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Redirects

I've just been reverting a few edits by an anonymous user, where that user had taken away piped links and fed them through redirects. As it happens, some of the links he changed were wrong in the first place, but that's by-the-by. Anyway, he questioned my changes, and I stated that it was policy. (Refer to my talk page.) However, now I find myself in the position where I can't find where the policy of eliding redirects is written down. There's nothing explicit at Wikipedia:Redirect, or Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Links and URLs. The explanation I've given is "... I presume that this is to reduce server load (by reducing the additional code executed each time you click on a link that gets redirected)." Any pointers? Is this the reason? Shall I make policy more explicit? [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 09:12, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just a comment: linking to redirects in this way makes the wikitext less ugly than using piped links. — Matt 09:23, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I don't think there is a policy, because it's not a good policy. Sometimes redirects are the proper solution (they better organize "what links here" and better deal with changing articles). That's why we have redirects in the first place. anthony (see warning) 15:30, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
i may be wrong but i think in the grand scheme of things the additional server costs of redirects are bugger all. The bellman 09:30, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've just added some redirects for "R from plural". My nit is that in reality, they were redirects from *singular*. Is there/should there be a policy that base topics be either singular or plural with redirects for the opposite? Or should there be an "R from singular"? Or am I just being a tad retentive? Jeb54321 14:12, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Possibly unfree images

Based on a previous village pump discussion, a new page is being developed to handle the removal of images used under nonfree licenses or lacking source information. A poll on whether to implement this process is at Wikipedia talk:Possibly unfree images. --Michael Snow 03:26, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)




The Polls Are Open: Drive Carefully

Voting has begun on the Managed Deletion policy. Note that it will actually be called "Early Deletion." The policy has been finalized, so, even if you have looked at it before, please look again and give it your vote. Voting will end on October 8, 2004. Geogre 00:46, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Year in X

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Incorrect_date_formats states that, for example, 2000 is preferable to 2000 in film. I've lost count of the number of articles I've seen when someone has come along and changed it to the latter, breaking the agreed convention. This may be just a case of those people not knowing the rule but it is now so widespread that people just ignore it. Should the policy be reviewed or should we go through all the Year in X links and fix them? violet/riga (t) 14:34, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Please don't go through all the links and change them just yet. If anything, ask for a policy review; this convention wasn't really "agreed to" at all. The MoS's requirement was copied (somewhat out of context) from Wikipedia:WikiProject Music standards, which lists an important exception to the guideline. There may very well be other reasonable exceptions to the guidelines applicable to non-music topics. This WikiProject-specific guideline was applied to the Wikipedia as a whole with little discussion. The standards for the Wikipedia as a whole should have a strong community-wide consensus. Even the WikiProject's consensus stands on uncertain ground, judging from the objections in the archived debate about the issue (which really isn't that important of an issue, IMHO). • Benc • 08:56, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Then the policy should be reviewed - it is as important as many other consistency issues. violet/riga (t) 09:28, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
In context, the suggested change may be desirable, even if I prefer the linking the main year page. Recently I came across dates linked as [[October 3]] [[2004 in music|2004]] instead of [[October 3]] [[2004]]. I feel this should be avoid, as this breaks dynamic date formatting. The feature had ended a longlasting debate about which format to choose. -- User:Docu

Presentation of Images

At present when a reader clicks on a thumbnail image to see the larger version of the image, they see it accompanied by a lot of irrelevant and unattractive material - the name of the image file, the image's edit history and technical details of its licensing etc. What readers should see is the image, with a caption and possibly a heading. There should then be a link to the edit history and licensing details, just as there is a link from an article to the article's edit history. This seems to me to be another example of how Wikipedia is currently structured in the interests of its writers and editors rather than in the interests of readers. How much difficulty would there be in restructing the image pages in this way? Adam 02:50, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia is relatively unusual in that the boundary between readers and writers/editors is quite fuzzy; the lack of a clean separation means that sometimes a reader encounters mechanisms for editing — such as the "Edit this page" link. I guess we tolerate editor-oriented mechansisms intruding into "content" when it isn't much of a distraction. Personally, I don't see much distraction in including "What links here", history and licensing data on an image page; a user can very obviously see the image and its caption. Moreover, images are somewhat different from articles in that they are rarely used as stand-alone entities — they are nearly always used as inline elements in the article space. If we implemented your suggestion, I think there'd be little improvement for a reader, but it would be quite a cumbersome change for editors. — Matt 08:56, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Actually they can't see the caption. The caption is visible under the photo on the article page, but not on the page where the image stands alone. What the reader sees is a bunch of stuff they don't want or need to see. Why would it be a cumbersome change for editors? Adam 11:53, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Regarding a caption, an image description page should contain a description of the image, and any that don't need fixing. Your change would mean an editor would click on a "What links here" or "History" to get the editor-oriented information; this extra click would be more hassle, if not "quite cumbersome". — Matt 12:39, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • A "description of the image" is not the same thing as the caption that appears at the article page.
    • This is quite correct. Indeed, many images are (or have the potential to be) reused in several pages, with completely different captions; the caption on the image page should simply describe the picture without presuming the context.
  • "this extra click would be more hassle"? You're kidding. Adam 15:02, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • No, I'm not; on slow Wikipedia days, clicking a web link can result in a long wait, like 10–20 seconds. If you're doing a lot of work on images (e.g. image tagging), this would be quite a time penalty for the editor. — Matt 15:17, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

contributing your own already published material??

Do people ever post their own already published elsewhere material as wikipedia entries? How are these sort of issues of copyright and authorship dealt with?

If copyright is entirely yours, and you are comfortable with the material you enter becoming GFDL (and free to be edited), there's no problem. If the material is in a contract with someone else, you'll have to ensure all stakeholders are comfortable with this. Radagast 15:59, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)


To answer your question, yes. I've contributed to Wikipedia material that I wrote for my own personal website. Some was GFDL, some wasn't. It wasn't in contract with anyone else, so I was the exclusive copyright holder, making it easy to contribute. As far as I know, I'm still the copyright holder of the material I contributed, but since it's released under the GFDL, people can copy it for many uses as long as they comply with its requirements. -- Dwheeler 03:49, 2004 Oct 5 (UTC)

I would add to that: you retain copyright on all original content you add to Wikipedia. By placing it in here, you are releasing it under GFDL, but you are not giving up any other intellectual property rights. -- Jmabel 01:46, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Proposed new VfD rule: No repeat submission of articles

  • Proposed new VfD rule: No repeat submission of articles that have already passed the VfD process (w/ consensus to keep) within the next three months. Please see the proposal and vote/discuss.

Wiktionary

Please have a look at Driveshaft (and Talk:Driveshaft) and explain to me the rationale for deleting the (apparent) stub. |l'KF'l| 20:16, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

Reverted and wikified it, the driveshaft deserves an article, although it will probably always be stubby. -- Solitude 11:40, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Risk of inappropriate images appearing

I don't know if someone has already experienced the following issue in Wikipedia to date, but let me comment on it, just in case:

As there is no limitation on the uploading of images to Wikipedia, I believe that there is a chance that images that should not appear on any article (among others, pornography, images of disturbing violence, etc.), could get to appear. Even if this type of images appears for no more than an hour before the page is reverted, the damage is already done to those who come in contact with the material.

Is this risk already managed somehow? I would like to read your comments on this.--Logariasmo 04:39, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No more than any other risk, I think. Ideally, only one person should come in contact with it - and then they should revert it. --Golbez 04:43, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)
I don't think that casual visitors would know how to revert a page. It is even worse if it is children who visit the vandalised article.--JohnWest 04:51, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Que Sera Sera. There is no mechanism set up for it, and I doubt one would be compatible with wiki nature. --Golbez 04:58, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)
You're right — images speak louder than words. If we ever move to a system where new articles are queued pending review by a pool of editors, new images will probably among the first parts of the wiki to be locked down. That's probably a long ways off, though. For now, the RC patrol is doing a solid job. • Benc • 10:33, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for reminding me -- awhile ago, I noticed that a nude paparazzi photo of Brad Pitt was added to that article, but I had computer trouble before I could alert others to the problem. This is as much a copyvio problem as an inappropriate photo problem though. Tuf-Kat 22:54, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)
One partial solution might be use an algorithm that tries to detect "likely pornographic" images. Like spam filters, my understanding of such algorithms is that they're imperfect but often right. I believe they generally work by noticing a lot of flesh tones in a picture that doesn't seem to be a face. For a neural net, you train like crazy, and make sure that faces are in the "okay" list. You could then delay for a short time actual viewing of such 'suspect images', placing them on a "please check this" list (where an admin might okay, or after some period of time it just becomes visible). I agree that many people perceive pictures differently than words. I don't know if people would think this worth implementing or not, nor how hard it would be. But that might be a technical and procedural way to lower the risk a little bit. It's worth noting that in almost all cases, porn images are also copyright violations, so even if you don't care about porn per se, it's still a reasonable idea to have extra controls relating to images. -- Dwheeler 03:45, 2004 Oct 5 (UTC)
I did a little searching on filtering out porn images. I found a OSS/FS implementation of an algortihm to detect porn images, based on a larger project to detect 'bad' things called POESIA. You can see an academic paper on POESIA as a whole. SourceForge has POESIA software; see the "ImageFilter" and "Java" subdirectories for code, and "Documentation" for - well, you can guess. Presumably, you could pass an image to this code, which would tell you if it's likely to be porn or not, and then you could make other decisions based on that. One interesting thing: POESIA can also detect certain symbols, like swaztikas, if you want it to. There may be other such tools; this is just the one I found. -- Dwheeler 02:59, 2004 Oct 8 (UTC)
That sounds like a good technical solution. Like any technical solution, it has rough spots (e.g., we would need some mechanism to stop script kiddies from uploading tons of garbage images thus forcing the filter to eat up CPU cycles). I'd suggest putting in a feature request at MediaZilla and/or the mailing lists. • Benc • 09:48, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Another thought: we could maintain a database of checksums of deleted images. Any uploaded image matching a deleted checksum would be sent to the "check me" queue. This would prevent non-free images from being re-uploaded, excepting malicious users who modify the image slightly to change the checksum. • Benc • 09:56, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
My suggestion would be to restrict the uploading of images to registered users and/or to users who have already participated actively (posted more than once), as they are less likely to post this sort of things. Obviously, it is slightly against the open policy of Wikipedia, but it might be required in the future, and I believe it does more good than harm.
Another reason for such a policy: Inexperienced users are more prone to unknowingly upload copyrighted images.--Lauther 06:56, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This is a terrible idea - how big a problem is this? The algorhythms cannot possibly filter out all offensive images - this will just lead to 'gaming' the system. Much better just to rely on people visiting the recent changes (is there a 'recently uploaded pictures' page? Intrigue 23:33, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

IMHO, the filtering algorithm idea is secondary to the main idea of sending new images to a "waiting for approval" queue, where admins would have to look at it briefly to make sure the image isn't inappropriate. Admins already do this on images that are already publicly accessible. This idea is just adding a safety net; it should catch a lot of the copyvios and outright vandalism — which we get a lot of, as far as images go.

You do have a very good point, though. I can see how implementing the algorithm as an automatic approval mechanism would encourage "gaming". Instead, we could send all new images to the approval queue, with those that the algorithm determines to be porn sending the image to a second queue, "probable porn". If and when a user's image gets sent to the porn queue, a message (or warning) is generated for that user instructing him to contact an admin if the image isn't porn, or to knock it off the image is porn. Unappealed images in the porn queue would be automatically deleted in three days. The regular pending-approval queue would have to be cleared out by admins on a regular basis, but the vast majority would be quick and obvious approvals.

Does this sound like a better solution, or are you entirely against the idea of a new images queue "safety net"? • Benc • 04:22, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've been a fan of wiki before I joined, and I have not once seen a hacking. But a safety net may tax the anti-hacking abilities of the community. Of course, we have the risk of explcit content being put here, that Wiki may even some day be a site of "Cyber Graffiti" or something of that nature. In fact, this may be giving vandals ideas as this is typed. Please forgive me if I am wrong, but it seems like a choice between images and the employee resources of Wiki.

PS- Plese inform me if I have done something wrong (or if I am wrong) here, as I am new.

Eseer Erre 20:20, 09 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Encumbered" or "Protected" — POV?

Is it biased to describe an invention Foo as being "encumbered by patents" or "protected by patents"? To me, the word "encumbered" has negative connotations, and similarly "protected" has positive connotations. What would be a good alternative? — Matt 09:29, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Is there anything wrong with "Foo is covered by patents" or "Foo is patented"?
Darrien 11:19, 2004 Sep 28 (UTC)
Ah, yep, quite obvious really ;-) Would you agree that these should be preferred for NPOV? — Matt 11:32, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Yes. You may also want to move this to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) so it will receive appropriate attention.
Darrien 11:57, 2004 Sep 28 (UTC)
From what I understand, encumbered is the correct legal term. Although wikipedia often uses other terms because of common usage, so other people may chime in. I've heard both. btw, since I happen to know the definition of encumbered as it applies here, I don't think it is a pejorative, of course, others may. -Vina 21:46, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Credit for images

For years publications would customarily (US) use images without crediting the creator of that image, but that has changed in the US. Now credit is routinely given for photographs and artwork.

Is this official policy on Wikipedia?

In my view, it should be, unless the creator of the image has contributed it anonymously. Who made what images is a matter of history and knowledge as much as other article content.

This, however, raises another issue. Suppose a contributor to an article on Bugs Bunny (say, one Elmer Fudd) uploads one of his images for use in that article, and refers to himself in the caption in this fashion:

Cwazy Wabbit Eating a Cawwot (Photo by Elmer Fudd, 1999)

Anyone see a problem with this? (Other than Elmer's spelling?)

--NathanHawking 01:17, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)

I see no problem; I credit all images I upload that I make as "Made by User:Golbez." --Golbez 01:27, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)
I think he means in the article, not on the image's description page. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:28, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Exactly. In the caption, visible to readers of the article.--NathanHawking 01:43, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)
Oh. In that situation, no, attribution should not be made in the article unless it's somehow relevant to the article. If people want attribution, they can click it. --Golbez 01:31, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)
Why do you say this? Is this Wikipedia policy?
Custom in US print publications and even on websites is to give visible credit for the photograph or artwork. See MSNBC Space Plane.--NathanHawking 01:43, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not paper. I don't know where the policy is stated, or even if a policy is stated, but that's generally how it works here, unless it's a corporate source like CNN or the AP. But usually, having attribution on the image page seems sufficient. --Golbez 01:55, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)
Noted that Wikipedia is not paper, hence my observation that even online publications generally credit the source or creator of images. We attribute quotations and fair use passages of text from sources.
If articles had sole authors, noting the authorship would seem appropriate. It only becomes impractical because of the large number of contributors and modifiers, thus the history of an article will have to do. Wikipedia documentation seems very clear (to me) on this rationale.
But images do not suffer from that same ambiguity. If corporate sources like CNN or AP are credited in the article text, why not anyone who contributes an original image? Explicit credit might encourage more to create good images for Wikipedia. (Wow! Your name in print! Silly, maybe, but human nature.) --NathanHawking 02:32, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)
Don't quote me on that corporate thing, I was trying to think of any instance friendly to what you're saying. And the credit is just as hidden as it is for the article, so why should people be less motivated to contribute an image as an article? It takes at least one click to see who contributed either to an article or to an image, and in fact, takes more clicks to find out what was specifically contributed by the person. Image attributions are fewer clicks away. --Golbez 04:47, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)
It's not explicitly stated that you shouldn't. However, it violates some explicit guidelines implicitly. Wikipedia:Captions has guidelines for what should go in image captions, and a short summary of what goes on image description pages. The short of it is, captions should be short and to the point. Putting a credit in the caption pushes the caption farther from both.
Print publications put credit lines next to images because they have no choice. MSNBC et al does it because they don't make effective use of the technology they have on hand. We have image description pages for voluminous information about the image itself, we don't need to clutter the articles with information that isn't relevant. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:14, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I don't know how you could say that "Image courtesy of NASA." (for example) clutters an article. Now on the other hand if someone wrote a small paragraph on how they created the image, that would be clutter! However "short" captions are not always appropriate. Creating captions of 3 or 4 short sentences can add a lot of value in some cases, but of course this should be used sparingly. We should always avoid being too rigid in our guidelines and always attempt to add value when we can. If you haven't guessed already, I am for including short credits in the captions when appropriate. Authors (and even government agencies) ask to be credited for the images we use, and I doubt most people click through all of the images in an article just to read the credits. —Mike 05:04, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)
I don't know about yours, but my encyclopedia (and my dictionary, for that matter) puts the image credits at the end, not in the caption for the image. So I'd say what we're doing is roughly analogous to the online equivalent of that. anthony (see warning) 02:16, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
For me, the chief problem with photo credits in article captions is that they have a negative effect, albeit a very small one, for the reader — it's a tiny bit of distracting and (typically) irrelevant information — I imagine that it's comparatively rare for anyone to have an interest in the authorship of a typical Wikipedia photo. As a courtesy to the photographer we should include the credits in the Image Description page, but as a courtesy to the reader we shouldn't clutter up articles with metadata. — Matt 09:10, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't we encourage people to include references with the uploaded images whenever possible? Not only would it make much easier the confirmation whether or not the image is in the public domain, it would also be of great interest for people who want to find out more about the image (painter, original publication etc.) – for example, the image of Odin is very nice, and I have no doubt it is indeed in the public domain. But how would I proceed if I wanted to determine the painter, and maybe find other paintings by him? That's just a random example, it's very common for images to have no reference. dab 13:18, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Which is what image description pages are for, not captions. An image description page describes the image by itself. Captions describe the image in relation to the article. -- Cyrius|✎ 14:53, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
When I include copyrighted images of experts with permission I often give credit in the article, because this makes the copyright holder happier about giving the permission (exposure for them), and might encourage them to give more permission for stuff in the future. See for example Carl Hiaasen. Amateur work shouldn't usually be credited in the article though. Derrick Coetzee 05:26, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I guess I might agree if I better understood the distinction between "amateur work" and its opposite. When I write for Sky Publishing or Kalmbach Publishing presumably I am a "professional writer" but when I write for Wikipedia, am I an amateur? When I shoot photos for Kalmbach or ANS I am a professional but the other 45 weeks of the year I am an amateur?
I do understand what you are saying, but I think the issue of the professional status of the content creator is of no relevance while the quality of the content is highly relevant. On that view we should credit not for professionalism but for performance. -- Jeff Medkeff
Sometimes a picture gains extra credibility when the creator is known. A picture of some spectacular starscape gives an entirely different impression if the caption says "Hubble Telescope" than some artist, be they ever so well known. --Phil | Talk 08:08, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

Virtually all people I've asked about contributing images to Wikipedia are agreeable, as long as they are credited prominently for their contribution.

An idea: many things are now possible with CSS. Would it be possible to have <<Credit:©author name>> tag of some kind included in the image syntax, that could be rendered in very small text under the regular caption, or even in a vertical strip along the side of the picture (as is often seen in newspapers and comic strips)? With css it could be rendered differently with different skins, or suppressed in a user's personal style sheet. What do you think? Catherine | talk 18:34, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sounds complicated Salasks 02:22, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Superscripts and subscripts

I've seen SUP tags used for superscripts in Wikipedia articles a lot. I assume SUB is also used. Both are problematic. They are not portable. I have an article on my website discussing the problems and suggesting cures:

Using Superscripts and Subscripts in Web Pages

In short, I recommend against using the SUP and SUB tags. For the most common use of the SUP tag, exponentiation, I recommend using the Unicode up-arrow, ↑, written as &#8593;. At the very least, even if pages already having SUP are left as they are, I request that the use of the up-arrow should be granted status as an officially acceptable policy for any future articles. --Shlomital 17:36, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)

In general, portability problems should be solved by updates to the MediaWiki software, not arbitrary requirements for our editors. I don't really like the use of "x↑2" instead of "x2", "H2SO4" instead of "H2SO4", etc. First, this goes against the most commonly used conventions for using super and subscripts in science. Second, the vast majority of our readers use browsers that can accurately render these elements. Additionally, many browsers have poor support for Unicode elements, despite being able to render SUP and SUB just fine. Third, MediaWiki explicitly allows SUP and SUB, along with a few dozen other HTML tags; the software creators thought it through before allowing the tags. In a nutshell — I agree that portability is a good thing, but not at the expense of clarity. • Benc • 19:33, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It hasn't to do with Wikipedia, but with the nature of copying and pasting into editors of plain text. Wherever, no matter where, you have a 109, it will end up as 109 in a text editor. That is the portability problem. I find the up-arrow (10↑9) or, failing that, the caret (10^9), to be both clear and portable. The importance of this issue for Wikipedia is that it's a resource for freely copying text from; therefore, I feel it is important that Wikipedia should be as optimised as possible for copying of text. I realise the legacy of SUP is huge. May I therefore ask, instead of making the up-arrow compulsory, at least making it acceptable? There is already one article (Extended ASCII) in which I have used it. As for browser support, browsers that don't support Unicode (like Netscape 4) are going the way of the dinosaur; and if that's still a problem, the caret is ASCII. And also: as I state in my article, chemical subscripts are an area where SUB tags can be used with no reservations. --Shlomital 21:19, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)
I still think this issue can and should be solved using a software solution. We already have Special:Export to convert articles to XML; why not have a Special:ExportToText? Besides, anyone doing a cut-and-paste from their browser is simply asking for trouble. What about images, <math> markup, tables, and so forth? • Benc • 22:26, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I hate to be curt, but this is bullshit. As Benc said, anyone who copies text out of their browser in a naive way is losing all sorts of formatting information, including such basic things as bold and italics. Are you going to suggest we replace those with textual equivalents? This is the web, not Usenet, and it's usually best to use widely familiar notation. This is not a portability problem at all but simply how copying text out of popular browsers works — it's a client issue with an easy workaround. Let them save the page as HTML if they want to keep the formatting. People really aren't all that dumb. Derrick Coetzee 05:20, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It'll have to be an export to some kind of formatted text file format. Any export to plain text will have the same problem of 109 coming up as 109. When people want to preserve the whole page, they use their browser to save the whole page, with all its markup and accompanying image. But when they want to quote part of the text, they do a cut and paste from the browser. The trouble with 109 is the same as with italics--not surviving pasting into a text editor. Italics are sometimes critical, sometimes not, but 109 is certainly a whole different thing from 109. The question is how much you're willing to make the contents of the encyclopedia dependent upon formatted text and embedded images (which are normally frills).
And I'd really like to know if 10↑9 or 10^9 instead of 109 is a policy no-no. --Shlomital 23:00, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)
It might not violate policy, but don't be surprised if someone comes along behind you and changes them. —Mike 03:55, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know what text editor you're using, but every ASCII text editor I know of is going to have problems copy-pasting 10↑9. Pasting that into OpenOffice.org works, but then so does pasting normal superscripts and subscripts (though admittedly sup/sub is lost upon pasting into Microsoft Word 97, while the up-arrow works). But that's beside the point. I agree with Derrick above; the preservation of formatting when copy-pasting into other applications seems like a weak reason to eliminate superscripts and subscripts, which to me are far more intuitive than the up-arrow (which suffers from the additional problem that it may be have other meanings and be interpreted differently, or confused with some kind of vector notation). Not only that, but using sup and sub are apparently required for some languages to render properly. They give at least a modicum of semantic meaning to the text; the use of up-arrow does not. -- Wapcaplet 22:19, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Concur with Wapcaplet. --Improv 13:41, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This is not a feasible solution. Conventional mathematical notation exists and changing it to something completely contrary to convention just so it can be copied and pasted properly is somewhat an absurd solution. Regardless, the up arrow means something different in mathematics, see Knuth's up arrow notation. Dysprosia 03:22, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, it means the same thing! See Knuth's up arrow notation#Definition: a↑b means ab. Gdr 13:23, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)
You're right for the single arrow (I'm thick, sorry). What I'm driving at though is why use unconventional notation for something when conventional notation is available? Dysprosia 06:32, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Fundraising Fame

The banner says it costs $10 an hour to run Wikimedia websites. Why don't we make it so that every person that donates $10 "sponsors" an hour? So instead of the box that constantly says to donate money, it would say "This hour of Wikipedia is brought to you by x user. To sponsor a Wikipedia hour, donate here" or something to that affect. That way people would get recognition for donating and more people would check out their talk pages and they could showcase their pet projects or their blog or whatever on their talk pages. Salasks 03:52, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Then we'd have to see these ads all year instead of just for a few weeks. anthony (see warning) 04:20, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It is a sweet idea, and grumps like Anthony could use their monobook.css to remove them. However it would be tantamount to Wikipedia accepting adertising. This comment was brought to you by Proctor&Gamble, whose soap poweder will get your whites whiter. --Tagishsimon
That is if your monobook.css works. Mine doesn't. —Mike 22:00, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)
I want to start a new article: "Wikipedians who make less an hour than the Wikipedia servers."

