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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy).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

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What does "if it is disputed" mean for non-notable bios?

A couple months ago, the community approved adding:

A7: An article about a real person that does not assert that person's importance or significance. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AFD instead. For details, see Wikipedia:Deletion of vanity articles.

to the criteria for speedy deletion.

There have been a number of problems with this, but for the moment, I would like to just focus on one. What does If the assertion is disputed or controversial actually mean? I can come up with at least three different situations where it might apply, and I would like to get a sense of what the community actually means/wants.

  1. Disputes over the factual validity of the notablity assertions.
  2. Disputes over whether the given assertions are sufficiently notable to be encyclopedic.
  3. Adjusted standards for undeletion and submitting to AFD.

In my experience, I think nearly everyone agrees with point #1. That is to say, nearly everyone agrees that questioning the truth of someone's biography is something that needs the discussion that AFD brings rather than speedy deletion. Points 2 and 3 are more uncertain. Some people, myself included, believe that any article which attempts to explain why the subject is significant or important deserves a hearing at AFD, even if someone might judge that the claims are not notable enough to warrant inclusion in an encyclopedia. The examples I would give are articles containing claims like: "John Smith is a star quarterback and three time MVP of his regional high school football league." and "Jane Doe is a regional supervisor for Big Time Pharmaceuticals responsible for 200 distributors and $24.5 million in product sales last year." In each case, I would say that articles like this are trying to assert notability, though in neither case do I generally believe such a person is notable enough to warrant an encyclopedia entry. In my opinion, since articles like these are trying to establish notability they deserve to be sent to AFD. Other admins simply judge that such persons are not sufficiently notable and speedy them, citing the criterion above. In my mind, disputes about how notable is notable, is one of the things that the criterion expected to be sent to AFD.

The third point above relates to what "disputed or controversial" should mean after the fact. If admin BioKiller decides that Sally Somebody's biography is not notable and it gets deleted before anyone has a chance to protest, what happens now? Should VFU be the place for arguing that it is notable and to get it restored? If so, should it still require a consensus for undeletion even though there was never an established consensus for deleting it? What about cases of "Whoops, I can make her sound more notable if you allow me to expand the article"? AFD allows people time for improvments, but that is substantially harder to do at VFU. In the alternative, should articles speedied as non-notable bios be undeleted and sent to AFD whenever someone asks? (Or perhaps anyone other than the main author?)

Thanks to everyone is advance for giving feedback on these issues. Dragons flight 19:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Speedy deletion is meant as a shortcut, not a method of resolving disagreements. It basicly goes for all CSDs: If someone makes a good-faith remark that they disagree with the assessment as a speedy, you take it to AfD. --fvw* 19:35, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
That is a very interesting opinion, but obviouly not how the system presently works. I would offer as example the fact there are presently three speedy deletions being discussed on VFU each with a 15-0 undelete vote and yet some people say the process ought to continue for a full week. Dragons flight 19:58, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
I've seen people disagree with speedies that very clearly fit the definition, though. So while I agree with what fvw said as a general rule, it doesn't always work. An unrelated problem with the above is that it requires us to assume intent on the part of the author. We can speculate about whether the author intended to assert notability, but at the end of the day we have to base decisions on the actual content. Some people see "John Smith has been a plumber for 15 years" as an assertion of notability, as strange as that sounds to most of us. Friday (talk) 19:44, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Hmmmm, well how about a standard that if you can find any admin willing to undelete it a speedy then it should be undeleted and sent to AFD? Dragons flight 19:58, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
No. That suggestion was recently made at Wikipedia talk:Votes for undeletion#AfD challenge and shouted down. It's bad because it encourages admins to straightforwardly overrule one another. There is nothing wrong with waiting your 5 days at VfU. Patience is a virtue and discussion an antidote to feeling overruled and insulted. You'll find an admin who'll undelete most anything: asking one person's opinion is nowhere close to as good as asking the community's. I think this idea would lead to wheel wars that could be easily avoided. Additionally, it means that 'mere editors' must ask nicely to get something done, whilst 'admins' can do it because they feel like it. I can't think of any particularly good reason why that differentiation should be entrenched. -Splashtalk 22:01, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, I was unaware of that thread, and am not surprised that it would get shouted down since it called for (among other things) abolishing VFU (at VFU talk, no less). I'm not suggesting that (though I realize my use of the pronoun "it" might have been confusing). I am only suggesting that speedies be subject to a rule that if any admin thinks it is worth discussion then they can undelete it and send it to AFD for a proper discussion. A suggestion that you seemed to be okay with a few days ago: "To a certain extent, I wouldn't mind so much if disputed speedies were taken to AfD instead ..." (your comment to that same thread you linked :-) ). Dragons flight 22:20, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
To a certain extent, yes, although my original version of the yellow box included speedies and that does remain my preference. Although by way of seeking compromise there, I was prepared to consider speedies out-of-scope. This is because the question of a valid speedy rests on content not process, whereas the question of a valid AfD is process not content (for the larger part). Note that the content of speedies is often provided as part of the VfU discussion anyway. But at least the article remains in the state rendered to it by one admin while we all have a to-and-fro about their actions. It doesn't require one admin to say "nope, you're wrong, and I'm right". The fact is, in the 600 admins you'll find one who'll undelete anything because they dislike all the speedy criteria, or are having a difficult day, or whatever. Saying "don't fight" has to be better than saying "only throw one punch". -Splashtalk 22:32, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

"If it's disputed" means what it says. If someone disagrees. Remember that any administrator can undelete an article that was deleted out of process, and sending to AfD would be a good thing to do in the case of a serious dispute. There is a gray area where an administrator may want to let VFU decide, but in practice AfD is much better at this kind of decision, not only because VFU has tended to get bogged down in process, but because on AfD the article can always be seen and edited . fvw's comment is a correct statement of policy, although not all administrators follow, or are even aware, of policy. --Tony SidawayTalk 22:38, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I think part of the problem is that deletion and undeletion are seen as a "big deal". (Technically, only admins can do these things, so I assume that's part of the reason why.) What if these actions were viewed as being closer to "just another edit"? Granted, they're major fairly edits. Still, the worst that would happen is, one person deletes an article, then another person strongly disagrees and undeletes it. At this point, at least it's obvious that it's a controversial issue. If there's still disagreement, rather than engaging in an edit war, interested parties stop and talk it out. After all, everyone follows the one revert rule, right? Isn't this how normal content disputes should be handled? Why not handle delete/undelete disputes the same way? Friday (talk) 23:10, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Not suprisignly i disagree with both User:Tony Sidaway and User:Dragons flight here. I have always understood the "If" caluse to mean "If there is an assertion of notability but you disagree with its accuracy take the matter to VfD/AfD" as AfD is better suited to setter factual disputes. it is not always beter suited to settle policy issues, which is what the qusttion "What kind of statement constitutes a calim of notability" is. Dragons flight says that if anyone disagees with tagging a particualr article that makes the application of the tag "disputed" and the matter should go to AfD. I would say "not always". Insofar as there is a clear policy consensus, a single person objecting to the application of that consensus does not make the kind of dispute that AfD is needed for. "Joe is a really neat guy" is pretty close to the classic example of an nn-bio as described in the original proposal for A7. But soemone might claim that there are too few "neat guys" so being one is notable. IMO that "dispute need not go to AfD. DES (talk) 15:52, 28 September 2005 (UTC) IMO "Fred is a good plumber" or "Jane is a first rate professor of history" are no more claims of notability than is "Joe is a really neat guy", and no more create a need to go to AfD, even if soemone disputes this. I tried to lay out in considerable detail what i thought the implications of A7 are, and to get some general policy consenses on what is and waht is not a "claim of notability" at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Interpretation of WP:CSD A7 (non-notable bios). This discussion had slowed, but not IMO stopped, when it was recently archived. i have just restorted it from the archives, and i suggest that further discussion move there, as this may pe a larger and linger discussion than the pump easily supports, and should ultimately be archived alonge with WP:CSD in my view. I do hope this excahnge here at the pump will lead to greater participation in the discussion there, (I had announced that on the pump before, but not so well phrased to attract attention). I thank Dragons flight for calling renewed attention to this issue, which i agree is important, and i agree should be setteled by a wide consensus. DES (talk) 15:52, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I am rather surprised by the claim, mentioned by some people, above, that invalid speedies should not be undelted "on sight"(and listed on AfD, as a courtesy), but, instead, taken to VfU and only undeleted after 5 days of review. I have not been following that - and no-one has objected - and it dosn't seem right to me either; if speedies are deleted "on sight" they ought to be able to be undeleted "on sight" - speedy deletion should only be used for uncontroversial issues; if someone objects, then, at least in my view, it's not a speedy candidate. Thoughts? JesseW, the juggling janitor 00:05, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

He's wrong. Obvious bad speedies can be undeleted. If you get any hassle just pop a afd tag on it and turn it into an article for deletion. If the article was worth undeleting in the first place, it'll sail through AfD. No need to muck about on VFU for bad speedies. --Tony SidawayTalk 00:18, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

The Simpsons episodes

The cruftier among you may (or, indeed, may not) want to know that a large number of The Simpsons episodes articles are presently listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2005 September 21. They thus fall to the axe sometime after the 28th. If anyone wants them rescued they should either a)get WP-compatible permission or b)re-write the articles on their /temp subpages (please write them there; it makes life easier for the clearing admin who does not have search the diffs for the versions to restore). -Splashtalk 00:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, a majority of them have been deleted as copyvios. -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 18:18, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Hence Splash's warning that they fall to the axe somtime after the 28th. Steve block talk 19:58, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Right. What I'm saying is I had to delete a majority of them because only a few of them had a temp subpage with non-copyvio material added. -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 07:29, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

WP:DRR

Wikipedia:Dispute resolution reform - for listing specific ideas in a coherent way. Use the talk to state ideas which arent formatted to fit into a logical - point by point structure. -St|eve 22:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

The wisdom of "quotes" sections in articles

It seems to me that in general a laundry list of "quotes" placed inside an article about a person is a recipe for disaster in that these sections are either skewed or invite drawn-out edit wars as each side jockeys for the quotes that make their POV about the subject look best. It seems like I see these types of laundry lists most often in fairly controversial, usually political, figures, such as Pat Robertson or Ann Coulter, etc. So I wanted to take a barometer of how folks feel about having these sections in general. My personal opinion is that they're almost never a good idea, particularly for someone who is controversial or political in some fashion. Having someone's voice in an article about them is useful, I think -- but rather than having a laundry list of quotes that can be used out of context or as a bludgeon (or pedestal), select a few quotes and include them inside the text of the article where they can be fully contextualized. Beyond which, isn't that what we have Wikiquote for? Aside from seemingly inviting edit wars, it seems redundant. I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts. · Katefan0(scribble) 12:26, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

  • I have mostly seen "Quotes" sections in articels on less controversial figures, such as Fred Friendly (But then i don't edit articles on political figures much). In thsoe cases such a sections eems to me to work well adn to add soemthing to the article. DES (talk) 15:08, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I haven't seen any edit wars on them, but I agree that they're redundant with wikiquote. Quotes in the context of a paragraph is OK, I just don't want to see laundry lists of quotes. Borisblue 15:52, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
    • There's nothing wrong with discussing quotations in the article text, but sometimes a few "raw" quotations can tersely provide useful information. Coulter is a good example. Her notability derives in great part from her writing style, and quotations can illustrate it. If any particular item is misquoted or taken out of context, it can always be edited or removed on that basis, not because of a general ban. Usually, an article shouldn't include a long compilation of quotations. The Wikiquote link handles that. Providing a few quotations right in the article, so the reader can glance at them quickly without clicking through to Wikiquote, makes the article more useful.
    • Incidentally, I've been sporadically changing the heading from "Quotes" to "Quotations". Many people use "quote" as a noun, but there are also many people who consider this usage substandard, especially in formal writing. [1] Everyone agrees that "quotation" is acceptable, so we might as well use that. JamesMLane 16:01, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
  • You're definitely right that quotes are often used as a way to circumvent the NPOV policies. Check out this egregious example: Anti-globalization and Anti-Semitism. Kaldari 18:59, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
    • I just skimmed that article and I disagree with you. The NPOV policy allows factual reporting about what opinions people hold. The article you cite seems to do it the right way, with opinions attributed to specific, named sources, and citations provided. This is in keeping with one of the examples on the NPOV page: "An encyclopedic article should not argue that corporations are criminals, even if the author believes it to be so. It should instead present the fact that some people believe it, and what their reasons are, and then as well it should present what the other side says." (from Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#The original formulation of NPOV) If one side is presented more thoroughly than the other, the solution is to add more quotations from or paraphrased of the underrepresented side, not to delete information. JamesMLane 20:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
      • The problem with that article is that it only has one side's quotes. Articles be about an issue, not one perspective on the issue. -- SCZenz 21:35, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Individual quotes are fine in an article when the quote itself (or some aspect of it, like its style or the opinion it presents) is the direct subject of discussion. It's important, though, for the article to frame those quotes in a way that describes what they're supposed to convey; in other words, if a quote is supposed to represent an opinion, it should be framed with 'talking heads such as so-and-so have disagreed, saying "blah"' or something similar. Even then, quotes should be kept to a minimum; in most cases, one short quote is enough to illustrate a point. Quotes that are not specifically worked into the article--including general quotes sections--do not belong in an encyclopedia and should be transwikied to Wikiquote. --Aquillion 20:24, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
It was no surpise to me to see that the targets of this imposition of a wrong-headed policy would not be the not-labeled-as-controversial Al Franken and Maureen Dowd but conservatives who have a popular following. This is what we call selection bias. An article about a political or cultural figure should contain primary source material. What the subject himself or herself said and wrote is of great importance. It's not about quotes per se.
The trend I observer is articles on conservative figures in politics, culture, and media no longer are about the subject -- but have been transformed into discussion boards introduced by their positions (sometimes with a quote) and then with filled with negative criticism -- and usually with detraction, insults, and sarcasm.
Advocacy of policy and cultural change belongs in articles on those topics. We've got them all covered: abortion, the war in Iraq, the Kelo v. New London decision, gay rights, etc. One expect to see some POV battles there.
Back to the examples: Pat Robertson's article has 43% devoted to Controversies of the subject (i.e. the soapbox for people who don't like Pat.) Ann Coulter's article has 69% devoted to Controversy and Criticism on the subject (i.e. the soapbox for people who don't like Ann.)
SCZenz brings up an interesting point: an article on a subject that merely contained three newspaper accounts of political opponents and pundits accusing the subject, a conservative politician, of ethics problems (investigated and dismissed years ago). About 3% of the article had basic biographical information. I found that one but how many more absurdly unbalanced articles are out there? I'm not arguing for a Be fair to Pat and Ann campaign but I don't think the problem is quotes but the love that Wikipedians have for their Controversies sections of articles on conservative figures in politics, media, and culture. Are any libs being targeted in this way? Maybe not -- perhaps they are just not controversial enough. patsw 00:23, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm a liberal, but I'd love to add a criticism of Maureen Dowd that her writing stinks, especially the throwaway sentences at the end. Would that be POV? ;)
Seriously, though, I think that criticisms/controveries can legitimately take up a large fraction of biographies, especially in people who are deliberately trying to be controversial and inflammatory (like Ann Coulter). If Al Franken has no criticism section, it's because nobody felt like writing it. If someone does, I can't imagine that it would be deleted. Criticisms should include counter-arguments, of course; the point is for each article to give a "fair and balanced" view rather than any one POV (even that of the article's subject).
Aren't we veering from the topic of this section, though? -- SCZenz 00:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
A summary of the points I raised would be that we don't have a "quotes" problem per se, but a "controversies" problem when quotes merely are the setup. By the way, SCZenz, it's your point of view that Ann Coulter is trying to be controversial and inflammatory. It's my point of view is that she is full of insight and honesty. But seriously, why doesn't anyone write a criticism section for Al Franken or Chris Matthews might be because conservatives in Wikipedia have their hands so full defending conservatives to be bothered going on offense, or liberals are simply over-represented among Wikipedia editors. patsw 02:04, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I obviously didn't mean that the two articles I mentioned was a definitive list; they're just ones I'd visited recently. Add whoever else you want -- I don't think quotes sections are good for Coulter, Robertson, Franken, Clinton or Mighty Mouse. Can we get back to talking about quotes sections now? · Katefan0(scribble) 02:20, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand your objection. If you think that Wikipedia articles on high-profile figures are often the targets of long, unnecessary lists of quotes criticizing them, I would expect you to agree with this proposal, which would drastically trim the criticism; as I indicated above, it isn't necessary to list every talking head who ever commented on an article's subject in the relevent article, just one or two people to represent the relevent opinions, properly-framed to explain why those quotes are there. Likewise, if you feel that there is a lack of standardization between different figures, with some getting long lists of critical quotes and others none of at all, then I would expect you to support a policy that aims to create standards for quote inclusion. It is, of course, unencyclopedic to just list quotes in a quotes section, without working them into the article text; people who want to know all the famous statements that a public figure has made can consult Wikiquote or the like. Famous or representitive quotes made by an article's subject, as I noted above, can be made a sub-topic in their own right and addressed in detail; but to remain in an encyclopedia article, their importance needs to be explained. Any quotes just hanging off the end, outside the article's prose, should be sent to Wikiquote without a second thought. --Aquillion 21:35, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

If I may echo and extend JamesMLane's point, I think that sometimes a list of quotes is appropriate. In particular, when the subject is primarily, or at least to a large extent, known for their use of language. Here, Coulter is a great example. She's not known so much for her critical thinking, but for the flamboyant way in which she expresses her views. As such, the list of quotes goes very directly to her notability. Her language is really the essence of her notability, that's why she became famous, not for her rather unoriginal take on politics.

