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WHAT IN THE HELL IS WIKIS PROBLEM?

We really should not be worried about copyrighted pictures from government sights. These are COPYRIGHTED PICTURES from a GOVERNMENTAL SOURCE im talking about here. This source could be department of defence, department of economics, or department of face-painting. ITS FROM THE GOVERNMENT. ITS AUTOMATICALLY FAIR USE YOU .. im not going to say it. The editors on here just seem to want to block anything that is on the internet but thats IMPOSSIBLE because to display something on the internet it obvioulsy has to come, at some point.. FROM THE INTERNET. Dont you get it?

WTH is wrong with you guys?

Id like a fair response to my question please. Jeremy D. 19:40, 2 July 2006 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Itchy01ca (talk • contribs) .

The mere fact that you find an image on a government website does not mean that that image is necessarily an "image produced by an employee of the government of the United States in the performance of his duty". The government routinely acquires images from third parties for its own use, and when it does so the images may (depending on the circumstances) remain copyrighted by their original creator. It is necessary to examine each image on a case-by-case basis to determine whether or not it falls within the boundaries of the federal work product doctrine. Fortunately, government webmasters are usually quite responsive and all federal government websites are required to have a "contact the webmaster" indication, so if you find yourself needing an answer as to whether a specific image falls within the FWP, it's very easy to get a solid answer. Kelly Martin (talk) 19:43, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I think the person may be refering to an image from a Canadian government site, [1] which of course is not subject to U.S. copyright laws. [2] older ≠ wiser 19:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be appropriate to block this user, without consideration of his (incorrect) position, due to his extreme and unnecessary hostility. We face enough challenges with copyright there is no need to subject our volunteers to such treatment. Wikipedia is not your favorite web flame forum. If you have a concern or compliant please express it with civility and without hysteria. Mistakes are made and polite feedback is appreciated. --Gmaxwell 20:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Unfortunately i see these copyright problems all the time. In my opinion, any form of bits and bytes should not be allowed a copyright. ITS BITS AND BYTES PEOPLE. Don't be such a prude when it comes to pictures and other material because as we all know (well.. MOST people who are ADULTS know) you cannot possibly please everyone. If this wiki experiment is going to succeed it HAS to be willing to go against the larger corporations and ideals of US corporations (copyright). So a picture that is from a Canadian Defence website should not be considered an unlawful thing. It just make sense.. to an adult at least.Jeremy D. 21:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Please read about fair use and public domain. Many works of the federal government are public domain, but this needs to be verified on a case-by-case basis, as Kelly explained. Many works that are not automatically public domain can be used under fair use, but this requires extensive justification. Nothing is "automatically" fair use. Please check your hostility until you've learned more about the subject. I would not advise blocking this user for incivility at this point, since they seem to be acting in good faith. Deco 23:59, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Having looked the source over (the .ca site "Important Notices" page) it appears that while it may well be usable as fair use for the specific aircraft's page (Canadair CT-114 Tutor) it's certainly not applicable for other pages. I beleive the editor may be mistaking "automatic fair use" for the policy of the U.S. where governmental publications are automatically public domain. Canada does not have the same laws as the United States (see the page, again) as far as governmental publications. While fair use may be applicable, it is certainly NOT public domain, and in fact cannot qualify as GFDL as the governmental site shows restrictions on reproduction, specifically commercial reproduction, which is GFDL-incompatible. If my two cents are of no help, please return along with $5 shipping and handling to: ~Kylu (u|t) 00:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I believe these statements to be accurate. Deco 00:23, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Canada sucks. Fair dealing is a joke. FAIR USE is the way to go!--153.18.156.242 17:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Canada sucks? You talk about blocking users. Block this guy. I guarantee that I wont be thrown in jail or my website will be taken down if i post torrents up on a Canadian server. Whereas in the United States, there have been NUMEROUS arrests of torrent server clients. Canada rules because we know that bits and bytes are bits and bytes and are a random collection of data on a computer screen. In my opinion, Canada is a much more free country when it comes to personal rights and freedoms. Corporations run the lives of every United States citizen. Not Canadians. Thanks Jeremy D. 21:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Itchy, please calm down. Very few people will take you seriously until you do. Shouting accomplishes nothing. Our personal opinions of copyright law have little or no direct effect on the legal framework; sure, the law may need adjustment, but I would strongly oppose any attempt to use Wikipedia as a soapbox for the purpose -- if I want to take a legal risk to make a point, I'll do it, but I won't readily drag someone else, much less an entire online community, into it. Again, please remember to keep a cool head and stay civil. Thanks, Luna Santin 11:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Understood. It just all seems rather unfair to people who are attempting to find good, historical pictures of rare objects and such. There seems to be a fair amount of grey area in copyright law concerning historical photos.

Multi Page Delete

Rather than list every article listed on List of people by nationality for AfD, I think it would be easier to have one AfD for them all. Also, the only reason one would be deleted and not all of them is if people with different veiws on notablity voted on them. Without knowing about the rest, I listed List of Iranians for AfD. As of now, it looks like it would be deleted under the reasoning that it is unmaintainable and could be a category. That would apply to all lists in List of people by nationality. But how to go about this? Would I put an AfD notice on all of them and have them be redirected to one AfD? I would like to get input on how to do it as well as support before I do this. An suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. Wikibout-Talk to me! 23:07, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

It now seems it will be kept so I withdraw this suggestion. Wikibout-Talk to me! 14:56, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Notification

I believe that before a 3RR complaint can be considered, the editor allegedly violating 3RR should be notified of the complaint. I have seen discussions go on about a user who has no idea that they are being discussed and have no idea that there is a rule such as the 3RR. I'm speaking from experience, as I was blocked when I first started editing for violating 3RR, and had no idea about the rule, had not been warned, and had no idea that someone had submitted my name to this page. It wou;dn't be that hard to notify people that are reported here. What does everyone think? Chuck(contrib) 01:40, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

This talk page doesn't seem to get a lot of traffic. Chuck(contrib) 21:21, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
That is likely simply an error on the blocker's part. I never see users being blocked for 3RR without being aware of it nowadays. --Lord Deskana I VALUE YOUR OPINIONS 21:22, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh ok, I have noticed things working differently since my block ages ago, however it would nice to be notified that discussion is ongoing at WP:AN/3RR, in case they have any imput or defence. Just a thought. Chuck(contrib) 21:28, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm... what sort of input are you expecting them to give? Typically their opinion adds nothing to the debate. It is clear whether or not 3RR applies to their edits. Do you simply believe that discussions about users should not be held behind their backs without them being notified? --Lord Deskana I VALUE YOUR OPINIONS 21:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I guess that's the underlying concern. I was horrified when I googled my username and found at at a 3RR violation. I think people would just want to know. Chuck(contrib) 21:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd say on most 3RR violations it's not necessary. It's a case of...

  1. Someone reports a 3RR violation
  2. Someone blocks

But perhaps on 3RR violations that involve debate the user should be notified. Hmmm... something to think about. --Lord Deskana I VALUE YOUR OPINIONS 21:36, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Not informing someone they have a 3RR against them is a pretty good way of maximizing the chances that there won't be a debate. If we believe in civility the least we can do is require people who pst a complaint to WP:AN/3RR to also inform the person they are accusing on their talk page. Homey 03:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, probbaly 85% of reports follow the 1-2 step above. Thanks for the imput. Chuck(contrib) 21:39, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
No problem, any time! --Lord Deskana I VALUE YOUR OPINIONS 21:40, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Very few 3RR blocks are issued to editors who are completely unaware of the 3RR. In situations where there is an ongoing discussion about whether or not the 3RR was violated it might make sense to notify the alleged violator, but usually it's the 1-2 described above. An editor who has genuinely violated the 3RR should realize that they have done something wrong regardless of whether they're aware of a specific policy; edit warring is something that people should realize is naughty just from first principles. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:28, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

ethnicity, hyphenation, and membership

There's a long list of ethnicity nominations heating up at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 July 3.

We need a firm policy on this for Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories).

  1. When hyphenation should be used?
    • I propose that hyphenation should always be used where the ethnicity is followed by the nationality (for example, Category:Irish-Americans). It is my understanding that this follows common style practice in American newsmedia.
    • I propose that hyphenation should never be used where the nationality is followed by the ethnicity (for example, Category:British Asians). It is my understanding that this follows common style practice in British newsmedia.
  2. When categorized?
    • The recent earlier discussion indicates that membership should be self-identified and verifiable. I agree.

This needs clear policy and forceful enforcement. We have a real problem with racism among some of the editors.

For example, folks with 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 Black ancestry are again being categorized as "African-American" without any verifiability. I don't want to go back to the days where folks were called "mulatto", "quadroon" and "octaroon". It's certainly not appropriate for a modern encyclopedia.

Another example:

No African or Caribbean or Asian or Indian immigrant is referred to as "English", no matter how long they or their generations have lived here.

I find the racist sentiment repugnant. It is contrary to current practices. For notable examples in the popular media:

Are there any existing Proposed guidelines or policy or essays? I'm planning on writing a new one, and it would be helpful to know where the previous attempts have been made.

If folks could point me at past discussion, I will try to formulate something in the next few days. Thank you.

--William Allen Simpson 06:45, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
It's as simple as 1 2 3. Using Shefali Chowdhury as an example. If a reliable source called her a Welsh actress, so can we and so should we. If a reliable source called her something else, so should we. We are reporters of what others have called these people, especially when it comes to national or ethnic labels. See how the reference to Keira Knightley's nationality was settled - with a reference that called her "English" (well, she called herself that) Mad Jack 06:49, 3 July 2006 (UTC)


I suggest the policy be that a person has to publicly identify himself/herself with a specific group. Even then there are curious cases: everyone assumed until 2002 that John Kerry was Irish, even his press secretary. Kerry was often introduced that way and never denied it--but he has no Irish ancestors. Rjensen 10:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Relying on self identification only is problematic for that very reason. There are now reliable, verifiable published sources that show Kerry's ancestor was Jewish not Irish which reference exact names and dates. These are the kind of sources we should be accepting, not just vague frivolous statements made on whoever's national day it happens to be, which are usually not backed up by any kind of evidence and cannot be verified. Arniep 13:21, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
So are you saying that Kerry should be categorized as Jewish American? I'm sorry, but that is just silly. While I completely agree that self-identification by itself is not sufficient (Kerry obviously should not be categorized as Irish American), Wikipedia is not a geneological database. It is pointless to try to categorize people based on ancestry alone. The categories used by the Census are highly problematic and have come under sharp criticism in recent years, so I don't think we should be building Wikipedia's category structure around it. The thing is that such labels are a complex mixture of cultural heritage as well as of genetic background. How should a person adopted in infancy from one culture into another be categorized? If the infant grows up knowing nothing of their biological heritage, what sense does it make to categorize them as of that heritage? By extension, if a person happens to have had one or more biological ancestors of a particlar ethnicity, but grows up with little or no connection to that cultural heritage, what is the point in categorizing them as part of that heritage. This is very problematic and deeply troubling. older ≠ wiser 14:39, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Arniep seems to want to base ancestry stuff here exclusively on ancient family trees. If someone says they are Irish-American, they are presumed to be such until they are explicitly mentioned as not being that. That was the case with Kerry. If the press made that mistake originally, then we should have - at the time - as well. It's that simple. If we can find a reliable source that says Kerry is Jewish, he can be categorized as such. If good sources call Shefali Chowdhury Welsh, we can call her that, unless there are more/better sources that call her something else. Mad Jack 16:56, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Of course Kerry should not be in the Jewish American category as the term Jewish American isn't usually applied to people based on distant ancestry alone, whereas the term X American is very often used in that context. I have suggested a guideline for the lists that would allow people to included if in a reputable source such as a biography, they are said to be of X descent, and I would suggest that it be limited to grandparents, unless the person has personally spoken or written about an ethnicity which is part of their ethnic makeup which is more remote than a grandparent. Arniep 17:40, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
The term Jewish can be applied to any person of any Jewish ancestry, if they or a reliable source choose to apply it. And I wouldn't call Kerry's ancestry "distant". His father is "fully Jewish" by ethnicity. If a reliable source called Kerry Jewish, we could, too. If not, not. Mad Jack 17:42, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Well his father wasn't Jewish religiously, and did he actually know anything about whether his father was Jewish? I think X American is much more commonly used for distant ancestry than Jewish American is so the terms are not really directly comparable. Kerry may be called a Jewish American by certain sources, whether those sources can be considered reliable sources is a matter od debate. Arniep 18:04, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Can we not have this Jewish vs. everyone else thing again? If you have this opinion, good for you, but must you share it time and again? Not only is it incorrect, it can be offensive to certain people. If a white supremacy site calls him Jewish, obviously we can't use them (We can't use them for sources on anything other than themselves, anyway). If a reliable publication calls him Jewish, we can too, pending a source that explicitly says he isn't (and the same is true for anyone else, obviously). Mad Jack 18:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

No, I think it is very problematic to categorize people by ethnicity and should ONLY be done when a person verifiably self-identifies with a heritage. There's no problem with making attributed statements in an article ("X source claims John Doe is a Y-American" or "according to X source, John Doe has Y-ethnic heritage"). But IMO, categorization should only be done where there is explicit self-identification (at least for living persons--the standard for historical persons may need to be based on descriptions in reliable sources). older ≠ wiser 17:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, sure, but if a New York Times article categorizes someone, they are presumed to have done their research :) Mad Jack 17:26, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Self identification is somewhat problematic as it leads you into the realm of deciding what phrase qualifies a person to go on an X American list. For example, a person may say: "I am proud of my Irish heritage", "I have a great interest in my Irish forebears", "I feel Irish", "I am Irish going back generations", "I am Irish on my father's side", "I have Irish blood", "I often dream of my Irish ancestors". Which of these qualifies a person as an Irish American? You see saying we must rely on self identification is really not that easy. Arniep 17:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
You either have a source saying someone is Irish or you don't. Not great interest, not proud of, not have, no dreams. "IS", "AM", or anything you can conjugate from that. Mad Jack 18:01, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Jack, you connecting the fact A that they are an American citizen and fact B that they have said they "are Irish" to mean C that the person is an Irish American! Oh wait, is that deductive reasoning?! You are making a subjective decision about what phrasing qualifies someone as an Irish American. If we are going to stick to your strict interpretation of the WP:NOR policy we need a source that says they are an Irish American. Reputable reference works just say an Irish American is an American whose traces their ancestry to Ireland, it doesn't say they have to say "I'm Irish" as far as I can see. Arniep 18:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

You two are filling volumes here and don't seem to be making any progess. Might I suggest taking this to a dedicated page somewhere and perhaps request an impartial mediator to try to help things along. FWIW, I think I disagree with both of you. To Arniep, I agree that self-identification is somewhat problematic, which is why I would insist on verifiable self-identification. Essentially, would not only have to self-identify with a heritage, but would also have to have some verifiable evidence for the claim. Note that is is about categorization. As I replied above, there's no problem with having attributed statements in articles (regardless of whether someone self-identifies), but I think it is inappropriate to label anyone through categories as having a particular heritage if they do not self-identify with that heritage. For historical persons, there would have to be verifiable evidence not only of biological heritage, but also that that heritage played some signficant role in the person's life. older ≠ wiser 18:48, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Bkonrad, the problem is what would be verifiable self-identification? If someone said "I am Irish" or "I have Irish blood", or "I have Irish roots" or "My family traces back to Ireland" or "My Irish roots were a big influence on me" or "My grandfather used to tell me stories about our Irish homeland and I never forget them", which would qualify the person as Irish American? Jack is claiming that he only accepts if they say I am Irish, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything different to any of the other statements. Arniep 09:47, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry if this sounds non-politically correct or non-diplomatic to someone, but I am not spending any more time discussing this, and I am certainly not going to any other page to discuss this. I don't have this kind of time to give. The NOR policies are clear. If someone is called Irish, we may call them that. If someone is called American, we may call them that. If someone is called an actor, we may call them that. They are all labels. We can apply the labels separately, or we can apply them together - Irish American actor - though not in the header of an article, of course. What we can not do is translate anything other than the label to mean that the label has been applied - it is this translation that is forbidden. On the much-discussed List of Methodist dentists, if a person is described as a Methodist, they can be on it, if they are also described as a dentist. Not "practiced dentistry once" or "raised a Methodist". The OR comes in when we translate these phrases to mean dentist or Methodist when they don't explicitly say that, same as when we translate "Irish grandma" to mean the person themselves is Irish-American. Mad Jack 18:59, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Jack you are translating the facts that they say "I am Irish" with the fact they are an American citizen to make a conclusion that they are an Irish-American. You are making a judgement about that. You can't just fall back on WP:NOR when it suits you. Irish-American is a specific label. If you want to change the title of the list to Americans who have said I'm Irish on St. Patrick's Day that's fine. Arniep 09:47, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I am not making a judgment. Like I said below, it's like seeing "Person A owns a dog" and "Person A owns a cat" and repeating it as "Person A own a dog and a cat". No translation is not involved, but simple repetition of what the sources say, in the same wording. On a list called Irish American Catholics, we need the source that the person is A. Irish B. American C. Catholic. If we have a source that says all three in the same sentence, all the merrier. But no translation or synthesis is needed - we don't need to go looking up a definition - when we repeat that the person is Irish, American and Catholic. It's all in the definition - if we need to use one to turn a description into a term, that's OR. When we repeat the exact wording the sources use, it's not. Mad Jack 16:16, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Commercial links

What is the policy of commercial links where an editor claims they are based on review of films? Namely in the article Erik Rhodes (porn star) there are numerous links both as External links and under Filmography that are to commercial sites for selling pornography. I would just like to know what guideline is expected here. Thanks. Doc 08:02, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:External links. Generally an official site for the actor would be linked to, but otherwise highly commercialized sites would be avoided in most cases. What is appropriate can be something a judgment call. Dragons flight 08:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, that confirms what I believed to be the guideline. Now we'll see if the user that placed the 13 links to commercial sites selling the pornography and multiple pop-ups on each page will see it the same way. Doc 09:15, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
The folks at Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam will support you if there's any problem. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 09:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion, but if I read that page correctly Spam project is not for commercial sites, but for linking to one's own site. Doc 19:36, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not the most active editor on the spam project but I still think you are wrong. We very much care about links to commercial sites and many members of the project routinely delete some of these links. I think it would be helpful of you posted your concerns on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam talk page. Pascal.Tesson 14:55, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
If you're just looking for definitions, try WP:SPAM. SB Johnny 15:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
It is not so much deffinitions that I need, I believe that I understand the concept, but support on the links particularly under filmography section of the above porn performer's page which links to the sale of pornography. I'm not even sure of the notability, but would prefer other input. Thanks, Doc 21:32, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

NPOV and naming convention conflicts

Since WP:NC moved from being a guideline to a policy it can potentially come into conflict with WP:NPOV. If this subject is of interest to you please share your opinions at WP talk:NC#NPOV and naming convention conflicts --Philip Baird Shearer 11:51, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (books)‎

The guideline linked above has been proposed to establish notability standards for books. I invite the community to visit the project page and make comments on its discussion page.--Fuhghettaboutit 21:06, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

99942 Apophis

Discussion moved to Talk:99942 Apophis.

