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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies.

Discussions older than 7 days (date of last made comment) are moved here. These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.


Getting rid of fair use

I'm seeing this issue come up over and over again. Most wikipedias prohibit fair use. Although I can see legit reasons to include some truly fair use images on en, I've observed that in practice it just leads to a whole lot of problems. A lot of people are claiming fair use for any image that they want to include, regardless of the legitimacy of the claim. A lot of people are spending time arguing over what is/is not fair use. I'm beginning to think that it's really just not worth it and it's greatly reducing the freeness of the english wikipedia. I know that a lot of people will object to depreciating fair use on wikipedia, but I also know that I've heard a lot of people voicing similar concerns to mine. How can we move towards putting this bad idea behind us? Matt 00:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm all for it, with one exception: when the image itself is the subject of an article, such as Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. --Carnildo 03:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Err, that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If we remove all fair use images, we'll leave a great many articles with no illustrations (perhaps permanently):
  • Almost all articles dealing with modern art. This includes basically all movies, TV shows, paintings and other graphic arts, etc.
  • Almost all articles dealing with fictional subjects.
  • Many articles dealing with aspects of modern history not witnessed by US government photographers. Note that this would probably include all situations where the exact copyright status is unclear (e.g. Nazi photographs).
  • And various others.
Aggressively pushing for free content is very good, of course; but let's not forget that we also want to be an encyclopedia, and one that can be competetive with commercial ones. Decimating our image libraries isn't really going to help in this regard. —Kirill Lokshin 05:02, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am not convinced that the "baby" in this case is all that valuable. We might end up with articles without illustration, so what? It would be interesting to see what percent of EB's articles include illustration (I don't know the answer to this). EB's article on Salvador Dalí (from what I can see from [1]) has no images. To say that we need "fair use" to compete with non-free publishers seems to me to be an argument for why a free encyclopedia can't be done. But de.wikipedia.org is doing it, and by most measures has been more succesful than en (unless you measure an encyclopedia by the number of pokemon articles). Matt 17:50, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
EB gets less than 1% of Wikipedia's hits so it is really rather insignificant as a competitor. We are competing with the whole (very well illustrated) www. Osomec 16:40, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is so much abuse of the "fair use" that we need a stronger wording that currently exist to discourage uploaders. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 04:44, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
NO! Getting rid of Fair Use will cripple Wikipedia. The IP laws are already restrictive enough, I don't see any reason not to take advantage of the little freedom we are given under law. We should encourage replacing Fair Use images where possible, but there are many instances where it is NOT possible ever (such as articles on video games and movies), where Fair Use is absolutely essential for a good article. Loom91 15:17, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is possible ever -- when the copyrights expire. Wikipedia would survive. It would also be more free, and more reproducable outside the US, both of which are healthy aims. Sam Korn (smoddy) 15:28, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Copyrights only expire theoretically—no copyright has expired during the lifetime of Wikipedia. Passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998 (and its international counterparts), and the failure of legal challenge to it, virtually guarantees that another extension effort will occur before 2019 (the next time that copyrights might expire). Making policy decisions based on the assumption that copyrights will eventually expire seems overly credulous. I think we have to assume that nothing presently copyrighted will ever transfer into the public domain. --TreyHarris 16:31, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's some intermediate choices. We could establish an arbitrary limit, like one-per-article (with some sort of special procedure for granting exceptions). Right now, there's no incentive to make free images, because so many articles are already crammed-full of non-free ones, which are usually "prettier" than the free ones. --Rob 15:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree getting stricter on fair use is a decent idea. i disagree with arbitary limits though. Screenshots and suchlike are essential to proper critical commentry on software products.
As for copyrights expiring yes that will happen eventually but for many things probablly not in our lifetimes. ALSO if we get rid of non-free images now then we still won't have them when thier copyrights expire unless someone else archived them! Plugwash 16:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd propose allowing fair use images only when the following conditions are all satisfied A) it is a genuine fair use claim; no legal problems for Wikipedia; B) there is a compelling argument that the image is necessary to illustrate the article, and C) there is a compelling argument that a free alternative is either impossible to obtain, or it is highly unlikely that we could ever obtain one through reasonable means (however you define that!) — Matt Crypto 23:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why not use fair use where it is permisible, and there is no more open alternative? Why not take advantage of rights that are given under existing copyright law? Aggressive deletion of useful images for copyright-panic reasons only impoverishes us. For great justice. 20:12, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

inappropriate username blocks and summaries

Recently, there has been much debate on the subject of blocking inappropriate usernames. Some administrators are regularly blocking such usernames as per policy, but with undescriptive block summaries. When new users see "user..." as the blocking reason, chances are that they will have no idea why they were blocked. I'm pretty sure that we have already lost potential contributors this way.

So I have been unblocking and reblocking such usernames with more better block reasons, and guess what, someone files an RfC against me for doing so.

I have therefore modified MediaWiki:Blockedtext to reflect this issue and added a link to the username policy. However, I'm not sure if that is enough to keep new contributors from being driven away.

Any thoughts? --Ixfd64 06:03, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'd agree in the sense that a blocking summary should always give some sort of indication why the block took place. Also, where edits are carried out by a bot this should be indicated in the summary as well. (More or less, the same standards that apply to edit summaries should apply to blocking summaries as well.) Christopher Parham (talk) 20:00, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The RfC doesn't mention that you've reblocked any of these usernames, or even that the "user..." summary is the big problem. If this is really the issue, why don't you bring it up at the RfC? So far, the RfC seems to be about you unblocking users and not reblocking them. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 05:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Suggest we comment in the appropriate place on the RfC page, as I have. John Reid 19:18, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm hoping to push through the proposed policy Wikipedia:Censorship. If it suceeds, then we may have a strong case against overturning the username policy itself, which is one of the policies most contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia. Loom91 15:14, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for making your intentions clear. If further demonstration was needed, this certainly provides enough to doom that "proposal". Wikipedia is not a democracy. Have a nice day. 134.10.12.226 01:22, 25 March 2006 (UTC) (User:JesseW/not logged in)[reply]
So wikipedia is fascism? The Psycho 04:35, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 11:44, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

T1 clarification proposal

I originally had this on the WT:CSD, but robchurch recommended that I move it to the village pump to get a wider range of opinions.

T1 is so ambiguous that nobody can agree what it means. This has caused a lot of undesirable wikiFriction as of late. If we can clarify T1, maybe we can all cool down a bit. Thus, I propose that T1 be broken into subsections that specifically state what is and what is not acceptable, with examples. For instance, T1 should state specifically whether the following controversial beliefs are acceptable in templates:

  • Controversial political beliefs (ex. "this user hates George Bush")
    • General political statements that are phrased in such a way that they are only an indication of possible bias (ex. "this user has liberal political views")
  • Controversial wikipedia-related beliefs (ex. "this user thinks consensus should govern all parts of wikipedia" or "this user supports pure deletion")
  • Religious beliefs (ex. "this user is Christian")
  • Controversial beliefs regarding other cultures (ex. "this user thinks American English sucks")
  • Controversial violent beliefs (ex. "this user supports the violent overthrow of the regime of Saudi Arabia")
  • Controversial identity beliefs (ex. "this user is gay")
  • Attack templates (ex. "this user thinks that stupid admins should start respecting the community and following policy")
  • Beliefs considered almost universally offensive (ex. "this user is a cannibal")
  • Condescending beliefs (ex. "this user thinks x and thinks that everyone that doesn't think x is wrong and will go to hell")
  • Controversial moral beliefs (ex. "this user supports abortion")

Such a reformed policy should also include a statement that templates that do not fall into the above categories should be decided by the TFD process. Personally, I think that if such a system were to be put into place, all of the above except for wikipedia related beliefs and general political statements that are only meant to help inform people of possible bias should be allowed. What do you people think of the matter? Where (talk) 04:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think what you're looking for is a policy, not (a) speedy delete criteria(on). --AySz88^-^ 04:09, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree. What you propose is extreme instruction creep. That a template is divisive/inflammatory is readily apparent from the reaction to it, I can't see how we could make it simpler. --Gmaxwell 04:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Userbox_debates seems to indicate to me that different people can get different opinions on whether something is divisive or not. This T1, may require clarification. Where (talk) 04:29, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The vagueness and misinterpretations of T1 have caused much WikiFuss and opened doors to abuse by certain people. Misza13 T C 23:05, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. There have been (and will probably still be) wheel wars about these templates (unless all the Admins interested in doing this are in personal RfC or RfAr, and under orders not to do it.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:24, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know, I don't understand why you include homosexuality as a "controversial identity beliefs". So uncontroversial identity beliefs are okay? That seems awful ... I dunno ... tyranny of the majority. The fact of the matter is that homosexuality is only a "controversial identity belief" because there are some incredibly bigoted people out there in the world. Homosexuality occurs naturally throughout nature in a wide variety of different animals; it should be no more controversial than saying, "This user is a biped" or "This user has two eyes". But enough about homosexuality. I'd rather see a much simpler solution that clarifies the purpose of templates and categories. See Wikipedia:Proposed template and category usage policy. I think that'd be a lot less ambiguous than trying to work on T1 which is trying to make a decision about which unencyclopedic templates are acceptable and which aren't. Getting rid of all the unencyclopedic templates is a much simpler solution and doesn't allow anyone to claim bias, like I just did with the homosexuality example. --Cyde Weys 02:04, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Very good points. However, banning all uncyclopedic templates, even those that have to do with writing Wikipedia and the Wikipedia community, seems a little harsh. Where (talk) 11:19, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that divisive and inflammatory userboxes should be deleted. I am convinced by the events of the last few months that they should not be speedied. This proposal makes abundantly clear the amount of judgment involved in the application of T1; other speedy criteria can be verified trivially, and usually all reasonable editors will agree when they have been met. (TfD will also usually get rid of something faster, since speedies will often be listed on WP:UBD; and Undeletion will be seriously discussed and often approved.) Septentrionalis 15:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I really think this T1 needs to be refined and to have some limits to its application, based on how severe the disruption or potential for disruption is...Mike McGregor (Can) 05:46, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No double standards

I've been concerned lately with double standards in regards to categorization. By categorizing some groups specially and not others, we essentially center around specific groups. For instance, we have categories for "Women scientists" and "Women cricketers", where we don't have "Men scientists" or "Men cricketers", because that's seemingly "redudant". This appears to be a clear androcentric bias.

Likewise, we make classifications such as "Category:American children", but not for "French elderly", "Middle-aged Germans", etc. The term "child" is problematic since there is no world standard, and generic classifications of children are also a temporal problem because categories aren't supposed to represent people as they are now, but as they've ever been (e.g. we classify former presidents as if they're current presidents, actors as actors after they've retired, etc. without making any temporal distinction), which would mean that in order to be consistent (call this retentive if you'd like) we would need to classify anyone who grew up in the United States as "American children". I'd like to see Wikipedia apply the same standards to everyone with regard to categories, whether that means removing existing ones or creating new ones to stay consistent and NPOV.

Thoughts? Sarge Baldy 21:24, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality – would that be helpful? --Francis Schonken 21:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, yes, thanks. I see that a number of people share my concerns. The only problem is that Wikipedia:Categorization is only a guideline, where I think it needs to be turned into a specific policy, or seen as falling under current NPOV policy. Sarge Baldy 21:59, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think you could successfully handle it under NPOV. Your points are exactly right, and those are biases. It's probably meant to counteract a perceived bias, but it's not the right way to go about it. A few of those could be defended under the position that they are know particularly for being something, as Curie is known for being a woman scientist in a time there weren't many. I believe that can be solved by simply requiring evidence. - Taxman Talk 14:25, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The number of redlinks as category examples in Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality suggest to me that its guidance is not being followed? Is there another policy which has superseded, or is it just a case of CfD votes not being bound to other guidelines' terms? --TreyHarris 18:32, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't the raison d'etre of categories utility? Female heads of government are, still, relatively rare, and a student might well be writing a paper for which such a category would be very helpful. On the other hand, one is far less likely to be specifically looking for male heads of government, and the Category:Heads of government would be nearly as useful if one is. Attempting to achieve a theoretical consistency here, at the expense of utility, strikes me as foolish. Robert A.West (Talk) 16:11, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Avoid the M-word

I've come to the conclusion that most uses of the word "meatpuppet" on Wikipedia, especially on AfD, are inappropriate.

Many contributors start out as "meatpuppets". That is, people who just read Wikipedia will often get the idea to start editing because a "vote" or discussion like AfD shows up on a topic they care about. This was the case for me, for example. Such people should be as welcome as any other newbies, and their first experience in Wikipedia-space shouldn't be that they're being called names.

Note that I'm not saying we have to let anonymous and new users vote-stack on AfD! It is perfectly possible to disregard those votes, and to explain why we're disregarding those votes, without saying "Go away, meatpuppet".