Deletion addition

I added this to Wikipedia:Deletion Policy#Decision Policy

Please do not remove any votes from any VfD or like discussion. If you suspect a vote of being a sockpuppet or otherwise invalid, mark it as such with a comment, and any pertinent links, and leave it there. The admin who reviews the discussion will investigate and decide whether or not to take that vote into account. By not removing any votes, we ensure that there can be no arguments over who removed what and why.

I think everyone should be able to understand why this is generally good. Arguments have come up regarding this, including in the recent GNAA discussion. Of course there may be exceptions like if there are ever hundreds of sockpuppet votes, but I think that in general, people should adhere to this. Just wanted to let people know that I added this, since its not a trivial change. —siroχo 20:55, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)

Two propositions

One of which has been made before - the In the News and Current Events must be less Americocentric. US "presidential debates" and other crap are just not interesting enough, and they are rather irritating when a lot of other articles and news items deserve attention. All this and more has been covered extensively before in previous discussions, but no action has been taken yet (save your excuses, heard them before), I believe one excerpt exists here: Template_talk:In_the_news#Americocentrism.

Next, the map of India used in several articles is inaccurate and offensive - no mention is made of the "disputed" territories or that the boundary shown is neither an international boundary nor an Indian-accepted representation of territories under Indian control, except in the main article on India and perhaps the Kashmir article and one or two more; the CIA map is used by default in all other articles and is WRONG - it is a map that reveals CIA and perhaps American government policies, but is incorrect, irritating, and unacceptable. Several instant remedies are possible: use colour-coded/ shaded maps that indicate dispute ; mention dispute in image captions ; mention inaccuracy ; explain that current CIA map is just that ; explain current map shows boundaries definitely under Indian administration, not the international boundary (which, to be as NPOV as possible, does not exist.) Throw out the revert mongering meddlers and the ignorant and implement a quick and effective policy - above all CHANGE THE @#*&^%@! MAP. Damn it. -- Simonides 22:49, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Am beginning to work on a replacement. Apparently, this is part of why Nagaland was protected. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 03:35, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
Done. See Nagaland. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 04:22, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
Peter/Poccil, I appreciate the interest, but I can't seem to see the new page you've put up. Secondly, it is not only the Nagaland article but a host of other articles that use the same map/ the same boundaries with variations in the image according the location being indicated. I see that you have worked on one map alone - would it be possible to replace all by changing the root image, and enforce the changes with an explanatory policy? Sorry if this all sounds like a lot of work - as a non-admin I have limited powers. -- Simonides 23:21, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Peter, thanks once again for working on the map. I've posted a couple of notes about it - that it is still inaccurate, but this time because the projection needs correction, rather than political/ideological concerns - but it's a lot better. Could you please answer my questions about the next steps to take - thanks. -- Simonides 13:41, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've replaced the default States of India map on the India article - now if some editors could use it to replace maps on all India-related articles where the old format was in use, I'd appreciate it. I'll try to do my bit, but I'm on a dialup connection so uploading/ image loading etc is really really slow - thanks! -- Simonides 14:25, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Your first proposition seems nonsensical to me. You may personally not be interested in "crap" like the US Presidential debates, but clearly many people in the world, both in and out of the US, are interested. They were multiple times the top story on the BBC's website, for example, which to my knowledge is not a US news source. They were also on the front page of newspapers in Greece, and I'm sure were I to regularly read news sources from other countries besides those two, I would've found them prominently discussed elsewhere as well. The simple fact is that US actions affect the world disproportionately, so the world tends to be interested in them. You may not like this, but Wikipedia isn't here to change what people are interested in, just to document it. Therefore, things such as the US presidential debates that are covered prominently throughout the world must continue to be covered prominently in Wikipedia as well. --Delirium 07:04, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry about the late reply, but I am seeing your message for the first time. I don't think there's much to say in reply except that the preponderant existence of a bias does not automatically justify the bias; you're not the first one to confuse the two and if you follow the links I posted above, you will see that the same points have been made before in other words and were refuted on similar grounds (BTW, I thought it was obvious my calling the debates "crap" was just letting off steam, but they are closer to crap than substance when they stay on In the News for three days and jostle out important news from the rest of the world, or get put back on by pushy Americocentric (self-conscious or not) editors). -- Simonides 23:02, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Image tagging question

Would someone well versed in copyright issues please come to Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags#Author gone and discuss how to tag images which were made by Wikipedians who have since left Wikipedia and cannot give explicit consent that the images are tagged as GFDL? An user has suggested that they should be tagges with CopyrightedFreeUse which, IMO, is violation of users' copyright. Nikola 23:26, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Bodymodification, Editwars, and Legal Liability

I noticed an edit war between intactivists and circumcisiosexuals. This got me thinking about modymodification and legal liability:

If parents would follow the advice of an article just reverted by procircumcisionist and based on that advice, the parents circumcise a healthy baby with no medical problems and the baby dies, the parents might sue Wikimedia for wrongful death. Contrarily, an anticircumcisionist might revert an article just before parents with a child requiring a medically necessary circumcision looks at the article. The parents decide not to circumcise based on the article. Again, the child dies, and again, the parents sue Wikimedia.

I have an idea which will kill the editwars and save Wikimedia from legal accountability:

At the top of every article about bodymodification, have a disclaimer like this as a serversideinclude:

"It is the policy of the Foundation Wikimedia that bodymodification should be an informed decision of the modifyee beyond the age of majority."

Then we can remove all pro/con-sections from the articles, thus ending the editwars. Since occasionally circumcision is necessary, we can have an additional disclaimer there:

"It is the recommendation of the Foundation Wikimedia that with the exception of emergencies, before one gets a medically necessary circumcision, one receive a second opinion from either a pediatric urologist if the patient is a child or an urologist if the patient is an adult."

We can modify this and put this disclaimer on all articles about medicine:

"It is the recommendation of the Foundation Wikimedia that with the exception of emergencies, one should get a second opinion"

While me talk about legal accountability of Wikimedia and medicine, perhaps we should have a disclaimer like this on medical articles:

"Important disclaimer:

The information on Wikipedia is for educational purposes only and should not be considered to be medical advice. It is not meant to replace the advice of the physician who cares for you or your family. All medical advice and information should be considered to be incomplete without a physical exam, which is not possible without a visit to your doctor."

These disclaimers would end the circumcisioneditwars and protect Wikimedia from lawsuites.

Anonymous Coward

There's already a Disclaimers link in the footer that's at the bottom of every page. Goplat 02:14, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Stating that medically unnecessary bodymodification should be the informed decision of the modifyee past the age of majority should be added to the disclaimer. Ŭalabio 03:10, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)
I second this. Ŭalabio 03:10, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)
Regardless of the issue or circumstances, I don't think Wikipedia should make ANY recommencations or content-specific policy decisions. We are a repository of knowledge from various viewpoints, trying to give a balanced and neutral viewpoint to every subject. To directly endorse a course of action, no matter how well-intentioned, opens us up for liability; even if this is intended to avoid liability. If we make no direct statements and let the facts and views speak for themselves, people can make up their own minds and act on their own conscience, not on ours. Radagast 12:59, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
I think "second opinion" is misleading. Wikipedia should present facts, but leave diagnosis and treatment to a trained and certified physician. Any medical disclaimer, in my opinion, needs to state this clearly. Even if there are MDs posting to Wikipedia, given the open nature of it, we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy, nor can we ask readers information to help them make a decision. I think anyone coming here for medical advice is in for trouble, however, someone coming here for education and impartial information on a medical topic should be able to learn something. John Gaughan 15:06, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
A "this medical article shouldn't be taken as medical advice" tag is a good idea. A specific tag for the circumcision articles is not a great idea. Tempshill 23:40, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sexuality in biographies

I note that the reference to G. H. Hardy's homosexuality, a trait ascribed to him by a number of people who knew him (Snow, Littlewood, Turing) has been removed from his biography. This has been done not because the information was not correct, but because this sort of information is not regarded ny some people as suitable to a biography. Why is this, and is this any kind of policy? If it is a policy, what precisely is the policy and what is its basis?

I note for example that Michelanglo's biography discusses his sexuality extensively, and Swinburne's mentions masochism. Is this because it is considered relevant to the artist? Hardy was also a literary figure, and his romanticizing of Ramanujan's remarkable gifts might well have something to do with his sexuality both directly and indirectly.

Some random comments: I think it's unquestionably necessary for at least some biographies — Alan_Turing#Prosecution_for_homosexuality.2C_and_Turing.27s_death, for example. For other people, it's less clear cut. My personal opinion is that you have to answer at least two questions:
  1. Why are we interested in this person? Is there interest in the person themselves, or are they primarily known for an important contribution? For example, people are intrigued by Turing's life beyond his contributions to logic, computer science, etc.
  2. What kind of impact does their sexuality have on the "reason for interest"?
For a famous mathematician, such as Hardy, you could argue that his (rumoured?) sexuality was a private matter and of no relevance to his work or how he came to be famous. You could, I guess, also argue that there is now a wider interest in the details of Hardy's life, so it is worth mentioning — it's notable if someone is homosexual in a culture where it was considered atypical, taboo or even illegal (making it much more notable than if he were heterosexual). We do, after all, include other "life-trivia" such as "Hardy never married, and in his final years he was cared for by his sister." — Matt 10:38, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As I pointed out, Hardy is also a literary figure; his A Mathematician's Apology is still in print after 64 years and is considered a classic; Graham Greene calling it "the best account of what it is like to be a creative artist". To say that he never married amounts to a wink and a nod under the circumstances; isn't it better simply to come right out with it? In any case it seems at least as relevant as his fascination with cricket or his atheism. User: Gene Ward Smith

So long as someone's sexuality is not the focus or most emphasized aspect of their biography on any article here, there is no reason why their sexual and other preferences should not be mentioned, particularly when, as Matt noted, they were taboo or illegal (which was the case with homosexuality in England at the time). It does seem silly to mention it in biographies of very recent Western celebrities however, because they don't face the same challenges and mentioning it seems like overemphasis (IMO)... - Simonides 23:27, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
They don't face the same challenges, but they usually face different ones. For popular entertainers it can influence how closely they guard their privacy; for political figures it has bearing on their policy positions (e.g. either explaining why a conservative Republican favored a gay rights bill, or casting doubt on his integrity if he did not). Shying away from that particular aspect of the person's life when other aspects are discussed implies that it is scandalous or offensive (a POV with which I disagree). In most situations, I don't think that merely mentioning a person's homosexuality is "overemphasis" any more than mentioning another person's apparent heterosexuality (by referring to his wife and seven children). It's simply objective honesty. And I think we're a long way from the point where a homosexual or bisexual orientation really isn't significant to a person's biography; someday when biographers are working on the Wikipedia entries, books, biopics, videogames, and holonovels about me, they're going to find my sexual orientation far more interesting and informative about me than the city or the specific year in which I was born, or what the names of my sisters were. Tverbeek 02:04, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Also don't underestimate the influence this can have on young gay people, who will most likely not be told anyone in history is gay in schools. While it may not be at all relevant to the person's work it is sometimes very relevant to readers as it may give them something on which to relate. - [[User:Cohesion|cohesion ☎]] 06:06, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment; should a person's heterosexuality be mentioned? My own view is that for Oscar Wilde, for example, his sexuality is relevant because it played a major part in his public life, but for many other figures it isn't. Wikipedia is not here to provide role models but to be an encyclopaedia, at the end of the day. Filiocht 11:22, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, if their heterosexuality is somehow notable, yes. For example, if (as I believe) Aubrey Beardsley was heterosexual (and if we can get a reasonably authoritative statement to that effect), that would merit mention, since his close association with Oscar Wilde and the aestheticist movement would probably make people guess otherwise. -- Jmabel 01:58, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion, homosexuality or bisexuality should be mentioned if there is some proof of it aside from rumors and urban legends. In the past, when homosexuality have been illegal, there have been truckloads of malicious rumors that have been used for defamatory purposes. They are not necessarily based in fact. I have also seen unfounded claims (althought I have not noticed any in Wikipedia as of yet) that most of the famous historical people have been closet homosexuals, which is about the same thing in reverse. If the persons have clearly had same-sex beloveds or have clearly indicated that they are homosexuals or bisexuals, that should be mentioned. That should be emphasized mainly if their fame or important event of their life or career was due to their sexuality (in Turing's case, the cause of his loss of security rating) - Skysmith 08:18, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. If, like Forster, the person's sexuality is of great importance to the work they produce over their lifetime, or emerges as a prominent or constant theme within their work, then yes, their sexuality should be mentioned. Equally, Alan Turing's sexuality is important, as Matt Crypto points out, because it plays an important part in our understanding of his life.
But there is a problem with sticking someone's sexuality in their biography as a minor detail, and/or especially next to their profession. For example,
  • "Jane Doe is a lesbian playwright..."
as opposed to simply
  • "Jane Doe is a playwright..."
can, IMHO, be seen as pigeonholing and has no place in an encyclopedia. If you take the view that sexuality is something you are born with, then if it has little influence on our understanding of a person's life and actions, it is no more useful than saying-
  • "Jane Doe is a blue-eyed playwright...".
Just a thought. Shikasta 18:18, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
What I meant is something like this. If the aforementioned Jane Doe would be famous for writing lesbian-themed plays, she could be specifically listed as "lesbian playwright". In that case her fame would be based on her favorite theme. Otherwise she would be listed as a playwright and the fact that she is a lesbian could be mentioned elsewhere in the article, for example in a context of a same-sex partner. - Skysmith 08:29, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Good point. We wouldn't say "Isaac Asimov was a bisexual writer", we'd say "Isaac Asimov was a science fiction writer" and mention his bisexuality where relevant; but we might say "Freddie Mercury was a musician and gay icon" or use a similar lead. -Sean Curtin 01:49, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

Eliminating titles of class distinction

I think Wikipedia would be better off without titles of class distinction (i.e. Administrator, Bureaucrat) and have all logged-in users obtain privileges of sysops, etc. Let all logged-in users become known as Wiki staff and have all these privileges. This idea was brought up by User:Sam Spade on his attitude towards adminship. Let the "social classes" system in Wikipedia break up or be eliminated, just like the internationally widespread elimination of titles of nobility. Marcus2 14:47, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think this would cause chaos and anarchy. Maybe not a whole lot at first, but it would get worse until the very open nature of Wikipedia would be in jeopardy. Any anonymous and open medium needs to have some way to keep the trolls in check, be it Wiki sysops, forum moderators, operators on irc, even comment moderation/scoring like Slashdot. John Gaughan 15:13, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It's a theoretically wonderful idea that would be extremely attractive in a world free of malevolence. Sadly, experience shows that as hard as some people may wish it, the World Wide Web is not such a world. However, there's nothing to stop anyone who wants to from creating their own Wiki and establishing whatever policies they see fit; it should only take a short time experimenting with such an social structure to edify the experimenter. Signed, someone who tried to run a BBS on the principle of guaranteed free speech until several avowed Nazis decided to try to take over the system. --jpgordon 16:51, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Even in anarchy, there are still peacekeepers. --Golbez 18:58, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)


Clay Shirky has a nice explanation of why sysops are required in online communities: [1] DenisMoskowitz 20:22, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)
I actually would suggest we move the other way -- I don't think young accounts -- ones that have under a certain number of edits or that were created too recently, should be able to perform certain actions established users have (e.g. move pages, VfD, etc), and further, that anonymous users should be prohibited from editing entirely, outside of the sandbox. --Improv 15:20, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
That would be contrary to wiki nature, that anyone is allowed to contribute regardless of giving their identity. I doubt that policy can ever change. --Golbez 17:25, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)
We need the class system. If we didn't then one idiot could cause a lot of problems since he would have the same powers as an administrator. Making everyone totally equal has never worked. There needs to be some people with more power then others because some people care about Wikipedia more then others. Remember, if something isn't broken don't try and fix it. I like the system the way it is. --NeoJustin 21:02, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)
Keep in mind that the anon/user/administrator/bureaucrat/steward/Jimbo "hierarchy" was never intended to become a set of social classes or a caste system. It was set up to protect the Wikipedia itself: we need people who can delete stuff and block vandals, but if everyone could do it, human nature would cause the Wikipedia to descend into chaos. No human society is without some form of leadership, be it dictatorship, aristocracy, republicanism, or democracy. (Wikipedia combines all four, to varying degrees.) In reality, the social and political distinctions between user and administrator are extremely minute. I've been both; take my word for it. • Benc • 05:31, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
My first editing conflict was with an admin, he never let on that he was an admin, never used superpowers to control the article -- that's what IMO an admin is ideally. Merely an editor. Of course they do a lot of extra work because of being the only ones able to do it. If I wanted to be an electrician, I could be, but it is sometimes easier for me to simply hire someone recognised as being able to competently wire my house. In the same way, I feel comfortable thinking of admins (and above) as simply editors who have agreed to do the less fun tasks (I call 'em chores) and on whom I can rely, when I need a chore done. As far as I'm concerned, the power inherent in anyone who comes to this site, including anon users, is plenty. An anonymous user can place here something that can literally affect all of mankind. That's anarchy enough for me. In a real-world anarchy, there would also be rules, in the form of "things everybody knows will get you painted blue and ridiculed" and also "things that if you do them they are likely to get you killed". Malicious editors wouldn't be allowed to ruin a real newspaper in the real world, even in an anarchy, and people caught tearing pages out of encyclopedias in the public library might have their hands removed so it would be harder for them to ruin what society considers valuable. But I wouldn't be cutting off hands, I'd have an expert do it, after the community reached a consensus on the issue. And note that these admins aren't claiming divine right to adminship, it has been granted to them by and may be removed from them by consensus of the community. If you don't think someone should be an admin, vote against them when they are nominated. Or don't. If you don't like the rules or the system, feel free to change it. That's how it got this way.Pedant 17:59, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)

Queen's v American English

This topic must have been covered before somewhere else. I'm noticing a lot of centres, metres, harbours, and judgements going on in Wikipedia articles alongside centers, meters, harbors, and judgments. Is there an ongoing discussion about using Queen's versus American English, or has this already been decided somewhere? If anyone can just point me to a discussion already in place I'd appreciate it. Thehappysmith 15:10, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I do not remember where I saw it (a quick look around turns up nothing), but I believe the policy is that each article should be consistent. For example, if an article uses "metre" then use the British forms. If an article uses "meter" then use the U.S. versions of words. Do not add "kilometre" to an article talking about "meters" because it is not consistent. John Gaughan 15:17, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The basic standard is, be consistent within the article, and for articles with a clear British interest, go with that spelling (i.e. London), and for articles with a clear American interest (i.e. Mt. St. Helens), go with American spelling. --Golbez
Just a few comments:
  • I hadn't heard the form of english spelling used outside of North America called "Queens English" before. To me (an Australian) I thought "Queens English" meant a form of english speech, such as using "one" to refer to the first person among others. I normally call what is referred to as "Queens English" in this post, "International English".
  • I changed cubic kilometer to cubic kilometre in Mt. St. Helens a few days ago, because cubic kilometer was redlinked, and because I thought international measurements should match international spelling, and US measurements should match US spelling. It got changed back, but i didn't stress about it.
  • "For articles with a clear British interest".. I would think that should be "For articles without a clear US interest", as everywhere else (I'm not sure about Canada) uses that form.
  • What combination of US/international spelling/measurements does Canada use? Actually nevermind, I'll go read the articles and find out :)
-- Chuq 02:51, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes, this person has misinterpreted the term "Queen's English", which refers to a rather specifically aristocratic UK form.
  • cubic kilometer should redirect to cubic kilometre. The latter looks quite foreign to a U.S. eye.
  • "For articles with a clear British interest" should probably be something like "For articles with a clear British Commonwealth interest". But if you think that, as a Yank, I'm going to trouble myself to neatly write in Commonwealth English when I'm writing about Argentina or Romania, you're out of your skull. Topics with no strong connection to the English-speaking world are just going to reflect their primary authors' preferences.
  • Yeah, Canada's somewhere between. I believe that no one but those who've grown up with it cna comfortably reproduce a specifically Canadian English. -- Jmabel 02:04, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
Whilst agreeing with the most of the comments raised above, I personally suggest that, wherever possible, words and phrases should be chosen so they aren't particularly UK/US/another form of English. For instance - instead of 'organisation' or 'organization', you can use 'group', don't refer to a 'public' school, but use 'private' school instead. Don't refer to meters or cubic metres, m or m3 is easy enough to have in their stead. Sometimes this isn't possible, and the flow of the article is more important than thinking of a universally accepted alternative word/phrase. But wherever possible, use a linguistically neutral term. jguk 20:54, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I disagree completely, I think that tends to make for flaccid prose. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:46, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)
I also disagree - particularly because of the school thing. A public school and a private school are completely opposite things to me. Chuq 00:23, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
When using the term "public school" you really have to be careful. There are completely different meanings in US and UK usage. If the term is used in an article, a description needs to be added to make it clear what is meant by it. Otherwise the article will be seriously misleading to many. jguk 04:58, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
For that matter, anyone who's dealt with Latin America knows that U.S. English is the dominant form, Limey detractors aside. A. D. Hair 03:34, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I've copied the following from User talk:Tim Starling#Suggestion I posted on the Village pump bcz of its importance as a policy matter, not merely a no-brainer for Tim to implement. --Jerzy(t) 01:45, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

There was a discussion about spelling and punctuation AE vs. BE etc.. on the village pump. I put forward the following suggestion. Tell me what you think.
This whole AE/BE preference problem is something that has probably got up the nose of very many Wikipedians over there years. I'm certainly one of them. I have a proposal for a relatively simple software solution that may be useful in other areas too. Some time ago we managed to kill off the debate about whether to use [[DD Month]] [[YYYY] or [[Month DD]], YYYY by implementing a system whereby wikified dates appear in one or other format depending on what the user has selected in their preferences. This works great but it only works for wikified dates. My solution world also work for unwikified dates. If we had a BE/AE option in preferences we could then have the flag checked when an article is displayed. Problematic words or phrases could be tagged e.g. "... he came to her {[defense/defence]} as soon as he could and ..." - and the appropriate word could be chosen as required.
Mintguy (T) 14:15, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • IMO, this is a terrible idea because it tries to impose a mechanical solution on a fuzzy problem. For instance, a UK buddy observed that i was mad keen about something. I use American English, so when i say i'm mad keen about anything, it would be a falsification of my intent to say, e.g., that i'm really hot for it. Similarly, i was taught that in AE, the first E is optional in both "judgement" and "arguement", which i take as evidence of reconvergence of the two dialects; the 'Net should logically be expected to be accelerating that in any case. We denigrate machine translations into English, and so we should, even more, unnecessary machine translations between these two mutually intelligible dialects. [Post by Jerzy(t) interrupted here by Mintguy's comment.]
My intention was to put this to Tim and for him to guage the feasibility. I would have preferred if you had not copied this here and then posted negative comments particularly as I don't think you have read my suggestion correctly. I don't quite understand what you are trying to say above. I am not suggesting that we have an automtic machine translation. It would merely be presenting some individually selected words (of the editors' choice) as AE or BE depending on the user's preference. To use your own words - It is a fuzzy solution. Mintguy (T)

Along similar lines:

  • If editors who use Commonwealth English want a separate 'pedia, perhaps the current en: should become American-English only (and probably become ae: or something), and i'd join a corps of translators shuttling article back and forth, but i prefer that we speak, in our choice about that, for what is probably the future, and stick to pretty much the policies we now have. [Here Mintguy interrupts Jerzy(t) again.]
This comment exemplifies EXACTLY the point that everyone is complaining about. You are inferring the American English is the norm - and that us outsiders should branch off - when infact AE is the exception to most of the rest of the world. Mintguy (T) 09:12, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • BTW, my quick read didn't quite satisfy me that anyone had enunciated what i thot was clear, and what i endorse: if the subject matter doesn't impose a logical choice of language, the original author's dialect should be retained. Two reasons i favor that are that it is even-handed, and that it offers a healthy incentive to Yanks to nurture their grasp of the Mother Tongue.