Deductive inferences in OR

While Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Is deductive reasoning original research? is not an example of a reasonable deductive inference, this was discussed recently on Wikipedia talk:No original research under the heading Reasonable inference, and there was also a recent question on section Mathematics that happens to be related. The fact is that unless an article is going to have identical sentences as its sources, some sort of deduction is being made. Synthesis is necessary for creating an article from multiple sources. The mathematics relation is that, here, we have an example of pure deduction under the rules of mathematics—which are verifiable—and a situation where simple demonstrative proofs cannot be made without either making those deductions or duplicating text from elsewhere. —Centrx→talk • 06:47, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

You are most likely quite right. Some deductive reasoning is probably necessary. But deductive reasoning is not deductive reasoning unless it has 100% agreement. No one would disagree that a woman is a female (ignoring the whole sex-change thing). Or that the US is short for United States. But there are people out there who think that even if a person is 100% Irish ethnically, they are not Irish American unless they define themselves as such and not reject the "Irish" part, considering themselves just "Americans". So if there is disagreement - it stops being deduction and becomes a majority, middle ground, or minority opinion, and we can't accept it under anything that is even slightly disagreed on. Mad Jack 06:54, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
In this particular case, we have a contested word meaning. If it was certain that stating "Irish-American" precisely meant at least x% of Irish ancestry, then it would be a reasonable deduction. —Centrx→talk • 07:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I think arniep butchered his own discussion when he brought up a quote by a person who was almost certainly all Irish by ethnicity, but who explicitly said that they did not want to be identified as an Irish-American. As long as these people exist, no "deductive reasoning" can be done on the X-American subject. Mad Jack 07:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
The quote- from Lists of Irish-Americans: "I'm proud of my Irish heritage, but I'm not Irish. I'm not even Irish-American. I am American, period. As you can see he says "I'm not Irish." and another statement "I'm not even Irish-American" so he clearly thinks the two statements have different meanings and usages! Yet Jack has decided that the a statement "I am Irish" is enough to put a person on the Irish American list, but not "I have Irish blood", "I have roots in Ireland" or "I was strongly influenced by my Irish heritage" or "I wrote a book about my Irish ancestors". If the lists are going to exist (which I'm not sure they should do) we either have to use sources that specifically say a person is an X American, or just use reasonable judgement about whether a person has clearly shown an interest in X part of their ethnicity. Arniep 10:07, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
If I might just throw in my own two cents about the lengthy debate the two of you (Mad Jack and Arniep) seem to be having. My impression is that your issue is more about criteria for inclusion than it is about deductive reasoning. Just establish a firm rule for inclusion and be done with it (possible ideas might include the person has self-identified themselves as X, or perhaps the person is at least Y% of X, or if you can find a reliable, textbook definition, go for it). Beyond that, more in general, I think some deductive reasoning is good, perhaps even required, but it's something to keep a very close eye on, at all times. Luna Santin 11:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment Luna. The definition of Irish American in reputable reference works is an American who traces their ancestry to Ireland, which definition in itself is slightly ambiguous. According to some users people can only be on a list of Irish Americans if a reputable source specifically says they are an "Irish American". Jack thinks that if someone says "I'm Irish" on St. Patrick's Day that is also OK, and I think that there are many things that someone can say or do which equally indicate that they are an Irish American. Arniep 13:35, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
The criteria for inclusion is "Is there a reliable source that refers to them that way"? Anything else contravenes policy. Jayjg (talk) 19:06, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

We can not have any "criteria", other than the source calling the person X-American, which is the "criteria" for any Wikipedia article - repetition of what a good source said specifically on that person/subject. On a list called Irish American Plaigarists, the person needs to have been referred as 1. Irish 2. American and 3. Plaigarist. If there are sources that refer to the person as two of those things in the same sentence, the better for us. In the case of the person being called these three things in three different places, we are not making any synthesis, but still repetition. I.e. if something says "Person A owns a dog" and then "Person A owns a cat", when we sat "Person A owns a dog and a cat" this is an exact repetition that means the same thing as the original version - no need for looking up a definition and attachin a term, which is what the translating of X father to the person themselves being X-American would entail. It's all in the translation. If we have to go look up a definition, that's OR. Mad Jack 15:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Jack, as you have pointed out yourself "Irish-American" is a label. If you are going to stick so rigidly to policy in regards to these lists as you seem to wish to, you need a specific source that says someone is an "Irish-American" not a source that says a person said "I'm Irish" on St. Patrick's Day. Arniep 19:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, I have proposed that the Irish American lists be merged with the Irish American article Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of Irish-Americans including only those people who are actually partly famous for being Irish-Americans. 19:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
No one is famous for being an Irish American. Not a single person on the planet, actually. This is because Irish American is not a profession. If a writer is famous for writing on Irish Americans, they are still not famous for being an Irish American, because they may well be 100% Dutch and still write exclusively on Irish Americans for whatever reason - maybe their wife is Irish. Some famous people, however, may well be known to be Irish Americans - whether correctly or not. I would advise you not to use the "St. Patrick's Day" thing because, A. no one is sourced to such a reference, as far as I can remember, though I haven't seen them all and B. This conversation is about all X-Americans. People don't say "I'm Polish" on St. Roman Polanski day (you get the point), precisely because we don't have a day associated with any other ethnicity, as far as I can remember (though some may say "I'm African American on African American History month:) ). The point is, "Irish" and "American" together is A + B = A and B. "Having an Irish grandfather" matched with the definition of "Irish American" to equal that person being Irish American is A + B = C. Or, put it another way - when we mix two ingredients and and get those same two ingedients as a result, that's not OR. When we mix two ingredients and get something new - that's OR. Anyway, I'm sourcing these lists one a day - yesterday was List of Welsh Americans - which perfectly satisfies Wiki policy and has no gaping holes (although I'm sure both of Hilary Rodham Clinton's Welsh great-grandparents are devastated at her exclusion). Mad Jack 03:16, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
You said, "We can not have any "criteria", other than the source calling the person X-American," but I'd take some issue with that -- it's certainly one available criteria, but I've presented other options. If someone's father is reliably sourced as being X% Irish, and their mother is reliably sourced as being Y% Irish, simple logical axioms would declare that the person in question is (X*Y)% Irish. If the percentage of Irish blood happens to pass whatever particular threshold we're using, congratulations, the person is Irish (again, a reliable definition of "Irish" would probably offer some guidance, here). If they just-so-happen to also be reliably sourced as being an American, there's no stretch of the imagination to consider the person Irish-American -- just as a building described in one sentence as "yellow" and in another as "a house" could reasonably be described as "a yellow house." I say again, in my opinion, this whole argument is about criteria for inclusion. Regards, Luna Santin 08:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but as has been said, Wikipedia does not make up any criteria for inclusion for anything, much less based on "Blood". Doesn't matter how much of what their father, mother, or great-grandmother was. Just like we don't have criteria for what is or is not plaigarism. If a source said it was plaigarism, we quote it. If not, not. Same thing here. Mad Jack 08:37, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd be a fool to deny that a reliable source specifically calling someone X-nationality should be a direct road for inclusion -- you're very right that it should be. But what I'm getting at is this: through logical axioms, "Tim's dad is half-Irish" and "Tim is a quarter Irish from his dad" are in effect the same statement, are they not? Logically, the statements are equivalent and interchangeable. Luna Santin 09:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
But, "Tim is a quarter Irish from his dad" is NOT equivalent to "Tim is Irish-American". -- Donald Albury(Talk) 10:05, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
You'll have to explain how I made any claim that it was. No offense intended, but I get the feeling you haven't read my above posts. Luna Santin 10:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
This discussion has been primarily over whether one can draw the conclusion in Wikipedia that someone is Irish-American because they have Irish ancestry. Your example doesn't address the question. Saying that someone is 1/4 Irish because his father is 1/2 Irish is not the same as saying that someone is Irish-American because his father is Irish-American. Hyphenated ethnicity is a matter of reputation. If a published source describes someone as whatever-American, we can put them in the list. We can't make up our own rules on when someone is a whatever-American. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 13:47, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes. We don't usually use the "phrases" "quarter" or "half" in the entries anyway. It's perfectly fine to mention that someone had an Irish "something" in their Wikipedia entry. This discussion is just about applying the label Irish-American in terms of categories and lists. Mad Jack 16:29, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
They're Irish, they're an American... what more could you possibly want? Again, a building described in one sentence as "yellow" and in another sentence as "a house" could reasonably be called "a yellow house." And, hyphenated ethnicity is a matter of reputation? That's not what the Irish American article or Dictionary.com say. Luna Santin 20:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, here's an example of how sticking rigidly to policy (note WP:IGNORE exists) will result in something almost non-sensical. This actor: Maurice Costello was born to Irish immigrants Thomas Costello and Ellen Fitzgerald in 1877. Yet, I have searched far and wide on google and I can find no source that says he was specifically an "Irish-American", but SURELY SURELY SURELY this person IS an Irish-American and certainly a lot more Irish than a lot of the people currently on the lists of Irish Americans who are only there due to some vague statement about Irishness. Arniep 23:07, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  • A. "SURELY SURELY SURELY" is a blatant opinion of yours. It should be kept away from articles.
  • B. Maybe Costello didn't consider himself Irish-American.
  • C. Some articles say he was part Spanish D.
  • D If we have a source that they are "Irish", that is fine, as long as we have a source that they are "American". But specifically "Irish", not their mother or whatever.
  • E. I don't see the problem with the definition of plagarism. You copied someone else's work and you got caught. You're a plagarist. Shame you. What could be simpler? Surely a plagarist is easier to classify then ethnic, cultural, and national identity.
  • F. And yet, we are not allowed to mix-and-match definitions of plagarism and anything else that isn't 100% certain.
  • G. If you don't think "X-American" is debated, just read some of the (more sensible) comments above.
  • H. That's really all I can say without lapsing into profanity. Mad Jack 23:14, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Jack, Jayjg and GraceNote specifically disagree with you there. According to them, Irish American is a label, and to be on a list of such they must be specifically sourced in a reputable publication as "Irish-American" not a quote of them saying "I'm Irish". Arniep 00:19, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
No, they didn't. As I've told you, Grace Note said on the List of British Jews talk that if we have a source that a person is "Jewish", that is fine as long as we know they are "British". Jayjg also explicitly noted that X-American is almost completely a matter of self-consideration, so a quote is the best thing we could possibly have. Mad Jack 00:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes they did: "The criteria for inclusion is "Is there a reliable source that refers to them that way"? Anything else contravenes policy. " i.e. refers to them as an Irish-American. Arniep 00:28, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Ok, the point in a discussion when we have stopped discussing policy and started intrepreting what other users said is the point where the discussion has become a joke on those still willing to participate. I have told you, just now - Grace Note said, quite specifically, and you know because you were there, on the British Jews page that "Jewish" is fine as along as we know or can source them being "British". You don't have to believe me. Ask him. Mad Jack 00:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Here is the quote, from [3] : "X is Jewish" + "X is British" = "X is a British Jew". Feel free to translate to "X Is Irish" + "X is American" = "X is Irish-American", aka "A + B = A and B", which is allowed . What is not allowed to add A and B and get a C, which is what changing "Irish mother" to the person themselves being Irish would entail. Mad Jack 00:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
But Jack, I offered two reputable sources to support my definition of Irish American; per your own reliance on WP:V, where's your source for the definition of self-identification? Luna Santin 04:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
What's your point? I can offer you a thousand reputable definitions of "plagarism", does that mean we're going to go and erase that part from the No Original Research policy? The whole point here is that we don't mix-and-match descriptions with definitions to produce results that have not been produced specifically on that subject/person. Mad Jack 04:57, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Jack, sorry, you have tied yourself to abiding by WP:NOR rigidly so I suggest you do that. As you said yourself, "Irish-American" is a label. The list is a list of people described as "Irish-Americans", not a list of Americans who are also Irish, which is original research and presumption on your part. Arniep 09:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
And here I will refer you to both WP:IGNORE and WP:UCS. You and I both know that someone who is simultaneously Irish and American is an Irish American -- the specific examples in WP:NOR refer to matters of far more opinionated content, while a person's ethnicity can largely be treated as an empirical question. Wouldn't any rational person, seeing "Tim is Irish" and "Tim is American," side by side, instantly ask, "Then why didn't they just say 'Tim is Irish American?'" I agree that your point is significant, I don't think you're a bad person or anything... I just don't think this is the right dragon for the fight you're having. Luna Santin 10:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Irish-American may seem harmless enough as a label, but other hyphenated ethnicisms may not be. I say that, especially with living persons, we may call a person what he or she calls himself or herself, or what a reputable source calls him or her, with appropriate attribution. Of course, I don't like most lists anyway. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 11:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Notability for hotels

Hotel articles are particularly spam-prone and a number of articles have been created about fairly unknown hotels. Since precedents on AfDs have generally established that touristic information should be on WikiTravel, I've been trying to draft a guideline for the notability of hotels to ensure that the new articles created have some encyclopedic value. Comments would be greatly appreciated. Pascal.Tesson 15:16, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

"Notability" shouldn't be an issue for hotels at all. The world is full of independent hotel guides that are considered reliable in the real world. An audited listing by a tourist board, travel organisation, etc, should be enough to establish that the hotel exists and is of a given type. Spam can be removed in the course of normal editing. Where there is no suitable independent guide entry, consider deletion. --Tony Sidaway 15:29, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
But Wikipedia is not a travel guide and Wikipedia is not the Yellow Pages. If the content is not encyclopedic then that info belongs on WikiTravel. Pascal.Tesson 16:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I have to disagree on this one, Tony. There's at least 3 chain hotels in every city, and none of them are much more interesting than your local McDonalds or Sears. I might be more inclined to keep a more unique and interesting hotel. Deco 15:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Some hotels are indeed notable - Waldorf-Astoria Hotel comes to mind. However, I have my doubts about all the hotels on List of famous hotels as indeed I see others also have, judging by the dispute tag on the list. KillerChihuahua?!? 21:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Deletion of lists

I recently found that a list article that I maintain was deleted per the following discussion: see the AfD discussion. Doesn't it seem like a bad idea to delete the list before the category is created? I'm specifically referring to the fact that all the state-specific lists (bands and musicians) were deleted. Those pages were not "a yellow pages for musicans", they were useful tools. It's too bad that warning can't or won't be given to the people who have a stake in articles that have been nominated for deletion. And when a page is deleted, who should take responsibility to fix all the redlinks that are left behind? -Freekee 16:29, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Just real quick, I saw you seemed to be using a wikilink format, but you put a URL in it, instead of an article name; could have been something akin to a typo, but if not I'd encourage you to stop by the wikilinks tutorial, real quick (I'm lazy and I'm not going to check if you're new because it doesn't make a huge difference to me, no disrespect intended either way). Anyway. I'd say you bring up a good point or two -- if we delete a list before merging with a category, how can we be sure we're not losing good content? In a good situation, the editors involved in CfD might have gone through the list, adding relevant articles into the category where necessary; I can't say if they considered that or not. Your other point, about notifying interested editors, is something I'll strive to consider in the future (I'm involved in AfD fairly often), but in the meantime I'd encourage you to watch pages you feel you have a stake in -- while the AfD notice is intended to be the notification you're mentioning, it's not perfect, and I like the idea of avoiding too many hurt feelings; in what I might call ideal, we might even be able to convince an article's creator that there's no offense intended, but that whatever decision's being reached probably is for the best. In this particular case, the list did seem redundant to a category, though I never saw either of them. Anyway, thanks for your time, and I hope this hasn't soured your experience too much. Luna Santin 18:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I just mixed up my internal and external linking tagging. Thanks, I fixed it. The thing is, I did have the list article on my watchlist, and watched it very closely. There was no mention of an AfD on the talk page - it was just gone, one day. But yeah, they don't need to notify the frequent editors if they mention it on the talk page. Is every editor with a stake in an article supposed to watch the AfD page? The other big problem is that the list was not redundant to a category because no such category exists! No, it's not disgouraging, it's just annoying, and I'm hoping we can find a way to make sure these sorts of things don't happen again. In this case, it was laziness on the part of the noms. The list mentioned above was a list of lists. When they deleted "list of US musicians", they also deleted the sub list for each state. And also the related "lists of (state) bands". So that was over 100 articles. I can see why nobody wanted to tag all of those lists, but that's no excuse. And since the list pages have been deleted, I can't even look them up in order to populate the categories. It's frustrating. -Freekee 19:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Freekee, in order to delete at AfD, there was supposed to be a notification placed on the page (not the talk page). If they didn't follow the process, please bring it to Wikipedia:Deletion review, where it should be automatically undeleted. If they did it for a lot of pages, the administrators should be spanked.
--William Allen Simpson 21:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd agree. If they didn't tag the articles (the tag should be placed up at the top of the article's main page), that goes against established procedure. AfD discussion shouldn't even begin until the article is appropriately tagged; if the nominator fails/forgets/doesn't know yet, every other editor should be looking at the article anyway (elsewise, how would they be able to comment?), and should notice the lack of a tag, and should then fix that. People make mistakes, yeah, and I wouldn't hold it against everybody, but an untagged AfD goes against deletion policy and stifles discussion. WAS has a good suggestion, if that's what happened. 67.116.68.97 00:53, 5 July 2006 (UTC) I forgot to sign in, apparently. Luna Santin 01:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
The page was appropriatly tagged, I had a look at the pre-deletion version. So, not reason to go to review. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 14:16, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I believe the point is the sublists, e.g. List of bands from California, were not tagged (and they weren't). IMO, this is a clear violation of policy and will be shortly overturned. Freekee - if you'd like the list content (before they're restored and relisted, assuming that's how this will play out) please let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Sublist was indeed not tagged, so hat will be overturned soon indeed, and probably be relisted at AfD. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 15:02, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Guidelines for notability of people

Grateful for comments on my suggestion at [4]--Runcorn 20:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

good suggestions but drop Who's Who--it's much too broad a base for an encyclopedia. Rjensen 20:12, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes indeed, they sent me three letters, and I'm not even close to notable. KillerChihuahua?!? 21:32, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Was that the British one?--Runcorn 21:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Legal threats

The legal position in some countries (I am thinking of Ireland, where the libel laws are ferocious) is such that it probably does represent a threat to Wikipedia. Never mind the editing environment, that is far from the main worry - you have to be able to let people remove or amend offensive articles, or you are contributing to the damage by continuing to publish the libel. However, I suggest a variety of ways around this;

Make it a condition of use (including reading) that any disputes are settled under the law of a free speech jurisdiction like the US

Make it a condition of use that disputes are the subject of arbitration rather than law - Wikipedia providing the arbitrator

Permitting a "Two sides of the story" article until the dispute is resolved. --Jpmills 11:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

IANAL but I believe the position of the Wikimedia Foundation is that since the servers hosting Wikipedia are physically located in the state of Florida in the United States, in a legal sense the only laws that apply to its content are the laws of Florida and the United States. If a user in Ireland reveals their true identity and adds content to Wikipedia violating Irish libel laws, I suppose the user might have some legal exposure but (again, I believe) the Foundation considers this to be no threat at all to itself. According to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy, information enabling a specific contribution to be correlated with an individual will be made available only in response to "a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement". Since Wikipedia's policies of WP:NPOV and WP:NOR effectively preclude libel, it's hard to imagine a case where a government would pursue legal action against an individual Wikipedia contributor since the most that could feasibly be kept in Wikipedia would be a sourced statement. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:23, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, eBay had some legal issues selling Nazi memorabilia even on a U.S.-based site. There are still a lot of fuzzy issues around jurisdictions and web sites. Deco 15:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, here's the libel problem. I'm sitting in England. I read a website. Because that website has sent the information to me, an English court is free to (and they have in the past) construe this as "publication" in their jurisdiction - after all, hasn't it been read by someone here? This may be tightened up in the future - courts have turned down some cases they felt were obviously forum-shopping, but not all of them.
This is not an opinion held by the laws of most countries - the UK, perhaps Australia, perhaps Ireland, offhand - but as matters stand now, it is possible for anyone to sue a website (or author) published anywhere in the world. The plaintiff doesn't even have to be English - they just have to be known and 'defamable' in England. (The Don King case is a good example of this sort of thing - [5])
As to the idea of "condition of use", it won't fly. It's vastly improbable a foreign court would accept something that's the equivalent of publishing a book and writing "by reading this you agree not to sue me for defaming you" inside; but even if they did it wouldn't matter... the guy suing doesn't have to have read or heard the defamatory material, he only needs to have been told about it. Shimgray | talk | 17:50, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Resolving content disputes

Is there a way to resolve a content dispute at Wikipedia? I do not mean the simple case if users found a compromise after a discussion or a mediation. The question is about a more complicated case, i.e. if the discussion failed to resolve the dispute, the RfC brought opposite views, one of the parties refused mediation.

According to WP:DR, the last resort is Arbitration, but ArbCom usually does not consider content disputes. It seems there is no way at all to resolve content disputes in complicated cases. Finally, the solution depends on which of the two sides of the dispute is more numerous and persistent and is able to "win" the edit war.

I would appreciate the comments of experienced WP editors.--AndriyK 13:47, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Which article? ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 13:58, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your interest. I would like to have a general discussion on content disputes not limited to a specific article.--AndriyK 14:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
You seem to be asserting that the content dispute resolution process does not work. Having access to the article in question, could help understand the problems you have encountered and offer some assistance on how to deal with the specifics of that dispute. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 15:28, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
'A compromise version has to be found'. Of course this cannot apply where one side is factually wrong. But where there is more than one point of view, there is in a sense no mechanism by which content disputes are resolved. This can only work under certain assumptions on the people involved. So, we make those assumptions: we assume editors are reasonable and open-minded. --Charles Matthews 15:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
When discussion seems deadlocked, often the best thing to do is to involve more editors. However the idea of resolving a content duspute "once and for all" is a chimera. Paul August ☎ 15:36, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Providing that there are no conduct issues, there can never be an unresolvable content issue. If there is an unresolvable content issue, there is a conduct issue with at least one editor. These are the cases that the ArbCom hears (normal disclaimers apply to this advice: do not take orally, overuse may cause extreme death, yada yada). Sam Korn (smoddy) 15:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Suppose there are two groups of editors A and B with differnt views on a certain issue. Let's take an ideal case : suppose all the users are civil (I know it is not always so, but let' assume it for the moment). The users of each group believe that their own POV is neutral and consider the opposite one "politically charged" or similar. They sincerely believe in thier views and are acting in good faith.
Any attempt to involve more editors, for instance, by RfC sometimes helps, but not always. It can happen that some comments are in favor of group A while the other ones support the POV of group B. So two groups may even grow, but it does not bring the solution.
What group A proposes as "compromise" is not considered as such by group B and vice versa.
Some of the users refuse to participate in mediation. Therefore, the mediation cannot be started.
There is no obvious user misconduct in this case, but the content dispute remains unresolved. How to resolve it in this case?
(In the real dispute I am involved in, there is a certain user miscounduct issue, and I am trying to resolve it with other methods than RfArb. Still, the main issue is the content one. Therefore I am asking about the way, how "purely" content dispute can be resolved).--AndriyK 16:36, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
No editor can say "your POV is politically charged" and refuse to include it in an article. That in itself is a conduct issue. Wikipedia does not regard the mens rea as necessary for proving an instance of user misconduct. Sam Korn (smoddy) 18:33, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, if there is alway a user conduct issue behind every "unresolvable" content dispute, then why ArbCom does not consider such content disputes to look at the user conduct issue behind it?--AndriyK 19:32, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
You are mistaking unresolved for unresolvable. Sam Korn (smoddy) 12:56, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
A difference of opinion between editors is only really a problem when it leads to disruptive behavior. As an example, the difference of opinion over how to describe Nicolaus Copernicus' nationality in the introduction to that article is quite radical, with some editors proposing that he should be unquivocally described as Polish, and others wanting to go into a little more detail on the nationality and ethnicity issues. As far as I'm aware this has never led to arbitration, and a reasonably amicable truce exists. I do honestly believe that the question of how to satisfy everyone on the correct summary of the nationality issue in the Copernicus article is probably unresolvable, and that it may well be the subject of oscillation for years to come, but since Wikipedia is a wiki that is not really a problem. This minor issue would only become a problem if it seriously disrupted development of the article itself. --Tony Sidaway 16:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
According to my experience, the version of more persistent and/or numerous group wins in such cases. Probably the case with case with Nicolaus Copernicus' nationality is not illustrative as any of the versions is not in obvious contradiction with WP policy. But what about the cases if one of the version contains an obvious propaganda, or extremely biased view? If their supporters appear to be persistent enough, the article content would violate the basic WP policies and principles and remain in such a state for months or even years. Do you think that it is not a problem?
It seems that without a working mechanism of the content dispute resolution the basic policies such as WP:NPOV, WP:NOR and WP:Verifiability will remain pure declarations and the "edit war power" will win.--AndriyK 16:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, WP:NPOV has a section related to undue weight (WP:NPOV#Undue_weight).
Therefore, if one of the POVs is only held by "an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority", it has no weight and can even be discarded.
However, if both views is held are held by a more or less equal number of opponents, provided none of these violate WP:NOR and WP:V, we have a problem. However, I have to see such a case yet (does not mean it does not exist though...)
So yes, it is a matter of number in a way. You can't give the same weight to fringe and to mainstream theories. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 17:05, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
The discussion here is not about WP:NPOV. The question is how to make this and other policy working in the complicated cases when the users cannot agree between themselves. Who decides in this case which theory is "fringe"?--AndriyK 17:14, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, POV-pushing and NPOV are kinda linked...
As for "fringe or not fringe", that is a good question actually. Obvious cases ("Earth is flat") set aside, it is a case by case basis, as there are no set rules, especially since the way to deal with content disputes is quite different in "hard science" and humanities. I would say that a fringe theory is a theory that is not held by mainstream research. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 17:21, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Two points of view, each editing in good faith present their information. One point of view has 50 published books backing them and some newspaper articles. The other point of view has 51 published books and more newspaper articles. The arguement can only revolve around which point of view is better published, the arguement can not revolve around which point of view is more valid (real, actual). If both points of view are equally published, both get equal coverage in the article. The only possible dispute would be of what consitutes a valid publication, which publication is more likely to be viewed by readers as reputable and well known. Terryeo 18:00, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me, in that case, NPOV requires both viewpoints be presented, and the controversy characterized. 51 doesn't trump 50; counting sources is not a way to resolve a dispute. OTOH, 50 sources in numerous scientific journals does trump a handful of sources, all written by the same individual, and appearing in the same self-published web journal. --EngineerScotty 22:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

In certain cases content is decided by brute strength. In others by cleverly playing the dispute resolution game. Neither is legitimate. Fred Bauder 20:42, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

And what is legitimate? This was my question. Thanks.--AndriyK 19:21, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
A legitimate resolution would be by consensus after negotiation in good faith. Fred Bauder 21:43, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
The question was about the case if the dispute cannot be resolved by negotiations or mediation. What to do in this case? What is the legitimate alternative to "brute strength" and "clevery playing" in this case?--AndriyK 10:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


Should the uploader judge fair use?

