TVPR 09:37, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The one thing Britain is is confused. I measure distance in mm, cm, m and mile... However, back to the point - Britain is very much a metric country, imperial units have not been taught at school for decades. The mile and pint really are the last remaining official uses...

Imperial units are taught in British schools, including conversions between metric and imperial. I know because I have taught it, and it is still on the National Curriculum. Captainj 21:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

However the Imperial units in Britain are different to "American units". Our pint isn't your pint (20 vs 16 fl oz), our gallon isn't yours, our ton isn't yours... Get the point? If not take a read of Comparison of the Imperial and U.S. customary systems/wangi 09:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Britain, as I said, is officially metric. But in practice it is not, even for those (like myself) who were taught metric units at school, but wouldn't dream of using them unless forced (the only people I've ever heard using metric measurements in day-to-day life have been scientists). Those who claim otherwise are usually evangelical (and rather delusional) metric fans who don't want to accept that their beloved system isn't popular. Also note that Imperial measurements of length, area and basic weight (the ounce and pound) are identical to the American. My main point, however, was not to claim that British and American systems were identical (although some parts of it are), but to counter the arguments that the United States is the only country that retains non-metric measurements. -- Necrothesp 10:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Well I guess It's personal/generation issue. I'd just like to make it known we're not all imperial unit monkeys ;) As for being evangelical or delusional, I personally couldn't care - I'd measure my height in feet and inches; my weigth in kilos; the distance to my house in miles; the size of a room to the nearest unit (e.g. 8ft x 6m); liquids in litres, unless I'm drinking a pint; and when shopping metric... /wangi 10:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm British. I accept that my beloved metric system (?) isn't popular in Britain. I think in the metric system. If I add some figures to an article, I'm not going to bother with non-metric units. If somebody wants to add a non-metric "translation", that won't bother me. If on the other hand somebody wants to give priority to his or her beloved antique metrology, thereby relegating my own beloved metrology to parentheses, I shall get annoyed. But of course I mustn't show my annoyance, must I? -- Hoary 11:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm always amused when people describe the Imperial system as an antique while favouring a system developed in the 18th century! -- Necrothesp 11:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Point taken. Me, I'm amused when the more antique mishmash is referred to as the "Imperial system". But then I reflect that there's some truth to it, as we're all under pax (?) Americana these days. -- Hoary 12:54, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Blah, common sense should prevail. We don't need Imperial units (or US Standard for that matter) in all articles, anything science related should be in SI, anything else should be in whatever people decide on the page. I'm 22 and from the UK, and I still use feet/inches, pints, stone etc. The decision of what to include should be worked out on article talk pages, but I would strongly object to a blanket policy of having Imperial or US Standard in parentheses. - FrancisTyers 22:49, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Units should be dealt with on the WikiProject level. A universal policy could never account for all the idiosyncracies you get in specialized fields. Melchoir 10:08, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I think all articles should use metric. The English WP is available to billions of English speakers around the world, often speaking English as a second language. SI is international - that is its point. If people would like to add their own local units too (particularly when referring to local issues), I won't mind that. Stephen B Streater 12:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

How about:

Where the original form of a measurement is known it should be specified first with conversions in brackets. Where the original form is not known and there are no other overriding considerations (e.g. local conventions in local articles) metric should be placed first with the conversions in brackets. Ambiguous units like the ton and the gallon should be avoided where possible and when they are included they should always be clarified.

-- Plugwash 13:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Plugwash 13:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

All articles should use both metric and American units (in the case of ambiguous units such as gallons, clearly designated as being American if you can't use a more commonly-used non-SI unit). This provides maximum information with minimum clutter. Many of our readers are not familiar enough with the metric system to understand units given only in metric, and many (probably most) are not familiar enough with American units to understand units given only in American units. What governments say is completely irrelevant; it's our readers that we're here to serve.

As for specialized fields, Wikipedia serves a general audience, not just specialists. Even if American physicists always use the metric system for physics, other Americans/Brits/Canadians/etc. (almost no former British colonies are fully converted to SI) will also want to read and understand the article.

The only exception to this rule is when the units involved are so ridiculously beyond what we use in everyday life that normal units are insufficient or the differences are negligible; our readers don't need to be told that 1.41679 × 10³² K equals 2.55022 × 10³² °F, or that 130 light years equals 7.6427 × 10¹⁴ miles—nothing is gained in comprehensibility from that. But the density of mercury, that's something that should be in both metric and American/imperial units. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, a number of former British colonies such as India (AFAIK), Malaysia, Singapore are IMHO more or less fully converted to SI. What non-SI usage exists is predominantly not imperial either. I expect it's the same in other African former colonies as well (not sure about South Africa). Even here in NZ (although it'd difficult to say since I spent most of my life in Malaysia and I'm a scientist) I would say we're mostly metric. True the older generation may still prefer imperial but by and large, I would say the younger generation uses metric almost exclusively. Perhaps body weight and height might be one exception although even that probably not that great (common) an exception. I believe Australia is similar as well. Also, significantly I expect you're far more likely to find someone who understand metric in most instances but not imperial then someone who understand imperial but not metric. And as others have point out, our readers likely includes a very large number of non native English speakers (such as many of the Indians, Malaysian, Singaporeans that I pointed out as well as Chinese, French, Spaniards etc etc). These by and large will understand SI but not imperial. I'm not rallying against the inclusion if imperial but simply pointing out that SI in fact probably has much more merit then imperial and SI are probably preferred by most of our readers. Nil Einne 04:29, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

By "fully converted to SI" I meant that generally imperial units of some type remain in use at least in certain limited contexts (such as height and weight, or of course older people). I certainly agree SI would be the preferable system if we had to use only one (Americans are taught SI in school, so most could probably do conversions with some thought), but thankfully we don't. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:55, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Two points. I reinforce the plea that if a unit like the pint (which differs between the US and other countries) is used, it should be explained which is meant, ideally with a conversion into the other sort. And there is often more than one metric unit. The density of mercury is about 13.6 grammes (grams?) per cubic centimetre in cgs units and 13,600 kilogrammes per cubic metre in SI units; probably, most people would prefer the former, although scientists usually use SI. The official unit astronomers use to measure distances to stars is the parsec, although common usage prefers the light year; neither is strictly an SI unit. Runcorn 19:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd love to use American or Imperial units but they get so complex once you get beyond basic stuff - working with measurements trying to work out if they are eights or twelths, long or short tons, and how many pints to the quart anyway? Not to mention fathams and furlongs, bushels and chains. But I'm an adult, and most of the time I've got a fair idea what people are talking about. If I want to know what the exact converion is, I'll pull out the calculator. I can cope with whatever anyone writes. One point though. English is the international language with probably more ESL speakers than native speakers. And SI is the international system of measurement. --Michael Johnson 14:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the preceding discussion is well meaning, but short on facts. When people say things like "most of our readers" I wonder where the numbers are to back up these claims. Note that we have guidelines on this topic at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Scientific style and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Units of measurement which say sometimes SI units are mandatory and that conversions should not be removed. If you want to add conversions to articles, I suggest adding them as you find them or organizing a wikiproject to do so. -- cmh 15:39, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Just two points to add: all packaged goods in Britain are labelled in metric, although loose goods can be ordered in Imperial. I drink pints of beer but buy milk in litres, I think in Fahrenheit, but everybody else I know thinks in Celsius. Secondly, as Michal Johnson implies, Wiki En probably has a large ESL readership. In fact judging by many of the contributions, Wiki En is frequently written by non-native speakers (look at any article concerning a non-English speaking country). Recipe books can manage multiple measurements, why limit Wiki En to one continent?

The presumption that SI units are not widely used in the USA really applies to the household. Many industries have converted to SI, especially industries engaged in international trade. On the other hand, there is one area of high technology where inches are in common use, computer printers, with terms such as dots per inch and pixels per inch. Gerry Ashton 21:28, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that in every place it is relevant that we should use both metric and American measurements. Metric may be used in the majority of the world, but a large percentage of people on the English Wikipedia are from the United States and have no sense of scale in the metric system, no matter how much they see it in their life. Foreign articles as well as American articles should use it. Finding conversion calculators online is ridiculously easy, so look one up, convert the two measurements, and put it into the article. And the wide availability of these things shouldn't be an excuse not to put them on here, as this is an encyclopedia and should be as NPOV as possible, and should accomodate as many people as possible. I don't want to look up a conversion calculator every time I see "163 kilometers" or "26 degrees Celsius" or whatever. I want to be able to know what the American measurement right there, and if I used metric measurements and it only had Imperial on the page, I would want to see the Metric conversion. bob rulz 23:54, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that Wikipedia should explicitly favor metric measurements, as they are universal and (despite what Bob says) more easily understood and converted. As has been pointed out, there are significant divergences within US/Imperial units, in particular liquid measurement, but also the long/short ton, and not all units are widely understood (stone, furlong). I'd have no objection to customary units being given alongside metric ones.  ProhibitOnions  ^(T) 11:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem with favoring any one system of measurements over another is that no single system is appropriate for all possible topics. The dimensions to Noah's Ark are specified in cubits, Hadrian's Wall used roman miles to space its milecastles, the National Maximum Speed Limit is specified in Miles per hour, and there is no Jules Verne book titled 111200 Kilometers Under the Sea. Other articles depend on sources that use acres, fathoms, hands, li, or picas. Trying to shoehorn these dimensions into SI units is not only elitist, but in many cases will violate Wikipedia:Verifiability. Instead of forcing everything into a single system, each article needing to list some type of measurement should use a measurement appropriate to the subject's nature, place, and time in history. It is only when this is done that conversions to aid the reader should be added. --Allen3 ^talk 13:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