--Jerzy(t) 01:45, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

Personally, as an effort to counter the 'perceived America-centric bias' -- even though I am an 'American', I prefer to write in British English when writing, unless it seems to me that doing so will make it seem like a British imposition of viewpoint. I'm not thoroughly versed in the nuances of Britsh spellings versus American, but it's one way I try to fulfill the goals of CSB project. Question: Is 'King's English' similar in connotation to Queen's English'?Pedant 18:23, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)

Yes - when Charles, Prince of Wales, or Prince William of Wales, becomes King, then we will speak (well, might aspire to speak) the King's English; officers in the British armed forces will take a King's commission; part of the High Court will be the King's Bench Division; we will have King's Counsel rather than QCs; and so on. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:49, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Policy proposal: Administrator Activity Policy

A new policy proposal has been created, titled "Administrator Activity Policy". It can be found here. Discussion is set to last two weeks followed by a two week vote. Feel free to direct your comments to the talk page thereof. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 23:23, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)

Fancruft

I believe the guidelines need to be a tad clearer concerning deletion, redirection, or merging of fancruft articles. Pages have been made on minute characters from shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Animaniacs, DuckTales and Tiny Toon Adventures that do not belong here. Some, like the ones from Tiny Toons and Animaniacs, can be easily deleted, because the same information can be found on the show's main page. Others, like Buffy, have literally dozens of such pages to their name with a lot of information on them. Some have said that they could be moved to "minor character" gatherings on single articles, which has already been accomplished for shows like South Park. I think that's a good idea, but it still remains to be fancruft that makes little sense to anyone else, and even in these circumstances, I don't think deletion is out of the question. Any thoughts? Ian Pugh 17:23, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • I'm noticing a lot of heat (and very little light) on the subject of fancruft lately. It seems to me that a lot of people are forgetting that Wikipedia is not simply a place to find out information on subjects of which one already knows: it is also a place to discover new information. Wikipedia is not paper. Something to be borne in mind is the plan to make Wikipedia available—presumably on DVD—in places where there is no connection to the Internet; in this context Wikipedia needs to be able to stand more alone than usual. --Phil | Talk 10:29, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
  • One compromise that has been reached, in the case of The Apprentice, has been to do just as you described -- move minor character information into a list page, or the main page, if sufficiently small in amount. One of the problems in making this kind of judgement is finding a principled position covering, say, Mr. Spock, Jigglypuff, and Kylantha. Figures such as Mr. Spock may have some significance to the general populance -- it could be said that he's the most famous fictional character from sci-fi. On the other hand, there's little reason we should know the entire fictional career. This brings to mind a question -- should the content of the article be related to the scope of notability? Particular, if person A, real or not, is notable for X, should we go much beyond X in describing them? How much detail do we want? We might, for example, decide that blood type, date of birth, first love, favourite foods, resume, family tree, and similar all belong on Wikipedia for someone who happens to be notable for something, or we might establish a rule of thumb to deal with this kind of thing. This is what I'd advocate, roughly -- if we can't explain why Jugglypuff or Kylantha are notable to society, they should not have an article, and if they do have an article, it should not go too far beyond a through exploration of the ties to notability. Thoughts? --Improv 18:12, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I don't mind including fan information on various fictional universes. Wikipedia doesn't have a page count limit, and it frankly makes it a richer encyclopedia. The widespread coverage of J.R.R. Tolkein's fictional universe, for example, has probably brought in a lot of Wikipedia users, who then go on to edit other (even non-fiction) articles. In my mind, the biggest problem is that if minor characters have their very own article entry, and they might intersect with other entries, soon just about any entry will be ambiguous. If they're a minor character, it's probably worth considering putting them in a main article on their source. In any case, I think Wikipedia should cover all knowledge... even the knowledge of fictional universes. Let's face it, the world of literature is wide and influential, and ignoring it will ignore things that are important to many. To deal with size of printed materials, the real need will be to make sure that these things are categorized well.. then a printer can automatically remove them if desired. Besides, if this is the worst problem for Wikipedia, things are going really well. -- Dwheeler 03:13, 2004 Oct 8 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is not paper. Fancruft is fine IMO if the article is really well written and if the subject deserves an article longer than a stub. Tempshill 00:01, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • It's also important for the writers to maintain a sense of context. This is, after all, a general encyclopedia. People need to remember that a wolverine was a species of carnivore long before it was the name of a Canadian mutant. MK 04:25, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Since we don't currently have a problem with too much content, I think minor character fancruft should be left alone unless it requires a disambiguation page, at which time those involved should decide if it should be consolidated. Otherwise, leave it alone. It lets people get angry about how biased wikipedia is, favoring US TV shows over whole continents. (This is reasonable, but the answer is too add more material, not remove existing material.) ;-) JesseW 07:41, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Has anyone considered moving the stuff over to wikibooks? That seems like the best and most appropriate place for the minutiae that don't fall into the "encyclopedic" category. —Mike 00:42, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

If an article about fancruft has potential to become encyclopedic or is encyclopedic, and the piece of fancruft is of reasonable notability within the surrounding fandom, I see absolutely no reason to delete it. If its a stub, you can of course merge it to some list. Wikipedia is not paper, and one of its greatest attributes is being able to have thousands upon thousands of articles about topics that people enjoy but a normal encyclopedia doesn't have space for. I don't understand the need to purify Wikipedia of any unimportant and not-so-notable topic. Half the point of it is to include all of those. —siroχo 11:36, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

The idea of a separate wiki for such material is sort of appealing (mostly because hopefully there no one would use the term fancruft, which has very negative connotations in my mind). However, I don't like it as any sort of solution the way the current system works. (How does one move articles from one to the other? How does one get to one from the other? What if I want to link to information about Maglor from the Wikipedia article on Fëanor? For that matter, how to do I find the article on Maglor if I'm searching from here? What if I don't know enough about the subject to know which wiki I should look it up in?) We would also have to determine where to draw the line, which would be just as messy as the VFD notability discussions are today.

Of course, I do believe in merging small articles into larger, more useful articles. I'm working on convincing enough of the other Middle-earth editors. ;) [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 00:20, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Recently I added a couple images to articles without the permission of the copyright holder, namely Image:TheDraw ANSI.png and Image:Ceresco library.jpg, in both cases because I don't know who the original author is and have no way to find out. These pictures would be very difficult to replace — while any ANSI art image could be used for ANSI art, I consider the TheDraw image to have additional historical value. I don't think any of us would drive to Ceresco, Nebraska to take a picture of something there, but some anonymous resident has already done so. Neither of these uses is even remotely likely to be challenged. While this seems to contradict general image policy, are these sort of images acceptable? Should they be? Is there a tag for this sort of thing? And, finally, is there some more appropriate place I could ask this? Thanks. Derrick Coetzee 00:16, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

For the former image, I placed the {{screenshot}} tag. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 00:35, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
In general, you should ask the web site where you got the image for permission, since they are presumptively the copyright holders or know who the copyright holders are. If you can't locate a copyright holder, then you should tag it with {{unverified}}, or {{unknown}} if you have a source (i.e. a web site) but no licensing info. It's not good for Wikipedia to include stuff of dubious legality, no matter how useful an image might seem. —Steven G. Johnson 22:26, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
The reason we should not include images of dubious legality, by the way, isn't so much the danger of our hosting copyrighted images on the website — we can take images down quickly — but the proposed projects of burning Wikipedia or a large subset of it onto disc and printing it on paper, for distribution to areas where Wikipedia is blocked, or areas where people have no computer access. See User:Jimbo Wales/Pushing To 1.0. Copyright holders could then attack legally with pointy sharp teeth, and we'd have little recourse IMO but to pay them something. Tempshill 23:52, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
More seriously (to be blunt) won't all our images look like crap on paper? They're too low-resolution. Even if the full-size versions are scaled to fit, I've uploaded a number of small diagrams and other pictures with the belief that they'd be viewed only on a screen. Derrick Coetzee 00:02, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Noncommercial Images On WikiPedia.Org Versus CDs

People with noncommercial images do not mind their inclusion on WikiMedia.Org (a not for profit family of websites). What is important is that we or people using WikiMedia.Org do not use noncommercial images in commercial works. Luckily, every picture -- indeed, every binary file -- has a page of metadata which includes license. It is easy to remove noncommercially licensed works from commercial works. I do not see why we must deillustrate our websites. When we burnWikiPedia.Org to a CD, we will have to leave out most images for fitting the Encyclopædia WikiPedia to a CD, so it is not like all of the images will ever make it to the commercial CD anyway.

Ŭalabio 04:04, 2004 Oct 6 (UTC)

I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree with this statement. You cannot speak for the many people who hold copyright to their images, who may want to control how they are used. Their permission should be asked wherever this is possible. I also don't like the idea of some of my small-filesize public-domain diagrams being excluded from articles I've written that really need them, but this is already occurring in many mirrors. What I'm not sure is if images produced by amateurs who cannot be contacted should be proactively included, and only removed if there is a later objection. Derrick Coetzee 13:24, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
What I had in mind is cases like when one finds an image licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 of the foundation Creative Commons. These people definitely do not mind their images on the not for profit website.
We do not have to deillustrate the website of noncommercial website of noncommercial for our for profit CDs. We can use the metadata on the image-pages for filtering out noncommercial images on our commercial DCs, which after all, with have most images left out anyway.
Ŭalabio 13:51, 2004 Oct 6 (UTC)
I agree with this, if and only if such filtering is made available to reusers in some convenient way. Probably the best way is to automatically maintain downloads of a "safe" and a "full" image collection, and reusers can choose whichever they like, at their own peril. If this is done, some dedicated Wikipedians should probably periodically review safe-tagged images for accuracy. Derrick Coetzee 23:01, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It seems to me that this has two significant downsides. First, it's too complex. It's much simpler to simply mandate all contributions have a license acceptable for all our uses. Secondly, it makes it less likely that we'll get unencumbered contributions -- people won't care to remove encumbered content if it appears 'good enough' to them for their ordinary viewing experience. If we mandate unencumberedness, then the incompleteness is in everyone's face, and they'll be motivated to do something about it. --Improv 18:01, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In my opinion, we should never accept content that would restrict its usage in any situation where we might want wikipedia to go (e.g. CDs, print, and the like). --Improv 16:47, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Template inside signature

There are problems about use of this type of template in signature? --[[User:Archenzo|Archenzo >>

Revenue passenger traffic, in millions of passenger-miles (scheduled flights only)
Year Pax-Miles
{{{1}}} {{{2}}}

]] 13:32, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I believe there is a limit as to how many times templates can be repeated on a page, so if you were to sign the same page multiple times, the template will stop working after the fifth occurance. I believe the name of the template is then shown instead. zoney ♣ talk 13:55, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Um, what sort of problems? One that I know of (and why I stopped using a template in my sig) is that it only works for the first five times on a page--after the same template appears more than five times on a page, it does not get expanded properly. I understand that this is a setting in the Mediawiki software. older≠wiser 14:01, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Not to mention that they are just damned annoying. Images like this draw attention. When I'm looking at a talk page, the fact that YOU have been there is not so bloody important as to deserve such visual prominence. -- Jmabel 18:25, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Seconded! This Unicode characters/images/tables/etc in signatures crap needs to DIE DIE DIE. Garrett Albright 05:32, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Just for the record your signiture contains 16 unicode characters without the datestamp. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 17:24, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)
Thirded. It's damn annoying, to tell the truth. I'd rather have everyone put a link to their Talk page instead. So much more convenient, and practical as well. Johnleemk | Talk 11:35, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think i heard in #wikipedia that in MediaWiki 1.4 the 5 template limit won't be there (they have a differnt solution for infinite loops), then using templates in sigs will work fine (which I intend to do since my sig is very long :) —siroχo 08:16, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

If your signature is very long, you probably shouldn't use it. --Spug 10:51, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Many thanks! This was an experiment. The template is not now in my signature.--[[User:Archenzo|Archenzo ( Talk)]] 13:16, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Policy proposal concerning episode guides and lists

See Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy#Policy proposal concerning episode guides and episode lists. Ian Pugh 14:00, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Make ESA images off-limits?

I found this text in the ESA General Terms and Conditions: ESA does not grant the right to resell or redistribute any information, documents, images or material from its web site or to compile or create derivative works from material on its website. Does this mean WP must not contain ESA images (in contrast to NASA images)? Awolf002 17:49, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes. —Steven G. Johnson 22:35, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, if you read the next paragraph of their Legal Disclaimer, you will read the following:
Users may not modify, publish, transmit, [..], without obtaining prior written authorisation. In order to obtain authorisation to display or use any content of the ESA Web Portal, please make a request for authorization by clicking on 'Contact us'.
In other words, you can, but you have to get their authorization.--JohnWest 17:54, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
That's true for anything; the copyright holder can always grant exceptions. —Steven G. Johnson


Tracing images, legality of.

If one finds a diagram that is useful but it is tricky to make in a paint program, what is the legal position if one takes the image into an image manipulation programme and traces it onto a new layer? It should be fairly simple, most times, to get an extremely good copy of the original image, but such action clearly goes against the spirit of image protection legislation. Do we have a policy? --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 19:16, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

That probably counts as a derivative work, and therefore, still applicable to the original copyright. I've done that, but only with PD US Gov maps, and therefore the derivative work is kosher. I hope. =p --Golbez 20:09, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)
It's a derivative work. Most copyrights restrict derivative works in some way, often more strongly than the original work! On the flip side, one of the conditions for fair use is how significantly the material was altered — for example, a caricature of a celebrity based on a photo is likely to be in the clear. I am not a lawyer. Derrick Coetzee 22:04, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The previous paragraph actually has more to do with the likelihood of getting caught than with the definition of a derivative work. I'd not do it. Tempshill 23:57, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
No, a caricature would be a sort of parody and therefore fair use.--Samuel J. Howard 01:52, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

It is ok for maps in most cases, and other things where there is no other way to represent the thing reasonably. Copying the artistic interpretation of the thing is what is at stake. Intrigue 23:37, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Handling persistent POV warriors

Do we have a policy for handling persistent POV warriors such as the anon who has been warned five (!) times for adding blatantly POVed material to Malaysia? It's so biased, everyone working on the article has reverted the anon's edits on sight. I asked if blocking is permissible on IRC, but everyone else suggested waiting. Despite all the warnings, the anon has persisted. If we don't have any policies for blocking persistent POV warriors such as this one, we should have. If the user is registered, we can go to arbitration, but for anons... Johnleemk | Talk 07:02, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I assume this is the guy on 218.11.*.* According to APNIC, that block's assigned to "Telekom Malaysia Berhad", and it looks like he's got access to the whole thing. The only way to block him is to block about sixty-five thousand addresses. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:40, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I figured as much. My proposal on IRC was just to block his current IP, and unblock the others after a day or two. Hopefully he'll realise his changes aren't welcome (as most of them have either been incorporated into the article or rejected as blatant POV). I just had to revert another edit of his. This is really getting annoying. Johnleemk | Talk 18:09, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Search results page

The Search results page used to give a red link to allow creation of a page, but this was recently taken away. Maybe that is to avoid creation of easily-missed orphans and vanity pages, but it complicates the creation of necessary redirects. For instance, I just wrote 3 Maccabees and 4 Maccabees (mirroring the current 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees), but needed redirects from Third Book of Maccabees etc. to mirror Book of Ezra and Third Epistle of John. I had to do a psuedo-edit and preview to get red links to create them. Is this intentional? Is there a better way? Mpolo 10:53, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

I'd just type in the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_of_article manually. Goplat 15:28, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
There is a difference between the "Go" and "Search" pages. If you enter the page name and press the Search button you won't get the red link. But if you press the Go button instead, you will get the red link asking if you want to create the page. —Mike 17:44, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)
I was convinced that I was hitting "Go" -- but now it's giving the red link again, so maybe I was temporarily insane. Thanks. Mpolo 19:39, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)
You were not insane. The feature disappeared for me also for a time yesterday. I suppose one of the technical people was working on something or other. Jallan 15:56, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Billion

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.


How to deal with an edit war on a survey?

I started a survey over at Talk:Project for the New American Century/Survey, and one editor (VeryVerily) who has been opposed to the survey from the start is now trying to disrupt it by inserting large numbers of disparaging non-vote comments into the voting section in direct contravention of the survey guidelines. Protecting the survey would be silly, so I've been reduced to edit-warring to try keeping it as tidy as possible. There's already a request for arbitration pending on this person and this subject so I suppose I could just consider it another piece of "evidence" should the case be accepted, but it annoys me that in the interim he's able to interfere this much with other attempts to work out the dispute short of that. I don't suppose this would be grounds for a temporary ban? That's all I can think of offhand, but since I'm party to the RfA now I don't want to do something like that myself. Bryan 17:27, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Eeek! Run away! That's a massive discussion page for one small paragraph to be agreed. zoney ♣ talk 22:59, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, it did inflate rather dramatically during the pre-survey discussion over what questions to include. That's the main reason why I'm hoping to keep the side-chatter during the survey itself strictly compartmentalized to the discussion section (having spent a couple weeks trying to discuss the issue with VV I know how rapidly his threads expand :). Bryan 01:02, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Should non-English examples be used in Wikipedia articles?

In the article on pleonasm, a contributor has inserted a number of non-English sentence examples:

  • Yo te quiero.
  • Te quiero.
  • Je crains qu'il ne pleuve.
  • Ce 'ne' est plus difficile à comprendre que je ne pensais.

plus commentary on them.

Compare this entry to vowel, which references differences in principle between English and other languages without using non-English examples.

We're discussing this here.

The only explicit policy advice on this I've located so far is Use other languages sparingly. Know of any other Wikipedia policy guidelines on using non-English?--NathanHawking 21:11, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)

I think non-English examples, used solely as objects of study and explained in English as these are, are perfectly okay. Derrick Coetzee 21:31, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I think they are more than OK. Yes, we are supposed to be careful about expressing ourselves in non-English phrases, but other languages are perfectly legitimate subject matter. See, for a similar example using Spanish, Alternative political spellings. I think it is entirely correct that this is not confined to English... and I'd love to see a Japanese or Chinese example of substituting different ideographs to make political puns. -- Jmabel|Talk 22:51, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
I agree, but with a provision: the article you cite is fundamentally different in one important way. It does cite Spanish examples of words with alternate spellings; it does not present whole sentences. In that respect, it's like the noun article I cited. Even an article as obviously appropriate as Spanish_language only has a short passage written in Spanish, compared to the same material in English.
You speak of puns. Should an English-language Wikipedia article on puns have punning sentences in Spanish, French, German, Russian, etc.? I think not. I think the passing reference to the Greek words for rock in the Biblical pun is fine. But should we cite the entire Greek text for Matthew 16:18? I think not there as well. Articles on language are no different. In the English-language Wikipedia, the focus should be on English-language issues, referencing differences only in passing; if Wikipedia is to be multilingual, that's different--then it becomes a matter of how to organize the material so predominantly English readers don't have to wade through other-language commentary.--NathanHawking 01:01, 2004 Oct 15 (UTC)
Interesting. Here, we disagree. There are subjects that inherently have multi-lingual aspects. I don't think we should be writing on the assumption that our readers are only interested in one language. It's not like there is some separate "multi-lingual Wikipedia" in which to put this material. Insofar as puns in some languages have aspects different from those in English, I think it's worth discussing, with examples. I know that there are some interesting aspects of Chinese puns that don't replicate in English (plays on which ideograph to use). I suspect that Vietnamese (a tonal language) would also have some distinct forms of pun. I'd want to see those covered in the article if someone has the knowledge. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:17, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)
Don't you think that an article on puns with examples from a dozen languages would become unweildy, cumbersome for most to read? To my eye, this problem is already apparent in the pleonasm article. More of the same would only make it worse. I don't have objections to Wikipedia being multilingual, if that's the will of the Great Wiki, but I do foresee a problem with stuffing non-English examples into English text: diminished readability for the majority. At the least, it should be cordoned off in a non-English section or into different articles--not just plopped into the English text. Does this make sense?--NathanHawking 08:35, 2004 Oct 15 (UTC)
Non-English references should be considered case by case, just as with English references and with all tecnical material and technical explanations. There are many multi-lingual people browsing the web and many articles where citing an example in a another language than English is quite appropriate, even, for example, giving the original Greek of a crux passage to help explain different interpretations. That amounts to the same thing as giving complex chemical formulae in an article on manufacturing (which is Greek to most readers). A reader who doesn't want such technical information can skip over it. But should it be there for those who do want it. It may result in "diminished readibility for the majority". But Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not only a selection of essays for easy reading only for the common denominator interest of the majority. Its main purpose is to be informative, which sometimes means being technical, sometimes very technical. The majority of readers have minority interests. I'm interested in linguistics and welcome linguistic material. Someone else wants precise chemical formulae. Another person wants to know the information on the geology of an area in with proper geological terminology. Another wants wants complex statistical information. And I don't think there should be a cordoning off of technical information by policy. Sometimes such information becomes long enough and full enough to deserve an article by itself. Somtimes it doesn't. Sometimes it might better fit in a special technical section of an article. And sometimes that is not so. Cordoning off the material worked in pleonasm. But that isn't always desireable. Jallan 22:48, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In the case of articles like puns where there are various langauge examples, they should be seperated by language, so those who don't want to read about some language don't have to, but those, like myself, who would be facinated by Chinese ideogram puns, could read about them. With other cases, I'm not sure. Could someone suggest some other cases where sectioning would not work? JesseW 02:11, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Euphemisms regarding death

What is the policy (if any) regarding how deaths are printed in articles? I see a lot of inconsistencies mainly in the use of 'Mr X died on' vs. 'Mr X passed away on'. Is it more accepted to deliver the hard facts, or offer a euphemism when explaining the death of an individual? Barneyboo 02:28, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good question. I haven't encounted a policy on what you're calling "euphemisms" for death. Mind you, I think death (in the conventional sense of that word) is actually what happens when people cease to breath and think and move. But that's me and my POV.
Selecting truly NPOV terminology is probably impossible--some believe only the body dies, others that everything dies. To the former, "death" is the euphemism (or malaprop) for passing on, while to the latter passing is euphemistic or false terminology. Since most agree that something dies, even if only this body, I think death and died is probably the closest we can get to a simple NPOV term.--NathanHawking 08:55, 2004 Oct 15 (UTC)
Use the simplest possible term, "died", unless there is a more specific term you can use, such as "was assassinated", "was executed", "was murdered", "drowned", "was killed", and so on. Also, in the case of people whose bodies were never found, you might want to use "disappeared" (maybe they lived and changed their identity, you never know). I would avoid euphemisms if for no other reason than that they're less familiar to speakers of English as a second language. Derrick Coetzee 16:17, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates of birth and death recommends "died". Simple, clear, factual. Gdr 13:46, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)

Existing Copyrighted Images

Moved to Wikipedia talk: Image copyright tags.