I think the same point applies to some extent to other characters such as Jim Hightower, Yogi Berra, or H.L. Mencken. While, of course, they all have broader importance, certainly the colorful language is a very important part of why each of these is famous. An exhaustive list would clearly be inappropriate, but 5 or 6 quotes can add quite a bit to the exposition of an article. Just because Wikiquote exists does not mean we should never include a few quotes in an article. I know that some feel "context" should always be provided for each quote, and thus object to a list. On the contrary, another word for such context might be spin, not necessarily bias, but spin. Often, such quotes stand better on their own, as there is then no point of view to be agonized over in the context. Some would argue that the selection of quotes is inherently biased, why should this be more true for a quotelist than for any other aspect of an article?

As a contrast, I think that a quote list for the likes of Clinton or Bush is inappropriate because language is really a trivial part of their notabilty. Derex @ 03:21, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I can see what you're getting at, but how would that line ever be drawn? I can see someone arguing a case that is just the opposite for the two examples you mentioned -- some folks might feel that Clinton and Bush, as U.S. presidents, had a significant stake in and were mostly known for their public appearance and public speeches, given that speechifying on TV is the main way a president communicates with the public. Does that then elevate their quotes to a level that you would think appropriate of inclusion? I'm thinking now from a policy perspective -- how could something like that be crafted? · Katefan0(scribble) 03:38, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, I'm not sure a line should be drawn. Guidance can be provided, however. My guidance would be that if a figure would be almost as widely known, or as notable, without their particular speaking or writing style then a quote list is inappropiate. Sure, many of Clinton's quotes are famous. But Clinton is not primarily notable for his peculiar use of language. Of course, it plays a role in his public perception, but that's not the primary reason why Clinton was important. That's the difference in my view. The other figures I cite above all derive their fame, at least to a large extent, from their flamboyant use of language. Similarly, I feel that even for a novelist or poet perhaps one particularly notable extended passage, 5 or 6 lines, might be worthy to give a concrete sense of their writing: the very essence of their notability. Derex @ 04:06, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
For the use of quotes. For the famous ones, they become a shorthand way of presenting a whole set of images and memories: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall","Read my lips", and "That depends on what the meaning of 'is' is". I think Gerald Ford is forgotten, in part, because he has no memorable quotes. Let's assume that that all you in agreement with Katefan0 get together and propose something, what would that policy be? And could we have some examples of bad quotes that make for bad articles? patsw 12:49, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I think there is a slight distinction here. The three quotes you mention lend themselves very naturally to inclusion in the text of an article. Part of the reason those are famous is because they are associated with very important events or issues for which the speaker is otherwise notable. So, putting them in a quote list divorces them of the very context for which they are famous. On the other hand, one of Berra's comments stands on it's own ... it's not really useful to point out that he said so and so after a loss to Boston. So a shortish quote list really is a fine way of presenting some idea of his style. Of course, one or two Berra quotes would fit nicely in the text itself. But not 5 or 6, you would have to strain to put words around it. So, the question is whether 5 or 6 quotes in the article would be more helpful than sending someone for the exhaustive list at Wikiquote. I think that's a judgement call for the editors, not a matter for policy.
Also, the quotes you mention do have some meaning for most US readers without textual context. But, that's just because we already know the context. I imagine a 14 year old American probably wouldn't know, and neither would many international readers. So, stand-alone quotes might be bewildering in these cases where the quotes are important precisely because of the context. This contrasts with the speakers I mention whose quotes are important examples of the reason for notability, even devoid of context.
Let me just re-iterate though that the argument that a quote list is an invitation to edit wars doesn't resonate with me. We have the same issue with virtually any aspect of an article about controversial figures, particularly political ones. In that case, the quarrel is often over how much detail to have about each incident, as more detail tends to inflate the apparent importance of an issue. What we can use in this context is some guidance on how many quotes might be appropriate, which is considerably easier to quantify than how much detail might be appropriate. Derex @ 14:10, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Derex, I agree that controversial figures naturally, well, invite controversy. But why encourage such when there is already a natural mechanism to defuse some of it, i.e. Wikiquote? You bring up some interesting points which I haven't had time to digest, but did want to mention that one thought. · Katefan0(scribble) 15:20, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
But, the point should not be to "defuse" controversy. The point is to write the best encylopedia article possible. If a short quotelist adds to that, I don't think it's a wise policy to proscribe them. Sure, we can link to wikiquote, but that's an inferior solution in every respect except avoiding fights. I don't think the possibility of disagreements is a good reason to dictate limitations on the factual content of an article. But, I've said my piece a good 4 times over now. So, I'll shut up and let others have at it. Regards to all, Derex @ 22:16, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Notability proposal

Wikipedia:Notability proposal is a proposal to explicitly make "notability" a requirement for Wikipedia articles, and to explicitly include "lack of notability" as a reason for deleting articles. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal and express your view on the proposal. DES (talk) 23:10, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Auto-squish emails?

This is partially a technical proposal too... How about we add something in the software to check edits and if it contains something that may be an email (e.g. something of the form XXX@XXX.XXX), either remove it automatically, or pop up a warning notice? There is no reason at all for any wikipedia page to have an email address. So, would this be workable/desirable? --137.205.17.180 18:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC) (Fangz)

There are some good reasons to have an e-mail address on a page: see Wikipedia:Designated agent for an example (not to mention certain user pages, like my own). Also, when talking about e-mail in articles, it helps to be able to do a "mailto:example@example.com" type thing. – ABCD✉ 18:30, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Article copyright texts

Forgive what's probably a stupid question, but do permission notices belong in the article text, as in the Vincent Saint John article? --Calton | Talk 06:12, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

You (or someone) should probably list that as a copyvio. As far as I know, all prose submitted to Wikipedia (with the exception of brief illustrative quotes under "fair use") needs to be licensed under the GFDL. --Carnildo 07:28, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Scratch that. It appears to be under the GFDL, so the copyright statement needs to be updated to reflect that, and should probably be moved to the talk page. --Carnildo 07:32, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
The GFDL requires copyright attribution, which in this case is not provided by the article history. Therefore, it is appropriate to have a small section listing the source. Superm401 | Talk 21:49, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I feel strongly that copyright restrictions other than the GFDL should not be permitted in a "free encyclopedia". Given that a link to the GFDL is generated at the bottom of each page, there should be no other in articles. IHMO of course. JohnSankey 15:03, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

It is proposed that citations using only (URL-only) inline links be deprecated in preference to more complete citations. As guidelines recommend, inline links may be used because they are better than no references. But inline links being deprecated will mean they are not considered an acceptable citation style and replacement with more complete references is encouraged.

  • More information about sources is better than less information.
  • References with more detailed citations of source material are preferred over inline external links.
  • Wikipedia:Verifiability:
    • It is policy to provide sources.
    • Giving more information about a source is encouraged, implying a preference for more complete citations.
    • Editors should identify specific sources and provide references, linking to the source if it's online, and giving a citation if it isn't. Giving a full citation means that, if an online source is removed from the website at a later date, readers will still know how to track down the original article.
  • Inline link usage should be discouraged in at least the following, which already encourage more complete citations:

Inline URL-only links should be converted to have a link text, or better to full web references as described in Cite your sources including information such as the last modification date and author. Even minimal web reference citations are preferable to URL-only citations, as their title or description provides information to readers and records some information about the source in case the URL becomes invalid. —(SEWilco 07:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC))

Advantage of an inline link:
  • Such links can be accessed by directly following that single link.
Disadvantages of inline links:
  • It is harder to know what is linked without following a link
  • Lacking information what was linked, it might be difficult to find the new location or an equivalent if the original is moved or deleted.
  • There is no way to tell, just by looking, when two links go to the same place.
  • You have to check links one by one to know which is which.
Some examples of problems with URL-only inline links:
  • Links to news articles which vanish within a week or month.
  • Links to sources on services which present only a login screen with no information about the target material.
  • Reorganized web sites, such as the Governor of Louisiana Kathleen Blanco's web site having been reorganized and a number of Hurricane Katrina articles now contain month-old press release links which are now invalid.
—(SEWilco 07:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC))
  • We're currently supposed to give both: if it's an article that's online, we give a link to the article after the sentence or paragraph the source supports, and then in the References section at the end, we give a full citation, which is headline, byline, name of newspaper, date of publication, and date retrieved if desired. What is it you want to change exactly? SlimVirgin (talk) 08:28, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
    • I want to change the use of only an inline link from being considered an acceptable source reference. The format of a more complete citation is not an issue here, only emphasis that a URL-only link has less content than a fuller citation. (SEWilco 15:23, 11 October 2005 (UTC))
  • The use of in-line links is already discouraged, albeit weakly, in the MoS entry on links. I agree that encouraging people to include complete citations over in-line links is essential, but discouraging people from including in-line links is counterproductive. Is there a way to get a page set up that contains an in-line link report that would assist in robot-assisted conversions? Courtland 13:31, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
    • The intent is not to discourage inclusion of in-line links, but to encourage more complete citations. At present a URL-only link can be considered an acceptable citation style. I seek stronger confirmation that URL-only links can be replaced with more complete citations. (SEWilco 15:23, 11 October 2005 (UTC))

SEW, I have no objection to the use of more complete citations, but the use of inline links are not incompatible with that.

Examples:

  1. Mary had a little lamb [2].
  2. Mary had a little lamb (Mary's Lamb, 2005 [3]).
    • References: "Mary's Lamb". February 24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
  3. Mary had a little lamb (Mary's Lamb, 2005).
  4. Mary had a little lamb. [4]
    • References: ^ "Mary's Lamb". February 24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)

Obviously the first one is not very good (I wouldn't go so far as to say it is bad), but any of the other 3 are complete in themselves and should be acceptable, even though the second and third have inline links. In the past you have advocated replacing inline links with footnotes throughout, which I still believe is a bad idea as it requires two clicks to find the reference rather than one. While I wouldn't object to modifying WP:CITE (or whatever) to discourage form 1, I do think that Harvard style references with links (i.e. options 2 and 3) should still be allowed or even encouraged. (P.S. Edit wars over citation formats are WP:LAME). Dragons flight 16:27, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

The format of "more complete" citations is not an issue here, just clarification that more information on sources is better than the minimalist URL-only. The existing guidelines should more strongly encourage replacement of URL-only citation of sources. (SEWilco 17:28, 11 October 2005 (UTC))
Yes, I think we all agree fuller citation information is much better. So encouraging that over less information is a good thing. However, we need to stop short of saying we don't allow URL's only, because as Cite sources says, some form of citation, even if not ideal is much better than none. That said, where do we have it that fuller citation is not considered better and encouraged? If you see it, change it, but not so far as to say URL only is not allowed. - Taxman Talk 18:12, 11 October 2005 (UTC)


From a simple practical point of view, I want to strongly support this proposal. I spend quite some of my time verifying references. Plain links seem to be broken about 20% to 50% of the time. Fixing them is an almost impossible pain. To see what I mean, go to a random article several times till you find one with many links. Try opening each link from that article and verifying it. Repeat this, say, five times. You will soon realise that the task is hopeless and that sometimes you don't even know why the link was there. Try the same thing with proper references (with any system) and it is much easier.

The important point is that the person who makes the link can, in just about 30 seconds, make a full reference, whilst the person who has to fix it later will probably loose about 10 minutes per link. Both plain links and no references are unfair to those who come later. There is no excuse for them. Mozzerati 21:57, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

It is difficult to know how many articles actually have citations without the use of the citation templates, though I'm sure that some clever SQL could tap that information from the Wikipedia servers. To try and get a little perspective on this, though, I took a quick look at the templates in use for citing peer-reviewed journal articles and here's what I found:

I'm not sure what this says beyond "the citation templates are not heavily used. It also presents a plethora of options for the potential citation-adder to choose from (consider PMID 11138768 for a study of shopping behavior in the face of varying degrees of choice). One thing that could contribute to the lower usage for peer-reviewed journal templates is the ability to create an inline link to Pubmed by using the syntax PMID 15621726. This functionality was created to assist in the production of in-line links, albeit to a database of citations. Meandering on ... this points up that not all in-line links are created equal. In-line links to the WWW frontier ("Joe's Web Site and Info Repository") are likely to break unpredictably and frequently. Maybe we can find a middle ground here where we discourage links to the frontier while encouraging links to established information repositories, though that word "established" is a sticky one and a little too close to "establishment", with all that implies. Courtland 23:18, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I thought those numbers were probably low because there are 3000 articles which use {{ref}}. Considering how new templates are, and if users of {{ref}} are also likely to try to use templates for citations, I expected numbers closer to 3000. However, looking at a couple other templates showed higher numbers:
At least the numbers are of the same magnitude, and I didn't look at the variations of those templates. (SEWilco 16:46, 12 October 2005 (UTC))
It's good to encourage better citation in a references section, but we shouldn't discourage inline citation, or say anything that looks as though we're discouraging it, because it's very helpful to the reader, and most editors just won't provide full citations. Wikipedia:Verifiability is the policy page that mentions this (the other pages are just guidelines), and I think it gives an example of linking inline and then giving a full citation at the end. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:55, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Although I wouldn't use the expression "just guidelines", I agree with SlimVirgin on this one. --Francis Schonken 06:35, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Current phrasing encourages supplying a URL-only citation as being better than nothing, but also encourages more complete citations. (SEWilco 18:50, 13 October 2005 (UTC))
Yeah, of course I agree with current phrasing of WP:CITE - ;) - which is a delicate equilibrium of encouragements and discouragments. Of course this how-to guideline has to keep completely in line with the related official policy, which it does presently as far as I know, and which is one of the components of its delicate equilibrium. As far as I'm concerned there is presently no need to change that equilibrium of the WP:CITE how-to guideline. --Francis Schonken 08:07, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I think footnote citations are better, for several reasons. The first is that with more information. When a link becomes stale. The classic examples a citing a newspaper which then restricts access (good old NYT and the Indy) if the author and the date is in the footnote then all is not lost (and often a blog "fair copy" can be found). Second it encourages people to cite pages from references which may not be on line. But while I think footnotes should be encouraged, I do not think that in-line links should be discouraged. Philip Baird Shearer 08:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I would like to invite both SEWilco and SlimVirgin not to go changing the text of WP:CITE during this discussion, without there being consensus about these changes - My words that I agree with current phrasing of WP:CITE were not yet cold (note that I wrote "current phrasing" in the sense of what I thought it was while this discussion was going on, while I didn't think anybody taking part in the discussion would be changing that phrasing unsolicited, well, I reverted such a change yesterday), and now changes to WP:CITE started occurring again, by people taking part in this discussion.
So, I'm about to revert these changes, which will take me some time not being a sysop, but again please no changes that change the equilibrium of that guideline during this discussion here (or at least have the courtesy to discuss such changes on wikipedia talk:cite sources before applying them).
Why I opposed to the wording "just a guideline" higher on is because writing a how-to & style guideline for how to put in practice the "general principles" laid down in "official policy" can need as much attention as working out these principles; and because people wanting to keep to the principles, almost naturally will have a look at the practical recommendations too. --Francis Schonken 09:48, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
SlimVirgin is at it again. Frankly, I'm growing a bit tired of this. No, I don't oppose adding more clarification to how to implement Harvard references - I oppose to changing the (delicate!) balance of the intro section while talks are going on, I oppose to reverting to versions containing errors (example: "in-text references is very useful..." references used in plural in that sentence) - I oppose to messing with the lay-out in order to push a POV (as if by miracle Harvard references would no longer be in-line references, and all external links a subset to Harvard references), and I oppose to removing the "style" template (where and when was there consensus about that?). I'd rather have SlimVirgin would mention here or on the WP:CITE talk page if there is something not completely coherent with verifiability and NOR guidelines, or would not be a reflection of current consensus. --Francis Schonken 19:02, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
PS: it is preferable that guidelines rather give recommendations than instructions, that's an important point of Wikipedia:How to create policy#Guidelines for creating policies and guidelines, the "flexibility" topic is repeated twice in that list of recommendations. --Francis Schonken 19:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
I have no idea what you're talking about. What's the connection between Harvard referencing and inline sources? How did the edits change the balance of anything? What was the POV? And how am I "at it"? Your edits introduced some odd English, and you seem not to want to give examples of Harvard referencing, which is odd, Please leave my edits in place, or list your specific objections here with the reasons. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:36, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Some phrasing indicates confusion between "URL-only inline links" and "links in text to citations elsewhere". The former is what in this discussion is often referred to as an "inline link". The former is less preferred than the latter, which are some sort of link to a citation. Although the latter may involve a link in text, a term such as "footnote" is common. Footnotes might use a linked number or Harvard reference notation, but both are just indicating the source material (which has a detailed citation elsewhere in the article). (SEWilco 01:55, 16 October 2005 (UTC))

