Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new other than a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.

Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.

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Shame on you!

It's mindblowing that a girl Tukker shows more interest in US historical monuments than the inhabitants of the US. Isn't there at least ONE person in the expletive deleted county who CARES? While every article about US-towns drones on about how much everybody earnes, and what nationalities their great-granddads had, it's virtually impossible to find out anything about the actual HISTORY of these villages. Somebody must have founded them, something must have happened, ANYTHING, PLEASE!!! 85.113.253.229 (talk) 17:15, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Copied here from Talk:"S" Bridge II (Muskingum County, Ohio) Kleuske (talk) 17:45, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The 'droning' is because it was imported from census data and that is what census data collects. RJFJR (talk) 19:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

em.. why? what's the policy issue that needs discussing? WP:AMERICANWRITERSCONSCRIPTEDTOWRITEHISTORY ?

The article was robot-procuded, furbished with minimalroutine edits and a few rather pedantic ones and then got robo-copied into the dutch article, all based on a single record in a public register with minimal data. Perhaps the policy WP:ARTICLESSHOULDHAVESOMECONTENT or WP:WHYDONTAMERICANWRITERSWRITEHISTORYARTICLES or WP:ROBOTDATABASEXPORTSAREWORKSINPROGRESSBYDEFAULT until they get some real content. Kleuske (talk) 20:49, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

And if you think. Hey, wait a minute, that article ain't so bad, that's because i figured out what it was and wrote the article. Kleuske (talk) 20:53, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

If only we had some way of adding to that census data, to expand the articles by some kind of, I dunno, "editing" process. Postdlf (talk) 19:52, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, even if there was such a process, imagine if just anyone could utilise it. Imagine if even people not logged into the site could do so. If only... - jc37 20:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I know we could call it anyonecaneditapedia! --Cameron Scott (talk) 20:52, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Why wasn't it? Kleuske (talk) 20:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

All the article needs is a photo of the bronze plaque that says "On this site, in the twentieth century, nothing happened."LeadSongDog (talk) 22:52, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I know I am going to regret asking this and it will probably make me look stupid, but who is Tukker and why is she wikilinked to Twente? SpinningSpark 00:21, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Tukker means "person from Twente", I believe. My Dutch isn't up to ethnic slang, yet, so I'm not a WP:RS on the topic, but her IP address tends to confirm that theory.—Kww(talk) 00:47, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

nl:Tukker would seem to confirm that theory, but of course WP:SELF says that's not a WP:RS either.LeadSongDog (talk) 02:18, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I did not know appropriate sources were needed in a simple statement about ones own ethnic origins. Would you be satisfied with my birth certificate? Or would that just prove i was born there, and not my membership of this ethnic community? Besides, "Tukker" is an quite commonly understood dutch epithet for "person from Twente", so there's no "ethnic slang" there. Kleuske (talk) 11:05, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps my understanding of this issue is not nuanced enough, but it appears that Kleuske is making a point about how boring and uninformative stub articles are? However I doubt that is it because most editors recognize that is what stubs are like ... you know, just a stub of an article. Yet if an Ohio history enthusiast or bridge expert were to cast their creative hand on the article, I am sure it could be radically improved. Now that is not to say that everyone would find an article on the topic interesting (much like how my eyes glaze over when I run across one of the many Warhammer 40,000 or American football articles). So again I am back to what is the point here? --Kralizec! (talk) 02:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

See S bridges too. But seriously, wp is the biggest encyclopedia ever and growing faster than it ever has. Articles will flesh out in their own time. Don't panic.LeadSongDog (talk) 02:18, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I hope you're right, but given th comments about a plaque saying "nothing happened here in the 20th century" above, i'm not at all satisfied they will. And excuse me for lamenting US disinterest in US history, and in particular "small" US history. I'm not surpised stubs are, well, stubby, but i am dismayed at the number of stubs in this particular field. Kleuske (talk) 11:05, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). Mr.Z-man 03:40, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Meanwhile, that machine generated stuff is way better than something saying simply "Mineville is 10 miles west of Leadville." And googling US placenames results in page after page of bogus sites offing to find you hotels, jobs, restaurants, dates, and of course, the weather, in tiny hamlets in the middle of nowhere, so Wikipedia's entries on such places, while they need some work, are still a far cry better than nothing. -- Mwanner | Talk 16:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Once the new NRHP site is working, there should be more material available too.LeadSongDog (talk) 22:19, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to include template {{cent}} on every discussion page

refers to {{cent}}

I am concerned about the number of discussions regarding important WP policy matters, of which the vast majority of editors are unaware. Placing this template on ALL talkpages would be of enormous help in keeping users in touch with policy discussions and developments, enabling them to participate in debates of their choosing. Rotational (talk) 21:15, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

When you say "all talkpages", do you mean a more comprehensive collection of discussion forums, policy talkpages, and the like, or do you genuinely mean we should transclude this template on all five million talk pages on en.wiki? If the latter, strongly oppose: at that level of instrusion, we might as well put it on the main page. I exaggerate, but the point remains: such would be a ludicrous overreaction. I agree that this helpful template should be more widely deployed, but certainly not universally. Discression is the better part of valour. Happy‑melon 23:10, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

On every discussion page? No thanks. On a greater number of Wikipedia related pages? sure. Resolute 23:32, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

• Comment I would be very doubtful of its usefullness on every talk page. There are editors who are completely detached from the policy/admin side of Wiki by choice. To suddenly assume that 100% of editors want reminding 100% of the time of every new proposal would, I suggest, turn off a lot of single-use or 'part time' editors completely. Advertising proposals to the right crowd in a proper manner is far more appealing. doktorb _words^deeds 23:35, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I think this arose out of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Forcing Lead image, where Rotational expressed concern that only a handful of editors were contributing on an issue that affects all editors. I therefore guess Rotational meant "on all Talk pages relevant to WP:MOS or policies such as WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:RS, WP:N". I'd favour a mechanism that advertises all such debates, but allows users to turn off such notifications. Is that possible?--Philcha (talk) 23:41, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Some people want to jump on these issues as soon as they pop up, but then, these people often watchlist the relevant pages. You may find WP:Update useful; it only gives you updates to the 7 content policy pages and the general style guidelines (that was in there and I'm going to put it back in tomorrow) once a month, but hopefully that will be often enough so that you have a chance to push back against any changes you don't like. I know that on style guidelines pages, people are not generally in any hurry to declare issues closed, there's plenty of time to weigh in. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 04:47, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

• Every discussion page is impractical and likely unwanted. But I would definitely support a much wider set of pages. Should be on Wikipedia:Community portal for a start. CIreland (talk) 04:54, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

• I think it would be okay to transclude {{cent}} at the top of every talk page of every policy and guideline, about 300 pages. Althought that would be a big (and very noticeable) change, so more feedback should be gathered before actually doing it. --Pixelface (talk) 07:01, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a software developer, but I know that placing the template on every user's page is not only technically possible, but simple. If the user doesn't want to be kept informed of the important issues of the day, then it is again a simple matter for him to turn it off (see the "Funds appeal banner" which can be turned off permanently by accessing 'preferences/gadgets'). I don't think the template should be rammed down anyone's throat, but it should rather be seen as an obvious means of keeping in touch with developments, and to be turned off at the user's convenience. This touches on the far greater issue of being informed about discussions on ALL matters, and not just policy developments - in other words a bulletin board where the user chooses his areas of interest and doesn't clutter his screen with notices that fall outside those areas. This is not a pipe dream - it is actually possible. ciao Rotational (talk) 07:14, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

• Agree with Resolute. People are welcome to put {{cent}} on their user page, their user talk page, some more Wikipedia talk page, but everywhere? No. Stifle (talk) 11:01, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you wanna transclude Cent on talk pages, it could be done like this now since I changed the structure a bit so that we can transclude the list as its own template. ViperSnake151 16:04, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

This is spilling into the next thread, so here's a {{clear}} --Philcha (talk) 17:00, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, everywhere, with the option of removing it if you don't want to see it. The vast majority of editors don't know of the template's existence, so that the whole exercise is aimed at publicising the template, and if one doesn't like it, then remove it. And considering the amount of irrelevant clutter everyone puts on their user and talk pages, I honestly can't see how ViperSnake's streamlined version can possibly give offence - it's a bulletin board for gawds sakes, not a Mona Lisa. Rotational (talk) 18:28, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

• This should not go on article talk pages as it would be duplicative and irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The last thing we need is more clutter on talk pages distracting from the actual discussions. Eluchil404 (talk) 18:29, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
• Have you understood any of the above points? Rotational (talk) 07:25, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
• This is not a good idea. Transcluding it on Wikipedia Talk pages (there are plenty of those) is fine. Dropping it on user talk pages with the presumption that they care about date autoformatting or some crap is not fine. Protonk (talk) 16:58, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Protonk, I presume the issues you call "crap", are the issues you don't care about and which other editors could very well be passionate about - there's no accounting for taste. The whole point of this template is that it can be turned on or off at will. Those editors who want to keep their heads under the sand are free to do so - those that want to stay informed will benefit. Rotational (talk) 13:34, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• Some talk pages are really cluttered already: Talk:Rickrolling has 8 templates and a table of contents before reaching actual discussion (you have to scroll down!). Do you want to put more burden on that poor talk page? Raymie Humbert (TrackerTV) (receiver, archives) 01:23, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
• This template would not pertain to the content of the overwhelming majority of articles for which the talk pages are designed; therefore, I am against putting it on every talk page. kilbad (talk) 04:29, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I support putting it on a wider variety of project talk pages, but putting this on every single talk page on the largest website in existence? No thankyou--Patton123 18:27, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist might be a nice place to put it. — Werdna • talk 07:03, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Too many guidelines and policies?

A contributor to #Proposal_to_include_template_.7B.7Bcent.7D.7D_on_every__discussion_page estimates that there about 300 pages of guidelines and policies. At Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Guideline-by-guideline citation of sources an experienced editor wrote "I do not know the complete set of guidelines to which an article is subject." I suggest we list somewhere all the guidelines and policies and then see what we can do to prune them. It looks as if it's now easier to become an expert in an academic subject than to become an expert on WP guidelines and policies. --Philcha (talk) 09:52, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

110% support. For a community that is supposedly not rule-based, we have an incredible amount of stuff in this category, much of it mutually contradictory, most of it unknown to most editors. Needs pruning with a particularly large pair of shears.--Kotniski (talk) 11:35, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is big. Most guidelines are about articles in a specific field. --Apoc2400 (talk) 11:59, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Apoc2400, does "Most guidelines are about articles in a specific field" mean that there are much more than 300 in total, or that most of the 300 are subject-specific?