No, this is the same anti-metric argument given by people who think we'd have to sing "I'd walk 1,609,300 kilometers for one of your smiles"... Of course, articles should use non-metric units if the article is a) about those units b) about something that frequently uses non-metric units (such as, say, pipe widths, or certain sports, although metric equivalents should be given), or c) uses historic material or direct quotations that refer to such units. But if none of these criteria are met, then metric units should be the primary ones used.  ProhibitOnions  ^(T) 22:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Your statement that metric units are "more easily understood" is quite simply wrong when it comes to a large percentage of our readers. Americans, as well as to a substantially lesser extent Brits/Canadians/Australians, do not understand metric units as well as they understand imperial units. You were born in Britain and currently live in Germany; if you were born and lived in America, you would not think metric units are more easily understood. The only thing that's easily understood by all our readers is metric plus imperial, and that's why we should always use that. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm a US citizen, and know well how "confusing" many Americans wrongly assume the metric system to be. However, starting from a position of unfamiliarity, metric units are more easily understood, as they are far more logical, are interrelated, and are based on multiples of ten, and are likely to be understood by a far greater number of the billion or so fluent speakers of English, including a good number of educated Americans. (Thanks for reading my biography, but I never make it clear how long I've lived anywhere. It's a little like the userbox debate.)  ProhibitOnions  ^(T) 08:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

In the UK, we are increasingly using metric units. Food has to be sold in metric units now, except in important cases (eg of beer). Petrol (!) is sold in litres. Energy is measured in kW hours. However, precious metal are still in $/Troy Oz. Are people in the US becoming increasingly metric as they get more internationalised? Stephen B Streater 08:23, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

There are exactly two metric units in everyday usage in the US: multi-serving bottles of soda are sold in liters, and electricity is measured in kilowatt-hours. Everything else is US Customary. --Carnildo 09:50, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

A large reason for the shift in the UK is due to European Economic Community's packaging regulations. Although European trade regulations have some influence on American companies (it's easier to make one package that is salable both in the EU and in the US, and the EU's regulations are more strict), the influence is not nearly so strong as in the UK. — Saxifrage ✎ 05:33, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

American packaging regulations mandate metric units alongside non-metric units. See Fair Packaging and Labeling Act and the US government fact sheet. bobblewik 00:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget that vast numbers of British people still prefer traditional units, and in many cases traditional units are generally used even by young British people, eg human heights in feet and inches and speeds in miles per hour. To a great degree SI has been imposed against the will of the British public, but Wikipedia is a public resource and does not have to defer to official dictat. "English as she is spoke" is just as valid as "English as Big Brother would have it spoke". Piccadilly 18:20, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree that SI and imperial units should be used alongside one another. This is simply for the benefit of those people who are not able to understand both systems easily, and there are a great deal of these. Many Canadians, for example, particularly the younger generation, associate no particular meaning with Faernheit temperatures. However, many Americans I have communicated with are extremely confused when I report thirty-five degrees Celcius as boiling hot, thinking it quite near the freezing point of water. Neither system is at all universal and therefore both should be used. Falcon 22:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Both systems, no tag. Conversion tools are widely available; use them. Don't tag problems; fix them. John Reid 06:07, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me a similar issue occured with users preferred date format. In this case Wikipedia automatically displays the date in the users preferred format (assuming the date is wikified). Could we do something similar here. Set everything up in metric but use templates (or something) to either do the coversion on the fly or to provide a link to a page that gave the conversions.--MarkS (talk) 17:39, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Given that Wikipedia prohibits original research, most "measurements", I would think, would be taken out of other published sources. In which case, the appropriate thing to do is to provide them in the units in which they were originally presented--if the source includes SI units, so should the Wikipedia article, and likewise for the "traditional" units. Go ahead and provide conversions, but the conversion should be listed second and it should be clearly indicated that it is a conversion performed by Wikipedia editors. (If a source includes a measurement in multiple systems, then Wikipedia should take both measurements from the source).

Given that any measurement will have an uncertainty, and that unit conversions will often add to that uncertainty (the alternative is reporting the conversion with more significant digits than is warranted), publication of the unconverted values is key.

One place which might warrant presenting converted units ahead of unconverted units is the case where measurements from different sources (in different systems, and/or with different uncertainties) are compiled and aggregated into a single Wikipedia article. Displaying them with the same units, for presentation purposes, is appropriate. However, it should be obvious when conversions occur.

--EngineerScotty 17:50, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Without intending any disrespect, I'd suggest you don't fully understand what "original research" was intended to apply to. I find the largest problem among many Wiki-Police is not comprehending the intent of rules and regulations rather than the practical applications. On the other hand, I agree with using the original measurements (ie distances given in yards rather than metres when discussing, say, First World War battles) but the conversion of units from one system to another hardly constitutes "original research." Michael Dorosh 21:05, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

You might have misunderstood what I meant by "original research". I'm not suggesting that multiplying inches by 2.54 to arrive at centimeters constitutes "research" (and therefore Wikipedia editors ought to refrain from doing such); I'm merely observing that most quantities reported in Wikipedia are (per WP:NOR) necessarily taken from some other source; and suggesting that the units present in the original source ought to be preserved. I'm all for adding conversions for the benefit of the reader (in both directions, when appropriate). Quantities which aren't taken from external sources (or trivially derived from other sources, or patently obvious) would need to be justified as to their origins. Measurements taken by a Wikipedia editor clearly would be OR; calculations performed on existing data to derive new data may or may not be. As to what level of calculation on the part of an editor constitutes "research", I don't know. Certainly, units conversion, simple averages, and other stuff like that doesn't rise to the level of "research", though more advanced statistcal analyses of raw data, especially from disparate data sets, might well be. --EngineerScotty 17:49, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Just have to throw in my 2 cents: I learned the speed of light on the Imperial system, and it's easier to remember it in six digits rather than nine. I have to start doing lots of multiplication when I convert it to km/h, since all I remember 186,282 miles per second. I'd say, don't use a template, but convert when you see it so that both systems are in evidence. Sacxpert 08:23, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Guideline on not changing one's comments after the fact?

I've been dealing with an editor who has forsworn use of the preview button - he sometimes makes talk/AfD/etc. edits in 5-minute-instalments, changing what he's written before. Also, he has no problem with heavily editing his own previous comments, e.g. just deleting incivil comments after they've been pointed out to him. Do we have a standard prohibiting this around somewhere?

And if it turns out we do not, you are all invited to comment on my proposal to add something to that effect to Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. Sandstein 19:41, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Certainly seems a good idea, maybe we should have a set style for edits to comments (say strikethrough for removals and bold for additions). Plugwash 19:54, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

My advice on this is to be found at Wikipedia:Instruction creep. Editing a comment after a minute or two, when you see a grammar error, seems ok to me if your edit summary is clear—in fact, I've been known to do it myself occasionally. Hiding one's own uncivil edits is pretty obviously not ok, and I'm not sure we need a guideline to say so. -- SCZenz 19:57, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Erasing one's own uncivil comments after just a couple minutes is effectively saying, "I shouldn't have said that, I'm sorry." This seems like a positive thing to me. If it's been around long enough for anyone to read it, I would use strikeout (foo) instead. Deco 20:06, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that the dividing line is whether or not the comment has been responded to. It is a discourtesy (at least) to other editors to allow them to look like they are making irrelevant comments, and at worst may be a tactic for setting up an RfArb. That is the objection as I see it. Robert A.West (Talk) 20:26, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with all that's been said; strikethroughs are obviously ok. I can't speak for any of you, but my experience indicates that it needs to be written down somewhere, for the education of those new to the way of the wiki... Sandstein 21:07, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I note that if we had a real discussion software support, preventing edits other than strikeouts after a post had received responses would be easy. Oh well. Deco 21:57, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the deletion of uncivil comments is commendable, and should certainly not be prohibited. Do we want to maximise strife, or minimise it? The internet fosters more incivility than any other medium due to the lack of face to face or even voice to voice contact and the lack of time delays, so people need to be able to withdraw comments they regret and indeed they should be encouraged to do so. Piccadilly 00:09, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Deletion of uncivil comments would be acceptable, if the edit summary made that clear. However, I prefer strike through, as to me that says "I said this, but wish I hadn't", as opposed to "I never said that", plus simple removal is open to abuse by an offender adding and subtracting an uncivil comment to insult someone (who reads it/sees it on the diffs) but subsquently pleads that they had already "retracted" the comment. Regards, MartinRe 00:21, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this - actually deleting comments that others have already responded to just makes the whole conversation confusing. Like editing offensive comments, this can actually provoke the involved parties rather than help them settle their differences. If they really want to remove the comments from view, they can propose moving the entire discussion to someone's talk page - this works especially well for flame wars where just a couple people fill a whole page with back-and-forth. Deco 11:27, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I can kinda see both sides of that one. The biggest factor there is probably the motivation of the editor -- are they removing the offensive comments in a good faith effort to improve the situation, or are they removing them in bad faith, seeking to sneak a few jabs past other editors? Difficult to tell the difference, but on the bright side a guideline may not have to, we could just take notice of the apparent fact that many, but not all, editors may see such removals in a bad light, and suggest strikeout tags as a transparent alternative. Good idea? Luna Santin 17:32, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Notability and deletion

I have noticed a decent amound of deletions happening because a subject is "not notable". There is no official policy about notability, but people seem to think there is. I have asked a few people about what is wrong with keeping non-notable pages, but noone seems to have any answer for me. One reason I read on the Wikipedia:Notability page, is that non-notable pages are hard to keep up to quality. But I can't imagine why that would matter, a simple tag or two would label the page as needing improvement, or mark it as generally a junky stub page.

