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Policy on including non-notable objects

Would someone please explain to me to me the official policy on the inclusion of very non-notable items in the Wikipedia? I'll give you two examples, Pencil Case and Cleat.

Both pencil cases and cleats are entirely mundane, non-notable items. There is so very little that can be said about either. Cleat is currently on VFD at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Cleat and it appears that it will survive. Never mind the fact that it is a collection of dictionary definitions and has already been transwikied to Wikitionary.

Here's what I'm wondering: is the threshold for inclusion in the Wikipedia set at being a noun? If that is the case and we are going to have articles for all mundane things like Fingernail clippers and door knobs then why do people, books, elementary schools, albumns, etc. require notability?

Just wondering aloud. Kevin Rector 20:54, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Presumably no individual pencil case, cleat or set of cleats, nail clipper, etc. would deserve an article. However, as classes of objects, I think these all are potentially encyclopedic topics. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:19, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)
A century or so ago there were things called "object lessons" which discussed a single mundane object and brought into the discussion a variety of educational topics associated with it. More recently, we've had wonderful books like John McPhee's Oranges, Henry Petrosky's The Pencil, Mark Jurlansky's Cod and Salt, etc. I don't know where I'd draw the line but I rather like these topics and I think they have considerable potential for growth. As Jmabel | Talk points out, I think the proper parallel would be between an article on a kind of object, like Cleat, and a kind of institution, like Kindergartens. The institution of the kindergarten is highly encyclopedic. Individual kindergartens are not. Just my $0.02. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:39, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
So what you are saying is that any noun can be included in the Wikipedia, even if it's only a dictionary definition (because it could potentially be expanded). But a proper noun must pass the notability test? Kevin Rector 22:00, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)
We're talking common nouns here; proper nouns are another matter. And many common nouns would be redirects at best. I can't imagine, for example, that a radiator grille deserves an article separate from one on a radiator; similarly, while bookbinding certainly deserves an article, very few specific types of binding would deserve their own article. Probably there are other classes of exceptions that are not coming to mind. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:37, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

This discussion would not be complete without a mention of bread clip, which has been on Wikipedia:Unusual articles for quite some time. I can find absolutely no reason why this article on an "entirely mundane, non-notable item" should not exist. Wiki is not paper, and concerns of notability will never leave the realm of personal opinion—in my opinion. :-) Worry about verifiability instead. JRM 20:19, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)

I find it very easy to believe that someone could write a wonderful article on Radiator grills, quite separately from that on Radiators. The article on (internal-combustion) radiators would talk about thermal properties, coolant flow, air flow, materials, etc.; the article on radiator grills would talk about their aesthetic development as part of automobile design, their materials (chrome etc.), their effects on pedestrians in accidents, etc. However, just because someone could write such an article does not mean that someone has. I don't see much point in having stubs around which aren't encyclopedic while we're waiting for a John McPhee to come around and make them so. By the way, there is a tradition of beautiful decorated pen/pencil cases both in Turkey (kalemtraş) and in Japan (enpitsu ire). --Macrakis 23:16, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bias: I'm an inclusionist, at least as far as article mainspace goes. When I want to know all about something, I go to WP. I don't want to have to guess beforehand, "Gee, is this important enough to be in WP?"
WP is not paper, and we won't run out of server space. It could be argued that short articles on trivial topics somehow degrade the overall quality of the project -- but -- that assumes such a measure is valid, that one could somehow add up the value of each article and divide the sum by the total number of articles.
In practice, when a user looks to find something on WP, he will find something -- article, stub, or an invitation to start a page. Whatever he takes away from the experience will represent his valuation of WP as a tool. If he searches for "notable" things, and finds much good work, he will value WP highly. If he searches for trivial items and finds nothing, he will value WP less highly. This is all that counts. — Xiongtalk 03:05, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

Portable soup is an example of a mundane object with an interesting history that survived a deletion vote after being improved. Including these things is in line with the modern trend of Social history.--Samuel J. Howard 06:33, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Some meditations on consensus, utility, presentability and inclusion

The frequent debates and controversy over the question of what criteria - other than neutrality, verifiability and well-formed prose - information included in Wikipedia should fulfil, is at once a bone of contention and also an (often unconcious) attempt by the community to form a consensus. Although the intention may be good, and the interests of all concerned be noble, there are always pitfalls on the path to consensus and here are some that we have fallen pray to in our combined theorising efforts:

  • Dichotomy creation: In any field where decisions must be made using analysis which is at once complex and lead to polar conclusions, there is an observed effect where psychological attractors (personality types) cause the "gut-feelings" - conclusions made from incomplete reason and thus drawing heavily on psychological makeup - of different demographics to polarise on the issue. Once this polarisation is observed by the parties to the discussion, it offers the often irresistable temptation to take an "easy way out" of the difficult analysis by postulating that the polarised demographics' conclusions are set in stone by their (personality types) and thus it is impossible to achieved a reason-informed shared-premised consensus. (Think "liberal"/"conservative"). Inclusionist/Deletionist? I beg you please to say: "No, it's not that simple." With grace and dedication difficult issues can be ellucidated by theory, but only if their investigators can be persuaded from opting out of the struggle.
  • Subjectification of premises: As the above pitfall, this problem only occurs in debates which are not easy. That is to say, they cannot be solved using linear logic from the most common shared premises. Because of the higher order of complexity of these problems (mathematicians may use the analogy of computational complexity), the decision making aparatus of the mind - being not designed to come to only rationally informed conclusions, only to make the best decision most of the time and quickly - defaults to (what we analyse as) premises which are subjective. While normally one notices when using a premise for decision making that is impossible to agree on, and rejects it offhand. However, the subjective decision making components of this pitfall always seem self-evident to those who are party to them. This again makes it far to easy to use this unfortunate phenomenon to avoid the difficult task of finding better foundations for a consensus. "Notable/Encyclopedic"? I beg of you, say "It's not a useful critereon". If people are willing to accept arguments without objetive premises, then there is no change for better ones to be made.

Unfortunately, the two pitfalls are linked, and each only strengthens the other. A concious effort to avoid both must be made, and constant effort maintained to prevent falling prey same pitfalls later on the path. This is difficult to do without a first step being made, if only to point out a vague direction to the analysis. I will attempt one below, but beg you to bear in mind that this is only a first tentative step towards an destination unknown, and that only those theoretical constructs which help the analysis need be kept.

The analysis of inclusion

Wikipedia has a reasonably clear, though variably stated deontology. We are here to do something we call agree is a good cause. Some state this cause as narrowly (without qualification) as "Building an encyclopedia", whereas others (like our founder) have used a more poetic phrasing: "We are here make the sum of human knowledge available to the world." It is almost universally agreed, even further, that this is a task - like govermnent - without an end. In order to achieve great things, one must always strive for the impossible, thus never reaching a point where one can give up. This concept is called Eventualism, and informs a large field of Wikipedia's philosophy. This does not of course preclude milestones, such as the creation of Wikipedia 1.0, but only admits that we will never finish the task of chronicaling all knowledge. We have inherited a stewardship that can be traced back to the Library of Alexandria and will no doubt continue past Wikipedia - at least in its current form.

This does not, of course, mean that there are not rules can be made concerning how knowledge about the world is to be contained in Wikipedia. As is often pointed out, we are not a repository: there will never be articles which contain information formated in a manner that doesn't conform to our well-developed stylistic guidelines. Let me tabulate some of these almost universally agreed upon rules of our formating of the world's knowledge:

  • Descriptive: This is a useful heading under which many of our stylistic rules can be grouped. Roughly stated, it dictates that Wikipedia information must be writen in prose, make statements which are about ontological "facts" and are reflected in evidence about those "facts", which is agreed upon by external sources. This precludes things like peotry, except as an example, etc. And leads to some other important sub-rules:
  • Verifiable: in order to be descriptive, writing must reflect agreed beliefs about the nature of things. This also prevent describing (in detail) something which is either not previously written about by external sources, or otherwise hard to verify. (For example: subjects of narrow interest). While at first thought, this might lead on to eroniously narrow the scope of Wikipedia to only describing those things that are universally agreed upon, a useful tool allows use still to desribe all things in this way: Abstraction. Where something is not agreed upon, one may instead "abstract a layer out" and describe the disagreement, instead of the conclusions of those who disagree. This in an important technique for articles to be:
  • Neutral: In order to be descriptive, an article cannot postulate something that is not a universally agreeable statement of truth. The technique of abstraction allows this, and is a great skill developed in Wikipedians. For example, while most people would say the Mona Lisa is a historic and invaluable work of art, we can simply say "most people would say the Mona Lists is ..." or another phrasing thereof, therefore actually encapsulating more information (what a set of people believe, and which set of people believe it), while being more universally agreeable. This is a very important component in the Wikipedian's toolset.
  • Well formated: Again, this is a heading under which many rules and guidelines of our policy can be grouped. The manual of style and other visible policy theory are a large part of this criterion - and I will omit these from my dicussion, as they are already well-theorised. However, there is also a large element which has thus far escaped theory- and consensus-forming: The article schema. This is an example of editorial value, a very important concept in Wikipedia (and thus knowledge management) theory. While Wikipedia's primary task is to house all knowledge, it's secondary - though more difficult and important - task is to present it in a way that allows people to take the shortest and most pleasurable route from:
  1. Wanting/Needing (Wanting but not knowing) knowledge about a subject
  2. Deciding (or have it decided for them, by Google, etc.) to use Wikipedia to get this knowledge.
  3. Finding it
  4. Reading it
  5. Knowing it

Editorial value plays a huge roll in all the stages of this process. At the first stage, is when people find something interesting that they then progress through the other stages with. We achive this by compressing our content: Through portals like the Main Pages, WikiPortals, disambiguation pages, and even the main articles on large scoped subjects, which compress content by summarising it and linking to sub-articles, we make judgement calls to provide summaries and pointers to important sections of our knowledge content. While this is not necessarily subjective, it is based on a complex analysis of the utility of various parts of the wide knowledge content to different people.

Thus due to its complexity, psychology and experience are again prone (by the pitfalls explained about) to informing these decisions instead of objective shared premises. One person may be convinced of the utility of knowing about a high-school, or a band's album, or a particular character in a computer game, while another person may consider these trivial, in comparison to a historical constitution of a particular nation, or a mathematical formula - and vice versa. In the future, this will not be a problem, as developments in technology (such as the mediawiki software, or a future platform) will allow complete customisation of Wikipedia - the Knowledge value will be seperated from the Editorial value as open access and a (perhaps) meta-tagging/folksonomy-informed system will take the intelligence of stage 3 to a new level. (I digress, ask me about this if you are interested, I have a lot of pretty well-formed ideas)

However, the problems of editorial value where there is only one centralised and thus necessarily agreed upon article schema, can still be theorised upon until this new system is in place. I hope that editorial value will be a field of theory that Wikipedians will perform a lot of work in, thus contributing greatly to society in yet another way.

A tentative conclusion

I will now use the above theory to come to a tentative conclusion regarding inclusion. This conclusion is based on the following (hopefully) shared premises:

  1. Wikipedia's great strength is its ability to tap the knowledge and eagerness to teach, of almost anybody in the world. The low barrier to entry is what has enabled us to grow exponentially, a miraculous achievement.
  2. Wikipedia is not understood by many people who have not experienced it from the inside, or read about it thoroughly. There are people who judge Wikipedia based on subsets of its articles, or the ratio of available knowledge on various topics. A large number of people also jump to the further eronious conclusion that the accuracy (in decribing the world factually) of articles is reflected by these subsets and ratios. This is not a correct way to judge Wikipedia, but it is not doubted (by anyone I know) that it exists.
  3. The judgement of Wikipedia in these eronious ways, is a judgement of Editorial Value, and not of Knowledge value (What knowledge about the world we have and haven't written about decriptively).
  4. The presentability of Wikipedia, as judged by various factors, including the skin, uptime, attitudes of editors, announcements and even bad judgement-calls like the above, is important to its continued growth, and reputation, which will be all-important as the web is (dilluted) by mirrors of Wikipedia content. While we maintain our status as a secondary source, people will more and more begin using us as a primary source as the proliferation of our content increases.