I still don't know what this means. Harvard referencing is writing (Smith, 2005) at the end of a sentence to describe a book Smith wrote in 2005, which is then fleshed out with a full citation in the references section. It's not a link. Anyway, URL links as sources are encouraged according to the policy pages, are widely used, and are very helpful to the reader. They are meant to be cited fully in the references section. Many editors don't do this (just as they don't do many things they should), but they're supposed to. I'm still unclear about what's being proposed here. A URL link isn't a footnote and isn't a Harvard reference. Sorry if I'm being dense. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:03, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
A Harvard style reference establishes the connection between the text and a full citation. This "connection" links the two even if there is no "HTML link" involved. URL-only links are encouraged only as being better than no citation. What is proposed here is emphasis that more detailed citations are preferred to URL-only inline links; can you point out a policy/guideline which is encouraging "URL-only links to sources" in preference to more detailed citations? (SEWilco 02:20, 16 October 2005 (UTC))
The policy (policy, not a guideline) states that inline links are good and should be accompanied by a full citation in the references section. When you say that links pointing to citations in the text are preferred, I think you're doing original research. There is no policy stating that, and editors in my experience like to use inline links. What I do, on the pages I edit, is add full citations to the references sections when editors forget to do it and add only a link, so it gets done eventually, though not necessarily by the same editor. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:26, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Dear SlimVirgin, trying to tailor wikipedia guidelines according to What I do, on the pages I edit,... is Original Research. Continuously messing with the text of WP:CITE while screaming "I don't know what this is about", and not seeking consensus here prior to performing such changes, is at least un-WP:CIVIL, and very near to disturbing wikipedia to prove a point. Sorry, probably indeed you don't understand what this is about thus far, so need to talk about it, don't you think, prior to changes? --Francis Schonken 09:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I cannot follow this argument between SlimVirgin and Francis Schonken; can someone elsplain it to me? I understand that there is a debate about inline citations. But the Harvard system is not the smae thing as in line citations. The Harvard system is an alternative to foot and endnotes the works my providing citations in the text (often, where a foot or nenote number would go) that refer to works in the bibliography of works-cited section. This system is increasingly favored in academic journals because it allow both for precision and convenience. It seems to me that an article about a non-controversial topic that draws primarily on a small number of general references may not benefit from the Harvard system. But any article that draws from a long list of sources, especially when these sources provide divergent views on a controversial topic, the Harvard system is extraordirilly useful and appropriate. But this has noting to do with the topic of this discussion, which is inline versus more complete citations. The Harvard system includes complete citations and therefore dow not create the conflict this section is concerned with, Slrubenstein | Talk 21:50, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't follow the argument either. Harvard referencing and the issue of inline links are two entirely separate matters. SlimVirgin (talk) 08:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
This topic is about inline links vs. more complete sources citation techniques. So, part of the discussion is about Harvard references being yes or no a more complete source citation technique.
The topic is also about WP:CITE: which citation techniques should be favoured most in that guideline: should it be inline links or any of the more complete sources citation techniques? And that is about balance, while a prior version of the WP:CITE guideline stated that there was "no consensus" about which citation techniques were most favoured by the wikipedia community ("there is currently no consensus on a precise prescribed citation format in Wikipedia", taken from this version of the WP:CITE guideline)
What I say is that SlimVirgin's mode of operation (and the mode of operation of some other editors...) is not very much contributing to the emergence of a consensus on these precedence issues (i.e.: which citation style recommendation gets precedence over which). The mode of operation I advise against is the one where major changes are operated on the guideline text, without prior consensus on the talk page (which could, as far as I'm concerned, also be this Village Pump/policy page too, while clearly linked from the WP:CITE talk page)
Note that the "style-guideline" template says: "please use the discussion page to propose major changes", a recommendation constantly ignored by some of these editors. --Francis Schonken 07:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, still don't get it. Harvard referencing is a very complete way of giving citations, used by editors all over the world. Are you arguing against that as well as against inline links, or what? SlimVirgin (talk) 08:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, still don't get what you're steering at. What's your reason to continuously try to unbalance WP:CITE? WP:CITE promotes Harvard references. Maybe not as much as you'd like. There are other wikipedians that would gladly promote other reference styles more than Harvard style. Why can't you live with it that WP:CITE presents a balance of these preferences, according to current consensus? Please read Wikipedia talk:Cite sources and its archives if you're not convinced the present balance corresponds to the present consensus. And if you're completely clueless what "balance" means in this context, please rather regard that as a reason not to edit WP:CITE prior to the establishment of a new consensus on that issue, than as a reason to push your POV at all cost. --Francis Schonken 08:33, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Stalking and Assume Good Faith

A recent Arbitration Committee decision adopted as a principle a proposal on stalking. I have added it to Assume Good Faith, as the formulation relates to that guideline, with a view to adopting it as good practice. Future arbitration cases are likely to revisit this principle. Please review and comment, and modify if required. --Tony SidawayTalk 13:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, maybe this needs reconsidering:
  • WP:STALK is now one of the three shortcuts to wikipedia:Assume good faith
  • wikipedia:stalking redirects to Wikipedia:Harassment (presently only one shortcut: WP:HA)
  • There is a "wikistalking" section in WP:HA, see Wikipedia:Harassment#Wikistalking
  • That section lists two "prior" cases involving stalking, so if a third case is mentioned, I'd only do it there (and only if this still learns something new compared to the two mentioned cases)
  • Could we move on promoting WP:HA from "proposed" to "effective" guideline, I suppose the prior cases suggest the guideline is enforcable?
  • further, re-redirect WP:STALK to Wikipedia:Harassment, adapting the "shortcut" template on both the "assume good faith" and "harassment" guidelines.
  • And make links in a "see also" section from WP:FAITH to WP:HA, and the other way around, thus showing the guidelines are related (instead of mentioning "one" of the three stalking cases in WP:FAITH...).
? good idea? --Francis Schonken 14:00, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I hadn't seen WP:HA before. It could do with trimming for readability, but it seems very workmanlike, summarising good precedents. I think the text belongs there and there should probably be a "See also" on WP:FAITH to WP:HA. That the latest principle is an outgrowth of WP:FAITH and WP:CIVIL should also be mentioned at WP:HA. I think most of WP:HA is uncontroversial enough that it would probably be made policy soon. --Tony SidawayTalk 14:17, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Gave partial execution to the points above (while someone had already erased the "Stalk" connections from WP:AGF), please check whether I did a good job! --Francis Schonken 12:08, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Lists and references

This topic grew from a conversation between Willmcw and myself here and here.

My original idea is that lists should cite sources like any other page, for example Greek dialects lists these dialects: while experts have developed differring systems for grouping the ancient dialects, that page gives three lists, each with a reference to the expert making this particular listing.

So, when we speak about stand-alone lists, usually in the format [[list of ....]], surely the thing is not different and there should be references also, for example List of compositions by Franz Schubert has an external reference to the Deutsch catalogue (which is the "official" list of compositions by Schubert).

A specific case is when inclusion in a list can be a matter of debate: for example List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers has a footnote system to indicate which sources justify which inclusion in the list. (PS: the footnote system of that page is a bit antiquated, and should be converted to wikipedia:footnotes standards, but that is not the question here).

Now List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people and List of gay celebrities use another principle: presently there is not a single external reference, for which justification is provided by Willmcw:

  1. "List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people" (LGLBP), it is considerably more extensive than "List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers"
  2. Due to the nature of LGLBP, miscellaneous editors frequently add spurious material to it. As a principal maintainer of the list, I greatly appreciate the simple criteria of biography inclusion. More importantly, I think that that criteria is the best NPOV system for properly evaluating such claims. If we went to having footnotes for each entry then the maintainers of the list would have to evaluate each reference about subjects who may be totally unknown.
  3. It is much better for the editors of respective biographies to evaluate the assertions as they know the subjects and sources best. However, if there is an external reference of high respectability then it might be used as an additional source. There have been some cases where editors of the biographies have resisted mention of a subject's orientation despite evidence where a fallback reference would be appropriate for establishing at least a "debated" orientation.
  4. In the case of the LGLBP, relying on internal sourcing has proven very effective.
  5. That choice was the result of a long and thorough discussion.

Although I see the point of this justification, I think the system is not as flawless as presented by Willmcw:

  1. Erik Satie has been on the list for months, although in the Satie article he was not insinuated to be gay for more than a few weeks a long time ago, so apparently the LGLBP listing was not checked thoroughly for coherence with the wikipedia article, nor for coherence with the "gay composer" list (not listing Satie).
  2. There is a risk of circularity of references, when accepting a "categorisation", introduced in an article without external reference, to be "reference" for inclusion in the list. The example discussed with Willmcw is Dreuxilla Divine, a drag queen, categorised "Gay, lesbian or bisexual people", against the wikipedia:categorisation of people guideline that says not to categorise with a sensitive category, unless the article reflects it (which was not the case in DD's case) - so external references are lacking, and might even be untracable in this case.
  3. Although such "sensitive" topics lists would probably always require some kind of monitoring, my idea is that external references directly in the list would somehow make that less cumbersome (but, I'm really not that experienced in maintaining such lists).

--Francis Schonken 07:36, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Francis, with all due respect you do not seem to understand the criteria we're using on List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers. It has no footnotes, other than a couple of old links leftover. New additions to the article are sourced internally, that is the biographies of the subjects must have a reference to their orientation, but the list itself does not need references. Yes, the list needs someone to go over over it and check for conformity to the criteria, a project that no one has adopted. I don't ubnderstand if your complaint is with criteria of the list, the adherence to the criteria (in either case you should bring this matter to the article talk page) or with the general idea of using internal sourcing for lists, which your points don't seem to directly address. -Willmcw 08:10, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, there's no "complaint" of mine. Just trying to figure out what's best for wikipedia. Personally I favour the "external references", but I also understand the reasons to do otherwise.

Would it be possible to provide some link to where the present approach for lists was discussed and finally decided. I would have no problem to adapt WP:CITE mentioning this exception, if that is the consensus in the wikipedia community, and a link can be given to where the rationale is explained. --Francis Schonken 09:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Further, the point with instances like Erik Satie and Dreuxilla Divine is that the editors of the biographies can best evaluate the sources and decide whether an assertion of a particular orientation is verifiable, etc. In the case of Satie, the editors decided that the evidence was that he was heterosexual to asexual and thus that name should not appear on the list. In the case of Divine, the editors decided to add the LGB person category. Should they document it better? Sure. But those chores should be handled by the biographers, not the list editors. -Willmcw 08:17, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Re. Erik Satie:

  • The main problem I mentioned was the considerable time delay between homosexuality claims being removed from the Erik Satie article, and Erik Satie being removed from LGLBP (the "main" list) - I estimate this time delay about half a year, but with some checking of diffs I could give you a more exact number. There's no "reproach" in that, just comparing this system of "internal" references, with a more straight application of "external references", also applied to lists.
  • So, I compared that to List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers, old system with footnotes containing external references: that list appeared more "immune" to the flaw of listing someone with a doubtful assignation.
  • I also pointed out that the present system without direct external references apparently does not cross-check lists (in the Satie case: LGLBO and List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers).

In general I suppose I think this division of "chores" between "list editors" and "article editors" more prone to getting off-track somewhere in the process, than direct external references for every list. But again, that is only my personal view, based primarily on the Erik Satie example: a single example is maybe not enough to decide either way - for that reason I'd like others to join and tell what their experiences are, which might go in another direction than my personal experience. --Francis Schonken 09:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

"[T]he present system" is Wikipedia, which means volunteer editors who eschew hard tasks. Everytime I sit down to cross check the list my eyes glaze over. (OK, maybe I just need to have my optical prescription corrected). But seriously, the problem of maintenance occurs no matter what "system" is used. The internal sourcing system makes sense for lists. Whether it be "List of Texans" or "List of left-handed persons", the list editors should be able to rely upon the WP biographies to have the correct info without independently checking and sourcing the facts themselves. To do otherwise would require a serious duplication of effort. -Willmcw 10:03, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
In my experience in attempting to ensure NPOV and factual accuracy of several lists, I have seen that lists have to have certain components, without which these lists evolve into endless edit-wars, vandalism, POV pushing and other problems. To avoid rtes pitfalls, lists need the following:
  1. An unambigous and narrow criteria for inclusion, e. g. three lists better than one as in: List of gay composers, List of lesbian composers, List of bisexual composers, rather than List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers; or List of avatars , List of messiah claimants, List of people that say they are Jesus, rather than List of people who have said that they are gods. If a person fits into two lists, list him/her in two lists.
  2. When defining a criteria, consensus must be reached before progressing into adding list items, and care should be taken not to dwelve into original research when defining that criteria
  3. The criteria should be clearly stated at the top of the page;
  4. Each entry requires one or more external (or WP) references. Entries without references are not allowed;
Another possibility is to evaluate the use of Categories rather than lists. Categories and subcategories can be created to accomodate most of the content of these lists. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ 16:09, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Re. 1, I don't see a problem to have long lists too. There's, for instance Wikipedia:Naming conventions (long lists): even if there are a lot of LGBT sublists, I think the question for a general list is justifiable as much, and I don't see a problem with it.
Re. 2 & 3, I think this doesn't acknowledge the difference between lists and categories as explained in wikipedia:categories, lists, and series boxes: as much as I defend categories to have strict definitions (and even these are sometimes rewritten afterwards, see discussions going on at category talk:terrorists), in the same measure I defend lists to be a more open approach. With external references for lists the validity/credibility of the inclusion depends on the validity/credibility of the external source, and wikipedians don't have to break their head about it.
Re. 4, of course I agree with that, and this is also one of the "natural" differences between cats and lists (while cats lack these individual direct external references completely, category inclusion solely depends on content of the respective wikipedia articles).
In general I think Categories and Lists each have their own specificity, and can be used alongside one another, each in their own right, where lists can definitely be broader than categories. --Francis Schonken 07:17, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Content forking

This is listed as just an essay and it's pretty much stating the obvious - we don't fork articles. But for those editors prone to rules lawyering, is there a policy or guideline that does spell it out? If not, why not paste a policy template on this essay? SchmuckyTheCat 05:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

The worst way to deal with rules lawyering is creating more rules, and I think don't fork articles follows from both some of our general principles (like WP:NOT) and plain common sense. I have no specific objections to declaring that essay policy, but I haven't read it carefully. --fvw* 05:09, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Agreed on your first statement, which is why I'm hoping a simpler formulation already existed. SchmuckyTheCat 06:08, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Expanded Wikipedia:Content forking a bit, for example made a connection to wikipedia:summary style which explains a technique how to split, while avoiding content forking. And added an example where POV split was denied by wikipedia community.