Theres plenty of other tags to say what wrong with a page - but deletion isn't a tag. It removes history, removes information and work done on an article. How does it help the *readers* (thats who wikipedia is for) if we delete valid but "non-notable" information - a classification that is quite subjective.

Does anyone have a real answer for what is wrong with keeping non notable pages? I would like to propose that we actually make *policy* concerning non-notable articles - hopefully one that discourages censorship and allows wikipedia to become an encyclopedia that doesn't just contain a popularity-contest's worth of content. Fresheneesz 01:09, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

The deletion of non-notable (and also poorly written) content is the center of the neverending philosophical debate between the inclusionists and deletionists. You can read about some of their rationales on Meta. A number of them seem to be intended to address notability. For me the motivation for deleting non-notable content is simply that it has limited impact on the world, and so relatively few readers will care about it. Since every article comes with a cost in maintenance and resources, it's best to focus our effort on the topics the most people will derive benefit from. Personally, though, I'm pretty lenient about notability and would happily accept a topic that affects only a few thousand people. Deco 01:49, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

The question is where does one draw the line. I can document the existence of my mailbox with photographs, but should I write an article about it? Existence does not guarantee that an article should be written. And then there's the question of whether Wikipedia is being used for free advertising. A garage band might create a website which talks all about them and their goals and what songs they play, and they may get a hundred or so people to see them play at the local county fair, but do they deserve an article? What about a person who self-publishes his own novel? User:Zoe|^(talk) 17:52, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I think vanity pages (like all the example you describe) are considered beyond non-notable and by definition POV. Thats a different issue. I think many people say that if something is non-notable, it probably will be POV, it probably isn't verifiable, it probably has OR. The thing is, those aren't always true, and my point is that non-notability isn't a fault in itself, but form a group of articles that are more likely to have faults. Just as unregistered editors are less likely to produce good edits, but many still do. Fresheneesz 20:05, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. A vanity page, despite the name, is not necessarily POV, although many are - you can talk about yourself or your obscure garage band in a neutral way, incorporating many references to verifiable sources. You don't see this much because most editors experienced enough to follow these rules also avoid writing articles on non-notable topics, but it's anything but impossible. This is just one potential justification; the link and discussion above lists some others. Deco 20:11, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Nothing whatsoever is harmed if we make Zoe's mailbox; no one will read it, and so it will just gather cyber-dust. What actual downside is there to permitting such an article? Server load isn't a valid reason; current Chief Technical Officer Brion Vibber (who now "maintain[s] overall responsibility for all technical functions of the Foundation, including both hardware and software", although the position didn't exist at the time) has said: "'Policy' shouldn't really concern itself with server load except in the most extreme of cases; keeping things tuned to provide what the user base needs is our job." So what's the actual cost to us?

On the other hand, there are certainly benefits to having a very loose notability policy. (As loose as Zoe's mailbox, perhaps the benefits wane, but it's simpler to just not draw the line at all.) You need only compare Eric Burns' opinions about Wikipedia as of November 1, 2004 and as of November 20, 2005 to see how deletionism drives away contributors. No costs, nontrivial benefits: let's set the notability bar low, if we keep it at all. There's no point arguing over what's notable when there's no advantage to deleting things that aren't notable; it's a waste of time and effort. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

• Official policy on notability is contained in WP:NOT, which states that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. That something is 100% true does not mean it is suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia, that Biography articles should only be for people with some sort of fame, achievement, or perhaps notoriety. One measure of achievement is whether someone has been featured in several external sources (on or off-line). Relatively unimportant people may be mentioned within other articles, that Wikipedia is not the yellow pages and that Wikipedia articles should not exist only to describe the nature, appearance or services a website offers. These points establish the concept of notability within wikipedia. However, no-one has managed to define it in policy beyond WP:NOT, since the term polarises debate and discussion of the issue becomes fractured. Steve block Talk 22:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

  I'm surprised that it's so old. Regardless, I think it is fair to say that consensus is currently in favor of notability requirements; WP:CSD shows that pretty clearly. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it might be a valid and interesting point to bring up the potential costs of *deleting* non-notable pages. I'm not talking about the hypothetical loss of information - but rather the huge waste of people's time arguing over *how* notable something is, and if its notable enough to keep, or non-notable enough to delete. I think its fair to say that hundreds or thousands of man-hours have been wasted over things that could have been completely avoided had their been clear policy to keep non-notable articles, if thats the only "issue". Fresheneesz 06:59, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

In that case though, some of these people would probably also quit the project, believing that it could not attain a worthwhile goal. Some have proposed a technical solution involving a notability level for articles such that readers can filter which ones they want to see, but this presents issues for disambiguation and would probably cause similar conflict over what notability level to make an article. Deco 08:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

That doesn't answer the question of why those people will leave the project. And frankly, I doubt very many people would; they would just start ignoring non-notable articles instead of prodding and AFDing them. As for filtering, I don't really think that's necessary, provided the rule that links should only go to items of interest is maintained. (For instance, categories that include exhaustive catalogs of Dragon Ball Z stuff would be subcategories of Category:Dragon Ball, and anyone who browses to that category would want to see subcategories containing DBZ trivia.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:05, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

IMHO it is extremely important that there are some sort of notability guidelines and that these are adhered to. Without these Wikipedia becomes simply an indiscriminate collection of information. Above all else, if Wikipedia wants to be taken seriously in the academic world (and thus far I don't think it has been) as a reference tool, it must avoid becoming a collection of facts and trivia. (This is a multi-pronged problem, we need good articles on noteworthy topics.) As an example I could write a verifiable article about myself, as my university website has a page containing info on me. Would this add any value to Wikipedia? Or would it detract from its worth? WP:NOT is the only policy we have in this respect, but there are well-established guidelines (WP:WEB, WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, etc) which are often used in deletion debates, and rightly so. Zunaid 09:29, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

• I think if people couldn't use notability as a reason to delete they would start using something esle. You'd see the argument shift over to relaible sourcing, which is what, ultimately, notability boils down to; notability is somewhat shorthand for positing the question of whether there are enough reliable sources to write an encyclopedic article on a topic. It's all just a subjective debate, everyone has a different idea of what Wikipedia is. However, since Wikipedia is a work in progress it doesn't matter. Steve block Talk 13:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be excellent if people switched over to reliable sourcing, and verifiability. The problem now is that people use notability to mean those things, but when something is verifiable and reliably sourced, notability changes to mean something entirely different - importance. Notability is a term that is floated around and used to mean whatever the hell people want it to mean. Its a simple politicians trick. Fresheneesz 21:59, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that notability is a difficult term to use, as it implies subjectivity; a stated rather than implicit emphasis on reliable sourcing would be ideal, as it targets the editor/s involved to improve the article in a productive way (see my essay for my thoughts on the semantics of AfD). Ziggurat 22:04, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I wrote a proposal to shift the emphasis to sourcing. People appeared to be so opposed to even the mention of the word notability it died on its feet. Do you think there's much to be had from resurrecting it? Steve block Talk 23:39, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

All the better reason not to use the word; my essay is about the pragmatic problems with using 'notability', not the ideological ones (which have been boiled to the bone). I was sorry to see your proposal fail, but I think that this would best be covered by explaining the existing policies better. It appeared to be a restatement of the basic principles rather than an addition.Ziggurat 00:03, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