It seems that we've tolerated this form of newbie-biting for far too long. Thoughts? rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 02:11, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like the term because I tend to associate it with its alternate meaning (aka, the Jim Henson) Raul654 02:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm one of those editors that turned up the intensity of their participation here after being called a meatpuppet, in so many words (in Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Checkerboard_Nightmare, my vote was struck through and discounted even though I had about 80 edits at the time). I didn't really like being called that but I realised that maybe the answer back was to build up some history here, make some good contributions, and campaign against certain things (like strikeouts in these sorts of discussions, I remain convinced they are terrifically bad) which I've been doing. The question I have is, for every editor like me that turns up his contributions (and I flatter myself to think I've done some good work here although I don't have a rack of barnstars to prove it), how many are chased away entirely? So ya, dump the term. ++Lar: t/c 02:46, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hear hear. I have been put off by how disrespectfully this is used in AfD discussions, and how often it's used to avoid responding to the arguments the "meatpuppets" raise. · rodii · 03:38, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree also. Perhaps we should make an amendment to WP:NPA explicitly discouraging the "M word." --TantalumTelluride 03:48, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Either there or maybe WP:BITE? It is more of a biting thing than an explicit attack but it's pejoratively connotated. ++Lar: t/c 04:14, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yeah, that makes sense. By the way, whether it's incorporated as part of WP:BITE or WP:NPA, its addition should definitely be discussed on the respective talk page beforehand. The caretakers of all those policy pages always want to thoroughly discuss even the smallest of edits. --TantalumTelluride 04:40, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Correction: Actually, WP:BITE isn't an official policy. Anyway, you get the point. --TantalumTelluride 04:41, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, it's already policy! The statement "Do not call such users meatpuppets; be civil." has been at the end of Wikipedia:Sock puppetry#Meatpuppets since January 8, 2006, and that page is policy. It seems we just need to draw more users' attention to it. I've proposed adding it to WP:BITE. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 06:54, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with that section is (was) that, while it ended with a tacked-on note not to use the "M-word", the very same word was used in the section title and the first paragraph. The message this sent was contradictory to say the least. I've now edited the section not to use the word "meatpuppet" outside the cautionary paragraph. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:37, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really think the message was contradictory -- the term is only uncivil if it is used against a specific editor or group of editors. We can refer generally to the reality that meatpuppets exist, but to (potentially unfairly) ascribe a certain intent to a specific editor whose mind we cannot read is inappropriate. Christopher Parham (talk) 14:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say civility problem isn't about potentially unfair characterization, but simply the fact that "meatpuppet" as a word can sound extremely offensive and its implications can be insulting even in cases where the definition given at WP:SOCK is technically satisfied. However the "local jargon" may define it, in a general context the word seems to imply a "person" who is entirely devoid of intelligence or free will, mindlessly obeying the will of their "puppet master". I don't think that's what we want to call new editors, even behind their back (since they may still overhear). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:40, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Having recently become inadvertently embroiled in a set of... let's say "interesting" discussions with a new and very wordy user after I noted a suspicion of m.../s... puppets when an AfD was flooded with unsigned comments (which all turned out to be from the one user unfamiliar with Wikipedia-space) I'll be more careful about using it in future. But when the sysops of a web forum / BBS etc. tell their members to head over and bombard an AfD because their site is up for deletion, that is still Meatpuppetry. Trying to create a new term for this may or may not work. Rational, intelligent potential new editors caught up in such will recognize why their actions were wrong if they stick around long enough. Partly due to my above experience I have drafted and proposed WP:EARLY (see below) Deizio 03:14, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My use of meatpuppet is the fairly specific (and, without a BBS or a clear admission on talk pages, quite difficult to prove) accusation that someone is just permitting their account or IP to be used without independent thought. I therefore believe it to be a legitimate term, although most uses of it are inappropriate, and (like any other unproven and defamatory accusation) uncivil. Septentrionalis 14:30, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problem I see is that even if that accusation -- that someone is allowing their account to be used without independent thought -- is false, that person's account is still in almost all these cases being used without a sufficient understanding of what it's being used for. Example: User X creates an article on an unencylopedic subject -- say, a dictionary definition for a neologism he invented yesterday. When it's put up for deletion, X goes to his LiveJournal. "Help!" he cries. "Those nasty Wikipedians are going to delete the article on $NEOLOGISM because they don't think it's a useful term!" User Y reads this and thinks "What are they thinking? Of course it's a useful term! Anyone can see that! I'm going to go over there and sign up for an account so I can give them a piece of my mind and help to keep the article alive!" Now, User Y is clearly acting independently -- he read User X's description of the situation and, based on that, made an independent decision to act. But because he's coming in based on a false description of what the argument is all about, and without any of the independent experience of Wikipedia which would allow him to recognize User X's description as completely incorrect, his input is unlikely to be one bit more helpful to the discussion than that of an actual meatpuppet -- a user who simply obeys User X when User X says "Go here and type this in."
So if we deprecate the use of "meatpuppet" to indicate a user of this kind, then how do we communicate unambiguously that just having an independent belief that the article should be kept is not enough, not when that belief doesn't come from an experienced and independent assessment? (I've always preferred the term "run-in voters", myself...) -- Antaeus Feldspar 15:39, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Run-in voters" is at least a better term, especially since it doesn't imply the "...controlled by someone else" part. But I think the clearest thing is to communicate the policy that votes by new users can be discounted. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 08:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Burgeoning templates

I suggested {{See also}} for deletion, and before the day was out the TfD had been removed, debate closed, as speedy keep. All this without giving me a chance to respond to some of those voting (who admitted that they didn't understand my point — perhaps because, as editors hanging round the template pages, they're so used to them that they don't understand the problems faced by other users).

I suggested it for TfD in part because, after I'd posted a comment making the same point to Template talk:See also, after some time the only response had been one that agreed with me. It seems to me that the "speedy keep" was precipitate at best. The template is frankly absurd; it offers virtually no advantages over creating a "see also" section manually, and simply places another obstacle in the way of casual or occasional editors (who are perfectly capable of adding a bulleted link to a section, but have no wish to look up the template in order to work out how to use it. It seems to me that there's a regrettable tendency in Wikipedia to replace simple editing methods with geeky ones. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that some templates are way too simple. Is it more convenient to type {{Main|Wikipedia}} or :Main article:[[Wikipedia]]? Too many silly templates on a source page can intimidate new users. As a matter of fact, I would have started editing Wikipedia several months before I did if I hadn't been turned away by all the confusing templates. I didn't know how they worked, and I was afraid to edit around them. All those templates do encourage consistent style throughout the encyclopedia, though, so it will probably be hard to change the current trend. --TantalumTelluride 01:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
See? I forgot to italicize that manual version of {{Main}}. It should actually be :''Main article:[[Wikipedia]]''. If I were editing a real article, I might not have noticed my mistake. --TantalumTelluride 01:48, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but once you'd noticed, what you needed to do was obvious — part of standard Wiki-markup. We can't legislate against typos and mistakes (you could just as easily make a mistake typing the template). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's true. I don't really know what the rationale is behind such simple templates, but it seems like they're always speedy keeps at WP:TFD. --TantalumTelluride 21:55, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The idea is that if the standard elements of the article are in a template it is very easy to modify them all at once. If a graphics designer will decide that the Main article should be bolded, or highlighted by color or by a glyph or put on the right side of the article, or whatever; then he or she should only modify the template. If the standard element is supported by a convention instead of a template, then such modification requires huge efforts with such tool as AWB and will pollute unmeasurable number of the Watchlists. What I would like to see is to have a button on the edit toolbox that has some sort of list of the most usable templates, so that a user would need only a couple of the mouse-clicks to insert a template. abakharev 00:32, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Image fair use clarification

We're having a bit of a problem here in the interpretation of the fair use for images. Currently, over at the article lolicon there are two images which shows the example of lolicon manga. User Brennan removed BOTH images on the grounds only one example can be posted on the article, due to his interpretation of the fair use policy. I've placed back the first picture that was in the article before the the second picture violated the fair use policy, and now this is being contested as well since, as he claimed, they both are in violation now, therefore, both must go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lolicon#Fair_use Arguments are stated above. Clarification would be most appreciated Jqiz 19:06, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ook? Putting aside the fact that I've actually only removed one of the two images ([2][3][4]) it's pretty straightforward: the fair use claim here is that this images are required to illustrate the genre. Unless we demonstrate in the text by citing third parties that there are sub-genres and that these are typical members, we can only use one image to "illustrate". There are several other hurdles to fair use here such as size and fact that it's cover art, but having a single image is the start. - brenneman{L} 23:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We're now arguing if lolicon manga is an example of a subgenre in lolicon, and you want a 'source' to confirm that the picture is a 'lolicon' manga?Jqiz 02:16, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Where on earth did brenneman get the silly idea that we can only use one image to illustrate something under fair use? That's complete nonsense. There's nothing in the fair use clause of copyright law that would justify this interpretation whatsoever. IT seems to me that there a lot of people on that article trying to censor it or otherwise get what they want done under some particularly lousy and ill-informed arguments over fair use. DreamGuy 00:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps from Wikipedia:Fair use. Wikipedia policy on fair use is more restrictive than copyright law. The policy (at the bottom of the page) includes the following: The amount of copyrighted work used should be as little as possible. Low-resolution images should be used instead of high-resolution images (especially images that are so high-resolution that they could be used for piracy). Do not use multiple images or media clips if one will serve the purpose adequately. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 00:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nobel and Other Secret Prize Nominations

This started out as an edit dispute in a particular article (R.J. Rummel), but has wider implications, so I am seeking wider comment. Periodically, a bio or other article claims that a person has been nominated for a Nobel prize or (less often) another prize with similar secrecy rules. This strikes me as violating at least three policies, depending on facts and circumstances:

  • WP:Verifiability. Since the nomination is supposed to be secret, any claim to have nominated is inherently unverifiable as to the fact claimed.
  • Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms. Since such prizes typically receive a lot of nominations, and since the lists of semi-finalists and finalists are closely guarded, such a claim has little meaning.
  • NPOV#Undue weight. Many readers are accustomed to the Academy awards and other such prizes where the term "nominee" actually means "finalist". Accordingly, any claim of being nominated for one of these prizes, even if listed, will tend to be misunderstood and should be qualified to avoid misleading readers.

I would add to this the obvious question about whether a nomination made in flagrant violation of the rules is even considered a nomination by the relevant committee. I would therefore recommend that stories about such nominations not be included in Wikipedia articles unless the claim is widely publicized and somehow relevant, in which case we have a duty to readers to clarify the doubtful nature of any such claim. Am I wrong? What does the community think? Robert A.West (Talk) 06:04, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From Hugo Claus:

Hugo Claus has been connected with the Nobel Prize for Literature for several years now, but he himself claims to have given up hope of ever receiving it.

For me this is OK. Improvements I'd suggest concern:

  • "has been connected with", find an alternate formulation applying Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words;
  • Find a reference where & when Claus would have said this.

--Francis Schonken 16:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See also Talk:Jorge_Luis_Borges#Borges_and_Nobel_Prize, which cites several sources; note that this has not yet made it into the article. Septentrionalis 22:22, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nobel Peace Prize nominations are my bete-noir. I've deleted dozens of assertions of nominations from articles (including a car dealer from Ohio and a diet guru from Brazil). There are a few cases where the nominations themselves were announced by the nominators, and so are verifiable, for example Stanley Williams. However even when verifiable they are not necessarily notable, since over a hundred people are nominated annually and there is a very low threshold (any college social studies professor or any national legislator may make a nomination of any living person). In general there has been little opposition to my removal of these nominations, but I haven't been too dogmatic about it. A guideline or policy may help, but it should take into account these famous nominations. -Will Beback 22:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For the Nobel Peace Price the only information given by the comitee is who the winner is. They do not give any information about the rest of the nominees, and they advise the nominators to not publish their proposals. Almost all information about people who's been nominated and hasn't won is speculation and can't be properly verified. It is true that there is quite many nominators for the price, but it is still not quite everybody. http://www.nobel.no/eng_com_nom.html --85.165.20.90 23:20, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Glad someone else has the same bete-noir as I do. I take a harder line, however. A claim of nomination for a scientific prize is non-verifiable even if announced by the alleged nominator, because the list of nominators (a few hundred) is secret. The peace prize is a different matter, since any lawyer, jurist or college professor of history can nominate; however, even in this case, there is no way to cross-check the claim. If a person bioed claims to have climbed Everest, but provides no evidence outside of his claim, I would not include it, except with strong qualification, and then possibly to document the counterclaim that his inflates his resume. Robert A.West (Talk) 00:07, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree that a mere claim of nomination is non-noteworthy by itself. If the claim, however, is a subject of public debate, or a point of public notoriety (other than between wikipedia editors,) then the controversy over the claim belongs in the article. As it is impossible to verify a claim of nomination, that cements that mere nomination doesn't mean squat. (How do you verify that someone was nominated? How do you provide proof that you have nominated someone? You can't, only (in this case) the Nobel committee can "prove" it, and they don't ever reveal.) If the claim of nomination is supposedly the tipping point between the person being notable and being non-notable, then I would land on the side of declaring the person non-notable. I could have a friend of mine (a history professor,) nominate me for the Nobel Peace Prize, publicly acknowledging the claim. That doesn't mean I've just become notable. (Even if I do have a few published works, which I don't.) Any secret prize, which doesn't make its 'short list' public, mere nomination isn't worth mentioning. I haven't even read the article at the center of this debate, just the talk pages, so I have no bias toward or against the person that is being debated. Ehurtley 00:36, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this. If a person claims to have been nominated that is meaningless. If a qualified person makes a public claim to have nominated someone, and if there is some controversy or notoriety connected to that nomination, then it may well be notable in the context of the nominee's bio. However no one is notable simply for having been nominated. Claims that someone is a "finalist" are totally unverifiable and should not be included. -Will Beback 01:12, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the comments on notability. This is very useful in the more general case, but doesn't really affect any of the articles that I have edited. Assuming that both the alleged nominee and nominator are notable, and that the claim of nomination has invited controversy or comment. Is it proper or POV to make a statement cautioning the reader? For example, "Since nominations for the prize are supposed to be secret, the nomination cannot be independently verified, moreover the committee receives a large number of nominations each year, and are silent about which ones receive serious consideration, so the nomination may not be very significant even if true." I don't want to mislead the reader, but at least one editor feels that this is discourtesy at least to a living person. In the aftermath of the John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy, I don't want to brush this concern aside heedlessly. Robert A.West (Talk) 21:37, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How to get permission for use of image

Hi, for an article regarding a local brewery I e-mailed them asking permission to use images from their website for wikipedia, and they agreed. What steps are necessary for me so I can include those images in wikipedia? (copyright and -tagging wise, the uploading procedure itself is clear to me.