Also put the {{proposed}} template on top, so that the community can assess whether or not to make it a guideline ("policy", as in Category:Wikipedia official policy probably not so suitable IMHO, implicitly it is covered by NPOV policy)

Asking for other guidelines who reflect the no content forking: the wikipedia:naming conventions (people) also indirectly advises to give each person one single article, with the most obvious name, and only use "summary style" type of splits for those so famous that they get more than one page (which, all in all happens not so often, and is as far as I know normally not from a "circumvent NPOV" outset). Whether a similar guideline can be found re. articles not on people I do not know. --Francis Schonken 21:58, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Bypassing NPOV policy by the use of categories

In articles whose subjects are controversial and disputes exist, the NPOV policy requires that we describe the controversy, present conflicting views without asserting them, without advocating any one of them, and with the understanding that views held only by a minority should not be represented as though they are significant minority views, and perhaps should not be represented at all, etc.

I bolded article in the preceding paragraph. Please appreciate that the wikipedia:NPOV tutorial makes distinction how to apply NPOV in "main" or "article" namespace and in category namespace (for that matter, NPOV tutorial also distinguishes how to apply NPOV for article naming). --Francis Schonken 06:51, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

What happens when we create a category that is based on a POV? For example: Category:Charismatic religious leaders. This category states: :This category contains religious leaders whose main basis of authority was or is based on charismatic authority, following's classification of authority. The creator of this category then proceeds to add a number of people to this list. My concern are several:

  • No attempt is made to provide sources that state that these people are considered "charismatic religious leaders', bypassing Wikipedia:Cite sources
    From Wikipedia:Categorization of people#Additional categories: Categories are only assigned as the result of an individual assessment of the content of an article, which should exclude categorisation in that category if the assignation is doubtful, certainly if it is unreferenced for sensitive topics. --Francis Schonken 06:51, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
  • In cases in which there is a dispute about a person fitting such categorization, the opportunity to present all POVs and describe the controversy as needed for NPOV is bypassed. When placing a person in this category, we are in fact bypassing NPOV by not allowing this necessary step to take place.
    The POV/NPOV issue should for each of these persons be treated in the article on this person, the article on the person then can only be added to the category if it can be considered to be part of a set of representative and unquestioned examples (Wikipedia:Categorization of people#Additional categories). So, if doubtful/disputable: don't categorise in such sensitive category. --Francis Schonken 06:51, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Some editors are claiming that if one source describes a person as a "charismatic religious leader", that is sufficient for including that person in the category. Again, this bypasses NPOV by presenting a minority POV as significant, and in this case, the only POV.
    Indeed, categories cannot be as inclusive as, for instance, lists: see also wikipedia:categories, lists, and series boxes - on a list such person could be included, giving the source reference(s), leaving it to the encyclopedia reader to make up his own mind what (s)he thinks about the value of such references. See also topic above about #Lists and references--Francis Schonken 06:51, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
  • In addition, there is a very likely element of WP:NOR, as many of the people included in this category by the editor that created it is based on his assessment of these people and his interpretation of Weber and the application of that characterization to certain people.
    I'm not that experienced in this topic, but if the Weber method for distinghuising this type of characterization is precise, and generally acceptable, and if it is clearly indicated in the category definition (that is the text on the category page), it should be usable. But still, that would not on itself justify the inclusion of all articles on people that fall under that definition: for each of the persons the case should be undisputed (as mentioned above), and also, again according to Wikipedia:Categorization of people#Additional categories, the "charismatic" epithet should for each of the persons included in the category be one of the 4 or 5 words that best characterize this person. Someone might be charismatic, but if (s)he didn't go down in history for being charismatic, the categorization would better not be applied. For instance, Mussolini "might" be charismatic according to the Weber definition, but he went down in history as a dictator very much more than as a charismatic authority. Madonna "might" even be both a "charismatic authority" in the Weber definition, and using religion as part of that exercing of "charismatic authority", yet (up till now) these aspects are not likely to be the characteristics that spring in mind foremost when describing this person. --Francis Schonken 06:51, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

In summary, my concern is the use of categories to bypass the non-negotiable policy of NPOV. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 12:45, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Note this category was recently nominated for deletion although it was closed with no consensus reached. Deletion discussion archived at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 October 3#Category:Charismatic religious leaders. I myself shared jossi fresco's concerns above. Steve block talk 12:57, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Categorization of people ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 14:48, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I have no favor for or against this category. I just wish to point out something in your statement. You questioned "cite sources", yet you provided 2 articles on Wikipedia which they say they are referecing: Max Weber and charismatic authority. The latter source also revokes the WP:NOR, as it must be encylocpedic or it would not have a Wiki article. As for the question of it not being deleted. Based on the discussion, some of which I stated above, the rules for consensus state that some find consensus at above 50% or 2/3 majority, and others find it at 70% or above. Due to the amount of controversy and complaints received over categories just being deleted "at will", I chose to use the 70% or above consensus. I take in account all the comments and votes of the discussion and try to weigh in where the consensus is. This particular discussion, I fealt there was not consensus to delete, so I closed it as no consensus. CFD policy states that you can bring the category back for deletion approximately after 1 week, and if you feel that strongly about it, then I urge you to do so. Thank you. «»Who?¿?meta 21:56, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Note that I am not advocating here for the deletion of this Category:charismatic religious leaders (even if I believe that this category should be deleted). I am raising a concern (that has been explored somewhat at Wikipedia:Categorization of people and Wikipedia_Talk:Categorization of people) regarding the bypassing of NPOV by the use of categories. As per your comments please note that although there is a source charismatic authority, that is a distinction made by Max Weber, these sources do not specifically labels a person to be a "religious charismatic leader". A good analogy could be Pathological_liar. The fact that there is such an article does not means that you can create a Category:Politicians pathological liars and add (politician name) to it. So, if there is a distinction called "charismatic authority", we could only add a person to that category if notable sources have labeled that person to be such, otherwise it would be WP:NOR. And if the case was that the "charismatic authority" of such a person was disputed, we are not allowing NPOV by the fact that there is no possibility of presenting the controversy and all sides of the dispute. That is my point. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 00:58, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
That's understandable, and my comments were mostly meant for the broader audience, as I believe yours were as well. I do, however, feel it is POV, but there is little to be done about the inclusion of articles on CFD, but we have many categories like that, that often get thrown on CFD just for that reason. But I agree with your other assessments as well, they do lack sources, I was just pointing out that the ones referenced were better than none, albeit they may have not been used properly. «»Who?¿?meta 10:33, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
(comment to Jossifresco's comment above:) Well, I suppose that I think the "explored somewhat" in the expression explored somewhat at Wikipedia:Categorization of people to be a serious underestimation of Wikipedia:Categorization of people - there have been serious attempts to make categories more inclusive than the limits now expressed in that guideline, but none of these alternative proposals seemed as likely to saveguard NPOV: "lists" is still defined as the way out for also including the more doubtful cases.
If Weber has a "workable" definition for "charismatic authority" that would maybe make a better category name (using that definition as a category definition) - If I understand you correctly, you also would feel more at ease with category:charismatic authorities, than with the present category name adding the "religious" epithet? --Francis Schonken 06:51, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

User-specific information in other namespaces

Are there any guidelines for which namespaces should or shouldn't contain user-specific information, and how? I know that many users use things in the Image: and Template: namespaces for their userpages, but there's been a long debate on WP:CfD where people are saying that it's not appropriate to have categories for organizing your userpages. Is the Category: namespace different? I've asked several times on the page why other users think that categories for organizing userpages are harmful, and I've been unable to get an answer. -- Creidieki 04:17, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

It's been pointed out on CfD, although I'm not sure if we have guideline saying so or not, that categories for an individual user's subpages do not serve either an encyclopedic or a community purpose: and those should be the uses of all namespaces. The various categories grouping Wikipedians together at least serve the latter purpose. Make a list on your userpage or something. -Splashtalk 04:26, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Misuse of the term Timeline in article titles

I've noticed a bad habit by Wikipedia writers of calling their chronology articles "timelines." But a timeline is a graphical representation of history, usually involving a horizontal line crossed by short vertical lines accompanied by dates. Other graphical elements can be involved, such as icons or pictures.

So, generally, an article called by the name Timeline is really a Chronology and should be retitled accordingly. This misuse of the term "timeline" is widespread throughout Wikipedia and needs to be changed with a new policy. Therefore I've posted a notice to two articles that there is a dispute over a factual issue, in this case the issue is linguistic: the use of the most correct word for titling the article. Those articles are Timeline of the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, where the conversation began, and List of themed timelines.

I will now set forth my case, as stated in the talk sections of these articles.


Definition of Timeline

Miriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Function: noun
1 : a table listing important events for successive years within a particular historical period
2 usually time·line /'tIm-"lIn/ : a schedule of events and procedures :
TIMETABLE 2


Random House Unabridged Dictionary Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.

1. a linear representation of important events in the order in which they occurred.
2. a schedule; timetable. Also,time'line".


Encarta® World English Dictionary [North American Edition] © & (P)2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

(plural time lines)
noun
Definitions:
chronology shown pictorially: a linear representation of significant events in a subject area such as the history of art, shown in chronological order


The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

time·line ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tmln)
n.
A schedule of activities or events; a timetable.
A chronology.
A representation or exhibit of key events within a particular historical period, often consisting of illustrative visual material accompanied by written commentary, arranged chronologically.


Wikictionary

Noun
timeline or time line
  1. a graphical representation of a chronological sequence of events (past or future); a chronology
  2. a schedule of activities; a timetable


As for the definition of chronology, I don't think that's in dispute. Nonetheless, the Second College Edition, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines it as:

1. The determination of dates and the sequence of events.
2. The arrangement of events in time.
3. A chronological list or table.

Now, given all this, it is clear that we have two different words for two different things and can therefore, when using them properly, clearly distinguish between the two. But some people will counter that language is a changing thing (which it is) and so, given the definitions provided, the meaning of "timeline" may be in transition. Thus, if "timeline" is used to mean "chronology" frequently enough, such as in hip venues like Wikipedia, it will soon come to actually mean that.

And this hypothetical projection into the future is true enough. But if that were to occur it would be an unfortunate development. We would then have two words for "chronology" and no word that would unambiguously indicate the graphical representation of time in a true timeline. Therefore, when we meant this latter, we would have to add an adjective, as in "true" timeline, "graphical" timeline, or whatever. This is needlessly cumbersome.

Therefore I recommend that Wikipedia establish a policy for the correct use of these two terms consistently through the various articles and that editors carry this policy out.

-- 68.49.159.131 Fred

Your citations above show that pretty much all of your sources include "a chronology" or a "schedule" as a meanign of "timeline". The "graphical represntation" meaning may be the most common, but it is clearly not the only meaning of "timeline" so your argumetn falls to the ground. DES (talk) 02:29, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

More importantly, no Wikipedia article is only an image, so if an article is entitled "Timeline," it means a metaphorical one. There's no confusion. As a gentle reminder, Wikipedia will take you much more seriously if you get a user name. Superm401 | Talk 03:36, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I can't imagine what purpose it would serve to change every appearence of timeline in every article to chronology or some such thing. Timeline can be used the way Wikipedia uses it; I doubt very much Wikipedia will kill the graphical meaning as long as there are 3rd graders and construction paper. ;) -- SCZenz 21:27, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Protection of Main Page Articles

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to bring up this topic, but I've noticed that there has been a spurt in vandalism of articles featured on the main page. Much of it has consisted of pictures of genitalia and such, along with expletives that need not be mentioned. This raises the issue of whether prominent articles should be protected as long as they are featured on such an accessible page. The last thing I want to look at when inquiring about the status of Saddam Hussein's legal proceedings is a penis or an anus. I can only imagine the shock a first-time visitor would experience at such a sight, and the attendant damage it would cause to the encyclopedia's reputation. Impaciente 01:46, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

That's a valid point, but it's been addressed many times before. The decision, which I believe is likely final, was that we will protect the version on the main page, but keep the other version open for editing, despite the risk of vandalism. This is because we want everyone to be able to see for themselves that Wikipedia is serious about allowing everyone to contribute to articles. Also, vandalism of articles featured on the Main Page is usually very quickly reverted because so many people are watching them. Superm401 | Talk 03:24, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Template parameter case standardization

Some templates are using capitalized parameters and some are using lowercase parameters. This has been particularly awkward when switching between similar templates. I suggest lowercase be the standard, following the conventions of using lowercase when it is not required. (Conversion can be simplified by using the new default syntax, i.e. {{{url|{{{URL}}}}}}, to accept two template names until existing invocations are converted.) (SEWilco 15:27, 21 October 2005 (UTC))

English (English)

Has anyone ever suggested having a separate English English wikipaedia , so as to avoid the universal American bias of articles ( an example being the article on Registered Nurse (R.N.)). Also , a separate English English wikipaedia would also satisfy those of us who would prefer to read an on-line encyclopaedia in our own language instead of encountering the unusual spellings of American 'English'. This would stop the ongoing discussion of the spelling of the word color /colour.

Many times, and no, it's not happening. The different words make up far less than 1% of all words on Wikipedia, so the two would be almost entirely identical. --Golbez 14:13, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Spelling considerations aside, if this is about the content of Registered Nurse (i.e., too focused on the USA), then the real answer is to edit the article as it now stands and add a section on Registered Nurses in the United Kingdom. That's a better solution to the "universal American bias" than forking. Seeing the occasional funny spelling is a small price to pay for not having two encyclopedias, each with increasingly divergent content and each with half as many contributors. –Hajor 14:48, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
the unusual spellings of American 'English': if an American spelling is unusual, feel free to alter it. For example, New Yorker–approved "coöperate" is less usual than regular American "cooperate" and thus normally can be so altered. Or do you mean that all American spellings are unusual when they differ from British spellings? Is "jail", for example, an "unusual" alternative to "gaol"? -- Hoary 15:09, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes , to me , all American spellings are unusual. Why can't I read wikipaedia in my language as I am used to reading it. If not , then wikipedia should admit to being an exclusively American production , and then I would appreciate that I'm reading something American rather than international.It sould then be called American English wikipedia.

I understand that American English bothers you, but it would be a terrible waste of effort to have a British and American English Wikipedia. Superm401 | Talk 01:02, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Some article use British spelling to which is also weird to me. For example, Yoghurt. Even Australian english is used in some articles. Falphin 01:26, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Anyone who wants to take on the job is free to create a fork of wikipedia in which only UK english will be accepted. DES (talk) 02:30, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
I would be very disappointed to see forkings to variants of English as I think it would undermine the quality of the encyclopedia considerably ... which is another way of saying that an American-only encyclopedia would be inferior to an all-English encyclopedia. Let's put it another way ... should I demand that news of the BBC World Service be broadcast into the United States with the British accent and phrases replaced by Midwestern accent and Americanisms, otherwise I just won't listen to it? Sounds rather odd when put that way, I think. Courtland 03:16, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
I've made a suggestion at Category_talk:Redirects_from_alternate_spellings about using a variant on {{R from alternate spelling}}. Perhaps a discussion on this could be engaged here or at the Category talk page. Courtland 15:45, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia really doesn't use American spellings exclusively, it's just that those are the ones that leap out at an "English English" person. Our manual of style describes how different variants of English are used within Wikipedia. FreplySpang (talk) 17:09, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

wikipedians that are not famous

in "category:1988 births" user:SoothingR has added him/herself (or some one else has added him/her). Is this allowed? I don't want to dob him/her in, but surely we can't all put our names on these kind of lists? --Ballchef 02:02, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

There are also users on the 1984, 1981, and 1989 births. --Ballchef 02:07, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Oh crap the're every where: 1971, 1968, 1954. --Ballchef 02:18, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
I removed the onese in 1971, 1968, and 1954. -- SCZenz 02:30, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
No, it's not allowed. --Robert Merkel 02:13, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
It's likely an error about the purpose of those categories, so I would recommend being nice about fixing it. -- SCZenz 02:15, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Should i ask them, or tell them, or just do it? --Ballchef 02:19, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd just remove it and write a nice edit sumamry. Broken S 02:21, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Concur. Something like my apologies for editing your page, but "category:19xx births" is for articles, not users might be a reasonabe comment. -- SCZenz 02:24, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Update

I have gone through and removed all users from the categories, from 1940 to 1999. There's one who used a biography template that put him in the category, who I left a message with and will follow up on. -- SCZenz 05:34, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Are sports scores encyclopedic?