• Well, the proposal was mainly an attempt to restate the basic principles, since they seem to have got lost in the wordiness of WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV. It seems to me Wikip[edia policy is drifting far from WP:KISS, and also that Wikipedians are drifting far from policies. Perhaps the proposal would do better as a statement of the principle that third party sources are required, Wikipedia:Independent sources? Steve block Talk 13:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the fact that your proposal used the word notability was probably a large part of its failure. Notability has a very real definition in English, and changing its meaning in the context of wikipedia would be confusing at best. I think rather than resurecting that sort of policy, we should enforce the current policies of NPOV, NOR, and verifiability - not by adding a synonym, but by forcing people to use those policies to base their arguments, rather than allowing people to use such wishy-washy terms as "notability" and "importance". Fresheneesz 00:38, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with that. Maybe I'll try drafting an essay sometime, but I'm dubious of the results it will get. Notability is ingrained in Wikipedia culture, whatever its validity. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:05, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Why do you think that an article on Zunaid or Zoe's mailbox would make an article on, say, Helium less trusted or reliable? Our respectability will come from stability and verifiability, thence reliability. If our information is reliable, we will become respected as a reliable source. No one will care that some of our reliable information is utterly worthless to them, provided that the rest is sound. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:05, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, add me to that group of noone. Wikipedia currently isn't reliable, and I wouldn't doubt that many think it can never be reliable because of the source of the information (us). Marking something as "not reliable" I think serves the same purpose as deletion, and is better because anyone interested can use a crappy article as a springboard to study or verify information thats in wikipedia, outside of wikipedia - and maybe even improve the article in the process. Fresheneesz 05:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't follow. If all information on Wikipedia were reliable, but some of that reliable info was non-notable, you would discard Wikipedia as a reference source just because of the non-notability of some of its content? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:36, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Part of our problem with reliability, however, is WP's fear of using anything primary in a NPOV fashion, as well as WP's general fear of things not printed on a dead tree. Reliability improves when our views on reliable sources improve. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:39, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Jeff's got a good point here. I can appreciate that when discussing scientific research the standards need to be higher, but when we're discussing cultural issues, there really needs to be some mechanism by which we can recognise certain commentators as reliable sources and not disregard them simply because their comments are posted on the web. Steve block Talk 14:06, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia can work if 2 standards are kept in place. One standard is about what powers editors and admins have. Another standard is about what consitutes a published, reliable source. As long as editors understand those and they are kept it place it can work. At one time, democracy was not okay, there was feeling that the common man didn't know enough to intelligently decide how he should be governed. When all publication was on paper in bound encylopedias, the subjects of articles were not decided by the common person. Here they can be. But we have to keep a bottom threshold for inclusion. Admittedly that is an arbitrary decision but it is the foundation of quality. Terryeo 23:10, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. We have to keep a bottom threshold for inclusion in terms of notability, because any article about something non-notable is of poor quality? Or we have to keep a bottom threshold for inclusion in terms of reliability, because any unreliable article is of poor quality? The latter I would agree with, the former certainly not. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:36, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

International versions

I have noticed that the international versions of Wikipedia articles are not just translations, but often completely different articles with different information. Is NPOV defendable when local Wikipedia version are significantly different? Obviously the FDL allows different versions, but I think it would be good if everything under the Wikipedia flag represented a single collection of facts, and not local interpretations. (I'm not sure if this belong to policy, so please redirect me to the appropriate discussion page if not) Robert John Kaper 16:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Each Wikipedia is a separate work, and that is the only way that Wikipedias in a wide range of languages can conceivably be created. The same fundamental polices apply to all of them, but each Wikipedia is the responsibility of its own editors. That's just the nature of the beast. Osomec 04:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

It would be tremendously impractical to keep different languages in sync. Every single edit would have to be immediately translated to all other versions for it to work. It's just completely impossible, logistically speaking. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:48, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

What about weekly or monthly synchronization? ...IMHO (Talk) 05:35, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Even that would take a staff of thousands. If you're a billionaire maybe you could employ one. Otherwise, it just ain't going to happen. Calsicol 04:19, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

File Synchronization

Action	New	Updated	Renamed	Deleted
Synchronize	copy both ways	copy both ways	repeat both ways	repeat both ways
Echo	copy left to right	copy left to right	repeat left on right	repeat left on right
Subscribe	-	copy right to left if already there	-	-
Contribute	copy left to right	copy left to right	repeat left to right	-
Combine	copy both ways	copy both ways	-	-

...IMHO (Talk) 06:08, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Assuming you "speak" n languages you might be able to keep a small number of articles in sync across that group, with collaborations across a larger group. But to some extent the language barriers stop POV warriors going across the whole set of projects. Having said that, both commons and interwiki links make it easier. Rich Farmbrough 08:59 14 June 2006 (GMT).

P.S. They are not "local" versions, although they will show bias towards there language group's locality, they are language versions. Rich Farmbrough 09:00 14 June 2006 (GMT).

I don't think you fully grasp the magnitude of your proposal. There are 229 Wikipedias; the English Wikipedia contains over a million articles. To keep it in sync with all others over the scale of a month, you would need to translate at least a hundred million articles per month. That's something like six orders of magnitude above the level of being remotely practical. Even syncing with one Wikipedia, such as German or Simple, would require hundreds of thousands of translations a month. Where are you going to get the translators? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:08, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I suggest we use genetic engineering to create and breed a race of monkeys specially designed for translation. We then put them all inside a dark, cold room in Florida and force them to translate 22 hours a day with electric whips. Mmmm, burning monkey. Deco 10:38, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

On a less negative note, its worth mentioning the existence of Wikipedia:Translation into English. If you notice an article where it looks like an international version has more information than the English one, then placing a translation request can help in getting the English article improved. And as you'll see from the interwiki links, many of the other language projects have a similar translation request pages for translations in the other direction.

In the past I've had good success with translation requests, encouraging Marginated tortoise to be translated from the German article and Artemisia Gentileschi to be translated from the Italian. -- Solipsist 21:28, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Question about external links

Yes, I read the page about ext. links, and my question was not answered there. My question: I originally placed a ton of ext. links to videos on the internet in the Brokeback Mountain parodies article. They have been removed, the remover arguing that my links violate the rule that says 'Wikipedia is not an Internet directory.' I understand that, and I've read all the rules on it- I understand that, whenever possible, Wikipedia should only link internally. However, in the case of these videos, that is impossible; and furthermore, I absolutely believe that this data- a brief descrip. of each vid, with a link to each one- is absolutely relevant to the article and worthy of Wikipedia. Here's a link to the page as it looked previously when my links were still in it: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brokeback_Mountain_parodies&oldid=55259986 . Let me know what your consensus is.

And, if indeed you do decide that such linkage is improper, my other article, re-cut trailers, will have to be changed as well. Andrewdt85 18:23, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

• A half-dozen links is usually appropriate; any more than that has a tendency to raise eyebrows. --Folajimi 18:28, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Without bothering to take tpo much time and look at each of these links, I'll just quickly ask instead if there is a webpage out there (other than wikipedia) that gives a listing of these parodies? If so then you can exclude all of those ones listed and just link to that page instead. Alternatively, another alternative is to create yet another seperate page in wikipedia that is a listing of these links. And then link to that in the main article. Which makes the main article appear cleaner. Also you could try breaking up the links into sections acording to type if that is at all possible. Again it will appear neater if it has some organiisation like that, rather than one big jumbled up heap of links. So think about these ideas and try applying whatever mix of them you feel will work best in your case. Mathmo 18:29, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

"I'll just quickly ask instead if there is a webpage out there (other than wikipedia) that gives a listing of these parodies?" - yes, there is a page that lists all the Brokeback ones- well, all but a few. Still though, I haven't heard any good reasons yet why my data can't stay on the page. Andrewdt85 20:30, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

X massacre vs. X Massacre

Currently there is no policy on capitalising of "massacre" in article names (see google). I think there should be one. I don't see how one article can have capital M, and the other lower-letter m. Now, my question is, is there a right solution and a wrong solution, or are both solutions correct, and we should conduct a vote? --Dijxtra 13:35, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

From a practical point of view, some 3/4 or more of articles have lowercase "m", so (unless there are prevailing arguments for the opposite), it would be far easier to move uppercase ones. I'm far from an expert on English orthography, but I don't see why would uppercase be justified—most of those names were given "ad hoc" and/or "post-festum". And further, when in doubt, there's WP:NC#Lowercase_second_and_subsequent_words. Duja 15:09, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Something like the Boston Massacre probably deserves capitals, as it refers to a specific event bearing that name, not just a massacre which occurred in Boston. Generally speaking, if you can't capitalize it, I think you should rename it, because "massacre" isn't a very neutral word if it isn't part of the name. Deco 21:48, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

For comparison, something that would not have capitals would be Watergate scandal, because that's not the "official name" of the scandal, it's just a scandal involving/called Watergate. Deco 21:50, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Underage users

Do we have any policy on underage users? I mean, I know we allow them but it concerns me to see users who are 11 or 12 and list their age, gender, and full name on the Wikipedia. Do we have a page we could direct these users to in order to point out why it may not be a good idea? I'm also concerned that some categories make it perhaps easier than it should be to track down underage users. Please note that I'm not saying we should ban these users; many of them contribute quite productively to the Wikipedia. --Yamla 23:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so.Geni 00:07, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I would just drop a friendly note on their talk page concerning privacy and let them make the decision. They'll pay more attention to a friendly personal note than a boilerplate template pointing to a random page. Many of these users have prior Internet experience though, despite their age, and know what they're doing. Deco 00:30, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I might guess its possible they're giving support to young editors - but I would definately drop a note to those doing things like that, if someone hasn't already. Fresheneesz 01:03, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