I hope I got the right section for my question, thanks Snakemike 11:05, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission. You need to make sure they give permission to use it under a free license, not just permission for it to be used on Wikipedia. You can forward emails granting permission to permissions@wikimedia.org where they will be archived in case proof is needed in future. Angela. 14:25, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talk pages being used to draft alternate version of an article

I was doing a search on google and (for the first time) got a talk page (Talk:Scappoose, Oregon) as a content-relevant result. Going there, I discover what looks like an alternate version of Scappoose, Oregon instead of a discussion about the article. After a brief look at edit histories, I saw that 70.58.119.11 (talk · contribs) deliberately treated the talk page like an article, with a couple of dozen edits. A single change to Talk:Scappoose, Oregon by Trtracing (talk · contribs) helps discover that Talk:St. Helens, Oregon has gotten the same treatment, perhaps by the same editor (given the geographic proximity of the two towns).

As a exopedianist who has contributed without logging in since 2003, I wonder if I and other Wikipedians should care about this use of talk pages. Is this early evidence of abuse that could lead Wikipedians against anonymous editing to fight for further restrictions on those of us contributing without logging in? Priot to the Seigenthaler controversy I wouldn't have given this much thought, but it's got me thinking enough about it that I'm posting this comment.

If there's a policy or guideline about this kind of misuse of talk pages, please direct me there. Thanks. 66.167.136.185 11:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

I don't see (a) why it's a "misuse" of talk pages; (b) what this has to do with anonymous editing. It looks like a text dump someone put there while working on an article. Regarding (a): agreed, it might better be done on a user page or a /temp page, but it doesn't look like that user has displaced any other edits. Text is often moved to talk pages to be worked on or to hold on to while sourcing issues are resolved; what's different about this? Why not leave a note on that user's talk page or the Scappoose talk page asking that user what s/he intends? Regarding (b): what would be different if a logged-in user had done this? · rodii ·
Talk pages are not the place to put text of an article. They are there to discuss how to edit the article and what changes/improvements to make. The text should be userfied and removed from the Talk pages. User:Zoe|(talk) 22:54, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that this should be at best a temporary expedient, and a user page would be better. But talk pages are often used for (shorter) pieces of article text while they're in process. Accusations of "abuse" and paranoia about this leading to restrictions on anonymous editing just seem a little extreme to me, that's all. · rodii · 23:31, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In this vein, I've seen anonymous IPs create new articles in stub templates due to a lack of other options. I find it a little sad that some people are reduced to "guerilla editing" just to add new articles to Wikipedia. Sarge Baldy 01:38, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Aha, now I begin to see a connection! Thanks, Sarge. (But why not register an account?) · rodii · 02:24, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to everyone — Rodii (talk · contribs), Zoe (talk · contribs), and Sarge Baldy (talk · contribs) — for their replies. Zoe replied most directly with advice I will follow: The text should be userfied and removed from the Talk pages. I'll move Talk:Scappoose, Oregon to User talk:70.58.119.11 and Talk:St. Helens, Oregon to User talk:Trtracing, which are the users which created the bulk of the text.
As to User:Rodii's concerns that I am being "a little extreme" about the potential for further restrictions on IP-based editing, I would counter that I have created hundreds of articles without logging in and yet in the span of only a few months saw how quickly the community rallied around new restrictions since the Seigenthaler controversy. We've now got the WP:AFC process, and the WP:SEMI process, just to name a couple. Here's a plausible scenario:
The use of Robots.txt on talk pages was something I thought of as well. 69.3.70.217 06:33, 25 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]

New policy

I know this may seem a bit harsh, but here goes: what would you all say to a policy that makes it that people shouldn't add images to their signature. I know it may be a bit mean and it is seen only as a cosideration on Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages but mainly becuase it:

  • Causes slowdown of the servers;
  • If lots of people have them, then your browser has to download each indevidual and different image(s);
  • It can be an ablosoulte pest when it comes to loading long pages.

What would you say? Kilo-Lima|(talk) 16:34, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. To respond to your points in order:
  • It doesn't necessarily affect the servers--it depends on whether the images are actusally stored on the servers. If the image is hosted somewhere else it adds no load to the Wikipedia servers at all.
  • But, assuming you have reasonable caching settings on your browser, the image loads just once, or just once in a while.
  • That depends on the size of the images. Page size is pretty variable. A 300-byte image on a small page might not be a problem. An SVG image--which isn't an "image" at all, but text, might even be bigger than a small gif.
So I think this policy is misguided--there is an issue here, but an image ban isn't the solution. Guidelines about how many bytes a signature should add to a page might be good, but the caching issue makes even that less serious than it might seem. · rodii · 17:12, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean, If the image is hosted somewhere else? Wikipedia only uses images hosted locally. Sam Korn (smoddy) 23:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A fourth problem: images do not resize when browsers change their font size, mucking the screen up for people with very small font sizes. I think this is something that should politely be enforced. Sam Korn (smoddy) 23:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC) Sam Korn (smoddy) 23:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
* Images in sigs -- no!
* Funny characters in sigs -- no!
* Rainbow colors in sigs -- no!
* Tricky links in sigs -- no!
* Manifestos in sigs -- no!
* Deceptive pipelinks in sigs -- no!
* Aliases in sigs -- no!
* Sigs that run on longer than most stubs -- no!
Taking users of such sigs seriously -- no!
Policy against such sigs -- never!
John Reid 08:39, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question regarding extreme bias

First forgive my poor English. I am relative new on wikipedia and perhaps this has perhaps already been addressed. Is there a policy regarding this and that case what policy? I will give a principal example of it:

If an editor enters the Holocaust page and it will become apparent for other editors that this person is a revisionist but pretending not to be. Further they can track this user and see that he in other places on the internet inside or outside of wikipedia promotes revisionism, uses a revisionist homepage as he’s own and so on. That he obviously is deep into this belief. And that he at the same time clams to not have this extreme view, but as a Wikipedia’n just want things NPOV. What is then the way to handle this situation? Would it be improper to raise the question of bias, even with good evidence – or would that be judged as a personal attack, and should not be done? Shall a hiding of the true agenda makes it easier for him to work this way then if he had bluntly told he’s stand in this issue?SweHomer 20:54, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • As far as I'm concerned, a person can't have bias; only a contribution can have bias. What the person does outside of Wikipedia, and what his other edits on Wikipedia are, that is information that can very useful in deciding how closely to watch what the person writes and how seriously to take his protestations of being neutral, but that's all. If his edits are biased, challange him for citations and/or change them to unbiased versions. If he makes enough edits that violate Wiki NPOV policy or other Wiki rules and can't be persuaded to cease, you have options. See WP:RDIS Herostratus 23:52, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Categories for people

I was under the impression that categories for people were usually (but not always) made so that a page wasn't cluttered with a huge amount of categories. However, a user has now removed all the categories from Category:Benjamin Franklin and moved them back to the Benjamin Franklin article. Has there been some policy or guideline discussion which would give some guidance as to which is the correct course? Thanks Arniep 09:46, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

main article page star for good articles

a new icon directly equivalent to the featured article star on an article mainpage has suddenly appeared, without prior discussion, on hundreds of articles marked as "good articles". please vote on the issue of whether it should be there (note the GA process is not currently policy, and was formerly restricted to talk pages only, putting an icon on the main article page itself is the new development) at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 March 25. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zzzzz (talk • contribs)

There is no "star" for the good article icon! The {{good article}} template places a small Good Article symbol (Plus icon) in the top right corner of an article to indicate that it is a good article on Wikipedia. —RJN 10:41, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any problems with it. I also think the "good article" concept is very good and the process is perfect, the very anti-thesis of bureaucracy and instruction creep. I'd hate to see it change. Sarge Baldy 11:46, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So anyone can use the template without consultation? And anyone can take the view that it is not a good article and remove the template without consultation? It is a bit bold with Wiki's reputation, is it not? David91 12:12, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how it's any bolder with Wiki's reputation than giving people the power to edit penis images into articles. It wasn't long ago that Featured Articles (or Brilliant Prose, as it was called then) allowed anyone to remove articles as featured at their whim, and at the time no one seemed to think twice about it. Sarge Baldy 12:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
the problem is not with the concept of GA, but with the fact that an additional barnstar is now added to the article space, when there is already a GA template added on the talkpage. the extremely lax good article standards don't matter so much when its restricted to the talkpage, but they do when an article-space barnstar gives a spurious sense of validity to a page. the "add this template to the article space" step is already removed from the standard GA process, final step is just to have this template deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zzzzz (talk • contribs)
How are the standards "extremely lax"? Seeing as any editor can say an article is not good and remove Good Article standing from any article without any discussion, it's rather easy to demote articles that aren't good. Although it's rather easy for a page to get listed, it's just as easy for it to get unlisted, and so I don't take it as a serious issue. It's only different than FA status in that it's informal both to add and remove, rather than formal as with the current featured article process. (Although the featured article process used to be exactly what the good article process is now.) Any articles listed as good that aren't can and should have their status revoked immediately. Sarge Baldy 03:13, 26 March 2006

(UTC)

lack of "formality" = open to abuse. *any* article, no matter how crap, can become "good" now, it just needs TWO editors to make it so. what does the GA star on articlespace actually mean? that "2 people liked the article your currently reading, one was the author, the other his best friend, it will probably be disliked by someone soon, but nobody has got round to it yet"? i used to be a GA supporter, but seeing the type of fancruft-loving user who actively uses it these days, now i'm not so sure... Zzzzz 15:08, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see a webpage which has content replicated on Wikipedia. But there is no way to tell if it is one of us taking their content, or that site taking ours. What is the policy in this (I would assume fairly common) situation? Do I report it as a GFDL issue or a copyvio or list it on both pages?.

This is the article in question: Guy Fawkes

Lurker 13:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That article is dated 2004-11-29, our revision of 2004-11-28 is the same (and had existed for a long time prior), so they copied us. They are allowed to use our content, for free and for any purpose, but they have to license it under the GFDL and acknowledge the authorship, neither of which they do. There's a page somewhere for reporting this kind of thing, but nothing actually gets done about it. Take your pick from Wikipedia:GFDL Compliance and m:Non-compliant site coordination-Splashtalk 14:58, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I should have checked the date, that would have told me whose fault it was. I've added the site to both of those pages Lurker 17:49, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also note that a GFDL violation is a copyright violation! --Stephan Schulz 18:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Watermark indicating authorship on images

User:Alanmak has insisted on adding "Photographed by Alan Mak on December 4th, 2004" in obtrusive letters onto Image:HongKongGoldenBauhinaSquare.jpg and we've gotten into a revert war there on whether this should stay. Please comment on what you think should be done here. --Jiang 01:17, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Watch out, the battle is moving to Commons. John Reid 08:43, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rich Farmbrough another Bobblewik?

We seem to have another Bobblewik these days. Rich Farmbrough (talk · contribs) is running SmackBot (talk · contribs), and it is very clear from the speed of the edits and the context of various changes that he's not actually reviewing the edits before commit.

There are loads of complaints on his talk page. This has been an on-going problem. He's been blocked (at various increments) repeatedly.

(Actually blocked once, for two minutes, in error - prior to these postings by WAS. Rich Farmbrough 10:25 27 March 2006 (UTC).)

Last week, it was screwing up US and UK.

The most obvious today is delinking dates.

Now, it just unlinked "max may med" to "max May med" at List of three-letter English words. There is no possible way that a human reviewer would have made that mistake.

The idea that a bot should ever again run around delinking dates, days, months, or anything else has been so long discredited that it leads to apoplexy. (I still remember when another AWB delinked 1947 in Israel.)

Heck, it's worse than that! Reviewing the contributions (that it's making every 6 seconds), I see that it moves the trailing ]]s to s]] on piped links. That's against Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)#Form.

I'd suggest that the bot be blocked until he certifies that he's personally reviewed and fixed every single edit ever done by the bot.... At a rate no faster than 1 every 2 minutes.

--William Allen Simpson 01:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
See: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals#SmackBot_and_AWB_operated_by_Rich_Farmbrough --Francis Schonken 10:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Or any of the other places this has been posted about by William Allen Simpson, which exclude my talk page. Rich Farmbrough 17:40 26 March 2006 (UTC).
Just noticed this verifiably false comment, belied here (now hidden away in his Talk archive). There were many other comments on his talk page as well. Hopefully, the issues are being resolved at the Schonken link above.
--William Allen Simpson 17:05, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Am I Right?