Recently, Aranda56 deleted two season's worth of game results from the article USC Trojans Football. I'm not necessarily questioning that decision (and in fact I think the article looked rather cluttered with too many scores), but the edit summary "WP:NOT a scoreboard" made me think. WP:NOT does not say anything about wether or not lists of sports scores are encyclopedic. They would seem on one hand to fit the "indiscriminate collection of information" criterion, but on the other hand to be an almanac-style listing of information, which is considered suitable for inclusion. Another thing to note is that while listings of sports scores do not seem to be generally prevelant on Wikipedia, we do have extensive listings of sports scores for some topics, particularly the 2004 Summer Olympics. See for example: Volleyball at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's Beach Volleyball, Swimming at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's 400 metre Freestyle, etc. So, is there a policy on the inclusion of sports scores? If not, should there be one? Is there consensus? -- Tyler 03:04, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Lists of sports scores–with the possible exception of major events (sporting championships like the World Series, World Cup of Soccer, that sort of thing; the Olympics)–I've found tend to add clutter rather than clarity. They seem kind of almanacky, rather than encyclopedic. Having a Wins/Losses/Ties/etc. record summary for sports teams by season is probably reasonable, too.
Might I suggest one of our sister projects? Perhaps start a wikibook sports almanac? I don't know if this type of thing fits the mandate of wikisource...?
Wikipedia IS an almanac, though. However, a Wikibook of the stats of a league over a long period of time might be useful as well. --Golbez 04:28, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
A Wikibook is a textbook - not a separate almanac, that's the way I interpret it, and they'd almost certainly reject that kind of content. For more discussion on this, see Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Sports results. For the record, I find sports results perfectly encyclopedic (I'll probably have to admit at this point that most of my contributions to WP are about sports results) since they can be written about in a verifiable, NPOV way and hold importance to a large number of people, and can have uses in research about the team's history and biographical research later on. I'll also point out that our page on the 2005 Tour de France was on of the most visited during July 2005, when the race was on (yes, I realise TdF is more important than college gridiron, but it shows that people expect this kind of content here). Sam Vimes 07:09, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Thank you very much! That was exactly the kind of discussion I was trying to find. -- Tyler 08:03, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Advertising

What is the current policy for advertising? I have spotted a user 70.60.164.150 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) which is spamming pages with advertising links. Is this vandalism? Where should this be reported (if it should)? Any guidelines?

Federal law [5] requires that Wikipedia maintain records on the subjects of sexually explicit photos and media which we host, including real names, ages, and identification documents for verification, if the images and media are not from Florida. Because Wikipedia has no such records, has no appropriate mechanisms for such records, and should not be exposed to the penalties that law prescribes (fines, 5 years imprisonment), I have proposed a criterion to speedy delete these images. Please see the Wikipedia_talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Images of Sexually Explicit Activity to help reach a consensus. --Mm35173 21:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

A copyvio tag has been placed on List of Guantanamo Bay detainees and the contnet otherwise blanked (as is normal for alleged copyright infrigments). The claim is that the page infringes the copyright of the Washington post in its published list of detainees. Several editors have stated that under the circumstances, there is no copyright infringement. WP:CP has a long backlog.

There is some discussion of this on WP:CP, but rather more on Talk:List of Guantanamo Bay detainees. Please visit and comment on this issue. Note that this page recently survived a deletion debate, and that the person who placed the copyvio tag voted to delete the page during that debate.

I am tempted to take the unusual step of restoring the content to visibility, but retaining the copyvio tag, given the unusual circumstances. i would like feedback on the wisdom of this course before I take it. DES (talk) 15:45, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

What unuslu circumstances? (SEWilco 19:13, 19 October 2005 (UTC))
Apart from the standard copyright in the typesetting and layout, a publisher does not usually have copyright in a mere list. In any event, it seems both that further or additional work has been invested by the Wiki compilers to make the list more comprehensive and comprehensible, and that there are several overlapping sources, including the Post's list, which verify the whole work as it appears in Wiki. I accept that a "safety first" policy might be appropriate for the generality of situations, but in this case, it would seem stange to blank the page unless and until a cogent legal argument had been adfvanced to substantiate the allegation of a copyright violation. David91 19:37, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Why is "this case" different from another copyright violation situation? Why not use only the information from public sources? (SEWilco 19:57, 19 October 2005 (UTC))
What does public source mean? Is the Washington Post not one? -- SCZenz 20:04, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
  • By "unusual circumstances" I meant 1) this is an alphabetically ordered list of allegedly factual items. Under the "Fiest" case (cited in full on the talk page above) such list do not usually qualify for copyright. 2)The list has been expanded and altered significantly here on wikipedia. 10-20% of the entries from our list are not presnet at all on the Washington post's list, and many of the entries have additional information not derived from the Post's list. 3) Many of the entries can be (and have been) confirmed from multiple sources. Footnotes on the sources for individual list entries were being provided. 4) The entire list was blanked, not just the content derived from the Post. 5) The list recently survived an AfD where the question of sources was raised. 6) The user who added the copyvio tag voted to delete the list during the AfD debate. 7) The existance of the list is an emotional issue for some. The AfD nomination cited the very existance of the list as evidence of an "anti-american" PoV. 8) Multiple editors have commented on the talk page, opposing this use of the copyvio tag. DES (talk) 20:26, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Those are the "unusual circumstances" to which i refered, and which make this rather unlike the usual text copyvio situation here on wikipedia, and which i suggest justifies making the allegedly infringing content visible in the absence of a complaint from the alleged copyright holder. DES (talk) 20:26, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
This is clearly not a Copyright violation. It is a list of facts, presented alphabetically. Such is not covered by copyright. The copyvio notice should be removed. --Quasipalm 20:51, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Fixing survey guidelines

I'd like to ask your opinion about fixing survery guidelines proposal. When this project was first proposed in June, it received some support on my userpage and no objections on the official page. Since there have been no comments for over 4 months, I am begining to assume there is a general consensus for those changes and I will update the survey rules accordingly in a few days, unless there are some new significant comments. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 13:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

What To Do About An Article?

I spotted this article AK-47_vs._M16. It's a detailed article and involved some work but it just really doesn't look like it fits in the Wikipedia. Why is the article even necessary? It's more of a primary research than an encyclopedia article. Undoubtedly, one would not find this in a traditional encyclopedia. The Wikipedia is not a traditional encyclopedia and covers a much wider range of topics. However, this particular one really doesn't fit. Are we going to do other articles comparing the M16 to the G3? What about a Mustang to a Corvette?

With that said, however, I feel that the information would be wasted if we simply deleted it. I'm at a lost as what to do with this. Please advise. Comatose51 03:38, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

It's original research. Despite the effort(if it's not a copyvio) of the uploader, it's got to go. Superm401 | Talk 03:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Possibly, though, some of the information in there could be merged into AK-47 or M16. --Aquillion 04:36, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Place it on WP:AfD explaining your concerns. Let the AfD process decide. It works. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 05:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/AK-47 vs. M16 -- it is on AfD now. DES (talk) 15:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Instant blocking for vandalizing high-traffic articles

There's been some edit warring on George W. Bush over a hidden warning at the top of the article ("Anyone who vandalizes the page may be blocked for 24 hours or more without further warning"). In order to get consensus on whether it is OK to block people for vandalizing a high-visibility article, I started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy#Instant blocking for vandalizing high-traffic articles. Rhobite 00:21, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

So, who's been edit-warring over it, and how long should I block them for? :-) --Carnildo 03:40, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Automatic deletion of orphan images

In patrolling recent images lately I've noticed a pretty constant number of submissions with no article showing the actual picture. Recent examples with a vanity motive: Image:Spacebattles.jpg and Image:Shemp1.JPG. Kudos to the creators for providing the correct license tags, but this clutter will never make it into an article.

Orphan images should be automatically deleted after a couple of days if no article is ever linked to them. Preferably a bot should do this rather than relying on editors to notice the issue. Tempshill 22:08, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Considering that image deletion is currently irreversable, as far as I'm aware, I think putting a bot in charge of it is a very bad idea. What happens if someone vandalizes some obscure article somewhere, delinking its images in the process, and the vandalism isn't noticed for a few weeks? How about if there's a dispute over whether a particular image is to be included in an article and it's delinked for a few weeks while discussion goes on? There's just too much room for bad accidents compared to the value gained. Maybe if there was some way to determine how long an image has been an orphan we could get a sorted list to go through manually, starting with the ones that have been orphaned longest and are therefore the most likely to be permanently disused. Bryan 23:37, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Absolutely not. Currently there's a bug in the MediaWiki software that causes images that are linked to Image:Like this to be shown as orphaned images. --Carnildo 00:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Understood, I agree, and thanks for the information. What about a bot that automatically gives the orphan images a tag saying "This orphan image is subject to deletion 7 days after this tag was added", then, and admins can do the deletion? To address Bryan's (absolutely correct) concerns, the bot would only apply this tag to newly uploaded images going forward. The backlogged orphan list is also a good idea and we could just wade through that one time, more times if people feel like it as time goes on. Tempshill 18:49, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
A technical possibility is including a Category for the month in which the image was listed, and not deleting until it becomes the 3rd oldest month. That requires only 12 categories. A bot would also have to examine images which are tagged to see if they now have acquired usage...once usage can be properly detected (other than, or including, searching text for "[[:Image:".) (SEWilco 19:21, 19 October 2005 (UTC))

Bypassing NPOV policy by the use of categories

Topic moved to Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people#Bypassing NPOV policy by the use of categories --Francis Schonken 16:45, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

verifiable sources

I just went through the mildly traumatic experience of having a biography deleted because there were "not enough Google hits" on the individual's name.

The biography that i wrote depended upon newspaper sources and a book about the individual. There are scores of newspaper articles about this individual from across the country, all written in 1927 and 1928. I obtained access to these sources by paying a subscription fee to a research service.

This particular individual captivated the nation for a few months. Newpaper reporters gave her nicknames, and she attracted attention wherever she went. She toured the country on a speaking tour. She became associated with a popular song of the period.

A new book has just been published about her; i edited this new book, in which another writer detailed the woman's exploits.

The verifiability page states, "Fact checking is time consuming. It is unreasonable to expect other editors to dig for sources to check your work . . . " That appears to be the main (if not the only) reason the article was deleted.

If my sources are for the most part not searchable on Google, should that disqualify this biography on verifiability grounds? (I note that the biography, and its source references, might have been written more closely to Wikipedia guidelines...) --Richard Myers

Could you tell us the name of the person? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:50, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Looking at Richard's edit history, unless I miss my guess, the article in question is Flaming Milka which got all of two votes on AFD. I can see how people might of looked poorly on an article about a historical figure who was 19 at the time and for whom the only reference given was a website. However, I would not object to undeleting this if there are substantial sources and facts from which it could be improved. Citations are clearly needed, even if only to newspaper articles of that period. Dragons flight 04:05, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
As Wikipedia:Verifiability indicates, sources should be cited even if they are not accessible on the web. See WP:CITE for more details. (SEWilco 04:50, 18 October 2005 (UTC))
see also wikipedia:reliable sources --Francis Schonken 08:06, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Process or result?

I need some sage advice, or a pat on the back, or some such. I tend to be result-oriented person, and in the case of Wikipedia, what I want to see is a crisply-written, NPOV, informative encyclopedia. It often seems to me that this result is sacrificed in the name of process. We proceed slowly and calmly, assuming good faith, with POV warriors, vandals, and the ill-informed. We have try to negotiate with people who won't discuss their edits, can't write acceptable English, who use sock puppets and anonIPs to revert until they get their way, etc. Someone has to be very outrageous for a very long time until being banned -- and then, as like as not, jumps back into the fray with another username. I find it an exhilarating process to work over an article with well-informed editors who can change their minds and compromise; there's back and forth, lots of cogent criticism, until something emerges that's better than any one person could do. But it seems that the majority of our time is spent trying to negotiate with people who won't negotiate, inform the ill-informed, teach politeness to the impolite, etc. At times I feel as I'm trying to save the world, one fugghead at a time.

Now as a Buddhist, I spose I've signed up to do this, so I ought to get with the program -- Wikipedia as the university of last resort <g>. But I hate hate hate for badly inaccurate written articles to stand, actively DECEIVING readers, while we try to work towards compromise. So I get angry and impatient and impolite in my turn, which is not good.

So, I need some reassurance: OK for the junk to stand while we make slow progress towards soothing the savage POV warrior? Can we assume that Wikipedia readers are all canny enough to figure out that an article is less than standard? Should I take a deep breath and concentrate on kind, calm progress rather than perfect articles? Zora 23:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC) ( a not-very-good Buddhist)

The proportion of featured articles is admittedly far less than the proportion of junk. On the other hand the relationship of the proportion of serious, helpful editors to the proportion of POV warriors, vandals, and the ill-informed is not so clear. Lacking clear data on this, I choose to believe most editors are at least reasonable, which I believe pushes wikipedia in the direction of continual improvement. If you've had your fill of contentiousness for a bit, take a break. Or find a way to contribute that doesn't involve arguments with anyone. For example, how about randomly picking stubs to improve? Or watching Special:Newpages and giving newbies a hand? If you seek peace I suspect you can find it. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:45, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
This POV business is very fraught. One person's neutral point of view can be another person's POV. There is an interesting case of this at:Analysis of the article on the philosophy of consciousness The debate gets interesting about half way down.
Both sides feel that they are purveying a neutral viewpoint, one an accurate historical account and the other an acceptable modern account of history. The debate is also an interesting insight into the "argument from authority" approach that might be taken if we had academic moderators. loxley 10:38, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
We're not sacrificing a result for process. It's a question of selecting the optimal process to produce the result we want. Part of our process is to allow open editing, to get the benefits of multiple inputs. Another part of our process is to throw out the vandals and their ilk, to avoid the cost of wasting time on them. There's a certain tension between these two aspects of the process -- how quick should we be to pull the trigger on someone? I personally think that right now we're a bit too open, and that we should move the line somewhat in the direction suggested by your comment, but not too far; investing a certain amount of time in dealing with less-than-perfect editors is in the interest of the overall project.
In the year and a half or so that I've been editing, we've brought the project much, much closer to being "a crisply-written, NPOV, informative encyclopedia" (although, if you check the rules in the Hyphen article, you'll see that "crisply written" shouldn't be hyphenated). Nevertheless, Wikipedia will never be finished. Regardless of what policies we adopt toward problem participants, there will always be some respect in which the encyclopedia needs work. Along with the suggestions from Rick Block, you might find it useful to bear in mind your role as one contributor to a wiki. You don't need to make a page perfect; you just need to make it better than it was. We rely on the accumulation of numerous such improvements. Perhaps the Buddhist take on it would be that when desire ceases, suffering ceases, so you should stop desiring a perfect encyclopedia! JamesMLane 14:43, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Ekshully, I've come to see the value of the less-sophisticated editors. If they have "silly" concerns or questions, well, they probably share those with a lot of the users, so it's just as well to answer the questions. Also, things get a lot clearer when you have to explain very very simply. It's the malicious/mean/rude editors with whom I have difficulty dealing. But you're all right, I guess I have to consider that having patience and keeping my temper is part of my Zen practice, and it's more important than having the perfect article right now. Zora 02:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Infobox with Template:Infobox Country within another template

Should we use 1)Template:Infobox Country on Austria or 2)Template:Infobox Country on Template:Infobox Austria which is used on Austria?

See Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Country_Specific_Infoxboxes_that_only_redirect_to_Template:Infobox_Country. -- User:Docu

I see no reason why countries should be exempt from the metatemplate advisory. I mention this here instead of there because TfD is not where we discuss whether or not articles get exceptions to the metatemplate advisory, and few people over there seem to understand that. --Golbez 15:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

racist links?

What is the policy on links to possibly racist websites? A link on a page I'm working on says some things which seem racist (to me anyway), but also has a POV which is not currently represented, and some statements that look like they are probably factual. Are links like this permitted? Banned? What about the content, can/should it be paraphrased and/or cited? Is it up to editors discretion?

Also at issue is whether the site linked to is notable -- it is not a reputable publication (not time magazine), but the sites analysis of and collection of information would probably never be accumulated by a reputable publication, though presumably the information exists elsewhere.