Either way, is there an easy way to help editors to find them? For example by assigning them to categories and then lining to the categories wherever relevant? In the case of field-specific guidlines, I'd suggest the categories should be about as broad as the those used at WP:GAN. --Philcha (talk) 12:21, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I hope there are not more than 300, but it's still too many, even if many of them are very specialized. I think they are quite well categorized already though. There is a project to rationalize the Manual of Style pages (WP:WikiProject Manual of Style), which account for a fair few of the total number, although I haven't noticed much action there recently. I'd be in favour of starting a similar project for other policy and guideline pages (though people get very attached to their beloved tracts, so getting agreement for any serious change is likely to be quite tough).--Kotniski (talk) 12:38, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I did a grep of the Policy and Guideline categories, ferreting out duplicates, userpages there by accident, etc, there are 491 official policies and guidelines of Wikipedia, including such gems at Wikipedia:Avoid academic boosterism. MBisanz ^talk 13:20, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Ouch. On the plus side, though, I see User:Gurch has been doing a good job on combining the edit warring and blocking guidelines today - looks like that number has been reduced by at least two.--Kotniski (talk) 14:08, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

<- I just reverted that. Lone editors should not merge policies without any sort of prior discussion at the policy talk page. Jehochman ^Talk 14:38, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Huh? It was discussed, admittedly not by many people, but no-one objected, and the changes are only cosmetic (no substantial change to policy, unless you can show otherwise). It isn't really helpful to revert changes just because you weren't consulted on them, without indicating what your objections are.--Kotniski (talk) 14:43, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

• The proliferation of policies and guidelines certainly needs pruning and, of course, we also have explicit policies for this: WP:BURO and WP:NOTLAW. Colonel Warden (talk) 15:11, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the number as an issue . No one needs to know about WP:IMOS unless the editor is interested into Ireland related issue the same applies to Wikipedia:Avoid academic boosterism. Are they all in a category for ease of reference ? Gnevin (talk) 15:45, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Number of guidelines is not too much of an issue. Number of policies is more of an issue -- the policy pages amount to, in effect, everything that must be adhered to when contributing. Admonishing someone for violating them is hardly fair if there are so many that nobody ever reads them all (a situation which I think we are in already) -- Gurch (talk) 15:53, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Right, too many policies is a problem. Guidelines are basically just a written record of a reached consensus that concerns more than a few articles. It's better to have them written down than just in editors heads. --Apoc2400 (talk) 16:24, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Someone asked for it, so I ran a grep, there are 56 Policies. MBisanz ^talk 02:21, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks MBisanz, is 56 policies to many . I don't think so . Gnevin (talk) 11:15, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Way too many IMHO. Of course, it's the total volume of the policy that matters too, not just the number of pages. Much of it is empty waffle or incomprehensible nonsense; much of it is duplicated or contradictory, or at variance with actual practice. We should be supporting efforts (like Gurch's) to reduce both the number and the combined length of policy pages, and to make them clearer, so that all editors can quickly learn the rules and get on with editing in harmony. --Kotniski (talk) 11:24, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

We have over a million articles to cover with WP:C,WP:CON,WP:Civil,WP:AFG,WP:NOT.... all be essential. I'd like to see a full list but i'd suggest their would be very little to trim Gnevin (talk) 11:27, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia_official_policy what do you think we can trim from here? Gnevin (talk) 11:30, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Well, looking at WP:List of policies, a number of possible merges (with consequent trimming of excess material) suggest themselves immediately. For example:

• Civility+Harassment+No legal threats+No personal attacks+Attack pages
• Editing policy+Edit warring+Wheel war+Vandalism+Ownership of articles
• NOR+NPV+V (I know this one has been tried before; unfortunately people are very nervous about merging policy pages, as can be seen from the discussion below)
• All the deletion policies (4-5)
• All the blocking and banning policies (4?)

--Kotniski (talk) 13:05, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Given that I was reverted when trying to merge the single-paragraph Wikipedia:GlobalBlocking (which has absolutely no need to be on a separate page) into the blocking policy, I think you can abandon any thoughts of doing anything like that -- Gurch (talk) 13:56, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

A full list of policies would be very useful. I suggest it should also include summaries a few lines long, plus notes on types of case where it's necessary to look up the details and on where to get help. For example:

Reliable sources. All except the most uncontroversial statments must be supported by citations of reliable sources. Articles in academic journals are the best, as these articles are checked by other experts before publication. Book by authors who have published in academic journals are usually reliable. Other types of source need to be checked carefully. For example some newspapers and magazines produce accurate reports and good analyses, while others are less accurate and sometimes sensationalist, frivolous or even libellous. Self-published sources such as blogs are generally not considered reliable – a few may be, if their authors' expertise is acknowledged by unquestionably reliable sources, but you will have to justify each use of these. If you are unsure about whether a source would be considered reliable, please ask at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard.

Related policies: ...

A simple list would be a good start, as I agree with Kotniski's comments (11:24, 26 November 2008). So I'd expect a list to become the driver for a review that would lead to simplification and merging, and summaries could be added to the list after that. --Philcha (talk) 11:54, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

We do have WP:List of policies, though the summaries there are rather shorter than in your example. I wonder if it might be a good idea for your type of list to become the policy, and demote all the existing policy pages (with their varying degrees of waffle and drift) to guidelines. That way all editors could quickly learn the rules that matter most, and we could all easily keep track of any proposed changes to those principles.--Kotniski (talk) 12:44, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out WP:List of policies, I didn't know it existed! It's a well-hidden secret, as few of the policy pages link to it, nor does Template:Welcome for new users. I also notice a few inconsistencies, for example Wikipedia:No original research's "In a nutshell" is IMO better than the summary at WP:List of policies. OTOH I think making such summaries the actual policies may be a step too far, as summaries can't help with the tricky cases - I picked WP:RS as an example for exactly that reason, and WP:N is another case where the detailed page is needed despite its flaws. I suggest:

• The content of individual policy page's "In a nutshell" blocks should be made into templates as subpages of Template:nutshell. It might even be good to modify Template:nutshell so it has options to omit the box, bg colour and image. Converting the text into templates would ensure consistency, as WP:List of policies and other pages could then use the templates.
• Template:Welcome should link to WP:List of policies.
• The headings of all non-User Talk pages should link to WP:List of policies
• If something is not reachable via WP:List of policies within 3 clicks, it isn't a policy. --Philcha (talk) 15:00, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Erm... all non-User Talk pages? I don't think so... -- Gurch (talk) 17:33, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Why not? Which ones should not? --Philcha (talk) 19:40, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I can't think of a good reason to link to it on any article, article discussion, user, template, template discussion, category, category discussion, file, file discussion, portal, portal discussion, mediawiki or mediawiki discussion page either -- Gurch (talk) 22:07, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

@ Kotniski. Honestly, the idea that Wikipedia:Vandalism could remotely share space at all with Wikipedia:Wheel war is laughable. Aren't you guys getting a bit overzealous here? What is so bad about the way things are? Is this about new users having a hard time learning all these policies? If that's the case let's all go try to improve Wikipedia:Five pillars (long my favorite introductory page on Wikipedia) and Template:Welcome. Mangojuice^talk 04:09, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

There is something in what Kotniski is suggesting, so why not take each line one-by-one? I will gladly support "*Civility+Harassment+No legal threats+No personal attacks+Attack pages" all being merged together into one policy named something like "Wikipedia:Civility, Conduct, and Legal Threats". We cannot allow 10 chefs to come up with 11 dishes just because it feels good to maintain the status quo. All these 'civility' policy documents can surely be put together into one when they are essentially dealing with the same thing? doktorb _words^deeds 10:42, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I think WP:CIV and WP:NPA, I could see those being merged. But there's an important difference in degree between those two. This is somewhat analagous to the distinction between WP:EW and WP:3RR: Civility (like Edit Warring) is a general, rather subjective idea, but Personal attacks are a much more specific case that is more clearly delineated as inappropriate and blockable, like violations of WP:3RR. WP:HARASS is rather distinct because one can be civil (i.e. use polite language) while harassing someone, following them around, engaging in conflicts. WP:LEGAL is another matter entirely; it really can't be merged with anything else. It's again a bright line rule. Civility is an element, but the importance of not using Wikipedia during legal action is entirely something else. Also, WP:LEGAL has been very difficult to write correctly; actually I think it needs to be split; one part of the rule has to do with using legal threats to intimidate others on Wikipedia, while another part has to do with how one should behave while involved in a conflict that might involve legal issues, like libel. WP:ATP, I do think is reasonable to merge somewhere since it seems like a somewhat minor point, but since it's central point is about deletion of such pages, I think WP:DP is a more reasonable target, or perhaps WP:CSD. Mangojuice^talk 15:41, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Philcha, I think you may be referring to a comment I made. I realized there were over 300 Wikipedia policies and guidelines when I was making User:Pixelface/Unique editors of policies and guidelines (which lists 302). I found them by looking through Category:Wikipedia policies and guidelines and its subcategories Category:Wikipedia official policy and Category:Wikipedia guidelines (and its subcategories), excluding proposals and rejected proposals. 68 of the guidelines are naming conventions. Wikipedia:List of policies and Wikipedia:List of guidelines provide summaries of Wikipedia's various policies and guidelines. I really don't know if the village pump is the place to figure out whether to "prune" them. --Pixelface (talk) 04:01, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Merge 3RR with EW

(Background: an attempt was made to merge WP:3RR with WP:Edit warring. This bold change was reverted; discussion continues below.)

It was not discussed at the relevant policy talk pages. My objection is that the changes were not discussed properly. We could merge all policies to m:Dick and WP:IAR, but that wouldn't be very useful, would it. We have created separate policy pages for clarity. Merging them may make things less clear. Jehochman ^Talk 14:46, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

"May", but do you think it does in this case? All the substantial material was retained, it was put on one page for ease of use, and the resulting page was not too long by any means. This is the sort of thing we should be encouraging. Don't you read the frequent expressions of amazement (like those above) at the vastness and fragmentariness of WP policy? If someone's prepared to put in work to do something about this problem, then at least make constructive criticism instead of "I'm not sure if I like this, so I'm just going to undo it". --Kotniski (talk) 14:57, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Please, no end runs around consensus. While you may think having a single page of policy represents ease of use, the administrators who block people for violations may prefer to have specific pages for each type of violation to be better able to explain to people why they have been blocked, to give just one example why separate pages may be needed. Jehochman ^Talk 15:01, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't see that's a reason for separate pages. Do parliaments pass separate acts for every punishable offence? Directing people to a section of a page is just as good as directing them to a separate page (better even, since it gives them more context), provided the target page is not too long (which it clearly wasn't in this case).--Kotniski (talk) 15:10, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree that there should be separate pages for different types of violation. However, violation of the three-revert rule and violation of the more general edit warring policy amount to the same thing -- edit warring. Similarly, violation of the wheel warring policy is simply edit warring with things other than edits (and administrators hardly need explaining to them why edit warring is prohibited) -- Gurch (talk) 15:50, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, quite apart from the general desirability of merging related policy pages, by including 3RR under edit warring we make the point - which many people fail to get at the moment - that 3RR violations are just a special case of edit warring. This is line with the recent change to the admin noticeboard, whereby we now have a general edit-warring nboard instead of a specific 3RR one.--Kotniski (talk) 16:10, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with merging these two policies, but we need more input before taking this action. Please post notices on all the relevant talk page(s) and consider starting a Policy RFC. Jehochman ^Talk 16:13, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I am not really a fan of process for process' sake. I fail to see a significant issue with making changes and then waiting to see if anyone objects. Objecting on the grounds that someone else might object for as yet unknown reasons kind of spoils that approach, and I wish it didn't because it makes doing things a lot more difficult. -- Gurch (talk) 16:16, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Exactly what I was just about to say.--Kotniski (talk) 16:20, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

First, WP:Edit warring does not cover the ground very well. Despite the sentence "Edit warring is not necessarily any single action; instead, it is any mindset that tolerates confrontational tactics to affect content disputes," the page focusses far to much on reverting, which is by no means the only way to edit war. There's room for debate about how far it should go into what tactics constitute or might be indicators of edit warring. It should probably also say more about which of the parties is regarded as the aggressor.

However at present WP:3RR has little to content that's not already in WP:Edit warring, so it was sensible to merge them, provided WP:3RR redirects to the approprate section of WP:Edit warring. With articles it's normal to keep related content together until either an article becomes unwieldy or it becomes apparent that part of it has aspects that do not fit easily with the rest of the article. I see no reason to treat guidelines differently from articles - both are attempts to communicate, and the same principles should apply. --Philcha (talk) 16:57, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I oppose the merger of the policies. WP:3RR is an electric fence rule voted into policy by the community to keep edit-warring down, and shouldn't be removed just because some admins with more judgmentalism than content-experience want to send out a less nuanced, but more righteous, message about all "revert-warring". Although a violation of 3RR is likely to be edit-warring, the term "edit-warring" can suggest anything from reverting vandals, to enforcing content policies to performing multiple pov-reversions, and so is good or bad depending on what the editor is doing. The creep of the anti-edit-warring ideology among the admin class at wikipedia has been truly devastating to the ability of good editors to keep POV-warriors and their nonsense out of articles. This creep should not be consolidated. For these reasons and others, the renaming of AN/3 by was wrong too, though the bot thingie probably spells the beginning of the end for that board. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 17:10, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

So you're saying edit warring is OK if it's being done for certain purposes? Sorry, but both policy and consensus are against you there. Nobody ever suggeste removing the three-revert rule. Violating the three-revert rule is defined to be edit warring, that's the whole point. How on earth is being anti-edit-warring a bad thing? -- Gurch (talk) 18:08, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

This is the kind of confusion I'm talking about. Deacon is confusing the concept of struggling or having a conflict with "warring," which has a more specific meaning. Mangojuice^talk 18:17, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