Therefore, I conclude that: Until the freedom and open-ness of our content is high enough for the free creation of 'Wikipedia content' portals, and our own article schema(s) become[s] lost in the plethora of schemas, the editorial value of our schema is vital to Wikipedia's mission. However, the question is not of making some way to slice up the sum of human knowledge into two subjective sets (notable and non-notable), but of how best to describe (see above theory) and arrange (the article schema) all knowledge.

I hope that this theorising will be of use to as many Wikipedians as possible, and must apologise that it was written extempore in a public library. Please correct my spelling, grammar and phrasing if you feel bold enough, and please, please, please feel free to use this as a base for further theorising. Together we can ellucidate this problem, and by doing so remove one of the biggest sources of conflict between well-meaning Wikipedians. Also, if anyone found this useful, and is able to, they should register for [wikimania.wikimedia.org | Wikimania 2005], where I will (unless something comes up) be presenting a paper and speech on this and other aspects of Wikipedia theory. -nsh 11:12, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Could someone summarize the above? I cannot bring myself to read through it. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:48, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry for the lengthiness - I believe this is an important issue and needs to be approached academically. I did however style the writing so that the conclusion was given metadata to denote that it had summary value for the entire post, by making its text bold. This incidentally, is an example of editorial value (the emboldening of parts of a string of words).

Map policy

Do we have a de facto policy on using CIA maps for countries in the absence of better quality maps produced by the Wikipedia community? User:Kelisi has been replacing the maps on several countries with what I believe to be clearly inferior maps (albeit with more detail). Please enter the debate on talk:Panama Jooler 08:31, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A list of Kelisi maps: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributions&target=Kelisi&hideminor=0&namespace=6
Kelisi maps are really ugly. LSD-induced colors with typography on crack, I have to say so. But his maps contain much more information than these nice-looking CIA maps. If anyone wants to fix it, an afternoon with Adobe Photoshop or any other comparable tools can at least fix the colors. You cannot easily add so many place names on the CIA maps. -- Toytoy 09:34, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
These maps do have shortcomings. Appearance is a problem, but so are the rights; the file format is also difficult -- we do not want to try to fix these in Photoshop; trust me on this. I don't think Kelisi has much experience either on WP or in graphic design, but he's onto a resource and has time and willingness to exploit it. I'm going to try to work with him on this. Okay? — Xiongtalk 04:13, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

Method Engineering Encyclopedia

Method Engineering Encyclopedia is not a standard Wikipedia article, and it strikes me as being out of place. The subarticles, too, do not conform to Wikipedia style. But this looks like a genuine effort in good faith, and could be worthwhile if the right place or format could be found. What to do? What to suggest? --Woggly 10:56, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikibooks? Smoddy (tgeck) 12:18, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I do not immediately find that the articles depart significantly from WP style; there are two obvious problems with the work as a whole:
  • The technical topics covered may be beyond the level of a general-purpose encyclopedia.
  • The introductory page is in a tone I can only describe, for a lack of any better phrase, as distinctly German Authority. It describes the group of articles as as "supplement" to WP, under Brinkkemper's "supervision", and of course we do not tolerate private projects.
  • The image of "Prof. Dr. S. Brinkkemper" is of course unacceptable, as is the little Utrecht U. flag up top.
There is, though, much good work here, and we can use it -- once thoroughly integrated.
Suggestion: Introduce Professor Doktor Herr Brinkkemper to Wikireality. Remove his image, the UU flag; mercilessly edit content. Do not put the pages up for VfD or otherwise take them through any formal process. Assimilate them. Dumb them down, if you like. Exercise your rights as editors.
When Brinkkemper realizes the stuff is out of his control, I predict grumbling in tones that will incite editors -- please don't respond in kind. Try to understand who you are dealing with. He may walk off in a huff, true. But I am not sure he will listen to reason without a good preliminary dunking. — Xiongtalk 04:52, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
Looking at their contributions it is academically of good standard, they just need help adjusting to Wikipedia.
This does raise an underlying issue for school/university projects. We might want to consider creating a namespace for school/university projects; where such projects could do there work without being in the main article space. This would allow such work to protected from outside input and marked before moving it to Wikipedia. (It wouldn't need amendment to the software, the would just be within their rights to revert changes made from outside the project group). When the project/article is completed they could move it to the main namespace with the minimum of disruptionl.
I would imagine with that kind of set up we would get a lot more academic interest in Wikipedia and hence better articles. :ChrisG 13:26, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I say when a dedicated bunch of students makes an invasion, one has to expect a good deal of POV and original research. This poroject is better be on alert. Mikkalai 22:30, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Citing Wiki in an online test

I want to use extracts from Wiki in online tests assessing students' English proficiency. Our online system generates random test forms from a large item bank. All candidates get different questions and only see the extracts for the brief moment that they are answering the question. It is not practical to provide links back to Wikipedia directly from the extracts because the candidates are not allowed to surf the Web during a test for obvious reasons. Would it meet the requirements of the license to explain on all candidates' home pages that extracts used in our questions come from Wikipedia, and tag the extracts with a Wiki label in the same way that an extract taken from Reuters would simply be tagged 'Reuters'? If not, can you suggest a better way?

  • I forgot to sign my request for comment. --Gleavd 13:25, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • One thing to note -- be careful to give an eye-over on the Wikitext before you hand it to your students -- unfortunately, not everyone on our site has good grammar/spelling/style. --Improv 16:36, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • You neglect to say what country you are in. If you are in the U.S., then (as long as you give that minimal citation) you are clearly within fair use. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:52, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia may not be a good choice as an example of English form. We have few hard standards and all content is subject to constant change. Britsh and American usage is freely mixed at times. Before you could use confidently our text as an examplar, you would have to edit it yourself to be assured of conformance to whatever standard for which you plan to test. You may as well just write the text yourself. — Xiongtalk 08:17, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the advice but I wasn't asking about the grammatical quality of the entries, which I am quite capable of judging for myself, only the appropriate way to follow the copyright rules in the context of our online testing system. Gleavd 11:04, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • If you are running a business, then it depends on exactly what you're doing with the WP articles and if they contain images or illustrations that are under certain GFDL or other restrictions. So you should really consult Wikipedia:Copyrights. If it is not for profit then you could just cite the source of the article according to the The MLA style manual. Paradiso 04:23, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • We are running a business but, so far as I can see, that doesn't prevent us from using Wikipedia extracts in our online tests. The problem for us is - as I stated it in my original question - how do we provide a direct link back to the source when our students are not allowed to escape from our server while they are taking a test? I assumed in my original question that a general reference to Wikipedia on the students' Homepage and a tag on the extract to say that it came from Wikipedia might be enough. I asked if that would be correct and, if not, for suggestions as to a better way. Nobody has come up with an answer so far. In the meantime, I think we can make the tag more specific e.g. 'Wikipedia: Bank of China (Hong Kong)'. This is simple enough to remember and specific enough for the student to be able to find the original after the test if they so wish. I understand the special copyright problems with some images etc. On a related matter, some people were worried about the 'unfinished' nature of a lot of Wikipedia content in terms of grammar etc. Having browsed for several days, I realise that this is a real problem. I suppose the answer is for us to edit all the extracts we are intending to use by correcting the grammar where necessary. This may turn out to be a lot of work but seems a fair exchange for being able to use the material. Anyone got any more comments for us?

Gleavd 06:53, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Most Wikipedians contribute in the hope that what they write will be freely distributed in all sorts of places for all sorts of reasons, and they know that they will never see a penny profit from it. In fact, in most cases of reproduction of our content, someone else is making a load of money from advertising on a Wikipedia mirror site. There are hundreds of these and the practice is entirely legal and acceptable. It would be a great shame then, if we ended up restricting you from using Wikipedia extracts in your tests, a far far less dubious practice than duplicating the entire encyclopedia and filling it with advertising. Don't take what I say for legal advice, or assume that I speak on behalf of all of Wikipedia's authors, but I would say it would be absolutely fine to reproduce our content in the way you describe, perhaps with just the briefest of notes to say that it came from Wikipedia. The chances that anyone will object on the grounds that you're violating their copyright are miniscule. If I wrote a book that I sold for profit, I think I would be quite happy for you to use an extract in that way, so it would be ironic if Wikipedia, which is supposed to be freely distributed, ended up being more restrictive. As with all copyright issues on Wikipedia, it's up to whoever's making use of our content to decipher the GFDL for themselves and come to their own conclusions about what's permitted, but in this case I doubt any of us will ever know or care that in strict legal terms the licence has not been complied with. I'd say go ahead and use our content. — Trilobite (Talk) 16:43, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks for that advice which confirms our own view. We will make clear hyperlinked reference to Wikipedia on our registered students' Homepages and also tag all extracts we use in such a way that students can easily locate the original later. We will become contributors and do our best to improve quality by editing the items we use wherever this is necessary. Gleavd 01:37, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Quality Control

Hello there,

Wikipedia was my favourite till I came to know that anyone can edit most of the documents and the change reflects on the page immediately. What is stopping anyone from posting rubbish, or worse posting "their individual views" on subjects. If this happens (maybe it is happening), then what degree of quality control do we have on the material available from Wikipedia. I am a researcher and I want to make sure that every information I gather is reliable. Thanks for your time.

Sam

See Wikipedia:Replies to common objections-gadfium 03:26, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The "absurd idea" that anyone can edit anything is what's produced this entire encyclopedia actually, which was "your favourite" until you realised how it was made and decided that actually you didn't like it after all. Why not judge us on our merits rather than your preconceived ideas about how an openly editable encyclopedia must be incapable of producing anything of value? I recommend reading the replies to common objections as linked to above, our own article on Wikipedia, and our Frequently Asked Questions — Trilobite (Talk) 10:36, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I find it really interesting that there is a discussin of AD/BC vs. CE/BCE that sounds as if the very future of Wikipedia is on the line... yet when someone raises perhaps the most thorny issue of Wikipedia, he is dismissed in an incredibly smarmy and condescending manner. Especially considering he was pretty damned respectful in his manner of addressing us. 69.171.36.2 21:05, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Well, I'm all in favor of being polite (although I am not always as polite as I would like). But while Sam raised a thorny issue, he didn't bother looking at the page that was specifically written to address that very question. His question also reads somewhat like an attack on the very foundation of the community, which is always guaranteed to raise feelings - especially when it's an area where the community really is vulnerable. Our reliability is not perfect (although it's better than it looks like it should be) and lots of us are not too happy with that fact. So when you say something that sounds like an attack on that point, it's liable to touch a nerve and get an impolite response. --Andrew 05:40, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
Sam, he's right. You ought not have been subjected to that. You asked a reasonable question; you deserve a reasonable answer. The short answer is: You cannot trust anything you see here (or anywhere else, for that matter).
You need to check out some key materials, starting with our disclaimer. I'd suggest that you browse the site a little before drawing any conclusions. If you plan to post many comments, I suggest you create a user account; it's free, easy, and you never get spammed -- indeed, you don't even have to provide an email address. But it's nice to have a name when you're talking in a room. — Xiongtalk 08:31, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
I find it amusing how everything said is interpreted as an insult. Trilobite gave a terse and informative answer to the question, albeit showing a pesonal attitude to the issue. If a person feels badly "subjected to that", they better refrain from talking to other people at all. Mikkalai 23:09, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This quality control business seems to be a non-issue to many of us. It is said vandalism and misinformation are house-cleaned very quickly, generally within minutes, by Wikipedians. Not exactly so.

Wikipedia is new. It's user base is growing. Many contributers learn from elsewhere and write previously unavailable materials. If you read a book about dairy cows and you write a short article based on that book, you introduced some fresh information to the knowledge pool.

In a few years, there will be kids grown up studying Wikipedia because it's cheap and, pardon my Hawaiian, wiki. Some Wikipedia knowledge will be used by them and then cycle back to Wikipedia to justify its own existence. Many of today's journalists use Wikipedia as a start point. Usually they have very little time to verify the information. It is possible that some Wikipedians will use these misinformed newspaper articles to justify questionable information. This is what happens today. Think of a decade after.