There's been a low-grade edit war brewing on this and I haven't been able to track down any policy on this, though I think I read something about intolerance some time ago. Thanks for any guidance. -155.91.28.231 18:59, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I would say that when such links represent a PoV that exixts and is relevant to the subject of an article, they can be included, and in some cases might be required by WP:NPOV and WP:CITE. A widespread PoV, even if distateful to many, must be reported to exist, and those reports must be supported by cited sources, which could well include web sites. Needless to say, (but I will say it anyway) the actual content of wikipedia should not be racist, but it may well report that some people hold racist views, while reporting that other people consider this views racist and objectionable. DES (talk) 19:09, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, links cannot be excluded solely because they express unpleasant views. What's the specific article at issue? ~~ N (t/c) 19:11, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
The article is Controversy_over_race_of_Ancient_Egyptians
The link is http://www.white-history.com/egypt.htm -155.91.28.231 20:49, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Please note "Articles should contain only material that has been published by reputable or credible sources" from Wikipedia:Verifiability and from Wikipedia:Reliable sources "editors should avoid using political groups with widely acknowledged extremist views, like Stormfront.org or the Socialist Workers' Party. Groups like these may be used as primary sources only i.e. as sources about themselves, and even then with caution and sparingly.".
Generally racist sources are liable to be lying or dissembling in direct or indirect, subtle and less subtle ways and direct links to them should be avoided or replaced. Even if you want to say "they claim that 'blacks are stupid'" then it may be better to link to an academic study which states their claim along with information about the likely reason behind their wish to make the claim and in what ways they have lied to back it up. Mozzerati 14:41, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Links and sources are two different things. ~~ N (t/c) 14:51, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, so including any links which aren't sources or specifically part of an article (homepage of described organisation) isn't appropriate. Including links to racist organisations when covering the Ancient Egyptians would be far beyond enclopaedic. However, if you look above, you'll see that the links are being included because of material they contain, in which case they are actually sources. That gives them a better chance, but still slim. Mozzerati 20:57, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

New CSD for blatent copyvios issues

Recentlt WP:CSD A8 was added to make "blatent" copyright infringments from "commercial content providers" subject to speedy delteion. This seems to have been widely misunderstood or mis-used.

I have recently found a number of uses of the tag for this case mis-used -- several were on images, and some on obvious non-commercial pages (people's home pages for example -- exactly the kind of over use the restrictions were intended to prevent). i hope admins are double-checking that the source is actually a commerciual content provider and the otehr restrictions have been adhered to. What can we do to make people aware of the restrictions? Should the CSD be reworded to make them clearer?

The CSD is explicitly for articles, that is for text, not images. Images can be speedied if thy have been tagged as "no source" or "no copyright info" for 7 days, or qualify under another of the CSD, otherwise they must go to WP:IFD or WP:CP.

The CSD is explictly for text copied from "commercial content providers" -- by which is meant people engaged directly in making money from content. The reason for this restriction is simple -- such sites are virtually certian not to grant a release for content to be freely reused. If there is any other category of site of which this can be said, it wasn't brought up during the debates over the formulation of this CSD. If anyone can suggest such a category now, the criterion can always be amended. But while the rule exists in the current form, it should be adhered to. DES (talk) 18:48, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

What about sites that have ads along side their content? They are making money off of it. Do they fall under commercial content providers? -Greg Asche (talk) 23:48, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
There should be an explanation of exactly what a commercial content provider is right on the tag. I think one reason for the confusion is that it is rather useless when restricted because so few copyvios are from these sites and people can't believe that's what the definition is. -- Kjkolb 01:02, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree, unless the copyvio is from a non-profit, I think it should be speedieable. But that isn't really for discussion here, if we want it changed, it needs to be brought up at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. -Greg Asche (talk) 01:30, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Recognisable faces in photographs

Copied from Wikipedia:Help Desk)

When uploading photos to Wikipedia, I have tried to avoid adding any that show people whose faces are recognisable. However, if you look at the original photo (not the thumbnail in the article itself) there are a few images where an individual *might* posssibly be identified. All of these picture were taken in public places, and the photos do not show anyone doing anything embarrassing or disreputable. Usually they're just people walking down the street or standing in front of a building. I have looked at the two PDF documents concerning this from the Help section, and as I read them, these photographs do not violate any individual's rights since they were taken in public places and the people depicted were not in a situation where they had a right to assume privacy. But that just covers the UK and US. My photographs were taken in other countries. I have experimented with blurring the faces slightly, but that just makes it look like the individual is a criminal or innocent bystander to a crime. Not what we want, I don't think. I haven't found a document in the Help section that deals with this with respect to W--have I missed it?

JShook | Talk 13:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia generally follows U.S. law on copyright issues, since the Wikimedia foundation is hedquartered in Florida, and is legally a U.S. entity, and the main servers are also located in Florida. I presume that this issue has a simialr rule. As a matter of common sense, i don't think images of the type described should be any problem. However I am going to copy this thread to the village pump (policy) where more eyes will see it, since this really is a policy issue. DES (talk) 15:28, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
In general, I believe, U.S. privacy law states that if a photographer is standing on public property when the photo is taken, no permission is necessary. · Katefan0(scribble) 18:52, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
That isn't quite complete. In general, in such a case a property owner can not prohibit the taking of the picture. However if it is published, the subject may have a claim for invasion of privicy if the subject is not newsworthy, particularly if the subject is identifiable and was not in a public place. (if you stand on the sidewalk and take photos through soemone's bedroom or bathroom window, you may be in trouble if you publish). This is a matter of state law and varies from state to state. The courts have generally taken a wide view of what is "newsworthy". There was a case where a black man was photographed on the streets of New York city carrying a briefcase, and this photo used by the New York Times Magazine for a cover story on "The New Black Middle Class". The man objected to many of the views expressed in the article, and felt that they use of his identifiable picute falsely implied that he endorsed thsoe views. He sued, and lost. DES (talk) 19:18, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
But he lost on fairly technical grounds relating to the fact that the photographer had sold the photograph to another company which then sold it to the times. I believe that New York State law has been changed (partially because of that case). Morris 15:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I should've added, "and the subject is also on public property." In general of course, some courts have upheld photos into private property as long as the photographer was standing on public property, reasoning being, I suppose, that if he could see it from the sidewalk, it wasn't really all that private. (Generalized for public consumption.) · Katefan0(scribble) 19:50, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
On wikipedia, pictures which show individuals going about ordinary activities in public places, and where thsoe individuals are not the main focus of the images, should IMO be perfectly aceptable. DES (talk) 19:18, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
This seems reasonable to me. Quite apart from the law, I think anyone in a public space must assume that they may end up in someone's photograph (think of all the native Parisians strolling by in the background of all of those pictures of people standing in front of the Eiffel Tower!) As long as they are presented as generic people-on-the-street, both the US and the UK agree their likenesses may be used without a release. If I want to use any pictures that seem to edge into a grey area--well, that's what Photoshop is for. JShook | Talk 19:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
I generally make images of people's faces slightly blurry (see for instanace some of the images in The Gates. In those cases the photographs were taken in a public park in New York City. The person had nothing to do with the subject of the article, but just happened to be passing by. I doubt that it is legally necessary, but I think it is a wise and polite thing to do, particularly in the case of children. Morris 15:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
I take your point about using images of children. I considered using but then rejected an image with three very indentifiable people but decided not to use it since two of the three people were children. JShook | Talk 19:38, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Content forking

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Content forking --Francis Schonken 16:34, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Catholic Encylopedia online--public domain?

The Wikipedia article on the Catholic Encyclopedia states that the text of this encyclopedia is in the public domain. However, on that encylopedia's website (http://www.newadent.org), at the bottom of each article, is a message stating that the online version is copyright 2003. How did the Wikikpedia administrators/owners/operators determine that it is permissible to lift text from the online version as if it were in the public domain? (I'm not arguing for either side). Thanks in advance! --Dpr 03:47, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

The site says quite clearly that the work is in the public domain. I am not sure where that copyright notice comes from or why, but it has no more validity than the copyright claims one finds on sites carrying 1911 Britannica content. —Charles P. (Mirv) 04:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Blocked users not being able to view source text

Having just accidentally been blocked gave me access for the 1st time to the page you get when you are blocked. What surprised me is that when editors are blocked they are not only blocked from editing but also from viewing the text source of articles (I have no idea whether they can view the source on the previous uneditable versions of the article), but this is clearly unlike when a page is protected and you can view the source text. I wonder why we deny blocked users access to the source text of articles, whether this has been discussed before as an issue, and whether denying blocked users the ability to view the source of articles as it is is what wikipedia as a community wants or not, SqueakBox 00:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

not to mention that it raises a gfdl issue. We say that the transparent version of a wp article is considered to be its wikitext so we REALLY should be making that accessible to anyone who can view the pages. Plugwash 01:24, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
You should report it on bugzilla, as it's clearly a bug. --cesarb 01:34, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Quite frankly, it's probably a waste of developer time (a very limited resource) to have them spend time fixing a minor bug that only affects a tiny, tiny portion of users (the least-desirable ones at that). →Raul654 01:36, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
It also affects open proxies and TOR exit nodes. --cesarb 02:31, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
As it pointed out in the message blocked users see when they try to edit, they can still use Special:Export to view the wikitext of any page. I believe GFDL compliance was one of the reasons for the creation of this feature. —Charles P. (Mirv) 02:35, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Marking speedy delete on pictures

Hi,

I have marked a couple of recently uploaded pictures as speedy delete candidates because there was no copyright tag and they seemed unlikely to be PD/GFDL/fair use. Is this OK? The speedy delete page doesn't say so, but there's word of a Jimbo Wales decree that picture uploads with no copyright tag should be shot on sight, rather than waiting for 7 days.

Another question, what to do about recently uploaded pictures that are orphans? Nominate to AFD?

When each of the above happens, it's usually a new user, so of course I like to welcome them and mention something about picture uploading.

Thanks in advance. Tempshill 00:53, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

According to this edit, the rules have changed. Upon questioning, Jtkiefer said that "on IRC that [Jimbo] said that", and I have no reason to doubt that. I would add, however, that I really wish Jimbo would make these proclamations somewhere more visible, like, for instance, the village pump. Even with the modified criteria, images still presumably can't be deleted on sight, per se. This is because one still has to wait at least seven days from the time of upload. This is a change, because previously the image had to be categorized as without either source or copyright information for seven days. I would also add that Jtkiefer says the policy is "up in the air" as a result of "different interpretations" so I don't know what to make of all this. As for recently uploaded orphans, if they are copyvios(presumably admin judgement) or non-commerical only, and unused for seven consecutive days, they qualify for speedying under WP:CSD#Images.2FMedia, #5. Superm401 | Talk 02:24, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
According to WP:CSD an image can be speedy deleted if it has been listed in "Images with unknown source" or "Images with unknown copyright status" for more than 7 days, no matter when it was uploaded. (CSD I4). An image can also be deleted if it is under a license which does not permit commercial use, and it has not been used in any article for more than seven days. (CSD I5). I regrad these as definitive, and if a spedy tag is applied to an image which does not meet one of thes (or one fo the otehr CSDs) and I notice it while on patrol of Category:Candidates for speedy deletion (or in any other way), I will remove the tag. If Jimbo wishes to decreee a further change in policy (I5 was already added by decree, and has never demonstrated consensus), the least he can do is to edit WP:CSD to spell out the rules he wants enforced.
I will add that IMO I4 is poorly phrased, as there is no history on a category's contents, and thus no way to know how long an image has been listed in a category. If the image is lated by appying a tag (such as {{unverified}} the presence of that tag can be verified in the history of the image page. The same problem used to exist for CSD C1, but that was reworded to remove this problem. DES (talk) 06:23, 16 October 2005 (UTC)\
I personally have no problem with tagging images speedy, I've been working to clear out those from the CSD category, and most of them are ones that are past the 7 day limit for verifying copyright status. However, I would love it if we could have a seperate category for speedy image deletions, as having a lot of images loading into the CSD category really slows down the page load. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 07:19, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Do we have any policy on porn?

What's our policy on porn photos? Where is it articulated? Tempshill 00:14, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors. Our policy is the same as for any other photos. Relevant, legal, and NPOV photos will be included where useful to an article. Superm401 | Talk 00:26, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors, so photos that some people would consider porn are allowed. However, photos with a really pornographic style (intending solely and obviously to arouse) are a bad idea, as they're just unencyclopedic. Also, photos from porn sites are copyvios and will not be tolerated. ~~ N (t/c) 00:28, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Don't editorialize ("bad idea", "intended to arouse"). Porn is permitted, as long as it doesn't violate other policies --71.112.11.220 01:49, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Nickptar's comments were not out of line in the slightest. Pictures intended for arousal, and not illustration, are very unlikely to be unencyclopedic, as he said. Of course, it's true that the same would apply to any picture that couldn't illustrate an encyclopedia article. -- SCZenz 02:29, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Basically, if it's got encyclopedic merit, it's appropriate to the page, and it's freely licensed - we're fine with it - but a sizable portion of the set of "porn photos" are vanishingly unlikely to have encylopedic merit in and of themselves, as I'm sure is obvious. But a lot of our illustrations could be construed as pornography out of context... look at some of the medical articles. We have no single policy; as with everything else, it's a confluence of fundamental policies and a good deal of common sense. Shimgray | talk | 00:29, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Thoroughness-of-article discussion

As I get into this and begin to write and edit more articles, this thought recurs quite frequently: "There is a lot of good, authoritative info on topic X already available on the Internet, so why am I writing all of this--I should just be finding and reviewing the existing sources and adding links to them" The articles I work on are mostly well-known topics, not obscure, so much already exists. Is Wikipedia just redundant in many cases? I doubt I'm the first person to think this. Is there an archived discussion on it somewhere? If not, I'm starting one now.

Jeeb 00:53, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I have considered that very issue, and come to the following conclusion: There is a lot of good, authorative info, but there is not a lot of comprehensive, completely free(in all senses), NPOV, and perhaps most importantly, infinitely reviewed info. Wikipedia strives to be a source of all of the above, which is rare for an internet source. Furthermore, while you may write on well-known topics(and keep at it :) ), others tend to focus on obscure ones. Those articles are a large part of what makes Wikipedia great. Superm401 | Talk 01:29, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Require log in policy to help eliminate vandalism

I recently had to revert the robot page to a 15 day old version because there was significant vandalism which went unnoticed that whole time. (About half the page was deleted and the rest was un-wikified)! I took a look at the past 100 edits (50 days worth) and this is what I found: (This was just a quick eyeball count based mostly on the edit descriptions and is probably not 100% accurate).

  • There were 17 reverts due to vandalism
  • There were 34 vandalism edits (all by people with no account)
  • There were 20 legitimate edits by people with no account

Because it is so easy to sign up for a wikipedia account, I do not think it is unreasonable to require login to edit non-sandbox pages. It will significantly reduce the vandalism, reduce the load on the servers, and improve the encyclopedia. So why does wikipedia not restrict editing to only logged in users?

BAxelrod 21:13, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish anonymous users. --cesarb 22:02, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

We have one user, Newsquestpaul adding links to the websites of local newspapers to a number of UK place articles and another Owain removing them as spam.

From the user name, I'd guess Newsquestpaul is associated with the publisher of these newspapers but, on the other hand, it doesn't seem unreasonable to have a link to the local newspaper for a place. Certainly, for the specific article I noticed, Herefordshire, The Hereford Times is the main local paper and the disputed link is to their site, http://www.thisisherefordshire.co.uk.

Thoughts? --Cavrdg 19:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I think these links are good and the motives of the user making a positive edit should not be a reason to revert it. ~~ N (t/c) 19:08, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
I think they are good, and ought to be kept—and in fact, actively sought out. Gene Nygaard 20:18, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
I think that they do not belong in the EL section. They really should be added as a section on Media in the area. Doing this should encourage growth by providing a place to add information about all forms of media as well as encourage providing some information about the newpaper itself. Vegaswikian 20:39, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd agree here - a section briefly noting the local newspaper / radio station would be handy, and doable for most areas. The external link would follow naturally from there. Witrh refards to Paul adding them - well, leave aside the motives of the user. Is Wikipedia better off from having these links? Yes, on the whole (in appropriate articles) it is. So we should have them. On a national scale, it'd be a bad move - but for towns and counties? Very helpful for the researcher wanting to know more about the place. Shimgray | talk | 20:50, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a web directory. You can talk about the newspaper, or even link it if it has an article, but we shouldn't be linking all the local sites. --fvw* 20:55, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
If it has an article, then the links should appear in that article only, not in other articles that might mention the newspaper. Otherwise, we should include the newspapers, and we should include an external link to them. Gene Nygaard 21:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree, mostly, with Shimgray. For most communities, there will be one or two papers at most; it's not going to result in a huge web-directory style listing. We might need to be a bit more picky for large metropolitan centers with a broad assortment of newspapers. Per Gene Nygard, I'd also suggest that we prefer internal links to external ones—where a given paper has achieved sufficient notability for its own Wikipedia article, we should have an internal wikilink. (I'm not saying that all of these papers need or deserve their own articles; if all we can say about the Podunk Picayune is that it is a weekly tabloid in Podunk, Iowa—then we probably don't need to write that stub.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:47, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Lists and references

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and series boxes#Lists and references --Francis Schonken 16:21, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

m:Checkuser

Sorry about posting this to two village pumps, but this started off as being misc and has now wandered into policy. I've proposed new policy at Wikipedia:Quick and dirty Checkuser policy proposal, please have a look. --fvw* 14:31, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Now voting, please give your opinion, we need forty votes and we need 'em fast. --fvw* 21:55, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Stalking and Assume Good Faith

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Harassment#Stalking and Assume Good Faith --Francis Schonken 16:11, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Naming for "nationality x" categories pertaining to the United States

I've started a page for discussion of what form of naming should be used for "nationality x" categories pertaining to the United States. Please participate at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)/Usage of American. Editors highly skilled in consensus building are requested to help moderate. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:16, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Using pictures from Wikipedia

I work for a local newspaper and we have a story about a Yellow-breasted Warbler in the paper this week. However we have had trouble locating a picture and would like to use the one from the Wikipedia page. Are the pictures on free to use and publish?