No guys, I'm not confusing anything. I'm fully aware many of you think edit-warring is a specific kind of reverting; please read my statement more carefully, paying special attention to the part I bolded because I'm psychic and knew this would be said in response. Yes, Gurch, continually reverting is in principle OK in order to enforce wikipedia's content policies [in practice, obviously, you'll get blocked for it]. Why wouldn't it be? Our goal is to provide reliable information to our readership, not act like some super-egalitarian high school debating club. Seriously, the reason I get mad at this kind of dogma is that it makes us forget this and it makes us elevate the editor over the reader. What certainly shouldn't happen is that expert editors are in principle forced either to spend most of their wiki time talking to a nutter and/or else get blocked and/or driven away just because they want to enforce WP:V or WP:RS or WP:NPOV [yes, they can figure out the better ways of enforcing these if they invest enough time and acquire enough friends]. There was a time btw when policies like that had the same status as discipline policies (before 3rr and the like existed), and though there are historical reasons why this in time did go away, I've never seen the reason it should have. Regards, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 18:32, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

The concept you have in your head of what "edit warring", if it can (1) include good behavior, or (2) can include things like reverting vandals, is not what is meant at WP:EW. If your point is that the terminology is poor, okay. But I think that you and I otherwise agree; edit warring (in the sense of what kind of non-cooperative behavior is bad for Wikipedia) is tricky and subtle to define, and jamming the 3RR on the same page will only make it more difficult to say properly. Mangojuice^talk 18:48, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, we sure agree on that last point. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 18:51, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I strongly oppose the merger. The 3-revert rule is one of very few explicit rules on Wikipedia regarding editor behavior. It is not subservient to the rule on edit warring: the whole point of the 3RR is that there are certain kinds of behavior that you can be blocked for with no subjective decision, such as whether it is disruptive edit warring... so that administrators can act with something really solid to back them up. There are explicit exceptions, and specific things people need to know about the 3-revert rule. There is no section in the text of WP:3RR that we can do without; all that is there needs to be documented and explained, explicitly on its own page. No one has proposed merging in the opposite direction, because the 3RR relates to edit warring, which can be a problem even when users obey the 3RR. WP:EW, on the other hand, documents a subjective rule and much broader principles. The only way I can see the pages being merged appropriately is if discussion of the 3-revert rule dominates WP:EW, which it really should not, since edit warring deserves its own description, and one shouldn't have to read about all the nuances of the 3RR in order to learn about edit warring. Mangojuice^talk 17:55, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

So just put the section on 3RR underneath the more general stuff? Wouldn't that solve your concerns? No-one's changing the policy or the rules here. It's perfectly normal to have general waffle and specific norms on the same page, and it's misleading to separate them so that people reading about one are unaware of the other. It's not really a great philosophical problem, it's just easier if we put stuff related to the same subject on the same page, up to a certain point when the page starts to get too big. In this way we avoid duplication (and subsequent drifting apart), make it easier for everyone to find what they're looking for, and (in this case) make it clear that 3RR is about edit-warring (it's a kind of edit-warring benchmark, not a rule dreamt up for no purpose or in isolation). --Kotniski (talk) 18:56, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

If we merge the pages together, going by their current size in bytes, more than half the content will relate specifically to the 3-revert rule. I would call that very unwieldy. Even worse, I think a lot of the material currently at WP:EW could be cut down, whereas WP:3RR is about as small as it can be. "Avoiding duplication" is a good goal, if these policies duplicated each other, which they don't. Each policy page should contain one key idea, not two. Edit warring is a key idea. The 3RR is a specific rule we have that needs coverage, and it's not the same thing. Two topics, two pages. Mangojuice^talk 19:17, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Much of what the two pages say is redundant. For example, the section in the three-revert rule policy about how to avoid breaking it is pretty similar to the equivalent section in the edit warring policy. If you look at my merged version, you'll see it's actually far smaller than the sum of the two page sizes, even with the wheel war policy too -- Gurch (talk) 19:51, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, that's pretty convincing. On the other hand, an advantage of merging is the people would be less apt to rules lawyer by arguing that they had not broken 3RR. If 3RR is a section on the edit warring page, I think they have less wiggle room. Jehochman ^Talk 19:27, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Mango, I don't see what you mean about it being two topics, or "not the same thing". 3RR is about preventing edit-warring, isn't it? It's part of the same topic. Having it on two separate pages is likely to make people forget that - perhaps it's that separation that's affected even your way of thinking? Anyone who wants to know what WP does about edit-warring needs to know about 3RR; anyone reading about 3RR needs to be aware that it exists in the context of a wider policy on edit-warring. Of course we can link prominently between two pages, but what's the point when the combined page can be so neat and compact as Gurch has shown us?--Kotniski (talk) 20:24, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

@Jehochman -- if admins are careful to refer to 3RR only in cases where the 3RR really applies or blatantly obvious gaming attempts, there's no need to worry. I agree, people would have less wiggle-room as to whether they were edit warring if we thought of 3RR and EW as the same... but they would have a lot more room to accuse the blocking admin of bias. That's the most important aspect of the 3RR: it really enables administrators to make blocks in certain circumstances with a real rule to back you up. "No, I am not a left-wing cabalist, you just violated this rule here, so I blocked you." True 3RR violations can even be enforced (in my opinion) by involved administrators, because the rule is clearly impartial. Kotniski: you are almost categorically wrong. Yes, obviously, the 3RR is meant to work against edit warring. But no, it's not necessary to really understand what edit warring is to understand the 3RR: it's a relatively simple rule that even new users can understand and be warned about without having a lot of experience in Wikipedia collaboration. They are related, but they aren't the same. I have a lot of experience reviewing unblocks, and a lot of those requests are 3RR-related blocks, so I really am very aware of the distinction. The distinction that is most important is the objectivity of the definition of improper behavior that the 3RR presents, one that is basically missing in WP:EW, and must be missing. They are closely related topics but that doesn't mean they must have one and only one page; in my view, this case is somewhat exceptional because of the actual "rule" status of the 3RR, which almost nothing else has. Mangojuice^talk 18:10, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Respectfully, I think some of the discussion above overlooks the difference between how WP:3RR is written and how it is enforced. For example, Deacon of Pndapetzim called 3RR "an electric fence rule," but in practice it is enforced subjectively; sticking with the fence metaphor, individuals who walk near 3RR (without crossing or even touching it) get shocked, while cabals jump over it with impunity. (On the 3RR discussion page [1], I described an edit disagreement in which one side expressly refused my repeated invitations to discuss - for example here [2]. I followed 3RR carefully but got blocked anyway, and the wrong version got protected. Other editors then stepped in and the consensus version was restored. The best advice I received was to request page protection, which I had never known how to do before.) If 3RR is to stay on its own page, then its enforcement should be what Mango imagines it to be, i.e. a bright line rule with no subjective enforcement. (If the definition is considered inadequate, it could be changed to match the definition of edit warring, i.e. reverting "instead of discussion," and possibly to lengthen the period from 1 day to 3 days). If 3RR is going to be enforced as it is currently, then I agree with Kotniski and Gurch that it should be merged into WP:EW for context.TVC 15 (talk) 23:28, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

You followed 3RR carefully? You mean you spaced out your reverts so you didn't have more than 3 in any 24 hour period? This is the kind of rules lawyering that WP:EW and a merge is intended to avoid. An edit war is alwasy disruptive. It doesn't magically become one after 4 reverts in 24 hours. The 3 revert rule is supposed to just be an obvious line - "This is almost always disruptive and almost always block-worthy" - its not an entitlement to revert war as much as you want as long as you don't cross it. All rules are enforced subjectively. That's the difference between the Wikipedia we have now, and the bureaucracy it could potentially become if we stuck to strict interpretation of every rule. Mr.Z-man 00:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

You mean it could be more of a bureaucracy than it is now? *gulp* -- Gurch (talk) 00:32, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Z-man, you're fighting the example rather than addressing the issue and the interests. I offered the example but the rule is not about me - having been burned I won't go near it. The point is, a rule either provides a bright line or it doesn't. If you want subjective enforcement, instead of the clarity of a bright line, then 3RR should be merged into the page about edit warring. If you want the clarity of a bright line, then wider principles can only be addressed separately. For example, a speed limit provides a bright line and can stand on its own sign. If you drive 20mph in a 25 zone, you will not be stopped for speeding. You might still be driving recklessly (for example if you are careening through the middle of a parade, scattering floats and cheerleaders in all directions), but you are not speeding. A rule can either provide a bright line or it can address wider principles, but it cannot do both. A problem with how 3RR is enforced currently is, it is written as a bright line on its own page but enforced subjectively as different admins' views of a principle from another page. And, instead of personalizing the issue with misdirected and unnecessary criticism, please try to remember that we are all volunteers; collaboration depends on assuming good faith. Your view of what "is intended" may differ from others' view. As I understand it, the intent of this discussion is to clarify the rules so they become easier to find and follow. If your intent is to find opportunities to rebuke people, then that might belong on a different page.TVC 15 (talk) 01:41, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Regarding definitions and merger, please note there is a noticeboard page with definitions of 3RR and edit warring: [[3]]. If a definition is updated or merged on one page, the other(s) should be consistent.TVC 15 (talk) 02:13, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Mr. Z-Man, any rules you put on anything are going to be gamed by the most experienced. That's what human beings do and is inevitable, and if you wanna start a fight against it by replacing clear rules with admin lottery and increasingly the meaning of the assertion "enforce content policies at your own risk", then this is a fight that - being futile - not only will be lost, but will do little to improve the quality of the encyclopedia's content. Remember, 3RR being separate doesn't prevent a righteous EW fundie admin blocking experts for reverting POV-trolls and it doesn't stop another admin showing leniency for mistakes, so its presense shouldn't be too troublesome to either side and hasn't been so until now. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 10:14, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Of course rules are always going to be gamed. 3RR is just especially easy to game. Most of your reasons have nothing to do with 3RR and EW in particular and seem to come from some sort of general mistrust of admins and would apply to any enforceable policy. In case you haven't noticed, 3RR is one of few, if not the only, "bright line" policy we have. All the rest have a significant amount of subjectivity in them, for good reasons. Despite this, the project hasn't imploded from abusive admins chasing away everyone. Mr.Z-man 13:31, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

We seem to be straying from the point somewhat - we were only talking about compacting policy by putting related points on one page; this won't affect the content or interpretation of those policies (except in that it makes it easier for learning editors to see the whole picture). Are there any remaining objections to doing that?--Kotniski (talk) 10:54, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

We aren't straying. 3RR is something the community got together and approved of, EW and its specific interpretations is available to fluctuate. Merging the policies is proof of and facilitates attitude creep. Merging them will make it easier for admins to believe that they are not really distinct offences, something which, although it already happens to some extent, doesn't need extra encouragement or validation. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 11:02, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, the community "got together and approved of" the edit warring policy as well; if they didn't, and it's subject to "fluctuation", why is it a policy at all? -- Gurch (talk) 12:13, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Huh? How are they distinct offences? 3RR was approved and serves specifically as a weapon against edit warring. 3RR violations are edit warring offences. If merging helps people to understand that, then that's another argument in its favour.--Kotniski (talk) 11:12, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

No. A violation of 3RR is a violation of wikipedia policy whether there is an Edit-warring policy or not. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 12:12, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Still not understanding you. There is an edit warring policy, and 3RR is part of it, regardless of whether it has its own page. In the unlikely event that the community decides it doesn't need an edit warring policy, or that 3RR is the only edit-warring policy it needs, then we can refactor the page again accordingly.--Kotniski (talk) 12:31, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

But, hey, you're talking like you have proven there is a great reason to merge the two, whereas you haven't, and the burden of prove lies with you {pl.}; and what's more, that's merely one of several reasons not to merge them. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 12:35, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Let's hear the others then. There's maybe no great reason to merge them, but given the gross excess quantity of policy that we have (see the thread above), anything that reduces that quantity (particularly if it reduces both the number of pages and the total amount of reading material) is manifestly a good thing.--Kotniski (talk) 12:48, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Reducing the number of policy pages by 1 is not a worthy goal, and is certainly a very weak reason on its own. The only good reason to merge the pages is if people feel they are redundant to one another. They aren't. One page could be written to encompass both but we would still need a 3RR page to describe the 3RR itself clearly. If there are too many policies, there are better candidates for deprecating or merging; WP:NPOV/FAQ comes to mind, as does WP:ATP and WP:HARASS. But the absolute number of policies really isn't that large. Guidelines, that's another matter. Mangojuice^talk 17:45, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