One of the central issues of recent discussion around fair use, and I think a difficult question, is whether the uploader should be required to judge whether media is admittable under fair use prior to uploading. The two sides seem to go something like this:

  • Yes, they should: if the uploader is not able to determine that media is valid under fair use, then it probably isn't, and there will be so many spurious uploads that we'll waste too much time orphaning and deleting them all.
  • No, they shouldn't: many people are not familiar with fair use law and we shouldn't expect them to learn about it just to upload media. Instead we should depend on our many users who are educated about fair use to review these images and add the necessary justifications if possible, or else delete the image.

I'm not sure what the best solution is. Maybe there could be some kind of compromise solution in which new fair use images are uploaded to a "fair use queue" where they are not to be used until they are processed by a reviewer (ideally, the software would enforce that they are not used). I like this solution because I don't really think uploaders will listen to anything we say. Any other feedback or suggestions would be appreciated though. Deco 18:33, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

'Fair use' can only be judged in the context of the article in which the image (or other material) is used. You cannot decide that an image is 'fair use' in isolation. If an image is not 'fair use' in any article, then it needs to be deleted. If it is 'fair use' in one article, it can stay, but that doesn't mean that it would be 'fair use' in any other article. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 19:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
To clarify a bit, holding images in a queue until vetted won't work, as 'fair use' depends on how the image is used in the article. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 20:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Good point, actually -- the keyword here in fair use is, of course, use. I couldn't say what an ideal solution would be... I'm assuming we already have people patrolling freshly uploaded images, so perhaps the thing to do is make the image upload policies more accessible (in my opinion, they're not), or maybe instituting some sort of "help me!" program for uploading, whether it takes place before or after upload. At present, people are just told "You didn't tag it, tag it or we'll delete it," but if they don't know the system, they stand about zero chance of magically understanding it now that they have a scary bot blasting away at their talk page (often, of course, this is the first message anyone ever bothers to send them, even before a welcome message)... so perhaps? Just food for thought, Luna Santin 20:30, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

There's a problem if something is genuinely used for fair use in one place then used somewhere else in an unfair way.--Runcorn 22:42, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Species > Race

I've noticed alot lately on Sci-Fi and video game pages, that people are using the term "race" instead of "species". e.x. Klingon race. This is incorrect, as race is like a sub-division of species. If the Klingons are a race, then what species are they from? Human? I have had to clear this problem up with the Mortal Kombat Wikiproject. I think people may be getting the term "race" mixed up with "species" because of the slang term "human race", which is like I said; is slang and isn't Encyclopedic. I think that Wikipedia should make a stand on this issue, so that the correct terms are used. SilentRage 00:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure. It's hard to line up sci-fi imaginings with real-world taxonomy. One the one hand, you would think that creatures from other planets would differ at the species level, at least, from creatures on Earth... but on the other, "race" is the word generally used in sci-fi, and since its meaning with respect to people is poorly defined anyway, how do we know they're using it in any particular sense? And even if they are using it as taxonomists use it, different "races", at least in the Star Trek world, can generally reproduce with each other and have fertile offspring, suggesting they do belong to the same species. --Allen 00:24, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
If "human race" is a common term, wouldn't it follow that someone might use "Klingon race" as well? You bring up some good points, but I'm undecided. Just a quick thought, Luna Santin 05:05, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

"Race" is commonly used in fictional genres with alien elements, including fantasy and role-playing games. None of the races exist in reality, and the story lines may not clearly establish any of them as species that can reproduce with others of the same species, under the modern biological definition. Klingons can produce offspring with humans and in one of the episodes all of the Alpha Quadrant races were descendents of the same species; half-orcs are a partial race of orcs with different properties. What race always means in this context is a distinct class of characters with different properties. Klingons are violent and brave; elves have +1 Magic or something.

Ultimately, even aside from this meaning in the genre, in English, race still means "A tribe, nation, or people, regarded as of common stock." The zoological meaning of "species" is not what is meant here and is irrelevant. It is only a specialized application to humans that the human species is divided into three races. I don't know how exactly this applies in Mortal Kombat, but in other applications it is standard and appropriate to refer to the elements as races, and there is nothing wrong with that in English. —Centrx→talk • 10:58, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Two creatures of different species can mate. Wolves and Dogs anyone? If two things can mate, it just means that they are genetically compatible enough for it to work. It doesn't mean that they are nessessarily within the same species. One of the reasons I brought this up is because calling different species, different races is slang. It's based on the whole "human race" slang term. I think that it screwed alot of people up, when it comes to the definitions of those two words. The second (and probably less) reason is because it may be offensive to alot of people. Think of all of the racial groups who read that different species are just different races, and the human species is one race. It just takes away their identity, and can become very offensive, even though it's not real. SilentRage 03:26, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The grey wolf, the red wolf, the coyote, and the dog are of the same biological species, though not the same phylogenetic species. See Species: "A species is a reproductively isolated population that shares a common gene pool and a common niche." This is the dominant, if not predominant, biological definition. —Centrx→talk • 06:52, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the distinction, whether intentional or not, seems to be that "animal-like" creatures: wargs, dewbacks, etc. are referred to as species, while reasonably intelligent bipedal "human-like" creatures: Klingons, Ithorians, orcs are referred to as a race. --Canley 03:39, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that too, but it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. We are discussing whether this huge mistake should be allowoed or not. SilentRage 05:32, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, if that's how you insist on putting it, the answers so far seem to be: yes. Luna Santin 05:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
That huge mistake is in the literature, and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and thus a secondary source, so it is not for us to disallow it. Perhaps someone could write an article on Race (fantasy term) and it could be linked to whenever race is used in this sense rather than the usual English-language meaning. -- SCZenz 06:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
There is no mistake. Race is the correct word. —Centrx→talk • 06:48, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Use of "race" in the sense of a three, four or fivefold division of mankind is a 19th-century invention and not the core meaning. Use of the term in SF/Fantasy literature is a perfectly reasonable evolution of an ancient word, and even if it were not, it is the term used. For Wikipedia to pretend otherwise, as SilentRage seems to wish, would be to mislead readers. Robert A.West (Talk) 06:56, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives, as one meaning of race, "a genus, species, breed, or variety of animals, plants, or micro-organisms". A genus is of course a whole group of species.--Runcorn 22:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Missing the point completely, the point isn't what's "right" - it's what's you can verify, from WP:VERIFY:

Verifiability, not truth

{{Associations/Wikipedia Bad Things}}

One of the keys to writing good encyclopedia articles is to understand that they must refer only to facts, assertions, theories, ideas, claims, opinions, and arguments that have already been published by reputable publishers. The goal of Wikipedia is to become a complete and reliable encyclopedia. Editors should cite reliable sources so that their edits may be verified by readers and other editors.
"Verifiability" in this context does not mean that editors are expected to verify whether, for example, the contents of a New York Times article are true. In fact, editors are strongly discouraged from conducting this kind of research, because original research may not be published in Wikipedia. Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources, regardless of whether individual editors view that material as true or false. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is thus verifiability, not truth.

Thanks/wangi 09:00, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Isn't a quotation from a standard dictionary a citation from a reliable source?--Runcorn 07:14, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Let's take one example -- suppose you're playing Dungeons and Dragons, and the Player's Handbook glossary and the Concise Oxford Dictionary offer differing definitions of a gameplay term. Which one would a smart player use? COD is reliable, sure, but in this context I'd say it is both less relevant and less authoritative. Per WP:NOR and WP:V, it is not our place to question the use of "race" by the creators of sci-fi or fantasy novels; what other sources could possibly have more authority in the matter? Also, your argument sounds like a synthesis of data, and as mentioned in this WP:NOR section, "that precise argument, or combination of material, must have been published by a reliable source in the context of the topic the article is about." Hope that clears things up a bit. I can respect your diligence and dedication to accuracy, but I have to disagree with your proposal/stance. Regards, Luna Santin 09:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

But COD agrees with the sci-fi usage: both say that a race can mean a species. And how does it violate WP:NOR?--Runcorn 10:13, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Oy, I miss the stupidest details, sometimes. Sorry. This should teach me to talk on the phone while editing. Luna Santin 11:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

IP address user and discussion pages blocked

I know that some people don't bother signing up for an account and edit via their IP address. I feel that their user and discussion pages should be blocked as it is not necessary that they are able to be edited due to the fact that IP addresses change all the time. It would be better if they actually signed up for an account. Thoughts?

If this is in the wrong spot then please move it. Mr. C.C. (talk <-> contribs) (review me) 04:43, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Seems like as good a place as any; if not here, then perhaps in WP:VPT, but it's all the same to me. So. It's a thought? Keeping their talk pages open can be useful for counter-vandalism; often they do change IPs, but they don't always do so with every pageload, they sometimes never do so at all, and relevant ranges are almost always available somewhere. Ditto for the "this IP address is registered to X-school" and similar announcement templates. But, I'm not sure how useful an anon user's talk page is, for issues of communication, collaboration, general conversation, dispute resolution, or any of the other things we use them for. Anon user pages... those, I don't think I've ever seen an effective use for, but I'm undecided on whether or not they're important. Think of them as a minor sandbox, if you will. Maybe, anwyay. Just food for thought, thanks for your time, Luna Santin 05:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Link Policing..?

A condition exists that has the potential to degrade the value of links in an article. Many links exist that have no relevancy to the article or specific part of an article that contains the link.

I don't have a solution. I know that an author should not be held to check the relevancy of every link placed in his article "automatically", however. On the other hand I have yet to encounter an irrelevant link in my Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006 Ult Ref Suite. Some may feel that what EB does is irrelevant but there is a need for some policing of links for relevancy. As the percentage of relevant links declines people will not want to be following wild geese, reading linked articles that may not be relevant.

I recently posted this example --Dogfish 18:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a work in progress. If there is no relevant material on the other side of a link we would welcome you adding some. --Gmaxwell 21:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Gmaxwell... I may find some time to help later but I'm afraid that currently I am deeply involved in other research. Hence my search for the obscure parents of an obscure 3rd wife of an obscure individual... I take it that you have faith that the community itself will find time and motivation to keep the links relevant. I know that Wikipedia is a work in progress, and it is my understanding that by nature it always will be. My feeling is (though I have no facts to support this) that the number of irrelevant links is increasing, and is probably due to the "automatic" key word linking. The community may police this itself in time, but it will fast become a herculean task... as the number of articles increase there will be more auto linking. I was hoping to see the situation improve in my lifetime. I'm afraid that for that to happen will require some investigation with a policy change as the expected outcome. Again, I don't have a solution... but I have been giving it some serious thought, though. One question that I have is regarding auto linking in existing articles. If an article mentions "Reginald Smythe, King's Horse Polisher" will a link be added when someone does an article on Reginald Smythe..? Will one be added for Smythe..? Would it be linked to Horse and Polisher as well..? Even if an article's author was held to task to check the relevancy of links in their own article it would only be fair that they are tasked with that only once. If more links are added after that they should be the responsibilty of the individual that added them. If that individual (person or automaton) continuously adds links that are irrelevant then steps should be taken to assist the individual.--Dogfish 04:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
You might be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation (which tries to ensure that all links to Reginald Smythe are properly directed to either the Horse Polisher or the Chief Widgetmaking Officer) and in the guidelines at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) and Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context. Of course there are articles (and authors) that do not follow these guidelines well, but the articles do generally get cleaned up over time, and authors either become educated or they wander away from the project. There are also projects like the Link Suggester that help people find missing links.
As you said, the task will never be finished, as there's always an incoming avalanche of unformatted, unreferenced, badly linked articles, but the core group of articles which have been refined and polished in our guideline-tumbler is also always growing, and by definition, the articles which get the most attention are those which are most popular and which the most people are looking at. It'll never be perfect, but I think that it will always be useful. — Catherine\talk 19:00, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Catherine... I visited your home page and was enlightened. I need to find more time to allocate to Wikipedia, or it will be years before I get on track. --Dogfish 06:24, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Hundreds of news articles

Someone has asserted that, in principle, once an incident has been referenced in hundreds of news articles, it must go into an article and that any scrutiny of the content is improper.

I counter that the Wikipedia is different from a newspaper which reports all the rumors, speculation, etc. before the dust has a chance to settle. Since the content is intended to be permanent, there's always a filter around how transient or insignificant a story is — even if the threshold of hundreds of references in news articles is met. I think that the "hundreds of references in news articles" is only a starting point and neither necessary nor sufficient. patsw 00:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

In what context? Was this one wire-service article printed in a hundred small papers? I would call that one article. Or was it hundreds of distinct articles about a dress that J.Lo wore? I would call that a topic of no encyclopedic interest -- who will care a year from now? Or, was it hundreds of individual articles about a band? Then, I would say it is evidence of notability, and certainly makes a verifiable NPOV article easier to write. Robert A.West (Talk) 01:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
patsw is mis-stating my position. The context is of the Rush Limbaugh page, and specifically his recent detention at the Palm Beach Airport for having a bottle of Viagra prescribed in his psychologist's name. Two reasons I think it's worthy of inclusion are 1) the event's relation to Limbaugh's drug arrest and plea deal; and 2) Limbaugh's detention and exoneration were covered by (yes) "hundreds of news sources" as newsworthy items. No doubt there are other valid reasons as well.
patsw's claim that I have asserted "in principle" that "once an incident has been referenced in hundreds of news articles, it must go into an article and that any scrutiny of the content is improper" is flat-out wrong. I'm all for scrutiny, and not every incident reported in the world is encyclopedic. But in the specific case of Limbaugh, I think the incident merits a brief, blurb-like mention. Eleemosynary 01:15, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
To Robert West: It was a sequence of three wire-service stories (carried by 100's of outlets):
  • Limbaugh was detained at the airport by U.S Customs with Viagra in a container labeled not with his name but the name of his doctor for three hours. This was anonymously leaked to the media.
  • The Palm Beach County Sherrif's Office announced that the incident would be investigated to determine if Limbaugh had violated a plea agreement or other laws.
  • The Palm Beach County Sheffif's Office announced it would not file charges against Limbaugh.
As Eleemosynary concedes above, he is for scrutiny, but no reason other than the brief flurry of news coverage of this incident is given for its inclusion. There were no legal consequences to Limbaugh and no bearing on the plea agreement, so who will care a year from now? patsw 02:59, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
To Robert West (and whoever else wants to come see): The Rush Limbaugh Talk page now seems to be a War of Attrition over this incident. Full context of this issue in on that page. (Oh, and I don't concede I'm for scrutiny. I happily insist upon scrutiny. Let's avoid weasel words.) Eleemosynary 03:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Would the Reichstag climbing patrol please place themselves on high alert. Just zis Guy you know? 16:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Refining Article RfCs...

I've proposed a few guidelines on responding to RfCs. Please comment on the talk page. SB Johnny 10:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

A person's memoirs as a reference

Hello all,

I'm confronted to a policy problem that follows:

I would like to write an article about a personality. Up to a certain point of his life (until he became famous), there are not much sources about him except his own memoirs. It is an OK reference for writing a (preferably good :) article?

Thanks! -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 11:54, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that it isn't a violation of WP:AUTO as long as he hasn't edited Wikipedia himself. However, you should make it quite clear where you are relying on his memoirs.--Brownlee 12:17, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'm using inline citations for each thing (as I always want to use inline citations) :) But I mean, wouldn't it be "weird" or something to have a quarter of the article (dedicated to early life and stuff) referenced only by his memoirs? I'm thinking about possible FAC objects too... :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 12:19, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
If there are no other sources, and you cite the additions based on the person's memoirs, then you're probably in good shape. For uncontroversial stuff ("Joe Schmoe had a younger brother named Jim") memoirs are probably pretty reliable unless there are contradictory claims out there. For more unusual claims ("Joe's younger brother Jim was raised by wolves until the age of sixteen, when Jim was found by Gypsies who taught him calculus and got him a job at CERN") you're best to edit judiciously, and explicitly set off those claims with specific reference to source ("In his memoirs, Joe Schmoe describes..."). TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Are these published or unpublished memoirs? If they're unpublished, aren't they effectively an unverifiable source? -- Rick Block (talk) 16:35, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Wouldn't they simply be a primary source? We wouldn't hesitate quoting someone otherwise. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:46, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I did most of Angela Davis based on an early autobiography she wrote. The only consequence was a somewhat sympathetic article. Most facts were not that controversial, her father ran a filling station, etc. Fred Bauder 18:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Primary sources are not allowed, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources. So, again, if these are not published memoirs then I think you can't use them (and you certainly can't use direct quotes from an interview you conduct). -- Rick Block (talk) 18:32, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
It's not a flat prohibition on primary sources, just on unpublished ones. Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Some definitions says, Wikipedia articles may use primary sources only if they have been published by a reliable publisher e.g. trial transcripts published by a court stenographer, or historic documents that appear in edited collections. We may not use primary sources whose information has not been made available by a reliable publisher. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 19:59, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I will be more precise. The person in question is a Soviet military commander during WWII. Obviously, until he became quite important several years before WWII, the only source of information about him (his childhood and his participation in First WW) are his memoires, who were published several times by various Soviet (now Russian) editors. Can those be considered as a reliable source regarding this part of his life?

And thanks for replies you already made, they're really important to me! :) --Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 20:05, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, they're published. Now, what were they published in? Major newspapers and magazines generally are accepted as reliable sources, although government controlled publications should be used with caution on subjects the government might want to slant. In any case, cite the sources so that others can evaluate them for themselves. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 21:13, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
In addition to problems with verifiability, primary sources often require interpretation, which would be original research: any interpretation must be provided by published, reliable researchers. For example, if his memoirs say that he became an officer out of communist idealism, a competent researcher writing a secondary source might consider whether this can be trusted -- what else would he say? On the other hand, Wikipedia is not the place for that discussion. I find myself surprised that any important commander from that war still lacks a biographer, who would provide interpretation. Still, the purpose of all the rules is to write a quality encyclopedia, so I see no objection to a good-faith effort using the best sources available, with citations. Someone else can always improve it later if better sources or more commentary turns up. Robert A.West (Talk) 21:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
It would be helpful here if there were some secondary sources that discussed the extent to which the memoirs are reliable; some authors tend to be more sympathetic to themselves than others. But, in the absence of any concrete reason to believe otherwise (which may very well arise from other primary sources—another commander's memoirs making a different claim about him, for example), I think such published works can be considered more-or-less reliable (enough) for use in an article. Kirill Lokshin 21:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I do have some secondary sourced, such as bio dictionaries and stuff... -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 21:56, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, who is this commander, and why is he worth an article in Wikipedia, yet so little is written on him? Robert A.West (Talk) 22:00, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Vasilevsky. He does have an article of sorts (it's quite useless). I have no idea why there's so little about him; probably because there are others in his immediate circle who have aroused more interest. Kirill Lokshin 22:02, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Because Zhukov got more interest, probably... --Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 22:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Being bold, added template {{Suspected impostor}}

I've added a new template, {{Suspected impostor}}, for reporting suspected impostor accounts which have not been blocked. I did this because:

  • {{impostor}} is only for blocked imposters
  • {{sockpuppet}} doesn't display the name of the imposter account in typewriter font, necessary sometimes to distinguish between a real user's name and an imposters; furthermore, sockpuppets and imposter accounts are very different things. (The latter is a more serious matter).