Wikipedia is not an Encyclopedia. There are more than 100 non-English versions. Trust me, counting out those dead and semi-dead versions, I have seen at least one top 70 "active" Wikipedia contributed only by a handful persons. Based on my observation three months ago, I have seen one Wikipedia (over 500 articles then) with 4500 edits out of a total 8000 edits contributed by just one person. Thanksfully that language is not English. If you call that trustworthy. -- Toytoy 23:59, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I have to agree that vast majority of national wikipedias are not trustworthy at all. The only thing that makes open source work is scrutiny by millions of eyeballs, which is still a distant dream for most of national 'pedias. Even English wiktionary is pitiful. Mikkalai 00:17, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Even in English 'pedia sometimes I spend 80% of my time reverting vandals. And there is a disturbing tendency of the growth of the number of edits that look not like a kiddy prank, kind of "!!!!!ELVIS RULES!!!!!!!", but rather like an attempt to test the integrity of wikipedia, as some smartass journalists described. Mikkalai 00:22, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Most vandals are pretty low level. If anyone really wants to screw up Wikipedia, he/she may just "fix" a little bit here a little bit there. Such as "Country Blah produced 176557 tonnes of Vitamin Z in 1979." -> You just tweak the number or the product name and give a false reference. If you or your sockpuppets do a little more creative edits here and there (fix grammar, provide wiki links, place/delete some adj. or adv. ...), people may overlook your change in a couple of days. And then the false number is set. And then you vandalize more popular articles. There are so many less-visited articles, its not easy to keep just some of them relatively safe.
I use Wikipedia all the time. I have seen many (mostly innocent) kilo-ton blunders (last one: 12 hours ago; corrected). I have made a few of them (last one: two days ago; fixed by myself in 3 hours). I guess that I could have created some mega-ton ones. In some "less encyclopedic" areas, I have found many (if not most) articles not well-organized. The contributors, without solid knowledge to the subject, can only piece together latest (but random) information. They didn't understastand some very foundmental information (technological background of the 19th century). I tried my best to organize it by placing basic information in the talk page. I still don't know how to fix it. Anyway, I am still addicted to this "encyclopedia". I don't think I'll eat leftover dishes collected from dozens households. My taste to knowledge is surely not so critical. -- Toytoy 05:41, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
It is easier for contributors to create a recent info data dump. Such as "in April 2005, Mr. Blah was found wearing no pants." You may not see a paragraph that mentions his education. The april fool's day Britannica take-over joke may illustrate my argument very clearly. The list of names kept growinig like cancer cells, but the joke itself is not improved. A good joke needs a focus. This is not something you get from one billion monkeys sitting in front of one billion typewriters.
As to some other one-monkey-with-one-typewriter-but-that-monkey-works-night-and-day non-English Wikipedias, that's another story. -- Toytoy 05:56, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
"Wikipedia is not an Encyclopedia." - Umm, it says right there on the left sidebar: "Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia". If we're not an encyclopedia, we seem to be misleading a lot of people. -- Dcfleck 14:04, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

Playing along with April Fool's Day?

I shouldn't have to worry about distinguishing between what's accurate and what's supposed to be a joke when I visit Wikipedia. This April Fool's Day revision is tacky, and compromises the integrity of a database that's already coming under fire for being editable by anyone. Grossdomestic 06:22, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

THANK YOU! Exactly what I've been saying for two days now. How do we tell vandals not to vandalize the encyclopedia when we're encouraging it? RickK 06:35, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

I say ban April Fool's Day. Chamaeleon 07:54, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. Please remove the bogus stories from the front page and anywhere else where it has propagated. Jooler 08:34, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree as well. These things are only supposed to be up for the first half of the day and taken down at noon (see April Fools Day). Since Wikipedia works on UTC, this would mean that it is past time to remove this stuff. I'll do it in one hour if somebody does not beat me to it. --mav 17:53, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia's database has no "integrity", nor should we commit the folly of Colonel Blimp. On average, our content is of high quality; but any given item may be rank foolishness. A deliberately foolish Main Page is a salutory warning to readers, especially those who get angry once they discover the joke. I say, let it stay up for a week. — Xiongtalk 08:41, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

Anno Domini -> Common Era

Would it not be more neutral and politically correct to use CE instead of AD when citing dates? Just a thought, but I know some people get edgy reading "AD"

"AD" is overwhelmingly standard and therefore neutral. "CE" is a bizarre innovation with a certain agenda behind it and therefore not neutral. It's Politically Correct, but incorrect politically and otherwise. But anyway, I think this has been discussed. Chamaeleon 18:57, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Chamaeleon has hit the nail on the head. →Raul654 19:02, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
Ditto, jguk 20:45, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
CE/BCE is overwhelmingly standard in academia, and AD/BC has christian connotations and origin. I therefore prefer CE/BCE, and use it for new articles. --Improv 22:11, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
If true, I think it is rather sad (both in the traditional (upsetting) and modern (pathetic) meanings) that academics do this. One should surely reference dates in whichever calendar is natural for those people present, adding extra details for clarity if needed, for instance: The founding of [something Islamic] occured in XXX AH (YYYY AD under the Christian calendar). --Neo 22:28, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
(But note that the usage should be AD CCYY.) Noisy | Talk 08:24, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), both AD/BC and CE/BCE are acceptable names for the era, and the Islamic calendar is perfectly appropriate provided dates are also given in the Julian or Gregorian calendar. The AD/BC versus CE/BCE issue has been discussed several times at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) (see the archives). The current MoS is a mostly acceptable compromise between the two extreme points of view so well caricatured above. Gdr 22:30, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)

The use of CE/BCE is more academic and therefore more encyclopedic and appropriate for WP. They're both still based on the life of Jesus, but given the choice I'd go with the more academic version. Paradiso 09:48, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Setting aside aside for a moment the superiority of the metric system, why do you suppose we call our unit of linear measure the "foot"? It no longer has anything to do with any king's hoof. But we call it a foot because we called it a foot last year, last decade, and last century. It's pointless to squabble over it.
Real life is full of oddities, and the part of real life that is the way we speak about the world around us is often peculiar and littered with anachronisms. I agree; we should change the calendar era -- not merely to rename it, but to date from the only event of true significance since the dawn of recorded history: the day upon which human beings from the planet Earth first set foot upon another body (1969 Jly 20, Old Era). That day should be the zeroth day of the zeroth month of the zeroth year of the Era of Humanity. While we're at it, of course, we'll rename the months to honor people we actually care about -- Newton, Einstein, Clarke, Hawking -- 13 months, each 28 days long, with a leap day every year, or two if we feel it's necessary. Weekdays will honor virtues, such as Truth, Justice, and some clever word that represents the manifest destiny of the human race to explore and colonize the universe.
Meanwhile, just to keep the trains running on time, I suggest we don't muck with the current system, not even to agree with scholars trying to muck with it. The mob almost tore Pope Gregory apart, demanding the days of their lives he stole from them. I don't want to be the one to stand in the financial district and tell the office drones that, not only can they not thank their gods, they cannot thank them for Friday. — Xiongtalk 09:01, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
Why, though, change from starting an era with Day 1, Month 1, Year 1 (the current arrangement) to Day 0, Month 0, Year 0 (your arrangement)?  ; ) Cigarette 13:58, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Why have years at all? And why start with the moon landing? Why not just declare today to be Day 1669192548320 of Earth's history (it's close enough) and leave it at that. In the meantime, while we're waiting for everyone else to adapt to our new system, we can just leave articles alone. If they say BC/AD, we leave them that way, and if they say BCE/CE, we leave them that way, and hope that users who have never seen those abbreviations can figure out what they're supposed to mean. --Angr/(comhrá) 20:41, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Why start at zero? Oh, my. I think we do not wish to reopen the running sore that is the debate on the 0th element in arrays. When I was younger, I confess, I was a staunch 0th-elementist; in later years, I have come to feel the first element of an array should be the 1st element. Perhaps my proposal was a throwback to those carefree years of munching chocolate-chip cookies and sleeping under the desk. Like the jihads that rage over consecutive hyphenation, proper indentation, date normalization, and use of the em-dash, this battle has gone on so long that I have not only misplaced my weapon; I have forgotten which flag I follow. Sorry.
But I can give a much clearer explanation for my presumption that humans will date from the moment of Neil's first bootprint. Earth is an egg, and all of human history until that moment has been the rustling of an unborn chick's feathers. We have pecked our way through the shell of gravity confining us within this narrow compass, and our destiny awaits. Our distant descendants will encounter much life on other planets, and almost surely define "intelligence" or sentient life as that which has begun to travel, with them, among the *stars*. — Xiongtalk 22:57, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

categories and subcategories

What is the WP policy, if any, on placing both a category and its subcategory onto the same page? For example: placing [[Category:Photography]] as well as its subcategory [[Category:Photography companies]] into the same article?

I believe that categories are always helpful as long as they are relevant. So I like to place as many relevant categories into an article as possible to help direct readers to what they are looking for. Paradiso 09:58, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Generally speaking an article should not be in both a category and its subcategory, see Wikipedia:Categorization (although this is not policy, merely a guideline). This is partly because subcategories are actually more useful in grouping together similar articles, categories tend to be very broad, and also because categories can become very crowded with, sometimes, only tangentally related articles. Rje 13:46, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Poll: Speedy criterion: "non-notable"

Controversy brews over whether "non-notable" is a criterion for speedy deletion. Before voting, consider if something you created might be thought "non-notable" by Someone.

Poll is open at: Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Poll: Speedy criterion: "non-notable". — Xiongtalk 01:10, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

Please see my above writings. -nsh

Laudative styles

A number of individuals, certain political or religious leaders in particular, as well as many nobles, have a certain style. For instance, Rainier III, Prince of Monaco is styled "His Serene Highness"; the Pope is style "His Holiness"; Tony Blair is styled "The Right Honourable" (as member of the Privy Council). Note that those title carry some semantic content; the Pope's expresses that he is particularly holy, and Blair's expresses that he is particularly honourable.

The problem is, not everybody agrees that the Pope is holy and Blair is honourable. There are about 1 billion Catholics out of a population of 6 billion, thus it is quite probable that a wide majority of the world's population does not regard the Pope as particularly holy.

Of course, we may take the point of view that such titles are mere courtesy titles with no real semantic content.

Note, however, that there may be cultural differences playing here. In some countries, many official functions have styles (judges are called "Your Honor", etc.) and thus people do not pay attention to them. In other countries, official functions do not have styles, and thus people, not used to such kind of formulas, may pay more attention.