I decided to post this here, since this is an issue based on interpretation of our policy -- especificaly, WP:NOT, Wikipedia:Notability and WP:CSD. It concerns this article: it is about an internet community dedicated to the a comic strip published in a British newspaper. By the contents of the article, I considered it a vanity article, eligible for speedy deletion under criterion A7. Because the article's main contributors (mainly the people who belong to that online community) disagreed (Talk page), I thought it would be better that this wasn't based on my interpretation solely. I wasn't going to VfD it, since my opinion is that the article should be speedy deleted (possibly with part of the content being merged into the main Striker (comic) article). Although someone has already VfD it, which I would rather had not happened. Regards, Redux 03:34, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Probert Encyclopaedia

The Probert Encyclopaedia - FAQ says : "Can I Use This Picture?

"You may use any of the pictures in The Probert Encyclopaedia in your own projects. But, you should not link directly to pictures served from our web server from your web site. Instead, copy the pictures you want to your own web server ... Please note: some pictures in The Probert Encyclopaedia have been obtained from the public domain in good faith, but may have been released without the copyright holder's permission, while we never knowingly include any copyright images accidents can happen and we cannot guarantee the status of images you choose to copy." [5]

I found images there : is it OK to copy them here ? --DLL 11:42, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The site is giving any user an express warning that the images may be in breach of copyright. You are asking whether it is "OK" to ignore that express warning. You are free to pick up that pot from the hob, but it may be hot enough to burn you and accidents can happen. David91 16:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There are no guarantees for anything in life. What the site says is that they make efforts to use only public domain figure, but that they do not attest with 100% certitude that all pics are public domain. The same happens here. We may have pics which copyright; and we are simply believing what the person that uploads the files says. I do not see much difference. You try but you can not guarantee third party's actions. Anagnorisis 17:34, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like they're working on the up-and-up and that they genuinely believe all of their images are unfettered public domain. The statement cited is simply designed to cover their asses if it turns out that they've made an error about the copyright status of an image.
Unfortunately, I can't find any information on their site about the specific source(s) for each image. Are they public domain because they're old enough for copyright to have lapsed? Because they're uncopyrightable for one reason or another? Because they're works produced by the U.S. government? Because they've been released by the copyright holders?
Then again, we just don't know. Are some of them actually under Crown Copyright? Did someone goof and import an archive of copyrighted images at some point? Unless we have a good way to verify their claims, we should probably err on the side of caution. Adding images to Wikipedia under a 'public domain' banner is a pretty strong statement, and it's one that we shouldn't be making lightly. We regularly delete images that make unsupported claims of public domain status, and we make an effort to verify image sources. Is it possible to do that here? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:47, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of Naming Policy on grandchildren of deposed royalty

I have raised the subject of how the articles about grandchildren of deposed royalty (born after the abolition of monarchy) should by titled. Should articles about them bear monarchical titles (prince/princess) on their titles, or is this misleading?

There is no explicit guideline on the matter, and discussing it pre-emptively could help avoid tense debates about such people (such as the former Greek or Yugoslavian royal families) in the future.

Please share your opinions here. --Michalis Famelis 18:42, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not therapy

I have been working on this at Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not therapy Fred Bauder 21:43, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Municipal naming

Is there a word which can be used as a generic term meaning "city", "town", "village", "municipality", etc? All of these have a legal definition and I'm looking for a general term to use which could mean any of them "colloquially" (such as a category including all of them). The only one I have found so far is "community", but that seems odd when a category includes Chicago, St. Louis, etc. (community sounds like a small place). I can't find anything in Wikipedia which addresses this. I started to use "town" for some smaller places, then found out it had a legal definition, too! If anyone knows, or can direct me to the proper place it would be appreciated. Thanks.Rt66lt 04:15, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot think of any. Also, any word that you find may have a generic meaning in some areas, but not all of them. If I had to choose one, I would use either "town" or "city". You could also use "cities and towns in..." for the category name. -- Kjkolb 05:02, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not a word, but an awkward phrase, "incorporated place", if you want to include only entities with a legal status, or "populated place", which is what the USGS uses in its database. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 12:24, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. "Populated place" sounds best so far.Rt66lt 15:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is a problem in the English language. I consider "city" the best generic term. "Populated place" sounds silly to me and could refer to non-urban geographic unit, such as an island. The fact that some governments give it a legal definition needn't control everyday usage of this fine and ancient term. Brock 04:11, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As a legal term, capitalization might help. As a generic term, city and town and village are all useful. Census-designated place is ugly and stupid, however precise it may be. ;Bear 05:17, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would you use "city" to describe Dixville Notch, New Hampshire or Hart's Location, New Hampshire? I think that is stretching any definition of "city" too far. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 16:55, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Technically, these are called "administrative divisions" (some fellow has incorrectly moved it to "subnational entity" that will have to be fixed), whereas "census-designated place" (CDP) is the term usually reserved for places without a more formal designation. Anyway, he was looking for a catch-all "generic term", and the current Wikipedia catch-all is Category:Human habitats.
--William Allen Simpson 17:21, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

time in WP

Could someone who can do so please send a message to all WP editors reminding them that words and phrases such as "recent", "x years ago" "for decades", "used to be" etc should be avoided. All editors should be specific about time in writing encyclopedic entries. Thanks Mccready 06:23, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also "current(ly)" is used far too often (in fact it should only be used in the {{current}} template). --Francis Schonken 12:57, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Famous_eccentrics

I am pretty sure this category violates WP:NPOV and WP:V as eccentricity is not something that really exists, but is just someone's perception of another who is different to themselves. The header states:

Eccentric personalities are marked by their disregard for society's norms.

No doubt all gay people were once considered eccentric or people with mental illnesses. Please place comments at Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_March_20#Category:Famous_eccentrics. Thanks Arniep 12:47, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dispute regarding a "dead" page.

This is regarding Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Knightsbridge University, I am in a friendly dispute with a fellow user who stated in the beginning of this discussion:

Knightsbridge University seems to be a diploma mill. We have precedence from VfD that notorious diploma mills may be encyclopedic (see Kennedy-Western University and American World University), but I guess they should be described as such.

In this submission the user implied that Kennedy-Western University is a diploma mill.

Since this article was used as an example of a VfD and is thus accessable to the public I would like to ad a statement saying that this is merely one users opinion on this page.

While I respect that users opinion I would state that Diploma mill is a derogatory term used to describe institutions which "awards academic degrees and diplomas with very little or no academic study and without recognition by official accrediting bodies" (quoted directly from the Wikipedia article). While KWU is not accrdited and does not seek to be, owing to its untraditional online teaching methods, it is most cannot be said that the institution awards degrees and diplomas with "little or no academic study".

In fact, as part of a lawsuit settlement with the State of Oregon (which tried to bar Kennedy-Western graduates from listing that institution on their resumes) it was mandated that the State would not recognize KWU as a "Diploma mill" but merely as an "Unacredited University".

Please see the discussion page for Kennedy-Western University for more discussion on the accrededation issues.

At the very least I ask that a POV be attached to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Knightsbridge University, as long as the page remains active.

I thank you all very much.Piercetp

Although the previous was not signed correctly, need it be said that neither Wikipedia nor Wikipedia editors are bound by a settlement between Oregon and Kennedy-Western University, as they were not named in the suit. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:04, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But my contention is that an incorrect statement which is potentially damaging to the reputation of KWU was made and this is still a page which can be accessed. Furthermore, it is forbidden to edit this page in any way so it seems like there is not avenue for anyone disputing the validity of this statement. That is why I believe a POV statement is needed.Piercetp

The proceedings of Wikipedia are generally public and should remain so. Records of debates should be treated as minutes: remarks striken should be in strike-out font, and only very rarely should all or part of a debate be striken from the minutes and expunged. All possible AfD debates will say things about the subject that are potentially uncomplementary: arguing that Professor Smith is not notable is not likely to be well received by the good professor. Self-censorship will not make for a good Wikipedia. Robert A.West (Talk) 14:12, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, marking an AfD debate with an NPOV tag would bring more attention to it, not less, as it would now be an oddity in its category. Robert A.West (Talk) 14:12, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Policy or Technical: Arabic Names

I've noticed from browsing categories (Deaths in any given year being a good example) that Arabic names are not displaying in a standard manner. For example, in 1977 Deaths [6], Abd el-Halim Hafez is the first entry under "A", and yet Fawzi Al-Qawuqji is under F, and Alia al Hussein is under H. So it seems that it is a haphazard mix of listing under first name (which I would think is wrong), some listing by el-, al-, and ibn- type prefixes (which is logical, though not very useful if there are a lot of people with the same name, much as a list of Mac-whoevers would be unwieldy), or by the name following the prefix, which is an English language way to do it. So is there a standard form that should be used? MSJapan 18:36, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think names are alphabetized in those lists according to how they are categorized on the original page. So for instance, Fawzi Al-Qawuqji has [[Category:1977 deaths]], and is thus alphabetized by default by "Fawzi Al-Qawuqji", whereas Alia al Hussein has [[Category:1977 deaths|Hussein, Alia al]], and is alphabetized as "Hussein, Alia al", even though the article title "Alia al Hussein" is what appears in the list. See Wikipedia:Categorization#Category_sorting for details. So it's really up the article editors to decide how it should be alphabetized, and there's no technical means to enforce consistency. I guess I would answer your question as "policy," then, but I'm unaware of a place where this issue is discussed in, say, the MOS. There's a little at the categorization article above. It's easy to fix this problem on a case-by-case basis, though--just edit the article page to add the correct sort key. · rodii · 23:46, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New policy to allow articles about unverifiable memes

Memes are like viruses, bits of "information" or some other concept, that travels by word of mouth and spreads, sometimes, globally. They are a social phenomenon in certain cases, when memes become massive, particularly in the case of internet memes like the goatse phenomenon. Sometimes a meme can play a significant part in people's lives, or simply be a thing that's been around for years and years and is known by thousands and thousands of people.

However, some memes are inherently unverifiable, and WP:V does not allow any articles which are not verifiable. Unverifiable memes tend to be the type that exist through pure word-of-mouth continuance, and often are also just phrases or games. Not only does no one need to write about these in reputable sources (and they don't), some of them are intrinsically unverifiable, and the most obvious case of this is the The Game (game) meme, which is an anti-memory game, the object of which is to forget the meme; this basis has, of course, turned it into a massive global phenomenon. However, because the idea of The Game is to not talk about it, many people are totally unaware of its existence, and "sources" of any sort for its existence don't extend far beyond the odd blog entry; the sparsity of these entries demonstrates how widespread the meme is, and how notable it is; however this page has been deleted due to unverifiability.

I am suggesting a new policy that works specifically for memes, and nothing else. It is simply this, that WP:V can be overriden if consensus agrees or proves that the meme is notable. Notability may in these cases be verified by underpar sources such as a significant number of web-blogs or forum-posts, or even a significant number of Wikipedian testimonies. The new policy would be overriden itself by non-notability and would not permit stubs. -- Alfakim --  talk  19:59, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note: this policy has been suggested specifically with reference to the The Game (game) contention. The Game is very article-worthy, but doesn't quite pass WP:V.

I don't agree with the argument that this (or anything) is "inherently unverifiable", because it implies that everyone who hears about The Game (presumably including journalists, authors of books on games, and so on) wants to play it and no-one wants to document it or describe it to a general audience instead. Seems to be begging the question. Ziggurat 22:07, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have never heard of "The Game" game outside of Wikipedia, and never before a week or so ago. If it really is so widespread and notable as claimed, someone, somewhere, will have written a good, citable source. Claiming the sparsity of sources proves the case because everyone who hears about the game is in on the game is question-begging. Jonathunder 22:43, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. If Alfakim persists with this silliness, some admin should ban him for violating Wikipedia's policy against advertising. Verifiability is non-negotiable. Otherwise Wikipedia will be as unreliable as the blogosphere or any typical USENET newsgroup. --153.18.99.87 23:35, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think it was bang out of order of you to say that. 1) "persists" implies I've been doing this a whole load against warnings from others, when this is the first time I've ever proposed a policy change. 2) I am not advertising, I am proposing a policy change. 3) I am not proposing the negation of WP:V, only an exception for memes. 4) I accept the comments of the above, and revoke my proposal. There was no need to invoke banning me. -- Alfakim --  talk  00:55, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Citation policy

Philosophical question on when a citation should be used or not.

A citation to the following statement was removed from the Poker page here (history):

As it spread up the Mississippi and West during the gold rush it is thought to have become a part of the frontier, pioneering ethos.

After the removal of the citation the following discussion was initiated here at the bottom of the link:

Poker citation removal

I disagree that it's "common knowledge", perhaps it is to someone like you who seems to be very well educated in everything poker. But anyway that's not the real point, which is that Wikipedia does not need less citations, it needs more, even for things that are not new ideas. If you have a good reference for that statement then please cite it. If not, then I see nothing wrong with my citation.