--EngineerScotty 02:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Wanna find spam articles quickly & easily?

You are all probably aware of this, but by typing a few select keywords into the search function, you can find many deletion-worthy spam articles.

Today I typed in "company leverage solution" & got a torrent of IT company articles (some of which apparently were already deleted). I AfD'd five of them before I ran out of energy.

Some other good keywords (use several together) to find spam, and spammishness:

enterprise optimize website news information scaleable deliver touchpoint integration manage

If you want to find neologisms, type in:

term coined

--Cheese Sandwich 03:32, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Talk page blanking

This will likely be an obvious question that I should already know the answer to, but please bear with me. An IP user, formerly blocked for an hour for straw poll rallying, has stated he is "not coming back" and has blanked his talk page. His IP is in an address pool. Am I justified in reverting the blanking? I have searched for official policy on this, but the closest I found was at Wikipedia:Vandalism#Types_of_vandalism, which doesn't clearly define whether comments surrounding a dispute (mainly statements clarifying the block, the user begging for unblocking, and other users responding to the rallying) qualify as warnings; there were no {{test}} templates used. -- Omicronpersei8 (talk) 04:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

While editors have more leeway on their Talkpages than elsewhere, it's really not considered acceptable to blank a Talkpage (rather than archiving it), especially if it's done to hide warnings and blocks. Also, there is no rule to stop you from reverting the page to its previous version if you want to, as long as you observe WP:3RR. And hey, if the user comes back and reverts it agian, at least you'll kow he's back :) --Doc Tropics Message in a bottle 05:25, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
It might be against policy, but I don't think it is very harmful to keep it blank in this case. From your description, he or she does not seem like a long-term or dangerous vandal and didn't even have any of the test templates. Also, if the person comes back and vandalizes, they'll quickly accumulate more warnings. Finally, blanking or deleting a talk page sometimes gets people to stop vandalizing. If it is a shared IP, then I would be in favor of it being blanked for now so that messages on it are not thought to apply to other people. There is (or was) a policy that allows for the periodic deletion of IP talk pages for this reason. It may be/have been just an informal practice, though. -- Kjkolb 05:28, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
You might be right about that policy, but wasn't it strictly applied to dynamic IPs? I believe a static IP is treated like a regular Talkpage? Not positive either way...maybe I should shut up and get some sleep :) --Doc Tropics Message in a bottle 05:38, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
In case someone else should be assigned this IP address, I think it would be wise to leave the page blank. If this user returns (and continues to vandalize or be a problem), then revert it and report him. Michael 05:40, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I actually decided, probably without a proper amount of deliberation, to do a mass revert on the user's talk page, and had a little learning experience as a result. This was, of course, not Doc Tropic's fault in any way, as he just laid out policy which appears to be quite accurate to me. Thanks for the tips, everyone, I'll take them all into consideration next time. -- Omicronpersei8 (talk) 07:31, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Yet Another Unenforceable Policy (YAUP)

JA: Like any WP:Policy or Guideline whose fair and equal enforcement would depend on knowing the real-world identity and affiliations of each editor in question, the aspects of WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:VER, and WP:SPAM that deal with advancing particular purposes are simply null and void. Just f'r'instance, nobody has any way of knowing for sure whether that editor or that cabal of evatars who are so insistent about imposing the POV of their favorite secondary source on an article is in fact the author or publisher of the work in question. What will be the result of attempting to enforce a WikiProvision of this type — and I use the word "vision" blindly? The editors who are honest enough to use their real names will be at the disadvantage of the editors, their agents, and their evatars who are not. WikiPar for the course, of course. Jon Awbrey 18:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Some intentions are pretty transparent regardless.Geni 18:22, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
JA: That's a little like saying that some speeders/thieves/etc. are easier to catch than others. Which is just another way of restating my point. Jon Awbrey 18:32, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Not really. Sometimes people think they can dodge policy. For some reason they seem strangely upset when they find they are wrong.Geni 20:00, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
No policies are going to be 100% effective, but throwing in the towel is the worst way we can react to that reality. Pronouncing long-standing, widely-accepted policy as "null and void" has no effect unless grandstanding is how you get your kicks. --Improv 21:16, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand the objection. Why do we have to know real-world identities in order to enforce NOR, NPOV or SPAM? that's nonsense. Sure, if I started to add random link to medication selling sites on a whim without being associated with them, I would not technically be advancing my own interests. so what? It's still linkspam and will be justly reverted as such within the minute. NOR is even more of a no-brainer. Sure, I can add my own papers and monographies to literature sections. That's perfectly fair, since even if it is my own research, I am not publishing it on Wikipedia, I am citing things published elsewhere. If I am citing myself rather too much, people will remove my stuff on grounds of insufficient notability. It simply doesn't matter. It is true, and self-evident, that Wikipedia reflects the interests of its editors, if you are concerned about that, you should look into WP:BIAS. dab (ᛏ) 21:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

JA: If people are failing to recognize the problem then that is par for the course in WP. Just for instance, let us say that an editor with the WikiPseudonym of GodsOwnTruth has a curious insistence on citing a particular book as the main authority on every subtopic of a given article. Let's say that 2 or 3 other editors concur in this opinion and are thus able to declare a "consensus" that trumps any attempt to balance the account. I myself know of several cases just like this. Please don't tell me how it's s'posed to work. I already know how it's s'posed to work. I also know how it actually works out in practice. And there is a real problem here, whether you recognize it or choose to deny it. Jon Awbrey 03:18, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Note that you can ask for outside parties to comment by Wikipedia:Requests for comment, and if it is well-seen, the result will generally follow Wikipedia policies. Religious texts are not dominant under Wikipedia:Reliable sources. —Centrx→talk • 03:25, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
It's still unclear to me what this has to do with usernames or user identities, though. POV-pushing is a problem, yes, but you're saying pseudonymous usernames grant an advantage, and I'm not seeing the connection. Do you know any other editors, or are other editors interested in the article? If the dispute involves just you and another editor, consider WP:3O; if not, consider WP:RFC, WP:MEDCAB, or WP:MEDCOM. Or, give us a link to the article(s) and/or diff(s) in question so that we can give you more specific advice and/or take direct action. You're talking about the ineffectiveness of policy and community, but I'm not convinced just yet that you've really given the dispute resolution system a chance to work -- if you don't try it, of course it won't work. Luna Santin 03:47, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

JA: Well, thanks for explaining why there's a block-hole icon at the top of the page. It's pretty clear that no policy changes ever come out of water-cooler chit-chat, but I'm sure it provides a useful distraction for those who need the distraction. Yes, I've seen how your WQAs, RFCs, CP3Os, and R2D2s work. They are about as useful as crying in your beer, except for the part about the beer. If you can't see that there's a differential advantage to someone who writes a book in the real world under his or her real name and uses a WikiPseudonym (or several) to promote the POV of that book in WP articles, and someone who uses his or her real name in both the real world and in this, er, unreal world, then "I fear that your judgment is beyond repair", to quote Mel Gibson. Jon Awbrey 04:14, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Like I said, the less we know about your situation, the less helpful our advice will be. If you want specific answers, you need to have specific problems. Luna Santin 11:43, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Unblock abuse

The Template:Unblockabuse deletion debate moved to WP:DRV. -- Omniplex 00:00, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Integration

WP:ʃ

For the last month, myself and 1-2 other individuals have been jumpstarting a massive cleanup project as an attempt to bring order to Wikipedia. I think I have the methodology sorted out: now we need participants. There are more details on the project page. Thank you. Cwolfsheep 12:31, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

What is the copyright status of images published in scientific journals?

I've looked all over trying to figure this out but I can't seem to find it. Can I upload images which were published in a peer-reviewed journal like Physical Review? One example that I would like to upload is this plot from [6] for the Standard Solar Model page. There are several other instances in which the scientific results from an experiment are nicely summed up in a plot that has been published, and it would help the article considerably to include it. Are such images ok if you cite the source? (By the source I mean the peer-reviewed article itself, not the website mentioned above.) If so, what copyright status tag should one use? Flying fish 18:44, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I should mention that I had intended to get the images from the arxiv, rather than from the journals themselves (for which you need a subscription, maybe that should tell me something...)Flying fish 19:14, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

One would assume copyrighted unless you have specific reason to assume otherwise... but creating your own version of the image from the data should be okay. Shimgray | talk | 18:47, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
The short answer is that journals do (almost always) claim copyright over the figures they publish, but for many materials a fair use claim is often reasonable. The long answer is that some poorly defined fraction of all such images are likely to be {{pd-ineligible}} because you can not copyright scienific data in the US. The question becomes whether the non-factual elements (layout, style, font, coloring, etc.) are sufficiently creative to qualify for copyright protection. For something as routine as an x-y plot, the answer may be no, but there is very little case law dealing with how much creativity is enough in this kind of work. However, I am quite confident that the publisher is never likely to concede that a figure is ineligible for copyright. As Shimgray says one solution is to take the data (ineligible for copyright) and make a new version of the figure. Absent that, I'd encourage you to exercise a fair use argument. Dragons flight 19:06, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Creating these images is NOT easy! In any case, wouldn't that violate the "no original work" doctrine? Maybe different rules apply, but it is standard (and necessary) for physicists to use other peoples images when they give talks, generally with the citation (or link to the arxiv) on the plot. It would seem very weird to me if scientific results published in peer-reviewed journals are not simply in the public domain, but the wikipedia page on public domain doesn't state that explicitly. Thanks for the advice, I will try to find an apropriate fair use tag. Flying fish 19:14, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Very few scientific figures are in the public domain. Depending on the policies of the journal, copyright for text and figures is vested with either the paper's author or the journal itself. (In a very few instances, published peer-reviewed papers are released under some sort of free license – see PLoS for an example – but it's never reasonable to assume this will be the case.)
For scientific talks, reproducing a copyrighted figure (with appropriate citation) is generally considered permissible under 'fair use'. Such arguments may also be appropriate and acceptable here, but (as with all fair use claims) each case would have to be examined individually. As noted above, it is always okay to discuss facts and data from a published paper—straight facts are uncopyrightable. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:28, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
I am not sure what Flying Fish means by "No original work." All our writing is original phraseology, unless marked as a quotation. The prohibition is on Original Research not "original writing". It is the facts and theories (not capable of copyright) that must be someone else's work: the wording and manner of presentation must be sufficiently original not to violate anyone's copyright. This is necessary to avoid copyright violation and to make the text eligible for inclusion under the GFDL. Now, on rare occasions a graphic is so powerfully done that it provides an interpretation: the famous Minard graphic [7] of Napoleon's retreat comes to mind. Such a graphic might constitute original research if created by a Wikipedian in support of an interpretation not in the text cited. We'll deal with one when we see one. Robert A.West (Talk) 19:38, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi Robert. The images that I am talking about are not schematic diagrams like the ones in Proton-proton chain reaction, I'm talking about plots like this one[8], which would require a hell of a lot of orignal research to duplicate. In a certain sense, the images that I'm talking about are "facts" - it would be impossible to get this sort of information across in words, but it IS the experimental result. Please take a look at what I've done for Standard Solar Model and let me know if it's ok. Preceding unsigned comment by Flying Fish (talk · contribs)
I see your point. If the data are available in tabular or file form, then they could be used to generate a new graphic fairly easily (the formats look pretty standard), and the validity of the whole could be verified simply by comparing the result to the graph in the cited, published source. On the other hand, that seems a bit silly. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that you are on reasonable ground. I am not sure if those types of graph are even copyrightable as graphics in isolation from the article, any more than the words, "Joe had raisin bran for breakfast," can be copyrighted in isolation from some story. Robert A.West (Talk) 23:55, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
I believe the graphs are in the same status as images, and fair use applies. (Under the fair use criteria there would be no damage to the owner since the owner does not sell graphs, only journals or complete article. Rjensen 00:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
The question would be whether the graphs are the essential "heart" of the article - that is, what value the remainder of the article adds. Normally this is a lot, but there might be papers out there that revolve around a single diagram. Deco 00:07, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to all of you for your comments! I've noticed that someone asked something similar directly on the Talk:ArXiv page. If someone with a good understanding of fair use weighs in and says it's ok it would be great if we could add a fair use template for images published on the ArXiv, or perhaps more generally for images demonstrating scientific results (if that is indeed ok). Flying fish 01:29, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Links to embedded YouTube videos

Curious as to policy about linking to sites with embedded YouTube-hosted videos. My hunch is that it would be better to simply link directly to the video at YouTube.com rather than the intermediate site (assuming the embedded page itself provides no additional/immediate relevant content). This policy would alleviate any concerns about endorsing the site, advertising, etc per WP:EL. For example, if a blog happens to have a video of the Napolean Dynamite dance embedded in it, should the Napolean Dynamite aricle link to that blog page, or directly to the YouTube-hosted video? (A possible hitch might be if the site-owner is also the creator on the content, who just is using YouTube as the hosting service). Thoughts? --mtz206 (talk) 01:40, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, what if a site is refered to as covering a event, and they are covering the event using a YouTube-hosted video? The entire point of the reference (to show that the page is coveing a event) would be lost the reference woul be redirected to the YouTube original.--Striver 02:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Striver's question is specific to a discussion we're having here: Talk:9/11 + The Neo-Con Agenda Symposium. I've provided my opinion to his specific scenario there. With my question above, I'm looking for more general policy guidance. Thx. --mtz206 (talk) 11:17, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Speedy deletions

Does anyone know what this page is actually for? I'm not criticising the speedy-delete policy, just this specific page. The problem is that speedy deletions are done via {{db-whatever}} and CAT:CSD, and disputed via {{hangon}} and the article's talk page, so Wikipedia:Speedy deletions doesn't really get a look-in. The main policy description page for speedy-deletion seems to be WP:CSD. --ais523 16:38, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree - you don't vote on speedy deletions, that defeats the whole point of speedy deletion. If the nomination is debatable, you should send it to AFD, not SD, so why have an SD page? Deco 19:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:No Moral Code

The community seems to be quite divided over the matter of ethics and morality in wikipedia, as evidenced by the rejection of Wikipedia:Wikiethics, Wikipedia:NOT evil, WP:EVIL, and Wikipedia:Beyond Good and Evil. i have tried to create a policy that incorporates all viewpoints and concerns, based on [9] and some of User:Herostratus's reasons for WP:NE. This policy does not endorse objective morality, or impose an ideology on wikipedia, which some believed would lead to censorship, and it asks editors to set aside their personal morality and philosophy in the interest of neutrality and information when on wikipedia, but it also states that wikipedia should not cause unessecary harm. please tell me what you think on the talk page. --Samael775 19:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Why concealing user's contributions to deleted pages? (repost)

Why is it still not possible to review my own deleted contributions? Not the content itself, but just the names of the articles the contributions were to?

I have already asked that in March, and received the answer that it's a technical issue, namely that reviewing deleted contibutions is an "everyone or noone" permission.

AFAICT, currently the fine-grained control over the permissions is implemented in MediaWiki and used on Japanese wikipedia.

So, why do you still conceal from users their own contributions? --tyomitch 01:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, the fine-grained permissions just aren't that fine-grained - I don't know whether a particular user can be given access to deleted revisions of a particular article, and even if so, I don't know if that could be done automatically for articles they contributed to. Someone with more technical background might be able to give a better answer, but in short I think that would require modifications expressly for that purpose. Deco 02:04, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Can permission be granted to everyone to view just editors' names in deleted articles' histories? If those names are insulting, then there's no big deal in exposing them anyway, as they are already visible on the block log. --tyomitch 10:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
The archived deleted pages are stored separately in the database. Since they're deleted, there is normally no good reason to view them. It is possible to view deleted edits on the tool server, and if there is sufficient demand I suppose the various edit counter tools may be adapted to show such data in a suitable form (usernames and timestamps, perhaps). --Tony Sidaway 11:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I believe that the reason they are unavailable is that deleted edit summaries sometimes contain offensive content, personal information or stuff that could get Wikipedia sued, which is a good reason for hiding it. However, I have found it to be a hinderance in dealing with vandals because most or all of their past vandalism has sometimes been deleted by the time I investigate, so I cannot block or warn the editor. If I have the name of the article(s), I can check the deleted versions of the page, but that is usually not the case. -- Kjkolb 19:05, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

"List of fictional..."

Type in "List of fictional" in the search function. You will get a bewildering number of inane lists such as List of fictional chimpanzees, List of Fictional Nurses, List of fictional cigarettes, etc. Three questions:

  • Are these lists maintainable? Are we saddling future generations of Wikipedians with the burden of keeping these lists updated everytime a new movie, book, sitcom, cartoon, or comic is released?
  • Are these lists relevant? Will people need to research "Fictional chimpanzees", for example?
  • Are these lists essentially encyclopedic?

I've just AfD'd one such list, List of fictional military organizations, only to discover the true extent of these... Your thoughts? Thanks- --Cheese Sandwich 04:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there some reason these can't just be categories? Luna Santin 05:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps that it would require having an actual article on every fictional thing that is mentioned in one of these lists. Tupsharru 06:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Ooh. With a closer look, I realize my previous question was... well, obviously uninformed (read: stupid). My thoughts on the articles are actually significantly more favorable, now that I've had a few closer looks. I'll admit I'm not sure if they're encyclopedic or sourced, but they made for an interesting read and I don't see any other way to get the content out there effectively; in that, they have some value. Luna Santin 11:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Often when I use Wikipedia as a reader, and not a contributor, I find such lists to be very useful navigational aids in the searching. A category is unable to sort in any other way the the alphabetical, and cannot contain annotations. The lists on the other hand often have the clues needed to guide me to the article which I'm searching for. Since WP:FICT calls for a lot of topics on fiction to be covered in Wikipedia, I don't see a problem with giving the readers the tools to find what they're looking for. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for starting this discussion. To address your points: 1. Regarding maintainability, these lists are very easy to update and edit, no great writing/editing skills are required to add an item, so it's hardly a burden. As I said in the AfD for "...fictional military organizations" I don't understand the criteria often cited by listcruft deletionists that the list must be "complete", "completable" or "maintainable", as if missing out a fictional pig from List of fictional pigs somehow invalidates the whole list as it currently stands and makes it useless. 2. Are they relevant? The example you cite, List of fictional chimpanzees, is actually List of fictional apes which has a much broader scope and does not really illustrate that it is useless minutae. I certainly don't think you can rule out someone needing to research such a list, even if it's just for a quiz question and not academic research. If I was asked the name of Cartman's pet pig (in South Park), typing "Cartman's pet pot-bellied pig" into Google brings up the list in second place (the episode article on Wikipedia is first). 3. Are the lists encyclopedic? This could be debated all day depending on your definition of "encyclopedic". I've seen some ridiculous lists on Wikipedia of course, and am happy to vote Delete or Keep based on the merits and notability of each, but I don't think they should be deleted as a general principle. --Canley 03:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

It's always good to come to a debate and already see my opinion brushed off as that of a "listcruft deletionist".

The problem with many of these lists is that they illustrate no topic; instead, they're merely a list of things that share an attribute. In the case of List of fictional military organizations, there's nothing you can really say about these things other than that they're fictional military organizations. The list is so broad as to include warrior castes and defense forces and police forces and terrorist groups and individual army companies and espionage cells and...well, you get the idea.

Likewise the list of pigs; that list has such inane criteria that it includes Porky Pig, a character anthropomorphized to the point where his porcine nature is almost never referred to in the context of the fictional works (and this is in something like 60 or 70 years of fiction from many disparate sources!), to Cartman's pot-bellied pig, who is clearly a mundane pet whose only attribute of note is completely unrelated to being a pig to characters who are greedy or fat or have other typically piggish attributes.

What possible trend are these articles illustrating? What can you say about them other than "These are things that are foo"? How are they not idiosyncratic non-topics, per the deletion policy? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 05:57, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Suppose I wanted to research the use of cigarettes in film; that seems like a perfectly reasonable search, to me. And where else would I find such content, if not at List of fictional cigarettes? Anything like Category:List of films with cigarettes will be deleted the moment it sets foot on Wikipedia, and it would make even less sense to create a few dozen articles just to mention each use of a cigarette. I'm not the biggest fan of lists, in general, but to me some of this content seems useful, and I really see no other way to effectively get it out there. Luna Santin 06:36, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia isn't the place to do research, though. It's a reference, but not a source, and Wikipedia cannot and indeed should not include every single thing that might be useful in research.
Additionally, just because something is useful or interesting doesn't necessarily mean it belongs in an encyclopedia. "Lists or repositories of loosely associated topics" are specifically called out in WP:NOT.
Have you considered why that category would be deleted on sight? Why should a list be treated any differently? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 06:42, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Becuase the list takes up only one article, instead of clogging up several dozen articles? As I mentioned, I'm unsure on the content but think the method is good. If it is done, this is quite probably the way to do it... whether it should be done or not becomes the question. And I think we already know where the posters here stand. You do bring up some very good points, but to be honest I'm not passionate enough to think out a rebuttal (in no small part because I can't think of anything much better than "But I don't think so," or "NUH-UH"). The main standard I'm looking at is, "Is Wikipedia better or worse, for having this content?" but I don't think we'll agree on that count. Thanks for your time, seriously. Luna Santin 10:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
MIB, my apologies if I pre-emptively offended you with the term "listcruft deletionist" - I certainly did not mean you specifically, or to brush off your opinion. I think your opinion and arguments are very valid and convincing, you make some really good points. The military AfD is exactly 50/50 at the moment so I think this one's gonna go down as "no consensus". I've seen this happen with quite a few list AfDs, and there seems to be a pretty even split each time unless the list is REALLY crufty, so there's some level of support for both sides out there. I also think that WP:NOT, WP:LIST and WP:INTEREST can be interpreted to support both sides, so this is a tricky one and comes down to personal opinion. Excellent point, Luna Santin, if a list is NPOV, verifiable and Not Original Research in addition to being useful, interesting or helpful, then is it really doing any harm to Wikipedia? --Canley 11:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I look at it this way: is Wikipedia better for expending a portion of its finite editorial resources (disk space and server resources aren't infinite, but they won't run out before interest runs out) maintaining these lists? Is it worth cluttering otherwise useful categories (and similar tools, such as Whatlinkshere and Recentchanges and such)? When you're talking about a list with no topic (something called out in deletion policy, as an "idiosyncratic non-topic" and in What Wikipedia Is Not as an "indiscriminate collection of information"), I don't think the answer can be anything but no.