So I wonder what the Wikipedia policy should be. I note that John Paul II styles him "His Holiness" but that Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama is not styled. Maybe we should also strive to make this policy consistent and not favor such or such religion or leaders. David.Monniaux 07:50, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I believe current policy already deprecates such honorifics. — Xiongtalk 09:03, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
When is it appropriate to apply a person's laudative style(s) to their name?. I think most would agree to a very general policy or guideline to consistently use all titles or styles that come with a political office. This cannot be a strict policy because using especially long styles may at times hinder readability. For example, as Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie’s official title included “King of kings, Lord of lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Root of David.” All titles and styles should be mentioned in the appropriate articles but not every time the name of the person appears. This might also go for professional titles and earned or honourary degrees (such as Doctor). This only makes articles more informative. Paradiso 09:18, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There is a difference between stating the titles and styles in the introduction to the article in an informative manner, and using the styles. See the difference between:
The Right Honourable Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953), commonly called Tony Blair, is a British politician. He is currently Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, having served as Leader of the Labour Party since John Smith's death in 1994.
and
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953), commonly called Tony Blair, is British politician. He is currently Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, having served as Leader of the Labour Party since John Smith's death in 1994. As a member of the Queen's Privy Council, he is styled "The Right Honourable Tony Blair".
There is a difference between titles and styles. Titles are offices, qualifications etc., presumably granted by some authority. The title of John Paul II is "Pope"; the title of Rainier III is "Prince of Monaco". This is descriptive. However, there are some styles that carry some laudative attributes, like "holy", "honourable", "serene" etc. That's another problem.
Academic titles such as "Doctors" are less of a problem, since they correspond to an academic qualification. It is not implied that doctors are more honourable, or intelligent, or have other qualities.
My position is thus that we should list the appropriate titles and styles in the introduction, but not use the styles if they imply some kind of subjective quality ("holy", "honourable", etc.) David.Monniaux 09:47, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Such titles and lauditives are usually depreciated in article titles, but I see no problem in using them in the article itself. Mgm|(talk) 09:51, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

In the United States (or at least in New York) all elected officials are introduced as "The honourable..." in formal occasions. For instance, if I'm inroducing my local state assembly member to someone, I would say "...the honourable Jonathan Bing..." but I would not consider that to be part of his name, in an encyclopedia article. For the pope (for example) I might call him "his holiness" if I was meeting him in person, but not if I was refering to him in an article. So I support the suggestion. Unfortunately, it is hard to draw the line between titles and "styles". What about talking about "The first lady"? That is very common usage, but it isn't a formal title either. Morris 13:26, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

"First lady" is a de facto title, in my humble opinion. "Duke of Edinburgh" is a de jure title. "His lordship..." or "the honourable..." are styles. David.Monniaux 18:25, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree (with David Monniaux). I would suggest (for example) removing "The right honourable" from the first sentence of the Tony Blair article, and instead mentioning somewhere in the article: Blair is introduced as "The right honourable..." on formal occastions.Morris 18:44, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
To clarify my comment above, I agree with David, and suggest changing the Tony Blair article (and others) more-or-less as he suggests in his example above. I suggest a different word than "styled". "Styled" is not used in that sense in American english (in my experience). I would guess a typical New Yorker would read "Blair is styled..." would think we meant "Blair dresses in the style of ...". Well, maybe I exagerate, but you see my point. Morris 01:35, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
Actually, Webster (an American dictionary) says on "style": "Mode or phrase by which anything is formally designated; the title; the official designation of any important body; mode of address; as, the style of Majesty.". However, I agree that this is not a meaning that most people would think of. David.Monniaux 05:09, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The term is commonly found in North America in the (usually derogatory) phrase "self-styled," as in "he is a self-styled expert on English." Paradiso 05:22, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Why not include honorifics but leave them in quotes - e.g. "His Holiness" Pope John Paul II. Alternatively, simply explain in the article that the figure is addressed as "His Holiness". Avocado 03:05, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
Don't put the honorifics in quotes. At least in American English, putting an honorific in quotes is done to imply that the person doesn't deserve or didn't earn the honorific -- "His Holiness" in quotes would be used to describe an antipope. --Carnildo 03:12, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Votes for disambiguation??

Samurai Clinton seems to be in the middle of creating a new process for marking pages to be disambiguated, including a voting process. See Template:VfDis, Category:Pages being nominated for disambiguation and Wikipedia:Votes for disambiguation/Super Mario Bros.. (He hasn't yet built a Wikipedia:Votes for disambiguation to collect all the entries.) Is there any need for this? Is there controversy over building disambig pages -- why not go ahead and do it instead of calling for a vote? Being bold is all well and good, but a new process like this should be discussed. I'm leaving a note on his user talk page asking him about it and pointing him here. FreplySpang (talk) 18:37, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, there's no need for this. Any user can move a page himself and create a disambig page. If there's already an article at the destination, we already have Wikipedia:Requested moves to deal with that situation. Votes for disambiguation would be superfluous. Rhobite 20:40, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
That's what I thought. Okay, now he's created Wikipedia:Votes for disambiguation too, but the only links to it are right here. It says, in part, "Votes for Deletion can shock and cause confusion, and Votes for Disambiguation are less dramatic." But no less confusing! Is there something we (you? I?) ought to be doing about this? I see that you and a couple of others are keeping an eye on him. FreplySpang (talk) 22:37, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I immidiately interpreted the idea as follows: Theoreticaly it may be controversial whether page X should live at X, or X (Y) especially when X is a redirect (One of the silliest examples I can think of was United States) with X as a disambig (United States (disambiguation)).
However the issue should surely be sorted out on the talk page of the article in question, and if debate gets too heated, isn't there Wikipedia:Requests for comment, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation and as a final resort Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration... i.e, this idea is not needed. --Neo 22:45, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Votes for disambiguation for further developments. FreplySpang (talk) 13:01, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Anyone who thinks a VfDis isn't necessary should wonder what to do when one encounters some stubborn person who doesn't want to disambiguate some pet term. IE Talk:Sar SchmuckyTheCat 19:15, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What's wrong with Wikipedia:Requested moves? Rhobite 19:26, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

Greetings,

I run an informative website:

http://www.studyspanish.com

We have a *huge* amount of completely free information. Currently we have 102 separate grammar topics, located here:

http://www.studyspanish.com/tutorial.htm

For each of these topics, there is a complete explanation, as well as a written quiz and a written test, all free. For the first 84 lessons, there is also a free oral practice.

There are comparable sections on verbs and vocabulary, as well as other free features.

Because we have so much free and valuable information, it would be very beneficial for me to add multiple links to the pertinent Spanish language pages. But, I see that policy "strongly discourages" this, although it does not prohibit it.

The policy statement said that I should come to the Village Pump and seek approval before doing this, so that's what I'm doing.

Thanks,

Ken Ryan

The thing about this is, while it's free, it constantly pitches the paid stuff. I would not welcome these links; at most (and I do mean at most), perhaps (and I do mean perhaps), this merits a link from Spanish language and maybe a couple of others if there are topics about the Spanish language where some specific page on http://www.studyspanish.com specifically relates. The most positive thing I see about linking to it is the audio examples. What do others think? -- Jmabel | Talk 03:44, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • Links from multiple pages would be a bad idea. I would definitely consider that spamming. Maybe on the one main article. The commercial parts of it are subtle and don't seem bad to me for that, but putting it on multiple pages just screams exploitation. DreamGuy 12:15, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)


Quotation Style

There's been a lot of discussion, arguments, flamewars, etc. over whether to use single or double quotation marks to mark text that has been quoted, but I seem to have encountered a new style that does not conform to American or (as far as I know) British usage: putting that text in italics. This came to my attention when I looked over the Featured Article on Ezra Pound's The Cantos, where quoted text is presented in italics. This is an intentional change; reviewing the Page History, I found that at one stage the more familiar single & double quotation marks were used in this article.

I was very tempted to change the style of all of these quotations, but I've encountered this nonstandard usage elsewhere on EN. I've since remembered that presenting quotes in italics is the standard practice for South African English, Polish, French, & in the novels of James Joyce. So before I enforce American style conventions on this article about an American poem, I thought I should ask if this practice is acceptable on EN, whether its use has been debated -- or are we subjected to the misunderstanding of an enthusiastic editor, & I should have no qualms about changing italics to quotations where it is otherwise appropriate. -- llywrch 04:17, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Italicizing inline quotes is a very uncommon style -- so uncommon, I doubt it's been discussed -- and should be converted into a more traditional style, since most people don't know that it's a form of quoting. Italicising blockquotes is more common, but is unneccessary, as the material is already set off by blockquoting. --Carnildo 05:32, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Basically concur. It has been discussed a few times (couldn't say where, but I've seen it go by) and firmly rejected: it is not common English-language practice. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:35, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
If someone could find a previous discussion on this matter, I'd appreciate the link. I'm hoping that we can tacitly agree to stop doing this, rather than have to make a formal proposal, put it to a vote, etc. etc. -- llywrch 16:20, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
In the previous discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Archive11#Italics for quotations, there was widespread agreement against italicizing quotations. Accordingly, the MoS now states, "There is normally no need to put quotations in italics unless the material would otherwise call for italics (emphasis, use of non-English words, etc.)." JamesMLane 15:36, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Italicizing should be reserved for titles of books, films, and artworks. Bolding also works well for titles. Paradiso 13:04, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Agree with the italicizing part, don't agree with the bolding part. Bolding should only be used for article term words or redirected terms noted in articles. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 15:52, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There seems to be a growing practice of using bold rather than italics with Cyrillic, on the basis that the italic version of Cyrillic looks so different to the normal version that ordinary users would not understand it. rossb 15:57, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Need policy on uncomplimentary history

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Dirty laundry

Wikipedia:No personal attacks . . . unless they're true?

Should personal attacks be allowed, or at least overlooked, if they are judged true and accurate? Please visit Wikipedia talk:No personal attacks and comment. —Charles P. (Mirv) 17:38, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Forgive me; I can't pass by this comment unnoticed. Personal attacks should always be avoided. You can say something directly about a user, even something negative, if true, and if necessary; but phrase your statement as gently as possible, and seek hard for alternatives to labeling. Argue on merit, not on personality. None of us is perfect; none of us is perfect in our respect of others' blemishes; and I am not perfect either. But we must all uphold an ideal. — Xiongtalk 18:29, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
  • Definitely not! The more true a comment is, the more likely the person at the receiving end is going to be offended. I'm with Xiong on this one. Mgm|(talk) 19:48, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
    • Ergo, you go there and discuss.--TVPR 21:42, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm also with Xiong on this one: ruthlessly (but patiently) attack a person's logic, but not their character.Paradiso 03:51, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree with Xiong as well. If I state somewhere on my user page or talk page that I love weevils, this doesn't give you free license to go around and call me a weevil lover. In other words, this is acceptable: "I disagree with your edits because the facts you put in are wrong." This is not: "I disagree with your edits, you weevil lover, because the facts you put in are wrong." --Deathphoenix 16:42, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Reading the entire discussion linked to above, I can't help but wonder if the matter would be better expressed as "If someone makes a false accusation, is that a personal attack?" (For example, if A accuses B of vandalism, it investigation shows that B merely made edits A disagrees with, did A make a personal attack on B?) -- llywrch 17:10, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • The problem is that the two issues are separate. A personal attack is defined by the intention to upset someone and do them down. A correct use of a statement is defined by the intention to help write an encyclopedia by dealing with someone elses behavior. The only difference may be in the head of the user writing the statement. No simple rule will help solve this. You might need entirely outside evidence to sort them out. Sometimes you might not be able to tell at all. Mozzerati 19:52, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)

Templates and tags

A user has spoken strongly against templates which include other templates; he wrote a long opinion piece on the subject and tries to force it into policy over considerable objection, even over attempts by sympathizers to improve the opinion. I wrote a factual rebuttal to the opinion, to which he failed to respond -- directly.

In place of direct discourse, he has systematically nominated for deletion a series of templates which I created -- one of which I used in the text of my rebuttal, in fact. He has nominated both useful and foolish templates with an equal hand. In each case, he has insisted that the only proper way to perform such a nomination is to insert the {tfd} tag into the body of the nominated template. This is a bad idea in many cases, perhaps all. At the least, it creates exactly the sort of trouble he himself has spoken against.

My every attempt to reason with him has failed. He refuses to accept insertion of {tfd} into the nominated template's Talk page as a workable substitute for insertion into body. He is strident on the subject, upholding this principle with fervor. This is all the more surprising since he himself raised the issue of tag insertion last year.

I have nominated Template:Tfd itself for deletion, since it does more harm than good (the tag itself, not the process). The respected user continues to insist -- and demonstrate -- that {tfd} must be included in the body of every template nominated, which leads inescapably to the conclusion that it must be included within {tfd} itself. In a perfect world, this would generate a {tfd} tag of infinite length, as every instance of {tfd} would include yet another instance. In practice, the MediaWiki engine prevents this (or so I assume; I shall not put it to the test, lest I be wrong). But, in accordance with stated and vigorously upheld procedure, I have inserted (directly, not by reference) the tag {tfd} into the body of Template:Tfd.

Please do not remove this tag. It is inserted in strict accordance with established procedure. If you think this is a bad idea, then I suggest you comment in the proper place for such comment. If you think the matter absurd, then I ask you to reflect on the evils inherent in reliance on authority over good common sense. Thank you. — Xiongtalk 18:43, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

WP:POINT. Brevity is good too. Thank you. Rhobite 05:44, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
Here, here! -- Netoholic @ 05:48, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
here hare here


Brevity is excellent, and when a certain user learns to take a hint in a few words, instead of provoking explanation after debate after explanation after debate, I shall return to my regularly scheduled life. Or would he care to respond directly to any one of the many points I have raised?