The longest journey begins with a single step; if you say the number of policy pages is too large to be reduced by one, then it will only get even larger. The 3RR page became redundant to the EW page as soon as people decided 3RR could be enforced subjectively/approximately (as part of EW), instead of as a bright line rule on its own. In fact, it is worse than redundant: it is misdirection, because EW issues get mislabeled as 3RR violations, adding even further to the confusion. (And the confusion is widespread.) If the idea of 3RR was to provide a mechanical rule that could be applied simply without the extra effort of figuring out who was at fault in an edit war, then subjective/approximate enforcement has led to an opposite result: individuals following the rules get blocked, while edit-warring cabals flout the rules with impunity, and the larger principle of edit warring gets lost. If the people enforcing the rules (i.e. the most experienced users) do not apply them as separate rules, then they should not be on separate pages. In practice, current enforcement of 3RR can only be understood as an approximate guideline within EW. Most here, including Z-man, seem to support that practice. So, 3RR should be merged into EW's page.TVC 15 (talk) 19:24, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

A 3RR vio is specific and if it is mislabled that is a matter of human competence. But not a serious one as it is very easy to tell the difference, though I don't see it getting easier if they are put on the same page. Edit-warring cabals will have as much, actually more success, if one blurs the line between edit-warring and 3rr vios. Doing this is a crazy step in any war against that kind of thing. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 10:24, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

But there isn't a line between edit-warring and 3rr vios! 3RR vios are (a special case of) edit-warring! The fact that so many experienced editors in this discussion are demonstrating difficulty understanding this is surely one more argument in favour of merging the two pages - if it misleads some of us, then it's certainly going to mislead the new editors that the pages are intended for.--Kotniski (talk) 11:30, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

A 3RR vio is always a EW vio. An EW vio may not be a 3RR vio. But its not possible to violate 3RR without also violating EW. Who cares if a block for EW that doesn't technically meet 3RR is accidentally mislabeled as a 3RR block? Its still a valid block. If they're put on the same page, it will give fewer chances for people to try to rules-lawyer out of a "mislabeled" block. Mr.Z-man 20:38, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I think Z-man has the right answer, albeit for the wrong reasons. Alas in America the Republican party has made a strategy of turning people against "activist judges" (i.e. judges who protect people's legal rights) and "trial lawyers" (who also protect people's legal rights and usually support Democrats), so somehow the words 'lawyer' and even 'judge' have taken on pejorative connotations in some people's minds and the whole concept of democratic self-government has been devalued. In answer to Z-man's question, the reason why mislabeling is bad is because it sends people to the wrong page, i.e. a 3RR warning or a 3RR block tells them not to do something they may never have done, so they don't learn anything - except that seemingly clear rules can be enforced arbitrarily and incorrectly. That makes it more difficult to learn and follow the rules, which is what most lawyers and judges spend most of their time doing, no matter what the Republican party may have (mis)led you to believe. Again, WP editors are volunteers trying to help out, so mislabeling and misdirection simply discourage well-intentioned people. At best, that makes it more difficult for them to help; at worst, it risks alienating them entirely.TVC 15 (talk) 01:54, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

The 3RR policy is actively harmful

3RR encourages tag teaming and Wikilawyering. It should be stricken. Taemyr (talk) 22:18, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't be silly. Then administrators would actually have to exercise judgement when blocking people for edit warring, we can't have that -- Gurch (talk) 22:39, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Tag teaming is indeed a problem of sorts and there must be a better way to promote consensus building and more eyes are on the disputed article. I'm guessing some anti-tag rule/notice should be added somehow but I don't have a great suggestion at the moment for addressing it. This brings to mind an odd event a few months back where I complained about an editor who asked a friend to revert for him and was blocked a week for "edit warring" while all three of us made only a single revert. Good times! Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 03:04, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Tag team reverting and wikilawyering are indeed harmful to the project. That said, is there really anyone here who think that ∞RR would cause fewer problems? The three-revert-rule works as well as it does because while 90% of us are able to restrain our impulse to hit the revert button that fourth time, 10% of people just do not care because they know they are right and that is the only thing that matters. Once that 10% is blocked for WP:EW, then the rest of us can get back to work on a consensus solution. --Kralizec! (talk) 04:26, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Tag team reverting is a good thing, isn't it? It is consensus in action to defeat edit warring, POV-warriors and other disruptive editors without the intervention of administrators. It seems to me that it is the wiki way, and if I recall correctly, it was once encouraged by a policy or guideline. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 05:39, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

If that policy or guideline can be found, it would be interesting to read more about, but I think the preferred solution is now to request page protection. Tag team reverting may defeat some edit warriors, but not others, and it cannot provide stability. For example, where an edit war results from religious differences, the article could bounce constantly between the beliefs of different teams, and every reader could get a different version of the page every time.TVC 15 (talk) 08:30, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

And when you request page protection, the administrator is expressly forbidden from exercising any judgement as to which version of the page to protect. So readers may well end up with stable WRONG information; and no-one seems to care much about that, they just pat themselves on the back for ending the edit war.--Kotniski (talk) 09:12, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

You forgot your wikilink: m:The Wrong Version. You also misstate the case: admins do not have to protect a version with vandalism, BLP violations, copyright violations, and the like; and if there is a version clearly prior to the edit war they may revert to that instead of an arbitrary current version. Anomie⚔ 13:09, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

They "may", yes. So in fact they can do whatever they like, and don't need to justify it when challenged. So is it really very surprising that editors who care about WP being right and not just stable are reluctant to ask for page protection? (And is it any wonder people edit war when the policy contains an inbuilt reward for the more aggressive warriors?)--Kotniski (talk) 15:08, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

@TVC 15. I think that page protection is still a last resort. If there are 2 tag teams on opposing sides, then page protection may be the only option. Using a tag team to enforce a POV is, without doubt, harmful edit warring. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:58, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Tag team reverting is certainly not a good thing, ever. All it does is lengthen edit wars by bypassing the rules in the hope that the other side of the dispute doesn't have as many people to edit war. Its far more harmful than a normal edit war. In the case of tag team revert warring, the page shouldn't be protected, the users involved should all be blocked for disruption. Calling in backup to revert war is certainly not the "wiki way." Mr.Z-man 17:56, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Note that 3RR is only one rule of thumb to end an edit war. If support troops are brought in by conflict partners the disruptive editing warrants blocking even if 3RR is not officially violated. Arnoutf (talk) 18:09, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, when I complained about the apparent irrationality of 3RR a long time ago, I was advised that the way to proceed in an edit war situation (where the other party won't discuss) was to "get more eyes on the article" by bringing in other editors. Now we're being told that doing this is even more disruptive than lone edit-warring. So what's it to be?--Kotniski (talk) 09:58, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Any restrictive policy provokes go-around scheming, so what? Any serious conflict encourages parties to consolidate, quite likely off wiki, so what? It's inevitable, unless the community prefers to slip down to complete anarchism. 3RR is actually one of the best-laid policies for its simplicity, just like a highway speed speed limit. Keep it, and keep it separate. NVO (talk) 10:20, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi NVO, thanks for making the speed limit analogy, but please see the discussion above about whether to consolidate WP:3RR into WP:EW's page. If 3RR were enforced the way you and some others imagine, i.e. if it were enforced the way it is written, then I would agree with your praise of its simplicity. However, many don't want it enforced that way (they deride reading the rule and following it as 'lawyering', as if that were a bad thing), and in practice it is enforced as a subjective/approximate guideline within EW. That leads to misdirection and becomes harmful. If the most experienced users cannot or will not apply the simplicity of 3RR, then 3RR loses its standalone utility, and can only function as an approximate guideline within EW.TVC 15 (talk) 23:01, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Full protect important policies

I think important policy pages such as WP:BLP and such should be full protected due to their seriousness, and being possible vandal magnets. This should also be done for legal reasons due to their scope. Anyone agree?

On Wikibooks we do that, but then we have this "unstable branch" where people can propose changes. ViperSnake151 15:57, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Preferably no. Otherwise, it makes it difficult for me to rewrite them -- Gurch (talk) 15:58, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I really don't see a need for this. - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:43, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Neither do I. I see no evidence that they are vandal magnets, and even if they were, I can't see that this would be a problem. The reason vandalism of articles is bad is that some readers will view the page in a vandalized state. For policy pages, only editors are likely to look at them, and editors can easily revert any vandalism they see. The only exception would be if the pages were being so heavily vandalized that it became an effort to revert, in which case temporary protection could be used as usual. On your last point, if anything has to be done for legal reasons, the foundation lawyer will tell us. That's what he's for. Algebraist 16:58, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

"possible vandal magnets?" We don't protect things from editing because of a "possibility of vandalism"; WP:V has been only move-protected for several months, yet its seen rather little vandalism for the amount of incoming links it has. Mr.Z-man 18:46, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd possibly agree so that users don't make massive changes that may be against consensus on the talk page. Policies are important, and people use them like a rule-book. It's no good if the rule book has the wrong thing in there. – How do you turn this on (talk) 18:51, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Strong oppose. This procedure would shift even more power to admins over active non-admin editors of good standing. When vandalsim is threatening article integrite, admin limitation (full protection) is warranted, but this would give admins more power to discuss and change policies that will have an impact on the whole community. That cannot be the intention, but that is what will happen. Arnoutf (talk) 18:54, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

What's the point of a policy if anyone can twist it? Rules should be stable, lock it and throw away the keys. NVO (talk) 03:34, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

"What's the point of an encyclopedia if anyone can edit it? Compendiums should be stable; print them and shove them in a library." — sorry, couldn't resist twisting your comment this way. I'm mostly joking, but hopefully you can read my response between the lines. :) {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 04:16, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

And I'm not joking at all. You are quite right about stability of the compendiums, thanks for bringing the point. Remember, stability is one of five criteria of featured content (or so it was at 18:30 today in case some schoolkid with a button changes it). Unfortunately, the wars over WP:MOS make all featured content subject to daily revamps, reverts etc. rendering FAs unstable and... yes, "unfeaturable". Today it's double quotes, tomorrow single; link dates, unlink dates - I'm not talking of something new, it's basic typography styling that must be stable. NVO (talk) 18:33, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Edits made to policy pages without (or against) concensus can be reverted too. I firmly disagree with this proposal. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 10:15, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

We certainly need to have some kind of stability in our rule-book. Making it much smaller would be the most productive step - then we could all keep track of what's changing and object to changes we don't like. Protection, however, normally seems to be necessary only when edit wars break out (as they do from time to time). It has the disadvantage that it prevents innocent copyediting.--Kotniski (talk) 10:59, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree with Kotniski's comment (10:59, 26 November 2008). Protection would make it more difficulty to clarify the rules, reduces duplications and inconsistencies, etc. - improvements which are seriously needed.

AFAIK at present we have difficulty recruiting admins, and protecting policy pages would only increase admins' workload and aggravate the recruitment problem. --Philcha (talk) 12:03, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Difficulty recruiting admins? Haha. That's rather like advertising a software development job saying you need 10 years of .NET experience and then announcing you're having difficulty recruiting candidates... -- Gurch (talk) 12:10, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, I would not mind becoming admin if the RfA procedure was not time consuming (and I think I would qualify after 2 yrs, 10 months - not a single block - >11,000 edits - admittedly little vandal fighting so no urgent need for the tools either) However the 3rd degree interrogation and the very much involvement in the admin nomination process make me unwilling to go through this. Arnoutf (talk) 18:33, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

The whole admin process is one area were policies can and should be changed; you named one solid argument for it. Arbcom has already announced upcoming review of its own role. But content policies are quite different from site maintenance. So I see no conflict between (a) actively changing what needs to be changed, especially when it does not affect content directly (b) locking key content rules. NVO (talk) 18:38, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Solution looking for a problem. I've yet to see any major policy page be vandalized in such a way that seriously impacted anything... the costs of full protection greatly outweigh the benefit. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:19, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Bad idea. If individual persons cause problems by vandalizing or edit warring over the policy pages, those individual persons can be first warned, then later blocked, for being disruptive. However, there is no compelling reason to stop good-faith changes to policy pages merely to stop a few individuals from acting unseemly. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 18:27, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

There is one compelling reason: it is a policy, not an article or an essay. The difference is: if me or you are expected to abide to the rules (of any formal standing), then they must be stable. We don't expect real-world laws to change at will every hour, why would we tolerate it here? NVO (talk) 18:44, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't recall anyone ever enforcing a vandalism-modified policy ("Dear user: I'm sorry, but please refrain from not placing penis pictures on articles. If you don't start adding dicks to your edits, you will be blocked."); this isn't an actual issue. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:14, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

The rules are stable. If anyone tries to change a rule without consensus, it is quickly reverted, with or without protection. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 21:31, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