For a good example of what I mean, see Saffron, which is a featured article partly because it has so many citations and references.

from the article:

Saffron, which has for decades been the world's most expensive spice by weight

Well everyone knows this fact, but still the author cites it twice. -snpoj

That's just a terrible example. The fact that poker spread west is self-evident, but beyond that, that it swept west in a cultural way is not something to specifically reference since it can be referenced by literally thousands of texts. The wikipedia most certainly does not need more references like this. Thursday comes after Wednesday. Citing a Jane Austen book to that effect is trivial and unhelpful. Citing every sentence or every phrase would be a nuisance, with this a perfect example. 2005 05:19, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be interested in what people think about these two apparently different philosophies on citations. Thanks. -Snpoj 22:07, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Citing every sentence and phrase is an excellent idea. I have no reason to believe any claim an article makes that it does not provide a source for. It is not self-evident to this non-poker player that it spread west, since I have no general knowledge that tells me it began in the east. It can't be hard to find one or two good sources to say that, and given the low amount of effort involved, there's no reason not to. -Splashtalk 22:12, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Seems that it's a dispute over whether this is 'common knowledge' or not. I'd say it definitely isn't, especially given the unhelpful phrase "it is thought that". By whom? Ziggurat 22:13, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I would strongly encourage you to revert 2005's citation edit on Poker if you think it is appropriate. I don't want to do it and start a revert war if you know what I mean. -Snpoj 22:19, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I fundamentally concur with Splash. Beyond just the Poker article, it seems that having copious references (formatted correctly, of course) add to the value of the encyclopedia. In fact, the Poker article is a perfect example for the reason why. What one reader assumes to be common knowledge, another reader may not. That's the beauty of the references. As a Texan, I personally know that Poker spread out west, but would someone from India have that same assumed knowledge? Of course not. Lbbzman 23:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, yeah. It may seem obvious that it spread west - how else could it? - but a moment's thought gives a plausible "introduced to California by sea and spread inland back towards the Missisippi" explanation. We don't usually need to cite matters of fact by definition, but we do need to cite matters of historical knowledge, and the earlier comments about the days of the week are really not in the same class as historical details. Shimgray | talk | 23:39, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note that there's also the issue of citing poker as embodying the frontier culture and way of life. -Snpoj 00:30, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The citation is either self-evident, or a matter of pov if looked at absurdly like this. "It is thought" is neither encyclopedic or helpful, so removing the passage is the appropriate thing to do. One writer's opinion about what occured and its significance is not interesting or even appropriate to the core topic of the article. Poker spread. Whether is spread up the Mississippi or down is minutiae beyond comprehension. Citing sources is for authoritative content, not self-evident things like the days of the week, nor POV of extremely unimportant nature. Additionally, the statement in question is already redundant to the cited sentence before, leaving ONLY the pov for the sentence in question. 2005 06:10, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Snpoj and Splash that more references and citations are better. My view is that verified, authoritarive citations always add value to an article. If the dispute was about whether the cited author was an authority, I could see removing the citation. — MSchmahl 04:50, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As above, citations from reputable, verifiable sources are the key to good articles. An encyclopaedia article is similar to research papers, the more you can say that "this is so because (reputable source(s)) say so, the better. One of the main issues that many users of print encyclopaedias take with WP is that there are not enough citations and therefore the academic value is lessened. It would not hurt for every statement to be backed up with a reference. Zarboki 07:27, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If I pull down the Brittanica from my shelf, and pick a random article I will find few or no footnotes. I will find a bibliography. Now, there is a meaningful difference: Brittanica articles are written by recognized experts who have reputations to protect; Wikipedia articles are not. Some readers find footnotes distracting, and there may be value in adopting some kin of an old rule from high school: the Three encyclopedia rule. If an unsurprising fact can be found in three encyclopedias or other general reference works, you may assume it is general knowledge and avoid footnoting, although the encyclopedia article should be cited in the bibliography. Robert A.West (Talk) 14:34, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just in terms of practicality I don't think many wikipedia users have even a single paper encyclopedia on hand, or the patience to research something in triplicate to avoid placing a footnote, but this could be a possible solution. I also see a problem with having big general references in a bibliography with no citations. People will unknowingly add statements that aren't referenced in that work and the reader will assume that they are. -Snpoj 22:28, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You may be right. My position is that, just as allwiki would have been distracting, so are footnotes about facts that can be trivially verified by anyone with access to any library. Many of the articles in the Common law series, for example, go entirely without footnotes, yet are very accurate. On the other hand, some of the politically-oriented articles use footnotes almost as peacock terms to push doubtful statements. I suppose that there is no substitute for good judgment. Robert A.West (Talk) 22:44, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway, thank you very much for the comments. I'll feel more confident citing now that I know I have at least some support from the community. I guess I'm going to use this discussion as a benchmark when editing/citing, along with the Saffron page. Thanks again. -Snpoj 22:28, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Transwiki process is ridiculous

The transwiki process is way, way too complicated. Transwikiing an article to wikibooks, for example, involves creating a new article on wikibooks, copying the text of the old article into the new article, copying the history page of the old article into the discussion page of the new article, leaving tags on both articles and on the new discussion page saying what you've done, putting info into the summaries of the new article and talk page saying what you've done, adding a line on the wikibooks transwiki log, including links, explaining what you've done, and adding a line to the wikipedia transwiki log, including links, explaining what you've done.

This is, no doubt, why virtually no one ever does this. Go through the transwiki log, either here or on wikibooks, and you'll see that almost every one of these in the last year and a half has been done by Uncle G's 'bot.

Uncle G and his bot haven't been around for weeks, leaving me trying to figure out how to get 90 articles transwikied to wikibooks. I have no intention of spending 10 hours going through this whole laborious process by hand, and am about to rebel against the whole process and just ignore the logs on both sides completely. So, now no one can say I didn't notify anyone of this. I'd have mentioned this on the transwiki talk pages, but no one reads those. --Xyzzyplugh 06:32, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Several of the steps that complicate the procedure follow from GFDL (and its underlying copyright mechanism, see Wikipedia:Copyrights), so I'd be careful about which steps can be cut out, and which ones can't;
If uncle G is on wikibreak (which might be the case, last edit over two weeks ago [7]) or if his bot is on wikibreak (which also appears to be the case, last edit a month ago [8]), it's always possible to place a bot request at Wikipedia:Bot requests – well, I see you did that a few days ago.
I also see that uncle G is not fond of sharing bot code ("The tools are written in C++, cmd.exe script, and REXX. No, they are not currently available to others." ref) — so, maybe try to contact Uncle G by e-mail: he might not have seen recent requests, and other wikipedians might not feel like programming something that has been done before. --Francis Schonken 16:55, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What movies should be in WIkipedia?

Many movies have entries in Wikipedia. Yet, Wikipedia doesn't have, probably never will have, and perhaps should not try for the comprehensive coverage of the Internet Movie Database. Wikipedia just isn't the right tool for this job. IMDB is a database, with links for actors and directors, connections to the Directors' Guild of America for correct credits, links to trailers, and similar supporting machinery. Trying to emulate all that manually within Wikipedia is like pounding a screw.

I'd suggest that Wikipedia only have articles for "historically significant" movies, defined in some objective way, like "won an Academy Award". I'm not sure what the criterion should be, but it should be an objective one. --Nagle 18:09, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I concur with Nagle here. --Improv 18:21, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • We shouldn't emulate imdb. But, we shouldn't have an unreasonably high standard, as suggested. Certainly all films from the big studios belong (even the "bombs"). Also, generally, theatrically released independent films should be included. Most direct-to-video films don't belong, simply because anybody with a camcorder can make one (that's a particular problem with porn). If we write up a criteria, it should describe what we're already keeping, and not try to delete a majority of existing articles. Most of what's in imdb is already kept out, and I don't see what the problem is. --Rob 18:33, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The answer is that every commercially released movie should be in Wikipedia. Whether iMDB exists or not doesn't matter, Wikipedia's job is completely different. Wikipedia is not a database, it's an encyclopedia = sum of all interesting human knowledge. Doesn't matter if it's movies or video games or, uh, primary schools you're looking for - you have it all in a single site. That's why Wikipedia is so great.  Grue  19:25, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • As someone who has done a lot of movie work, I would have to agree with Grue. If we're only talking about historically-significant movies, why stop there? Remove all of the historically-insignificant video games, books, television shows (and their episode articles), people, places, and things. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:28, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not as concerned by what movies are in Wikipedia as the more general problem that Wikipedia is the wrong tool for the job. This is a database problem being addressed, with excessive human effort, with manually linked text files. Movie entries have cast lists which link to actor entries which link back to movie entries. Remakes need to be linked to originals, and vice versa. Actor careers need to be accessable. It's all manual, and the links are unreliable.
    • If people want to make the effort let them. If they are stopped it is more likely that they will make no contribution to wikipedia than that they will switch to writing featured articles about films you consider to be historically significant. Piccadilly 15:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IMDB, In My Doubtful Belief, is most dutifully basic. I must dare boldly imitate mechanically de brains involved making dat base. WP Won't Progress with plenty wordy dang.

We find e.g. movies, music albums, games, gamers and football players where we want an encyclopedia. That it is not paper (see the same questioning theme one or two sections further) can't allow to create stubs or plentiful articles for things only known today and that you will be happy to forget tomorrow. It is fun, we are submerged with publicity, but one should feel responsible for a content that means something for more than half a generation : or Britannica beats us. --DLL 17:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You only find them if you look for them. They are completely irrelevant to the quality of the articles on more traditional topics - except insofar as they draw in more users, some of whom will contribute to those articles. Hawkestone 22:56, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is this a copyvio?

I just came across the article McCain Detainee Amendment and I had a copyvio question. In the section called McCain Detainee Amendment#Statement by Senator John McCain on October 5, 2005 we quote a speech made by Senator McCain at length, and putting aside the stylistic reasons why we may not want that, I was wondering if that would be a violation of his copyright? I mean, I realise that I'm being extremely paranoid, and it's not like he is ever going to sue us, but still. It is quoted in full, so it can't really be called fair use.

I know very little of copyright law (just enough to get by on wikipedia, really), but isn't a speech protected like anything else? Oskar 21:25, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I thought speeches on the floor of Congress (House of Representatives or the Senate) are PD by definition. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:31, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not a violation. All speeches by US government officials are non-copyright public domain. Indeed, all US government documents, electronic data sets, and publications (and artwork, as in WPA posters) are free of copyright. Rjensen 21:31, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, then, there we go :D Oskar 21:32, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
However, speeches belong in Wikisource, not here. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is not entirely true; only speeches that would be performed (or any other material prepared) as part of their work for the government would be public domain. Christopher Parham (talk) 01:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Wikipedia is not paper" and AfD: need for revision or clarification?

I have seen that very statement used often for justifying the retention of articles on otherwise non-notable individuals and events. While WP is not paper, it still uses resources, and I believe it is supposed to (ideally) maintain a certain level of content by application of multiple policies to any given situation. For example, an AfD I put up on Kristi Yamaoka in accordance with WP:BIO and WP:NN has in both instances come down to applications of "well, WP isn't paper, so it's no big deal" or "she's notable because she was on the Today Show" or "somebody will expand it" (and no one has in weeks). At the same time, there are plenty of other policies that the article fails miserably, and while I suppose this will end up staying until someone else gets tired of it next year, I'm sure that similar things have happened in plenty of other cases as well. I understand that "WP is not paper" allows for more leniency with respect to what can go into WP, but at the same time, there are other policies and standards that prevent every day's news from becoming encyclopedia articles when the topic does not merit it.