Refactoring talk pages

Is there a policy/guideline for refactoring talk pages? I have noticed some people removing resolved issues from Talk pages without archiving them or even making a note that the discussion had ever existed. Surely we should have a guide for archiving and/or refactoring Talk pages. Johnleemk | Talk 18:03, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Two articles discuss this, perhaps among others:
  1. Wikipedia:Talk_page#Refactoring_talk_pages and
  2. Wikipedia:Refactoring
Seems to be open season on talk page modification, and that the fate of their appearance is as subject to the vagaries of human judgment as any other material here. This seems good advice, though:
"Provide links to the original, uncut version, so others can check your changes, and if necessary go back to the original to clarify what an author actually said. This combination of refactoring and archiving will often prevent complaints that information was lost. Make it explicit that you have refactored something so no one is misled into thinking this was the original talk page."--NathanHawking 18:40, 2004 Oct 15 (UTC)

Translation, copyright, and citation

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Avoid_self-references#Translation,_copyright,_and citation

Policy decisions on IRC

Recently at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship, there has been a lot of talk about whether it's fair to decide Wikipedia policy and admin/bureaucrat promotions on the unofficial #wikipedia IRC channel. Many participants in the discussion agree that it's generally a Very Bad Thing when this occurs.

To remedy this, I've proposed a policy that sets out some ground rules about using IRC to formulate policy. (Namely, Don't Do It.) Please read it over at m:Talk:IRC channels (that's on the Meta-wiki), and add your thoughts. Thanks, • Benc • 23:02, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Making a complaint about a user

Wikipedia:Request for comment requires that two users discuss an issue with a user before a dispute is announced. How does one get another user to review this issue without announcing it on Wikipedia:Request for comment? -- Itai 12:10, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I assume you should just mention on his talk page, i.e. if you wanted to list me on of RfC(:-)) you would first put a comment on my talk page, [User_talk:JesseW], and give me a chance to respond (a few days, say) then, assuming this issue was larger than just me and you, someone else would also do the same, and if this did not resolve the issue, only then would you post on RfC, referring in your post to the existing Talk discussions. IANAWL, so I may be wrong, but that's my guess. JesseW 14:51, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The problem is that some issues are so obscure so as not to draw the attention of anybody but those involved - and assuming only two are involved, a deadlock is reached, and WP:RFC can't be used on account of requiring somebody else to try to solve this beforehand. -- Itai 19:50, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Er... Write up a persuasive explanation of why someone else should be interested in the topic, and post it on the Village Pump as a "Interesting thing on Wikipedia"... Hopefully that will drum up enough interest so someone else will try to solve it beforehand. If that fails, then you can go to RfC. AFAIK, this is how the system is supposed to work; if an issue is only sufficiently interesting (to work on fixing the issue) to two editors, then the likelyhood of anyone reading RfC to be interested is felt to be too small to justify the attention. However, the village pump has no such restrictions. ;-) What's the issue? JesseW 20:36, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The issue is foolish and pointless, as always, and thus will not be hereby recalled. It's probably better this way. -- Itai 18:39, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You can also seek mediation, rather than approaching this like a prosecution. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:01, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, but Wikipedia:Dispute resolution lists mediation as the last dispute resolution procedure, stating: "When requesting formal mediation, be prepared to show that you tried to resolve the dispute using the steps listed above." -- Itai 18:37, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Stubs

Hi all - apologies if this is mentioned elsewhere... I'm new here, but I've looked through both the FAQ and the help guide and I can't find this mentioned.

I've been adding small amounts of information to several stub articles. In some cases, the amounts are so small that the article is clearly still a stub. In others... I can't tell. Is there a hard and fast rule of thumb as to when a stub stops being a stub?

Grutness 06:42, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In short, no. There is no hard and fast rule for what constitutes a stub. Use your intuition. I would say that when in doubt it is better to err on the side of leaving the stub notice. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:32, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

And there are others who believe stub notices as currently implemented are no-purpose, useless annoyances added mindlessly any article that is short. One might as well have this done automatically by software for any article under some arbitrary minimal amount of bytes if there were any use to it. More information can almost always be added to an article. Many long articles are far more deficient in the amount of information that should be added to them in respect to the topic they cover than many supposed stubs. There is never any harm done by removing a stub marker. Jallan 16:47, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Apparently, unlike me, judging by that last sentence, Jallan considers his/her opinions to be facts.

There are very short articles that are not stubs. Two examples that leap to mind are

  1. disambiguation pages
  2. articles about minor deities about whom there is little to say beyond identification

Hence, number of bytes would not be a suitable criterion.

And, yes, I do agree that there are long articles that are so uninformative that they might as well be stubs.

Still, I really disagree that "There is never any harm done by removing a stub marker." Clearly, there are people who find them useful, even if Jallan is not one of them, and the harm done by arbitrarily removing things that other people find useful is that it is damaging to the community. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:20, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately minor deities and such do get tagged by the mark-all-short-articles-as-stubs warriors, along with every other short article they find. A person who would not dream of actually writing a plea into an article about what should be done about it, has no qualms about adding a boilerplate stub statement to the same purpose. The result is mindless marking of anything that is short, which might as well be done by a byte counter (on anything but disambiguation pages and redirects of course). Size of article does seem to be the only criterion being used, though that is applied with no consistancy. Arbitrarily adding messages to articles that other people find useless is surely also damaging to the community. One gets used to filtering out the garbage, of course. If stubs were marked only by editors who were knowledgeable about the topic of the article with an indication on the talk page about what was needed, then marking as stubs would be useful. But the current practice of indiscriminate marking of articles by templates is damaging, because too often done thoughtlessly and inconsistantly and wrongly. Randomly remove a thousand stub markers and who would even notice if they didn't check the edit history? Do people working in a particular area of expertise really pay attention to stub markers rather than their own evaluation of what is needed and what they can best contribute? Jallan 17:00, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
That's a lot of issues. Two seem worth engaging.
  1. "Unfortunately minor deities and such do get tagged by the mark-all-short-articles-as-stubs warriors..." Guess I'm not one of those warriors, then. I would say that the best defense against that — and I'd encourage this — is that if you work on a short article that is clearly not a stub, it's worth adding a note like <!-- Please don't add a stub notice to this, it's relatively complete, just a topic about which there is not much to say. -->
Is it that fact that this shows up as part of the text of the article that mainly bothers you? I could certainly see a case to be made that this could be reduced to simply a category, which would provide just as much information to those who are maintaining Wikipedia, without equally being in the face of passive users.
Jmabel | Talk 20:24, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)
The message bothers me, as well as the inapproriateness of the stub marker in many areas where I have knowledge. Often, in fact, you could help Wikipedia by making the stub a redirect, which is what I have often done. Substubs have an especially annoying message which suggests that creating a substub is the normal process for making an article, which effectively encourages users to create substubs rather than produce a good article. Jallan 00:09, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm beginning to wish I hadn't asked! :) I shall use my discretion - and hopefully will learn what is and what isn't a stub given time. Grutness 11:22, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No worries. You just stumbled into one of the semi-"religous wars" at Wikipedia. A further position in this is just that Stub notices are minor compared to all the rest of the stuff we do at Wikipedia, and it's best to just focus on other issues. I must admit this is mostly my view. Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia! JesseW 15:01, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The use of English or foreign language names of organisations

Wikipedia has quite a large number of entries covering different organisations in non-English speaking countries. A number of these are listed under their foreign-language name, which to me seems to be violating Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) and perhaps Wikipedia:Use other languages sparingly. However the frequency of such forms could be interpreted as if they are somehow accepted.

An interesting observation is that different countries seem to have different standards. Scandinavian and German organisations normally have official English names, and they seem to be used, with the national-language name as a redirect. For France and Poland, most articles about political parties use English names. (Articles on smaller parties seem to be more prone to using the foreign-language name. See Category:Polish political parties and Category:French political parties for examples such as Akcja Wyborcza Solidarnosc and Les Verts). For other types of organisations, however, national language names seem to be more frequent: all the major French trade union organisations are listed with their French names (see Confédération Générale du Travail for a list). Looking at Italy and Spain, this is the case even for some major political parties. (Most confused of all is perhaps the Lega Nord article, under the Italian name, but starting: "The Northern League (Italian: Lega Nord)").

A specific problem which may pose a problem to implementing a general policy is that the acronym of the national language name sometimes becomes the main form of reference, not only nationally but also in English. (An example of this might be FNLA, wich is a redirect from National Front for the Liberation of Angola.)

I've been trying to find a specific mention of organisation names in the policy section, but there doesn't seem to be any. It seems to be very much needed. Also, I think there might be use for a coordinated effort to move organisation articles placed under foreign-language names to their English translations and replace the originals with redirects. Alarm 13:55, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • I would like to suggest we have no policy on this matter, using redirects as needed to keep article names sane, and discouraging edits that have the sole intention of changing things one way or the other. Sometimes it makes sense to use the foreign name (e.g. Bundestag), especially when acronyms are involved. If anything, I would tend to err on the side of usually using foreign names (except when doing so would be hard to type b/c of umlauts and similar), but that's just me. --Improv 15:22, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) is quite clear:

      Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly used in English than the anglicized form.

      Not every organization with a non-English names has one single official English translation for that name. Often the native name is more commonly used in English than an English translation, or there are more than one ad hoc translations in circulation. In such cases, the native name should obviously be the one used. Only when it can shown that a single English name is used in English more often in English than the native name, should the English name take precedence. Let individual editors who know about such organizations be the ones to make such decisions on a case-by-case basis. Jallan 19:06, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • If there is an official translation, I'd generally use it. If there isn't one, it's more complicated. At least, we wouldn't want to be the only ones to use a translation. BTW the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) doesn't include organiz/sations in the enumeration. -- User:Docu

Flash policy?

What is the wiki policy about including Flash (.swf) animations in an article? 62.252.64.13 17:00, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any policy, but I'd call it unusual, but not discouraged. However, there should be some explanation of it for people without Flash, just as images have alt text. Derrick Coetzee 17:35, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I would hope to see it forbidden -- it can offer very little useful content, is very nonportable to other formats, is impossible to translate, and is further difficult to edit. Allowing such things on Wikipedia would be terrible for the project. --Improv 05:44, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The main problem I see is that editing Flash requires a proprietary tool. I strongly disagree with "can offer very little useful content." To the contrary, sites like Mathworld use a variety of Java applets where Flash would work just as well. Also, even images share the problems of difficulty in editing and translation, but at least image editors are free and ubiquitous. Derrick Coetzee 15:49, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
As previous posters have mentioned, Flash is too proprietary to be a good fit for Wikipedia. I doubt people would actually remove a Flash thingie from an article, but I think many people would work pretty hard to code a replacement, and put that in instead. So it's more like, please think really hard before doing it, and do it only if you really need to. (And expect it to be replaced, ASAP) JesseW 15:09, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'd say, keep the whole thing banned. Animations have no place in an encyclopedia. Gotalora 02:42, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with this statement. Superfluous animations are distracting, but animation is a valuable tool for informing people in many cases. Encarta contains animations, Mathworld contains animations, and there are animations demonstrating a variety of academic concepts all over the web in math, physics, computer science, chemistry, and just about everything else.
Unfortunately, every widely-supported format for animations on the web is encumbered with problems. GIFs have patent (and size/smoothness) problems, MNGs are unsupported, Flash is proprietary, Java is heavyweight, and Javascript/DHTML are nonportable. If there were a standard for animations I can think of a number of articles that would benefit from them. Derrick Coetzee 03:17, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The GIF patent has expired. Animated GIFs are fine from a patent perspective. A free equivalent for Macromedia Flash (whether it uses Flash format or SVG) would be wonderful, but I'm not holding my breath... --Robert Merkel 12:40, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Internal combustion engine is a perfect candidate for an animation, as is Lunar phase. The problem being, as others have said, an open format. I'm a little disappointed that neither page has any external links, animations or not! -- Chuq 03:11, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

HowStuffWorks.com uses Flash very well in explaining a variety of topics. Examples: Home Networking, Internal Combustion, and Earthquakes. I'm not sure if a propreitary format like Flash belongs in Wikipedia but there's no doubt in mind that it is possible to use it to improve articles, especially technical articles. Salasks 03:08, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Recipe policy

Reminder, you are invited to give your opinion here : Wikipedia:Recipes proposal SweetLittleFluffyThing

Speedy deletion policy

I've been taking a look recently at the deletion log and I'm shocked and appalled at some of the articles that pass for speedy deletion. Case in point, see Geno's Steaks (text is available at http://www.mcfly.org/en/Geno%27s_Steaks if it's still deleted). This is an accurate non-stub article about one of the most famous cheesesteak places in the world and was speedy deleted "because it lacks encyclopedic content". I've listed it on Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion, but I'm starting to think our admins need to reread the deletion policy. anthony (see warning) 14:08, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

An article cannot be speedy deleted because it is not encyclopedic. The administrator who did this violated policy. Such articles should go to VfD. Derrick Coetzee 16:23, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Way too much stuff is deleted without reference to deletion policy. It seems few people read it. Intrigue 23:57, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think part of the problem is a very wide range of interpretations of cases 1 and 4 ('patent nonsense' and 'Very short articles with little or no context'). See User:Niteowlneils/csdornot/ for examples of things I've seen speedied. Most are not CSDs according to my very conservative interpretation of the cases. Some I actually think should be made cases, but some shouldn't, and the description of cases 1 and 4 should be made clearer, ideally with several examples. Some of the definitions at Wikipedia:Vandalism could also probably be clarified, and would benefit from examples (especially 'silly', 'sneaky', and 'Attention-seeking vandalism'). Niteowlneils 03:33, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I favour a conservative interpretation, because this limits the power of any one administrator to a class of articles that almost all should be deleted. The counterargument, though, is that aggressive deleting deletes helps lessen the load on VfD and the relatively small number of good articles deleted can be undeleted. I don't believe this, though, nor is it current policy. Derrick Coetzee 06:47, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The problem is that VfD is absolutely overcrowded, cleanup as well - thus the amount of bad articles grows faster then its cleaned up. Thus instead of argueing about a borderline case which may have been a valid article stub - why not spend the time making a few articles on cleanup into worthy articles? That'd be much more productive than spending a long discussion to get a three-sentence stub undeleted (like it just happened with Butterface), or something which stinks of spamming to most except those few locals. The amount of garbage here grows with the success of WP, but it seems to me that both VfD and Cleanup don't scale with it. andy 07:38, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I agree, Cleanup has a problem I am trying to get people to comment here Wikipedia talk:Cleanup/Leftovers#Leftovers_system. Leftovers is seriously out of control and I worry people will just ignore it. - [[User:Cohesion|cohesion ☎]] 08:17, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
This comes back to the earlier suggestion that perhaps non-sysops should be allowed to view deleted content. zoney ♣ talk 15:49, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I guess I missed that discussion--did anyone actually come up with objections (I can't off the top of my head), or did the issue just kinda slip thru the cracks/fall on deaf ears/whatever? Anyone know if someone has submitted a feature request? Niteowlneils 02:52, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I think what we really need is admins who are willing to patrol speedy deletions and restore those deleted out of process, listing them on VfD, Cleanup, or wherever. -- Netoholic @ 04:40, 2004 Oct 20 (UTC)
People do do that sort of thing. But you tend to find that the some of the admins doing the out-of-process speedy deletions tend to be amongst the most aggressive and rude of the admins (because they have had years of battling with trolls/vandals, it is said) and questioning them can be an unpleasant business. Pcb21| Pete 10:17, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Yes, a relatively small group of agenda pushers flood vfd with articles (like schools) in the absense of concensus on whether to accept schools as valid articles. They are using vfd as a battleground to change the reality on the ground instead of seeking concensus. Many other articles that do not fit the criteria for deletion are being deleted, they slip past most non-vfd obsessed people, who then cannot even see what was deleted. We must enforce a conservative interpretation to reduce the amount of inapropriate listing, and speedily get rid of stuff that REALLY shoudn't be here. Mark Richards 20:12, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
There is not an absence of consensus to delete schools. Nothing gets deleted out of VfD if there wasn't a consensus to do so. I look at all of the schools listed on VfD and see vote after vote to delete, and only you and a couple of radical inclusionists voting to keep them. RickK 23:20, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
No, in fact, while many schools are deleted, some are kept. Just take a look at Category:High schools. Just to take New York City examples, I can't imagine deleting Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School, Hunter College High School or Stuyvesant High School. Not sure if any of them ever came up on VfD, but quite certain they'd survive the process. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:34, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
I'm not saying that high schools are, in and of themselves, automatic candidates for deletion. The examples you give are probably valid keeps. But the tons of articles which have nothing but the school's name, the city it's in, its address and phone number don't make it past VfD, despite Mark's consistant votes of keep. RickK 05:54, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
Nothing gets deleted out of VfD if there wasn't a consensus to do so. If you define agreement of 2/3 of the people who are willing to spend hour after hour voting on VfD a consensus, maybe. anthony (see warning) 21:31, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, simply in order to realise how much stuff is deleted you would have to have an unhealthy obsession with VFD. Only folks with quite litterally hours to waste could even plough through all of the stuff that is listed. All it takes is the 5-6 rabid deletion-warrors to get the schools deleted. Most people aren't watching, and can't be bothered. They go on writing articles, instead of trying to delete them. Mark Richards 23:20, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Of course, some inclusionists don't write any articles at all either, and spend all their time attempting to keep crap on VFD... Ambi 00:15, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Yes, this is the problem. In order to stop the articles they write from being deleted, and defend others against the same fate, inclusionists must waste as much time as deletionists. If deletionists stopped using vfd as a battleground not only would less useful material be written, but creative energy and time could be spend on improving Wikipedia, rather than trying to prevent needless damage. Mark Richards 17:20, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It's all on Wikipedia:Deletion log, isn't it? Of course, only members of the secret admin cabal can see what was deleted... -- ALoan (Talk) 00:47, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Oh, for Pete's sake! "Sneaky deletionists patrolling VfD, oh dear! If only other people did, we're sure they would want everything included!" Come on! I have not seen any "deletionist" go through VfD with "delete" and no rationale, but I have certainly seen some people (some in this thread) go through every single article and say "Keep" with no other words. Give it up! Let's take these in pieces, shall we, and see if we can stay on a single topic without resorting to conspiracies?
1. Is speedy misused? You bet your bippy it is. It's misused by people who tag inappropriately ("users" not part of the deletionist cabal), and it's misused by admins. Absolutely it is. Have I ever speedy deleted something that didn't fall within the lines? Depends on interpretation. By the strictest reading, yes. By the most liberal reading, no.
2. Are schools routinely deleted? If they're routine schools, yes. Wikipedia doesn't put up an article on every store on the block, every street corner, every school bus, every anything, because no anything is automatically an item that needs or can bear discussion. So the people who actually vote on VfD read the articles (which is far more than many of the people complaining about the deletion of schools do) and decide, case by case. That's what they're supposed to do. If most get deleted, it's because most are written like, "Cherry Park High is at 2206 Cherry Park School Dr. and the principle is Dr. Waters. There are 1000 students." The problems with that kind of an article are so many as to be beyond tolerance to even list. Misnamed -- is there only one Cherry Park in the whole stinking world? Substub. What is different about it from all other buildings holding students? Can it be verified? (Since we don't even find out what blinking city it's in, no.) So, it gets deleted by VfD, but then some people say that since there has not been a specific policy that all schools must be deleted, that means that all schools must be kept! That's Menonite.
3. You've got to vote, if you want your vote counted.
4. You can't go through all of VfD? I can't, either. Know why? It's too long. Know why? We get a lot of junk. The abuse of speedy and the overload of VfD are related. The people who abuse speedy, on both sides, are often the people who find VfD too long to deal with. Is that justification? Normally, no, but it indicates an underlying problem.
5. The rules of speedy no longer match the practice. Either the practice must conform to the rules, or the rules must conform to the practice. I made an effort at allowing a middle ground, but it was opposed by people who didn't read, or didn't understand, it. Niteowlneils is working on changing the rules. I support that. The truth is that some of the practice needs to be reformed, and some of the rules do, too. Geogre 01:26, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Messages in the article namespace

Now that there are so many sources of these messages (stub, various COTWs, Countering systemic bias, more I do no know?), I'd like to propose that all such messages (yes, including the stub message) should be posted on the article talk pages from now on. If we do not tell readers on the article page that we think an article is good (the feature message), why do we tell them when we think one is rubbish, or too short? They might even work out the short bit for themselves. Do we need a poll? Filiocht 08:21, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

Featured articles don't need a message because they are the most evolved of the artices, and therefore need less work. The stubs and CSB messages need to be on the article page because they highlight the the shortcomings of the article, and encourage others to improve them. And if they were on the talk page hardly anyone would see this.- Xed 10:01, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Totally disagree. Editors read talk pages and information for editors can quite happily go on talk pages. Pcb21| Pete 10:13, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Editors read talk pages, but often only if there is an indication on the article page that something is wrong. Xed 10:50, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Concur with Xed. --Improv 20:28, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Many templates by their addition on the main article page include the article in a category. We would need to have invisible templates to be added to the article page to add the category and alert editors to the status of the page. Actually, in general, I don't think it would be very workable to remove templates from the article pages - rather I would prefer to see the FA template being included on the page (and hey, that will suitably embarrass people enough to remove FA status if the page degrades). The NPOV dispute template or protected message are there to warn readers too for example. zoney ♣ talk 09:27, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Is there a problem with having the talk pages inside those categories, which are categorizing metadata, not article content, anyway.
On the latter point, it seems clear to me that all those messages are for the benefit of editors not readers. Pcb21| Pete 10:13, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
We have a guideline that says that tags that are for editors should go on the talk page and I would suggest that the stub and cotw tags fall into this category. The guideline implies that tags for readers should go in the article and I would suggest that the FA tag falls into this category. So I wonder, why ddo we post them the wrong way round? I agree with Pete re the categories. Filiocht 10:15, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
You're missing the point. The stub messages and so on are, effectively, apologies. Readers seeing a crappy incomplete article would tend to overgeneralize and think all Wikipedia articles are crappy and incomplete. The message tells them, 'This isn't our best article, we're still working on this one, don't consider it representative.' Derrick Coetzee 14:37, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Equally, the other messages might be read as sending messages to the readers. My point is, why are some messages accepted on article pages while other, equally valid, ones are not? Specifically why flaunt apologies and hide the FA message? Filiocht 14:42, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
Featured articles don't need a message because they are the most evolved of the artices, and therefore need less work. The stubs and CSB messages need to be on the article page because they highlight the the shortcomings of the article, and encourage others to improve them. And if they were on the talk page hardly anyone would see this.- Xed 14:48, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You are saying that editors don't read talk pages. If this is true, and I don't think it is, it would be better to promote to use of talk pages again rather than pollute articles with non-article metadata. Pcb21| Pete 14:54, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
"This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by fixing it." Sounds like a message to editors to me. Pcb21| Pete 14:50, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
By definition. And often on articles that are actually quite complete. And if FAs do not need tags, why does {{FA}} exist? Article pages should represent the current state of the article, no more, no less. All the meta stuff belongs on the talk page. Filiocht 14:55, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
Note that {{FA}} *is* generally on talk pages. The battle of where to put the template has been won in that case, but the war about all the other templates is apparently still going strong. Pcb21| Pete 15:11, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
YM {{featured}} HTH. {{FAC}} and {{farc}} also go on the talk page, as does {{COTW}}.
I am persuaded of the rationale for a short message on an article's main page (rather than talk page) to explain to the reader that an article is shorter than may be hoped for (i.e. a stub message); similarly if there is a problem with POV or disputed facts then we (rightly) have messages that go on an article's main page to alert the reader, and these issues are generally dealt with quite quickly. However, stubbiness, POV, disputed facts can be tested reasonably objectively, whereas systematic bias is much more subjective. I don't think it helps the reader very much to know that a topic is (allegedly) subject to systematic bias. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:34, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Systemic not systematic. A description of the difference is on WP:Bias. -- Xed 15:44, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Can't see the difference, to be honest - if the system creates a bias, that is a systematic bias, whether it is deliberate or not. How does a systemic bias differ? -- ALoan (Talk) 18:30, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
PS - both are redirects to bias which was in cleanup, and I have subsequently edited it a bit - if you want to explain the difference between systemic bias and systematic bias, you could do it there and expand the article at the same time. -- ALoan (Talk) 19:29, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Why are you persuaded of the rationale for putting stub messages? If an article is short, the reader can clearly see that for themselves.
As for the pov messages, they are always put there to placate editors who are at war, not to help readers out (in fact it may even hinder readers whomight then suppose articles without this message have been ticked off as neutral). Pcb21| Pete 17:40, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Because, as Derrick Coetzee points out above, stub messages are effectively apologies to readers so they know that the stub is not typical (actually, at the moment, quite typical, but there is some good content too...) and to encourage them to have a go at filling it out. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:30, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I have to agree with ALoan and Derrick Coetzee. The very first article I edited was one that was marked as a stub that I felt I could shed additional light on. If the stub message wasn't there, and thus wasn't inviting me to put in my two cents, I probably never would have started contributing. --HBK 05:12, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Filiocht that the policy on this subject needs some clarification, although I'm not sure I agree with his suggestion. As has already been pointed out in this discussion there are quite a lot of tags on article pages, and many seem to be intended mainly for editors. This probably explains why those of us involved in the CSB discussion on the templates and their use didn't really see any big problem with pasting them to article pages. For me, the main argument is that it would serve Wikipedia in the long run to encourage editors to expand on lacking articles, and that tags on article pages will be a more effective way of doing that than tags on talk pages.