I have been up for 6 hours past my bedtime working hard on a cogent explanation of only one facet of the disruption provoked by one user's refusal to simply let stand one comment (albeit lengthy) I made on one opinion of his. He has stalked me throughout the project, disrupting nearly every single thing I have touched. I have thrown about 40 hours of my life into clear, accurate explanations of why I spoke, why I should be allowed to comment, why it appears he has taken such vindictive actions, why I have done certain things and not others. I have responded directly to questions whether or not they were made in good faith; I have attempted to respond to every point made, leaving no question open about my good faith or entire willingness to debate matters on merits, not on personalities. I have restrained myself (with some failures, for which I apologize) from argument ad hominem -- that is, I have not avoided discussing the issues by discussing the man instead.

This gentleman responds to my every point and question with a sneer, a snigger, and another random act of violence. No cogent explanations from him, though you might get a facile line or two. You might say I'm put out. If he were merely rude, I could ignore him. But he continues to fool with things, provoke others to fool with them, and generally turn this project into a circus.

I have begged a high-ranking Wikipedian to simply block both of us until the Arbitration Committee renders its opinion; it does not seem I will be granted even that relief.

Any user who thinks this is a long-winded reply should go look at Wikipedia talk:Templates for deletion#Tag location (process) where I really have laid out the entire gory technical mess for anyone to see. This user is clever enough to meddle in areas that are so complex that he knows most users will never bother to follow the lengthy technical explanation of his actions and their effects. That is what makes him so dangerous. He is a master of superficial plausibility (and I tip my hat).

I am a reasonably competent technician, and people pay me to build things that do not break, things that make life easier for them, or make them Cash Money. I am a fairly competent graphic designer, and people pay me to take ugly photos and make them look good, to take bland boxes full of text and spice them up with well-chosen and pertinent art (not gingerbread). I am a surprisingly competent systems generalist, and I can take almost any process apart into its components and rebuild it to function more smoothly, at less cost, with a nicer range of features which work as expected. I am an absolutely sterling writer and master of the American language, and nobody pays me a bent nickel to write anything, because I refuse to pander to common taste or compromise my integrity by uttering that which is not precise, accurate, lucid, and correct.

Against this must be weighed the fact that, crash diets notwithstanding, I come in the giant economy size package. If you rip my head off, turn me upside down, and shake to see what comes loose, I daresay you will get a lapful.

Now, as surely as salt follows snow, I know this certain user is ROTFL. He is having a whale of a time, like any bully. There is nothing I can do about that. I'm too new here; I have no gang of followers; and as I said, his style is to make war in such out-of-the-way, technical areas that most of you are simply offended when it rises from the black deeps. The wiser are offended at both of us; the less perceptive do not bother to read anything, and merely judge a case on the length of the argument, awarding victory to he who says the least -- anti-intellectualism taken to its ultimate.

On which note, I approach not my bedtime, but my time for rising to meet a new day, for earning Cash Money so I may indulge myself in substantive contribution to this project. I trust I will return to a pleasant, congenial, scholarly working environment. Thank you. — Xiongtalk 12:04, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)

An actor has an alias he doesn't want known

I have a question about how to handle a specific situation. It's my understanding that some voice actors use an alias in some of their work. This happens when the actor is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, but some producers aren't willing to spend the money to use SAG actors, so the actor sometimes takes jobs under the alias to earn some income even though he union contract says he's not allowed to. If the actor's use of this alias were ever made apparent to SAG, SAG would respond with fines and suspended health coverage. So the actor has an obligation to do all he can to discourage people from linking his name with the alias. The problem arises, then: should the Wikipedia article about this actor mention the alias? Or not? What happens if the actor (or his representative) wants the alias removed from the Wikipedia article? - Brian Kendig 03:33, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What is more important to preserve: someone's privacy, or freedom of speech? If you choose one side over the other, then how far are you willing to go? It’s a very emotional debate in professional ethics and journalism. I tend toward respecting privacy, it more classy.Paradiso 03:46, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Where do you get the information about the alias? If it was available on the web, then this actor's cover is already blown (although the information may be much easier to find on Wikipedia than on an obscure fan site). We should probably keep the information. Was it online but already been taken down at the request of the actor? That's a more difficult question - I don't have an answer. Is this something added to Wikipedia but is not verified? We should remove it. Finally, if we've had this information in our article for more than a few days, then our mirrors will already have picked up on it, and it will take quite some time to disappear from the web - possibly forever, if a mirror has updated in that time but then becomes dormant.-gadfium 04:00, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The alias is given on IMDB (in the "Sometimes Credited As" section), as well as several other fan sites; it's generally common knowledge. (So it kind of surprises me why the SAG doesn't act on it.) My concern is if a user comes to Wikipedia looking for voice actor X, but X isn't listed, because we don't reflect that it's a common alias of Y. - Brian Kendig 04:06, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Verifiability is your friend. If it's sufficiently well-documented for adding to Wikipedia, it's sufficiently well-known that we don't need to worry about being the ones to blow the actor's cover. --Carnildo 04:10, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just to provide specific examples: two examples of this situation are Steven Blum and Melissa Fahn (both of whom, incidentally, worked on the English-language dubs of the Cowboy Bebop anime). It is a fairly widespread belief, backed up by hundreds of hits on Google, that other anime roles which credit "Steven Blum" and "Melissa Charles" (for example) are actually performed by these two voice actors. IMDB lists these aliases. Should Wikipedia? - Brian Kendig 04:15, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If it is widely belived, but there is no proof, then the wording in the article should be "It is commonly believed that .... but there is no proof." with a reference to IMDB or another source for evidence of widespread belief. --Carnildo 05:27, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
If the internet knows, then you can be sure that entities with specialist knowledge such as the SAG will definitely know. It is likely that SAG implicitly accepts the odd infringement, but does not say so publicly. Pcb21| Pete 07:21, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Lemme ask a followup question. Take Steven Blum / David Lucas for example. Have a look at his IMDB entry. Some productions list him as "Steven Blum". Others list him as "David Lucas". His voice and style of delivery are quite distinctive; it's highly unlikely that these are two different people, and far more likely that it's one actor trying to dodge SAG penalties by using an alias and refusing to acknowledge that it's him. (There are sites which claim to have proof that these are one and the same person.) So do we list the alias on his Wikipedia article? Or do we play along and create two Wikipedia articles as if these are two different people? - Brian Kendig 14:23, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • I would just like to comment on the motive -- I agree with Carnildo that verifiability is the key element. We should not be 'playing along' or otherwise getting involved in value judgements unrelated to if the material is encyclopedic and, as possibly a subset of that, if it is verifiable. It's not our job to care about other things. --Improv 20:17, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I hope you don't see this as rank opportunism, but I just wrote something a couple of items above this one about "uncomplimentary history", plus a new style article: Wikipedia:Uncomplimentary_history. I think I have the answer - the Wikipedia article includes a sentence that says, "IMDB (insert link) claims that Name X is actually Person X." That way, Wikipedia is absolutely correct. As for privacy, I think that comes into play with things like, "The home address of Actor X, or Federal Judge X, is 123 Mulberry Street." A voice actor who uses a pseudonym? It's hard for me to see any privacy issue there I'd merit with half a second's thought. Twestgard


I want to take a poll to help me decide what to do. I know of several voice actors with well-known pseudonyms they use so that they can get non-union work by sneaking around the SAG to avoid harsh penalties. They do NOT want these aliases to appear at all in the Wikipedia articles, even though the true identities of these aliases are all over Google, because they worry that if a SAG representative ever looks at Wikipedia and sees the aliases, the actors will get in trouble. But meanwhile these actors want to claim credit for the productions they've done under these aliases (like, X says "I was the voice of Space Cadet in this movie!" when the movie lists some other actor for that character), and in fact their Wikipedia articles list the productions they've done under other names. They're betting that a SAG rep isn't going to bother verifying the credits for the productions they've claimed credit for.
An added wrinkle is that there are people who represent these actors on the Internet, and they have told me that they are obligated to remove the aliases from the Wikipedia article if I mention them even simply as rumors. They've said the other option is for them to stop helping with the article at all, and that this could sacrifice the accuracy of the article in the future.
So, should I:
(a) Uphold fact and eschew censorship, and put in the articles something to the extent of "IMDB and some other web sites claim that X has performed under aliases including "Y" and "Z"" in some of his voice work. Mr. X has not commented on these rumors." It's not Wikipedia's job to protect someone who has secretly violated a union contract. When the actors' representatives revert my changes, deal with this as per standard Wikipedia policy.
(b) Respect the desires of the actors, protect them from what could be stiff penalties from the SAG, and simply fail to mention the well-known aliases at all. This means that if someone looks up the voice actor of his favorite character in his favorite anime series, the actor's name might not appear in Wikipedia at all. This is a little bit of censorship and it means the article won't be as complete as it could be, but it will avoid the problem. Wikipedia doesn't need to be complete.
(c) Go even further, and remove from the Wikipedia article any production credits which are done under aliases. That is, if the Wikipedia article about Steven Blum doesn't specifically say that David Lucas is his alias, the article shouldn't list credits for the name David Lucas.
By the way, the two specific actors I'm trying to decide how to handle right now are Melissa Fahn and Steven Blum. An IMDB or Google search should easily turn up what aliases these actors are purported to use. - Brian Kendig 03:16, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
defintey option a. It's not the first outside group to try and censor wikipedia.Geni 09:18, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I find the discussion a bit ridiculous. Are we talking about people who slightly bend the law to feed starving kids here? They knew what they were doing and must face consequences. Mikkalai 23:38, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not written from a "complimentary point of view," in contrast with wikinfo, which is. As such, the subject of an article does not control -- or even have a material opportunity to influence -- the contents of the article. As noted, unverifiable information should not be added, but information from other sources deemed reliable can and should be included regardless of the possible consequences for the article's subject. The possibility that agents may take their ball and go home (a promise they are unlikely to carry out) is beside the point. We are Wikipedia and have our own sources, writers, and editors. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 22:19, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation merging policy

So, maybe I'm in the wrong here, but I don't think so. Whenever I come across two or more dab pages because of mixed case (or helpful misspellings) I merge them and make sure the other is correctly redirected. There are two policy docs that seem to make this pretty clear on Wikipedia:Disambiguation it uses the example to share one page "TITLE and Title". Wikipedia:Disambiguation_and_abbreviations is even clearer, "Usually, there should be just one page for all cases (upper- or lower-case), e.g. MB for MB, mB, mb, Mb."

However, I commonly run into editors who revert these mergers because "these are different from those!". and thus, there are three dab pages, one with chemicals (mixed case), one with Titles (Leading cap) and one with abbreviations (ALL CAPS). My most notable failures to merge recently have been Sar/SAR and Tea (disambiguation)/TEA (disambiguation). No content on either page, just dab links.

Am I being dense, or is there a legitimate reason to inconvenience readers with seperate dab pages for mixed case? SchmuckyTheCat 15:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The only reason I can see for more than one disambiguation page is if one would otherwise be too long, but this is rare. If there are lots of options then group them by context, see for example Nexus. In all cases where there is more than one disambig page, I would expect to see all the others linked prominently at the top of each of them, e.g.
Foo can relate to many topics, geographical places are listed on this page, for Chemicals see Foo (chemicals), for works of literature see Foo (literature) and for all other uses see Foo (disambiguation). Thryduulf 16:52, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with SchmuckyTheCat. There shouldn't be two disambiguation pages that differ only in capitals (or in punctuation or pluralization), for the following reasons:

  • Real-world usage is often ambiguous (e.g "Mb", "mb" and "MB" are all used for "megabyte").
  • People won't in general type the exactly capitalized and punctuated form into the search box. For example, someone looking for "SAR" will probably type "sar" into the search box and so get the Sar article. It seems rather pointlessly pedantic to make them click on a "see also" link before they can choose which SAR they want.