That isn't to say every "List of fictional foo" is necessarily topicless, but when a list is so broad that you can't say anything about everything (or even most things) other than what's in the title, it's probably less "List of Communist-themed antagonists from Silver-Age superhero comics" and more "List of things that are blue." - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 15:32, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. My view is that if the subject is encyclopaedic then the list is probably defensible, but if there is no conceivable encyclopaedic utility to the topic itself (which in my view would certianly fit fictional tobacco products) then the list seems pointless. Wikinfo could probably tolerate these things, but Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopaedia. There is a vast gulf between a list of US Presidents (which you'd find in an encyclopaedia) and a list of fictional pigs. Just zis Guy you know? 15:58, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I still see shared attributes vs. actual topics as being a problem; after all, Blue is certainly encyclopedic. Does that make List of things that are blue encyclopedic? (Clearly not, but it's a simplistic example of the evaluation.) - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 16:15, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

In answer to your three questions:

1) As to maintainability, "Lists of fictional X," are no more or less maintainable than any "List of real X." Just as fictional lists have to be updated as new fiction appears, list of real things have to be updated as thing happen in the real world. THus "Lists of fictional X" require new more effort than any other article, list or not. Further, Wikipedia editors come in all stripes - including those that prefer to edit articles on fictional topics; no special effort by uninterested Wikipedians should be required.

2) This, I think, would have to be judged on a case-by-case basis. I can see many lists of fictional things having useful research applications, not just for traditional academic writing (which can at times focus on esoteric topics of popular culture), but also for people interested in writing original fiction (especially Wold Newton style hybrids) or simply casual browsers interested in some book, show, game or movie they like. Some lists of fictional things, however, are too broad, limited, obscure, or otherwise flawed to support.

3) This one is the sticky one. On the one hand, Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. On the other, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. In many cases, the fate of an individual "List of fictional X" is going to come down to which of these principals various editors feel is more important.

Further, it should be noted that lists are not interchangable with categories. Lists offer the possibility of arranging information in ways other than strictly alphabetical, and allow for annotation and commentary not possible in tha category.

My recommendation is that each "List of fictional X" be carefully examined and only AfDed if there is a critical flaw, essentially maintaining the current system, rather that taking any kind of blanket action. - CNichols 02:34, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Problems with the "Al-Quds" (Jerusalem) entry in Arabic Wikipedia

Dear administrator,

Lately I have noticed an error in the Arabic entry for Jerusalem (القدس). It was said that (free translation:) "Jerusalem is one of the greatest cities of Palestine, and its capital". This is, of course, not true: Palestine has no capital, for it is not even a state yet; Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. I think correction is nessecary.

Thanks.

See: http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%AF%D8%B3 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.143.165.209 (talk • contribs) 2006-07-10 10:23:08 (UTC)

This is the English language Wikipedia, you need to take up your concerns on the Arabic Wikipedia... Or better yet just be bold and edit the article. Thanks/wangi 10:07, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, I did just that; I changed it in proper Arabic from "Palestine" to "Israel". But they changed it back to the way it was. I ask myself whether higher interference is requirred or not. Although it is indeed a problematic and disputed issue, one should remember that the Israeli Knesset and gouvernment are located in Jerusalem, while no official capital-worthy Palestinian institution dwells within the city (the village of Abu-Dis is not a part of Jerusalem, and the "Orient House" has been shut down years ago). Palestine isn't a state for now, and it has no capital - its institutions are spread throughout the territories. So with all due to political disputes, I think Arabic Wikipedia must face the reality. Defacto, Jerusalem isn't the capital of Palestine. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.143.165.209 (talk • contribs) .

But again, that is a the Arab Wikipedia. The different language editions are essentially independent, and few here on the English encyclopedia have the ability or inclination to edit an Arab language website. You must take this problem up there. And this is by no means a trivial topic - as far as I know the status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is not internationally recognized (and, as you rightly point out, neither is the status as capital of Palestine (whatever status that has)). --Stephan Schulz 07:46, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

The question is how to define a capital. Defacto, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Although many countries does not accept this, and keep their embassies outside, the city still functions as the Israeli capital - in aspects of government, judicial system (the High Court) etc. This status of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital defacto, is confirmed, by the way, in the English Wikipedia entry for "Israel" (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel ). So, if you examine the state as it is now, Jerusalem functions as the Israeli capital, and definatly not as the Palestinian one.

I know Arabic, and I can edit Arab Wikipedia entries. I did that. But the problem is, that they changed it back. This is where I wonder: Doesn't Wikipedia has basic standarts? How come the International English Version regard Jerusalem as the Israeli capital (like man other version of Wikipedia), while the Arabic version doesn't? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.143.165.209 (talk • contribs) .

That's the Wiki way. Everybody can edit articles. The way to reach a stable article is via discussion and consensus building. But that has to happen on the Arab Wikipedia. We here have no influence over there. There is no global truth verification task force. Bring your arguments up on the proper talk page, cite verifyable sources, and be prepared to live with the fact that you still may end up with a minority position. The English Wikipedia also qualifies the status of Jerusalem via a footnote, you might try that. And please sign your discussion contributions using 4 tildes (--~~~~). --Stephan Schulz 11:38, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Derogatory terms for people as encyclopedic?

And while I am at this, there is an article called "ambulance chaser". Is it WIkipedia style to have a derogatory term for a group of professionals as an entry? Should we also include 'greedy insurance companies' or 'medical hacks' or 'bean-counters' (for accountants)? Is this what we want for Wikipedia? I heard (but do not know for sure) that the "ambulance chaser" article was initially created by creating the name and placing an image of John Edwards as the sole content of the article. Now the article at least has some attempt to create a NPOV article, but you really can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. And why would we want to try?

I admit I am only a few months into editing Wikipedia, although I have read it for awhile - but generally on topics of interest that are well written. But when I started editing, I looked up something which led me to the 'tort reform' and then I realized that there were webs of subarticles branching out all focusing on the same political agenda - favorites are tort reform and lawyer bashing, but I'm sure there are others. I was appalled at the 'ambulance chaser' article. I am an attorney, but not a personal injury lawyer. I still find this highly offensive, both personally and as a WIkipedia editor. What kind of encyclopedia is this? THere is nothing encyclopedic about these aricles, unless you want to have a separate dictionary of derogatory terms and epithets. Then we could add 'medical hacks', 'greedy corporations', and soon devolve further into 'dirty nigger', 'jewboy', 'kikes', and the like. We could make a name for ourselves for being the encyclopedia that is an equal opportunity offendor and the baddest of bad taste. I think this paints the picture?

So the question here, is please help me understand what policies address this, if any, and if there aren't any, why aren't there?jgwlaw 04:45, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

You could just go to Talk:Ambulance chaser and propose a move. Seriously, I don't think there's a larger policy issue here. Deco 05:36, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
And the article in question (mostly) describes the term and its use, not lawyers (or even personal injury lawyers). Just as we indeed (and rightly) have articles on nigger and kike without condoning the use of this words to denigrate people. There is no question that these terms exist and are used. We document this fact.--Stephan Schulz 07:14, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, after I edited it. But okay. I'll just have to keep an eye on it. It started out as a bashing of lawyers and a tort reform diatribe. (See above). jgwlaw 11:51, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
It's important for all sides of an issue that is subject to POV to participate :), so that the related article finds a neutral equilibrium. For this particular issue, there are likely well-paid & full-time PR professionals maintaining anti-litigation POVs here & elsewhere. --Cheese Sandwich 12:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Multiple IP addresses

Hello. Could anyone elaborate on the protocol for coping with disruptive users that utilise multiple roving IP addresses? Meaning that almost each edit is under a different IP address so warning and then blocking a user is of no use, as they simply pop up to vandalise and disrupt elsewhere with a different address.--Zleitzen 08:00, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

There's really nothing we can do, from what I understand, because for anonymous users, I read earlier, their IP address changes for every page they visit... MichaelZ526 08:07, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
There are some folks experimenting with contacting ISPs, please see Wikipedia:Abuse reports. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Heritage categories

I've spent some time trying to draft clear, neutral, and specific language to cover the recent debates. Please take a look at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories)#Heritage. Note that I'm deliberately using a very broad umbrella term, rather than a list of "ancestry, class, culture, ethnicity, national origin, race, religion, or previous condition of servitude".

I believe that there is general agreement on how to label them, and specific agreement on the use of hyphenation, supported by numerous debates at Categories for Discussion.

Remember, these are Wikipedia:Naming conventions, and need to be concise. The detailed guidelines for inclusion and interpretation will be at Wikipedia:Categorization of people, where we can worry about other issues.

--William Allen Simpson 15:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

A "jury duty" rule of thumb for AFD

Opened at WT:AFD, a dual proposal for:

  • A volontary form of "jury duty" (once someone engages in an AFD, he should try and stay to its end).
  • Documenting suggestions about "how to close an AFD" for admins (with respect to discounting early votes of people who didn't come back after evidence was provided).

-- 62.147.38.70 17:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Spelling in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, whatever, is the same.

Check the history tab on this page.

I don't think I agree with this asessment, that footnote is for the meaning of the reference in the whole article, not just that bit about spelling, also, it seems inconsistant (at least to me, I do have some knowledge in this area) to say that spelling is (*all*) the same within the Britsh Isles and within every English speaking country, but differs between each English speaking country beyond the British Isles (just becuase that's how it is "authorised"). Linguistic cirteria does not disinguish "dialects" and "languages." Can you tell me, for example, is there a definite border between US spelling conventions and Canadian spelling conventions. According to the laws of linguistis, there is no inherent reason why differences in vocabulary, word formation, and even spelling need to follow country borders, therefore just becuase dictionarys for a particular country have the same spelling for all places and groups, does not mean that spelling "beyond the dictionarys" is the same. Have you ever heard of Scots spelling, or Black English spelling? Consider dictionarys for a prarticular "national varietys" of a "language" that may provide two different spellings of a word, and consider the possiblity that local usage may favour one spelling over the other. Myrtone

I'm not sure of your point. Yes, linguistics need not follow national or political boundaries, but it may, especially when issues of pride are involved. SFAIK, much of Black English is a conscious protest against the majority culture. Where there is a large natural barrier (i.e. an Ocean), a linguistic divide has been historically inevitable. Whether telecommunications will alter that is speculation. Nevertheless, there is something called "Standard American English" that is taught (with little variation) in schools throughout the United States, and is expected of educated citizens. I assume that the "Queen's English" serves much the same purpose in the UK. Other variants are more problematic, since some are interintelligible only with difficulty. If we admit every local variation of spelling and usage into Wikipedia, then any illiterate, unintelligible scawl can be justified as a "dialect" and no one can contradict -- I've seen jarring constructs justified as "Indian English", which is news to the thirty or so natives of India with whom I work. If we admit only one version, we are being unreasonable. So, we make a practical compromise, as best we can. Robert A.West (Talk) 13:18, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the prescriptionist tradition of favouring some spellings over others is biased, but it's also widely accepted, and an encyclopedia written in a mishmash of dialects simply wouldn't be as comprehensible or taken as seriously - we should take advantage of the wide standardization of these spelling in writing to promote widespread comprehensibility of all our material. Many dialects don't even have an accepted orthography, which makes writing in them quite awkward. That said, quotes should reflect the original dialect, whether spoken or written; we should not "translate" dialects. Deco 13:36, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

"Yes, linguistics need not follow national or political boundaries." Well, unfortuately, JackLumber (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) seems to follow (exactly) these boundries, but yet claims to be a "linguist." Myrtone

Myrtone, please. Once again, you completely missed the point, ignoring the context. That was about Canadian English. Whenever Canadian spelling follows British spelling, that's because of historical, political, cultural ties between Canada and Britain, not because of Ireland or Scotland. However, the Irish and the Scots did heavily affect English as _spoken_ in Canada (and the United States too, for that matter), and this is duly noted in that article. Myrtone, when will you start thinking outside of the "boundaries" of the box? JackLumber. 15:28, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

"historical, political, cultural ties between Canada and Britain" I'm not so sure about that historical, let alone, cultural ties with, say England, or what you even mean by the "boundries of the box." Believe me, even serious scholars do not neccasessarily *write* according to community consensus. Myrtone

There are two issues - the words used and the standard spellings. The early dictionary-makers in the USA chose to vary a few common words - honour and honor, for instance. This has remained fixed ever since. English-speakers within the British Empire and later the Commonwealth accepted the UK standard for spelling. Some extra words are used, not only in Scotland but also in English regions.

Microsoft Word 2002 offers English (Ireland) and also Gaelic (Scotland) along with Gaelic (Ireland). I wouldn't be surprised if this changed soon.

--GwydionM 17:20, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Too much attention to vandals?

I hope this is an adequate place to post this. I'm not an expert user, so bear with me. I might be completely mistaken, but I have the impression that some vandals might get too much attention here. I realize it is easier to ban someone if their actions are known, but pages like this one almost seem to pay tribute to these users (I also realize some of their edits can be amusing, etc. but there are other places on the internet for that). I'm of the opinion that vandalism is fairly easy to spot and control and that these imbeciles will leave if they are ignored. I know the issue is much more complex, but I just wanted to share my thoughts. ChaChaFut 06:08, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Some have said that pages like that are the ultimate goal of a vandal. They can show it to their firends and say "Yep, I'm that annoying." I'm neutral on the matter. Such pages can be helpful in keeping tabs on known vandals. Frankly, it surprises me that he's even still a problem. In any case, such pages are probably a necessary evil. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 06:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry protocol

Suppose one had solid evidence of an editor's systematic use of multiple socks for the purpose of intimidation, false consensus building, 3RR aversion, etc. What is the best way to present said evidence, given the fact that doing so would likely allow the objective observer to surmise the identity of the puppeteer? Is there an "off-line" alternative to how I see it attempted so clumsily so often? Wikipalooza2006 07:26, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The main place right now would be Wikipedia:Requests for investigation. If you don't feel you have quite enough evidence for that and want some more technical checks, try Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser. --Aquillion 19:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Sub-pages in entertainment entries - are these relevant?

I would love to contribute to some of the stubs floating around wikipedia, but one thing bothers me:

In entertainment articles (particularly those about a particular show, anime or videogame), there are often a slew of sub-pages which seem to probe every facet of said show etc. Is this what wikipedia is actually aiming for?

One example is 'Cultural references and innuendo in Rocko's Modern Life'. It's a list of innuendos and product references from a cartoon show. I can't for the life of me see how it's relevant in an encyclopedia.

Other examples would be anime which focusses on combat - often every minor character is listed somewhere with a list of who they fought, when and where. This is often all there is to these characters anyway, since they're very minor. It seems like a boatload of fancruft.

Not only does it pad out the encyclopedia with fluff, but it distracts contributors from filling out numerous stubs because they're so busy listing the many 'Mr X's and how many times they kicked 'Character Z' in the face.

Is there a rule or assertion somewhere which discourages this kind of page? I'm aware that unsubstantiated fancruft is discouraged, but is there a rule implying that articles should remain to-the-point and not shatter into a thousand sub-pages with useless information for the info-seeker?

Any input appreciated,

QuagmireDog 13:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

For a discussion (not policy, not guideline) about this, see Wikipedia:Fancruft. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I must hold my hand up, it's there in black and white on the fancruft page *rolls eyes*, my apologies. Between that and the 'pokemon test', it seems worrying about these things is self-defeating, so I'll see about brushing up on wiki editting and add to some other pages. QuagmireDog 14:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Template Photo Discussion

This discussion has been going on regarding the "Atlantic 10 Conference" Template...I'm including what has been said, so far, below. Why can't you put logos in a template? I don't agree with it, and it certainly improves the look of the template..what does everyone think Lasallefan 18:34, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

beginning of discussion on a-10 template talk page
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Logo What's the problem with using the logo? 192.160.62.60

Wikipedia policy as described at Wikipedia:Fair use criteria item #9 specifically proscribes the use of fair use images outside of the main article namespace. Thus, the use of fair use images, such as logos, is not permitted in templates. --Durin 13:13, 20 July 2006 (UTC) I understand what your saying, but here's the thing, a Template is an EXTENSION of a main article, and an intricate part of many main articles. As such, logos actually ARE allowed on conference...and all...templates.

Furthermore, picture/logo use on templates is common on Wikipedia 192.160.62.60 18:40, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

This is false. Please read Wikipedia:Fair use criteria item #9. The incluson of the logo is explicitly banned. Quoting the policy, "[fair use images] should never be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages". Re-inserting the image is a violation of Wikipedia policy and constitutes a form of vandalism. Stop. --Durin 18:51, 20 July 2006 (UTC) To simplify matters: the policy states: "Fair use images should be used only in the article namespace. Used outside article space, they are often enough not covered under the fair use doctrine. They should never be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages." Durin is wholly correct in this. — pd_THOR | =/\= | 20:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC) Fair Enough...but I think Wikipedia should look into changing this polcy. I mean, honestly, are the copyright police going to come after you for a Template?...there should be some discretion 66.30.130.133 22:46, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not much of one for rocking the boat; but I can see your point. I won't discourage anybody from trying to implement policy changes; I just prefer following it. /me shrugs. — pd_THOR | =/\= | 23:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC) "They wouldn't sue over this!" and similar arguments to support abuse of copyright is not an affirmative defense under fair use law. We must assume the institutions that hold copyrights to material are interested in protecting those copyrights unless we have proof otherwise. Thus, the fair use images must remain off of templates. --Durin 01:01, 21 July 2006 (UTC) I ask you both this...arn't we going against this policy: Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. We could improve this site, but instead we're worried about minor stuff. How do you go about asking for a policy change anyway? Lasallefan 18:14, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

First, WP:IAR is not policy, and even it were it it does not mean ignore all laws. Second, adding decorative images in violation of copyright law is not improving the site. Instead, it is placing it in danger of copyright/trademark lawsuits by the holders of copyrights who may be interested in defending their rights. It is most definitely not a "minor" thing to be sued. Even if Wikimedia won the case, the damage in fighting the lawsuit alone could be more than enough to shut this entire project down. Wikimedia does not have deep pockets. You can change policy by discussing potential changes on the talk page of the policy in question, or (probably better, for there is a larger audience) bringing up potential changes at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). But, be advised; the fair use policy is unlikely to change. --Durin 03:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
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end of discussion on a-10 template talk page...add comments below


Trigger Happy

Dear Administrator:

I, like you, am an editor; I create articles and make edits. But, many, I am sure many other people out there, are tired, frustrated and angry with the behavior of many Administrators. I am certain that it is appallingly easy to revert an article, that someone has undoubtedly spent allot of time and effort writing. I have, in the past spent hours, researching, planning, writing, checking and revising an addition to an article only to have the whole lot deleted forever three minutes afterwards.

I know that deletion of material is essential in a free-to-edit encyclopedia, but if you see an article that someone has anonymously devoted their time to writing, why could you not revise it, change it or give a reason for you action? They deserve one.

I know all Administrators are not all Drunk-With-Power-Trigger-Happy-Nazis, many of you do an excellent job and you know who you are.

In closing: Create, don’t Destroy. Make a distinction between “what is right, and what is easy”. Be enriched and enrich others with the knowledge of other people.

And keep that finger off the trigger.