I also think that the CSB Article tag (that says "This is an article targeted by the WikiProject Countering systemic bias as in need of expansion") fills a purpose as an excuse, and perhaps a hint at an explanation, to a reader discovering that important African profiles and huge labor organizations only have semi-stubs, when Wikipedia has half a novel on each and every obscure programming language and Middle Earth creature. The wording was chosen on the basis that it makes a non-POV statement, instead of a value judgement such as "this article is too short". Currently, there doesn't even seem to be any generally accepted way to alert the reader to the fact that an article is short in relation to the subject matter it's dealing with, if it isn't short enough to be called a stub.

The other CSB template, called Limited geographic scope, fills another important reader information function. It highlights the fact that although the article is about a seemingly general topic, "the general perspective and/or specific examples represent a limited number of countries". This is very common (for some examples, take a look at Lawyer, Gang or Student activism) and can potentially irritatate and alienate a large number of readers and potential contributors. The template could be seen as a sort of "internal stub tag", indicating that important parts on the subject is dealt with in a stubby way or not at all.

The above is an attempt to explain some of the reasoning behind the well-meaning initiative that some fellow Wikipedians have chosen to call SPAM in capital letters. This does not mean that I don't see the other side of the argument. Neither does it mean that I won't accept not being allowed to paste CSB templates wherever I see fit. I'd just like some constructive dialogue on better ways to handle the problems this initiative made a serious attempt at addressing. I would welcome any wording suggestions that might lead to templates filling the purposes outlined above being generally accepted. Alarm 18:59, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Part of the problem, I think, was the rather prominent nature of the templates used. The stub template is a short italicised sentence, no images, no box, no colour, and quite easy on the eye. I applaud your sentiments, but, for example, I was somewhat surprised to see that a prominent "CSB" notice had suddenly appeared at the top of the the current COTW, African Union, dwarfing the rather discreet "Current COTW" tag. (As an aside, if you doubt the efficacy of COTW, you only need to see how African Union and Congo Civil War have come on.) -- ALoan (Talk) 19:29, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You should give the efficacy of CSB a chance. - Xed 20:03, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Oh, I think it is an excellent project. I just don't think it needs banner templates at the top of articles to achieve its objective. -- ALoan (Talk) 20:38, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Why not give the templates a chance? What's the worse that could happen - Wikipedia gets better articles? - Xed 21:08, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Because (a) I think they are information for the editor, not the reader, and so should be on the talk page not in the article itself; and (b) I think they are too intrusive and detract from the content, which is, after all, the article, not the template. The worst that could happen is that readers see the banner and don't bother to read the article because it is marked as containing systemic/systematic/whatever bias. -- ALoan (Talk) 21:18, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
So is it just a design issue? It's too big? - Xed 22:15, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The worst that happens is that you spam articles, and effectively enclose them, withyour own POV judgement which remains there for all time. And then along come 101 other projects which do the same thing, until the wikipedia starts looking like a parade of worthy but misguided project adverts, beneath which, if you look hard enough, you'll find an article. It is not a design issue; in the case of CSB it is a POV issue. More generally it is a policy issue. --Tagishsimon

This should not degenerate into a spat over a particular template. The issue here is consistency. I contend that his is lacking in the current situation. Filiocht 07:34, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

Again, my contention is that a reader will assume an article is representative of Wikipedia content unless we indicate otherwise. In the case of a featured article, this is a good thing — we don't want to ruin their good impression of the project as a whole by saying, 'You might like this one, but this article is better than all the others.' With incomplete, highly biased, or factually incorrect articles, it's just the opposite — a notice to editors on the page tells the reader that the page is still being worked on and shouldn't be considered reliable or representative. Also, since readers are often interested in topics they look up, it strongly encourages readers to become editors, just as red links do. Other messages do not share this property. Derrick Coetzee 07:48, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Similar cases could be made for other messages and personally I don't buy them. Also, there are repeated debates over what a stub is, with many articles potentially being incorrectly tagged. Once again I state: IMHO, we need consistency, a consistent and clearly stated policy. The steps towards this goal, as it see them, are: 1) define which messages are for readers (as opposed to for editors). 2) recast policy so that only these messages appear on the article page. 3) institute a mechanism whereby new messages can be caterorised as talk page or article page messages. Filiocht 08:03, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
I could easily mark hundreds of articles with a template that says that the article is crap, in my opinion, in one way or another. Or I could put them on cleanup. Most of us don't do that. We gradually try to improve articles in areas we know and create new ones. We don't stick ugly apology notices on them. And I am tired of the argument that stubs and poor articles and blank links are good because they encourage new editors. By that logic, what you need are more systemic biased articles not less. A difficulty with templates is that it they are easier to put on than remove. It isn't worth a possible fight to try to remove them. But every supposed new problem that comes up has someone proposing another ugly template to mark the supposed problem, to alert readers that this especially needs to be fixed. Stop all ugly tagging of articles by template warriors. Fix it yourself, or send it to cleanup and mark it with a template for that purpose, or leave it alone. If a project plans to work on a particular series of articles, list them on the project talk page. Stop SPAMMING me through templates that I have some duty to work on something just because there is a template on it. Or add a feature to turn off all editorial template display and make it the default. In the case of stub templates often placed by someone who obviously knows nothing about the subject. Templates that mark that an article is listed on a dispute page or on cleanup or on VfD or copyvio are a different matter. There is some way of knowing when they should be removed. But when does a systemic bias template get removed: when Xed, according to his POV, indiosyncratically says it should? Or are there going to countless editorial fights over template removals? Wikipedia supposedly doen't allow tailored messages to be written within a article to be visible in normal viewing. Why should less helpful untailored templates be allowed? Get rid of this junk POV advertising. Jallan 00:57, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Once again: my suggestion was not about one message, it was about all messages. I could mirror Jallan's rant substituting the stub message for the bias one, but that gets us nowhere. I'd now ask anyone posting here to read the original question first. Filiocht 08:32, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

New anti-vandalism tool

To help admins and editors to track repeated vandalism of specific articles, I've created Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages (thanks to Fuzheado for the original idea). By looking at Related Changes for that page, it's easy to see at a glance which of the vandals' targets have recently been changed. If you spot an article repeatedly being vandalised, please add it to that page. -- ChrisO 08:45, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Categories for deletion phrases

Attempting to mirror the VfD help page (mostly by copy and paste with search and replace). Anyhoo, discussions are open, suggestions please?

132.205.15.42 03:58, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Preliminary Deletion

I made a proposal on the WikiEn-l mailing list that seemed to get quite a bit of approval, so I went ahead and drafted a policy here. It's supposed to handle those dubious articles, those that aren't obvious speedies, but those that will clearly never be kept on VFD. I hope to get some comments/brickbats. Thanks. Johnleemk | Talk 13:38, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Proposed trim to Manual of Style

User:Maurreen has proposed a draft trim to the Wikipedia Manual of Style on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Draft Trim, which has subsequently been adjusted by User:Jallan and myself. The discussion on this proposal is scheduled to end at 23:59 (UTC) on 25 October. If you would like to comment on the proposals, please add them at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Draft trim. jguk 23:37, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:VfD decisions not backed by current policies

This has been a unilateral project by User:SimonP, who has, after clear (often unanimous) VfD decisions to delete certain articles, has removed the VfD discussions, kept the articles, and listed the articles on this page. If someone has an objection to the reasons for which something is to be deleted, there are two outlets for it: 1) post your comment on the VfD discussion itself and try to persuade consensus the other way, or 2) list it for undeletion. Perhaps I have missed a policy discussion somewhere, but that one user would create an alternate method of overturning consensus and populate it himself seems very inappropriate to me, and flouting established procedures seems far more contrary to policy than users voting outside previously recorded justifications for deletion.

Thoughts? Postdlf 00:59, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's not quite unilateral, I did get one person's support and no objections when I first brought up the idea on the mailing list. Also I sincerely hope that I will not only be the only one working on this, and if I am alone I will soon stop. For now I think some serious issues need to be resolved and that my actions are a good way of beginning to address them. - SimonP 01:23, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
If SimonP had put the page, and copies of the articles, under his User page I would hope there would be no problem. He is perfectly justified in bringing up this issue, although it might be better to have put on meta. Regarding not deleting the pages, however, I agree that as the de facto policy regarding deletion is that votes to delete can be for any or no reason, the pages should be deleted from their current location. If SimonP wants to keep copies elsewhere (under his user page, for instance) that is fine.
I tend to agree with his argument: what is the deletion policy there for if it is not binding on either listing or voting on deletion? Some might say that the deletion policy is simply a guideline; like most of the other "rules" on Wikipedia, it suggests what will be, in fact, accepted or rejected by vote or editing. i.e. the deletion policy is for makers of articles to have some guidance as to the likelyhood of their articles being voted(for any reason) to be deleted. I'm not sure what I think of this.
Regarding non-notability as a criterion for deletion, it's a tricky question. The de facto opinion is that non-notability is a reason, but, apparently, there's enough resistance to that opinion that putting it in the deletion policy is not considered feasible. Thanks for bringing it up. JesseW 01:28, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I would not object to moving these pages to the Wikipedia, or some other, namespace. I also don't think the wiki will implode if they are left where they are for the time being. - SimonP 01:34, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
JesseW, I fully agree that users can vote to delete for any reason. They give "non-notable" as a reason very often. However, as you also noted, non-notable is not one of the reasons that policy lists as valid causes for deleting an article. Another tactic that some users adopt is to assert that a page meets one of the valid criteria; sometimes, when you examine the article, you discover that it doesn't. So, it's doubly important for administrators to evaluate the votes before deleting. They should only delete a page after ascertaining that the page truly meets at least one of the reasons that policy gives for deletion. Fg2 01:47, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Why do you believe that VfD discussions themselves and Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion are insufficient to address wrongful deletions? This is especially puzzling because in every article you have listed as having an improper VfD decision, you did not even post any comments. Why wouldn't making your concerns known there be the first step? Postdlf 01:37, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You assume I want these article to be kept. I have no interest in seeing every textbook ever written in Wikipedia. I do not object to the proposed "it must have affected 5000 people rule." I would also support some form of "hundred year rule." My favourite would be the "verifiability rule." My complaint is about process and arbitrariness. The 5000 people rule failed to achieve consensus, as did the 100 year rule, as did every other rule saying that a subject had to be notable to be in this encyclopedia. As such I think it is wrong to delete articles purely because of their lack of notability. When you list an article saying "delete - not notable" it immediately makes the VfD discussion a referendum on whether the article is notable or not, not whether notability is a valid reason for deletion. - SimonP 01:52, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
  • Interesting angle this is taking. Might I suggest that most deleted articles are of incredibly limited scope of interest? A good example might be the deluge of articles about every grade school in North America currently on VfD. This site had to raise $50,000 just to keep up with server demand. Sure, it isn't paper. However, I believe it's right, just and acceptable to establish notability and general interest and I can't think of a better place than VfD. Acting unilaterally on the assumption that there's no other course of action might be OK under certain special circumstances but with all the checks and balances in place here, I don't see why putting something up for community vote on "Votes for Undeletion" is such a bad idea. Going back to the limited scope argument, it's unlikely that anyone other than the party or parties responsible for most articles of this nature will log on in hopes of finding such esoteric info while the deletion is under reconsideration. Just my $.02. - Lucky 6.9 02:19, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • "Notability" is a shorthand, but it is, in fact, a condensed version of "encyclopedic." If our purpose is to give every user a space to write words and have them maintain, then we're a web host and/or Everything2. Since we have to honor our commitment to being an encyclopedia, we have to go with those things that belong in an encyclopedia. "Notable" is a short version of "will be of service to researchers." As with any other project, we have to assume some level of expertise and some level of ignorance in users. Saying that the local photography club in Kent will be of service to a hypothetical researcher in the 24th century is a stretch not worth making. Instead, we say "not notable." The reason is that we are trying to work our way, by consensus, toward discovering the sorts of facts that should be discussed. The world has more facts than things in it, and we have to select. Notable does not mean "famous," and it does not mean "old." I welcome any debate on what we ought to use for defining "notable," but the fact is that saying something is not notable is, essentially, saying it is non-encyclopedic. I have to say, though, that not following the VfD consensus is the worst way possible of making a point. As an administrator, and particularly one who has taken on the dirty work of following VfD, it is up to you, SimonP, to be ruthlessly honest and bound by the decisions of VfD. If you disagree with the reasoning voters use, please do open up a policy debate, but please, please, don't do it by acting unilaterally. Having one person agree with you on the mailing list is far from acting at community suffrance, much less behest, and I would think that any of us would need an explicit request, after an explicit announcement of intent, before doing anything so drastic as to stick a thumb in the eye of VfD by removing the tags and discussion and deciding upon one's own that an article stays. Geogre 03:29, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)


When this time last year an attempt was made to ban "unencyclopdic" as a reason for deletion RickK defended it is simply being shorthand for "lack of notability." The end result of that discussion (now at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Unencyclopedic) was that simply saying something is unencyclopedic is not a valid reason for deletion.
I question your "of service to researchers" criteria. Who are these researchers? Are they academics, genealogists, or anyone who puts a phrase into a search engine? Even the lowliest garage band gets some hits on Google so someone must be "researching" them. Who judges what is of use to researchers? I once met a fellow who did his Ph.D. on the history of the University College student association. For him a huge number of articles that we would currently delete would have been of service. Personally I think "of service to researchers" would allow far too much into the encyclopedia and makes a rather poor argument for excluding more content then we do presently.
As to it being my duty to rigorously enact the wishes of the VfD vote. Who rigorously enacts the wishes of the far larger group of people who voted on Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/schools or at Wikipedia:What's in, what's out? It certainly isn't the voters on VfD. - SimonP 04:03, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

If you disagree with the votes, then you are not obligated to delete these items, but you are also not allowed to move them from the VfD page. This is a highjacking of the process which you do not have the right to do. How can you say that you have support because you post something on the mailing list and then go and do it without waiting to see what the mailing list had to say about it? As soon as I read your email comments, I went to where you said these things were so that I could delete them as per VfD policy, but I couldn't find them. Just leave them in the Vfd/Old page and don't muck with them. RickK 04:18, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Where in the VfD policy does it say articles on schools can be deleted? - SimonP 04:41, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
  • Shame on SimonP for his disregard of the decisionmaking process! He needs to take a look at Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion_phrases, to see that it's QUITE CLEAR that non-notable is a valid reason for deletion, and that it obviously follows from requiring things to be encyclopedic. --Improv 06:29, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
That page specifically states "Please note that many of the phrases below or their definitions do not reflect Wikipedia's established norms for deletion, and should be taken only as indicative of the users' opinions, not of Wikipedia policy."

SimonP not only moved them off the VfD page, he took the VfD header off in violation of policy. This the guy who's trying to claim that he's carrying out policy. I deleted those articles which had had consensus to be deleted which had not been redirected to other pages, and SOMEONE (I will not point fingers) UNdeleted them, in complete and UTTER violation of policy. If you think they should be undeleted, take them to Votes for Undeletion, but if you undelete without process, it's a severe violation of sysophood. RickK 07:40, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

You deleted them without following proper procedure, and such pages are routinely undeleted. Where does it state that any article can be deleted simply with a consensus on VfD? Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators clearly states that consensus must be among those who care, not those who vote. Poll after poll has shown that those who care do not agree that schools should be deleted, so why do five votes by the same group of users trump these wider consensuses? - SimonP 08:00, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
(1) Debates about whether schools should be kept as a general policy were inconclusive. In the absence of a general policy, school articles have to be decided case by case. Vfd is the place where school articles are given individual consideration. Some are kept, some aren't -- there isn't a general rule. (2) Claiming that the ones who matter != the ones who vote is an interesting subterfuge. Wile E. Heresiarch 15:36, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
From "Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/schools" Any school about which we can write a non-trivial, non-stub, NPOV article." Votes - Keep 23: Delete: 3. How much clearer do you want? - SimonP 16:25, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
Talk pages don't constitute a poll. They don't gather attention from enough people, nor the right people, to constitute an actual policy change. --Improv 17:44, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Can I give SimonP a 'Nub End' award? It's like a Barnstar, but it's for people that waste a few minutes of your life and leave a bad taste in your mouth. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 16:57, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Housing co-ops

I've gone ahead and deleted Finlandia co-op and Watermyn. I don't see any reason whatsoever for supposing the vfd discussion wasn't sufficient reason to delete them -- as SimonP blandly notes on Wikipedia:VfD decisions not backed by current policies, Current policy: Nothing specific. Jimbo once got annoyed at such deletions. Wile E. Heresiarch 15:09, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The decision to redirect theses wasn't mine, but Sj's. Some content was also merged into the Brown University article, make sure this is removed or we are violating the GfDL. - SimonP 16:20, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
A proposal for a poll exists now at Wikipedia:VfD decisions not backed by current policies/poll. - SimonP 17:14, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

coins vs. copy right

I made a photograph of a US nickel with the Lewis & Clarck expedition for nl.wiki. Of couse the photo is mine but is there copyright on the coin artwork? Is this only OK for coins older than x years? nl: Jcwf

  • Works of the U.S. federal government cannot be copyrighted. This would apply to U.S. coins and currency as well. Postdlf 20:17, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Watch out though, just because artwork appears on a nickel doesn't mean that the US government created it. The US government can get licenses to use copyrighted works, and they can even hold copyright on works created by others whose copyright was transferred to them. See Work of the US Government anthony 警告 18:07, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Watch out as well, because reproducing images of currency is illegal in some countries - I'm pretty sure it's illegal in the UK, and probably is in the US also (although not always enforced). I don't know if this extends to coins, I heard about it in reference to banknotes. PhilHibbs 17:22, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    I'd expect high-resolution reproduction to raise alarms, due to its potential for facilitating counterfeiting. If we stick with the usual sizes (up to 300x300 or so) we should be okay, even if we're still technically breaking the law. Derrick Coetzee 18:22, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Horrible decision to mark certain article names off limit

Please reply at Template talk:Wi#This is horrible.
Dori | Talk 20:12, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

VH1's list of greatest artists of hard rock

Is this list a copyright violation? As it now stands, there is no content other than a list compiled by a single organization, as their ratings. I *know* facts can't be copyrighted, but this is VH1's proprietary opinion. RickK 05:31, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Tough call. I'd say yes - there's certainly creative effort that went into the making of the list, much as compilations earn copyright on the arrangement of their materials (see the usual cookbook examples). IANAL. Derrick Coetzee 05:48, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Here's a relevent quote from public domain: "Collections of data with intuitive organization, such as alphabetized directories like telephone directories, are in the public domain. Creative organizations such as categorized lists may be protected by copyright." Derrick Coetzee 16:44, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In short, the legal way to write this would be to write about the list and give an external link to where VH1 hosts the list themselves. -- 20:09, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Is my Talk page mine?

Do I control the content of my talk page? Can I just clear it down, or is that considered vandalism? Should I correct spelling and grammar mistakes that annoy me? I'm not intending to do this, I'm just curious. PhilHibbs 17:03, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Refactoring and Wikipedia:Talk page - generally, archive rather than delete (to maintain a record and make it easier to find previous comments) and edit other's comments as little as possible (to avoid the charge of ignoring them or twisting their words). -- ALoan (Talk) 18:43, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I really recommend archiving and pointing from the talk page to the archive. It's not mandatory, but doing otherwise is generally thought of as poor form, especially if you remove criticism of your own conduct. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:30, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)
I think it is entirely fair to be able to delete any comments from a user you don't like or are in an argument with. Sometimes this is the only way to stop a wiki-argument. Samboy 23:15, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Formatting of Category:Year pages

Earlier this month I went through Category:2004, Category:2003 and Category:2002, and added sort keys to the category references in the articles and subcategory pages so they would be sorted (more or less) by topic on the Category:YYYY pages. Contrast the results on Category:2004 (which, as I type this, looks pretty much as I left it -- except for all those List of..." articles) with, say, Category:2001 (which I haven't changed). Which version do you prefer? See also the discussion on Category talk:Years. - dcljr 22:49, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Merely from a quick eyeball of Category:2004 and Category:2001, I would say that your version is indisputably better. --Phil | Talk 15:50, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)
  • Seconded. Keep doing that. You might want to add a sentance or two to Wikipedia:Categorization or some such, so other people can find out to do this also. JesseW 02:06, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. - dcljr 21:46, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Use of Greek characters in article?

I'm wondering about the use of Greek characters one occasionally sees in article introductions. This is typical:

The word comes originally from Greek πλεονασμος pleonasmos (="excess").