A "consensus" of, say, three or four determined regulars is then quite able to bend the rule as they like. Again, look at MOSwars. Reverted? many times and still unstable. NVO (talk) 00:23, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

The MOS is not policy. Policy has a lot more eyes on it, and any controversial change will generate a remarkable amount of discussion. And, as you noticed with the MOS, even three or four determined individuals are not able to force their preferred version through. Resolute 00:43, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

And protecting the page does not do anything to change the stability or instability properties of WP:MOS, as the mentioned "regulars" are admins. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:17, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Most of them (us) aren't, as far as I know. In any case I've never seen anyone abuse any admin powers they might have by editing the page when it's been protected.--Kotniski (talk) 10:01, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Per Jayron32. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:29, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

@NVO: I think you've misunderstood the concept of "changing a rule". If a policy page is vadalised, the rule hasn't changed (the vandalism will be reverted as soon as one of us sees it). Rules are only changed via WP:Consensus. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 10:22, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

This is one of the things that Wikibooks gets exactly wrong. In the 7 years that Wikipedia has had policy pages, it has successfully dealt with vandalism, edit wars, and changes to consensus without having to resort to permanent full protection for any policy page. There is no evidence that this will change. Furthermore, many changes to policy have been made by non-administrators editing the pages in the normal way, reflecting consensus and talk-page discussion, and many improvements to our policies, such as copyedits, corrections of stale hyperlinks, and other things, are done by non-administrators. The only pages that we permanently protect for legal reasons are pages such as the general disclaimer and the copyright licence. Those are legal documents. Our policies are not. Wikibooks has an acute problem with overprotection, of which the protection of its policy pages is but one facet. (There are several large parts of its main namespace that are permanently fully protected, for no good reason, ironically leaving several books in a state of permanent disrepair that normal editors could have otherwise fixed.) This is not thinking that we need to import into Wikipedia. It's pretty bad thinking for Wikibooks. Uncle G (talk) 20:01, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Agree with the conclusion, can't agree with the "successfully" in the second sentence though;) Our inability to deal in any rational manner with bouts of edit-warring and irresoluble disputes over what has consensus leads to disruption on a massive scale, both to those trying to maintain these pages and to ordinary editors trying to comply with them. Protection isn't the remedy, but the system is broken.--Kotniski (talk) 10:10, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Repeat after me, Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Any description of Wikipedia's policies as a "rulebook" represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how Wikipedia works. — Werdna • talk 08:29, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, you seem to be committing your own fallacy, by quoting a statement from WP:NOT as if it were true just because WP:NOT is policy. We all know that WP is a bureaucracy, at least to some extent (and perhaps that's a good thing too), and its policies do function as a rulebook (again, to some significant extent).--Kotniski (talk) 10:03, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I think that you fundamentally misunderstand how WP works. It certainly is a Bureaucracy and the rules keep us from becoming Uncyclopedia. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 19:21, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Contradictory Templates Template:Cleanup-gallery and Template:Gallery

I am posting this in concern that I believe Template:Gallery is allowed to use despite it Contradict the Polices that are cited on Template:Cleanup-gallery. Basically what is going on all over Wikipedia is that the most all the pages that use Template:Gallery is also topped with Template:Cleanup-gallery. The polices of the Cleanup Gallery Template cites the following source Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles and does not directly link to the Section #images which is located at Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles#Images, which in turn cites Wikipedia:Layout#Images and Wikipedia:Picture tutorial.

The Cite at Wikipedia:Layout#images does cite that "If an article has many images, so many, in fact, that they lengthen the page beyond the length of the text itself (this also applies if a template like {{taxobox}} or {{Judaism}} is already stretching the page), you can try to use a gallery, but the ideal solution might be to create a page or category combining all of them at Wikimedia Commons and use a relevant template ({{commons}}, {{commonscat}}, {{commons-inline}} or {{commonscat-inline}}) and link to it instead, so that further images are readily found and available when the article is expanded." It goes on linking to a failed Policy which show what the proper formating of Galleries and what is or isn't allowed for them.

I was considering placing Template:Cleanup-gallery or Template:Gallery on WP:TFD but I decided to ask here first instead as I feel that I want more details on why these 2 templates exist even though they contridict. Also I felt that the massive usage of the Template Cleanup-Gallery is being over used and I have seen it placed on image gallerys with as few 2-3 images. I have event tried to remove on of them only to get my edit reverted. (My Edit Log Reference: Lucas_Oil_Stadium) In my personal opinion I feel that the usage of the Template Cleanup-gallery is very unclear and does not specifically point to why the gallerys are not allowed on Wikipedia. In closing I hope this problem I am having gets straightened out. Sawblade05 ^{(talk to me | my wiki life)} 05:27, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I found the Gallerys are not allowed policy at Wikipedia:Image use policy as I am now considering placing the Template:Gallery on VFD if someone can place the template on there. I am gonna try to make the edit to Template:Cleanup-gallery to make it point to the specific policy as it does not link there already. Sawblade05 ^{(talk to me | my wiki life)} 02:10, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Oppose, Both cited guidelines discourage but in no sense bar the usages of Galleries. The purpose of this template is to encompass those individual cases from which a gallery may be beneficial. It is both counter-protductive and unconstructive to remove this option. If you are intent on barring galleries entirely, please understand that the Gallery tag is use more often than the template—desite the advantages with the template. Furthuremore, deleting this template would quickly cause a number of galleries to fail to function. Galleries that violate the policies cited above, should be dealt within an individual basis rather than issuing an unilateral ban. Under good faith, Wikipedia does not protect pages or ban users as a means of prevention; and it certainly violates this principal to delete templates as a means of reducing the number of galleries which contain an unnessary number of pictures.

Your concerns are justified, and it is certainly of interest to correct those galleries that are unncessarily large. However, most galleries use the Gallery tag rather than template. The Gallery tag does not allow for categories or the use of "What links here" tool to track them. If a usage should be deprciated it should be the tag rather than the template. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:08, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I have one last question. What do we do with Galleries With only 4 or less images that are tagged with Template:Cleanup-gallery as this does not solve my problem that I had when I've attempted to remove such a Gallery citing that it was already in the Commons per my edit and revertion of Lucas_Oil_Stadium. We really need a Guideline for the usage of the Template:Cleanup-gallery as I felt its been overused and I don't think it belongs on small galleries with 4 or less images. (The ones that take up 1 line without scrollbar) Kinda similar to the guideline of the placement of Template:Trivia which is to be only used on Trivia Sections that are excessive in Length. (more than 3 facts from what I understand) Sawblade05 ^{(talk to me | my wiki life)} 05:46, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I think this guideline would apply a lot of cleanup templates, and as you've cited Trivia and Gallery-cleanup appears to be suffering the worse of it. Within my opinion simply removing it should not cause too much controversy, and you certainly have leeway with such a nebulous policy guideline. This issue is no longer encompassed by title of this section, and perhaps we should research and propose a guideline in how many and in which cases templates may be used. I remember after talking to David Levy, that originally the guideline for adding templates was derived from an older set of rules of making omissions explicit (the one I linked is actually a proposal, there is an older one than this that actually got passed). ChyranandChloe (talk) 08:56, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Proposition 1 - Civility and Conduct

Following the discussion above about merging certain policy documents to make things a little more streamlined, I've gone away to think about the first of these merger proposals which could be a "runner". We are all Wikipedians aiming for the same cause, I just don't want to see editors new and old having to trawl through a Treaty-sized pile of articles before daring to start an article. The streamlining of the machine should make the product better produced.

My proposal is to merge current policies on Civility, Harassment, No Personal Attacks, and Attack Pages, into one single policy - "Civility and Conduct". I take the point that Legal Threats should stand alone.

I believe that a single behavioural policy will be easier to police, easier to understand and easier to implement. The current policies are confusing in their overlap (or potential to overlap), whilst I believe quite honestly that were we to work together to merge Civility, Harassment, No Personal Attacks, and Attack Pages together into a streamlined policy, "Civility and Conduct" will be one of the benchmarks of Wikipedia behaviour.

doktorb _words^deeds 12:47, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

• Sounds good. But you're on your own, I'm not due to unilaterally rewrite a policy for another three months or so -- Gurch (talk) 13:30, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
• This is a good example of the missing-the-point alluded to above. Wikipedia:Attack page doesn't just cover conduct by editors. It also covers content of pages. (See Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#G10.) Merging it into a "conduct policy" would lose that very important facet of the policy as it currently stands, the consensus for which you can see at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/13. I suggest having a better understanding of our policies before thinking about how to merge them. The simple truth is that editors don't have to trawl through all of our policies before daring to do anything, so the fundamental premise of this entire discussion is flawed. Wikipedia:Ignore all rules is a policy, too. Uncle G (talk) 20:25, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
  • They don't have to, but they might well think they have to... Anyway, surely the point of having policies is that we do want editors to read them?--Kotniski (talk) 09:53, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, with WP:EW and WP:3RR, they should be merged because a 3RR violation is always a EW vio. With this its a little different. Someone can make personal attacks while still remaining civil. People can completely fly off the handle without attacking or harassing anyone. While there is a significant bit of overlap, they do cover separate topics. Mr.Z-man 00:50, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't get that - can you give an example of a personal attack that isn't uncivil? In any case the line must be a very fuzzy one, and there is much that could be saved by putting the two topics (to the extent that they may be distinct topics) on one page. --Kotniski (talk) 09:53, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

May I respectfully suggest that your mother fornicated with barnyard animals? I believe that is an example of a perfectly civil personal attack. 71.194.129.10 (talk) 22:23, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

So you think using fancier words makes such a comment "civil"? I believe the message being express, rather than the words used, determines civility of a post. SMP0328. (talk) 22:29, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

For excellent examples of civil attacks, see the various discussions between Winston Churchill and Lady Astor. LeadSongDog (talk) 16:56, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

It gets murkier; what about cases of niggling comments to editors who may be clearly upset or angry about something? Clearly disruptive - should the punishment be as bad as that for the subsequent outburst? Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:24, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

If we want a merged, simplified version of the personal behavior policies, one already exists: meta:Don't be a dick. The rest of the content of these policies is really elaboration and explanation for people who honestly have a hard time understanding that they are being dicks. Mangojuice^talk 15:01, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

The idea of merging the articles, as suggested, seems sound to me. As a separate issue, I have a question concerning civility blocks. I have noticed that editors who violated 3RR excessively can get blocked for extended periods of time, or even permanently. Does that apply to civility violations also, or is that something that never gets more than a 24hr block? I am asking because have noticed that some users seem to violate WP civility guidelines rather freely. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 15:35, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I'm sure we could do much better on the civility front. The confrontational atmosphere often found around WP must surely be one of the things that drive good editors away. I was thinking of proposing it as a kind of communal new year's resolution - but strengthening of the policy and enforcement (polite but serious warnings - followed up with blocks - until people start getting the message; uncivil comments allowed to be removed from wherever) might not be a bad direction to go in.--Kotniski (talk) 16:18, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I would certainly endorse strengthening the enforcement of civility violations. Would this justify moving to a separate thread for further discussion without distracting from the proposal to merge the civility articles? Malcolm Schosha (talk) 17:05, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

External links to forums

If a company runs their own support forum and has there own people in it, would it not be acceptable to list the forum in an article about the company in the external links section?