Gdr 16:56, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)

There are a few.
  • Users may get more dab topics than they were expecting, since a person visiting TEA will not be looking for the caffeinated beverage (assuming their CAPS-LOCK key wasn't stuck, of course). This is a negligible drawback and offset by the fact that it's a dab page anyway (so who cares if there's more than you expected) and following a link to a new page just because you didn't get the case right is annoying.
  • If the topic of a merged dab page is ever made the primary topic, the page has to be unmerged. For the sake of argument, say the most common thing named Sar really is the river Sar, and almost all links expect that. Then Sar will redirect to that, but SAR should not (just as TEA should redirect to Tiny Encryption Algorithm, not to tea—which I've just fixed). Unmerged pages are a lot easier to fix up in this case.
These are the only reasons I can think of, and they're not very convincing. All in all, though, the issue is too minor to get worked up about—unless I've missed something important. JRM 17:03, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
  • If you think the issue is too minor (as do I), go merge and redirect Sar-->SAR or SAR-->Sar and get flamed. SchmuckyTheCat 00:06, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No. If the issue is too minor, then obviously I'm not going to do anything that will provoke others, because that would show that I care. I don't. Things I see no reason to make my mind up about can be safely left to others. Wikipedia is all about distributed editing and picking your battles. JRM 16:51, 2005 Apr 9 (UTC)

Canadian publication ban

An interesting situation is developing with the article Adscam blog disclosure. The article discusses how an American blog is reporting information on a Canadian criminal case in contradiction to Canadian law.

In Canada, where press freedoms are somewhat more limited than in the U.S., a judge can issue a "publication ban," prohibiting media from reporting certain details about a case. In the case at issue, the proceedings are public but subject to a publication ban. That means I can go watch them, but I cannot go on the radio and say what I saw. (I don't know about yelling really loud on the street.)

The article on the case itself, sponsorship scandal, carries a warning telling Canadians that editing or linking to the article could put them in legal jeopardy.

The Adscam blog disclosure article carries no such warning. But earlier today, the user Denelson83 took it upon himself or herself to edit the article. He or she cut details from the article and replaced them with the line, "As of that date, such information is covered by a publication ban, and as such, cannot be mentioned here." The user also deleted the link to the blog in question.

I am reverting the edits. Wikipedia is not, as far as I know, based in Canada, and therefore can, like Captain Ed's blog, publish whatever it wants about the case. (I do not live in Canada.)

I think it might be worthwhile to develop a policy on such matters to avoid edit wars. Mwalcoff 21:52, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

China doesn't want us reporting that the United States recognizes Taiwan as an independent nation. Should we delete all references to that? Canadian law doesn't apply to servers in the US, and we have no need to care. RickK 05:58, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

  • Rick, the United States never recognized Taiwan as an independent nation, and it's been several decades since we recognized the ROC government as the legitimate government of China. Oh, and Mwalcoff, I think you are entirely correct on that our situation is the same as Captain Ed's. No view on what our policy on warnings should be. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:42, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
    • That doesn't answer my objection. Should we remove all photos of women from all articles they're in because Saudi Arabians are offended by naked female faces? This is an international site, with servers located in the United States, Canadian legal systems do not apply here and should not be applied. RickK 20:56, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
What would the legal position be of a Canadian who reverted vandalism (say, a page blanking)? His/her name would be on the edit summary, the diff would show that the person would have "created" the content (or at least, have "posted" it). Is it really responsible of Wikipedia to put a well-meaning editor in that position? Guettarda 19:24, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
So you're saying we should meekly bow down to any government who says we have to remove content? RickK 20:56, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
For the record, as far as I am aware, the Canadian government has not requested the removal of any content from Wikipedia, nor of any material published in other countries. There is no "Great Firewall of Canada" along the 49th parallel. Canada recognizes the right of other countries' press to conduct themselves as they see fit, in accordance with local laws.
Material covered by publication bans in Canada typically includes a)information that might taint jury pools or otherwise harm anticipated criminal proceedings, or b)information that might severely and adversely affect innocent parties (information about rape victims and the like). Bans in the former case are typically lifted as soon as is reasonably possible (and I gather that this has happened in this most recent case); bans in the latter case are often permanent.
With respect to warning Canadian editors about potentially infringing a court order, I can't see the harm. Wikipedia shouldn't be censored, but it doesn't hurt anybody to aid our editors in staying on the right side of their own laws...does it? --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 04:14, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Talk page spamming

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Spam

CFD restructuring

Some people think that CfD is getting too large and unwieldy to be practical. Several proposals have been made to alleviate that. These are open for discussion (and voting) on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Restructuring.

Pornography

Almost every time I click on a link in the upper right (today it is about the Kurdinsh President of Iraq) I get some kind of male genitalia photo. Since I sometimes look at wikipedia at the office, this can create a situation. Are not all the main page links locked down somehow? I wish this were dealt with...

  • No linked pages aren't locked as highly visible pages are likely to draw in new contributors. There is a good side though, such pages are always watched and it's likely it's all dealt with within minutes. Mgm|(talk) 18:46, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Posting of photos depicting sexual or quasi-sexual acts

Discussion moved to: Wikipedia_talk:Graphic_and_potentially_disturbing_images

Why was this discussion moved off this page? Talk about censorship! --Samuel Wantman 05:53, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Because a general discussion was already well underway on a dedicated page. I don't understand how moving content constitutes censorship, but maybe that's just me. WP:AGF! --MarkSweep 06:00, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It dampens debate in this forum and elsewhere. The discussion was moved to a page that is essentially dead. By doing that, the message is, "we decided this already, don't talk about it any more". That is not how consensus works. Consensus is most effective when the views of a vocal and serious minority are listened to by the majority. That is how creative solutions that address serious concerns come about. I could see leaving what was posted here while adding a link to the previous discussion on that page. I suspect this issue along with other controversial issues will be discussed over and over and over again. Each iteration will hopefully generate new ideas and better solutions. -- Samuel Wantman 06:15, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I moved the page so that the discussion could better be informed by the prior work done in this area, and also so those Wikipedians interested in this topic in particular would have a chance to respond. Many Wikipedians follow several policy pages of interest to them but do not follow this page closely because it is so general. You may note that I moved several other discussions at the same time. In each case, it seemed to me that the better place for the discussion was on the policy page devoted to the topic. If you disagree, move it back. For what it's worth, I too believe that the project would be better served by a more conservative policy regarding images with sexual content. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 22:06, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Redirects to Presidential nicknames

I had previously attempted to create redirects from presidential nicknames Smirking Chimp, Commander Codpiece, and Whistle Ass to George W. Bush. All of these are notable nicknames with thousands of Google hits. The Wikipedia:Redirect page specifically states: "For example, redirecting Dubya to George W. Bush might be considered offensive, but the redirect aids accidental linking, makes the creation of duplicate articles less likely, and is useful to some people, so it should not be deleted." Furthermore, we currently redirect Slick Willy (another nickname often considered offensive) to Bill Clinton, so I don't see why this should be any different. These redirects were deleted by User:Danny and User:SlimVirgin in what I believe is an abuse of administrative power. At no point were they ever listed on Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. They were simply deleted summarily. Furthermore, I was blocked for 24 hours by User:Danny with no explanation nor warning. None of this is acceptable. If these users feel that a redirect is unacceptable, they should go through procedure just like everyone else. It isn't acceptable for them to use their admin powers to delete whatever they don't like. 63.173.114.137 23:17, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The difference is that "Dubya" has entered the common vocabulary and gets a million and a half Google hits, while the only place I've heard "Commander Codpiece" is here, and it only gets 1,300 hits on Google. --Carnildo 00:13, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
1,300 Google hits is still relatively noteworthy. Most VfD'd articles have far less backing than this. "Smirking chimp" nets over 288,000 hits; even if not all are about Bush, most of the top matches are. By the way, I'd like to thank User:Meelar for going through the appropriate deletion process on Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion rather than trying to summarily execute the redirect for Dumbya. Since the vote has just begun today, feel free to express your opinions on the WP:RFD page. Note that Meelar also listed the Slick Willy and Butcher of Baghdad redirects for consistency. 63.173.114.137 02:15, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'll list other insulting redirects as I notice them. These don't belong here--nor do yours, for that matter. Meelar (talk) 02:36, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Double Jeopardy Policy on votes

Recently, articles about Taiwan were under massive votes for changing the titles from XXX of Taiwan to XXX of ROC. Although the initial votes could be justified based on the Naming convention, the results of these votes almost invariably failed to be passed due to the POV nature of the topic and also the lack of a consensus on the issue. However, in the past few days, another round of voting attempting to change the titles of Taiwan-related articles again was waged by the same single Wikipedian and this really affects the pace of many Wikipedians who concerns about this issue and have to make efforts to engage into the same arguement over and over again.

Without suspecting any ulterior intention for this Wikipedian, who I believe to be a truely enthusiastic editor, I believe this tireless efforts targeting on Taiwan-related articles and making other wikipedians have to repetitively engage into the same dispute over and aover again is really problematic. From the previous voting experiences, I believe that the same wikipedian know it very well that such repetitive vote would not only be another futile attempt butl also be irritating to other contributers.

As a general rule, I wonder if we can enact a Double Jeopardy Policy on votes so that once a debate is over, no one should wage another vote based on the very same reason for a certain amount of time, unless a general consensus was gathered from the discussion page. I have never started a village pump discussion and I wonder how would this work. However, I do believe such a policy would greatly promote the process of editing and cut down frivolous votes. This proposal may also be beneficial to the whole Wikipedia society and is not particularly for Taiwan-related topics. Any comment would be greatly appreciated.

Reference(incompleted, please kindly help me compile the lists)

Mababa 23:55, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What you're talking about is not "double jeopardy". You may want to know this is a criminal law concept. We are not sending anyone to the electric chair. A similar concept in civil litigation is called "res judicata" or "claim preclusion".
Wikipedia polls are not trials. A poll is more like a referendum where a lost proposal is usually not allowed to be raised again in some years defined by law. Why? The most important reason is social costs. Referendums, not unlike other elections, are designed to test people's opinions. Wikipedia is exactly the reverse. If you create an article for "Tommy Ed" and talk about the life of an inventor who invented bulbs, people in the know may want to rename it to "Thomas Edison". This is bad analogy but you got the point. It is, possibly, not a good idea to bar the same lost issue again if it involves with fact. We cannot afford to let false information to sit on top of the shelf for very long just because of a procedual bar.
In a word, the polls are nearly costless. It is not an election that's going to cost taxpayers millions. The idea of today's election system is based on the presumption that it takes money to get everyone to vote. There's no money. Nor do everyone vote. We are even talking about a fact, not an opinion. So what can we do? -- Toytoy 02:38, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
Disagree. These polls are not costless. The people who are interested in China (I am not one) feel that have to be constantly on alert, because if they ever take a day off or miss a poll, that the consensus will be deemed to have shifted to the other side. I could go either way on calling it double jeopardy, but from the original writer's point of view it is a correct analogy. I feel that at some point, a decision should be deemed to be made, otherwise, the concept of a poll closing has no meaning. Morris 03:15, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Mababa, this is your best suggestion since turning Chihiro's parents into pigs! I would support this whole-heartedly. It's a waste of effort to flame in talk pages over the same repeated issue when that energy could be put into creating content. What's worse, is how often I see new facts being used to flame - facts that would be useful in the article but aren't because the focus of the editor is on "winning" the debate in the talk page, not improving the article.

When this happens across dozens of pages, with the same arguments, what a waste.

I haven't thought this through, but some considerations of a mixture of these maybe?

  • A minimum of 30, or even 90, days between votes.
  • A minimum to even raise the issue again for discussion by anyone who participated last time
  • A "poll to re-vote", of one non-argumentive sentence and a strict no advocacy, no argument, no debate, no talk-page spamming restriction, responses of more than "yes" or "no" would be disallowed.
  • a "call to re-vote" or even just "call to poll to re-vote" that must be seconded by someone who previously voted the other way.
  • A restriction on raising the same issue on another page. If a poll to rename the category "Fish that live in water" to "Fish that live in the sea" utterly fails, there should be some obvious restriction to also prevent the same user from continuing the argument at "Mollusks that live in water".