This discussion has come up a great number of times, but in the context of protecting Wikipedia from them. Werdna (talk) 01:13, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

While it is certainly true that teenagers in general seem to commit rather a lot of vandalism (I am forever reverting it), I find that a number of younger editors also produce some very high-quality edits. They tend not to understand copyright and fair-use but as far as general edits go, there's often some good stuff. Deco's comment about hand-writing a friendly note is a good idea and probably right on the mark. --Yamla 02:07, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

We also have several teenaged admins, and even a former arbcom member (User:Grunt). User:Zoe|^(talk) 16:21, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

And at least on 'crat who's younger than I am (I'm 15). Will (message me!) 21:19, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

wikipedia is one of the few places where those in their early 20s feel old.Geni 15:29, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Underage is in mind, not in birth. Well-bred people talking politics, sports and sometimes only religion show their age and nothing can be done. --DLL 23:18, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Doubled stub tags

I am forever seeing articles with more than one stub tag affixed to them (usually two). I am wondering if perhaps this practice should stop, because they look terribly awkward and disorganised stacked one atop the other. My question, then, is twofold:

• (a) should we allow more than one stub tag on an article, and
• (b) if so, should we prohibit redundant ones (where one tag is a subset of another, eg. one for a politician stub and one for an Iranian politican stub)? Falcon 20:15, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Same as categories, the case is not rare, of a national politician that was involved in WWII, or a place related to historical events ... For subsets, it would be easier to ban them (just try to see if there is ordering enough in stubs to find subsets). --DLL 23:13, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

While I understand your frustration, it is helpful to have multiple stub tags on entries. As the entry is improved, those tags can be removed, and it makes it easier to find appropriate/relevant categories for the entry. Folajimi 14:41, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

The best ever stub is this revision of Ambrosius Stub. Kusma (討論) 15:05, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Excellent example, Kusma! I'm suprised that it even passed for a stub.

However, I do wonder why the other categories are left out of the current revision... --Folajimi 15:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

There used to be a general feeling in the stub-sorting community that use of multiple stubs (say over two) was a no-no. I don't know if that sentiment has changed, but I don't agree with it in any case. Stub template addition should be treated in the same way that categorization is ... you use as many stub categories as you need. Note that stub categories do not replace standard categories - if you find a stub that lacks a standard category (i.e. a category other than the stub categories it finds itself in as a result of bearing stub templates), add appropriate standard categories. There are two reasons to do this. First, standard categories are often more specific than stub categories. Second, the standard categories should be persistant and their presence will allow removal of stub templates without the removing editor having to simultaneously recategorize the article. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 09:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I can see a few arguments to support either side, here. It could clutter up things, I suppose, both for stub categories and the article itself. But, I think it's very probably worth it -- since the whole point of a stub is to be expanded, I'm not sure if it would be an entirely bad idea to offer more than one route for expansion. Granted, past a certain point it gets excessive, but I'm not sure where that point would be. If a particular combination of stubs comes up pretty frequently, it seems an argument to consider creating a new stub type. Luna Santin 10:09, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Would this be canvassing?

I am planning on filing an RfC against a user and was thinking about going back through their edit history and contacting users (most likely through email) whose talk pages he has edited to ask them to contribute to the RfC. Would this be considered canvassing against Wikipedia policy? I'm perfectly willing to contact ALL such users without regard for the details of their interaction if that makes any difference. Ideogram 21:33, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

• The following is an excerpt from WP:RFC:

"A user-conduct RfC informs the community of a dispute between editors and invites comments from the community."

The act of issuing an RfC in and of itself is a sufficient site-wide announcement. Attempts to contact "allies" to your cause may be perceived as "campaigning", or an underhanded attempt at ballot-stuffing. Either way, your actions may be deemed excessive... --Folajimi 02:17, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I Don't think it is uncommon for, say 2 or 3 editors of a common view about an editor to communicate via email and thereby, more or less at the same time, create an RfC. The one brought against me, User:ChrisO posted that he had created an RfC on the several editors Discussion pages whom he felt was sympathetic to "his" point of view. Like, prepare the RfC and prepare the standard post that will go on several "sympathetic" editor's discussion pages. Post the RfC, go down the list of pre-prepared "sympathetic" editors and post the same notice to all of their discussion pages. Efficient, and it isn't quite canvassing because those editors are of course, interested parties. Terryeo 05:28, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest you don't; it is likely to provoke at least one of the users you contact into considering that you are unduly canvassing. While it is certainly true that often RfC don't generate massive interest, attempting to stir up interested parties is, currently, heavily frowned upon. It's a delicate balence. JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:33, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Direct to video films

Is there any sort of notability policy on direct-to-video films? Should they have a different notability from those that actually show in theaters, or does it matter? I'm specifically referring to Chubby Killer, which, according to imdb, is direct-to-video. User:Zoe|^(talk) 23:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Notability. Currently, we don't seem to have guidelines for films at all, just fiction in general. Deco 23:51, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

There has to be some kind of guideline, since we can't have every student film in the world on here. A $15k budget, no notable actors, no notable director, having an article notwithstanding (and could probably be AfD'd), and according to the IMDB it's not even out yet? Yikes. We need a film answer to WP:MUSIC, which has served us quite well. --Golbez 23:53, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:MUSIC isn't *that* great, it's got a whole pile of flaws that need to be addressed. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:00, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't know if there's anything set in stone, but ones that are distrubuted by major houses should be fine, as Chubby killer is distributed via Lion's Gate. That should be worth something. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:00, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Remember that Wikipedia is not paper, and although we might think its ridiculous to have "every student film in the world on here", we might be surprised to find out that wikipedia can handle that sort of load. Fresheneesz 07:34, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Point of Information: Vote hawking or pawning

Are there any rules regarding the bartering [or selling] of votes on AfDs, RfAs, etc? How about guidelines? --Folajimi 03:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• I don't know of any precisely on point, though the observation that Wikipedia is not a democracy is clearly relevant. We function through discussion and the building of concensus and for that reason, I am sure that admins will agree that the buying/selling/bartering of "votes" is not appropriate. Dragons flight 04:21, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Generally speaking, any type of vote coercion would be strongly frowned upon and likely justification for administrative action if repeated. I can't cite the relevant policy, but you might ask on Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion. Don't panic too much though - if it comes out that such coercion occurred, just note it on the nomination page and the closing admin should take it into account. Deco 04:23, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the constructive feedback. My greatest concern is relating to those who are trying to pull a Duke Cunningham with their votes. Should such incidents be addressed in isolation, or is it more expedient to have a notice included in the appropriate templates? At least it will not be said that the project failed to acknowledge the appearance of impropriety relating to such conduct. --Folajimi 13:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Rules have long since been established in the real world to deal with such activities as conducting a meeting or voting on an issue. Yet the Wikipedia does not seem to want to embrace these solutions for one reason or another as if these problems might somehow be new. Ask yourself how the bartering of votes would be handled in the real world. The answer should be not different when asked about the Wikipedia. Yet it seems that as with many, many other issues the policies that are followed on the Wikipedia and the policies that are followed in the real world do not always jive. Perhaps the Wikipedia needs to look seriously at its system of governance and consider ideas that exist in the real world like parliamentary procedure and the like. Otherwise I fear the Wikipedia may be in for some very serious trouble ahead. ...IMHO (Talk) 05:12, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• Personally, I am disgusted with politics and governance as it is implemented in the "real world", and I shudder to think that this project would adopt parliamentary procedures. I can't speak for anyone else, but where I'm from, you'd be hard pressed to find a more odious lot than those who run for office. Wikipedia may be in need of reform, but the idea that this project will look to the 'Politician's Playbook' for how to deal with the bartering would be asking "for some very serious trouble ahead." --Folajimi 14:39, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The point that is being made here is not that parlimentary procedure is best but rather that many of the issues of governance like the selling of votes have long since been addressed in law in the real world. Why rehash all of this stuff for no reason? ...IMHO (Talk) 16:45, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• The "real world" has all kinds of approaches to governance and meetings besides voting and "parliamentary procedure". Many organizations run on a consensus basis--a far truer form of consensus that Wikipedia, in fact, which rarely lives up to its advertised values in this regard--and active facilitation as a meeting model. We should be moving *toward* a true consensus model, not away from it in the form of vote-counting, campaigning, parties and all the other ills that your "real world" approaches bring. · rodii · 15:28, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree that the Wkipedia offers the potential to explore but not to the extent that it rejects any accomplishment achieved in the past in the real world on the grounds of other ills. I am merely saying you are failing to acknowledge that there is a baby in the real world bath tub which you should not throw it out with the proverbial bath water. Laws against vote fraud are quite common in the real world and should be quite common in the Wikipedia. ...IMHO (Talk) 16:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. · rodii · 16:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• I'm new here and it's possible that I've misunderstood the issue at hand, but I had the (strong) impression that our 'votes' are not really votes in the RL (Real Life) use of the word, since they are not intended to be binding. Rather, they represent an expression of opinion designed to help build concensus on a topic. When a decision is finally made, the 'votes' are taken into consideration, but they are not the sole deciding factor in making that decision. From what I've seen, this works out relatively well for the most part. No, it's not perfect, but no system is. One of the major differences between WP and RL is that in comparison to an on-line community like ours, most nations are actually rather small and quite homogenous. I'm not sure it's reasonably possible, or even desireable, to apply 'parlimentary procedure' to a community this large and diverse. These are just my impressions based on a relatively short period of observation; YMMV. Doc Tropics 20:39, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