In short, "WP is not paper" is the catch-all when no other reason to keep applies. So, perhaps something needs to be done regarding AfD policy such that failures of multiple policies are considered with greater weight than the one instance of one policy that said article passes? MSJapan 05:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the first and second AFD, you never cited any *policy* the article violated. You confuse policy with guidelines, and essays. They are not the same thing. You also don't understand that some inclusions guidelines, like WP:BIO, say somebody needs to meet just one of multiple criteria listed (and even if they meet none, they can still be found notable and kept). Re-AFDing articles or changing basic policy can't change the fact that some people disagree with you about what is notable. Also, you've mischaracterized the reasoning of the keep voters. If you don't know why people voted the way they did, you're unlikely to ever convince them to change. And to address your point: Wikipedia is not paper, so it would be rather silly to say anything else. --Rob 07:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, by your claim, if I wrote an article about myself, it would have to be kept; there aren't any policies for notability, only guidelines. Furthermore, I haven't mischaracterized anything - my exact point is that passing only one guideline is insufficient. The reason why, BTW, people voted keep is because it's still contemporary and fresh in their minds, and therefore "important", when it really isn't. People are saying the artricle should be kept because it's uplifting, or because there's no harm in it, not because they think it is useful as an article. That illustrates a problem with interpretation, and that's what I'm here to inquire about - the fact that a change in how the criteria work (i.e., needing to pass more than one) would make a big difference in terms of what's really encyclopedic and what isn't. Wikipedia is supposed to be discerning over what's encyclopedic and what isn't, and it will never gain any credibility otherwise. In order to do that, guidelines may need to be reworked, hence my question. MSJapan 08:26, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I never said that just because an article doesn't vioilate policy it must be kept. You again misread the views of opponents. I brought up the fact that there was no violation of policy in the article because *you* suggested there were multiple vioilations of *policy*. That is a very serious allegation on your part, and you need to either prove what you said is true (cite policy and how its broken) or concede you made a serious mistake. Before that, there's no purpose in discussing anything else you said. --Rob 15:49, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
MSJapan, which are the policies which you feel that Kristi Yamaoka fails? The most important policies here are NPOV, verifiability and no original research, it meets all those. It also meets WP:BIO. You can ask "who will remember her in 10 years?", but due to the fact that the cheerleading rules were changed because of this event, it's safe to say that people involved in cheerleading will remember her. We have articles on baseball players from the 1940's, towns in Siberia, and 19th century mathematicians which few people have ever heard of either. I'm guessing that you have an overall desire for stricter, perhaps considerably stricter, standards of notability than the ones we currently follow. If you haven't before, you might want to check out Meta:Association_of_Deletionist_Wikipedians (or the opposing viewpoint, Meta:Association_of_Inclusionist_Wikipedians). --Xyzzyplugh 14:22, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But the article doesn't meet WP:BIO: Kristi Yamaoka is not a political figure at any level, she's not a professional athlete, she's not an actress, TV personality, author, musician, or professional. She also has achieved neither renown (The quality of being widely honored and acclaimed) nor notoriety (ill fame) for her involvement in a newsworthy event - she was big sensational news for three or four days, and that was it. WP:BIO essentially states that one has to be more than a temporary phonomenon to merit inclusion. The only alternative test the article passes is verifiability (which is a requirement for all WP articles); there are very few unique Google hits (furthermore, the information the news reports give conflicts, so it's not all accurate either). After the first AfD, I let it sit there for two weeks, and nothing substantially biographical was added, and to be completely honest, nothing new was added after March 9, which was the day after the accident. So, the article was a kneejerk reaction to current events, not a real attempt at a bio article. MSJapan 15:31, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • MSJapan, you and I disagree on whether the Kristi Yamaoka article passes WP:BIO or not. You have a different interpretation of WP:BIO than I do. That's fine, and you are welcome to your opinion as am I. To rectify this difference of opinion, we would need to clarify WP:BIO to mutual satisfaction. As it stands now, your claim that the Yamaoka article fails WP:BIO depends upon a factor (relatively brief notoriety) that equally applies to a very, very broad range of biography articles that we have here. As noted on the second AfD nomination, a small sampling of these articles includes:
  • We have entire categories filled with similar articles. We are probably talking about thousands of articles that are about people who had brief notoriety. There's considerable grey area with extremes on both ends, and plenty of room for subjective debate. For example, John Wilkes Booth has fame only because he shot a president; nothing else about his life is otherwise remarkable. Yet, few if any people would suggest deleting an article on him. That's probably one extreme end. The other contains articles that are speedy deleted every day. Between the two extremes exists a very broad range of articles, not just one article.
  • The general standard up to this point has been to include articles where notability claims have been made. There's considerable debate on what counts as a reasonable notability claim. This is a subjective area that will remain subjective. You can't measure it as notability is purely subjective from each person's viewpoint. To cheerleading coaches, Yamaoka is highly significant. To somebody in Timbuktu who doesn't even know what a cheerleader is, Yamaoka is meaningless. As a result of this wide disparity in viewpoints, we have tended to keep articles where there are claims of notability because, and forgive me for repeating others, we are not a paper encyclopedia, we do indeed have room for articles on such people, and disk space is cheap.
  • I don't think we should be in the business of changing policy by way of AfD. Rather, we should be working together to come up with a community agreed upon standard and then applying that standard. There is and has been considerable ongoing discussion on notability standards. They have always been controversial and remain so today. Some places where you could contribute to these discussions include Wikipedia talk:Notability (people) and Wikipedia talk:Notability.
  • I've reviewed your contributions to WP:AFD and have noted that in the votes you have made, you have never once voted to keep something. You are what some people would call an extreme deletionist. That's not an insult and please don't take it as such. There are all sorts of people here. Some are deletionist, some are inclusionist, and most are somewhere inbetween. As User:Xyzzyplugh noted above, you should probably have a look at m:Association of Deletionist Wikipedians. I think it important you should understand that as a deletionist you will frequently find yourself being a voice of the minority, just as you would be such a voice if you were an inclusionist. I grant that you have your opinion, and you are quite welcome to it. We need to work as a community towards what the standards are that we wish to uphold. We can't do that by sharply contesting individual AfDs. Instead, we do it by working on global consensus building mechanisms, whereas AfDs are local consensus building mechanisms.
  • I hope the above helps. I know you and I disagree on the Yamaoka article, but please understand that I hold nothing against you personally, and consider you to be a fine contributor to Wikipedia. I am in no way expecting you to agree to my viewpoint on the Yamaoka article. Rather, I am hoping that the above helps to highlight the communal nature of our efforts here and why the microcosmic discussion on the Yamaoka article is considerably more macrocosmic. --Durin 17:16, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A user

Refuses discussion and simply puts sign "do not feed the troll" beneath my statements[9]. I consider it a serious breach of civility and personal attack. Is it a personal attack and does deleting this count as 3RR ? --Molobo 07:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please give us diffs pointing at the actions you find offensive. I wouldn't want to shoot from the hip here. An RfC may be appropriate. John Reid 09:09, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Usability Study (originally posted in WP:VPN)

AxelBoldt informed us of this : "Openusability.org published a usability study of editing Wikipedia. They specifically studied the German Wikipedia but most of the results should be applicable to all Wikipedias. The paper is written in English."

As a newbie, I posted some questions and remarks because I found it difficult to find information about what to do and how. It is still difficult and prevents one to find courage enough to help improving WP.

What if thas article was the basis for a global policy discussion centered upon usability ? --DLL 18:01, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've been seing more and more often stuff like "stub prevention" as an excuse for removing currently redlinked links. I always though that the whole point of redlinks was to spur people in crating the articles in the first place.

When and were did we turn on red links? Circeus 20:05, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Stub prevention looks like a bad reason. I've removed redlinks as part of AfD cleanup for a deleted article to prevent re-creation of articles, but I think a preemptive redlink removal to prevent stubs is generally bad, unless the redlink text is extremely obscure. --Deathphoenix ʕ 20:15, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This has been going on for several years. It's kind of a clear example of the gradating conflict between eventualists, who see red links as leading to new pages and an improved Wikipedia, and immediatists, who see red links as unprofessional and detracting, or believe they will lead to unprofessional stubs. Personally I consider the eventualist outlook more sensible, but it's worth considering that not everyone thinks a surplus of red links is a good idea. Sarge Baldy 20:17, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, it is described in WP:CONTEXT in these terms currently:

(Third bullet of What should not be linked:) Subsidiary topics that result in redlinks (links that go nowhere), such as the titles of book chapters and the songs on albums, unless you're prepared to promptly turn those links into real ones yourself by writing the articles. It's usually better to resist linking these items until you get around to writing an article on each one.

I use fewer links than I used to. But the formulation of the WP:CONTEXT guideline is a little too edgy as far as I'm concerned. When I start a new article I very often check what links here to see whether there's any "demand" for it (or whether there's an ambiguity that should be resolved): removing redlinks thwarts such proceedings: without redlinks it is somewhat more difficult to trace which other articles should be updated with additional bluelinks after the article has started (so usually I don't bother to follow that multi-step process - I'm not a robot!).

Probably it comes down to: use yr common sense: something that's worth a good article can be redlinked without reserve; something that's in the notability border zone should better not be redlinked (while than you would give a fellow wikipedian that tidies up after an AfD extra work). --Francis Schonken 20:41, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Redlinks in context often make sense. What I object to are lists where 90% of the items listed are redlinked. This is where "stub prevention" is a valid reason to avoid redlinks, only I prefer to think of it as "bad-article-about-non-notable-whatever prevention". -- Donald Albury(Talk) 21:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm of the opinion that redlinks should be only be created if the creating editor genuinely believes that a notable topic lies in wait - and ideally because they have reason to believe that article will be (self)created in the near future. Mega-redlinking, to peoples names, dubious list items and other random stuff, especially in articles of borderline validity, looks dumb and doesn't help. I quietly remove redlinks when I see cases of this, apply the {{redlinks}} tag in others and I've also written about them at WP:REDBLUE. Deizio 21:52, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree with Deiz. I only make a redlink when I think that Wikipedia should definitely have an article on the topic and will probably have one in the relatively near future. Recently, I have noticed that the names of people who are blatantly not notable enough for articles are frequently being linked. Something should be decided about what to do with lists that have some entries that have articles, or are clearly notable enough for articles, and entries that are not notable enough for articles. Typically, they are all linked, regardless of notability. This often results in large numbers of redlinks and encourages the creation of articles on non-notable topics. Non-notable entries could be left unlinked, but people might find the contrast more objectionable than having the redlinks. Editors sometimes bold the entries, or just the unlinked entries, but it is questionable whether that is an improvement. -- Kjkolb 10:09, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Significance

I've basically tried to write a guideline or policy which gets around the thorny issue of notability or importance or significance by rooting it in the main policies which govern Wikipedia. I hope it can be accepted as a base level from which we can move arguments over encyclopaedic value on, so that we instead have arguments over sources, or points of view, or original research. To me, those are the issues a community building an encyclopaedia should be debating. Steve block talk 21:45, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New policy Lindsay

I just found this new policy on Lindsay Lohan articles. Didn't know it was April Fools already :D - The DJ 22:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Extending the WP:NPA policy

Although it is not possible to enforce the policy of No Personal Attacks outside of Wikipedia, there have been occasions in which some users use public forums, blogs and personal home pages to attack editors of Wikipedia by name, alias or both, while at the same time demanding that the WP:NPA policy and WP:AGF guidelines are observed to the letter in article's talk pages. I am referring here not to a critique of an editor, but to obvious personal attacks such as the use of vituperative and obscene language and making pernicious and disparaging comments about them.

I personaly believe that such a position is indefensible and should be considered disruptive behavior. It creates an atmosphere of ill-will, animosity and lack of trust, that are not conducive neither to collaboration on editing articles, nor to community building.

I would appreciate comments from editors about expanding the WP:NPA policy to include some wording that will address the attempt to bypass policy and game the system by an editor "outsourcing" his personal attacks against other editor(s) to public forums in order to "get away with it". ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 01:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the same reasons that we have the NPA policy in the first place apply to personal attacks off-wiki. They pollute the community and generally make collaborative working on the encyclopedia less likely to happen. Putting aside all the potential problems that go along with this, like making the correct identification of of users off-wiki, this is a sensible concept. There are certainly a lot of things to take into account here and work out before making it policy, in particular whether it is semi-private journal website, or wheher it is specifically designed to target others or for the consumption of the general public and Wikipedians. In the latter case, personal attacks are just as reprehensible off-wiki as on, and should reasonably have repercussions on Wikipedia. Dmcdevit·t 01:33, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would support this. There are currently a few editors, most of them already banned, who have set up other websites/webpages to launch serious attacks on Wikipedians, using what the editors believe are their real names. In the case of one of these banned editors, the comments involve very serious sexual abuse. In the case of another editor (not banned), he's making comments about an admin on another website that he's specifically banned by the arbcom from making on Wikipedia, a ruling he had agreed to stick to, so him engaging in the same behavior elsewhere shows bad faith. I agree with Dmcdevit that we'd have to be careful how we worded the policy, but in principle it has my support. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:15, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I started a proposal page at Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks/Extension ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 01:10, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have the same concern as Dmcdevit regarding the context of the comments. The person may just be venting their frustrations on their personal website or journal (though it does not excuse personal attacks). There is also the problem of evidence when the behavior takes places offsite. Everything is preserved on Wikipedia and who said what can be determined in the history, but with emails, newsgroups, chatrooms and websites other than Wikipedia, the evidence may be transitory, forcing us to rely on hearsay, and there is the potential for falsifying evidence as well. This is one of the problems with the Wikipedia IRC channel. People are sometimes blocked on Wikipedia for what happens on IRC (it frequently affects requests for adminship, as well, usually negatively), but there is often no proof besides hearsay. -- Kjkolb 10:26, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is that some editors are not afraid to state that they are they themselves that are posting personal attacks, and they have the chutzpah to assert the need to abide by WP:NPA in Wikipedia hosted pages. You see, anyone can put up a dime-a-dozen website or free blog and assassinate the character of a Wikipedia editor or editors, by posting these messages anonymously. But I am referring to something else: those editors that unashamedly use other public forums to attack members of the community as a way to bypass WP:NPA. This is the intention of this extension. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 15:29, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It would be a mistake to attempt to extend the reach of Wikipedia's rules to activities elsewhere than Wikipedia, for a number of reasons. Since our own user validation is so weak, and since it can be assumed to be at least as weak elsewhere, there's no way to verify that the User:Jpgordon on Wikipedia who is nice and NPAish is the Jpgordon over on Upyours.com who is flaming the nice people on Wikipedia. Further, our rules our to regulate our behaviour while in the process of developing Wikipedia -- not our behaviour in life in general. There are rare exceptions to the reach of our rules -- I'm thinking of User:Amalekite, who took it upon himself to post a list of "Wikipedia Jews" on a prominent Nazi website and found himself made persona non grata here. And I'd certainly look askance at someone who said nasty stuff on Nastinessaboutwikipedia.com and then posted pointers to it on Wikipedia. But our rules are properly (in my opinion) about what we do on Wikipedia itself. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 17:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ASR - linking to Special:Pages - Redistribution of content issues

[Copied from here]

One of the reason for WP:ASR is because Wikipedia content is widely distributed under the GDFL to other websites. A good example is Answers.com. This link will hopefully show you their version of the Wikipedia disambiguation of the name Leonardo (you may need to scroll down the page): answers.com disambiguation page for Leonardo. As you can see, the "See also: List of all pages beginning with "Leonardo"" link does not work there. I doubt it works on other mirror/redistribution websites either.