This kind of policy is increasingly necessary as the project scales. I wonder if there are statistics about casual editor turnover, but my guess is that for many it's 6 months to a year. So not only do we need something that prevents a single user from repeating a poll until she wins - we also need something that promotes article stability over the most controversial pieces of it from a new user re-proposing an issue that was recently decided. SchmuckyTheCat 03:07, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouraging comments. Certainly, I am awared the difference between a poll and a trial but I do feel that these votes are just as tiring as getting through trials. For sure we want the content of this encyclopedia to be as accurate as possible. However, I would like to quibble that it is not accurate to say a poll cost people nothing. It still cost the participants who care about the dispute their time and energy to engage into the discussion, to search for informations to bolster their position. And I belive these are the cost for votes. Though these were only polls in wikipedia, I feel the Taiwan-related articles are repetitively being polled or trialed for the very same arguement. Polls are great to gauge opinions in the community; and everyone should enjoy the right to exert freedom to initiate polls. However, it should not be abused. Having the same articles to be voted over and over again based on same reason is a waste of the Wiki resource and keeps participants away from their editting. It is not appropriated and should be stopped.

If the information is inaccurate as you suggested then the majority in the vote should have already voted for the more accurate side based on the information provided by both side. (The biggest problem of today is that we are talking about are opinions, not about the facts.) If the information is POVed, then the majority in the vote should have already voted for the more neutral side. If the result of the vote turned out to be against the so-called naming convention policy, it only indicates that the convention policy is problematic and not necessarily has included all aspects of different views. What would repetitive votes change the neutrality status of the previous vote result in the public eye? I wonder.

I also wonder why's that the result of previous poll was not respected and could be disregarded to initiate a second vote on the very same topic based on the very same reasoning logic whih has been either accepted or rejected in the previous poll?

As I proposed earlier, I suggest a limited protection period from this type of frivolous votes. I also propose this protection could be overidded if a consensus is gathered to safegaurd Wikipedian's right to initiate votes and to circumvent a potential flaw generated from the previous vote. As SchmuckyTheCat suggested, either time period or a poll on the reinitiation would be some options that we could think of. Without a general consensus, everyone should accept and respect the voting result before any new or major evidence/event be presented/changed.

Take today's votes as examples, they are initiated because the previous ones failed to be passed. If today's votes fail again, can one still wage the same votes based on the same reason over an over again every single month until they get passed? Or perhaps if today's votes should passed, can we initiate counter votes over and over again until the result get reverted? As you suggested earlier, since not everyone would participate a vote and also that people's patience weans, would the vote being held later be more accurate than the previous one? So should we keep on engaging everyone's time and energy whole year round until one side is tired, since wikipedia regard participants' time as free and costless? Facts should be always updated, but the consensus generated by each opinion polls should be treasureed and can not be afforded to be disregarded.

BTW, if the name of this proposed policy is inaccurate to descibe the intention of this proposed policy, res judicata policy on voting might be a better name as Toytoy suggested.--Mababa 03:33, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Forming policies in light of this issue aside, it does seem to me, that in the above instance, a revote is constantly made on the basis that "voters are misguided", that "votes dont count because they dont agree to previous concensus" and that kind of thing. This will not do. I have seen some of these voters sticking to their positions even when the same wikipedian tried to explain the situation to them in their individual talk pages. Does this actually mean the original convention should be the one now coming under review instead? If subsequent change requests gets voted down despite these "conventions", surely it means something has to be done about the conventions themselves?

Nontheless, I agree a limit has to be set to guard against repeated votes, especially useful in cases whereby the vote margin is simply too small, and in which I am pretty sure some folks will initiate a new round of votes...and the process repeats itself again and again so long that the margin remains small. Perhaps we should simply remind ourselves that Wikipedia is not a democracy|. Majority votes dont always count. It is the arguments made which are more important sometimes.--Huaiwei 09:30, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the general intent here, but I'm not sure about the specifics. I'm also thinking we don't need to restrict it to just votes. We could call it just Wikipedia:Give it a rest. Maurreen 09:57, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You can't grant your work into the public domain

Hey all, I probably should've posted here sooner, but I've done some research recently and collected authoritative evidence that, in fact, it is not possible in the U.S. or U.K. for a person to release their own work into the public domain. This creates some potentially dangerous legal situations. I've explained all the details on Wikipedia:You can't grant your work into the public domain, along with what I believe should be done about it. In short, I'm proposing to deprecate some of the public domain image and text contribution tags, and asking contributors who used these tags to use "free use" tags such as {{CopyrightedFreeUse}} wherever possible instead. You might suggest just modifying the public domain tags, but this isn't okay; it would be effectively releasing someone else's rights without their permission (regardless of intent).

I posted about this on Wikipedia talk: Image copyright tags, Template talk: PD-self, and Template talk: PD-user a number of days ago, seeking consensus on the matter, and there was no objection. I posted at Template talk: MultiLicensePD and some others today, hoping to move forward on these after a suitable period.

I've already added suitable warnings to {{PD-release}}, {{PD-self}}, {{PD-user}}, and {{PD-link}}. I'm beginning to think some heavy machinery (bots) will be necessary to notify everyone who has used these tags. Although this action is rather drastic, I hope we can mostly agree that it needs to be done. If someone can bring in a professional lawyer I would really like to hear what they have to say on the matter, as I am not one. Deco 02:17, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is needless pedantry. Can you point to a single appreciable difference between public domain and a license that says I-own-the-copyright-but-you-can-use-it-any-way-you-want? →Raul654 03:20, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
I totally agree with Raul. Everyone who has ever slapped a PD template on their work understood that what they were doing was irrevocably giving up all their rights to it. Lots of these people will have left Wikipedia and be untraceable. If someone starts going round deleting perfectly good PD photos on the basis of pedantry I will be very annoyed, and I certainly won't be the only one. — Trilobite (Talk) 03:36, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
So instead of a "public domain" tag, we need a "I will let anyone do whatever they want to with this work, and won't ever prosecute anyone for copyright infringement in relation to it" tag? What's the difference?

You technically "grant" anything in the public domain if you forfeit the right to copyright the text. It just means that such a decision is non-reversible. Basically, you give up the right to profit, own, etc off whatever you "claim" to release into the public domain. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:30, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I totally agree. There's no discernable difference. Wikipedia clearly states what happens if you label your image PD. I don't think for a second these templates should be replaced. The few days this has been posted isn't nearly enough to gain consensus about such a drastic change. Don't rush and certainly don't delete images yet. It's irreversible. Mgm|(talk) 08:46, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

For Wikipedia at least, it doesn't much matter because in addition to tagging, the uploader agrees that "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." If under some interpretation public domain doesn't do it to it, GFDL is still there as a fallback. --iMb~Meow 09:48, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I disagree in the strongest possible terms with this deprecation of PD tags/licensing. I am one of the people who dual liscences my text into the public domain (and a couple of photos as well, but they are the minority). What I am saying by doing this is that I give everybody the right to do whatever they want with it, and that by doing so I explicitly forfeit (sp?) all rights over the work. Even if it is technically not legally possible to do that, there is absolutely no lawyer or court in the UK that will challenge a person's de facto right to do this, or who will attempt to enforce copyright on something that somebody has so released.
Although I am no lawyer, I do know that in common law juristictions like the UK and US, case law is equally as important as statute laws (if this is the correct term), and I would be suprised if there wasn't case law that effectively says that people can release things into the public domain.
From Public domain: A copyright holder can explicitly disclaim any proprietary interest in the work, effectively granting it to the public domain, by providing a licence to this effect. A suitable licence will grant permission for all of the acts which are restricted by copyright law. Such a license is sometimes called a free use or public-domain equivalent licence.
From Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ#Public_domain: A work which is not copyrighted is in the public domain, and may be freely copied by anyone. It may have been placed in the public domain by its creator, it may be ineligible for copyright (not original enough or otherwise excluded), or the copyright may have expired. (my emphasis).

I'll do some research later. But based on what I know, if I have a pencil and I'd like to disclaim it, I can easily give that pencil to anyone else or drop that pencil in a trash can. I don't even need to write a notice or any legal document to give up my rights to that pencil. Copyright shall not be very different.
One thing that tells a pencil from an article is that copyright is usually easier to trace. My pencil is mass produced by a pencil factory. If I put it in a telephone booth and leave, it will be very difficult for me to prove my ownership even if I come back 10 minutes later. I am usually capable to claim my authorship to something written by me even after 10 years. That doesn't mean the public cannot prove that I had already granted all the rights (except for moral right) to the public domain. Moral right (such as authorship) is not transferrable. I can by the right to mass reproduce Dan Brown's next book. I cannot legally buy his manuscript in secret and tell other people that I am the author of Da Vinci Codes II (see ghost writer).
Copyrights can be disclaimed. -- Toytoy 16:11, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Sure you can. I hereby release this edit into the Public Domain --Alterego 20:55, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

The idea that you can't put your own work into the public domain makes no sense at all. The pencil analogy makes no sense because a pencil is tangible property while rights are intangible. The difference is parallel to the difference between ownership of a book and the material within it. Certainly moral rights are more permanent than copyrights, but they too can be transferred. President Bush's speech writers quite regularly transfer their moral rights to him. The real difficulty with putting one's works in the public domain is a question of evidence. Jean Giono's letter putting his "The Man Who Planted Trees" into the public domain was addressed to a very obscure British magazine, Trees and Life; it's not even easy to verify that the magazine existed. The copyright on that publication has been the source of some controversy. If your claim is that the author has put the material into the public domain you have the burden of proving that fact, and even if the material has been frequently reprinted in many places that alone does not discharge the burden of proof. Eclecticology 22:39, 2005 Apr 9 (UTC)
The pencil analogy is valid. I can disclaim intangible property in a way similar to the way I abandon my ownership to a pencil that is tangible.
Moral rights are not transferrable. I can buy the right to publish Dan Brown's next book. I cannot buy his finished manuscript and tell others that I wrote it. If I do so, Dan is allowed to reclaim his authorship. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is in public domain now. I cannot claim that I was the author even if I am allowed to publish it.
As to GWB and his gang of typewriter monkeys, it's a question about work for hire. GWB or his men wants to say something. They hired some typewriter monkeys to do it. These monkeys are not allowed to say their own words, they are hired to say GWB's words. And actually, GWB is used to represent the whole U.S. federal government. The federal government is the copyright owner of his words spoken as the president of the U.S.
This is a minor point, any works created by (US) federal government employees in the course of their employment are not subject to copyright, and are in the public domain. (but the point about GWB's writers is correct) Morris 15:32, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
If my company hires someone to write a song for it. My company is the author of the lyrics and the music. Personally, I think the authorship belongs to the employer since the very beginning. It was not transferred from the employee to the employer. Unless the employer says yes, the employee's work is not considered finished.
Works Made for Hire. -- In the case of a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is considered the author for purposes of this title, and, unless the parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them, owns all of the rights comprised in the copyright. 17 U.S.C. sec 201(b)
See, the authorship belongs to the employer since the very very very beginning. -- Toytoy 11:05, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
The legal citation clearly refers to "rights comprised in the copyright". Being recognized as the author is a moral right which is not so comprised. It is additional to copyright. Eclecticology 22:45, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)
To respond to all of the above, it is true that we have GFDL as a fallback, in the case where the uploader is the copyright holder, but not in the case where they have merely uploaded a work that someone else claimed to put in the public domain, as is often the case for the {{PD-release}} template. Also, a person who believes the work is in the public domain may creative a derivative work and not place it under the GFDL, which is illegal.
The Creative Commons public domain dedication does not release the work into the public domain in the U.S. and U.K., but contains other language releasing all rights so that it does make the work free use, which is good enough. Our public domain image tags do not contain such language, and this is why a problem exists. The Copyright FAQ is simply wrong, a victim of a widespread misunderstanding.
I'm not saying it's unacceptable to make a statement releasing a work into the public domain. I'm saying that, for jurisdictions where this is not possible, we need to incorporate language releasing all rights, so that downstream users will not be victimized by an ineffective claim, just as the Creative Commons dedication does. This might seem like pedantry, but I think we're really better safe than sorry.
Finally, I have no intention of deleting any images. I am an inclusionist and there are very few images that I favour deleting, much less ones that the author wished to be freely used. I only suggest that a suitable warning be inserted, and that where possible we add free-use or other tags to strengthen the freedom of the image in jurisdictions not recognizing such a statement. I hope this is clearer.
Also, you cannot "forfeit" your right to copyright a text, you cannot "disclaim" a copyright. Some of these responses really sound like they haven't even read the page I linked, or else misunderstood it severely. Public domain is totally okay — the issue is when someone thinks they put something in the public domain, but they really haven't. Deco 22:56, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
After some further reading and thought, I am willing to accept continuing to use the PD tags and not converting them, mostly because the GFDL is available as a fallback in most cases. At the least, though, I think a link to Wikipedia: Granting work into the public domain should be given on {{PD-release}}, and maybe also {{PD-self}}, {{PD-link}}, and {{PD-user}}, so that everyone can be aware of the potential issues around this. Does this sound okay? Deco 00:34, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Apparently not. Oh well. Sorry to annoy everyone — I'll forget about this. Deco 06:21, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I believe that Deco is correct. At least one copyright attorney I've spoken with (on non-Wikipedia matters) has said that there is, in the U.S., no provision in the law for an author to disclaim copyright or deliberately make a work public domain. If you take a look at Creative Common's "public domain" license, it is in effect a contractual agreement that attempts to do the same thing. As a result, Deco's conclusion that true public domain works (where the copyright has expired, or where the work was published without a copyright notice before the law was changed to no longer require such a notice) should perhaps be seperated from recently contributed works where the author's intent is to license without limitation.