The codes required look like this: &pi;&lambda;&epsilon;, etc.

I wonder if the transliteration isn't sufficient. I note that the article for Pyjamas has Persian script: پايجامه.

Is this of widely believed to be of value, or just an affectation? --NathanHawking 01:52, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

I personally find it of value. On occasion it turns out to be useful to know what the Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, Arabic, etc. way of writing a word that comes from one of those languages is. Also, you can use numerical codes as well, which is what will come out if you type on a Greek keyboard, and which is necessary to write Greek properly (the named entities like &alpha; don't include accent marks). --Delirium 01:56, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)
OK, thanks. Thanks too for the handy way to display those codes as codes: &amp;alpha; (Which I just had to do recursively.)--NathanHawking 02:11, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)
By the way, also very useful to those who may know Greek (or, similarly, for other languages with different alphabets). Clarifies any ambiguities of spelling, and gives you the right text string if you are doing a search of your own for further information in the relevant language. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:53, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)
I'm inclined to see the Greek character version as the "actual" reference, and the version using Roman characters as a gloss for anyone who doesn't understand Greek letters, or whose browser is incapable of displaying them. AlexG 18:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Is the original poster asking whether the Greek form is needed, or whether the Roman transliteration of the foreign form is needed? To the first question I'd say the original form is valuable (assuming it's correct); to the second question, absolutely: any non-Roman rendering should be accompanied by a specfic transliteration, unless it is itself an exact transliteration of the English word in question (which we must assume to be the case for pyjamas; though one wonders, given the pluralness of the English form). en.wikipedia is an English work and its readers should be assumed to be intelligent and literate but unilingual. To drop in an untransliterated or untranslated foreign phrase is an affectation of the I-am-so-smart kind. Sharkford 14:01, 2004 Oct 29 (UTC)
Pyjamas seems to be quite a good example - original Persian is given plus transliteration; I wonder what the Hindi devanagari looks like. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:36, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Reference?

If I'm citing Wikipedia as a reference because I've used it for information, what should I list it as? Does it have a policy about this, or a specific name it goes by?

See Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. --Diberri | Talk 17:55, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)

Proposed policy: School articles needing evaluation

In light of the very conflicting opinions on whether or not schools should be kept in Wikipedia, I've begun a new proposed policy. My hopes are that this policy can replace VfD where schools are concerned, and we can better approach school articles. Please see Wikipedia:School articles needing evaluation to read my proposal. —siroχo 13:59, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

All discussion should be directed to Wikipedia talk:School articles needing evaluation

You sure that's ALL human knowledge?

I'm always wary of any effort to systematically exclude a type of information from Wikipedia. In fund-raising notices, Wikimedia advertises itself as developing a repository of "all human knowledge". Okay, so "encyclopedic" information goes into Wikipedia, dictionary-type information goes into Wiktionary, and similarly for Wikisource, Wikibooks and Wikiquote. The divisions here are relatively unambiguous.

So where does the rest of the information that Wikipedians are systematically excluding (or proposing for removal) from Wikipedia go (e.g., info on smaller schools, less well-known people, etc.)? Is this not human knowledge? Well, actually in most cases not only is it human knowledge, it's actually human knowledge that would, in fact, go into more specialized kinds of encyclopedias (e.g., Primary Schools in Missouri or Who's Who in Sri Lanka...).

Okay, then, should we create more Wikimedia wikis to deal with the overflow? Say...

  • WikiWho for information about people not considered "important enough" to include here?
  • WikiPlace for the proverbial "minor school" entries, along with other buildings, neighborhoods, etc., not considered important enough for inclusion here?
  • WikiTrivia for other, well, trivial stuff?

Clearly this systemization is less clear-cut than what we currently have (i.e., less distinct from what would be in Wikipedia). In addition, it would simply become unmanageable, what with all the crosslinking that would be involved.

The alternatives, it would seem, are:

  1. ignore some human knowledge that we don't deign to be worthy of Our Good Encyclopedia
  2. stop deleting actual human knowlegde (that doesn't belong anywhere else) from Wikipedia

My two cents. - dcljr 16:57, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion, it's possible to write an article on any topic that VfD won't rip down, as long as you put enough detail and thought into it. See my Vespene gas for an example; it's a decidedly esoteric topic, and was listed but kept. I think it is not the relative unimportance of a topic that leads to its deletion, but a combination of its unimportance and a worthless article on it. Derrick Coetzee 18:28, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Two things: First, your comment brings to mind the perfect article fallacy. You shouldn't have to worry that an article you've written is going to be deleted just because you haven't put enough work into it. True, there is the occasional case where extremely content-lacking articles can fairly be questioned (I myself have recently listed such a page on VfD), but these should be considered on an individual basis. Which leads to my second remark: Have you seen the lengthy debates on "fancruft" (this example of which comes from a link higher up on this page)? There most certainly are categories of articles that are suggested for deletion based largely on their subject matter. This is what I was objecting to. Perhaps I should have phrased my final sentence as: stop trying to delete actual human knowlegde... from Wikipedia. - dcljr 19:05, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
There is no pefect article fallacy. There is a continuum between articles that are arguably pefect and articles that are aguably absolute crap. At some point Wikipedia is more harmed than helped by a flawed article. So ... yes, any creator of any new article should have to worry about putting enough work into it and not making it totally POV and not writing about something non-verifiable and so forth. The bar is quite low here ... but still too high for some people some of the time. And if an article is thought by a consensus of those who are currently considering such things to be so bad or so unsuitable that it is preferrable to having no article on the topic, for whatever reason, then the article will be deleted (or passed to another Wiki-project). That doesn't prevent anyone later writing an acceptable article on the same topic. But Wikipedians should not be pressured to improve unsuitable articles immediately. (Submit your advert and someone will immediately create and NPOV article out of it and it will be kept! People here are volunteers and fixing up adverts submitted by those without shame is hardly a priority.) In my opinion there is now far too much dumping of bad stubs on topics with the idea that someone else will do the work of cleaning them up. If the author doesn't care enough ... why should anyone else?
Any creator of any edits to any article that exists also has to worry about putting enough work into it that someone doesn't change or entirely remove their work (which may happen anyway). There are warriors with strong POV guarding particular articles, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad, depending on your own POV. As to articles suggested for deletion based on subject matter, there are certain kinds of articles expressly discouraged in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. Within those guideline and other guidelines there are naturally differences of opinion about what is encyclopedia and what isn't. No matter what guidelines were given, there would be edge cases and people arguing about them.
As to people proposing specifical categories be eliminated ... anyone here can propose anything. Most proposals on policy changes get nowhere. Talk and propoals usually mean nothing. Seven or eight people talk about something, they call for a poll, a few people vote, it is indecisive at best, and nothing happens.
If you want to create a new Wiki-project for material that arguably doesn't belong in Wikipedia or definitely doesn't belong in Wikipedia and currently has no place within other Wikimedia projects, you can certainly try to do so, whether within the Wikimedia envelope or outside. That's how projects get started.
Jallan 02:02, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Just to say, I'm all in favour of a WikiTrivia. Collecting all knowledge isn't much good if you can't find the important bits among the frivolous and esoteric, and doing so well is very tricky. Average Earthman 16:36, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
All I'm saying is, there seems to be an inordinate amount of deletionism around here. And I was not seriously proposing those other wikis; my point was, that approach would be unworkable. BTW, Jallan, that's one scary Wikipedia you inhabit. Now I'm afraid to edit anything! ; - dcljr 01:47, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The problem is with that ALL, which is just a silly claim. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, and there has to be some standards around what fits and what doesn't. I got up at 7:00 AM today is both human and knowledge of sorts, but it is not encyclopaedic. Filiocht 13:32, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

  • The talk of Wikitrivia might work for "nonimportant" articles, what ever those are. I agree with Dcljr's view point that this is the 'sum of human knowledge' and as such nonvandalism things being deleted is very problematic as it goes against the very goal of Wikipedia. As well it is problematic that so much of my time is spent trying to keep articles, and so much of others' peoples time is spent on trying to delete them, time better spent on creating articles.
Let us keep everything, and do a deletionist drive once a year. Stuff that is trivial will go into Wikitrivia based on vote. Vandalism of course need not wait for this once a year drive ;). --ShaunMacPherson 03:29, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)


Jumping over edits

Twice I've been accused of "jumping over" the edits of another user: first at Prolixity, and again at List of heteronyms, both of which were articles that were relatively new when I made my edits. Surely editing relatively new articles is acceptable and tolerable. I assumed such was true with these two articles as well. Please discuss. (Accusers need not reply.) [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 17:17, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

If someone wants to write an article free from other people's edits, they can do it in their favorite text editor or as a subpage of their user page. Once someone begins an article in the main namespace the operable rule is: "If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly... do not submit it." - dcljr 18:17, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Not only that, but I consider "{{Inusefor|24 hours" to be a serious abuse of the inuse tag--one or two hours, tops (possibly 3 or 4 if you are really going to spend that whole time on the article). Niteowlneils 23:08, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Well, it doesn't really make it right, but based on User:NathanHawking, this is probably all attributable to newcomer misunderstandings. Niteowlneils 01:03, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I actually had one time when someone took umbrage when I asked him to remove "{{inuse}}" after three days of intermittent work. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:26, Oct 31, 2004 (UTC)

Avenues for handling the ever-increasing size of VFD

For a good deal of time, we've been certain that there's a problem with how we handle deletions. The one that most people are sure about is that VFD is getting too big to handle. There are, of course, those who claim that VFD is an anachronism, useless, etc. (these people are often those residing in the extreme inclusionist camp), but their views don't carry wide support among the community.

Naturally, we've had proposals combatting the problem of an ever-expanding VFD, some of which can be viewed on Wikipedia talk:Candidates for speedy deletion, Wikipedia:Managed Deletion, Wikipedia:Categorized Deletion and Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion. I originally wrote the following essay rebutting some common objections against Preliminary Deletion, but I found that the ideas outlined within would give a very good idea of where we could steer policy-writing in the future, regardless of Preliminary Deletion's outcome. Thusly, I have decided to share this with the community at large, since I believe that as our community grows, so will the size of VFD, and by extension our problem with maintaining such a behemoth.

[responding to the suggestion of expanding speedy deletion criteria]

Shall we rereview the results of Managed Deletion? I'd love to expand speedy deletion criteria, but that proposal would get shot down easily. There's a reason why nobody's drafted such a proposal — nobody but a few deletionists (or centrists leaning towards the deletionist side) want it.

The largest complaint about Managed Deletion was that it placed too much power in admins' hands. A good part of the community distrusts three admins to handle a deletion, so our alternative is to let one admin decide? That makes even less sense.

There's another compelling reason not to expand speedy deletion criteria. We might expand them, but the inclusionists always whine about the deletion of prose. It's one thing to delete "ioshgohgoaghoeg". It's another to delete a paragraph or two which some inclusionists might actually claim to be notable; these are borderline cases which some admins delete, but some admins don't. Expanding the speedy deletion criteria destroys the beautiful, if flawed, process of VFD.

Now, I'm going to discourse on why VFD is one of those genius-istic systems that some recognise and some don't, much like the U.S. Electoral College. VFD is not merely a place to delete articles. VFD is a place where borderline articles are placed when people don't know what to do with them.

For example, take a poorly written article on some rather obscure subject, say, a 1920s Bulgarian actor well known within his home country only, for pioneering filmmaking there. Google probably won't yield too many results on him. It may look like vanity. So following our current system, an editor places it on VFD, which basically advertises to Wikipedia: "Hello, I'm an article which is so confusing, nobody knows what I'm about or whether I should even be here. Can somebody help sort me out?" Anyone who knows the actor can easily describe how he is encyclopedic and should be kept.

Speedying full-fledged prose destroys this process, and as such, is probably not too feasible.

[responding to charges against Preliminary Deletion, such as "confusing bureaucracy", "instruction creep" or "too many problem resolution pages"] <snip>

Wikipedia is growing. We're getting more visitors. The population always contains a few baddies. At first we had one or two baddies, nothing our system couldn't handle. But as we grew bigger and bigger, we got more baddies, because we got more visitors. The percentage of baddies remains fixed, but not the total population. So naturally, we had to expand our systems for handling baddies as we grew larger.

Now, I'd say our current system is not scaling. Look at the debates on VFD. There are many contentious ones; however, there are always a few cases where practically everyone is for deleting the article; an obvious violation of policy, for example, such as irredeemably POV articles, or original research, or simply vanity pages. It's impractical to have them cluttering VFD, which is already damn bloody long to read, thank you.

So, our system simply isn't scaling. We will need to tackle this eventually, because people on dial-up simply cannot participate in VFD. Categorising VFD (another proposal) is an excellent start. But we will need to add extra pages. There is no doubt about this at all. We will need to expand our system for handling these, because there will be more people adding vanity pages, which will lead to more listings on VFD, which will lead to an extremely long page that only those on broadband can even read.

We have to cut down the size of VFD. The only way to cut down its size is to cut down the pages nominated, or move them elsewhere. The only way to cut down the amount of pages listed would be to loosen our policies, which surely a lot of people would oppose, or to develop other avenues for listing them, which leads back to "move them elsewhere". So it's your choice, folks. Either you centralise everything on one monolithic page, or you categorise deletions in some manner.

(this essay was originally posted on Wikipedia talk:Preliminary Deletion/Vote) Johnleemk | Talk 11:32, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't think the main objection to managed deletion was that it gave admins too much power, but that it privileged them by excluding non-admins from a voting process. Maybe a managed deletion path without this privileging of one grouping might be accepted? (Disclosure: I'm an admin, but not a member of any Cabal, as far as I know.) Filiocht 13:17, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
You know, Filiocht, I thought I was distinctly non-Cabalistic, if not unclubbable, until I wrote the Managed Deletion proposal and was called a Cabal member. The thing about the Cabal is that it's defined by the people who aren't in it. Anyway, the reason for admin-only was that I wanted it to be a form of expanding Speedy without the arbitrariness of "kill on sight" that ought to be really horking off inclusionists (if people only knew what they weren't seeing on VfD). I wanted a way for dangerous stuff and stuff that gamed us to go away, but with a consensus, and I structured the process so that any disagreement defaulted to VfD so that there couldn't be abuse. The reason I didn't make it open to all was that I thought the authors would vote "keep," and even a single keep vote punted to VfD. Also, I thought there were some people who might make it a point of pride or principle, because they don't think anything should be deleted, to go through and cast serial "keep" votes. That would have rendered the page nil. That's why I didn't have it open to all. There is another way, and that's to have a set of "Electors." I described this on the talk page to Johnleemk's proposal, but I gather he didn't like it, either, and it would definitely mean more beaurocracy. Geogre 01:57, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Electors are even more cabalistic, even if there is no cabal. We need to tailour proposals people can swallow. The thing is, as someone said elsewhere (can't remember where I read it), Wikipedia is so divergent now that it may be nigh-on-impossible passing any new policies in the near future, since there will always be a substantial amount of people you can't please (well, enough to prevent consensus at any rate). I find it close to hilarious people are calling Preliminary Deletion confusing or overly bureaucratic. I'm as fed up with red tape as the next person, but to me it seems people have taken advantage of this poll to vent their anger with the increasing bureaucratic procedures we have. I mean, you're able to boil down the policy itself to one sentence! And the additional "extras" are only one or two sentences more. How can this be complicated? I intentionally decided against using your suggestion, Geogre, not because I didn't like it, but because I know how afraid people are of bureaucracy. It's overly complicated, and people won't trust it. I'm extremely frustrated about how that despite the fact that we need to change our policies to keep up with an expanding Wikipedia, a substantial niche of people who have their own ideas (ideas ranging from the wildly inclusionist to deletionist that will get a lot of "no" votes if they're ever put to the vote) are holding up the majority who agree with a particular proposal. If 70% "yes" votes is the best a proposal as simple as this can muster, I wonder how "expanding speedy deletion" will go if it's ever polled for. Expanding speedy deletion gives one admin the vote. It doesn't just exclude non-admins; it excludes all admins but the one who stumbled upon the article. Johnleemk | Talk 08:47, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Now this is going to be hard for me to write, as I feel I'm going against my instincts, but maybe the answer is to just give up? I mean that maybe current VfD setup is the least possible evil? As someone who has tended to avoid the page for a long time now, I may be in no position to talk, but if an alternative solution is so hard to come up with, maybe that's because there is no alternative than to fight the good fight on an article by article basis? Or to accept that Wikipedia will never be an encyclopaedia in the conventional sense and that there will always be articles that I feel have no place here but that have a lot of support from others? In other words, if this place remains a process, thaen the presence of crap is less of a problem than it would be if it ever becomes a product. Of course, if it does ever become a product, I can imagine that a small group (2 or 3 people) will make some very hard-nosed decisions about what to keep and what to dump. Filiocht 09:03, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)
Well, Filiocht, after the failure of Managed Deletion, I just wrote articles for a couple of weeks, ignoring all else. I was even tempted, when writing, to say what the inclusionists say, "Someone will fix it" and write whatever crap my memory dumped out. I didn't. I researched. I was careful, but it's just as discouraging to know that one's attempts to be precise, to think about one's prose, are of no more value than "Melissa Doll is an erotic model. She is very popular." Why work, when the work has no value? Why not just litter the site with the eager fever of self-fame? Do the best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with a passionate intensity? If they are, what can we do but step up?
So I have returned to VfD. Article by article. Checking in every :30 or every :60, because otherwise it's too long in new listings alone to manage. I have gone back to being Jack Ketch on the CsD page, though I don't do New Page patrol enough. I don't know what else there is to do, when Johnleemk is right: there are enough people of any point of view who are filled with zeal enough to kill all policy changes.
Johnleemk, I came to the conclusion that speedy expansion was impossible before I wrote the Managed Deletion. On the proposal page, you'll see a bunch of admins agreeing. People will suggest new criteria, and they'll have a civil discussion (see the talk page of my old Managed Deletion -- very constructive and sane), and then it gets to a vote. When it gets to a vote, a host of people are marshalled from the void to not just vote "no," but scream "no" (see -Sj-'s taunting on the subject of extending the vote period on Managed Deletion on the vote page).
My sad assumption is that there is going to be a point where only beaucrats, if not just admins, will have to make non-democratic (not unilateral) decisions. The reason is just that we have policies set up for the days when Wikipedia wanted to grow, when it was vital not to scare away contributors. It was well crafted, over time, for that. Well, we have contributors now. Now, we have a steady enough base and a large enough inventory that we need quality rather than quantity, but our rules are still set up so that no one can be scared off, where all is entirely democratic. I'm for democracy, of course.
As for the Elector thing, it's pretty democratic, but it adds paperwork, no doubt. I don't even think, btw, that anyone is really worried about that. I think that's an excuse. Geogre 13:56, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I agree with you (but I still can't stomach a full-time return to VFD) in general, but...I don't ever see the community adopting any of these measures. Like I said, if people think Preliminary Deletion is confusing, complicated and bureaucratic, wait till they vote on the elector system. It doesn't stand a chance as the situation is now. Johnleemk | Talk 16:43, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

typo/misspelling redirects

Is there a place where we collect redirects that should be removed? Redirecting misspelled variants can be outright harmful: it leads to wrongly spelled links on WP going undiscovered (because they will be blue, even though misspelled, this has happened to me several times), and also readers may be led to believe that the spelling is correct when it is not. Two examples off the top of my head:

dab 16:42, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. older≠wiser 16:45, Oct 31, 2004 (UTC)

I still believe that there is a strong argument for keeping common misspellings as redirects. It enables searching for the common misspelling. Ideally, we should develop a way to have these handled by some special approach that prevents them from creating blue links. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:39, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

well, instead of a simple redirect, we could put a note saying "did you mean", e.g. at Qu'ran: "Did you mean Qur'an". An automatic redirect is not even noted most of the time, and people will not realize it was a mispelling (rather than an accepted variant). dab 08:22, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It is possible to add a Category to a REDIRECT (you have to append it and make sure the whole thing is on one line. If we categorised REDIRECTs by their function, it would be possible for the Janitorial Squad to check that they are not being used for links where undesirable. --Phil | Talk 12:06, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
We have red links for missing articles and blue for those that exist. Is it not possible to get the system to make links to redirects green or something? Simply checking the first character of the article (a #) might be a simple way of doing this. If the green is of the same brightness level as the blue it would not be overly distracting but would allow us to spot them easily enough. violet/riga (t) 12:16, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
While having the redirect links display in a different color might be OK as a user preference, I just want to point out that it is perfectly acceptable to use redirects as links. I'd be cautious about anything that might give people the impression that using redirect links is somehow deprecated and should be avoided. older≠wiser 14:02, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
To be honest I think that people shouldn't link to redirects - piping them is much better. When editting an article I usually check for any links that are redirects and update them. violet/riga (t) 17:05, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It depends on the nature of the redirect. For example, if the title of a book currently redirects to the author it is still entirely correct to link to the book title: if that article ever gets written, it will now go the right place without further work. Similarly if the name of a building redirects to the city the building is in. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:32, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

If one adds Template:R_from_misspelling, "What links here" can be used to makes sure nothing links there. This makes spell checking easy.

The source is much easier to read if with [[Mayor of Chicago]] instead of [[List of mayors of Chicago|Mayor of Chicago]] (to link to the same page). Such redirects shouldn't be replaced with a direct link. -- User:Docu

Links to redirects can always be replaced automatically, if desireable, so there is no need to deprecate them. The "Misspellings" Category however is an excellent idea (as long as it doesn't spawn enthusiasm for the inclusion of as many misspellings as possible...), and it may also be used to automatically check for mispellings present in article texts. In fact, it would be great to have Categories for all redirects, allowing a classification of why the redirect is there (abbreviation, a.k.a/alias, misspelling, wrongtitle,...) dab 16:51, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC) I just found Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages. nice. dab 18:12, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Proposed method for reconciliation of Deletionist and Inclusionist Attitudes

Inclusionists and Deletionists share what often seems like very little common ground (at least when discussing what to do with unsatisfactory articles), but both hope to make Wikipedia as good as it can be. I have a suggestion that I think would render most inclusionist/deletionist disputes moot; and be a positive wikipedia change as far as both camps are concerned. In the policy proposal I may speak extensively of school articles, though articles on schools are certainly not the only thing that would be impacted by this proposal.

Sometimes (at least when tempers are a bit hot due to a vehement dispute), there is the suggestion from one camp that proponants of the opposition view ought to start their own wiki. Suggestions of this sort are problematic not only in so far as they produce factionalism, but also because, if we were to take them up on that, we would essentially be forking wikipedia. And splitting the editor base into two different projects with large degrees of overlapping intent/content seems to be a bad plan.

So, is there a way to 1) allow people of these diametrically opposed opinions to coexist and 2) not require anyone to give up the fundamentals of their views on what wikipedia is/should be?

I think the answer is yes to both, and the way I would implement it is to have a deletionist wikipedia and an inclusionist wikipedia coexist.

To spell this out: Though there are varying views within either camp with respect to the scope of what wikipedia ought to cover, let us call the inclusionist position the following: All informative factual, verifiable NPOV information belongs in the wikipedia. Let us call the deletionist position the following: Only a certain subclass of informative, factual, verifiable NPOV information belongs in the wikipedia, and that subclass is determined by some factor like Notability or "encyclopedic" subject matter. I put encyclopedic in quotes because it seems as though something very particular is meant by that, and so it is being used in a particularized way.