Which brings me to another point. The pervasiveness of Wikipedia results on web searches should be emphasised as widely as possible to all editors of Wikipedia - maybe even in the editing boilerplate text. I fear that people who are not aware of how widely the content is redistributed will "check facts" using web pages that are just regurgitating the thing they are trying to check! A horrendous exercise in circularity. Carcharoth 03:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

[end quote]

This has probably been discussed before, but does anyone have any comments?

I personally find it very annoying when I try and check something with a web search, that the top tens or so of hits are just mirrored/redistributed versions of teh Wikipedia article I am trying to check. This is bad on so many levels. I am sure some people already "reference" an article by referencing copies of Wikipedia.

Can I propose, if it hasn't already been done, that a strongly worded warning is added to the various boilerplate warnings about verifying content, that people don't verify content using copies of Wikipedia! Carcharoth 03:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have the same concern. I think perhaps it would be a simple fix to update wikipedia's licensing so that regurgitation web sites must clearly label that their content comes from wikipedia. I myself have seen a page I created simply copied on one of those sites. However, in some cases it looks like articles on wikipedia are a copy edit OF a regurgitation site - although its hard to tell where the original copy first was published. Fresheneesz 03:28, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Paths on the top of articles

I think it would be very useful to have paths on the top of articles, so that one can navigate back and forth through articles in an organized way. The current fasion of having scattered links on the page, and in See also sections are extremely useful, but they don't allow someone to see specifically what an idea or concept falls under (ie a more general category). This is what i'm proposing: put a path on the top of each page denoting what pages directly precede it and a button to view "Subsections" for a list of pages that linearly follow the current page. For example on the page Monomial, this would be at the top:

Mathematics Algebra Elementary algebra Polynomial Monomial Subsections

An example of the subsections for the page Elementary algebra (this would appear as its own otherwise blank page):

Elementary algebra Polynomial Monomial
Binomial

This would allow users to browse wikipedia in an organized fasion that can't be provided by portals and c ategories. Comments please? Fresheneesz 03:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • There are some category tools on the toolserver that can do things like this (though not integrated in the way you suggest). The main problem is that our content is not really organized in a tree structure in the way that your proposal would demand; it would be a great deal of work to organize WP in this way, and I don't think there is much benefit to be gained beyond what exists in the category system. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • This implies that Wikipedia's content is organized, or organizable, in a hierarchical way, which I don't believe is true. Even in some of the more areas sections, pages may "inherit" from multiple superordinate categories, and even if your scheme could handle that, it seems like the categorization would begin to overwhelm the content. In most areas, though, Wikipedia has a true network topology, with connections going every which way. Where would Bill Clinton go, for instance? Presidents, Arkansans, Lawyers, Adulterers, Authors? And the denizens of those categories are all ging to have their own nonce set of categories... the problem of imposing an order quickly becomes intractable. I think in the case of this kind of sprawling, multi-structured data, a bottom-up classification system like categories (or del.ici.ous-style tags) is the right way to go. I would add that you haven't really, in my opinion, made a case for why a system like this is desirable, but there's nothing to stop you, as a proof of concept, from creating a page (maybe in userspace to begin with) with a hierarchically structured map of a concept area--say, algebra--where each node is a link to an article. If you can pull that off, with comprehensive coverage of an area, and not too many "leaks", maybe that would be in interesting project in its own right that wouldn't need fundamental changes to the way WP operates. Think of the way Wikipedia uses the Ethnologue structure for languages, for instance. · rodii · 03:56, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • A bad idea, for all the reasons stated above: assumes a hierarchical structure which does not exist; duplicates a job which categories do in a more general way; far too much effort to implement. Gandalf61 08:38, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Those are all good points. One problem with categories is that the category pages are not very organized. I have never actually found a use for the category pages myself. On the point of "our content is not really organized in a tree structure", I did think about this and one work around is having a *main* tree structure, and then also linking to sub categories like this:
Mathematics Algebra Elementary algebra Sections related to Polynomial Subsections
Here, clicking on "sections related to" would turn up a page of other categories that Polynomial is in. Also, this system is by no means a proposal for *all* wikipedia pages. The main place I see this helping is in math and science related articles where there is a clear progression from most general to most specific. This could also be implimented within history or timelines. For example, in history, many articles are about something *specific* that happened in WWII, or something like that, and other articles get increasingly more specific. These categories could show a clear *main* path that someone could trace to find out more about the subject. Once again, articles about such general things as "Bill Clinton" might not be a good candidate for this sort of proposal. But I think some subjects would work with this quite well.
One question: What category tools on what toolserver do something similar to this? I haven't ever used whatever you're talking about, so it might be close to what i'm looking for.
In any case, more comments please? My goal of discussing this here is to get consensus permission to do a *trial* of this organization system, so that we can see how well it works. Fresheneesz 10:28, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One example is the CategoryTree tool. Start by inputting category "Fundamental" and it creates a downward-branching tree structure through all article-space categories.
The functionality of relating articles to their immediate superiors and other closely related articles is often accomplished through the use of series boxes. (See WP:CLS for background on this.) Usually these appear at the bottom of an article, but sometimes as a bar on the right side. It is possible that these are not being used as well as they could be in math and science articles; you may want to consult with the editors of templates like {{BranchesofChemistry}} as to how to better create a networked structure in these fields. Christopher Parham (talk) 12:06, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In those instances where areas do admit such an obvious tree structure for organizing the data, we already have one. A perfect example is provided by biological species; a transcluded speciesbox shows what Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species it belongs to. Similar boxes exist for languages. Probably other areas too. It's probably the case that this is not a useful way to try to categorize all wikipedia articles. Perhaps you would suggest that mathematical objects could be so categorized profitably, but I don't think I agree with that either. -lethe talk + 15:59, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree that this is a perfect example of an obvious tree structure. For example, this categorizes Cat (for example) under "Living things -> Animals -> Mammals -> Carnivores -> Cat family -> Cat". But if all articles should only have one location in the tree, I would suggest that "Society -> Private life -> Personal life -> Pets -> Cat" would be more relevant. Which illustrates the problem with a simple tree structure. Eugene van der Pijll 16:08, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly what don't you agree with? That taxonomy is not an obvious tree structure for biological species? You think that for some species, other classifications are more relavant than their taxonomy? So why haven't you gone to the article cat and replaced the speciesbox with its more relavant categorization? I probably disagree with you. The most useful and obvious tree structure for biological species is their biological taxonomy, and every single species should be so classified. This does not preclude any particular species (such as cat) from also being dscribed under other taxonomies as well (the one you suggest would be a good taxonomy, if such a taxonomy existed. As it stands, it might be OR). -lethe talk + 16:28, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree that it is the obvious choice to put on the article as its single taxonomy. The role of cats in our society as pets is much more important than their position in the tree of life relative to the Indian Desert Cat or the Sand Cat. That role is (for example) the only reason why Cat is much longer than Sand Cat. However, my alternative tree is better presented in the article itself, as prose, and not in the taxobox, as it is much less "systematic" than the biological one. That is why it is good to have the biological taxobox at the top. By the way, my structure is not OR, at least not by me; I got it from Portal:Society. So that taxonomy is already on wikipedia. Eugene van der Pijll 16:40, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But being systematic is one of the criteria which in my opinion makes that structure the most natural. -lethe talk + 16:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not that this is very relevant to the idea, but I'd have to say that the taxonomy is a good structure for cat. The purpose of such a tree structure as I'm suggesting is *NOT* to provide an obvious and loosely related progression, but to provide a *tool* that people can use to furthur look into the subject that they're in. Someone can easily look up "pets" if they're interested in other pets like a cat, but its not quite so obvoius what subject something like "Taylor Series" is in, or what it can be directly related to. Same thing with the taxonomy, its not what specific categories cats are a part of. Fresheneesz 20:09, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As I tried to suggest above, there is nothing stopping you from creating an article called, say, Structure of Mathematics, developing a comprehensive tree structure classifying all the mathematics articles and providing links to them. Why does the navigation information have to be on the article page? And then if it turns out that it's a fabulously useful tool, maybe an argument will be plausible that your taxonomy should be built into math articles the way languages or species are classified. I am skeptical, but why not try it? · rodii · 01:12, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it'd be pretty useless if noone can find it. Even if people can find it, it simply wouldn't be used if it were out of the way like categories are. How often do you use categories? Fresheneesz 07:29, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well you have to do a proof-of-concept in an out of the way place before it can even be considered for the main article space. All you have right now is a bunch of words. If people like your work, then, and only then, will it go where people will find it easily. -lethe talk + 07:59, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, I'll think about developing it further for a specific part of wikipedia first. Thanks. Fresheneesz 08:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Plagiarism

I keep coming across articles that seem to be simply a cut-and-paste from another online source. can someone drop me a line on my talk that points me towards policies and guidlines that cover how this is to be delt with? Thanks, Mike McGregor (Can) 05:47, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Spotting possible copyright violations gives a step by step guide that you might find useful. The offical policy is at Wikipedia:Copyrights Regards, MartinRe 08:46, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I got to thinking about this in the last few days when I came across USS Saratoga (1814) which mostly comes from [page] and Lake Chicago taken from [incredibly poorly written page]. I was pointed towards WP:CSD A8, but that seems to apply to pages using a commercial source. These 2 articles are copied from government sources. Is there Is there policy that's ment to be applied to plagiarism as opposed to copyright infringment? Would a new Cleanup tag saying something like: "To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. This page appeares to be plagerised in part or in whole, from this source. blah blah blah...," be uesful in situations like this? I don't want to start seeing these kindes of pages deleated, just improved. Thanks, Mike McGregor (Can) 09:32, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Both of those sources you mention are products of the US Federal Government. US law says works of the federal government aren't copyrighted. So legally both of these are perfectly fine. -- Middenface 09:44, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In regard to plagiarism vs copyright infringement, we're quite the opposite of what you might expect. Plagiarism (using someone else's ideas) is frowned upon in academia; here it's mandatory. There original thought is lauded; here it is deprecated (see WP:NOR). Here every article should have a complete list of the sources from which it was derived, and any idea you find in a wikipedia article that isn't supported by the quoted sources should be removed. An encyclopedia is, by definition, a collection of someone else's ideas. -- Middenface 12:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would strongly disagree that Plagiarism is mandatory here. Plagiarism is using someone else's work without proper acknowledgment. Any novel idea used here should be cited, but if a concept is written about in the same way widely in multiple sources it can be described here without having to list 100's of references. Also, "The use of mere facts does not constitute plagiarism", and much of the content here is factual. Regards, MartinRe 13:01, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If I have interpreted what you are saying the wrong way, my apologies. I don't care if there are a thousand sources for the same fact, you should still cite at least one reliable source for every fact in an article. Very often one source will cover most, if not all facts in an article, but it is desirable to have more than one source to give readers a better chance of finding one of the sources if they want to check the facts. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 14:37, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Slight misinterpertation, or me being unclear :) My comment wasn't about facts, but ideas (as facts can't be plagerised, only unreferenced). Novel or unusual concepts/opinions should be cited, but it's not feasible, nor warranted to cite every possible phrase that might possibly be classed as an opinion. For example, a sentence such as "Motorway Blah is a major road in X, carrying Y,000 cars per week" doesn't need a citation of someone classing it as a "major road" in my opinion. It would need a reference for y,000 a year figure though. Slightly contrived example, sorry I couldn't think of a better one, but hope that clarifies what I meant. Regards, MartinRe 15:09, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I see what you are saying. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 15:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
From http://www.history.navy.mil/warning.htm "All information on this site is in the public domain and may be distributed or copied unless otherwise specified. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credits is requested."
At the bottom is the byline "This article includes text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.", which seems similar to the way articles from 1911 Britannica are referenced (although I'll put that text in a references/source section to make it clearer. So, it appears to be fine, it's PD, and credited, cleanup needed, maybe, but not plagerised. Regards, MartinRe 09:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What I'm looking for clarification on is wether or not an article copied verbatum word-for-word from a government or PD source is an acceptable arrticle on wikipedia, or If articles like that should be cleaned up to include multiple sources and so that the information from those sources is written into a "new" article unique to Wikipedia (until bots from other sites re-post it elsewhere...).Mike McGregor (Can) 23:43, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO, there is nothing wrong with copying public domain material ver batim, as long as you acknowledge the source (which is what I did at Cape San Blas lighthouse). Of course, if you have a second source with additional material, you should include that, rewriting as necessary to create a readable article. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 00:01, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles#Lists has several projects using PD sources. From looking through some of them, it's advised not to dump text straight in, but to clean up spelling, POV, etc. so a straight copy is not up to wikipedia standard, but it's probably not the worst starting point to have, so long as the article is labeled appropiately. In short, acceptable article, nope. Acceptable starting point, yep. MartinRe 23:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Templates

When I first started editing, I came across a section that suggested that it was against the rules to remove a NPOV template from the top of an article. I can't find it anymore. Can anyone point me to some useful page or pages?

If I have added a NPOV tempate to the top of a page, and I later edit it to say why I have added it, can that edit be reverted as NPOV? In my opinion it wasn't, but the other party won't accept anything that reflects badly on their contributions. Engjs 01:29, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation page links on articles with disambiguated titles

I have brought this issue up before, several months ago, I think. I asked whether articles with disambiguated titles, like tables (board game), should have a link at the top to a disambiguation page. I thought that it was unnecessary, since a person will not get to an article with a disambiguated title by accident. Others here, or possibly at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous), agreed that such as link is unnecessary. However, Wikipedia:Disambiguation now seems to be in conflict with what was agreed upon. Here is a quote from that page.