Matt

It depends on the image - if you click on the actual image, it'll take you to a page with source and copyright information. I was going to look up our yellow-breasted warbler page, and tell you the answer for that particular image, but for the life of me I can't find it - what page did you see the picture on? Shimgray | talk | 14:01, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry - it should be yellow-browed warbler! Matt

The image details are given here. It's from a 1905 German book on birds (Naumann, Naturgeschichte der Vögel Mitteleuropas) and as such is old enough to be in the public domain and may be freely reused. Unfortunately, we only have a small copy of the image, which may not look very good in a print form... but at least it's something. Hope that helps! Shimgray | talk | 15:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
As that is a Commons image, the actual URL is http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Phylloscopus_inornatus.jpg and it is labeled as being public domain. (SEWilco 17:39, 11 October 2005 (UTC))
If you need a better image there are hundreds on google click the link here [6]Arniep 22:51, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but most of those won't be free to use. Angela. 23:03, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help guys. Matt

Images from the European Space Agency

After meetings with ESA officers, we are working on proposals agreeable both to them and ourselves about using their images on Wikimedia projects. See m:ESA images. (There are delicate legal and institutional matters involved, so please read the whole article before commenting. Remember that this is a public page and that we are negociating with ESA, so please keep comments civil and on-topic.) David.Monniaux 11:37, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

This is an excellent piece of work; thanks to you and all involved for the effort. Hopefully we can use this experience in negotiating with other major bodies in the future... Shimgray | talk | 14:05, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Cite sources/archive8#Inline links discouraged in favor of more complete sources --Francis Schonken 16:04, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Votes for Creation

Moved to perennial proposals. Steve block talk 18:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Redirects for locality articles

I have recently moved The Gap, Brisbane, Queensland to The Gap, Queensland, to maintain the locality naming conventions for Australian towns and suburbs. Another user has complained about this, claiming that they were compelled to move all links (about half a dozen), from the old articles to the new article. I believe that, as I left a redirect in place, such a move was not necessary, but I'm going to seek opinion here in the interest of harmonious consensus.

Lankiveil 10:46, 6 October 2005 (UTC).

The course of action you've taken seems reasonable to me. If you were moving a large number of articles, and they were all one-to-one changes, then why not? MichelleG 12:18, 6 October 2005 (UTC).
It seems to me that each locality has its own way of noting domain:subdomain relationships, and I agree that you should try and maintain conventions. I work on New York City a lot and we have a a sort of mess on our hands with naming variations. Some examples: Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York, Rat Island (New York), Herald Square (Manhattan), St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. I don't think there is a right or wrong way, but if possible try and remain consistent
Does it seem reasonable to you, however, to simply leave the redirect in place? For some articles with inconsistent titles with potentially hundreds of inbound links, it's a completely unnecessary and menial task to go and switch them all over, when a simple redirect will do the job, right? Lankiveil 07:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC).
It is not necessary to clean up the redirects, but one should always check the "What links here" page from the redirect anyway. First of all, it IS absolutely necessary to eliminate double-redirects, which dead-end (to prevent infinite loops) and present users with an error page. Secondly, there are often links which should be cleaned up, depending on the nature of the move: a change from Malinke to Malinké should be cleaned up so that all articles which link to "Malinke" are now more accurate, with the properly accented spelling.
Thirdly, ultimately it's tidier and easier (for the end user and for downloaders of the database) for links to go where they say they're going. If there's a reasonably small number of links, you really should clean them up. If it's a huge task, maybe you should reconsider the page move -- there may be a reason so many articles link to the old title. If it's in between...the choice is up to you. Personally, I tend to consider good redirects as "flytraps" for search engine indexes, for preventing duplicate articles, and for future blind linkers (who are guessing at a proper article title). I don't rely on them as a proper or permanent navigational device, especially since you never know when another editor might change a redirect into a more complete article -- I've found a need to do that a few times, and spent time cleaning up "What links here" as a result. Just some food for thought. — Catherine\talk 11:34, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Technical/Insider vocabulary usage

This may not be the first time this was mentioned ... or maybe I'm the only one that finds this a problem. I've only been around for a little bit but the tendancy for articles to contain masses of links instead of properly explaining their content really seems to undermine Wikipedia's usefulness as an encyclopedia. I understand the need to condense the articles to keep them readable, but let me provide you with an example. I am interested in linguistics although I'm not a linguist (I study languages to communicate.) If I look up 'Latin' because I would like to learn some about it and I may be interested in studying it, very quickly I'm faced with words like 'synthetic', and 'declension' which as a non-linguist I can't really grasp in the context of Latin. So I click through and I'm faced with another slew of Linguistic jargon like 'morpheme', 'agglutinative', and 'isolating-synthetic-polysynthetic'. Now I will give credit to the authors and Wikipedia itself that I now do understand these terms, and a comprehensive article on Latin would most certainly contain quite a few terms that the average person would not know, but in some cases it does seem that many of Wikipedias articles are not written to be readable to the general public.

I believe that in theory, every single article in Wikipedia can be written in a way that anybody who can sufficiently read English would be able to understand. If it's an article on a 'quantum harmonic oscillator' then you most certainly would have to click down a few levels and spend quite a bit of time researching the basics before you could move back up, but I believe it could be possible. Right now it just seems that references to other articles are being placed rather irresponsibly and one finds themself clicking down a few levels only to become completely lost as the article begins to discuss an entirely unrelated point and basically leads to no conclusion. Am I being unlrealistic? Freshgavin 07:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


That would cause a lot of duplication of material, which means a lot more effort, both in writing and in maintanance. Personally I think linking is the way to go, but others agree with you, have a look at http://simple.wikipedia.org --fvw* 07:28, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Hmm. The difference here is what they seem to want to do is eliminate linking by eliminating complexity. It's good for some purposes but the information is way too limited. I admit that what I wish would happen would take a lot more effort, and it's really only an ideal. Anyways, it's not that I think everything should be duplicated to eliminate linking, and everything should be written in a way that is understandable to everyone, I just think that people should remember the way Encyclopedias and Dictionaries were supposed to be phrased in the first place (at a relatively even level with every other article, long or short), and I think that there's just way too many dead ends when you're sifting through high-level material.Freshgavin 02:21, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I must say, I agree with Freshgavin. Sometimes it is enough to provide a short description of a term and give a link to it. If we take the aforementioned article on Latin, it is constructed very well:
start quote
Latin is a synthetic or inflectional language: affixes are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, which is called declension; and person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect in verbs, which is called conjugation. There are five declensions (declinationes) of nouns and four conjugations of verbs.
end quote
That is, such terms as "synthetic" and "declension" are shortly described. Sometimes, however, an article consists of links only and I think that should be discouraged.Dmitriid 10:48, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Demolishing pages via a redirect

I'm new to WP so would appreciate some guidance here. There have been questions as to whether or not several related pages involving alternating current, reactance and power, and mains power might be best merged or made more consistent with each other. I made a proposal to make them more consistent. The answer from a user was immediate: the page AC Power has just been destroyed by a redirect. Its contents were not merged into the target page, Alternating Current, but simply destroyed, together with its discusion page, except for those familiar with WP and who know how to access prior versions of pages.

Shouldn't the relevant content of a page be merged into the target page before it is redirected? Is there any procedure for determining a consensus for such an action? (I don't consider that there was.) JohnSankey 00:25, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

  • You mean AC power. When you land at Alternating current, click the link in the top left corner — this will take you to the redirect page itself. Then click on the history button, and you will be given links to all the previous versions of that article. On the policy point, no, there is no obligation to merge content before a redirect. It is up to the redirecting editor to decided if and how much to merge. Any other editor can merge it later if they want to, so it's not problem. You should probably use Talk:Alternating current if you feel a discussion is necessary prior to the merge, but often that's only necessary if you could reasonably forsee controversy. -Splashtalk 03:29, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
If there is additional content one should do at least to a "crude merge", i.e. move the text, and not just delete it. A proper merge of the old and new parts of the target article can be done later.--Patrick 13:52, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I haven't seen anything like consensus or reasonable discussion for such a move anywhere, the AC power article is already reasonablly big and still has plenty of room to grow. For theese reasons i have reverted. Plugwash 23:47, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Moldovan Wikipedia

Republic of Moldova is a small county in South East Europe, formerly part of Soviet Union, and most of its inhabitants speak the Romanian language, as in neighbouring Romania. Until 1989, the language in Moldova was written in the Cyrillic alphabet, as Russian, after that it was changed to the Latin script as in Romania. Cyrilic is still used in the breakaway region of Transnistria.

There exists a Wikipedia written in this "Moldavian language", that is, Romanian with cyrillic characters, see mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Паӂина принчипалэ. It has around 250 articles now, with the absolute majority transliterated from the Romanian Wikipedia. Should this Moldavian encyclopedia exist, given that the language with this script is used only in the breakway region of Transnistria which is not recognized by any country and which is ruled by a thugish regime? Oleg Alexandrov 20:43, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I think the current Wikimedia policy is basically that we create a language Wikipedia if someone cares enoguh to ask us to. Also, remember that unoffical languages are still spoken and written. I have little trouble believing that there are plenty of Moldovans(including those outside of Transnistria) who still prefer the Cryllic script. Superm401 | Talk 21:46, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

The Norwegian encyclopedia has Norsk (bokmål) and Norsk (nynorsk). From what you are telling me this "Moldovan" is still Romanian. It's like English. We don't have an American, Canadian, British, Australian, Newfoundlandish or New Zeelander wikipedia. We only have one wikipedia for the English language in general. So what you guys may want to do is call "Romanian" the wikipedia which uses Romanian in the Latin script since Romanian is already a midium-sized wikipedia and call this 250 article Wikipedia "Romanian/Moldovan-Cyrillic". The way I understand it, "Moldovan" is written in the Latin script outside Transnistria so it would be unfair to call the Transnistrian variant Moldovan and the non-transnistrian varient Romanian. But Moldovan in Latin is Romanian so hence the Cyrillic varient and the Latin varient are the same Romanian language.Dow 22:37, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

The big question is whether this encyclopedia should exist. The name can be figured out later. :) Oleg Alexandrov 23:25, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
If you look at the front page of mo.wiki, it tells you "Dacă preferaţi să vizualizaţi Wikipedia în alfabetul latin, alfabetul oficial din Republicii Moldova, vizitaţi Wikipedia în Română." - which is something like If you prefer to read Wikipedia in the Latin alphabet, the official alphabet in the Republic of Moldova, see the "Wikipedia in Romanian" (link). However, please note that this is not a new subject - it's been debated at length before, with the consensus (I think) generally being that as there are a sizable number of people who are primarially literate in Cyrillic versions of the language, it stays - if for some reason Australian was English written using the Greek alphabet, it would probably get a seperate wiki. In addition, this is the discussion for one specific language version - it'd be more effective to bring this up at meta-wiki. Shimgray | talk | 23:38, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Don't get the idea that this issue is as simple as Australian-English written using the Greek alphabet. This issue is 100% political and on this Wikipedia it is 99% the whim of an individual called Node ue, who generally makes anti-Romanian contributions on articles concerning Romania and Moldova.
The Moldovan language written in Cyrillic is only used in Transnistria by force. Moldovans would probably rise up and take it to the streets if someone would come up in Chisinau and declare Moldovan in Cyrillic legal again.
Moldovans in the Republic of Moldova, even the most communist and brainwashed of the bunch would tell you that although Moldovans are one nation and separate from Romania, they speak the Romanian language and there is no such thing as a Moldovan language.Jeorjika 00:10, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Jeorjika... right. In fact, Jeorjika seems to be under the illusion that: 1) I created that Wikipedia; and 2) I am the only person who likes it. The first one is not true: I found it after it had already existed for a few months. Nor is the second: I just got an e-mail back from Vertaler, a native speaker who likes it and is mildly interested; similarly Gabix, a Belarusan learning the language, is interested, as is Ronline, a Romanian guy.
Jeorjika says I "generally [make] anti-Romanian contributions on articles concerning Romania and Moldova" -- he's referring to such contributions as [7], [8], [9]... to me, they seem more like enforcing NPOV than "anti-Romanian contributions".
Regarding the name of the language/languages, that's not the issue here. But 30% of Moldovans will tell you they speak Moldovan... --Node 03:39, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

There is no point in having a Moldova Wikipedia because, as it was argued by others, there is already a Wiki covering that language: Romanian. If we are to cover nations, and not languages, then we might as well add Mexican Wiki, instead of Spanish; Brasilian Wiki, instead of Portugese, and so on. Also, the Moldova Wiki has its structure set incorrectly. Romanian in Moldova - or as they call it over there, Moldovan - is written in the Latin alphabet. May I then ask why the Moldova Wiki is written in the Cyrillic alphabet? That makes as much sense to me as having the English Wiki written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Node ue hates Romania and Romanians. This is the reason he does this. Even in the English Wiki, he reverts the Republic of Moldova page to suit his idea of what is true. Node ue is a Russian who was sent to colonize Moldova. He's here to destroy the Romanian spirit by using propaganda. --Anittas 05:31, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Please look at the mainpage of the Moldovan WP -- it says, "daca preferatzi sa vizualizatsi wikipedia in alfabetul latin, vizitatzi wikipedia in romana". And to everybody else -- do you guys see how this is now? The people who don't like MoWiki are mostly like Anittas: they accuse me of hating Romania, they have accused me of being a KGB agent, a Smirnovist agent, a Stalinist, a Russian, a Romanophobe, and all sorts of other things just for my work there. That just shows how ridiculous they are. I speak almost no Russian. They themselves make fun of me for being American rather than living in Moldova. And as to the Republic of Moldova page, I am not the only one reverting that page -- Sergio Dudnic, a Moldovan, has been reverting it, as has Irpen, and others. Anittas and her friend Mihaita are alone in their reversions. --Node 10:04, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
No, having a Romanian WP in Cyrillic script is considerably less nonsensical than having an English one written in Cyrillic script. And you'd better put aside the talk of motives. This is not to deny some of your concerns, which seem to merit some kind of investigation. You might first reread the hint above about where best to complain about this Moldovan WP. Then complain about it there as persuasively and dispassionately as you can. -- Hoary 05:57, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Whether or not there is a Moldavian Wikipedia is entirely up to the people who are using it. If you don't want to use it, don't use it, but it is not your right or anybody else's to tell them they can't use it. User:Zoe|(talk) 21:01, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I think people are right about going to wikimedia. I would suggest organizing a vote for deletion there, at Meta:Requests for deletion. Oleg Alexandrov 15:56, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I strongly oppose this idea as entirely in opposition to the Wiki way. User:Zoe|(talk) 21:01, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
You strongly oppose what? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 10:28, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
a vote for deletion. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:27, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

In fact, people that want to have a Wikipedia in "Moldovan" don't even speak what they call "Moldovan language" and they want this Wikipedia just in polical purposes. All articles in "Moldovan Wikipedia" are just transliterations from Romanian one. So, I agree with removal of "moldovan wikipedia" -- unsigned anon post

How many Arbitrators should we have?