impression

After extensive discussion on a topic and pursuing reasonable alternative solutions without success and having looked at the self posted credentials of some of those in opposition I am now left with the impression the Wikipedia is nothing more than a glorified grade, middle and high school teacher/student endeavor which has been exposed to the public without regard that the rules which the public are obligated to follow and the rules which students and teachers are obligated to follow are vastly different. For example: in the real world or public world it is perfectly legal to accuse anyone of anything without being in danger of committing an act of slander or libel so long as the accusation is true whereas in the Wikipedia any accusation is regarded in the same manner as would be talking back to the teacher in the school environment. What is truly disturbing about this is the effect on the content of some articles. It appears that some articles are being guarded by teachers from editing so that they might use them as a special online resource for their own students rather than permitting any edit that is not in line with their particular usage of the article. For instance: if a teacher wants to refer his students to a certain topic so that he can assign a task of say writing a basic computer program to perform the computation of the mathematical formula the article relates then he will naturally be opposed to anyone including such code in the article or on any other page or in an article of its own. The absence of a speller function tends to uphold this idea. I certainly hope that this is not the true nature of the Wikipedia and that conveyance of knowledge and truth is its ultimate goal rather than it’s serving as merely an online classroom aid for teachers and students in difference to the rules we must abide by in the real world. ...IMHO (Talk) 04:47, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

If a teacher wanted to reference a stable article for the purpose of a class, they would simply use a permalink to the desired version - there's no need to "guard" an article. Also, it seems clear that you're referring to some specific conflict and it'd be helpful if you could link it and tell us more about it instead of speaking in vague generalities. If you feel intimidated by a protective user, just remember that nobody on Wikipedia carries authority over content. Deco 06:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Again as in the past my concern is not so much for specific cases but rather for policy in general. Your comment assumes that a teacher would know about a permalink and their acknowledgement that they do not have authority over content. Although there is a specific case which relates to this discussion I am reluctant to share it with you since my experience has been that you likewise reject computational examples and data because they apparently clutter up a pristine presentation based solely upon mathematical notation although you have embraced publication of computer code elsewhere. Suffice it to say that I am highly disappointed in the Wikipedia for failing to require that articles include real world examples to the detriment of all users. I have the knowledge. My only concern is that others may have the knowledge as well. ...IMHO (Talk) 07:38, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I understand the need for a new policy; if a user is interfering with your ability to contribute Wikipedia, you can always seek out one of a many options for dispute resolution. You could even offer them a permalink; if they're unaware of the option, we can always let them in on the secret. If they ignore an article's talk page or just don't know it's there, placing a message on their user talk page will give them that orange box on their next pageview. Could any of those options potentially solve your problem(s)? Regards, Luna Santin 09:45, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

For one thing the user appears to be stalking me - showing up on every page I edit in regard to this problem (as disquised below). The issue is that this user has made the false declaration that a process which the article is about continues ad infintium for its primary real world application when in fact it is terminal. This indicates the need for clarification to be included in the article which the user refuses to allow. ...IMHO (Talk) 15:43, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

If another user is harassing you, it would make perfect sense to ask for some sort of intervention. If there's a serious content dispute, it makes perfect sense to cite credible sources and ask the other user to do the same; if they refuse to provide a citation and persist in edit warring and/or harassing you, there's always dispute resolution. Honestly, unless you're more specific, I'm not sure what else I can offer you here. Luna Santin 05:48, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

FYI see [8] and related discussions/articles. 69.9.30.178 11:29, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Could you provide an example of a 'talking back to the teacher' type of problem? I've found that we generally have no problem with accusing article subjects of things, providing there is some sort of citation of sources. With respect to accuastions aimed at other editors, admins on Wikipedia are generally willing to intervene—again, as long as the accusations are clearly explained (diffs are very useful here) and civil. General complaints about 'some articles' aren't helpful, as such complaints don't indicate where the problem lies.

Please be aware that in general, Wikipedia is not a how-to guide or course textbook and it's not surprising that computer code, detailed methods and protocols, and classroom-type example problems are trimmed. (...With the exception of places where code is directly relevant, as in articles like bubble sort. Even then, we would be better off having an animation or flow chart rather than a lump of code.) That type of writing is more appropriate to our sister project, Wikibooks. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes I can give you an example. When someone is loosing an arguement over an issue they start accusing the other person of personal attack when in fact all the other user has done is to have pointed out the truth and called attention to the other person's error. Its very similar to a classroom dicussion situation in which the teacher is wrong (if that were even possible) and the attempt is made to point this out and the teacher then defends his or her position not by addressing the issue but by accussing the student of talking back to the teacher and disrupting the discussion. There is an actual and more specific example but I refrain at this point from disclosing same. ...IMHO (Talk) 16:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Once again, in the absence of specific cases, there really isn't anything that can be done to remedy the situation. I will note that regardless of whether you're on the 'right' or 'wrong' side of an argument – and in general, often the participants in such a debate draw very different conclusions about who is 'winning' or 'losing' – it is imperative that the participants remain civil and refrain from personal attacks. Hostile editing tactics make it more difficult to edit with others in the future, and can turn off good editors from contributing. Incivility also turns discussions about facts and content into arguments based on personal animosity. If someone makes a baseless accusation of personal attack, you're usually best to ignore it—admins arent going to block you for an unsubstantiated claim. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

In this situation the need for an example and computer code could possibly be eliminated if the other user were to acknowledge that the mathematics, while capable of being applied using either decimal or integer variables, in the case of its primary real world application requires the use of integer variables only. Instead they insist the primary application continues ad infintium rather than being a terminal or a finite process due to their apparent misunderstanding of the process or possibly the entire concept. Consequently the computer code and data are needed in order to clarify this point for other users. Bottom line is that the process will in fact eventually terminate for any finite size sample since atoms are not divisible by the process and decimal numbers do not represent their numbers accurately where only integer variables do. ...IMHO (Talk) 16:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

If you're talking about half-life and you're adding material to bolster your argument, perhaps you should place the material on the talk page of the article. Discuss your interpretation and reasoning there. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Your extreme reluctance to be specific creates a very strong impression that you are generalising from a small amount of evidence. I don't recognise the alleged problem at all. Honbicot 02:52, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

IMHO refers to the conflict on the half-life article, though he won't state it directly. There's an ongoing dispute about adding a particularly long table about the various periods of decay, or whatever the proper term is since it escapes me at the moment, of a specific element (C-14). IMHO is trying to show that the process will eventually end with this table. Others have told him that the process could theorhetically continue indefinitely. That's the jist of it. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 03:06, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

What stops me from just giving myself a barnstar?

Hi,

I was just wondering, suppose I go to someone's page with a barnstar, and I copy the code,and put in on my page. I do change the name into evilbu of course.

Who will stop me?

And will the person who supposedly gave it to me ever find out?

Thanks,

Evilbu 20:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, personally, my own conscience would prevent me from doing that. ^_^ -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:58, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, a peak at the page history of your userpage would reveal who really awarded the barnstar; giving yourself one would be considered silly. You might try and create a sockpuppet, but barnstars awarded by users who otherwise seldom edit, are also considered silly.

OTOH, I'm not aware of any rules and regulations concerning the awarding of barnstars; nor are there any rules granting special priveleges based on the number of barnstars. The issue might come up in an RfA, I suppose; but attempting to award yourself a barnstar (and getting caught) would hurt you far more than not having any.

--EngineerScotty 21:00, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Barnstars are nice things given to make people happy. They have no requirements and no effect. You can add your own if you want, but it's like buying yourself a Christmas card. Deco 21:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Although giving yourself one as described here -- from a third party -- is basically the same as forging someone else's signature, which is severely frowned upon. If you want to give yourself a barnstar, give it to yourself from yourself! —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 21:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Bunchofgrapes, did you know you just gave me a barnstar?

Just kidding you, but seriously one could really exploit this. Okay, so maybe giving yourself a barnstar attracts attention. But what about double account people??

I did not do it, I admit I tried it and made a preview, but I didn't submit.

Evilbu 21:08, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I have a feeling I'd hear about it pretty quickly, actually :-) As far as double accounts -- sockpuppets -- go, that's a harder problem, but there are a lot worse things a sockpuppet can do than award barnstars. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 21:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

It's true, you can forge barnstars for yourself. A little known fact is that your Wikipedia salary increases with the number of barnstars you have. Perhaps that explains why we're a bit casual about it.  :) Wikibofh_(talk) 21:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, my salary literally tripled the day I got a barnstar. Deco 21:35, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

To answer the question in the heading: nothing. See here, for instance: [9]. --Dijxtra 21:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Non-notability guideline

There is no policy or guideline that dictates anything about non-notaility - although there is that essay. Me and another person have co-written a proposed guideline Wikipedia:Non-notability, and I was hoping people could give us input, or help embellish the page. Thanks! Fresheneesz 07:41, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Why not just improve Wikipedia:Notability? Just zis Guy you know? 22:36, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Freshneesz I have a set of guidelines for notability in fiction. You want to come over and start a discussion Wikipedia:Notability (fiction). jbolden1517^Talk 07:05, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Why not? Well because its an essay - not a guideline. I don't want to cramp anyones style over there at the essay. I think my guideline proposal steps off in a very different direction than the essay does.