The solution: Wikipedia ought to have two tiers of articles. Call the broader tier the wide tier, and call the narrower tier the slim tier. All articles start in the wide tier. People can nominate articles to be elevated from the wide tier to the slim tier. Then, there is a votes for promotion process (for those of you concerned that we need fewer voting processes rather than more voting processes, I think that a consequence of adopting this policy would be a drastic, drastic decrease in the number of candidates on VfD). If, by rough consensus, an article is deemed promotion worthy, then the article becomes part of the slim tier. The slim tier would reflect the deletionist ideal of wikipedia, not just the cream of the crop articles (like the one's featured on the front page), but basically all and only those articles that we, by consensus, think are on a suitable topic and well written. The union of the wide tier and the narrow tier would be the inclusionist ideal. Now, when a reader comes to wikipedia, they are presented with (by default) the narrow tier, but also with a clear announcement of the existence of the wider tier (and a notice reflecting the nature of the difference). People can set, via a cookie, whether they would like to use wikipedia slim/professional or the more robust (but also less refined) wikipedia. The result would be that 1) there is still only one wikipedia, and all wikipedians are working on the same articles (in the sense that no article has been forked to a different project, and thus, there is only one instance of each article for people to work on) and the wider tier would contain school articles, articles on hospitals, fire departments, obscure actors, so-called "fan-cruft." etc. Rather than fighting to remove information from the database, people would be proponants of the promotion of certain articles (and I'm sure we could include a process by which articles could be demoted, if that was favored).

In short, we would eliminate all of the notability arguments that occur on VfD, and VfD would basically be used to deal with issues like substubs with no potential for expansion, dictionary definitions, original research, etc. The school issue would be dealt with through 1) policy and 2) debates on votes for promotion. But, the inclusionists would be able to relax because failure to get an article promoted wouldn't mean the information is lost (in the same way an article's deletion results in a loss of information) and deletionists would be happy because there is a professional/"encyclopedic" face to wikipedia.

This compromise seems to be the best solution to accomodate everyone's preferences, alleviate the sheer number of articles on VfD, and allow us to focus on improving the articles themselves.

So, what does anyone think of this suggestion? posiduck 17:20, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea that seems to arise naturally when you think about the problem. However, what you are effectively suggesting is a peer review process. If the narrow tier were the default, most readers would not be able to see articles in the wide tier, and so these articles would, for all practical purposes, not be "accepted" until they are promoted. Those who argue against peer review say that the proportion of articles that are created that are not encyclopedic is relatively small, and wasting time and effort reviewing these is detrimental, and was partially responsible for the destruction of Nupedia.
On the other hand, a process which demoted articles from the narrow tier to the wide tier may be more helpful. In this way, articles could continue to be edited by people who care about them, even after effectively being erased from the public view, and perhaps one day promoted again. As for what the deletionists gain, the person whose content is currently deleted is bound to be more agreeable to a demotion (effectively meaning, go fix it, but take as long as you want) than a deletion. Derrick Coetzee 18:16, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I know that I would be a lot less concerned with demotion than deletion. I would be happy with either system. My questions are, 1) are there problems with this proposal and 2) is this a technical feasibility? However, if there aren't major problems, and we could manage it from a software standpoint, I think this solution is as near to ideal as we are going to get. Posiduck 22:56, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This is already technically feasible. All we'd need is to do is orphan the "demoted" articles and then move them to a namespace reserved for them. Put a suitable tag at the top indicating its status. We could call it the Graveyard. Articles in the Graveyard are considered as good as dead, and are not reachable through normal links or default search, but can be revived by a dedicated editor. Deco 00:56, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps a more accurate description of the inclusionist ideal is that "All, verifiable, presumed-to-be-factual, NPOV information, at the exception only of the lowest trivia, should be included, at the expense of quality." A more accurate description of the deletionist credo might be "Useful, verifiable, presumed-to-be-factual, NPOV information should be included, at the exception of information which is outside the remit of an encyclopaedia, thus at the expense of quantity and breadth." (and it has two As, not one) The hardcore inclusionist understandably wants quantity, regardless of quality, whereas the hardcore deletionist wants quality, regardless of quantity. The key here is to have guidelines which strike a balance between the two, and clearly define boundaries. Perhaps the solution is to table articles at a panel of admins. If it fails the "clear delete" benchmark, then it is deleted (though more slowly than a speedy). If it passes the "clear keep" benchmark, then it is kept. Then, anything which falls in-between goes up for discussion on VfD-under-a-more-suitable-name. Examples of "clear keep" boundaries might be:
  1. For a book, Amazon sales rank above 1,000
  2. For a website, Alexa traffic rank above 100
  3. For a band, a listing on AMG
  4. For a society, clear evidence that being a member makes one notable
  5. For a school, several noteworthy achievements which set it apart from others
  6. For any article, that the article is younger than a certain age (one week? one month? one day?)
"Clear delete" boundaries might be:
  1. For a book, Amazon sales rank below 200,000
  2. For a website, no Alexa rank, or a rank below 1,000,000
  3. For a band, no commercial releases
  4. For a society, no evidence that anyone famous has passed through their doors
  5. For a school, no evidence that it is any different from your average school
  6. For any article, no expansion beyond stub in a certain period (six months? one year? if it's not improved in this time, it likely never will)
These are just examples. We would also need clear, unambiguous definitions of "encyclopaedic" and yardsticks of notability. Then it is only the middle ground over which people will argue, rather than putting all of WP policy at stake. Leaving sensible argument is good, since it concentrates the efforts somewhere. Chris 00:51, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
But these things aren't clear, by definition - what is clear evidence that being a member makes one notable? What if the article is utter garbage, in such a way that it would be unanimously deleted on VFD now, even under a week after being created? On the opposite side, I think there's a strong case that a society can be notable, without anyone famous having passed through its doors. These things need to be judged on their merits. Furthermore, this policy is doomed to failure, as there is no way the inclusionists will agree to the school delete criteria. As to the broader idea - I vote no. Let's not create a whopping technical mess in order to give the inclusionists a Wikimedia-funded playpen. Ambi 01:14, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
A playpen as well as a critical source of GFDLed material to be used in future articles. I think such a resource would be well worth the minimal hardware resources it consumes. Deco 01:43, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Actually, it depends. I wouldn't necessarily oppose such an inclusionist paradise version, IF it were not the default. If you could join and then select the preference, that would be fine, but I won't stand for new contributors being turned away by finding crap article after crap article. Ambi 05:22, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I agree with this. Such articles would not be linked or come up in searches by default. They would also be marked with a tag at the top indicating their status for unwary Googlers. Deco 23:17, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Coming to this fresh, so these comments are a response to the initial offering, and not to the comments that have followed -- forgive my going a bit long, please.
What Posiduck has proposed is a form of the "version system" that some people have advocated. I have no general problem with the version system. The idea that I heard from Angela was that all articles carry with them a rating. Any user might enter a rating value. Only articles that achieve a high average rating would pass over to the "Version 1.0" Wikipedia that would then be eligible for the print versions of the encyclopedia. Users of the Wikipedia could use the "peer reviewed" wikipedia (when researching and wanting more reliable information or not wanting to take a chance on the information) or the unrated Wikipedia.
In general, I think it's an ok way of establishing quality control. However, there are no teeth to the proposal (nor, really, to Posiduck's). What separates us from a playpen or from Everything2 or from Slashdot? We may not be paper, but we are not infinite. Without some disciplinary functions as well as some pruning facilities, we become the latest way-kewel board for people to play, albeit a very expensive one with an extremely high Alexa rank. Our Alexa rank makes us highly coveted for page rank boosting. Our Alexa rank makes us a fun target for vandals.
Therefore, I could abide a version system with the following changes: All new pages must win at least, let's say, 50 ratings before moving on. Let's assume a score of 1-10. Anything with an average of 8-10 goes to FAC. Anything with an average of 3-6 goes to Clean Up. Anything with an average of 2 or lower goes to VfD, simply for evaluation of whether it's worth keeping or not. Anything with an average of 1 or less goes to CSD. If something like that happened, then I could see it.
I look at Wikipedia as being an organism. It must get new food, and it must excrete waste. Growth for its own sake is the ideology of the cancer cell, Edward Abbey said. Geogre 01:44, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
That is a proposal I could agree with - and that quote is particularly of note. Ambi 05:22, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I like this proposal in principle, but see two problems with it. First, wikipedia's penchant for attracting vandals, which has already been pointed out above, could conceivably mess up this sytem entirely if the process is open to all users. It may be wise to restrict voting in some way, whether by experience or number of edits or whatever. My second problem with the system is that it encourages including what is popular as opposed to what is relevant. This is probably inevitable no matter what system of quality control is used since this is first and foremost a communal project, but implementing a system such as this gets us no closer to resolving the conflict between deletionism and inclusionism. I would say that some basic standards that are more strict than wikipedia's current standards would still need to be established apart from popular vote (though these standards should be sensitive to both sides of the debate and not reflect one side or the other's beliefs too strongly)and that popular vote would be used to decide where articles that conform to these basic standards would go according to the version scheme proposed above. Indrian 20:47, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
What's interesting to me, Indrian, is that your objections are exactly the ones I made when I first heard the "Version" system proposed. I can see a dedicated POV warrior going through every article on HatedEnemy and giving it a 0 rating and every article on EsteemedHero a 10. I can also see the people who vote "keep" on every article on VfD giving every article a 10 score. Since demotion and deletion would depend upon average, it only takes a few curve-killing voters to keep a score out of the average that would lead to deletion or FAC. Further, highly academic topics, or highly esoteric ones, would not get many ratings. Currently, the very good John Dee article is on FAC. Hands up, all those who know who he was. If I tell you he was a 17th century mathematician, would you want to read it? I'm sure you see the dilemma. In fact, even though he was a mathematician, my literature background is better for reading the article than someone else's mathematics background. The biggest problem with all Version systems, though, is that they require what amounts to a major redesign. They take some software work, but they take a complete reorganization of how Wikipedians approach the site. We would all have to go to the Unrated Page every day, read and rate -- possibly having a queue of articles so that we could keep up with the ones we'd done -- and then go to whatever tasks we usually do. Still, as ideas go, it's one of the ones that is closest to something we can all agree upon, I guess. Geogre 04:32, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • It's certainly a bold proposal, and on the face of it looks like it would solve a lot of problems. One thing I wonder, however, is if it really would. Specifically, not all Deletionists are the same, and not all Inclusionists are the same, and it is therefore unclear exactly which positions would be represented by each wiki 'slice'. We could, perhaps, do various clasifications for articles and allow cookie-based filtering of those (and then Rambot's work might be gone for those who decide not to use it, for example, while others might like Rambot's stuff but dislike pre-university schools). Another difficulty is the technical issues involved in this -- a lot of design work would go into implementing your proposal (and my improvement ideas make it even worse). Despite these two problems, it certainly is an interesting idea, and is not too much unlike other calls I've seen here that simply want reviewed, polished articles for professional purposes (e.g. printed form). Maybe that's in the future of the codebase if enough people decide it's important. --Improv 06:20, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would be satisfied with just about any compromise that allows people who want to continue to work on the articles that would otherwise be deleted, without splitting ourselves into two different projects. That's my primary concern. Posiduck 16:21, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that your proposal itself involves splitting Wikipedia into two projects, Wikipedia-narrow and Wikipedia-Wide. I don't think such a split is possible to avoid. And I judge from the fact that a significant number of people oppose merely allowing people to view deleted articles that there is no hope of reaching a consensus on this, which goes one step further and allows people to both view and edit deleted articles. anthony 警告 20:19, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I doubt that there is anyway to render this dispute moot as Posiduck claims at the beginning of his proposal. However, the proposal moves in the right direction towards compromise. The two tier system has promise, but I think if we are going to have two tiers of articles, then some guidelines need to be established other than popular vote for the top tier. These guidelines need not be overly stringent and should reflect the sensibilities of both sides of the arguement, but I think they are necessary. Establishing these guidelines would probably be a protracted and frustrating process, but the end result would probably make wikipedia all the better for it. Indrian 20:47, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

Here is my proposal, in rough brief form, based on Posiduck's ideas:

There will be a new namespace called the Graveyard. Whenever a page Blah which does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion is voted to be deleted, it is not immediately deleted but is instead moved to Graveyard: Blah, and the redirect at Blah removed (effectively orphaning it). The default Wikipedia search does not search this namespace. A template, {{graveyard}}, is added to the top of the article, explaining to anyone who stumbles across it its status and asking for help in "reviving" it. All articles which are not significantly edited within a specific amount of time, say 6 months, are permanently deleted.

There will be a symmetric process, similar to Votes for undeletion, which can vote to "revive" a significantly improved article from the Graveyard.

What are the advantages of this approach?

  1. Inclusionists win, because content which was formerly deleted is now kept and may be improved for a considerably longer period of time.
  2. Deletionists win, because there will be considerably less opposition to demotion of articles than deletion, without sacrificing quality.
  3. Graveyarding can be achieved by ordinary users using Move (followed by blanking the redirect); administrators can delete Graveyard articles at their leisure, or this could even be made automatic.
  4. Articles which must be removed immediately, due to copyright violation, offensive content, or any speedy delete condition, can still be deleted instantly.

What are your thoughts? Deco 23:30, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Except for the part where you needlessly delete graveyard articles, I think this plan would work just fine. Posiduck 00:31, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I consider this a concession to deletionists who worry about resource usage. Graveyard articles which are continually edited would not become candidates for deletion. Deco 02:17, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have a serious problem with it. First, it essentially allows Wikipedia to be a web host for whatever junk anyone wants to put up. Let's say that the article blah is not "I am the kewelest!!!!! I rule!" but "Bush stole the election. We will have a revolution on January 21st?" What then? Conspirators edit it like mad. It stays edited and edited and edited. Or let's say it says "Bush deserted the military. He was supposed to report but didn't." Then let's say that someone at one of the bad lefty sites puts up a link saying, "Learn the truth about Bush. See Wikipedia's revealing article at" and gives the link. Edits? You bet! Tons of them. It's still trash, and we're now hosting. In the one case, Wikipedia is someone's Angelfire. In the other case, we're having our good name used for politics.
It's only a matter of degree between those and "My new way kewel game is at the following server" or "Chad is so gay" and "Lord Somersault is the cooooooolest character in console game Foobar" that we usually get. Add to that the vanity page where the person edits it a lot. Add to that the kind of junk that happens when illegal things like pedophilia find ways of passing information to one another, and you've got the real world.
We must delete things. There are damned good reasons for killing the junk, and they're not hatred of humanity. They're not attempts at spoiling fun. They're not academic elitism. There is crap out there that puts us all at risk. Geogre 04:22, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I agree completely with Geogre on this. This site advertises itself as an encyclopaedia and people really need to consider what that word means. The acceptance of crap is the greatest current danger to the future of this project. Filiocht 08:34, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
I mostly agree with Filiocht -- I don't think it's the greatest danger (the greatest being some successful lawsuit imposing dangerous process on submission, or shutting us down), but feel that it is an important danger to pay attention to. The ability to delete is an important one, but, perhaps unlike a number of other deletionists, I usually vote to delete based on encyclopedicness of topic, not of article. Articles that I argue to delete, therefore, are articles that I think never, regardless of how good the article, will be appropriate for Wikipedia. Generally, if I think a topic is encyclopedic, and the article contents are even roughly aiming in the right direction, I will vote to keep the article, and sometimes work on improving it or rewrite (I've done it a few times -- if you're really interested, dig through my contribution history, noting that I was User:Pgunn before I renamed myself to follow my sig). This proposal seems aimed more at reconciling with a different type of deletionist -- someone who votes to delete articles that are poor but on encyclopedic topics. It may be interesting to attempt to determine how many of both types of deletionist there are. I should also note that, again, I wish people were more civil in these discussions on both sides. --Improv 15:26, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
When I say current danger, I mean one that is actually happening, not some (I agree much more serious) potential but not actual lawsuit. I agree with your approach to deletion, by the way. Unfortunately, it would appear that some contributors do not take the time to consider what an encyclopaedia is before creating an article while others, as you point out, want to delete articles because they are badly written or contain crap. If these articles went to cleanup and 50% of the effort that now goes into VfD went there instead, the problem might well reduce. That said, I do feel that the current voting setup on VfD is counterproductive and in need of reform. Filiocht 15:58, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
What's being missed here is that Graveyard articles are effectively dead. The notice at the top would specifically indicate that we do not claim such articles have any credibility or significance. As for free hosting, well, yes, but they're also releasing all their content under the GFDL, and so it's available for morphing into actual article content. For example, an editor on the page about the console game Foobar might read your hypothetical Graveyard page on "Lord Somersault" and incorporate some of it after some fact-checking and copyediting. Also, just as real Angelfire pages are terribly unpopular and cost Angelfire little in bandwidth or space, so would these pages.
As for political speech, just because an article is in the Graveyard doesn't mean it's not subject to the same policies as the rest of the encyclopedia, such as NPOV. If the title itself is POV, it can be moved. The point of it being there is for it to be either eventually improved, or eventually deleted. If you could propose an amendment which better ensures this, I'd like to hear it. Deco 16:32, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Geogre, I'm not suggesting we eliminate deletion altogether. I think for copyvio, for random strings of characters, etc., it makes sense to delete those, and we'd still have a VfD for that. But, I am suggesting that for things like schools, hospitals, b-movie actors, as well as stubs on topics that people think should be included, it would be nice if instead of being deleted the articles could be preserved. If we delete a bunch of short but still informative schools now, and then later, policy changes, and the school articles are considered something we should include, it would be nice to just modify and promote the already existing articles rather than have to recreate all of them. It would cut down a ton on the debates of VfD, because most of the hotly debated VfD articles would be candidates for demotion rather than deletion. At the very least it would give inclusionists a chance to put our money where our mouths are, and take the time we aren't wasting on VfD anymore and put it to use improving stubs and whatnot. Posiduck 01:44, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have two answers to make, I guess. Ok, first, unlike Improv, I do vote on the article, not the topic. This is because there are shades of quality in articles. I'll vote to keep even a poor article on a good subject and vote to delete even a good article on a topic that doesn't belong. I think we've got to know, though, that we're being used by more than authors. We're a reference, and there are many, many people using us as such. There are times, as I've argued on my user page, when nothing is better than an insulting something. If the article is "Ironweed is a book by Kennedy. It won the Pulitzer prize," then I'm going to vote to delete it. Why? Well, it's a great book, and it's being used in college classrooms. A new user comes to Wikipedia, searches for information on the book the class is doing, reads that misspelled and useless bit of junk, and never uses us again. It's not that it has to be a beautiful article, but it has to be an article. The authors of substubs are killing us to get their names in lights.
One of the things neither Deco nor Posiduck answered, though, is the very, very real worry that we will become a subcultural board. The worst case has already happened at our sister projects. The German Wikipedia almost got shut down because the pedophiles began writing coded articles that had external links that allowed them to keep in touch with each other. We've had the same things happen here, but nasty deletionists have stomped on them, sometimes with extreme passion. Trust me: that community knows about the possibilities of keeping in touch and posting information on free wiki's. Aside from the legal jeopardy of unwittingly allowing any of these people to propser on a graveyard or demoted space (and yes, ISP's and server corporations have been taken to court and suffered seizures in the US, where Wikipedia lives, for having this junk and not knowing it), think of the moral side of it.
Let's back up, though, from that edge, which is a real one. Let's look at what did, in fact, happen with the John Kerry article during the campaign. Someone went in and just said that Kerry's wounds were "minor." Well, that was POV. Bushcountry.com put up a page telling its readers to "learn the truth" about Kerry's fraudulent Purple Heart medal and gave a link to...guess what?... the edit warred John Kerry article on Wikipedia. Like I said: people do this because we are regarded as a reference.
Let's back up another step, though, from that also real edge, and let's just stick to the game of blah. What is the benefit of it? Cui bono? The primary benefit seems to be that people like it. Ok. They like it. Is that enough? People like pornography, too. We don't exist simply to be fun, or entertainment, or a communications medium, or the service of interests. What is the harm of losing it? People like it. Ok. What is the harm? You see what I mean? The fact that people do like the game means that they're eager to talk about it. It means that we get disproporationate activity on something about which we cannot be encyclopedic and need not cover. We become, in other words, a step closer to GameFAQs. These matters are already covered very well, and the primary benefit is that they entertain contributors, rather than inform the user.
Finally, schools. My objection, and I note that it's the objection mounted by most of the other "school deletionists," is not that the schools have information on them, but rather that they are treated as subjects. It is a question of granularity and taxonomy and of information retrieval and use. When the information on a given school is location, mascot, and principal, a table does the trick. By breaking out the information on every single school, and all of it trivial and out of date immediately, we lose that information. It can only be kept together if there are multiple pointer pages. My other problem with individual schools is that we're begging for edit wars and taunts when we have them. That's not a reason to delete, and I don't offer it as such, but "Mr. Smith's class realy sux0r" is going to show up more and more, and school rivals will taunt and repaint each other, once every school is known to exist here. It doesn't happen now because the kids don't find the schools here. If it ever gets to be the case that every HS and MS has an individual article, we're going to be awash in disputes and ugliness. We already get kids calling each other "fag" in articles that get deleted. Imagine when the schools are present.
At any rate, I don't have a problem with a Version system, if it has a digestive system attached to it, but "all things that are not completely false are kept" is not something I support. As for better ideas, Deco, I've offered them before, both above and elsewhere. I'm not one of the people you can accuse of cursing the darkness. Geogre 04:20, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I certainly like this idea. In fact, it's part of the intention of my Wikipedia fork, McFly. Call Wikipedia the narrow version, and call McFly the wide version, and we've already got this essentially in place. I'd much rather have Wikimedia adopt this solution itself, but until then there's always McFly (I've just added the ability to edit, and am working on parsing Wikipedia:Deletion log regularly, only allowing users to edit deleted articles, and sending the edit button to Wikipedia for everything else). anthony 警告 19:58, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Proposed changes to the Manual of Style

Currently the MOS says: 'For the English Wikipedia, there is no preference among the major national varieties of English.'

But there are two exceptions to this rule in the manual. There is a poll on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style on whether these exceptions should be removed. The poll will end on 20:00 UTC on 8 November.jguk 19:02, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Userpage Protection Policy Change

Moved to Wikipedia talk: Protection policy

GFDL-friendly merge-and-delete of short, single-author material?

As some may know, there is continuing contention over the disposition of very short articles about non-notable high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. I am experimenting with the idea that such material should be merged into articles about the towns, on the premise that people interested in the town are better able to judge the appropriateness of this material than the general VfD population.

Here's the question. In the case of a short article that is exclusively, or almost exclusively the contribution of a single author, it seems to me that it ought to be possible to perform a "GDFL-friendly merge-and-delete" by placing a manually-written notice in the article's talk page, similar to the one below. (I've deliberately chosen one in which the article was created primarily, but not exclusively, by a single author). I'd like thoughtful comments on whether this is good enough. (I realize this isn't what you might call algorithmically perfect but GFDL is a human-interpreted license, not an algorithm).

This example concerns inserting the entire text of High Tech High into a section of San Diego, California.