The Arbitration Committee will be having elections again in December. However, the arbiration process is presently pretty throughly backlogged with 17 open cases, including one dating back to June. Comments from resigned Arbitrator Ambi and others seem to indicated that being overloaded is chronic fact of life at ArbCom.

If I understand the history correctly, ArbCom was orginally created in the start of 2004 with 12 members and has not been expanded since then. However, the number of active editors (those making at least 5 edits a month) has grown in a fairly exponential fashion averaging 10% a month for years on end. A little math will tell you the same thing as the wikistats, we have increased the active population of editors about ten-fold over the last two years.

Presently, there are already some proposals to have 20 or 30 arbitrator positions, and maybe that is enough. Though even at that level there may be problems finding enough people to volunteer for a hard and often thankless job.

An alternative might be to make the Arbitration process itself less formal and centralized and make Arbitrator another class of authority like Admin / Bureacrat. In other words, allowing the community to continuously appoint Arbitrators through a process like requests for adminship and ensure that the process can grow to suit the need, then there should always be a pool of trusted individuals to review any dispute.

So what does the community think? How many Arbitrators do we need? 12, 20, 30, 50, 100? And should we stick to fixed terms and fixed numbers throughout the year, or should we move to flexible process of continuous appointments to match our continuous growth?

Dragons flight 05:42, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

How about making all administrators arbitrators? The few among the administrators who are willing to do this work could then participate in arbitration. Only administrators who sign up for a particular case would participate in that case. Fred Bauder 13:01, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
It's been tried. They were called "Quick polls" and they were neither quick nor effective - in fact, they were a gigantic disaster. The system we have now, for all its woes, is far, far, far better. →Raul654 18:23, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
No one should be permitted to review any part of a case before signing up to consider it. That's a sure way to introduce bias. If we have a pool of arbs larger than a "case panel" (and we most certainly should) they should be assigned randomly to each request. Recusals are still a good thing, where appropriate. Unfocused 17:48, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd definitely favour "admin" not being one of the prerequisites of being arbitrator. And that the ArbCom would have a few of such non-admin arbitrators: always useful to have a look at the "major problems" (that's what ArbCom is about I suppose) from all sides.
As for number of arbitrators, I think I'd favour to approach this with the kind of "redundancy" policy proposed at Wikipedia:Redundancy is good, for example, even if the number of effective arbitrators is limited, have elections appointing anyone who qualifies in a "batch" of reserve arbitrators: when seats become vacant (or an arbitrator just wants to have a break), select the first available of the reserve arbitrators (in order of originally proposed candidacies). --Francis Schonken 13:56, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Making all administrators arbitrators is not something I'd support. Administrator is supposed to be "no big deal" but you end up with someone promoted to it because of their edit counts - edit counts do not at all show the maturity to be "judging" users. ArbCom needs fixing, but making all admins arbitrators isn't it. SchmuckyTheCat 18:15, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Dragons flight, just a quick comment (not commenting about the proposal, but about getting attention for it): you probably want to post this to the mailing list as well; it might get more feedback there and would probably have a better chance of getting feedback from Jimbo. I doubt that anything will be implemented in time for this year without the express consent of Jimbo. Thanks! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | WS 13:13, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
At your prodding I went ahead and sent an email to wikien-l. [10]. Dragons flight 18:03, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I have another proposition, make the arbitrator committee like a jury; the highest standard of neutrality should be achieved, the arbitrators should as much as possible not being really aware of the situation, and not having real interaction with any members in the cases. And once they are selected, the arbitrators should ONLY and EXCLUSIVALY rely on the evidences brought in the cases at the evidence pages. The Arbitrators(more exactly, a jury) should be restricted to any form of exterior contact with the cases, not discussing with the members in question in the mailing list, neither IRC, about the cases. And if it happens that it is discovered that it happened, the cases is dissolved and other arbitrators are chosen for that cases.
Now, the complex part of my proposition. I think for the interest of members, Arbitrators should be replaced by a jury. A program should be written, who randomly choose among the members registered, administrator or not(but restricting to those that have at minimum registered for an amount of time, and have a number of minimum edits). Let say, 80 members or more are chosen randomly. And then, each side of the conflict, will chose from this number of selected, 6 jury.(a total of 12) Those that have been selected in the Jury will know it, by an announcement in their talk page, by some that will be assigned to announce them(and which party has selected who, would be a secret).
After they have been chosen, they will be instructed the consigns of how to act. From that day, the Jury will be restricted to discuss about the cases with any others, be it in IRC, mailing list, etc. If it happens that they did, the jury will be dissolved, and a new set of jury should be chosen. The Jury will be instructed also to take into account the evidences presented during the cases only.
The Jury will then, privately, decide to discuss and vote on propositions. The propositions will be those presented by each parties concerned. The propositions will be based on a “Wikipedian Constitution,” which will be written according to the Wikipedia policies etc. Each of the two parties concerned, will present, which Article(s) of the constitution are not respected by the other side. Each party will have the right to ask for help from 3 experienced members, to come up with their cases. And after submitting the accusation act, they will present the evidences, and the Jury must vote on those and decide the sentences, according to the Constitution that will have set of sentences... Only my 2 cent, take what is worth. :) Fadix 02:05, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't know about this idea... but, in any case, you'll probably want to make the criteria for availability include something like 'x edits in the past x days', to ensure that jurists are currently active (and actually available!) You would probably also want to exclude blocked (or even recently-blocked) users. And there would still have to be a Judge of some sort who has the final decision about who is and isn't too involved to serve on the jury or when to dissolve it and hold a new trial... the judge would also handle things like ensuring that all the jurors knew what they were supposed to do and making sure everything runs smoothly. Of course judges would have to be selected in something like our current ArbCom appointments, but since they wouldn't have to devote as much effort to individual cases (and since fewer would be needed per case), they would be less of a bottleneck and hopefully suffer less burnout. Ironically, although this all sounds horribly complex, it would probably run more smoothly than our existing system if set up properly, since it scales up better... I still don't know if I support it, though. --Aquillion 00:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

the problem of trivia sections

There's an unfortunately widespread tendency among editors to create, at the end of the article, a section entitled "Trivia" or "Miscellaneous facts" or somesuch, where they place a bulleted list of a few facts that they couldn't fit into the article anywhere else. There are two big problems with this:

  1. This is a gawdawful way to write an encyclopedia article. I don't think anyone would dispute that well-structured paragraphs are far superior to random lists of facts.
  2. They grow. When editors happen upon an article with one of these tumors, it's easier for them to add another item to the list than to integrate a fact into the existing structure of the article. People being lazy creatures, they often choose the former course of action. And so the section expands, and expands, and expands, until it's fully one quarter the length of the rest of the article's real content (excluding references, external links, cross-references, and suchlike): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amiga&oldid=26750909#Trivia is an egregious example, but it's far from unique.

It's relatively easy to nip this in the bud, when the list contains only a few items. When it has metastasized, as in the Amiga example above, fixing it becomes a herculean task: for every fact on the list, one has to check that it's accurate, check that it's not duplicating anything else, and find an appropriate place for it. This is not easy. If it isn't fixed, however, it not only makes the article look bad and read poorly, but actively contributes to its degradation, as editors add to the list rather than the structured prose above it.

So:

  • Am I the only one who thinks this is a problem?
  • If not, what can we do to discourage it? Policies and guidelines on this seem to be lacking, but for a bit at the end of Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles.

I am inclined to think that removing such lists to the talk page, or a subpage thereof, is the best solution. The information is not lost or buried in the history; editors can, at their leisure, integrate the facts into the article properly; and the section is no longer actively causing damage. Would there be support for a Wikipedia:Trivia section guideline along these lines? —Charles P. (Mirv) 20:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

For the time being I made Wikipedia:Trivia section redirect to Wikipedia:Trivia (see below) - I suppose such suggestions can be taken up there (and/or on wikipedia talk:trivia of course). --Francis Schonken 09:13, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I would disagree. I think it helps keep a concise record of information regarding a given subject, especially in the case of media. In cases of something that spands several series, integration of such information would require more expansion in an already limited area (which tends to cause another article being created to accomodate the size). It is easier to go directly to a certain factoid rather than having to process the entire subject. However it depends on how well the information would be integrated into its respective topic as well. Ereinion 21:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree as well. I tend to call those sections "Notes" because that's what they are: notes. Look at The Deadly Assassin for an example of an interesting, informative section that adds greatly to the article. Attack of the Cybermen is another interesting example, because the "Authorship" section was originally contained in the notes, but I merged it out so it wouldn't envolope it.--Sean Black | Talk 22:18, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Alright, so it can work well in articles on pop culture topics. But consider the trivia sections in these articles: [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]. . .and on, and on, and on. Can one say the same about these? —Charles P. (Mirv) 00:32, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't really like these sections in the articles I work on. For example, take Jimmy Carter. That article contains:
Miscellaneous
   * On October 14, 1978 President Carter signed into law a bill that legalized the homebrewing of beer and wine.
That point is accurate, but it somehow really is fairly trivial, in comparision to other things going on at that time (hostages being held in Tehran, etc.). I don't really think it belongs in the main chronological part of the article, but I also don't like it the way it is. Morris 00:18, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
That's another problem; such sections become a magnet for stuff that is at best tangential to the subject of the article. In the example above, that fact is highly relevant to homebrewing (where it is mentioned) but really not very relevant to Jimmy Carter. (Often these tangential additions concern pop culture references to the subject of the article; Marduk is a particularly bad example of this. But that's another rant. . .) —Charles P. (Mirv) 00:47, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
No, I think you're right there. If you can't find a section to integrate the fact into, you should probably leave it out. And on Marduk- I think a "References in Popular Culture"section is useful, and it lets those of us into fictioncruft to have a presence, while not intruding on the "real-life" stuff. It's a good compromise.--Sean Black | Talk 02:27, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

There's trivia and trivia. While this is supposed to be a commonsense thing, some editors (usually anons) seem to have difficulty with this. I've had this on Golem and Metatron, two articles where the trivia section at some point was longer than the remainder of the article. Pop culture references are two-a-penny. In seventy years few people will remember The Simpsons. JFW | T@lk 03:03, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. The Simpsons is astoundingly popular, it's the longest running animated television series ever, and will be for some considerable time. The validity of including particular bits of trivia depends on their relevance. Is the work critically acclaimed? Does it have a large fanbase? Is there a significant ammount of material on Wikipedia about it? You can't remove all pop culture references, nor can you reference all of them. For example: Albert Einstein appears (briefly) in the Doctor Who serial Time and the Rani. I would expect this to be mentioned in Time and the Rani, maybe in List of Doctor Who historical characters, but not in Albert Einstein. Like I said, it's about a compromise between the crufty and the real.--Sean Black | Talk 04:05, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I recently revived wikipedia:trivia: that had been a separate (proposed?) guideline a long time ago, then it became for several months a redirect to wikipedia:importance (but that guideline is "proposed" for ages without coming to a conclusion). Then someone changed trivia to redirect to BJAODN. Then I revived it as a separate guideline proposal a few weeks ago, and this morning it got sorted in category:wikipedia notability criteria, a wikipedia guidelines subcategory.

Guidance on "trivia lists"/"trivia sections" can be found in wikipedia:trivia#Trivia policy. I don't know whether I did a good job of describing the present policy regarding trivia in that section (I can only say that during the week the revived trivia guideline proposal was on wikipedia:current surveys nobody commented on that section). So please have a check whether that section answers the present questions, and improve and/or suggest improvements on its talk page. --Francis Schonken 08:51, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles about people are badly titled

I am deeply troubled that Wikipedia uses a badly biased naming scheme of entries for people. I have two important things to say.

A., Why there are articles titled like "Marilyn Monroe"? It should only exist as a redirect! Why is "Norma Jean" a redirect, when it should be the title of the article about the silver screen godess? You can't escape your name. When you are born it is written in both the church book and the state/secular register. Everything else or later is just a pseudonym. Especially the artists and celebs change their pseudonyms often, e.g. why move the silicon megabreast scandal lady article every two weeks when a certain "Pamela Anderson" adds Denis or Lee to her signature?

Policy is to use the most common name, to reduce confusion by readers. This is a bit of a judgement call but seems to work (but see Gdansk). ~~ N (t/c) 12:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Even if that is a common TLA and far from the most common usage of that TLA? See Avi as an example. Vegaswikian 21:50, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia should always use the birth name of people, because that is the only thing unchangeable and objective. An encyclopedia must have stability and lack of stability is currently the biggest problem of wikipedia.

I don't follow. ~~ N (t/c) 12:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, this would eliminate inherently controversial article titles like "Queen Elisabeth II" or "Pope John Paul II". These should only exist as an automatic redirect that points to the person's birth name, wich is the article title. The USA does not recognize any kind of nobility or monarchic title. Many many people and countries of the world are offended by such claims of title, since the idea of nobility and feudalism are against the nature and the only source of authority is the body of population. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, which is a kind of thingie invented by the enlightment movement, it should follow that philosophycal ideology, which states liberty, egality, fraternity and thus all people are equal by nature and that is unchangeable. Thus inheritable or feudal/religious titles are out of the question.

For Wikipedia to explicitly take an anti-monarchial position would be POV. These people are most commonly known by their titles. ~~ N (t/c) 12:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
For Wikipedia to follow any ideology at all would be inherently POV. Wikipedia is in the business of objectively documenting facts and occurances, and thus needs to use either the most commonly recognized name or the name that the person self-identifies with (in most cases these are the same). If Wikipedia did otherwise, it would be going out of its way to push a particular viewpoint, which is bad and quite the definition of POV. -- Tyler 17:31, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

If you use the birth name only and always the birth name of people for article titles, not even the monarchists can accuse you of bias, because it is an objective matter of fact, written in ink on the register's paper. As a sidenote, monarchs can be removed and that happens sometimes. If this happens you do not need to change the name of the article, only its contents. E.g. there is a very small finite possibility the crowned lady of UK will end her days cleaning streets in the Islamic Republic of England, where UBL is the ajatollah. In this case neither article needs to be renamed if you use the birth names.

Renaming articles is easy and not that obtrusive. ~~ N (t/c) 12:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
No, that's wrong. Someone who holds a title that they are best known by continues to be referred to with that title in histories after they have died or been deposed. There's no reason that Pope Pius X should be renamed simply because he's not the current Pope. -- Tyler 17:31, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

B.,

> Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) starts from the idea that names in the format > <First name> <Last name> are usually the least problematic as page name for an article on a single person.

Please note, even this sentence is very problematic, because most non-native speakers of english cannot reliably remember what "first name" and "last name" mean and the whole idea is inherently ambigious. Please always use the phrases "family name" (e.g. McPherson) and "given name" (e.g. John) so everybody understands what is it about!

But whether "first name" = "given name" depends on the language - see Kim Jong-il. ~~ N (t/c) 12:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Indeed. I briefly worked with Far Eastern students at a UK university; one of the standard password-generation algorithms involved the first name and surname. It was essentially random which way round the system had decided their names went...
To address the original problem - "birth name" being eternal is a relatively local phenomenon anyway. In some western countries alone -
  • a name can legally be changed irrevocably with nothing more than personal whim - I decide that henceforth I am to be known as John Smith, and that's the end of it
  • historically, someone could be known by a geographical name - see, say, Leonardo da Vinci, which is much the same as the US President being "George of New Haven" - with the correct name being almost unknown (or potentially even unrecorded)
  • a child can be registered at birth with no name given to the registrar, simply "infant child" or the like
  • may be changed for political or personal reasons in adulthood; if we named Pope Alexander VI as Rodrigo Borgia, we'd still be 'wrong', as he was Rodrigo Lanzol until he was 14
  • historically, may have been latinised - Carolus Linnaeus rather than Carl Linnaeus, or the great Erasmus
When someone is known most commonly in English by a name different from the "correct" one in their native language, we use that. So why not extend the same courtesy to those whose native language happens to be English? Shimgray | talk | 13:39, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Regards: Tamas Feher from Hungary <etomcat at freemail.hu> 195.70.32.136 11:53, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know for certain, but I would imagine Wikipedia is not alone in listing Norma Jean under the article title Marilyn Monroe.
Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, which is a kind of thingie invented by the enlightment movement.
Can this go at the top of the Main Page please? --bodnotbod 12:23, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
The current policy is fine. "Marilyn Monroe" is the name she went by as a public figure, which I believe ends the discussion. If the terms "first name" and "last name" are unfamiliar to readers in some countries, well, they can learn. It's not worth having a bot go through and try to correct every single culturally-local term in Wikipedia. Tempshill 16:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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