Perhaps I'll stop by notability in fiction. Fresheneesz 07:30, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

While the specifics of Wikipedia:Notability are not policy, that essay and citations to it on AfD and elsewhere stem from Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which is fundamental, and Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, which is policy. —Centrx→talk • 07:49, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

This is true, but the purpose of the guideline we have made is very different from the essay. I suppose I should have said that right off the bat - I'm in an odd mood this evening. Fresheneesz 08:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

But those all really beg the question. Given an article's subject X how am I to determine if the person notable or not? The discussion on AFD look like "X is notable" "X is not notable" and then for all but the most easy cases it just comes down to who shows up. We might as well flip a coin. What I think would make sense would be to write up some guidelines and try and build real criteria for notability. For example an article in Benet's means that a fictional character is notable. jbolden1517^Talk 12:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think that has been tried before (sorry I don't have a link tho). However, any attempt to qualify "notability" will either use pre-existing guidelines or policies, *or* it will draw some arbitrary subjective line. The guidline that me and Ephilei wrote suggests using guidelines and policies directly, rather than to redefine notability. The proposal focuses on suggestions on how to deal with "non-notable" articles that might have various problems. For example, for small articles, it proposes merging with main articles - as long as the main ones don't get too big. Fresheneesz 21:41, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Poetry quotations

The guidelines on copyright don't mention poetry -- and certainly don't make it clear to me how much if any of a poem that is under current copyright I may include in an article. I would like to include some of a poem by Ko Chung Soo to illustrate his style, etc., but I don't know what is allowed. I have seen entire short poems cited in journals and reviews presumably with-out getting permission (certainly with-out indicating it), so? Kdammers 09:10, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Lyrics and poetry and Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources talk about this and include some examples. Kotepho 09:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I suggest quoting a short portion, or several short portions that are not in order and/or contiguous. There is some leeway for quotes in reviews, but I don't think quoting the whole poem is allowed, even in a review. We remove complete song lyrics and long quotations of copyrighted text from articles, or delete the page if that's the only thing on it, and I think the same would be done for poems. I don't know about extremely short poems, but I would try to avoid quoting all of them, as well. See this, too. -- Kjkolb 09:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Why do some articles use italics in the title?

Discussion moved to Wikipedia:Manual of Style. bobblewik 14:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Clarification of policy on Fair Use with regard to portals

Wikipedians in WikiProject Stargate and its associated Stargate Portal have recently been discussing the applicability of Point 9 of Wikipedia's Fair Use policy as it pertains to portals. To those unfamiliar with it, it states:

Fair use images should be used only in the article namespace.

As anyone can see, this poses a problem with regard to portals. It makes sense for templates, userpages, and even talk pages, but Portals are something different. User:Tango made this excellent argument about fair use on portals on the Stargate portal talk page:

"[Point 9] was probably written before Portals existed. A portal is part of the encyclopedia, it's not like the user space or the wikipedia space that are just there for behind the scenes stuff, portals are actually meant to be used by readers. I think fair use images [should be] ok here (assuming their use really is fair - make sure you give a rationale that makes sense for a portal, don't just copy it from the article)."

I think that, considering the purpose of portals, fair use images should be permissible in portals under rules similar to those governing pages in the article namespace. If the response is favorable, I'll draft it as an amendment to Point 9. Lockesdonkey 21:11, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

• I doubt that argument will fly; portals are useless without the article namespace. --Folajimi 21:27, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

What's your point? Of course portals don't have any meaning without associated articles, that doesn't stop the use of images on them being fair. --Tango 00:39, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The "article space" is an abstraction; the point alluded to encompasses all encyclopaedic content. Just because the content is in a so-called "portal space" falls short of what might be considered a suitable argument for exemption. Folajimi 12:55, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• In my opinion, the stargate wikiproject should not exist on this wikipedia. It suggests a fictional-perspective-centric perspective on all of the topics it would cover, and otherwise seems to encourage things that would be far more suited to a project-specific wiki (perhaps a stargate version of memory alpha?). In any case, fair use should not extend to portals merely for cosmetic purposes, and given what portals are, no other purposes seem valid. Someone should MfD the Wikiproject Stargate page too.. --Improv 21:44, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

• Could you clarify? You said you objected to the "fictional-perspective-centric perspective"? Isn't this something that could be solved with writing about, for example, the popularity (according to polls and other measures), and mentioning what critics have said (linking to the reviews)? Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 22:38, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

You say it suggests a particular perspective on articles it would cover. How can you know what perspective future articles will be written from? --Tango 00:39, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• First of all, if you have a problem with the way the stargate project is doing things then tell us and we will fix it. But we have a right to exist, as a perfectly lagitamate wikiproject. That however, is not the issue. The fact is that Tons of portals have pictures on them, in fact, The main page is not the article namespace but it has tons of pictures! Most portals, along with the main page have sections for featured pictures. Tons of user pages and talk pages also have pictures on them. Everybody is completely disregauding this policy already. It's a stupid policy, that everyone, including the admins are completely ignoring. (There's a pic on Jimbo Whales's userpage). I vote to Strongly, Boldy, and imidiately Delete Point 9 of the fair use policy so that the wikipedia community aren't a bunch of hypocrites. Tobyk777 22:57, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Much though I dislike seeming to undermine my own proposal, I must clarify:

1. Not all pics are fair-use.
2. My proposal does not call for the removal of Point 9; rather it calls for its rewording; on that point, my proposed rewording is:

'Fair use images should only be used in the article and portal namespaces. Lockesdonkey 23:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Under which conditions do you think the use of copyrighted images in portal space qualifies as fair use? Kusma (討論) 23:29, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

A picture within a selected article is fair use for the same reason it's fair use in the article itself. A selected picture could be fair use, especially on an art related portal (having a Picasso painting on a Picasso portal is almost certainly fair use, at least at a low res). --Tango 00:39, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I suggest the policy be made more vague. Eg. "Note that the use of copyrighted images for decoration is not generally considered fair, which includes a lot of images outside the article namespace." --Tango 00:39, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The use of copyrighted images for decoration is considered not fair in all namespaces, including article space. Kusma (討論) 00:55, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

What reliable source says decoration is never fair use? Rjensen 01:36, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

See fair use and Wikipedia:Fair use. A use might meet the burden of fair use and be decorative, for example an attractive picture that also serves to identify the subject under discussion; however, a use that is purely decorative and serves no other transformative or informative purpose will not meet the requirements of fair use. Dragons flight 01:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Per Dragons flight—while decoration may fall under permissible 'fair use' under very narrow circumstances in copyright law, it is forbidden by our own policy. That policy is acknowledged to be more strict that the bare minimum requirements of law in some circumstances. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:53, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

What do you suggest for Portal:Pokémon, which has no images whatsoever. The portal is extremely bland with no images. It would be "nice", for it to use just one image in the introduction to give the portal some identity. All other portals have some "iconic" image. For example, see Portal:Geography, which with one glance you see the globe and might think "geography" before even reading a word on the page. I too would like to err on side of caution with fair use. But, do you think one image on Portal:Pokémon falls within fair use? -Aude (talk | contribs) 02:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• Fair use is not something we negotiate on -- it's a legal matter. "Just one to make it pretty" isn't a line of reasoning that makes one bit of difference to making us compliant with the law or reasonable safeguards to keep us within it. --Improv 02:23, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Lockesdonkey,
Could you please give us a sample of what type of images to which you are referring, and why you feel that they should be allowed in Portals? What is needed to be known is what the context of the image use would be. I am an astriaportaphile myself, so would love to see the Stargate Portal look better with a good image or two, but let's not go to crazy, okay?
&#151;Lady Aleena talk/contribs 03:08, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• It seems to me there isn't really an "article" namespace. "Article space" is sort of imprecise shorthand for a vague concept. There's a main namespace, where most of the things we call "articles" live, but some things that really count as an article (for example, as someone pointed out above, the main page) are in other namespaces. The real point that needs to be conveyed is that fair use images are only appropriate for pages we think of as articles (defined somehow, and including some non-main namespace things, including portals). The distinction is between the "backstage" areas (talk, user, wikipedia, template, etc. namespaces) that are there to facilitate the work of the encyclopedia, and the "front" areas the public consumes (main, portal, and various other things). To me that makes more sense than getting legalistic about the fact that portal: technically isn't main:.