Dfrg.msc 01:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Seconded. You've expressed very concisely my dissatisfaction with a number of editors over the past, not only administrators. Obviously the admin who is most guilty of this is Tony Sidaway. THE KING 15:38, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
    • KING, consider this a warning: stop making personal attacks. Even when I'm not the subject myself,[10] I still get rather tired of seeing you wage your campaign against Tony every opportunity you have. You've had numerous people tell you your conduct along these lines is unacceptable; now knock it off or be blocked. Postdlf 01:10, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
  • First, in addressing administrators you are addressing the wrong people. Anyone can do the edits that you are upset about, not just administrators. Second, I've taken a brief look at some of the contributions that you feel have been unfairly removed. They tend to sit in the area of literary criticism and the counter-arguments to your contributions seem to be 'please don't add your personal critique' or 'please no essays' or 'POV', that type of thing. When I first read your post here I thought "gee, someone is doing deep research, dotting i's and crossing t's and getting dumped on". As it is, your additions are on the borderline of acceptable encyclopedic content, sometimes crossing over that border; the surest way of ensuring the content 'sticks' is to contribute content that is notable, verifiable and supported by citations/references. You'll find that additions which have those three properties are very seldom subject to questionable removal, though they will be 'dry' compared to essays and critiques more appropriate for other venues. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:52, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Look mate, this Isnt just about me, and what I have done.you know nothing apart from what you have seen backlog through what I have done under this account. The issue here conserns everyone, or I wouldn't have posted it on a public page. Dfrg.msc 11:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
  • :If THE KING is guilty of making personal attacks here, then the arbcom is guilty of the same thing everytime they make a ruling of someone with bad behavioir. And everyone who has ever left a {{test2}} message on talk page is also guilty of personal attacks. Saying that someone is not behaving appropriately is not a personal attack, especially when there is merit to the claim. Please review WP:NPA before you make accusations. Ch u ck(contrib) 02:33, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
  • ::I agree with Chuck. Criticism of someone's actions, provided it remains civil, isn't a personal attack. Whether Tony is actually guilty of these offenses, I won't comment on. — Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:00, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
I also agree with Chuck, and I agree that there are many people who abuse the ability to revert. In my experience it is almost always admins, or people who have enough experience to be admins, who do it. In some cases I see people who have lots they want to do, and rather than take their time to do them well, quicken their pace to the point of incompetence. Editors, and especially admins, should be reminded that they are not wikigods, but are equal editors. I myself have been told that admins are above regular editors, with a note I believe was "don't kid yourself" or something to that effect. I won't mention names, cause I've done it in more appropriate places enough. Fresheneesz 00:38, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I probably didn't tell Fresheneesz that myself, but my own sentiments are close enough to it, that you may feel free to use me for a proponent of it. On this Animal Farm, editors are equal, but some editors are more equal than others, and they've taken to standing up on hind legs and acting quite a lot like farmers, you know. And you know very well why *I* think that. I was indefinitely blocked not too long ago, and without warning, by an administrator who simply forgot WP:AGF, didn't read well, and was trigger-happy. Had it not been for another administrator who had better sense, I'd still be stuck there. This happens. When admins war with each other, generally the blocks are shorter (it's never banning, which is the death penalty punishment for peons, er, plain editors), but if you want a rather droll example of a wheel war with sysops blocking each other and deblocking each other like Wizards using spells and counterspells in a Harry Potter movie, I suggest perusal of Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pedophilia_userbox_wheel_war#SPUI. This one had to be stopped by the Deus Ex Machina hisself, pretty much making a mockery of the idea that WP is a community of high-minded types able to police itself.
Not that there was good reason ever to imagine it was, since no organization really is. The military has military police, who are there to see that high-ranking people don't simply do whatever they want (rank doth not have ANY privilege). In fact, the standard police in your city don't police themselves, drawing officer-volunteers occasionally out of the pool to do this out of love. (Like that would work-- and yet it's the WP model). Instead, they have something called "Internal Affairs," consisting of cops who are roundly disliked by their brethren, but who are absolutely necessary for the function of police departments. On Wikipedia, no such organization exists, except Deus Machina, who is usually too busy to do it (except for pedophilia wheel wars and lawsuits-- but this is extreme stuff). Meanwhile, if the average editor gets night-sticked by some administrator during a revert war, nobody notices.
A word about vandalism. I've heard much caterwauling about vandalism not drawing adequate penalties (and I've done some complaining about this myself), since most of it is ispso facto bad faith, res ipsa loquitur (it speaks for itself). So why isn't more of it indefinitely blocked? My own provisional answer: because actually, those who do the work of WP administration are only marginally concerned with vandalism. They are much more concerned with their own egos, and acting against those they perceive as defiant. The only real unforgivable crime in any organization, you see, is defiance-- failure to kow-tow. Which is what heresy is. Thus, you can see anonymous users, and even named users, getting warning after warning, or 24 blocks for adding scatological nonsense to encylcopedia pages--- but if you want to see somebody blocked forever, just take a look at what happens if don't follow the wrong administrators' feelings about userboxes or something. Or using a sockpuppet address to defy a one week block-- neener, neener! Then you'll find yourself out in the cold forever, unless you're an administrator yourself. In which case you get wheelwar, as above. Don't tell me it doesn't happen. It happens. These are my thoughts on WHY it happens. I would like to see some oversight on administrators to see that it doesn't happen as often. Warring among administrators is as rare as wars between feudal lords in armor. But when it happens, it points up the basic problem that Lords are no more likely to be gentlemen than anybody else. They just have a high horse.S B H arris 22:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Please try to stay on topic here; it is quite easy to tumble off the reservation in short order. Being an avid contributor, I share the sentiments expressed by Dfrg.msc; as such, I would appreciate it if the conversation is centered around the initial concern which was expressed about a fortnight ago... --Folajimi 14:36, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps instituting something like a three vote rule on reverts? That would prevent unilateral action, and bad edits would still get reverted soon enough. RandomIdiot 14:32, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

A three-vote rule might work for other things, but that seems like a bit too much red tape for something as useful as a revert. For example, there are many people (I have been one) that did not understand the rules to Wikipedia and have made awful edits that simply needed to be removed immediately. If it had waited for three votes, some of the articles were sufficiently lacking in traffic that it would've taken weeks. Also revert wars would end with the side that had the most people on it, and just because more people argue for something doesn't mean it's correct. --Stellis 08:32, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Truer words have never been spoken; there is a redirect which I wanted to remove so I could create an actual article from scratch. This was over four months ago, and nothing new has occured in the interim. The additional bureaucracy is unnecessary. Folajimi 10:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Which article? Ian¹³ /t 10:12, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Why do you ask? --Folajimi 02:06, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Because he wants to help? --cesarb 20:53, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
  • If something is reverted it isn't gone forever. I personally don't think this is a problem. And anyone can revert, admins can just do it faster. Wikibout-Talk to me! 00:24, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, speaking here for a moment as someone with the keys to the Admin janitor's closet, I actually find it quicker to revert an article the same way that anyone else would -- go to article history, click on the older version, edit then save -- rather than to find the secret link that lets me do this in one step. But, now speaking as just another user, I don't see the point of reverting any edits -- even if it's undeniably obvious that it was made by some looney under the influence of illicit pharmaceuticals -- without leaving some note about why the reversion was made. The point of having an encyclopedia anyone can edit is to discuss conflicting opinions on a subject & to seek a consensus; & the worst case in initiating a conversation is that the other parties talking prove that they are kooks, cranks or just unable to play nicely with other children. -- llywrch 17:24, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Down with Trigger Happy Admins! Solution: allow for a special new type of user called a "sentinel" that is greater than a basic user in authority. This new sentinel is not an administrator, and cannot block other users, but cannot be blocked either. The sentinel only has the ability to make 60 edits per day. The primary advantage to a sentinel is that the sentinel cannot be blocked by radical fringe administrators. Yet the sentinel's power is restricted to only 60 edits per day. This idea was a result of the extreme blocking related to these links:

Sure, sometimes there will be linkspam, and some sentinels that abuse their power, but administrators are not immune from the tyranical tendencies of those in authority.Spicynugget 14:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Baaad idea. Say a mischevious user U creates two users 1 and 2. 1 and 2 contribute useful information, do not do more then 60 edits a day, and operate in conformance with most rules. 1 and 2 get promoted to sentinels. They make more useful edits, and they are regarded as useful to the community. U replaces 1 and 2 with a vandalbot. 1 and 2 make 60 vandalizing edits a day on the same page. Administrator A suggests protecting that page. After it is agreed on, U sets 1 and 2 to start vandalizing whatever's pointed to by Special:Randompage or whatever it's called, thus vandalizing 60 different pages. Consensus develops that 1 and 2 should be blocked. However, that is not possible since they are sentinels. And presumably, they can't be demoted, cause if they could then those radical fringe administrators could just demote and block like they did before. Samuel 69105 18:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)



Frustrations with editing

Hello,

I would like to open this issue for discussion.

I’ve been working in the field of Clinical Psychology for 40+ years. In Wikipedia, I was working on a technical Article concerning the psychological & physical components of chemical dependency. Almost from my first edit, I was reverted by a User whose only entry on their User Page was “OK, so I finally got a User Page. Satisfied?” This is moronic!! Because I refused to engage in what surely would have deteriorated into a mindless edit war, I finally gave up on editing the Article all together.

Surely there is something that can be done here.

I would propose this: If a User is going to make edits to an Article, particularly a technical or scientific one, that the person be willing to state their expertise in the given field on their User Page, or at least something more than a glib remark.

Wikipedia is losing good, highly motivated, professionals as editors because they have experienced what I described happened with me.

If something is not done, I’m afraid Wikipedia will soon need to carry a disclaimer at the top of its Main Page: “This encyclopedia is strictly for amusement, and should not be regarded as factual.”

Frustrated, Michael David 12:34, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Your frustration is understandable; however, it seems that there is an undercurrent of Anti-elitism within the project. This stance is probably an attempt to prevent the perception of some users being "more equal than others."
At any rate all hope is not lost; there are ways for resolving such issues:
  1. Present your case to WP:3RR; this perhaps will be the most apropos option, as it is meant to resolve edit wars.
  2. Depending on the quality of the edits from the miscreant (which, as you have described it, appears to be vandalism) another option may be WP:AIV.
  3. If you are unsatisfied with the responses produced from the aformentioned channels, perhaps WP:MEDCOM may be in order.
  4. Worst case, if all other options fail, there is always WP:ARB. This is option is not one to be taken lightly; however, it perhaps may be the last opportunity to resolve the matter amicably, without departing from the project in disgust.
With any luck, one of these options will provide a satisfactory resolution to the matter.
Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 04:33, Friday, April 19, 2024 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your comments. In future I will try the options you've suggested. Michael David 00:34, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
(after edit conflict)
I'm not sute that this will help you, but recognition of expertise in Wikipedia is a complicated issue. Most editors do not reveal their real identity, so it is impossible to verify any claims of expertise they may make. While I have been open about my real identity, it has its drawbacks. I've had another editor threaten to sue me, and other editors have withdrawn from Wikipedia after unknown persons complained to their employers about their Wikipedia activities (I'm retired, so I'm not worried about that).
In another vein, I have a PhD in Linguistics and 25 years experience working with computers, but I don't edit articles in either field. Both fields have a lot active Wikipedians, and it's not as much fun as working on history, biology and local topics. Experience in a field helps you sort through the chaff, but everything in Wikipedia is supposed to be from reliable published sources, and non-experts can contribute to articles as long as they do their research and cite their sources.
As for dealing with disputes in an article you're working on, please see the section #Resolving content disputes above on this page. Wikipedia works best when several editors contribute to an article, and can reach consensus on content and style.
-- Donald Albury(Talk) 13:21, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your comments. Perhaps I should take your lead and stay away from Articles in my field. It actually could be refreshing to break from work sometimes. Sincerely. Michael David 00:34, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Because no one owns articles, regardless of claimed or real expertise in the field, I personally don't think experts should get automatic veto power or whatever over non-experts. This stance is also partially about keeping "experts" from being able to push their POVs (which may be financially tied to their careers) and no one being able to stop them. At any rate, Wikipedia is not a scholarly journal or anything, we are (at least, we're supposed to be) just summarizing published sources on topics, and non-experts can do that just as well as experts, ultimately. Experts are great at doing original research, but obviously that's not what we do on Wikipedia.
My suggestion is to just learn to deal with people who disagree with you... after all by submitting anything you're agreeing to let other people edit it. If someone reverts a claim that's correct, re-add it with a source. If they revert that, discuss it with them on the talk page. If they're pushing a POV or otherwise being unreasonable, see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. --W.marsh 13:46, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

with all due respect, the replies above are useless bordering on the impertinent. "I personally don't think experts should get automatic veto power or whatever over non-experts"? Good for you, but how is this supposed to help Michael David? Did he inquire for "automatic veto power"? give us a break. "My suggestion is to just learn to deal with people who disagree with you"? Is this seriously the advice you have to offer to someone who has been into psychology for 40 years? (Have you even been into being alive that long?) Even bored gestures towards dispute resolution are not helpful here. The case described by the original poster is typical. A user having “OK, so I finally got a User Page. Satisfied?” has the only content on his user page is almost infallibly a sock puppet or a troll. Which means that smart assed remarks about how Wikipedia gives power to the people are entirely beside the point. My answer to this inquiry would be, 'drop me a line, and I'll look into the case and help you revert any trolling, thank you for helping improve Wikipedia'. You can save your generic wisdom for people who come here complaining about genuine editing dispute. Just being reverted by a stubborn sock is not an editing dispute, and any expert of any field experiencing this deserves some help from the community. thanks, dab (ᛏ) 17:40, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Look, if he (or any expert or good faith editor) came to me and said the same thing, I'd investigate and block the sockpuppet, if that was the case. We all need to play by the same rules... that's all I'm saying. Resolve disputes, report trolls, whatever as they come up, if you need help doing that, ask an admin or experienced editor for that help... I don't see how requiring people to disclose their credentials is going to help any of this. A lot of people would prefer to stay anonymous, for reasons that have been touched on above. And not having a meaningful userpage doesn't mean you're "almost infallibly a sock puppet or a troll" - that statement describes me and lots of other good faith edtiors. --W.marsh 18:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Taking a look at the edits of Michael David (talk · contribs) is worthwhile. Most of the edits are to biographical articles of dead people. Many of those edits involve noting that someone died by suicide. See

That's just the past two days. Several hundred other edits by this editor show a fascination, if not obsession, with suicidal depression. There's no major technical article by this editor that I can find. --John Nagle 18:00, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Your comments say much more about you than they do about me. Michael David 00:34, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Heeey, Michael. First and foremost, I'd like to thank you for your valuable contributions; Wikipedia simply wouldn't be the website it is today without all the help it's received from diligent volunteers. We need people who are dedicated to the project, so please don't let random content disputes get you down; at the end of the day, good editors are very much appreciated by the community. That said, however, I need to ask that you bear with me in understanding a thing or two: first, of course, expertise is very difficult to really establish in an anonymous, online community, and second, while a user's page (or lack thereof) may be an indication of a few things, I wouldn't say the general editorial consensus is that it's the primary factor in decision-making regarding any user. Now, though, you seemed to be referring to a particular article; could you provide us with a link to the article(s), or to the diffs in question, so that we can develop a better feel for the situation and take a more direct role in helping you out if necessary? Luna Santin 18:11, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Thank you for you input; I'm not going anywhere. Michael David 00:34, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

On a general point about expert v non-expert editors, it's too facile to say that because of WP:V any editor is as good as another in technical areas. If we want a good, trustworthy article, letting someone who knows little of the subject quote a newspaper article or a popular book is no substitute for someone who really knows the sources, is probably more up-to-date than the popular items and can sort the wheat from the chaff.--Brownlee 12:19, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

  • I can feel the frustration. I have been reverted quite a few times on articles in my field of expertise, and have sometimes received vandalism warnings from other editors even when my changes are WP:CITE'd (I'd pull out the diffs, most of them are utterly ludicrous). Just last week, I spent an hour convincing a patient of mine with metastatic breast cancer to allow her CT head to be placed "on the internet", only to have the caption reverted by another administrator who didn't know what the word metastasis meant, and who thought my addition was vandalism because it had the word "breast" in it. I can absolutely see how this would keep specialist editors away. It's not about veto power; it's about having too many policemen on this project, and about many of them having no clue about the articles that they are policing. Michael David, we appreciate your expertise and your specialist contributions -- Samir धर्म 21:14, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your support. My initial naiveté regarding editing in Wiki has passed. I believe in this project or I wouldn’t spend time working with it. I intend to bring all future problems with this issue to this outdoor Pump - sunshine (and lots of Betadine) are truly the best disinfectants. Michael David 12:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

My 2 cents: I feel that being civil and talking it out, and bringing in people you trust to help, is a good choice in any wiki-war.

However, I'd like to point out that people with much more experience than me have been much more uncivil than me. There's User:Lulu of the Lotus Eaters, who uses ad hominem attacks on good-faith strangers despite his multitude of academic awards, there's user:Noesis, who worked in partnership with a very famous and respected academic, and yet became bitter when others made any addition to the article on that man(Leon Kass).

My point is that people can have bad habits with or without great qualifications.

Thus, I feel that the most important values on wikipedia should be to be act in good faith and to always try to learn and keep an open mind. Again, I feel that being civil and talking it out, and bringing in people you trust to help, is a good choice in any wiki-war. And if you know you're right, then more power to you.--Zaorish 18:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


Portal approval process counter to Wikipedia's aims?

It appears that editors are now selecting portals for possible deletion on the grounds that a portal has not been given prior approval: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Thinking. Concern has been raised that this portal approval process does not have the wide consensus it appears to claim, and that it runs counter to the principles of Wikipedia - the essence of which is that this is a wiki which enables users to get involved immediately without registration or prior review. Tiresome though it is to tidy up vandalism and to correct mistakes, that is the price we have to pay for having a wiki. This portal approval process appears to be an example of creeping bureaucratic authority. If people feel that editors who are unsure if their portal is a good idea need somewhere to for for advice, perhaps the page could be renamed Wikipedia:Portal/Advice, and it made explicit and clear that there is no need to wait a week for approval. SilkTork 08:18, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

If we don't require community approval to create Portals, we should, because something like Portal:Humor (full of empty links and with no constructive edits since January) is an embarassment! While I think the process should be explicitly stated, it is not counter to Wikipedia's aims any more than restricting edits to MediaWiki pages to admins. Articles can be of slight significance, but Portals must be broad introductions into broad topics, and the topics must demonstrate a community of interest willing to do the work of keeping the Portal fresh and up to date. bd2412 T 12:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Your points are valid, and apply to many aspects of Wikipedia. The current process is that something is created, be it article, category, WikiProject or Portal. It is given reasonable time to develop and show potential, then if some editors feel that it is doing more harm than good, a notice is put up and editors gather to see if a consensus of editors agree that the article/category should be deleted or renamed. The process here is that there is no notice given. Somebody applies, and those few people who are aware this process exists then decide among themselves. It is not a clear, open and democratic process. It is not policy. However, I understand the points you are making, which is why I suggest this process be named Portal/Advice. In the meantime, if you are unhappy with an existing Portal and feel that it is beyond hope, put it forward for deletion. SilkTork 15:43, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Above all, Wikipedia is about creating an encyclopedia, and is not a free web host. The proposal process was developed, to help deal with the creation of so many portals which then are disregarded, unmaintained, in some cases half-created. The bigger issue is shortage of portal maintenance (e.g. Portal:Fire, with news not updated since last December, Portal:Archaeology, Portal:Netherlands, Portal:Dogs, Portal:Industrial Design ...). The proposal process not only helps evaluate if the topic is broad enough, but also consider prospects for portal maintenance. -Aude (talk contribs) 14:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • The Portal process is no different to the Category or Article or WikiProject process. The same policies regarding Wikipedia not being a free web host apply. Once we get into the area of waiting a week for a self-elected group to decide if someone can proceed with developing one area of Wikipedia, then it opens the door a little for other areas to have approval rules. The essence of Wikipedia is that it is wiki - otherwise we might rename it ApprovalBySelfAppointedGroupPedia. SilkTork 15:43, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree a process is needed for portal approval. If editors make lots of overlapping portals, lots of portals with little or no content, or lots of portals lacking conceptual coherence, then readers will find them discouraging and frustrating. This could lead readers to give up trying to use Wiki portals. High quality portals that overlap as little as possible will be most helpful to readers, and that requires a minimal management process (e.g., a proposal-approval process). kc62301
I also think it's a good thing that new portals go through an approval process. This way they gain visibility and more users are interested in maintaining them, since it will be their creation. Pre-approval isn't a new thing, stubs and their categories go through similar process since 2005. feydey 17:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • If you feel unhappy with an overlapping portal, then nominate it for discussion and possible deletion. That is the procedure we have at the moment. SilkTork 15:43, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I somewhat agree with your arguments, that portals should just be created and then if something is problematic, to put it up for deletion. The problem with that is the sheer number of poorly maintained portals that get created. Even major topics like Portal:History are being neglected. I have tried (unsuccessfully) reaching out to Wikipedia:WikiProject History for help with Portal:History. I wouldn't suggest deleting portals covering such key topics, but some better way of dealing with this is needed. The proposal process was intended to help do that by stemming the portel creation, en masse. -Aude (talk contribs) 18:27, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Having a pre-approval process will not prevent a Portal falling into disuse. Nor will it ensure a brilliant Portal is created. If you are concerned about the state of some Portals, couldn't you put a message on the Portal suggesting it needs some TLC - perhaps, as the Portal/Advice group, making some helpful suggestions. I could see a Portal/Advice group being very useful in encouraging and developing Portals in a friendly and supportive manner. SilkTork 22:17, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't think this is a good idea at all; if the page is neglected or half-done, MFD it. However, forcing users to get a rubber stamp to get a portal will make active users more reluctant to create them. Tito xd(?!?) 22:38, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree. Here are my thoughts on the portal approval page:

Below I've transposed the Miscellany for Deletion nomination for the Portal Approval page. To participate in that discussion, click the edit button below and to the right: --Transhumanist 03:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

There is no need to transclude a debate from elsewhere here. A link suffices. I've removed the transclusion. Worldtraveller 16:40, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Strong Agreement with Transhumanist on all points Tobyk777 02:30, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

(You may want to go to the MfD and restate that.) --Transhumanist 03:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

This discussion is continued on Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Portal/Proposals, which includes my original reply to this forum.


Categories by ethnicity - what's wrong with having them for British people?

Today's Gretzky FA on the frontpage has him categorized as Belarusian Canadian and Polish Canadian among other things. Innumerable US personalities are similarly categorized by ethnicity.

I tried to categorize British people of Bengali origin similarly with the category British-Bengalis. There are, to my knowledge, 11 such people articles on WP so far, all of which I tagged - Eenasul Fateh, Iqbal Ahmed, the two girls on Harry Potter, etc etc.

But for some reason, this was put to a VfD along with several others, and then deleted after a vote that barely recorded 10 votes in total - with at least 3 for. The deletionist gave all sorts of strange reasons for not categorizing British people by their ethnicity, few of which made much sense.

I also pointed out the policy of targetting small categories (although with 11 members, British-Bengalis was larger than most). The deletionist cleverly left out British Asians which is truly a large category, and which will have many backers if anyone ever puts it to the vote.

I have therefore two questions:

  1. Why one policy for American/Canadian articles and a different policy for British articles?
  2. Why delete small categories, and leave out larger categories, when the argument for deletion is essentially the same?

If anyone can clarify, I will be most grateful. I would like to know what official WP policy is, before a useful category dies a needless death.