In most cases, the generic term or phrase should be the title of the actual disambiguation page. This permits an editor to visually determine whether a disambiguating page is generic in Category:Disambiguation.
Pages that deliberately link to generic topic pages should use an unambiguous "(disambiguation)" page instead, to assist in distinguishing accidental links. In turn, the "(disambiguation)" page will redirect to the generic topic page. This "(disambiguation)" redirect page should always be created for the Wikipedia:Links to (disambiguation) pages listing.
For example, the specific topic Tables (board game) links to Table (disambiguation), a redirect to Table with the template {{R to disambiguation page}}. Table is a generic topic disambiguation page.

Are such links necessary, and if they are, why? Thanks, Kjkolb 03:02, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand the distinction between a generic topic page and a DAB page, but in reply to your original question, having the link to the DAB is not strictly necessary, but it is helpful. Sometimes people pick wrong (like Table (database), versus Table (information)), so it's nice to have the link there, rather than having to rely on the back button, or doing another search.Freekee 05:20, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't use meaningless apocopations, "DAB" doesn't seem to have anything to do with this discussion. Moreover, this was rather thoroughly covered at Wikipedia Talk:Disambiguation, see the archives. Most (97%) disambiguation pages are "Generic Topic".
Yes, sometimes such links are necessary. Once upon a time, "Tables" was the board game page. Now, "Tables" is the plural redirect to "Table". Therefore, the only way to find other uses of the plural from Tables (board game) is through the Table generic topic disambiguation page.
However, most specific topic pages do not have such links at the top. That's why the language says: "Pages that deliberately link...." This requires "deliberation" (that is, thought). Do not mechanistically add such links.
--William Allen Simpson 18:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Google test

User:Nixer and me have recently had a dispute regarding the spelling of the name of a certain Russian airport (Ostafievo International Airport). I am not going to bore everyone with the details of what the dispute is about, but a google test was used to prove certain points. The problem, however, is that a different google count is obtained by both sides. When googling for "ostafievo -wikipedia", I get 220 hits (see a screenshot), while Nixer gets 1,470 (see his). I tried two different computers (with different ISPs), and I still get ~220 hits. The discrepancy is just too huge to ignore, and as google tests are quite common in the community, I would like to request public comments as to what may be the cause.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 15:21, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. With the specified link, I get 214 hits; but when I add "English" in the Language field of the advanced search, I get 781. Perhaps this may be related. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And I got 1990 (!) results [10] when specified the English language.--Nixer 16:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I got 781 just like Arthur above.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 16:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I can't explain the discrepancy, but I can eliminate it through better methodology. The "raw number" is often fairly useless for searches like these with a small number of hits. A much better count is the number of "unique" pages, which AFAIK google doesn't display directly, but if you jump to search result page 10, you'll see a message at the bottom of the screen like this: In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 67 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included. Using that metric, I get 67 hits searching in English-only and 85 searching in all languages.—Bunchofgrapes (talk) 16:36, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I get 215 in Australia. I've suspected in the last few months, specially since the China controversy, that google gives diff results in diff countries. BTW what % of web does it now index? Mccready 16:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is not so much countries. Google has many hundreds of servers, and they are not perfectly synchronized—in theory two people searching at the same time in the same city could get different results if their ISPs connect them to different data centers. A discrepancy of a few results is not uncommon, although a discrepancy of over 600% is unusual in my experience. -choster 19:10, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And this all is just another reason to avoid Google "tests". Who cares how many folks badly spell a word? As we wrote at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places):

  • "Generally, use the official English name for the place and its type."
Nota Bene: The testimony of locals and people familiar with the country should be considered above Google evidence. Google is very likely to have many results from news organizations and wire services. These remote reporters may be ignorant about local naming standards.

What's most important is that the company that built the place has an official name: "Ostafievo".

--William Allen Simpson 18:36, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Policy on including/excluding articles about foreign language subjects?

Is there a policy that explicitly states that articles about e.g. films or books that have never been translated into English are or are not acceptable? The absence of a policy prohibiting such articles would seem to indicate they are acceptable. Additionally, some guidelines seem to indicate they are acceptable, e.g. Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Sources_in_languages_other_than_English and Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(books)#Title_translations. There are articles on WP about primary source materials that have not been translated into English like e.g. Akkari-Laban dossier and 23 (film) and I think there are probably many others. However, sometimes such articles show up on AFD and some people believe that the fact that they have not been translated is a valid reason for deletion. It would help to know if there is a policy on the matter that is being overlooked, or if there is not one whether one might be needed. Thanks, Esquizombi 20:09, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would certainly disagree with anyone advocating deletion solely because the film or novel weren't in English. If there were other disagreements, such as notability, that's a different issue. If the film is listed at imdb, it should satisfy notability, if there were references to indicate that the film had been seen by large numbers of people, or the book read by large numbers of people, and it has decent numbers at amazon, then it should definitely be kept. But this is all just my opinion. Can you give us some examples of such articles that have been listed at AfD? User:Zoe|(talk) 21:32, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
E.g. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/The_CIA_and_September_11_(book): a book in German that has not been translated, but several of the people posting there thought that in itself was objectionable. The number of people who thought so made me want to find a policy on the subject. Feel free to recommend delete on it if you can identify a valid reason for doing so, in which case I might change my recommendation too. I dislike the idea of a precedent for deleting articles on that basis; I have limited foreign language skills (minimal Spanish, German and Arabic) but could conceivably add articles on untranslated foreign films or books if I felt confident I had some understanding of them. I've watched movies in at least German, Dutch, Turkish and Italian that weren't translated and have contributed info to IMDb on some of them. Esquizombi 23:34, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is not now, nor has there ever been, such a policy. We write our article in English, but the subject of the article may be from any field or culture. We may have a slight bias towards English-speaking topics because most of the editors are English speakers, but we do everything we can to fight that bias. Please, if you have a good article about a non-English topic, add it to the encyclopedia. -lethe talk + 21:38, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The only caveat is that if you cite from sources that are not in English, you need to provide original text and translation in the footnotes so that it complies with WP:V. See WP:RS#Sources_in_languages_other_than_English. Otherwise you are good to go. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 21:49, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mediawiki

I went to Mediawiki recently in hopes to find the same Wikipedia governmental resources there, as I had a post that didn't relate to Wikipedia in general, but more broadly, to mediawiki in general. I"m appauled to find there ain't the same governmental resources there. I mean, wikipedia has these resources to include everytying, so then why hasn't mediaiki have that yet?!?! PLz include it!!!.


Mediawiki is a software suite, not a place. Mediawiki.org is for development coordination. Perhaps you meant to go to wikimedia.org? But then, that's just a portal. So maybe you wanted to get to the wikimedia foundation's site? If you had, you would have found the link to m:Wikimedia site feedback. -lethe talk + 10:55, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Well, my rationale is that it seems like wikipedia is like at the top of all the wiki projects, but that's not the case, wikimedia is. I'm just saying like there should be some institutions found in wikipedia that sould also have a version for wikimedia. As i mentioned in my most bottom comment, wiktionary doesn't have that either. For example, this Village Pump section, or set of pages, or Instition of Wikipedia should is not found in wiktionary or Wikimedia; There should be a Village pump institution in Wiktionary, & wikimedia, for disscusion that woulnd't apply just to wikipedia, but to all wikimedia (projects). For excaple, I had a post pertaining to accounts. Well, that would apply to all wikimedia projects woudln't that? thanks for the reply by the way.24.70.95.203 11:53, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]



But here's my post

Vandals:
Looks like you guys have a problem with vandals. Well delete thier accounts. Yea, you don't have to delete thier M.O. pages because we could use them for future reference. [I might feel different about this later in my life, but this will suffice for now.]


Voting:
Wikimedia is an elitist community. I'd like to vote, but I want the security of being able to delete my account. Is this fair representation??


Usernames:
Wikimedia is also hypocritical. Wikimedia is for all languages, so then why are usernames only allowed in the Latin alphabet. Yes, you say its so it'd be easier for wikipedians to refer to the username, but obviously not all wikipedians know the Latin alphabet.24.70.95.203 10:06, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Also, I think search should be revamped to advanced. I alos just when to wiktionary. They don't have a village pump!!!! I mean, wikimedia doesn't have to have like rfc pages; I mean, Wikimedia should have the same governmental institutions found in Wikipedia!!! But, Imean, like those institutions found in wikipedia that woud'nt have any use in wikimedia need not be incudled, I mean, wikimedia has to be more useful!!!24.70.95.203 10:12, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]



So, I put a bit of though in this issue. I looked at the GNU document, and it seems like that someone just decided to make this licence. Well, I could make my own licence. Wikimedia could make their own licence. And I think they should, if it the new liicence is ammended so that accounts can be deleted, I mean, if wikimedia wirtes its own licecense, it could be so universal like the current liceces its using, that other applications in the world could us the licecese; [the licence could be written nonexclusivly, so that in other things (sorry i don't have a very good vocabulary:Pjk), where appliplicable {[as in] not refering to accounts} could be posslibe]; they if contributers and users want to vanisih, they sould be allowed; freedom of speech also gives the freedom to be silent.24.70.95.203 16:13, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See -- wikt:Wiktionary:Beer parlour. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:03, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Enforcing policies

In most cases, policies are followed, and the consensus prevails. But the situation can arise when a couple of editors will "ignore" policy, or provide their "opinion" on why policy can be interpretted in another way, by selectively choosing their facts.

Since Wikipedia Consusus is a guideline, it seems to me that Wiki Policy takes precedence. Some policies claim to be "absolute and non-negotiable" (eg. Wiki neutral point of view).

I have personally wasted MONTHS of time arguing with certain individuals over their point of view, despite being able to VERIFY my position with Wiki policies, and they have been unable or unwilling to verify theirs. There has to be a more effective way of enforcing basic Wiki policy, or at least ascertaining whether policy has been followed or contravened? --Iantresman 15:10, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As was pointed out on the admin noticeboard, it looks like a content dispute, so the next step in resolving disputes could be to try and get other people's opinion on the matter. Policies may be absolute, but that does not stop disagreements over interpertations. For example, in a dispute, both sides may agree that NPOV must be upheld, but differ on whether a particular phrasing is neutral or not. Have you tried any of the suggestions in WP:DR, and if so, what was the results? Regards, MartinRe 15:27, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was trying to avoid a specific example. I know there are ways to resolved certain issues, but they can be (not always) long and tedious.
We have quick ways to resolve (a) vandalism (b) the 3RR rule. Surely there could be a quick way to judge "the three content-guiding policies" (c) verifiability (d) neutral point of view (e) no original research. --Iantresman 19:54, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Abbreviation expansion

This proposal has been kicking around for some time, and previously mentioned here. Its contents are mostly a consolidation of practices from other guidelines pages. Its categories and templates have survived (or been renamed according to) CfD and TfD over the past month. This seems to be the time to upgrade to the guideline notice.

--William Allen Simpson 18:57, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Almost famous

I've been cleaning up new articles lately, and I've been encountering some unhappiness regarding vanity articles from the "almost famous", usually self-promoting entertainers. The "speedy delete", "proposed delete", and "AfD" processes are available, but add "db-bio" to some unknown performer's page and they scream. Some will take off a "prod". AfD works, but is a hassle for everyone. Some current examples:

  • Lee Asher - performing magician, moderately notable but not a big name. Becoming unhappy; see Talk:Lee Asher. Heavy self-promotion in original article.
  • Dante Roberson - drummer. On the way up and just on the low edge of making WP:BAND criteria, but original article was weak and he's not in Google much. Part of the problem is that he performs under a different name, like many hip-hop artists. Currently in AfD process, and will probably not be deleted, but it's taken quite a bit of effort by several people to find enough references for him. Original article posted under Roberson, causing complaints from Scottish clan people. See Talk: Dante Roberson.
  • EXelement - unsigned band. Grumblings, deletion notices were deleted, but currently in AfD process with all votes "Delete".
  • Buz Sawyer (advertising executive) Original article was basically a resume. Moved to (advertising executive) to deconflict with comic strip. Edited language for NPOV. Verified claims. Found and added references. (He was responsible for promoting a failed dot-com). He's probably not quite a prominent enough executive to be in Wikipedia, but nobody is pushing for deletion right now.

Can the "almost famous" be dealt with in a more graceful, or at least a less labor-intensive, way? Or is this about normal? Advice?

Maybe a "Further information is needed to determine if this article qualifies for inclusion in Wikipedia. Information needed is: ... If this information is not provided within N days, the article will be deleted." template. Effectively, this would be equivalent to "prod", but nicer. --John Nagle 21:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus War 1

I'm going to put forward a conceptual policy question and I'd like input about how, in concept, it should be handled.

An article we will call Votefortruth is presently dominated by a relatively small group, which we'll call teamtruth. Teamtruth is, however, about 3 times the size of any other group interested in the article. Because of this, sources get ignored and, instead, consensus is demanded for everything before a change is made, regardless of how many WP:V sources are provided. The result is the article remains nearly the same with most of the changes coming based on what teamtruth likes instead of what fits the WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOR policies.

To sum up my POV, or my bias if you like, I think this violates all policy, and even the Consensus guideline itself (see Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus vs. other policies).

The problem is, so now what? Is their a policy solution? Or does one have to go outside policy and round up their own majority to get more votes and edits/reverts on their side?

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