That said, it feels like concentrating too much on whether a page looks "bland" or not is losing the plot a little bit. The content is what matters. But if a fair use image can provide information, I don't see that the distinction between portals and "articles" should be a distinguishing factor. · rodii · 03:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I think visual appearances are very important. We want to attact people to WP with beautiful articles, not send them away with ugly ones. Someone said above that this is a matter of law. That's wrong. I don't think any countries copyright laws would allow us to use a pic in one part of a website but disallow us to use it in another. If you have permission to use a picture legaly, then use it whereever you want. If you put it on a non-article page that doesn't make it ilegal. This isn't about law, this discussion is about a policy that doesn't make sense. Pictures should be allowed to be used everywhere. (And they already are). Tobyk777 06:06, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

This discussion isn't about pictures that we have permission to use; it's about pictures that we are using without permission but under the aegis of 'fair use'. This is a much more limited concept than many editors on Wikipedia realize. From a legal standpoint, 'fair use' is very heavily dependent on specific usage and context. Wikipedia has many thousands of images which we are using under one fair use rationale or another, and which we may only use under a limited set of circumstances and on a limited number of pages.

Meanwhile, our own internal fair use policy (as distinct from the provisions of copyright law) is – under some circumstances – even more restrictive and absolute than the law's requirements. This added restrictiveness often is to make application of the policy simpler and more uniform, as most editors are not intellectual property lawyers (and don't wish to become them). TenOfAllTrades(talk) 08:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

It also helps to preserve one of the two primary goals of the project, that we be composed of Free Content. Our allowance of fair use exists simply because one can't make a proper encyclopedia without sometimes quoting a contemporary work or using an historical image. We can, however, make a proper encyclopedia without maximally pretty pop-culture portals. I think some of these folks are starting to mistake Wikipedia for a fan site. :( --Gmaxwell 14:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

It should be noticed that the above claim that the policy on fair use being only in articles is factually inaccurate. I'm tired of chasing the people who claim this all over the Wiki, as it's simply not true. --Gmaxwell 14:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Point 9 of the Fair Use policy says "Fair use images should be used only in the article namespace" (emphasis original) and is official policy. Can you elucidate why you think that doesn't mean what it seems to? I think I'm on your side in principle, but your claim sure confuses me. · rodii ·, sometime yesterday (just noticed I forgot to sign, sorry)

Fair use criteria consensus discussion started

After quite a few months, I have kicked off Wikipedia:Fair use criteria/Amendment/Consensus. It is not a vote, but will give each editor the chance to support or oppose the amendment very clearly. I've got it going for a fortnight as obviously it needs to end some time, and there is a lack of guidance on how to amend policy. - Ta bu shi da yu 22:38, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Notable Family Member -- WP:AUTO, photo licensing, notability?

I was thinking about attempting to create one or two Wikipedia articles -- on my grandfather and grandmother, respectively. I believe they're notable because they were medical missionaries in China and India in the '40s and '50s, my grandfather being a doctor who was in China when the Communists took over (the whole family was, for a period, under house arrest), and my grandmother being not only there also offering medical care, but also a published author of books about their missionary experience and also several children's books. [Family scuttlebutt is that one of her books almost became a movie featuring Cary Grant as my grandpa. But as that's scuttlebutt, it wouldn't be making it into the article. ;-)]

I'm writing here to request some policy advice/clarification on three issues:

• First, a secondary opinion about their notability; sure, I think the above makes them quite notable, but before I start writing, I would like to get others' take on same. It's not precisely current history and she passed away before the Web really took blossom, so she doesn't have a large 'Net footprint, so I don't think they'd pass the "Google test," but I think the events as described are sufficiently notable for a person to have a Wikipedia article, especially with my grandmother's publication history.

As a suggestion, try embedding the material into another relevant article first. Then see if it would make sense to make a whole separate article about the person - is there enough verifiable material to work with? Are there books about them? At first glance, being a missionary and writing a book is not a particularly notable thing. Stevage

• Second, I know WP:AUTO forewarns against autobiography. As long as I'm being neutral in how I write the subject matter, and do not treat the article as if I own it, is there similar policy/guidelines against me writing this, as it's not autobiographical?

You should be ok. Stevage

Actually, WP:VAIN cautions against family member-written articles. · rodii · 17:53, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• Third, with regards to an article photograph, if I have a photograph taken by a family relative, but of which I have a copy, do I need to obtain clearance from said family relative to use it? Or by virtue of being family, am I good? Not sure how, in other words, I should handle the licensing of the photograph of a relative. — Mike • 15:39, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

That's really between you and your relative - you would effectively be claiming to represent them. Stevage

Specific thoughts from the notability guideline: The Wikipedia:Notability (people) guideline makes me think that my grandmother's work would qualify as she was a "[p]ublished author ... who received multiple independent reviews of or awards for their work." I'm not certain I can find the reviews or awards in question, but I could perhaps dig up specifics. As for my grandfather, I think his work in China and India would qualify as having "achieving renown or notoriety for their involvement in newsworthy events," but that might be to a lesser degree. Thoughts? — Mike • 15:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

You'd probably be best off either including them all in an existing article, or making one combined article for the lot of them. It doesn't sound like you have a lot of written material *about* them to work with. Stevage 16:34, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• I think you should examine your motives on this. Are they genuinely notable, or is it just important to you to pay "tribute" to them? Did your grandmother have a significant writing career outside these books? Was your grandfather "involved" in newsworthy events in a way that had an impact on those events, or just as an observer? Perhaps most importantly from a personal standpoint, if you write these articles and they get nominated for deletion on notability grounds, will you be able to keep your cool and not take it personally? That is a difficult thing to do. · rodii · 17:53, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, I appreciate all the advice, guys. I think I may try working on drafts in my userspace and, when they're really and truly ready (which might be a very long while, as I'd like to also use the preparation as a way of honing my reference-citing skills, etc. -- as a wikignomish editor, I've not done a lot of wholesale article creation), see if they'll fly in the mainspace. I know some of their life history encompasses rather significant and notable events -- opening and then staffing (and serving in) hospitals in China (pre-takeover) on my grandfather's part, dealing with house arrest when the Communists took over the country, and so on ... and my grandmother had a long career as an author, writing not only autobiographical books about her missionary work but also a large number of children's books, as well as some poetry and plays (all published works, just to be clear). I honestly don't think there'll be a problem with notability, given this, but I must admit that I don't have the facts of their notability fully at my command at the moment, leading me to sound right now as if I'm presenting a weak case. Worst-case scenario, if notability fails and the articles are AfDed, yes, I think I could live with it, as long as the AfD was made in good faith and achieved a community consensus of delete. — Mike • 18:25, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

No Virtual Majority

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_Virtual_Majority

Some people gathering around articles share the same POV. They are then able to create a "virtual" majority on wikipedia, disrespecting the viewpoint that is mainstream in the real world. ackoz 14:03, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Shall we understand that you submit a new policy proposal ? Also, think that plenty of mainstream viewpoints may still be POV and/or false. The criteria for an encyclopedia is definitely not mainstream, it is the state of the knowledge. Plenty of pleople may think that the earth is flat, that the world was created by way of speech, and may never have heard about atoms or quarks. --DLL 21:47, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

State of knowledge = scientific mainstream POV. ackoz 05:03, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, for the love of science. I'll be going far for consensus because consensus is not the only criterion. Here at WP we miss some very important points. There's two :

• Did not Diderot ... when he created his encyclopedia, use it to push personal research and POV, particularly against the mainstream religion and political powers. Encyclopedias are not everyday made by Diderots.
• Science shall soon admit that its well-validated methods are dying. "A butterfly sneezing here can produce a typhoon elsewhere". This is admitted as true - true and never reproductible (same conditions, same results) - meaning that truth tends towards approximate and statistical, almost empirical methods. Those methods which tradition and pseudo science use since God first sneezed. Here, we shall only be more inflexible against methods using jargon and credulity, but the flaw is there.

Back to your point : WP is an encyclopedia and sticks to mainstream science. The final voice for an article is not a straw poll or a partial "majority" of abject trolling geeks, it is a bunch of references to another encyclopedia or serious books or papers. Have no fear. --DLL 18:10, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Should I have included this link?

I just edited (rewrote, mostly) the article on the children's record Gossamer Wump. The spokesperson for EMI records (which bought out Capitol Records, the original issuer of the record) wrote me that the record has been reissued by EMI New Zealand, and sent me to a website where the record could be purchased. The website is NOT EMI New Zealand, but a private dealer (?) or perhaps an EMI affiliate who markets the record on the web.

I included the link in the article, because it came from an official source, and because I know that people who land on this article are most probably looking to obtain the record (just as, in fact, I had). On second thought, though, it seemed inappropriate to include what is essentially a plug for a commercial website in the pedia.

What say you all?

--Ravpapa 05:30, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I've been working recently on removing Amazon links from articles on books; it's generally inappropriate to link to one specific dealer IMO. Shimgray | talk | 09:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• I think we have a special link type using ISBN codes that leads to a page with automagic links to a number of vendors. I don't recall the syntax for it, but it's probably the most appropriate link of this type. --Improv 16:09, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
  • See Wikipedia:ISBN. You can either simply type ISBN 123456789 to produce ISBN 123456789 or use the {{ISBN}} template. Steve block Talk 08:26, 23 June 2006 (UTC)