Speaking of forum.. This site needs one. Email topic notification search by topic title only etc.. I dont htink it will ever happen though. This seems pretty cumbersom to use.kieranmullen (talk) 00:22, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

See mw:Extension:LiquidThreads. — Werdna • talk 08:22, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Retouching of images

What is the policy (or do we have one?) for using photoshop for slight retouches of famous people? I know stuff like photoshopping a mole out of Barack Obama.jpg isn't right, but what about stuff like what was done in BarackObama2005portrait.jpg? (See their revision histories. Also, sorry I couldn't internal link them, I've forgotten how to do so without actually showing the image. I'll fix when I can.) Jedibob5 (talk) 01:52, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I fixed your links for you. --Cyde Weys 01:55, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I keep forgetting how to do that. Jedibob5 (talk) 13:49, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

There isn't one, but this sort of cosmetic image improvement is commonplace, as long as it doesn't lead to factual misrepresentation or inaccuracy. We have countless fair use images from e.g. magazines and professional studios where this sort of work was already done before anyone ever saw the image. Dcoetzee 06:26, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Deletion for a Hoax

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I have created a proposed policy for speedy hoax deletion on User:Darth Panda/Proposed Deletion for a Hoax. As this is my first time proposing a policy, I would be glad to hear any critiques or comments about my proposal. Please direct all comments to User talk:Darth Panda/Proposed Deletion for a Hoax. Thanks! DARTH PANDA^duel 02:00, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikijargon in article-space

Have a look at Buckwheat (or, in general, Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Peacock term). Are most readers going to know what a "peacock term" is? Have you guys seen other maintenance tags that may be obscure to the general reader? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:32, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

In the case of Buckwhear I find User:Temporaluser tagging excessive. Taemyr (talk) 02:44, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Playing the devil's advocate I must say that the template is a blue link to Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms, so "most readers" have an easy way to find out what it's all about. Having three tags per line is quite a different story. NVO (talk) 10:26, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

If we want to allow wikijargon in article-space, we'll have to rewrite much of WP:SELFREF and WP:JARGON. Although WP:Naming conventions concerns only page titles, the many arguments we've had over how to weigh using words that Wikipedians understand vs. words that readers understand are relevant here, too. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:12, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about anyone else, but "peacock words" or the like was used to name this issue in every writing class I've taken where the issue came up. Same for "weasel words", BTW. Anomie⚔ 18:11, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I changed it to say "Why?" because that's pretty much what a peacock word is, saying something without saying why it is like that. ViperSnake151 22:41, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2008 March 18#Template:Peacockterm Uncle G (talk) 00:30, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

NPOV depends on a balanced cross section of editors showing up

I am sure that this has been discussed previously (possibly many times) but editing difficulties I experienced in editing the Anti-Zionism article has caused me to think that a balanced article on a controversial subject depends on who shows up to do the editing. In turn, who shows up depends on

1. Who can show up. If the totality of Wikipedia users are weighted in a certain direction in their views of a subject, then the article on that subject will be weighted in that direction too.
2. When the issue an article deals with is highly polarized, the editors who show up to edit, even if evenly balanced on each side of the issue, will have a great fight, but will have -- from the beginning -- absolutely no hope of creating a qualitively informative article on the issue.
3. When the issue an article deals with is highly polarized, and with editors weighted to one side, the larger group will shove their POV down the throat of the other side, and call the resulting crap "consensus."

Conclusion: a different process for editing articles on controversial issues is needed, or articles on controversial subjects should be excluded from Wikipedia. Why? Because crap articles, and bullshit articles, tend to discredit all of WP, and at minimum reflect badly on it. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 15:47, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I have had similar problems in the polarized article. Nevertheless I don't think your proposal should be carried out.

First of all, consensus is something else from democracy. In special cases majority vote can create consensus, for example, if the people resisting consensus are supporters of a fringe theory. In other cases the view of a single editor unwilling to accept any form of compromise can be seen as outside consensus. However if there is a reasonable debate consensus will most likely not be by majority (however large). That said I agree the "consensus" claim is overused by editors who are in majority groups (even marginal majorities). The counter argument is that Wikipedia is not a democracy. But that will not solve the problem.

Excluding controversial articles is not an option as that would exclude many core topics (note that articles of little interest tend not to lead to controversies as nobody cares enough). Arnoutf (talk) 16:10, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

What you say makes a lot of sense, but it has not worked. What I suggested is just a suggestion, and I would be just as happy to see some different approach taken. But that is now in place is not working, and is not (it seems to me) in the best interest of Wikipedia. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 16:17, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• By the way, this thread on the Irgun talk page [4] is a perfect example of what I discussed above. It is beyond my comprehension how this sort of editing has go on for years without changing the system for editing controversial articles. Why are things like this on Wikipedia? It defies comprehension. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 23:00, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

There is a dispute resolution process with varying degrees of escalation. Have you tried it? Removal of "controversial" articles isn't going to happen. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 23:43, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

The dispute resolution process has seldom, if ever, solved these issues. In this case, there has been arbitration here and it seems to have solved nothing.

Concerning the Irgun article (which I mentioned above), my only editing was yesterday, when I noticed this statement in the lead Initially, a central part of their efforts included attacks against Palestinian Arabs. That claim is a view that is disputed, and it was cited to a very main stream Jewish source; so I checked the source [5]. As is clear, the source says something rather different than what the lead presents it as saying, so I made this change [6]. That has been diverted back by two different users, and it seems unlikely that my correction can be gotten to replace the distortion because I am outvoted. If you refer to my original analysis of this sort of problem (above) you will see that in #2 I said: When the issue an article deals with is highly polarized, and with editors weighted to one side, the larger group will shove their POV down the throat of the other side, and call the resulting crap "consensus." This case is, it appears to me, a perfect example of that.

I already know that AN/I will not resolve this sort of problem. Also a look at the mediation and arbitration efforts of the past shows that will not resolve the problem either.

Challenge: I hope the users who read this understand that this a years old problem that can not be solved by any presently existing WP mechanism. Additionally, if WP wishes to be taken seriously as a reliable information source it is unacceptable to continue evading resolving the problem. The challenge is: do some brainstorming, and find a solution. Please, this really needs attention, and someone needs to hit the panic button. I brought this to Village pump (policy) because I hope someone here will start to think about finding a cure, instead of suggesting putting a band-aid on (what amounts to) a tumor. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 13:33, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok back to the issue.

1) Controversial articles often result in edit wars.

2) Current conflict resolution does not always work and this is worrying

3) Deletion of controversial articles is not an option (these are just too important).

So in my view the core questions here are:

A) Do we need specific conflict resolution for controversial articles?

B) Do we need to adjust/tighten the current conflict resolution rules?

C) Should the editors in conflict articles use the current conflict resolution procedures more systematically?

Or any combination of these. Arnoutf (talk) 15:48, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for doing a good job of laying out the issues and possibilities so clearly. I have never been in a dispute that went to mediation and arbitration. From what I have seen of them, from the outside, large amounts of time get taken up in these (a real obstacle to users who have jobs), and the outcomes never seem to actually settle the problem. These, apparently, takes up ridiculous amounts to administrator time too. Perhaps a more rapid dispute resolution procedure would be good. I suspect the answer is in your item "A" Malcolm Schosha (talk) 16:35, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Producing an NPOV article depends on following policy - which includes not overwhelming an article with a discussion of antisemitism (where in fact, it barely belongs) and then announcing that more or less everyone in the world is guilty of it. Policy would also stop us using a laughably poor source for an extraordinarily "surprising" quote from Joschka Fischer that "anti-Zionism inevitably leads to antisemitism". I'll need to remind everyone you've been warned not to remove other people's TalkPage contributions. PR^talk 21:18, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

PalestineRemembered, I am trying to see if it is possible to generate some ideas for resolving problems that are recognized by many WP editors. I have described how I see those problems at the top of this section. If you have any suggestions that apply to that, I certainly would be happy to hear them. If you have specific complaints about my editing deficiencies, that should not be made on Village Pump (policy), but on the talk page of the disputed article, or (if you think it justified) on AN/I. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 22:06, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to be blunt, but this smacks of "changing the rules of the game because I didn't win". The mechanisms for dispute resolution work well enough, even for so-called controversial articles. Problems arise when editors refuse to concede when consensus or decisions run against whatever their position happened to be. Just as not everyone gets gets to be an astronaut when they grow up, not everyone gets to be right on the Wikipedia, either. In direct response to Arnoutf, A and B get a "no", C gets a "yes". Tarc (talk) 14:06, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Tarc, please review WP:assume good faith.

I am far from the first editor to notice that there are problems with many articles that deal with controversial subjects. I am suggesting that something extra needs to be tried now, but I do not have the WP clout to control the direction taken. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 14:42, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I am well familiar with WP:AGF and how it is alternately used as both a shield and a cudgel, thanks. And yes, I comprehend what you are suggesting. I am replying that nothing extra is necessary, as there isn't really a problem here in my opinion. There are countless hotspots across the project...I-P issues isn't the only one...that go through the systems of dispute resolution every day. I would be highly opposed to classifying particular articles or groups of articles as needing special rules, as I see it as creating a "some animals are more equal than others" type of hierarchy, which would run counter to the philosophy of an open-to-all encyclopedia. Tarc (talk) 18:21, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Tarc, referring to WP:assume good faith I see it says: Assuming good faith is a fundamental principle on Wikipedia. I could not find anything about the dangers of it being used as "shield and a cudgel", and I do not think that is correct. Also, based on the comments made so far by uninvolved users, I seems that they do understand what I described concerning hotly contested articles really is a serious problem for WP. If there is a solution, I do not know....but I think that not finding a solution undermines the reputation of WP. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 22:13, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I see in totality three other users who have commented in this topic besides us; one generally agrees with you, one does not, the other pointed you to existing dispute resolution. So declaring that you have "uninvolved users" behind you does not appear to be the case. Neither is your claim that dispute resolution does not work. It has worked, and worked well, even in very contentious Israel-Palestine articles. There used to be quite a row over Israel and the apartheid analogy for example, with massive move wars over the name and ad nauseam attempts to get the article deleted. Nowadays, the article is relatively calm and stable; mostly due to compromise, and partly due to tendentious editors being banned.

You say above that DR in the I-P arbitration "seems to have solved nothing". Well I must ask, what is your definition of "solved" ? Tarc (talk) 22:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Tarc, I did not say they (three users) are "behind me", I said that they acknowledge there is a problem that needs to be solved. I am not interested in getting anyone behind me. I am interested in solving a problem. If there is no solution forthcoming, then things will just continue in the direction in which they are now going. I have assumed that some users would find the present situation good, and others would not. (Actually the level of agreement with my view on this issue is better than I expected.) As I have explained, I think the situation with disputed articles is bad. Also, my own best guess is that the chances for change is remote, and the situation is hopeless. I decided to raise the question anyhow, but the thin response from users to this thread suggests that you have nothing to worry about. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 23:58, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Where did I say that I acknowledge there is a problem? I was only trying to be helpful to you to find a proper forum instead of trying to delete articles which aren't going to get deleted. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 02:14, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Little Red Riding Hood, sorry I misrepresented you. I wrote that in a rush and relied on my memory, which is sometimes a mistake. However you seem to have misunderstood my thinking, perhaps because I did not explain myself clearly enough. I do think that some articles might be better merged into other articles, such as Anti-Zionism with Zionism. But I never really thought that would actually solve the problems I listed when I started this thread. If you read back to that, particularly the "Conclusion", you will see that I wrote: a different process for editing articles on controversial issues is needed, or articles on controversial subjects should be excluded from Wikipedia. My assumption was that it would be understood my goal was developing better WP mechanisms for dealing with the problems and not deletion of important article content.

My suggestion was that a serious effort be made to find a solution to the problems that now exist, and for the reasons I explained. You seem to think, mistakenly, that I am trying to resolve a particular editing dispute. I would not bring an editing dispute here. I gave an example only to make clear how things go wrong. That was in the Irgun article, when I made an edit to correct some material that distorts the source cited. The Lead says this: Initially, a central part of their efforts included attacks against Palestinian Arabs,[2] but it increasingly shifted to attacks against the British. The source is to a book by Joseph Telushkin, who actually wrote in the book cited: The Irgun, a militant group -- originally founded by followers of Ze'ev Jabotinsky to retaliate against Arab terrorism, and which later to forcing the British out of Palistine... That the existing version rather distorts the meaning of the writer, and perhaps Tarc can explain his reasons for not wanting the mistake corrected.

The Irgun is not a group I personally like, and am not any more inclined to support it than Tarc; but Wikipedia intends articles to be accurate, and to have an article just reflect the personal judgments of its editors is deplorable. I used that example because it seems a pretty clear how things go wrong in articles on controversial subjects. Capisce? Malcolm Schosha (talk) 12:34, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

<--Arbitary Break. @Malcolm Schosha - it is extremely noticeable that you've again failed to deal with the first source-challenge that I presented you above (over the Anti-Zionism article). The content you wish to use from that source is "extreme" and the credibility of it is diminished and not enhanced by the better recorded material from the same subject that's been presented. (Your Telushkin edit also has serious problems, but we'll not go into that for a moment).

It is also noticeable that the first material you fought for is highly inflammatory, almost calculated to permanently the collegiality that needs to exist between editors.