-- Peripatetic 11:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Policy for category deletion is at Wikipedia:Category deletion policy. The CFD page itself lists reasons to nominate a category, and refers to Wikipedia:Categorization of people which only says that all such categorization schemes "may be problematic". Answers to your specific questions: 1) there is no differential policy for American/Canadian vs. British categories, 2) because one CFD outcome has no binding influence on any other. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm, kinda puts that position in a tight squeeze with systemic bias though. Steve block Talk 14:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Where can I review the CFD for this categorisation - on the face of it, it does seem an odd idea to delete such a category where we have "fictional armies" and the like roaming around. --Charlesknight 14:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Hard to know which CfD you're talking about. There have been at least 4 repeated debates about British bazians. Virtually all of them have been deleted for improper categorization.
For example, well-known people like Cat Stevens have been variously categorized as "Swedish-British" -- very American-style -- and the British say, We don't call people that! So, somebody tried "British Swedish", and more folks said, We don't call people that, either! And other person tried "Category:List of British people of Swedish descent", which is just excrable, and doesn't fit any category naming convention -- although that could be an article where folks could add references for verifiability.
Moreover, it turns out the he never calls himself Swedish anything, and apparently was never a Swedish citizen, although he lived in Sweden 4 years as a child ("sometime after" 8 years old). Now that's just silly!
It all comes down to listing heritages by 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, or non-notable temporary residency. And after many such CfD debates, and additional debates here, we now have a clear and concise policy.
I'm sure folks will be cleaning up Americans, Canadians, and others, but it will take time. They'll be deleted as they are emptied of the non-notable, non-verifiable ethnicruft (to coin a phrase).
--William Allen Simpson 16:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
It may take a while, although we can try to clean up the sillier stuff. A while back the article on Lhasa de Sela, who has Mexican and Jewish ancestry, was born in the U.S., grew up there and in Mexico, and has lived in Canada and now France, had the following categories:
Category:Jewish Canadians
Category:Jewish Mexicans
Category:Mexican-French people
Category:Canadians in France
Category:Jewish-Frenches
-- Donald Albury(Talk) 17:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


Wikipedia:libel

Does the wikipedia:Libel policy apply to statements of opinion on talk pages? For example, if I say on a talk page that in my opinion, a person (not a wikipedia editor) lied when s/he made a certain claim, may that statement be deleted as libel? Anonymous44 14:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer but I know that a level of malice would need to be proven. If you think that a person lied because you have discovered some conflicting information from another source and are trying to put the most accurate information in the Wiki entry, then it would be difficult to prove there was malice in your assumption that they lied. Of course, if you then go on a tangent about how someone is this horrible person who always lies...etc... then you maybe in more troubled waters Agne27 15:00, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
WP:BLP states "unsourced or poorly sourced negative material from biographies of living persons and their talk pages" should be removed. If you are merely offering your opinion, that also isn't really in keeping with the original research policy. When discussing issues you need to be able to source any claims you make, whether that is in the article or on a talk page. If you can't source your claim that a person lied, your claim should be removed. If you wish to get recognition for such a claim, I would suggest you contact the media, who can afford to employ people to decide whether to publish such a claim. Your opinion that someone may have lied has no bearing on an article's content, it is extraneous and has no place in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a message board. Steve block Talk 15:31, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, WP:NOR doesn't apply to talk pages - see WP:OR#On_talk_pages_and_project_pages. And I'm not talking about a biography either. --Anonymous44 15:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Not according to WP:BLP, which states states "This principle also applies to biographical material about living persons found anywhere in Wikipedia." If it defames a living person and you don't have a good source, it has to go. Steve block Talk 13:58, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
No malice is needed if the individual is not a public figure and the libel is not on a matter of public concern (e.g., an article statement about a professor's personal life rather than his academics); a negligence standard then applies under many state laws. Our notability standards fall short of what it takes to be a "public figure," btw. Postdlf 15:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
In my case, the person has claimed to be a vampire hunter and to have staked dozens of actual vampires. If I were to mention that I consider this to be an invention, would it be subject to wikipedia:libel?
--Anonymous44 16:37, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
No. It wouldn't be libel under U.S. law, because you have a reasonable belief that that statement true, and the truth cannot be libel. --Aquillion 17:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Agree wtih Acquillion. Of note here is the standard is 'negligence' not 'malice' for a private individual, and again, the truth cannot be libel (or the truth is an absolute defense). And opinion is not, of course, defamatory. It may be tacky, but not defamatory (see libel and slander for the two types of defamation).
Legal libel is rarely an issue. More often incivil conduct is a breach of either Wikipedia:No personal attacks or Wikipedia:Civility. But it's not a problem as long as you attack the statements made by the person and not their character. Deco 17:40, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Ditto Deco (? !) I couldn't resist.jgwlaw 00:53, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Exactly, Deco, yet another reason why I try to always promote my own personal Talk: space policy: Discuss the edits, not the editor. Eaglizard 13:33, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


Protecting one's own page

I really would like a new policy in which the non-administrator user can protect his userspace (main userpage, talk, subpages, etc) from any potential vandalism, but wouldn't be able to protect any other pages on Wikipedia. Is this feasible? --Revolución hablar ver 04:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I would guess you mean semi-protection, as otherwise the user could not edit their own pages. The talk page would have to be exempt from this, as anon's are entitled to communicate with a user via their talk page. Alternatively, you may mean full protection, but want the user to be able to edit even protected pages within their own user space.
I doubt it would be difficult to program, but it would require a change to the software, which makes it unlikely to be implemented as we have a shortage of developers. It also seems rather unwiki-like, as we try to keep almost all pages editable by anyone.
If you have a problem with a particular page of your being regularly vandalised, then Requests for Page Protection is the place to go.-gadfium 05:13, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, "your" userpages are part of the wiki, which means that in theory anyone is entitled to edit them, odd as that might sound. In practice changing someone's userpage without their permission is Very Bad Form and you're allowed to revert them. Unless the userpage is disruptive to Wikipedia's mission in some way, in which case, the fact that they are part of the wiki is indeed called into play. Anyway, many of us have gotten someone or other cross with us enough to vandalize our userpages. Usually they get tired of it pretty soon, if not there are the various procedures for bringing them to account. Herostratus 00:38, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Allowing a user to protect their talk page, thus blocking comments/warnings/etc., would seem particularly problematic. Dragons flight 00:46, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that could never work. Not only would it hinder communication, but it would also prevent warnings from being posted-we cannot condone or advocate such an ability or promote seclusion from others when the Wikipedia community does not thrive upon isolation. MichaelZ526 07:19, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


Speedying cut+paste copyvios from sites other than commercial content providers

(From WT:CSD) I am thinking that it might be best to amend A8 and remove the requirement "Material is unquestionably copied from the website of a commercial content provider (e.g. encyclopedia, news service)." Currently, pages that are copyvios of materials from non-profit organizations take too long to process. People have to check if the article is a copyvio, blank the article, insert the {{copyvio}} template, and list the page on WP:CP. Then, a week later, somebody else has to verify that it is a copyvio and then speedy it. Given that there are an astronomical amount of copyvios, this can cause a lot of wasted time. Thoughts? -- Where 15:00, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Agree 100%. Martin 15:04, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm uncertain. Nonprofit sites might be more willing to give permission for the material to be used. I also would like to see concrete evidence of the large number of such copyvios. Deco 15:39, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Regardless of willingness, we can't just copy their material. For concrete evidence see Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Martin 15:54, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Concur with Bluemoose (who really should change their signature) - I think it'd be a good thing to do as Where suggests. On Wikipedia, WRT legal issues, it's better to ask permission than forgiveness. --Improv 17:02, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Unless I am misinterpreting the proposal, he seems to be suggesting that we delete the content without ever seeking permission to use it. Why wouldn't we want to ask permission? Deco 18:23, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
If permission is granted it can be put back. The obligation of action should be on those who want to license the content, not on those who are ensuring propriety. --Improv 19:17, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Sometimes the editors who cut-n-paste from non-commercial sites and blogs are the copyright owners. If spooked by deletion they could not come back. Often somebody is willing to "retell" the copyrighted story. They might need a copyvioed piece to retell. abakharev 08:42, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Maybe but most stuff coppied from elsewhere needs heavy modification to fit with wikipedia in any case.Geni 15:23, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
If I remove a cut & paste copyvio, I tend to leave a message on the original author's talk page — often something based around the {{nothanks}} template. It gives a legitimate author/owner an explanation of what happened. Even if the editor inserting the material is doing so deliberately and works for the organization in question, that person may not have the authority to release material under the GFDL or realize the consequences of that.
Per Geni, it's almost always as much work to wikify, restructure, and rewrite copy & paste stuff to fit encylopedic and house style as it is to write an article from scratch. Alex, above, overlooks the fact that most copyvios are found and verified through a Google search anyway — so we don't need to copy a local copy of the document; it's readily available as a reference on the net. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:25, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

As it seems like we have reached a consensus to do so, I have modified WP:CSD with the changes. Feel free to revert me if you disagree that there is consensus here. -- Where 02:21, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


Archival policy for articles transwikied to wikibooks

I'd like to propose a change in policy for articles that are transwikied to wikibooks. Currently, articles that are transwikied from wikipedia are simply deleted, which has the unfortunate effect of also deleting the history of contributors (the history of a transwikied article on the WB side starts with the person who did the transwiking).

It seems to me that these histories should be preserved, both as a way of acknowledging the contributions, and perhaps to give WB editors a way to find source material if the article on WP lacked citations (i.e., we would at least know who to ask). I don't think this would cause much of a problem on the WP side, because very few articles are successfully transwikied to WB, though this may be in part because the contributors to the article don't realize that it has been transwikied (and articles that are transwikied and "abandoned" at wikibooks are soon deleted).

So I propose the following:

  1. Transwikied articles should not be deleted, but rather "blanked", and then have a template that informs interested editors that the article has been moved to WB.
  2. Transwikis to WB should alway be titled "Transwiki:ARTICLENAME", so that those of us on the WB side interested in finding a home for these articles will know what to look for.
  3. If an article "finds a home" at wikibooks, the article space on WP should be blocked from any editing, preserving the message that it was transwikied, and where the tw'd article (now a chapter or book) can be found.

SB Johnny 18:22, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. There are lots of places we transwiki to which are not even Wikimedia projects. We don't allow redirects across namespaces even, why should we keep nonexistant articles just to point to somewhere outside of Wikipedia? That would make us more like a search engine than an encyclopedia. User:Zoe|(talk) 21:28, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Why the hell is transwikiing taking place without preserving the article history? The article history should be transwikied as well! Carcharoth 23:44, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Things just aren't set up to do that automatically, though it would certainly be a good thing if people copied it when making the move, or at least leave the page undeleted and make a note on the talk that it needs to be done. The best solution, IMO, would be to tweak the software to allow normal page moves across namespaces, so that the article, talk, and histories can all move together (perhaps with a script to change "((user:x))" to "((w:user:x))", etc.). SB Johnny 12:12, 23 July 2006 (UTC)


Template:hotu

Template:Hotu (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) - A template to link articles to Home of the Underdogs. A legitimate site, perhaps, and contains lots of information - but it also contains copyrighted material, abandonware versions of games. Now, the site is no secret - and if the companies wanted their work pulled, I'm sure it would have been already. But the question remains, should we be linking to these so people can download them? --Golbez 06:10, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

At first glance, one would immediately assume copyvio if it were linked anywhere else than on its own page. In that regard, it might be copyvio just linking to it. I'm no expert. Generally, however, I would think that Wikipedia would want to discourage editors from distributing copyrighted material. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 06:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Linking to copyright violating sites is strongly discouraged. At WP:EL we say, Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry). Also, linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on us (see Wikipedia:Copyrights and in particular Contributors' rights and obligations). . User:Zoe|(talk) 21:32, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
They've got abandonware games (technical copyright violations), but they've also got a large archive of freeware games, including a number of well-known commercial games that were re-released as freeware. Links to games in the "freeware" section of the site should be fine. --Carnildo 18:46, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
The first two pages I saw it on were Magic Carpet and Magic Carpet 2, two non-freeware games, but definitely abandonware. --Golbez 22:31, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


"List of " suburbs" articles

I just started an AfD on List of Logan City suburbs. This is simply a list of the suburbs of Logan City, Queensland. What's policy on this? A list of suburbs seems the wrong tool for the job. And it would take tens of thousands of articles like this to cover the world.

How should atlas data like that be represented? We really need more map support ("Wikipedia Earth?") for this kind of thing. --John Nagle 06:51, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


AFD vs PROD

Do we need both of these systems. They do the same thing, and having two only serves to confuse. --GW_Simulations|User Page | Talk | Contribs | E-mail 09:48, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes we do. Wikipedia:Proposed deletion is for generally uncontroversial deletion candidates. For the rest there is AFD. Prod removes a lot of useless workload on WP:AFD. Garion96 (talk) 11:48, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
I kind of sympathize. I've noticed people using the "prod" tag when they really should be using "expand". Just because a stub is new and not fully fleshed out yet doesn't mean it's a proper deletion candidate. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 02:26, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Which is easier to fix on prod then on AfD. Vegaswikian 02:37, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


Impressions from a new(ish) editor good and bad.

I have been editing Wikipedia for about a year (I think!), and until a fortnight ago all I ever did was add and modify articles and surf it for info. Up to that point I had nothing negative to say about Wikipedia. I still think it's a marvellous concept and an extremely useful reference tool, far superior than any other encyclopedia. Best of all, it's free at the point of use, so knowledge is not limited by budget. I have every intention of carrying on playing a part in it, as the free proliferation and preservation of knowledge is a cause I am deeply committed to.

There is however another side, one of which I was blissfully ignorant until one day I visited my Sharon Janis article and found it vanished. Since then I have been learning fast about policies, administrators, AfD's, deletion reviews, and the inner workings of Wikipedia generally. It has been a profoundly upsetting stressful and time-consuming experience. I never expected to end up fighting a crusade against a massive bureaucracy.

Whilst I've had other articles removed, I could see good reasoning behind them. With the Sharon Janis article, I found myself having to fight hard to justify the blatantly justifiable, whereas some of my other articles about far more obscure subjects have never been questioned. Whilst this is undoubtedly the encyclopedia everyone can edit, it's also the encyclopedia where at any time, anyone's prejudice can strike out information someone else gave up time and energy to contribute. I am not convinced that reality matches policy. The policy is sound, but what happens in practice is that ego, personal prejudices, feelings pride and emotions inevitably come into play. What is happening in reality is that articles that are rubbish but no one cares about could survive indefinitely, but those where someone has a personal dislike or pejudice get nominated for the chop. The victims in this are articles which whilst not perfect have merit but have the misfortune to be read by someone with a bee in their bonnet. Fortunately, those curious enough about deleted articles can often go to Google and find out about the subject that way, but I don't think they should have to.

I see from the forums I have visited that I have become just another aggrieved editor who has seen hard work removed without a full reasonable and justifiable explanation. It is a lot easier to remove an article than defend one, as I have painfully discovered, and that is not right. I have far better things to do with my precious time than spend countless hours on procedures, forums and jargon, but so deep is my passion for what I believe that I have gritted my teeth and waded headlong into this bewildering cyberworld.

To sum up, Wikipedia is a marvellous creation which I'm glad I discovered, but it is far too easy for articles to be removed. I don't mind anyone appealing for a deletion, but an editor or administrator should have to work at least as hard in removing an article as I've had to in defending one. The power to delete is too widely spread amongst God knows how many administrators and therefore too easily the cause of micarriages of justice. As for the deletion review, it is a lottery depending on who reads your article and the review. The power to delete should instead be concentrated into a panel of ten highly experienced committed users who require a minimum 8-2 verdict to remove an article with a full given reasoning from each member. Above them should be a tribunal with powers to overturn in the light of fresh evidence. Even then articles should be re-admitted anyway if suitably modified in a way dictated by the tribunal.

I will go on using, contributing and (very reluctantly) participating in discussions on Wikipedia, but after the last fortnight I will do so with a heavier heart. Headshaker 15:34, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sharon Janis for the AfD discussion on the Sharon Janis article. Apparently it failed WP:BIO and contained misinformation. --AbsolutDan (talk) 16:02, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
"Sigh" which I then modified and am in the process of modifying further to fully justify what is clearly justifiable anyway. My whole point is that the onus should be on the prosecution to prove beyond reasonable doubt that an article is unworthy, not for the defence to prove worth as I'm having to.
Headshaker 16:18, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Most of your post above seems to be related primarily to the removal of content to begin with, per "it is far too easy for articles to be removed" and "an editor or administrator should have to work at least as hard in removing an article as I've had to in defending one" As such, the AfD appears to have proven that the article didn't meet WP criteria for retention at that time and was removed fairly. Deletion review can be a bit challenging, yes, but if an article is deleted fairly, there really needs to be a compelling reason to restore it --AbsolutDan (talk) 16:59, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Proven?! It did not prove anything! That is my point. The onus should be on detractors to prove unworthiness. The article was not deleted fairly. The fact that a user could not verify a statement in a mouse click or two does not constitute "unverifiability". Get off your arse and make some calls if you doubt it that much! I did.

Headshaker 05:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

You should have gotten off your arse to make a verifiable article in the first place. The first article you made was overly laudatory and almost completely unreferenced. It was absolutely fairly deleted. -- Samir धर्म 02:36, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I feel I have to respond to your blanket assertion that it is far too easy for articles to be removed. Have you ever browsed through a single day's entries in Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion? Many, many of these articles should never have been created in the first place, and there absolutely has to be a mechanism in place to get rid of them. (That doesn't even include the ones so blatant that there are separate criteria for speedy deletion to delete them out of hand. If you feel, in light of all these articles, not just yours, that you can offer constructive suggestions for ways to improve the deletion process, then please offer them. Fan-1967 04:31, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Any editor in good standing with some contribution history to show value to the encyclopedia is always welcome to ask any admin for an article to be userified (copied or moved to their user space). I get and (after review for suitability, see my user pages for guidelines) grant such requests all the time, and so do many other editors. If an article you are working on is deleted and you think it's salvagable, ask that it be userified, work on it some more, seek advice from interested editors and once you've improved it to address the concerns raised in the AfD, move it back. If it's been substantially improved it will not be automatically speedied as a recreation of deleted content. Railing against process will not get you sympathy, though... this process works pretty well and has general consensus... Hope that helps, and happy editing! ++Lar: t/c 17:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


Fact checking of articles (especially featured ones)

Have a look at this edit. A basic and easily checkable fact in the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom article (the salary) was not updated. This is the sort of thing that justifiably gives Wikipedia a bad reputation. What is the point of saying that our articles can be more up-to-date than others, when no-one checks to see if they are up-to-date? This was all the worst for appearing in a featured article linked from the Main Page. Can processes please be put in place to stop this happening again? Carcharoth 23:32, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Well the fact checking is suppose to take part in the Wikipedia:Featured article candidates nomination and selection process as was the Peer Review. Several editors took part in both processes. It just looks like that one fact slipped by. Agne27 03:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Really? From what I see of the Peer Review and WP:FAC processes, they don't involve much fact-checking, and concentrate more on the style, layout, balance and references of an article. Maybe I passed by in an off-week. Regardless, I've now found a WikiProject devoted to fact checking, so that is good. Carcharoth 09:29, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


No Original Research - queries

I'm not quite clear on what the difference is between Original Research and Rephrasing or Reasoning something. My example is slightly obscure, but is the best I can come up with at the moment. If say, no-one anywhere had published something saying that the District Line had the most number of stations on the London Underground (this 'factoid' has been published, but for the sake of argument let's say that only the number of stations on each line had been published). Would it then be Original Research to look at a list of the number of stations on each line and say "The District Line has the most number of stations". To me this is similar to the "deductive reasoning" section above (which concerned deducing people's nationality), but this is a clearer case of deductive reasoning. Other cases I can think of include saying things like "team Y is the first team to have won trophy X by this scoreline since 1860". This sort of thing is verifiable, but if it hasn't been published elsewhere, the only way to verify it is for the reader to go and check various lists and see if this is true. So where is the line drawn between rephrasing and representing a set of facts and maybe adding some obvious deductive reasoning, and this process becoming Original Research? A similar process would be seen for the process of rewriting and rephrasing things from a source. Where is the line drawn between summarising several sources (which is one of the prime purposes of a tertiary source like an encyclopedia), and synthesising those sources in such a way that (maybe accidentally) new connections and insights are revealed about the topic? Carcharoth 00:45, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

There does seem to be a bit of gray area about how literal one interprets WP:OR. With your "direct line" example, I can see both sides one can take. A strong benchmark for me is whether or not this interpretation advances any particular position--especially one relevant to the articles NPOV. In your direct line example, a particular POV is not being advance so I would personally feel comfortable with that addition. However, I see with deducing nationality--like what happened with the Copernicus article--more room for crossing over the WP:OR line. Agne27 03:49, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I can see endless scope for arguments about whether something is an obvious and trivial deduction from published facts (when it would be silly to call it NOR) or not. To me, the District Line example is a trivial deduction, and I would accept it even if there were controversy; others would disagree. Almost certainly, it will often come down to whether it offends someone's POV.--Brownlee 11:27, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:RS are best considered altogether, not one at a time. Something is either verifiable or it is not, it comes from a reliable source, or it does not. In your example, there is a list that you can cite. So, the right prose would be “X resource suggests that the District Line had the most number of stations on the London Underground.” If there’s no citation at all, I’d expect it to get challenged. If there is a citation with that, then I think you are OK because you have signaled that the observation is tied to a resource you are citing. As to the amount of interpretation added to the citation, if another editor objects and says that you are doing OR, you may be put into the position of defending the source or finding another source. That seems to be a basic rule of Wikipedia, that the onus is always on the person wanting to include something in an article. I think it is best to let the editing reach that point. Tsetna 14:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
See the discussion on Wikipedia talk:No original research concerning the suggested policy of "reasonable inference", wherein inferences that are straightforward and noncontroversial would be permitted. This hasn't gained much consensus to date. Deco 11:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


Tor blocks

I didn't receive a response to my ANI post about this, so I've decided to post here. I'm after community support to run a script to convert tor blocks to AnonOnly NoCreate. The source code of this script, which has worked as expected on my own wiki (see [11]), will be available on request. I would suggest that this script run on a botflagged account, as it will otherwise flood recent changes with 250-odd block and unblock combinations at a rate of approximately ten unblock/block combinations per minute. I do not currently have a sysop bit, so the account would need to be hit with a sysop bit. Issues to be resolved:

  • Whether the script should work on commuting the blocks to Anon-only / No account creation, or simply update the current blocks to mark them as Tor blocks, and to block new exit nodes.
  • Whether or not the script should run on a separate, botflagged account.
  • Whether or not I, a non-admin, should maintain the script (I'm aware that some are uncomfortable with this).
  • Whether the script should run one-off, or regularly in order to keep the blocks up to date.
  • Whether a script should be used to execute the blocks, or if there are admins willing to update these blocks manually.