The text is copied exactly from High Tech High to preserve GFDL traceability. Will clean up shortly. The text is that as of 17:25, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12. The text is entirely the product of a single author, Bboarder12, with the exception of the insertion and removal of various Wikipedia administrative notices by others. The history is: [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 01:14, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(cur) (last) 17:25, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 17:20, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 17:05, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 17:04, 1 Nov 2004 CBDroege m (reason)
(cur) (last) 17:04, 1 Nov 2004 CBDroege m (original author of page is not allowed to remove speedy deletion candidacy.)
(cur) (last) 17:02, 1 Nov 2004 RickK (vfd)
(cur) (last) 17:00, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 16:56, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 16:52, 1 Nov 2004 CBDroege m (candidate for speedy delete)
(cur) (last) 16:49, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 16:47, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12

Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/172

--> Wikipedia talk:Requests for bureaucratship/172

Accelerated VfD

I have just posted another proposal to try and deal with VfD overload. Since it a) is primarily a formalization of current practice, and b) requires unanimous consent of the entire community (admins and non-admins alike), I am hoping that it will be less controversial than some of the other proposed ways to deal with Wikipedia's seriously broken housekeeping processes. It currently is here. If someone wants to make it into a formal, separate voting page, fine. If people want to comment or suggest tweaking the numbers there, that's fine, too. Niteowlneils 19:09, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Whether to allow warnings about inaccurate information on the WWW?

When I was web searching for information about the APS Underwater Assault Rifle 5.56 mm, using Altavista's web searcher, I found a realistic-looking page about this rifle, which described this rifle in detail, and also mentioned a USA copy of this rifle and a recent undercover war called the Twilight War. The Russian APS is real and as described, but the USA copy and the Twilight War are fiction and occur in a videogame scenario. The page did not mention anything obviously fictional such as ray guns or spaceships. I do not play videogames and I had not heard of that videogame or its scenario. The web page did not mention any videogame and did not warn that any of its content was fictional.

That sort of mixture of fact and fiction (sometimes nicknamed "faction") can be a major pitfall and landmine for people looking for information. As a result, when I wrote the Wikipedia page APS Underwater Assault Rifle 5.56 mm (having checked the information by looking in reliable information at the APS's maker's web site), I included a pointer to a web page A warning about websites that describe guns which I wrote describing this risk of being misled. But someone deleted the page and the pointer to it.

However, the Wikipedia page Gestapo's section "Books" includes this warning:-

Suspected hoax works about the Gestapo include:
Gestapo Chief: The 1948 Interrogation of Heinrich Müller - Gregory Douglas. San Jose, CA 1995

which has been allowed to stand. Please, what is policy about warning the readers about inaccurate information on the WWW or in books or in films etc?

Readers should be told about possible inaccuracies in our own articles. We cannot be held accountable, however, for the rest of the web — anyone who isn't aware by now that the web isn't a totally reliable source of information probably shouldn't be reading Wikipedia. If it's a widespread phenomenon, it may at best deserve mention in the body of the article. If you're afraid an editor may use the faction page as a source, feel free to include an HTML comment mentioning it specifically. Deco 07:43, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Anthony Appleyard 08:03, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think A warning about websites that describe guns was correctly deleted. Charles Matthews 09:46, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

See also this talk area. Anthony Appleyard 17:03, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Reporting the POVs in dictionary definitions together with the POVs of opposing experts is always NPOV

Cited definitions from dictionaries such as the American Heritage Dictionary have been cut repeatedly from several Wikipedia pages. The reason given is that the "dictionary definition is POV." I cite you to the recent history of a disambiguation page and its TalkPage.

I suggest part of the solution to this problem is to insert a new paragraph into the NPOV page to state explicitly, "Dictionary definitions are always NPOV if the contrasting definitions of experts are also quoted and cited." The most appropriate position would be following the "Religion" paragraph of the NPOV page. ;)

Any suggestions? ---Rednblu | Talk 08:59, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • I'm not sure if we could assume that dictionary definitions from a real dictionary are always NPOV -- there may be some bad dictionaries out there, and dictionaries don't always reflect actual usage of a word. Personally, I don't think citing dictionaries ever adds anything to an encyclopedia, and imagine it might be a bad practice to get into. --Improv 14:47, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • Further note -- older dictionaries were often not even remotely POV -- I've looked at some older ones from the early 1900s, and they're hilariously POV. Even newer ones, for reason of historical conservativism or lack of agreement with us about what NPOV is about, are often not POV. I therefore don't think being part of a dictionary necessarily contributes at all to NPOV, and therefore think your proposal, while well-intentioned, is based on bad premises. --Improv 17:36, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
      • But wouldn't those older dictionaries validate for sure that those old hilarious POVs actually were part of history? :) ---Rednblu | Talk 17:44, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
        • It might be notable that some people thought that, but wouldn't necessarily be notable as to what other points of view were common at the time. We might expect, say, French dictionaries during colonial times to be very much for reporting the French government POV, and we might intuit a nationalist POV to oppose them, but that wouldn't necessarily tell us about the differing tribal POVs, the Communist POV, the early liberal POVs, the ... Basically I'm saying is that it can't be a very good rule of thumb. I don't see the utility in quoting dictionaries at all on Wikipedia. --Improv 20:09, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
          • I agree totally--no utility in quoting dictionaries. However, if a POV is expressed in a dictionary, then that POV is per se and necessarily a valid POV to document on Wikipedia, is it not? There would be no rational justification for cutting one dictionary definition among others from a Wikipedia page simply because of the POV in the dictionary definition that was cut, would you agree? ---Rednblu | Talk 21:23, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)


  • A dictionary definition is an opinion, though often an expert opinion. So it should be fine to quote it as long as you attribute it and as long as it's relevant to the article. In an article about a word you might quote the OED to show what scholars believe about the etymology or use of that word. But in a dispute about ownership of a word (e.g. "is America a democracy or a republic?" "is atheism a religion?" "is communism the same as totalitarianism?") quoting the dictionary doesn't help. Both sides of the dispute know that the word has more than one meaning. Gdr 15:56, 2004 Nov 6 (UTC)
    • Those examples are helpful. I am folding your comment and everybody's else comments into the following "Digesting the suggestions" section. ---Rednblu | Talk 21:45, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Digesting the suggestions: I plan to edit this section as we go along :)

Thanks for helping me clarify the "algebra" of NPOV. For example, I changed the heading on this section to clarify the idea here. After thinking about your comments, I find the following.
  1. Likely the final page should not cite dictionaries. That is, artful editing generally would make the page flow better than just quoting dictionary definitions.
  2. Many times a particular dictionary definition may not provide encyclopedic interest. In that case, editors would agree readily that the particular POV in that dictionary definition was non-interesting.
  3. Dictionary definitions will not resolve which POV is right--merely validate that the POVs in the dictionary definitions are appropriate POVs to detail in Wikipedia somewhere. For example, dictionary definitions will not resolve whether "America is a republic or a democracy"--merely validate at most that there are two opposing POVs that are both appropriate POVs to detail in Wikipedia somewhere.
    • Older dictionaries illustrate the point. Older dictionaries serve to validate that the hilariously old-fashioned ideas in them were actual POVs back in time. And hence, those POVs in older dictionaries serve to validate those old-fashioned ideas as appropriate for detailing in Wikipedia pages as part of the history of ideas. But neither the older or the newer dictionaries can settle which POV is right.
  4. However, in constructing pages, including associated disambiguation pages, for a controversial area, dictionary definitions always would serve one important function, namely validating that the POVs in the dictionary would NPOV qualify for representation in some page. This would apply in any situation where there was disagreement among editors whether the POV in the dictionary definition was to be allowed "print space" on the page. (Typos are readily identified by the publisher.)
  5. Hypothesis. Hence, NPOV could always be achieved by detailing the POVs in the dictionary definitions together with detailing the opposing POVs of experts.
It appears to me that the above states a falsifiable hypothesis on all dictionary definitions. That is, one counter-example that would falsify the above hypothesis would be from the following:
  • Find a word W in a dictionary D such that the D definitions for W together with opposing expert opinions would NOT make a NPOV page.
An example in support of the above hypothesis would be the word work for which the dictionary definitions state the following two POVs together with others.
  1. POV 1. Work is the transfer of energy from one physical system to another, especially the transfer of energy to a body by the application of a force that moves the body in the direction of the force. (There would be several alternative statements of this POV.)
  2. POV 2. Work is one's place of employment.
According to the hypothesis, an NPOV report on the concept of work could always be achieved by constructing a set of pages, together with appropriate disambiguation pages, of the POVs in the dictionary definitions of work surrounded by the POVs of the experts on work that differ from the POVs in the dictionary definitions of work.
  • In particular, NPOV would require that the non-scientific POV 2 on work would not get cut from a disambiguation page on work. ---Rednblu | Talk 17:27, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Reputable dictionaries are exactly as citable as any other reputable sources, no more, no less. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:10, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)
    • I would have thought so a priori--before encountering a real situation.  :( But then, when in an actual situation of having an exact quote from the American Heritage Dictionary cut by an editor as at this link, when I thought about it, there seems to be a lack of general understanding--including my own--about how citable a dictionary really should be. For example, I would have reverted the cut and argued much more strongly if the cited quotation had been from Darwin's Origin of Species--because I could say "Darwin said that." But who knows who wrote the dictionary definition? Thanks for helping me think this through--because I think a section in the NPOV documentation is required. ---Rednblu | Talk 20:04, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
      • To put it briefly: dictionary definitions are not special, nor is any particular source. Any text exhibiting a point of view is POV, without exception, although you could certainly contend whether a piece of text is POV or not. I can't help but see this whole argument as a way of drawing attention to and justifying a single tiny edit. I'd seriously consider just moving on. Deco 21:46, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
        • Thanks for the advice. :)) ---Rednblu | Talk 22:07, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How to handle stale NPOV disputes

This is a question on the existing NPOV policy, regarding the detail how to handle articles which are listed as NPOV dispute but no activity is seen. The typical NPOV dispute article sees rather hectic activity, hopefully in the discussion, but sometimes escalating to edit wars in the article.

But there are some articles which are NPOV dispute listed, but no activity is seen. Except when trying to remove the NPOV dispute warning. So I wonder whether it is OK to use the dispute tag to stigmatize an article forever.

I've also asked at Wikipedia talk:NPOV dispute, but that page seems to have few watchers.

Pjacobi 21:29, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've previously gone through NPOV-disputed pages a few times to clean out old ones like that. What I usually did was ask on the talk page if the NPOV dispute was still ongoing, wait a week, and if there was no reply then either nobody's got it watchlisted any more or nobody cares about the old dispute. Of course I also check to see if there's any NPOV problem that's obvious to me as a total outsider, but if there isn't one and nobody seems to care I just remove the NPOV header. If there's still a problem someone will put it back someday. Bryan 21:44, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Yes, that would be the easy case. But I'm referring to the case, that when asked, or when trying to remove the dispute notice, there is opposition. But still no changes to the content. To make the case less abstract, my primary problem is Open Directory. --Pjacobi 22:42, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Heh. Yeah, I ran into one of those myself; Talk:Thealogy#NPOV still in dispute?. I tried using the threat of resolving the NPOV myself despite not knowing anything about the subject, through the "use a dull axe on any parts that seem POV and maybe also on the parts adjacent to those just to be sure" strategy, hoping it'd spark some effort to fix things before I got busy. It didn't work, so I used an axe on any chunks that seemed POV. Surprisingly, that did work. My axe was sharper than I thought. :) Anyway, you could try that; warn everyone that you're about to solve their dispute for them. One way or the other it'll shake things loose. Bryan 23:12, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
You might also consider the tag {{controversial}}, which indicates that the topic is controversial without saying that there is necessarily a dispute in progress. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:43, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

Copyrights

See User:AaronSw/Song lyrics. What is the policy of having copyright violations in User pages? RickK 08:41, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)

Same as for any other page. Everything published on Wikipedia is supposed to be under the GFDL; if these lyrics are copyrighted, a case might be made for fair use in a proper context (i.e. an article about the song) but I doubt that a user page qualifies. If they are copyrighted, AaronSw should tag the page for speedy deletion; if he refuses to do so it should be sent through Wikipedia:Copyright problems. —No-One Jones (m) 09:22, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I've left a note about it on AaronSw's talk page. —No-One Jones (m) 09:25, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Transliteration

What is our preferred way of spelling foreign names in article titles and text? I know that the name common in English is standard, but what are my options if the word is not current in English at all?

The question is mostly about how to handle diacritics: Many foreign languages will have scientific transliterations that include diacritics (or, if the language is written in the lating alphabet, the native spelling itself will). Article titles only support a limited range of diacritics until we move to Unicode (for this we have the "wrongtitle" Template, see e.g. Panini (scholar). In the case of Panini, should we give the scientific transliteration once and use Panini throughout the text, or should we use Pāṇini throughout?

The question is related to disputes on Talk:Zürich and to comments I made on Talk:Islam#transliteration.2C_capitalisation.2C_diacritics.

My own take is that full diacritics should be used for the article title if possible and at least for the first occurrence in the text. On the other hand, it seems good sense to use Qur'an rather than Qurʾān and Muhammad rather than Muḥammad, so while I think we need guidelines to some extent, it will often have to be judged case-by-case. dab 17:05, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What would your rule be if there is only one referece to the word in a subsiduary text which references the main page? Does one link it to Panini or Pāṇini? See comments below about searching text with "search engines".
I am against using diacritics -- funny foreign lines, dots and squiggles over letters -- or use foreign grammer rules to strip diacritics eg the German grammar rules to turn a ü into "ue".
Using Zurich as an example. I am not against the start of the main page it saying
Zurich (in Geman it is spelled Zürich, and spelled Zuerich in accordance with conversion of umlauts).
But I am against using the forign spelling of the word in the text.
Keeping with Zurich for the moment, recently the Second Battle of Zurich was moved to Second Battle of Zürich and all references to Zurich in the text has been changed to Zürich so a "search engine" search for pages with the text Zurich will not throw up the page! The person who changed it, highlighted the change to the Zurich page and stated that he would not be happy for the word Zürich on the battle page to change, unless the main Zurich page changed. I think that this falls under the law of unforeseen consequence.
en passant there are some forign phrases which are commonly used in English if they have diacritics they should stay. But words like Zurich should be stripped of their umlouts.
Here are some reason why I am against them other than as information at the top of the main page these are:
  1. To strip them from the letters is an easy rule to follow. It saves learning dozons of diffrent grammers to know what the likely funny foreign lines, dots, and squiggles are to be used on any particular place name.
  2. most English languge keyboards do not have the keys with funny foreign lines, dots, and squiggles. Accessing diacriticsis more complicated than just typing the words in without them and many (most) people using an English language keyboards, do not know how to do it.
  3. On the Zurich page dab suggest that this was a radical postiion to take. On the contrary forcing English people to lean about funny foreign lines, dots and squiggles above and below letters, in lots of diffrent languages is radical.
  4. If a search engine, like Google is used, to find a word with diacritics it tends to through up the forign pages. So WikipediA pages are lost in pages of forign text. It is silly to expect users to put on extra filters to look for words which would be found without them if only the diacritics were not included in WikipediA pages.
  5. If a search engine, like Google is used, without diacritics (the English language norm) then if all the words on a page are with forign lines, dots, and squiggles eg the current Second Battle of Zürich the page will not show up.
  6. As English is the worlds lingua franca, a considerable number of people using the English version of this Encyclopaedia will not have a European Language as their first language, or even the Latin alphabet as their main character set. Why inflict an unnecessary level of complication on them by insisting that they know all about all extra European dots lines squiggles on letters which do not exist in English?
  7. When editing a page the words which appear like this P& # 257;& #7751;ini instead of Panini is more difficult

--Philip Baird Shearer 19:08, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  1. yeah, but the squiggles are there for a reason... and an encycolpedia is a place you come to to learn. dab
  2. but users don't need to type them. They just need browsers to display them.dab
  3. yeah, sorry, I am this user. Nobody forces you to learn them though. You can just 'strip' them in your mind if you like. It's not as easy to restitute them. dab
  4. WP is not striving for SEO, afaik... dab
  5. google is very good at handling diacritics. And there will be diacritic-less redirects, of course dab
  6. again, they do not need to know them. They are there for people who want to know. dab
  7. point. but then I don't think many users afraid of squiggles will feel called to edit the Panini page anyway ;) dab 20:05, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have moved your comments below mine because they broke my numbering. You made your assertione, I've made my points, you have replied. Enough said. (But just for clarity could you replace "WP is not striving for SEO" with the same phrase without the Acronyms because I do not know what SOE isPhilip Baird Shearer 17:54, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is an English-language encyclopaedia and it is general policy to use the forms of words used by speakers of the English language. If a word or name has diacritics in its native language, then by all means mention them in that word or person's article (in brackets at the beginning, and don't make a big deal of it), but if they aren't used when the word is written or the person is written about by English-speakers then they don't belong in article titles or the normal text of an article. Proteus (Talk) 18:19, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As of CURRENTYEAR

See Talk:As of CURRENTYEAR. --Sgeo | Talk 23:40, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)

Countdown deletion

I'm a complete newbie when it comes to policies, so any help (in suggestions as well as merciless editing) is appreciated. I think Preliminary Deletion isn't going to work. I've blathered up a suggestion of my own (after all, we can never have too much deletion policies :-) tentatively called "countdown deletion". It's on a personal subpage; check it out, mull it over and tear it to pieces if necessary. Thanks in advance for giving a damn. JRM 00:55, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Use of the word terrorism

It seems, from Talk:September 11, 2001 attacks, that people are in favour of trying to develop a sitewide set of guidelines for the use of the word terrorist. In view of its likely length, the discussion has been moved to a separate page: Wikipedia:Use of the word terrorism (policy development). Please go to that page if you wish to be involved in developing this policy, and publicise this page as appropriate to fellow Wikipedians who may be interested. jguk 22:35, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Johns Hopkins faculty

Quite a number of pages created recently have been copied directly from web page of Johns Hopkins University. While this may not be so serious as copyvio, I think the simple copying of CV-type material about faculty members and courses into WP is not a great precedent. See for example User:128.220.30.161. Charles Matthews 10:53, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is actually strong copy violation, unless it's the author posting the content, and more than likely it's a student. However, I'm sure we could get permission from some appropriate authority to use the content. Deco 15:41, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I doubt we'd want the material, though, as one of the things "Wikipedia is not" is a place for resumes or CV's. N.b. someone just put up a silly joke article on a member of the comedy improv troupe at Hopkins, as well. Hopkins students are supposed to be clever, but apparently someone there isn't reading our policies. Geogre 18:41, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's not just CVs, though — they're fairly good concise descriptions of the people's background and work in prose form, and that's about as much as we have in most researchers' articles. Here's an example (from Meredith Williams):
Meredith Williams, Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, received her B.A. and Ph.D. from New York University. She taught at Wesleyan University (Connecticut) and Northwestern University before joining the Hopkins Department in 2000. Her areas of research are the later Wittgenstein and philosophy of mind and psychology. She also has an interest in the history of experimental psychology, especially the shift from the behaviorist paradigm to that of contemporary cognitive science. A number of her articles have been brought together in Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning (1999), including papers on the problem of rule following, the significance of learning in Wittgenstein's later thought, and Wittgensteinian criticism of the computational theory of mind. In recent articles and in a booklength study of Wittgenstein's positive philosophical views, she focuses on the problem of normativity and the social dimension of language and mind.
They might be considered non-notable, but well, they are faculty at a well-known university, and I am an inclusionist. Deco 23:55, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Suggestion on PROT, NPOV and edit/revert war articles

In most cases, disputed articles are resolved by means of the Talk page. But often they arent. In some cases the article is locked, and development stalls, in other cases there is a valid NPOV point but no progress is made until one or other contributor gives up and goes away, which is fair but not the best version of neutrality (see stale NPOV discussion above).


Ideally the handling of disputed articles should:

  • Where possible not freeze development of the article as a whole (edit wars imply an individual in breach wiki policy, and hence represent a problem with some individual(s), not the article)
  • Not encourage articles to become locked (except in cases of actual vandalism)
  • Not encourage articles to become described as disputed overall if the actual issue is in reality small scale (eg section or word use)
  • Minimise the time that articles are in dispute

A way that might work is to refine the use of tags so that heavy handed measures (NPOV or PROT on a whole article is quite heavy) are much less needed and mostly reserved for dealing with pollicy breach not article disagreement. Compare two articles:

  • In September 11, 2001 attacks the entire article was NPOV'd at one point with the main reason being a debate basically whether "terrorism" was right or not. But that tag arose not because the article as a whole was in dispute, just one term used in it.
  • In the Pursuit_of_Nazi_collaborators article an NPOV tag was added because the title was possibly NPOV, and there was debate what the scope of the article should be. But that labelled the entirety of the article and all facts as disputed, where they actually weren't.
  • In Paraphilia there was an argument that the entire article's approach was not neutral. In such a case a NPOV tag is more appropriate.

In fact, on Paraphilia, I chose {{POVCheck}} and not {{NPOV}}, meaning "This article may need to be reworded to conform to a neutral point of view; however, the neutrality of this article is not necessarily disputed", which was more accurate, so as not to mislead readers of the present article that there was more doubt than was the case. Because I didnt want visitors to be faced with an article that was 70% right and yet be told at the top, "this is all disputed".


What comes across clearly to me is,

  • There need to be some more appropriate tags which are more applicable to smaller scale dispute
  • In case of dispute, use of minimal tags where reasonable are so preferable this should be wiki policy
    • (A minimal tag can be left longer as it doesn't lock or cast doubt on the whole article)
  • The tags applicable to disputed words/sections/articles need to be made much easier to find (maybe a link on the edit page?)
  • Once a disputed aspect of an article is tagged, revert and edit wars on that point are not permitted. Sysops may select what they feel is a fairly balanced wording for the time being, and provided it's tagged as "disputed", the rest is kept to the talk page until agreed.
  • Major tags such as NPOV which affect entire articles should by policy only be appropriate if the entire article or major parts of it are disputed
  • Tages such as PROT should only be needed to prevent vandalism and/or revert/edits against wiki policy, by users who do not respect sysop decision.
    • (But any article content dispute can be resolved as above so PROT shouldn't be as necessary)
  • PROT especially should be used slightly differently. If an article needs protecting from one user, then that user is the person who must be blocked or asked to stick to the talk page, not the article. Only if the article is subject to anarchic major editing from multiple sources should PROT be needed.


Examples of new small scale tags I'd suggest (ok they arent perfect but its an idea someone else could develop upon):

  • "This section is being developed or reviewed. Some statements may not be neutral or may be disputed at present. Please see Talk page before editing"
  • "There is dispute over the usage of the following words, which may not be neutral or may be disputed. Please see the talk page. This article retains the existing words until consensus is reached"
  • "This is a fast changing article and many areas are being developed at a time. Lesser disputes such as posisble individual NPOV words have been left to a side while the article as a whole is developed. These should be discused on the Talk page rather than allowed to override the development of the article as a whole."
  • "This article is subject to regular edit and revert wars, and the administrators of Wikipedia have agreed a wording which they feel comfortable is not unreasonable for the time being. The article is left open for development, but these aspects should not be changed until a better consensus is reached and the matters on the Talk page are resolved."
  • "The following words are not considered neutral by some, and are actively being discussed on the Talk page"


In summary, the changes would be:

  • Specifying that users should wherever possible use the most appropriate tag (not just "NPOV")
  • Encouraging lesser levers of dispute,
  • Requiring proper tagging, not just NPOV for everything, possibly by a "tags help" next to the "editing help" on the edit page
  • Allowing sysops to specify a relatively neutral wording until a better consensus is reached

wiki can keep more articles open and reduce the number where the whole article is marked as disputed, without in any way reducing people's power to contribute individually.

Its a raw suggestion with many holes in right now, but the heart of it - better use of tags disputing a word or section without casting the whole article into doubt, ways to say "yes we disagree on X but lets come back to it" and ways for a sysop to say "use that wording until you get a better consensus", could help free up many locked and stalled articles, allow faster ways to resolve edit wars, and that would benefit everybody.

FT2 21:21, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

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