Meanwhile, you've been Forum-shopping this highly contentious content dispute around various "conduct" based noticeboards at WP. This will not count in your favor when there is an ArbCom out on this entire subject area, and it specifically refers to "conduct" of editors and adjudging whether such conduct is "disruptive". Administrators rightly have a short fuse in this particular area, and you will be blocked if you persist. If I had my way, you'd also be blocked for repeatedly addressing other editors in an ethnically-specific fashion, and your interference with TalkPages (even after being told repeatedly by an administrator to desist) does not bode well. PR^talk 12:29, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

PalestineRemembered, as far as I can see, your edit has nothing to do with the subject of this thread, and consists of a lot of accusations against me personally. I would suggest that you review WP:no personal attacks and WP:civil. Certainly, if you think I have violated WP rules, you have every right to take your accusations to AN/I. You will note, I hope, that this page is for discussing WP policy, and is not the place to discuss what you think is wrong with me. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 13:10, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup templates: Is it time for a fundamental change?

I am a great supporter of the current array of templates available at Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup, as I feel that they invite editors to address issues such as {{notability}} by improving the articles in question. I use them often, and despite the fact their use brings me into conflict with other editors, I feel their benefit far outways their disadvantages.

However, there is an issue about their relevance to general reader. On the one hand, they act as a warning that there may be problems with the article subject, the content or viewpoint of the article itself, or that there are other quality issues that the reader should take account when forming their own views about a particular topic. On the other, cleanup issues such as notability really are not a major issue for most readers, and frankly notability is a rather esoteric subject in any case.

My proposal is that cleanup templates would be better placed on article talk pages, rather than added to the mainspace articles themselves on the grounds that they detract from the reader's experience of Wikipedia. In articles such as A Terrible Vengeance, the templates tend to disfigure the articles when looked from a purely presentational view, and the issues they are designed to address are probably better addressed through the talk pages in any case. Does anyone share this view, or should they remain on article page as is current practise? --Gavin Collins (talk) 11:20, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I think it depends on the template, as you suggest. There's certainly no need for a notability template to be shown to readers; however some others do have a use on the article page, as a kind of warning (or apology) to readers. (I feel that these tags are overused, and are often used without enough specificity, but that's another issue.)--Kotniski (talk) 11:25, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I support a review. I think there are many templates that can be on talk pages rather than articles. The 'machinery' of Wikipedia should be invisible to the casual reader in most cases. Lightmouse (talk) 11:33, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree that we need to consider moving these to talk pages. Brief brainstorming: tags that go on the article should include only (1) tags that serve as early warnings for possible deletion (e.g. notability) and (2) tags that serve as a beneficial warning to the reader. So for instance, the main {{cleanup}} tag should probably go on the talk page... but {{unreferenced}} and {{notability}} maybe do belong on the article page. Mangojuice^talk 13:00, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Moving the tags to the talk page misses a fundamental point: The purpose of the tag is not just to tell the reader that problems exist, but to invite the reader to help us fix them. If the tags are on the talk page, the only people who will see them are those who are already working on the article. If the new consensus is that we don't want to invite readers to help us fix problems anymore, fine, but any new consensus that does not address that issue IMO is fatally flawed. That said, I would support changing the instructions for various cleanup templates to state that any editor may remove the template from the article if there is no talk page discussion of the issue, but that anyone may re-add it if the discussion is started. That of course wouldn't apply to templates that are blatantly obvious, like "This article has no references". It may also be that we have tags for things that are really not needed; those could certainly be deleted. Anomie⚔ 13:49, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Every "reader" is also a potential "editor". Even regarding the Notability tag, there is every chance that a reader would be aware of a source that would convey the notability of the subject, or make helpful additions to an article that needed work. I can't think of any cleanup tags that would work better if placed on the Talk page. And unneeded tags? Such as? -- Mwanner | Talk 14:04, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

The purpose of attracting editors is a good one, but I think very unsuccessful. Look at WP:TC -- all the templates include an invitation of some sort to improve the article, but most of these templates are fundamentally comments about the article that an editor wants to make. {{Essay-like}}, {{Fansite}}, {{Story}}, {{restructure}}, {{generalize}} just to name a few, all give non-specific criticism of an article and don't give good opportunities to improve. Comments on an article belong on the talk page, that's what it's there for. Maybe it's not moving the templates to the talk page that's necessary; maybe what we really need to do is some house cleaning on the templates. Mangojuice^talk 14:26, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I like them the way they are. However, the "mere invitations to help clean up the article"-type templates could be replaced by "1-line" templates that say something like

This article needs help in the following area:

copy-editing

You can help. [Show me how]

only prettier and with a drop-down with the full template in the dropdown section linked from "show me how." Other templates, such as content-quality or reference-quality issues, should remain as-is. This will also be much easier to implement and won't require retraining existing editors. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:46, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm still opposed to this. Header templates, just like hatnotes and inline cleanup comments, are of service to the project's goals, and help to flag issues which can affect a reader's perception of the article's coverage. There are not as widespread as is occasionally reported anecdotally, primarily being used by articles which are of low quality. Furthermore, our approach to talkheader templates means that they're usually useless and ignored entirely (being primarily composed of WikiProject spam). The only arguments I can see for moving cleanup tags to talkspace are the avoidance of self-references and a general sense of aesthetics; in the former I feel that the selfref is useful if it helps improve a bad article, and I believe that our current tags are stylish and only minimally intrustive for the most part. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:57, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Lightmouse. Agree with Anomie that we want to invite the reader to help, but mainspace could make the invitation without explaining to the reader what job needs to be done; that could be on the talk page. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 16:54, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose the move to talk pages. As a reader (as well as as an editor), I find these notes helpful. Libcub (talk) 17:05, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Just a short note to tell that I strongly support moving cleanup tags to talk pages. Every article is in need of improvements. Let us have an encyclopedia with a decent layout and appearance, instead of cluttering tags on almost every article. --Kildor (talk) 21:20, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm indifferent towards the proposal. I agree that numerous cleanup tags on one out of every few articles looks encyclopedic, but if they're moved to the talk namespace, they'll surely go unseen by the vast majority of readers. I've found some cleanup tags to be somewhat helpful, particularly {{refimprove}} and {{copyedit}}, but {{notability}} is rarely of use, at least to me. –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 21:38, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I oppose this proposal. Ideally, all readers are editors and we should be encouraging people to edit, giving them ideas is a way to do that. Unless there's some sort of evidence that cleanup tags attract no editors, I don't see how we can assume that they don't. Additionally, if a reader comes across a crappy article, they're going to get a very negative impression about Wikipedia's quality. But if the crappy article is tagged as being a crappy article, they'll at least know that crappiness is not supposed to be the norm and that the article probably isn't a representative sample. There's also massive implementation costs with this. As of this comment, 379,559 articles (about 14%) contain Template:Ambox, it would take a bot editing nonstop 20 pages per minute 26.4 days to move them all (since each article requires 2 edits, one to remove from the article, another to add to the talk page). The documentation pages for hundreds of templates would have to be updated to reflect the new rule. It would also create issues with section-specific templates. The implementation costs and possible loss of new editors far outweigh the potential benefits. Mr.Z-man 22:36, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm surprised that this perennial proposal hasn't made it to Wikipedia:Perennial proposals by now. Uncle G (talk) 19:16, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

A discussion on the use/necessity (?) of biographical infoboxes

This discussion on the general WP:MOS guideline talk page has probably started to venture off beyond being a MOS.

The point in question is basically about specific wikiprojects opting to use infoboxes or not, particularly if there are other projects an article falls under that would get an infobox (in the specific discussion, it is the Classical Music WP desiring not to use an infobox on composers even when the general People wikiproject suggest their use.

The main issue is of course are Infoboxes as necessary as some make them out to be. Some see these as duplication of the article text, as well as having random datum that would otherwise never be included in an article; in addition, for shorter articles, they can be a visual eyesore. Of course, they can also be seen as a useful "at a glance" section.

The second issue is where the purview of the use of an infobox falls under. In the above case, a classic composer falls under both the People and the Classical Music project. Which "project" has priority, or do neither do leaving it to the specific page editor to handle?

The final issue is more something that I am concerned with and that is the fact that infoboxes can be useful for creating meta-data for an article (for a person, for example, dates of birth and death, nationality, etc.) that can be computer-read and thus used to build meta tools to compare and combine such data appropriately (say, a timeline of when various people of a nationality lives); they are also often used to categorize articles automagically. Now, regardless if a project decides they don't want to have visible infoboxes, a simple modification to most infoboxes to allow them to be hidden via CSS (not collapsible hidden, but hidden via "display:none" CSS) can still be used to provide said meta-data without affecting page display. I would at least encourage this aspect to help make articles more useful via third-party tools, in the same manner that most articles with geo-spatial data can be mapped out. --MASEM 18:25, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

My take on this

• Infboxes should not be necessary (although they can be useful). What worries me more is that infobox growth seems to get a life of its own (see e.g. the zillions of options in the country infoboxes) making them often several screens long, no longer in a glance information.
• Projects have only limited power in Wikipedia. If there are conflicting interests the projects should leave it to the page editors to come up with a tailored solution for that page.
• Hidden infoboxes is in my opinion a bad idea. Infobox information is not always uncontested (see e.g. the debate over the start of WWII). Hiding this information will make it important to bots and indexers, while hiding it for the average editor, thus eliminating checks and balances of wikipedia. Arnoutf (talk) 18:38, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

You may all want to read Wikipedia:Disinfoboxes before commenting here.Nrswanson (talk) 19:13, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the objections Wikipedia:Disinfoboxes presents against uniformitarianism in infoboxes - items that can't be shown to benerfit readers should be excluded.

I'm not familiar with the metadata issues or with whether the metadata idea is a concrete plan or a pious hope. I understand Arnoutf's point about not hiding metadata because that would make it an opportunity for POV-pushers, but I don't see why that should impact readers. What about putting the metadata where readers who are not editors don't see it, e.g.:

• on a separate sub-page of the article.
• in a construct that is hidden by default but can be shown by setting a Preferences option? --Philcha (talk) 19:42, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

My personal feeling is that wikiprojects should not make blanket requirements for the inclusion of infoboxes, as the biography project has done, but the use and structure of infoboxes should remain flexible to meet each individual article's needs. However, I have no problem with a project banning infoboxes, such as the composer project, if they prove to be problematic within a particular series or topic of articles. Personally I think wikipedia has gone info box mad and we could use a good weeding out of useless/poorly constructed info boxes. Most articles really don't need or benefit in any way from them.Nrswanson (talk) 20:16, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I think a single project trying to "ban" infoboxes in "their" articles is a massive overstepping of the job of wikiprojects. Projects exist to aid and organize collaboration, not to create their own content rules that only apply to a few articles. The fact that infoboxes are so widely used in articles should be an indication that there is wide community support for them. One project doesn't really have the authority to overrule the community like that. Just because it isn't codified in official policy doesn't mean there isn't consensus. Sure the project can choose not to create a {{infobox composer}}, but they have no authority to blanket revert the addition of infoboxes, that's just absolutely ridiculous. Mr.Z-man 21:24, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree with you Z-Man, but the problem ends up being that people will say that "but consensus is that X type of article doesn't! See the discussion!". So it's a hard line to figure out, and certainly is part of a larger issue than just info boxes. The problem in THIS case, that I've brought up elsewhere, is that some of the arguments used against them seem to want to elevate composers (in this case, or a couple people have mentioned artists) as somehow unable to be 'pigeonholed' because they are somehow beyond it...it's something that doesn't quite make sense to me, and is ALSO part of the larger issue, I think. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 21:59, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I can speak a bit to the issue of infoboxes being useful as a source of semantic key-value attribute information. In a number of ways this works well: the syntax clearly and unambiguously expresses the association, and the information is visible and easy to edit so that it can be verified and corrected by readers. Another common source of key-value pairs is categories. On the other hand, it'd be much nicer if the available key-value pairs were not limited to those in infoboxes, but could be expanded to many pieces of information contained in the prose. Doing this effectively in a way that enables reader verification and correction is a difficult problem that hasn't yet been addressed. Dcoetzee 22:27, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

My opinion: Infoboxes are often useful; sure, the lead probably mentions the person's birth and death dates, but "Born: November 1, 1972 / Died: December 1, 2008" can be easier to look up quickly than "Romeo Scragg (1972–2008) was born on November 1, 1972, in Dogpatch, USA. He lived an uneventful life as an alcoholic and pig farmer until his death on December 1, 2008." There is also something to be said for the uniformity of appearance that infoboxes can give to articles within a field. WikiProject's recommending or discouraging infoboxes should represent the consensus of the community in regard to articles within the project's scope; when an article is within the scope of multiple projects with differing consensus, a consensus for that article needs to be determined (neither project automatically "wins"). Wikipedia:Disinfoboxes looks like one person's opinion with no attempt at a balanced presentation, and not something that is terribly useful as actual guidance on use of infoboxes.