Input is welcome. Werdna (talk) 10:48, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

You seem to have left out the part of the argument explaining why we would want to have Tor proxies be blocked in that way? Dragons flight 21:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
There are a lot of people who use Tor, myself included. Allowing those people to edit from Tor seems to be a good way to go - Tor is not, in itself, "evil". Werdna (talk) 06:56, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Anything that encourages people to have a named account seems like a good idea. AGF: why shouldn't a non-admin maintain the script? I assume that people can check it if they wish. I can't see any reason not to run it regularly.--Runcorn 19:25, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

If the community doesn't go for the commuting of the blocks, I have no problem running the script simply to update our existing Tor blocks. Werdna (talk) 10:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


Deleting/keeping articles on micronations

Does WP need separate standards on when to delete articles about micronations or are WP:ORG and WP:WEB good enough? Micronations are defined in the WP article on them as "eccentric and ephemeral in nature, and are often created and maintained by a single person or family group" and thus seem to be by definition, without anything else, non-notable. Anyone can start one by declaration and most of them do not exist outside of one person's website. The ones that are mentioned in the article were mostly notable as part of a political movement. What should the standards be for retaining such articles? It seems that at a minimum the micronation should have some sort of significance outside of the political movement to which it is related. Also, is there any way to speedy delete these? Forming a micronation is like forming a band (easier in fact, as you don't have to be able to play an instrument), but without more, why do we care? JChap (talk • contribs) 17:46, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

"An article about a real person, group of people ... that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject" is the sentence you're looking for, I think... if it appears to have some kind of significance, fine, but otherwise it's inherently non-notable. Shimgray | talk | 17:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
That's the one. Although, it perhaps needs to be made clearer that these would qualify as (presumably) organizations. JChap (talk • contribs) 18:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Most of the ones I've seen should be speediable, as there generally doesn't even seem to be a claim beyond "We've got a freewebs page so we're a nation." The question is, if some are notable, how do you assert notability for a nation that, after all, doesn't actually exist? Fan-1967 21:21, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Off the top of my head... major and high-profile news coverage of a claim of secession; the micronation being involved in an interesting legal status or part of a court precedent on the issue; someone having been convicted of major fraud involving it; a small-scale war over the place... Shimgray | talk | 08:44, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


Placement of categories and stubs

It seems to be general practice to put stubs and cats at the end of articles, but is there any rule about which comes first? I notice that bots often swap them round, but with no clear preference as to order.--Runcorn 19:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I think there's a preference to put all the stuff that doesn't actually appear on the article page at the very end of the article—that is, stub notices would go ahead of categories and before the interwiki links (which are invariably last). I'm not sure if this has been clearly written out in any policy, however. In any case, it's one of those things that ultimately shouldn't make a difference, just because stub tags should only be on an article temporarily. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:07, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


Cliffs Notes on works of literature - should we link them?

WileyPublishing (talk · contribs), who has identified on the User Talk page as a summer intern for Wiley Publishing company, which publishes the Cliffs Notes, made edits to numerous articles for classic novels to add a link to a Cliffs Notes page for that work. The edits have been reverted as linkspam and the user has been blocked from posting.

The content at each page seems to be, for free, the full contents of the Cliffs Notes that many of us paid money for in high school when we hadn't read the book. These were not generic linkspam, but were specific links to the notes for each novel.

The suggestion has been made that there may be some value in allowing these links to stay as a useful resource relevant to each book. On the other hand, this is a commercial site and the pages do have some advertising content on them, so these links would help draw viewers to these pages and these ads. On the other hand (yep, a lot of hands here) we do direct people to other sites (IMDB, for example) which have some advertising content, though maybe not as much.

There is some discussion of the issue on the user talk page.

Could people take a look at some of the content referenced by the links (see: Special:Contributions/WileyPublishing)? What do people think? Are these links we should allow, or should it be forbidden as linkspam? Fan-1967 20:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

While as a general rule I believe anyone who is paid to post their employer's links should be dealt with sternly, I'd say links such as these are positive contributions, because they provide a good degree of substantive content not elsewhere found, and from an established source. Mere naked advertisements for a product should of course merit removal and blocking. Postdlf 20:41, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm inclined to allow this as well. The editor has been completely up-front, and the content is good. Just zis Guy you know? 20:45, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
The encyclopedia article is supposed to provide a summary of the book and appropriate commentary/context. I don't think it really makes sense for an encyclopedia to systematically link to someone else's commercial product that basically just does the same thing. As such I am opposed to linking to Cliff's Notes, even while admittedly being pleased that Wiley Publishing was upfront about their activities. Dragons flight 20:56, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Cliff's go well beyond the scope of the encyclopaedia, though, in that they provide plot summaries and the like. Just zis Guy you know? 21:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Presumably our articles have some plot summaries (or should), so I assume you just mean they have more? That would be a matter of degree, and I feel that we can reasonably add everything of encyclopedic interest without appealing to Cliff Notes. Besides which, why Cliffs and not Barron's Notes or Literature Made Easy. This is a slippery slope. Why link one online commercially based summary and ignore others? We are developing a reference work providing summary and context for the book, and for that reason it doesn't make sense to link to other competitive and commercial reference works even if they are arguably better at the present time. It would be like linking to Encarta at the bottom of articles if their coverage of a topic happens to be better. Admittedly, Cliffs Note is also something of a study guide, but I don't think people ought to expect that an encyclopedia is where you go to find study guides. Dragons flight 21:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Cliff's Notes also have literary analysis essays that go beyond the descriptive reporting we do here. As for "slippery slope," if there are multiple online summaries of quality and independent merit, why not link to them all? Or just allow each article's editors to decide how many is too many, or which ones don't provide anything new or different.
I also have to really take issue with your comment about not linking to "better" reference works that compete with Wikipedia. Our goal isn't simply to outcompete other reference works by traffic count. Our goal is to inform readers, so if there is a resource out there that is more substantive than our article, we should provide it (and that itself will increase traffic count anyway, because knowing such links are going to be in articles will cause more people to start their research here, even if they finish it elsewhere). Also, such links inevitably lead to the improvement of the articles themselves by organizing available information for future contributors. Postdlf 21:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
No, if there is a more substantive source out there we should use it to improve our article and when appropriate reference it. I wouldn't mind referencing Cliffs Note (though referencing a reference work is not great form in itself), but mere systematic linking to them is fatalistic. It amounts to saying: "This other project which also summarizes and discusses the book is better than us, so everyone should go use them instead." We could have a bot go through and link all these articles. We could even have a bot go through and add thousands of links to Encarta on any corresponding article. But I do not believe that the way to write an encyclopedia is to merely link to other reference works that are expected the rehash much of the same content. In my opinion, the value added is small, and the slippery slope for allowing systematic commercial spamming is large. Those factors together make this a bad idea in my mind. By the way, for anyone who hasn't noticed it, just up the page is a section, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Scientific_American_linking, dealing with many of the same issues in a somewhat different context. Dragons flight 22:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
This really does violate WP:EL, as it was added by an (unpaid) employee of Wiley presumably acting on their behalf (because of the user name), and I would normally say delete such links on sight. However, the quality and usefulness of what was added is so great that I would be tempted to go back and add them myself if they were deleted. In at least one instance, using WP to promote a company you were connected to got someone indefinitely blocked, [12] however there does not seem to be a specific policy on this. Plus, there were obvious differences in the facts between that incident and this one. JChap (talk • contribs) 21:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm an editor at Wiley, and I just wanted to clarify that summer interns at Wiley are paid.--Pixel23 10:06, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Aren't these specifically to be avoided under WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided, point #1 (and perhaps #4)? It sounds like folks are saying commercial spam is OK if it's really good spam. Would links to Britannica be OK? -- Rick Block (talk) 21:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Comment Would links to IMDB be OK? Fan-1967 00:22, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
They are normally to be avoided per the title. I would say almost always, but this may be an exceptional case. JChap (talk • contribs) 03:15, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

User was blocked for an inappropriate username, not for adding the links. He had already added them as 12.149.50.2 (talk · contribs) and they had been reverted, but he was not given a warning. He then registered as WileyPublishing and added them again. The 12.149.50.2 address is registered to John Wiley in New Jersey, according to this. User was warned with {{spam}} at 16:09 (UTC),[13] and ignored the message and posted four more links [14] [15] [16] [17]. Only after he was blocked did he say he was working for Wiley and Sons.[18] AnnH ♫ 21:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Are cliff notes annotated texts? If so, remove the links in favour of links to Wikibooks, where the cliff notes could probably be useful as references. I'd certainly say the links should be removed per WP:EL. If they are useful, they will be added in due course by independent editors. Steve block Talk 22:24, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • They are not annotated texts. Many of these works are still under copyright. They contain fairly detailed plot summaries with analysis. They contain far more content than even the most extensive book article I've seen on Wikipedia. Look at, for example, Lord of the Flies, which is an excellent, quite extensive article. Then look at the Cliffs Notes page for that book [19]. There has to be at least ten times as much content. If someone really wanted detailed analysis of the work, they offer more than we realistically can. Fan-1967 00:28, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  • In this particular case (perhaps it makes sense to have this conversation every time a new situation like this comes up, because linking is a very sensitive manner), I'm worried that Cliff's Notes is just one member of a field of products that do the same thing. Unlike journals, which typically want to be exclusive publishers of studies, anything that has Cliffsnotes will also likely have at least 5 or 6 coverages in other products. I'm at a loss to make a concrete suggestion on whether they should be included, but I suspect that we don't want to link to 5 (or 50) of them. This differs substantially from my thoughts on the Scientific American article linking opinion, as noted elsewhere. --Improv 02:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


Non-productive debate on talk pages

What's the best thing to do with debate on talk pages which is not about page content and is clearly not productive (e.g. a debate on Talk:Roman Catholic Church based on an anonymous assertion that the Roman Catholic Church isn't Christian)? While it's there it attracts responses and distracts from the purpose of the page; but I've been a bit loath to just delete sections of talk pages. Should it just be deleted? Left alone? Marked as 'closed' in some way (like how debates which have reached a concensus are marked as closed)? TSP 20:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd archive it out. Just zis Guy you know? 21:12, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


What to do if a move poll is determined by partisan reasons

For thoose interested, see here for a discussion about the interaction between policies such as WP:CON and WP:NPOV when partisan motives are playing the first fidle. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#What to do if a move poll is determined by partisan reasons.3F. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 09:49, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


Lists

I am starting to see a lot of comments from editors who see lists as redundant with categories. See, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Superfluous game lists. Setting aside the specific issue (i.e. that the lists being discussed there aren't terribly useful ones) my understanding is that lists and categories are encouraged to operate side-by-side, and are not redundant with each other. Surely a list does several useful things a category cannot do, most importantly including items which do not yet have a Wikipedia article and items which would not justify having one. Is that not correct? Or is it one of those major wikipedia controversies like deletionism -vs- inclusionism. Do we have prolistists and antilistists? And if so, how do I join the first camp? AndyJones 12:56, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

This has been an ongoing debate, please see Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes. The "official" stance is that lists, categories, and navigational boxes each have their own advantages and disadvantages, and that none of them are obsoleted by any of the others. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:52, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Can there be an "official stance" on a wiki? In any case, while a list can have advantages over a category, a list that is just an alphabetical listing of links to articles is not such a list. While it may be improvable maybe it's such a simple subject that there isn't anything else to say and it doesn't make sense to change the order. In that case, it makes sense to delete it as duplicating a category. Or perhaps it could be improved, but it has existed for months and it's still just an alphabetical list of links. In that case its like a poor article that someone proposes for deletion, which some people say no because it could be improved and others say delete it because no one has improved it yet. --JeffW 23:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Lists can be classified and annotated. Thus a list of Nobel Prizewinners could be split into sections showing which Nobel Prize it was, and annotated with a short summary of why they won it, if it was shared, etc. The former can be done with a hierarchy of categories, but this is cumbersome. The latter cannot be done at all with categories; you can read each article, but that's very time-consuming.--Runcorn 19:30, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Having said that, an annotated list can be seen as a reduced version of a summary-style overview of a particular area. I would like to see annotated lists, overview articles and 'pure' lists made distinct. A 'pure' list is a lot more like a category. Carcharoth 22:10, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


Guidelines

Hi. Which village pump would be appropriate for discussing a guideline? --GunnarRene 14:35, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

This one. At the top of the page, "The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies." Tsetna 14:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
OK. Thanks. I thought it might be this one, but wasn't sure because policies and guidelines are distinct on Wikipedia. --GunnarRene 18:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


Aura (paranormal)

I recently added some links to Aura (paranormal) and someone removed them. The links I posted were related to Aura (paranormal) and was wondering why they were removed. I would like to put the links back on the site since they are related to the page. I would appreciate some imput. Thanks. John R G 17:59, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

  • I think he means the links in this diff: [20], which were removed here and here (reasons given in the edit summary). More discussion here [21]. --W.marsh 18:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes you are correct but they are Aura related and therefore should not be removed. Am I correct? If I am wrong tell me why. John R G 18:15, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

They are advertisements, and violate WP:EL. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:31, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Exactly. Further, if you wish to put up pictures of "auras", you should probably state that they are "alleged" so as to remain objective. MichaelZ526 07:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


RM when cited

Can someone point me to policy regarding users removing material that is backed up by article references? Also, is it enough to have references at the bottom, or do you need to implement the awkward ref/cite syntax for it to be considered cited? - Keith D. Tyler (AMA) 18:54, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Well that's a complex issue. Generally, see WP:V and WP:CITE. But content disputes can occasionally see referenced claims end up getting removed, for a whole variety of reasons (undue weight (WP:NPOV), unacceptable sources (WP:RS), etc.)
As for citing them, really it's best to do an inline citation for claims. It's not required, but it can avoid misunderstandings with anything controversial. You might see Wikipedia:Footnotes and the newer "<ref>" style citation, which is a lot easier (to me at least) than the old system. --W.marsh 19:20, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
And simply citing something doesn't, of course, mean that it's encyclopedic information in the first place... verifiability is a minimum but not sufficient requirement. Shimgray | talk | 08:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


Copyright status of Chinese characters?

Hi, I would like to upload an image of a Chinese character that I found on the web. It seems to me a Chinese character cannot be copyrighted, just as you cannot copyright the letter 'A'. I seem to recall an entire font can be copyrighted but not an individual letter. Is this correct? And if so, what do I select when choosing the copyright status of the uploaded image? --Ideogram 23:35, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Couldn't you just type out the character? I'd think that would be simpler. However, I would suppose the proper license would be {{PD-self}}. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 23:51, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmm I could, but then I would have to figure out how to type it, and magnify a truetype font. I already have the image. --Ideogram 23:59, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
This comes up often enough, and the US rules on the subject are bizarre enough, that I have just created {{PD-font}} to cover situations like this. Assumming your image is raster rendering of a simple black and white character and not, for example, some super stylized and decorative work of art, this should apply. Dragons flight 00:12, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Being enterprising, I also just wrote: Wikipedia:Public domain#Fonts. Dragons flight 00:52, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. --Ideogram 00:59, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
U.S. copyright law is really stupid. Bitmaps and vectors are both instructions to a computer. The courts don't understand that there is no distinction between computer "programs" and "data". --Ideogram 01:03, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I never made the claim that US law in this area was actually reasonable.   Dragons flight 01:09, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

U.S. copyright laws regarding fonts are really bizzare. There is some legal precedence that suggests that fonts are uncopyrightable, under the argument that the owner of a popular font could seriously restrict the freedom of speech if he/she had complete economic control over all uses of the font. Presumably, if you could copyright a font, you could also control exactly how and in what manner any written content was expressed when that font was used. And has been in the past. From this perspetive, showing Wikipedia using propritary fonts like this is a violation of the GFDL and illegal, provided the font is copyrighted. Courts have clearly ruled that font designers can't control how the characters are used in terms of combinations of characters.

Now it gets even more bizzare as some font data files are considered algorithms, hence copyrightable as computer software. So the font data file (like a true type font) is copyrightable, although raster images of the font are still perfectly legal to copy (such as in an advertisement). I think it is from this perspetive that the raster scanned image is perhaps going to be legitimate. However in this situation, to make things very simple for copyright purposes, you should be the one who "renders" the character and makes the image. Don't just "steal" the image from another website. If you need to have a good free (as in beer, not copyleft) Chinese character font, please see Code2000 for links to the website. Most of the Plane-0 Chinese characters are in that font. There are other Chinese character fonts, some of higher quality, but expect to pay through the nose to be able to obtain them. If you already have the font... good for you. --Robert Horning 21:26, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


Use of GFDL material from the web

This article appears to be based on Wikipedia's own article (probably before some random editors did a hack job on our article). I would like to copy this article back to Wikipedia. Could there be a copyright problem or is the fact that it is based on GFDL Wikipedia material prevent that? --Ideogram 00:02, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't find exactly which version of ideogram this one is, but I'm confident it exists in the article's history (the November 12, 2005 version looks pretty similar). The article in Wikipedia split, and some of its content is now at Logogram. Before restoring to this very old version, I'd bring this up on the article's talk page. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:08, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
The article seems to be abandoned. I'm going to be bold and see if anyone objects. --Ideogram 01:24, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Careful. If someone copies GFDL (or GPL or LGPL) material and modifies this stuff, the combined work is not automatically under the corresponding free license. Of course, if it is not, the publisher is likely violating the original license, but that is his or her problem. As long as he is not sued, he can go on violating it. And even if he is sued, he may settle for some other conditions (e.g. buy a different license from the copyright owners - that may be hard in the case of Wikipedia or Richard Stallman, but it is possible in principle) than coming into (L)G*L compliance. --Stephan Schulz 14:19, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, it would be required to be under the GFDL if it was originally published under the GFDL and modified, and the person doing the violation is redistributing the content in any way. Of course, you are correct that he may not have intended to have the modifications redistributable under the GFDL. But if you own the original copyright and copy his modification back, he would be up the proverbial creek if he tried to sue over copyright infringement. All that could happen is to simply revert the changes, and counter-sue for damages including court costs and the defining lawsuit of the century that establishes or eliminates the GFDL as a legitimate content license. I think you would be safe to do this, as any legal challenge would be one of the most juicy legal plums you could imagine. Just be prepared to put your money where your mouth is and have to defend yourself on the grounds of the GFDL. If you don't own the original copyright (aka you weren't an original contributor to the Wikipedia article), you would be on much shakier ground legally. --Robert Horning 21:35, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


Much Ado About Nothing

Article: Template:MLB_HoF
Controversy: Usage of official HoF logo; fair-use vs. permitted use
Background:
Sometime in the past, a small tag-type template was created to be used on the article pages of members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. This template originally included the official logo.

After some initial controversy regarding the simple necessity of the template, an editor began making the "FUC" argument, removing the template.

Soon, the template re-emerged, and in this iteration, the official logo was replaced by an unattractive photograph of the front doors of the HoF.

Two VfDs were attempted, during which the template was frequently shuffled between the unsightly picture, and the official logo, on the basis of fair-use images being non-permissible.

A staff member of the HoF was contacted, and permission granted under standard HoF policies (they allow editorial usage of the logo) and that staff member's office telephone number was posted in the discussion page.

I understand the intended scope of the policy, and, in my opinion, this is well outside it both legally and morally. This is a relatively unimportant template content-wise, but, to someone researching baseball and its players for the first time, a small tag indicating HoF membership serves as a quick, at-a-glance way to determine the career performance of a given player, and has survived *two* VfDs because of that fact.

Since the VfD's combined with the simultaneous revision of the template were rather obviously aimed at forcing a stylistic point, rather than truly a content one, I'd like to see this matter discussed in a wider forum than has been so far attempted. A few admins are strongly asserting their own interpretations of posted policies, the most pertinent of which is both contradictory and specifically mentions case-by-case exemptions.

I hereby open this discussion with a request for consensus and clarification on this triflingly insignificant matter.

(Note: Permission ahs been sought, and granted, by the HoF, however, certain administrators have expressed concern that this permitted use might not hold in the face of potential commercial editions of wikipedia content. The office telephone number of the HoF staffmember detailed to answer such requests has been posted publicly, probably an incredible nuisance to the aforementioned staffmember. The phone number rings busy during non-office-hours as of 7-19-2006. Accordingly, official clarification will be required as to the types of proofs required under FUC policies.) Ender78 05:51, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

  • It's not just commercial use, it's attack use. There's always a bunch of people mad at the Hall of Fame (usually for not including their favorite player, but other reasons as well). Bill James's The Politics of Glory is a whole book about how the HoF is messed up. So people could take the logo and use it in an attack site. Would the HoF be OK with that? I don't think so. Sorry, I don't think you should use it. Surely you can get someone to take a picture of the HoF sign or something. Herostratus 12:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
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