In the case of the WP:WPBIO versus WP:Composers, it looks to me like individuals on both sides are too entrenched to allow much progress, and the issue is too clouded with WP:OWN, WP:ILIKEIT/WP:IDONTLIKEIT, vote counting, over-reaching generalities, and hysterical raisins. What is needed, IMO, is a collection of what real advantages and disadvantages there are to composer infoboxes, and whether enough can be done to minimize or eliminate the disadvantages (e.g. No damn flags!) to make the advantages worth it. Anomie⚔ 22:54, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I find it amazing that everyone is so quick to jump on the composer project without being concerned with the fact that the Bio project is trying to force info boxes on articles across the encyclopedia. If that isn't a case of WP:instruction creep and WP:OWN I don't know what is. It certainly doesn't line up with WP:Style. I personally believe its best to not require info boxes but leave them as optional. There are three issues at play here: style, communication, and content. A policy enforcing the implementation of an info box is a style/communication decision. The argument for an enforced info box is that the info box will improve the look/design of the article as well as providing a useful means of disseminating an articles information. However, this view fails to recognize that not all articles are best served in terms of style and communication by an info box. Many articles are better off without them. See Wikipedia:DIB for a more thorough explanation. Therefore I would oppose any policy that blithely imposes an info box on any article without considering the unique needs of that individual article. On the other hand, banning info boxes from certain articles for content reasons is perfectly legit. If an info box is going to present a consistent problem within a particular area of articles by creating inaccurate presentations of content, then I think a ban is warranted. If you want a detailed example of such a case I can provide one for not including info boxes on opera singer articles, but it will be lengthy. Basically none of the categories applied to musicians works well for 99% of opera singers (i.e. Voice type, label, website, years active, etc.) All that's left is name/d.o.b./d.o.d/occupation which is already in the lead. I am not familiar with the composer project's particular arguement against info boxes so I can't comment on it. Nrswanson (talk) 00:08, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

So you think infoboxes should optional, but support wikiprojects banning infoboxes from certain articles? That seems a little contradictory. Requiring infoboxes is against WP:OWN but forbidding them isn't? If the musician infoxbox doesn't work for opera singers, wouldn't creating an {{infobox opera singer}} with more sensible fields make more sense than a blanket ban on infoboxes in opera singer articles? Mr.Z-man 00:39, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

If you can think of any fields for an opera singer that won't present a problem beyond the standard info contained in a lead then sure. I personally can't and I am a opera singer. And I don't think my arguement is contradictory. Its not a case of WP:OWN when you honestly believe that any info box on a particular kind of article is damaging to the article's factual accuracy (a view which I believe I can prove). This isn't an arguement about style but about the accurate presentation of content; something wikipedia should take very seriously.Nrswanson (talk) 00:51, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for illustrating my point about editors who are too entrenched to allow for progress, who overreact, and who spout over-reaching generalities. But I really don't think it was needed. Anomie⚔ 00:55, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Why is being forced have an infobox bad, and forced to delete an infobox good governance? Both are forced, and both are disagreeable to the person with the opposite philosophical position. Your argument is that forced governance is bad, except when you guys are doing the forcing. Then it is rule by wisdom and enlightenment. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:33, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

No my arguement isn't that all forced governance is bad. We force people to not add copyrighted material and thats a good thing. We force people to do lots of things at wikipedia, they are called guidelines. I don't think we should force people to present content in a highly specific format like an info box but I do think we should force people to present information accurately.Nrswanson (talk) 01:57, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Ok, we just force them to delete infoboxes. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:17, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

You are sure quick to jump to extremes. An entirely blanket policy banning info boxes on all articles isn't good either. Info boxes are quite useful in many places, just not everywhere. I'm all for info boxes when they can be implemented in a useful way. I just don't think that's possible within certain articles. I'm not for banning info boxes but limiting their use to where they can be used to the benefit of the encyclopedia.Nrswanson (talk) 02:28, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

• No, you just delete the ones under your control where you have enough muscle to reverse any restoration. Being part of a gang is good, it allows you to exert control over Wikipedia blocks of articles and enforce rules. Your group appears to oppose all biographical-infoboxes. You just delete them where you have a tagteam in place to enforce your will. There is nothing magical about a classical-composer compared to any other creative person. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 07:41, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Uh I have never removed an info box from a composer page, nor have I participated in any info box discussion at the composer project. Nor am I arguing for such a policy at composer articles. (I haven't heard that project's reasoning behind that decision in enough detail) Although I am technically a member of the composer project, I don't watch their talk page and I don't participate their much. I only joined because I write articles on composers (mostly opera composers) fairly often. I wouldn't, however, consider myself familiar with the project and it's members. All I am saying is that there may be a series of articles where info boxes are not helpful or are even harmful. (an assertion that you have yet to address seriously) Also, as far a I can recall I have never removed an info box from any article at wikipedia. And what gang am I supposed to belong to? As far as I can tell I have never bullyed anyone, nor have I forced my will on anyone else as part of a group. Are you so afraid of rational discussion that you have to resort to incivility and name calling?Nrswanson (talk) 15:23, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Fragmentation of this discussion/Past history

This topic has been forum shopped around to at least seven pages including:

• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style
• Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)
• Template talk:Infobox Musical artist

also Template talk:Infobox Person, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography, Template talk:Infobox Actor and probably others.

It isn't easy for those with an interest in the subject to have the energy, stamina and time to keep pace with all these simultaneous discussions - hence only two or three concerned editors seem to be represented here.

There is a considerable past history of discussions on the subject of biographical infoboxes, see Music biography infoboxes for links to many of them. This issue has consistently been the most disruptive faced by the music projects. One of the main reasons that bio-infoboxes are so disliked by content editors is that they involve some many time-wasting point attacks and accusations of ownership by essentially non-contributing editors. --Kleinzach 02:20, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

If it wastes your time, don't bother with it. It's a volunteer project...no one is forcing you to do anything. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 03:10, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

So exhausting those holding a different opinion through extensive forum shopping is now a legitimate strategy? Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:55, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

That doesn't have anything much to do with what Kleinzach said. The point is, if you think something is a waste of time, no one is forcing you to waste your time with it. Nor is the fact that the 'issue has consistently been the most disruptive faced by the music projects' have anything to do with the need to deal with the issue, now does it? And can't one say that those being accused of violating WP:OWN being the disruptive ones? Everyone has their own view on what is and isn't important here, and what is and isn't a waste of time. Since no one here has ANY mandates and no one is making any money/doing this as a job, trying to say that only certain opinions and discussions are worthwhile is very unhelpful and really pretty uncivil. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:43, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

As I previously mentioned, it is not forum shopping, such as searching for the best venue for a trial, it is notifying any potentially aggrieved parties, as is done in any proceeding based on laws. It is why involved parties take out ads in multiple local papers to notify those involved, of say a foreclosure, or an inactive bank account. Anything less would not be considered due diligence. The only posting that looks like an odd man, is the actor box. The closest I could find at the time for a vaudevillian. Each time the wording is roughly this: "The discussion is here at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Individual_wikiprojects_are_deleting_infoboxes_from_articles. As best as I can sum up the argument is that: classical composers as creative people can't be defined by the simple labels used in musical-infoboxes, and as creative people transcend the traditional people-infobox which can't capture the essence of what makes them an artist. And of course, some people are just philosophically opposed to any infoboxes, no matter what information they contain." --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 07:26, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

The gross distortions in that summary of the opposing view has been pointed out to you at the other discussion. I'm not going to repeat all the arguments made in that, much fuller, discussion, but would urge those looking at this to read that before making up their mind. Johnbod (talk) 17:03, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Only a few of those threads could be legitimately misconstrued as forumshopping. The key parts of the definition of WP:FORUMSHOP are: "repeatedly ... until", and "same issue on a number of forums in succession" – meaning 'over a span of time' (after one thread dies unsuccessfully, move on to start it up again elsewhere).

In most of those later threads Richard was pointing everyone towards a central discussion, and they were all within the same short time span. That's just normal canvassing for additional input in relevant locations. Due to the non-neutral wording of his pointers, it could also be called "Campaigning" according to WP:Canvass, but not forumshopping. Consider it "noted", as arguably poor-etiquette, and lets get back to (re)discussing the actual question, above. -- Quiddity (talk) 06:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Forum shopping is forum shopping. The number of times it's done is not relevant. It's a problem because it turns people off the discussion. For the record, it was other contributors who were trying to move the discussion to a more central location, see [7] and [8]. --Kleinzach 07:48, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Cut the bickering - we've got a centralsied discussion now. --Philcha (talk) 09:27, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

KiB --> KB // GiB --> GB

What is the policy of wikipedia relating to the use of KiB and KB and (GiB / GB)?

Personally, I'm sick of seeing this made up measurement of KiB.

The advantages of KB are: 1. KB is a known abriviation; people will understand it right away. 2. Choosing one policy for the whole of Wikipedia limits confusion. 3. KiB notation is not widespread in use (even so according to the KiB article). 4. Complete accuracy is often not that important to convey the message, when accuracy is very important; articles could fall back to the KiB notation. 5. The whole outside world uses the KB notation.

See WP:MOSNUM#Quantities of bytes and bits. There has been much debate over this on the MOSNUM talk page, so expect strong feelings when cleaning this kind of thing up, but the guideline clearly is on your side. -- Jao (talk) 12:27, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora) appears to run counter to WP:NC, which is policy. Recently many articles have been moved from the common name to the scientific name. Just a few examples: Joshua tree to Yucca brevifolia; White oak to Quercus alba (which was then reversed): based on the logs, this one seems to have been moved and reversed 3 (!) times; Bur oak to Quercus macrocarpa. It is understandable that the scientific name might be preferred in cases where there is no single well-known common name or where the common name is ambiguous. But it seems contrary to policy to systematically prefer the scientific name, even in cases where there is a well-established, unambiguous common name. Given the participants there seem at loggerheads, I think broader comment here is warranted. Any takers? UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:58, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora)#Breach of the Naming Conventions policy --PBS (talk) 21:07, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Discussion should probably continue at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora)#Breach of the Naming Conventions policy. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:09, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

For the moment, discussions have stalled on the stubbornness of a handful of intransigent owners of the page. If this continues, we will have to consider whether the mentions of this ill-advised policy in the naming convention are justified. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:46, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Battle of Iwo Jima - Raising the flag of policy creep

I am amused by User:Megapixie's edit here, as he has now removed the exact example used in the policy WP:NFC#Unacceptable use Images # 4 to illustrate when fair-use is allowed, with the edit summary ""Raising the flag" is NOT fair use in this context - per Policy. Replacing with another suitable image." This must be something of a record in the annals of policy creep. Johnbod (talk) 22:57, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Not sure you're right here Johnbod. The image is OK for Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, which is an article about the image and is the example given at WP:NFC. Using it in Battle of Iwo Jima would be hard to justify and I think its removal is correct. CIreland (talk) 23:50, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

The policy linked to above says (as what is unacceptable) "An image whose subject happens to be a war, to illustrate an article on the war, unless the image has achieved iconic status as a representation of the war or is historically important in the context of the war (e.g. Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima)." That seems very clear to me. It is not talking about an article on the image, but "an article on the war", and the case is surely even stronger for an article on the actual battle. Johnbod (talk) 23:57, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure the image should have been removed per WP:UCS...Modernist (talk) 23:55, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I read that as using Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima as being the article where the use is justified, but I can see the other interpretation too. Regardless, I don't see the need (per minimal use) to use it in the battle article when it refers to the image article anyway. (Oh, and by the way, if you decide to replace it, it needs a FUR.) CIreland (talk) 00:05, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that is just not what the policy example says. Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is an article on a photo, not a war. The "iconic status as a representation of the war or is historically important in the context of the war" is completely irrelevant to the article on the photo, as fair use is justified there by the textual discussion of the image etc. Johnbod (talk) 03:39, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Then the policy example is wrong, and needs to be clarified. It's a question of law. Using the image to illustrate war is "superseding the use of the original work" - it is using the image for exactly the purpose for which it was created, and exactly the purpose for which people have to pay royalties to AP. It is not fair use, per U.S. law.

To be justifiable as fair use, legally, the photograph has to be being used in a different way; for example, to make possible criticism or commentary of the photograph.

Further discussion is probably best centralised in the corresponding thread at WT:NFC. Jheald (talk) 10:49, 3 December 2008 (UTC)