As for what the implications are for Wikipedia in particular, I have no idea, because I'm not a lawyer. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:09, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The fact that there is no provision in the copyright law does not mean that it can be done. The prevailing rule would be that anything which is not explicitly forbidden by the law is permitted. This is a question of common law rather than statutory law rights. Saying that you have no idea because you are not a lawyer strikes me as a non-sequitur. Eclecticology 22:45, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

Down the memory hole

This comment originally appeared in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) 10:54, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC). It was not only removed from the Pump, but from the Pump's history itself -- pure Orwellian censorship, and not by a common user, either.

If you think this is unacceptable, I hope you will work to preserve not only these remarks, but to discover the actor who obliterated them. — Xiongtalk 03:13, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

Hrm, I believe you'd have to have direct access to the database to pull this off. Administrators can't, and I think stewards can't either. If it was malicious that's a very small pool of suspects. I'm suspecting a software error — see Wikipedia: Village pump (technical), section Serious software problems for some similar errors encountered while editing articles on other Wikipedias. Deco 03:57, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This was posted to the talk page of this page at the time given. I suspect that's where it went, and remains. —Charles P. (Mirv) 04:29, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm striking my accusations of this complaint being "disappeared". I am not convinced! It is just as easy to make me look foolish by altering history as to eliminate all reference to the complaint. But perhaps I misfiled it -- just because Somebody's out to get you doesn't mean you're not paranoid -- in any case, as usual, one act of ill will cloaks another. I only wish Someone would address the substantive issues. — Xiongtalk 06:18, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

Following process on Templates for deletion

Who are we? Why are we here? I'm not speaking of the entire project or our grand mission, only of the small group of regulars who work within TfD. What are we doing here?

Each one of us will have a different answer to that question; so to guide us in our efforts, we have a written process. Process should not act as a straitjacket, but as a way for us to agree to respect each other's differing views.

If all of us had the same exact opinion on each template, there would be no need for the Wikipedia:Templates for deletion page -- not in its present form, at any rate. We would each individually mow down templates we found insupportable, and log the deletions. No need for debate, no need for discussion. And since we would all be in perfect agreement, we would have strong justification for refusing to hear appeals from other members of WP.

But it is not so. I think {{widget}} should stay and {{blivet}} should go; El Supremo thinks {widget} should go and {blivet} stay. Sometimes, we can discuss these issues and find a meeting ground. Maybe I can accept some changes to {widget}, with which El Supremo can tolerate its continued presence. But what do we do when after a week of wrangling, I still say "Widgets forever!" and El Supremo grunts, "Blivets or death!" -- what then?

Our process specifies that after seven days on TfD, if consensus is not reached, the nominated template is free to go -- the matter is over. We also say that a template should not be renominated for a month, if then. No good purpose is served by chewing old bones.

Recently, the nominated template {{divbox}} came to the end of its seven-day roasting. There was considerable controversy, a more or less even split of opinions (4 delete to 3 keep), and certainly nothing approaching consensus, or even overwhelming majority. Our process says {divbox} goes free, and that's the end of the matter -- at least, the end for this month. Those determined to keep a dog in the fight may do so on the nominated template's Talk page.

Shortly after I removed the offending listing and carefully began to archive all its debate -- not merely the debate within the TfD workflow, but wherever I could find a scrap of it -- a certain user, without discussion of any kind so far as I know, restored {divbox} to the TfD page and simultaneously juggled the entire contents of the page, including our written process guidelines. Am I the only one in this project who finds this a bit questionable?

"It is also possible that no concensus has been reached. Action: Remove template from this page entirely. Copy the entire discussion to template's Talk page. Remove {{tfd}} tag from template's main page. ("Disputed" subsection deprecated.) Absent concensus, the disputed template is kept."
I have to disclose that it was I who wrote the text of this section, as part of a complete cleanup of the page, including explicit workflow process. The cleanup stood unchallenged througout the recent heated debate over {divbox} -- nobody found it offensive or even felt a need to correct my misspelling of "consensus" -- but now that it permits {divbox} release from jail, it must all be destroyed. (!?)
This process, too, is subject to change -- but have we come to the point where we are permitted to change our guidelines for how we work at the same time as we cite our changes to process as justification for what we do?

If we have come to the point where everything is up for grabs, please let me know, and I will start work on Jimbo's home page, VfD, CfD, RfC, RfA, and all the other pages which manage the way we manage the work we do. If I don't need to discuss any of my changes before making them, then why should I? And if someone disagrees with me, why should I not alter existing process to make his disagreement illegal?

If we have not come to that point, and we still cling to shreds of social fabric, then I ask you to take whatever action you think necessary to hold those shreds together, and allow me to return to the work I do best -- making things that work for us all. Thank you. — Xiongtalk 10:54, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

Please answer my complaint here.

Just to get the facts straight: if I understand you correctly, you suggested a new policy on how to treat deletion discussions where consensus is not reached within a week. The previous policy was to let them stay on the Tfd page longer, to see if consensus could be reached later; your policy would count no consensus as a keep, right? There was no reaction, so you changed the rules unilaterally, but noone complained.
Then, at the first vote where consensus could not be reached after a week, you removed the entry, as per your new policy. Then people reverted that removal, and reverted your policy changes. Yes?
My interpretations: It would seem that people didn't object to your proposed changes in procedure, not because they agreed, but because they did not notice the changes. They only noticed that you changed that part of the procedure when you acted upon it. It is not a good idea to assume that silence means assent. I don't blame you for changing the procedure when noone objected, but when later on people noticed the changes, and started objecting, the best thing you could have done was to revert to the old procedure, and discuss your proposals again on the Talk page. It's no use saying: "but you should have said that sooner". If the majority doesn't want to follow your procedure, you cannot hold them to it, just because you've changed the policy "behind their backs".
One other thing you might keep in mind: You closed the discussion on {divbox} because of "no consensus", but you were one of the most vocal supporters of that template. That makes your decision to keep the template and to remove the discussion look biased. It would be better to let others, who are not involved in the vote, make these decisions. Eugene van der Pijll 11:52, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • You've got a hard spin on the ball, EvdP, but you are substantially correct. I did not consider my rewrite to be a change in process (not policy at all, these are less authoritative guidelines with much narrower scope). I believed I was formalizing existing process, not altering it. I did not think retention of nominated templates was process, but failure of process -- lazyness, difficulty understanding poorly-written instructions, lack of clarity. It simply does not make sense to leave nominated templates in the tank to slowly rot away -- there must be a cutoff, and there was discussion of extending that cutoff from 5 days to 7, which I incorporated -- and noted elsewhere, near that discussion. I did nothing sneaky -- I edited boldly, and spoke boldly of it.
My refactoring was extremely extensive -- all of it, to my opinion, structural rather than procedural rewrite -- clarification of existing process, removal of ambiguity. But however you like to characterize it, the fact remains that nobody saw fit to fool with it, question it, or attack me for doing the work -- so long as it inconvenienced them not. In the end, it was two users only -- those two alone -- who took it upon themselves to, in one short editing period, restore {divbox}, regress to the old, badly-written process, and cite it as justification for throwing {divbox} back in the tank. Please check history carefully before jumping salty on me; everything I have said is backed up by the diffs.
I don't really know how to make this point clearly without being insulting. Let's say you are playing a card game with us, for which we are constantly changing the rules. There is a piece of paper upon which the rules are written; you change it, I change it, he changes it, she changes it. You change it again to specify that anyone dealt the Ace of Spades wins the hand if it is the last card he holds at the end; a few hands are played and nobody modifies your new rule. A new hand is dealt, and lo! you have the Ace of Spades. I do not, but I still say nothing about your rule, even after I peek in your hand and see that Ace. We play out the tricks and you are left with one card. You lay it down, saying "I win the hand!"; I grab the offending card, shove it back in your hand, grab the rules, cross out the Ace-of-Spades clause, and say, "Now let's play." Are you really so sure there is nothing about this that seems just a bit stinky to you?
I do take your meaning about the propriety of my removing {divbox}; I have another opinion on it, which I have given at length at User talk:Korath#TfD and Xiong. I shall comment here, and not to duplicate my remarks, either.
The TfD process is a Wikibackwater; few users go there for any reason. I think few users even create any templates that might Someday be deleted; most users have other interests. Like any dark corner, it is a place where bullies hope to catch the weak, friendless, and unwary. Perhaps I was mistaken for someone belonging to one or more of these categories. In any case, I was soundly beaten by a certain user, who pummeled me unmercifully, dragging every template I ever wrote into it. I don't know whether like minds congregate there; or whether that certain user has made this thankless task even more unamusing for anyone who dare stand up to him; but I know few voices were raised in my defence -- and truly, few users are seen near templates in any capacity, as creators, editors, deletionists, inclusionists, or maintainers of the workflow.
So, where is the disinterested user? We have a chronic demand for admin attention on the page; we cannot even get enough admins to come by often enough to delete templates upon which consensus is very clear. Nearly everyone there wears two or three hats. Both of the users who participated in the action to which I refer in my boxed complaint above voted in strong terms on {divbox}; did that give them the right to monkey with the removal, or forbid them to do so? Should I omit to comment on templates I touch, so that I may vote upon them when they come up on TfD? Should I abstain from voting so that I may refactor the workflow with clean hands?
It all comes down to clear intent and demonstrated action, not theoretical mudslinging and hopes that Caesar's wife will come to work. Process at the time called for removal absent consensus, and I want to see anyone argue that this constitutes consensus. Process at the time also called for 7 days' debate, and I removed {divbox} in the 169th hour. If my rewrite to process was illegitimate, then it was all illegitimate; if you side with the deletionists in upholding the deprecated "Disputed" subsection of the workflow, then why did you not move {divbox} there -- after 5 days had passed?
Instead of trying to turn the question around and point it at me, why don't you try to defend those who acted so offensively (in the literal sense). It all boils down to a tool that some users find useful, and some users who simply insist on snatching it away from the rest of us, even to the extent of perverting a system put in place primarily for simple garbage collection. — Xiongtalk 21:41, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

Where are the sources? Where are the citations?

Every article in Wikipedia that doesn’t cite at least one source for the information in the article hurts the credibility of Wikipedia. From my browsing, it appears that most, at least many, of Wikipedia’s articles have this problem. I assume I don’t need to go into how the lack of sources for any article hurts Wikipedia’s credibility, as that is fairly obvious. An, perhaps not so noticeablem effect, is that time spent arguing VfD and other issues, would be reduced by a focus on sources over “Importance” etc. and the focus of these discussion should be around verifiability. However, for the purpose of this post, I want to address how Wikipedia can resolve this potential for crisis.

My first proposal is an innovation in the coding for pages to contain tags to identify the integrity rating for the information. Information not sourced is given a 0. Information with a source that hasn’t been checked is 1. A source that has been checked and is still questionable is given a 2. Checked, Accurate and Impeachable sources earn a statement(s) a grade of 3. This way, editors know if a source/statement has been checked. Perhaps color-coded text or background could readily relay the status of the statement as in relation to verifiability. Not only must we ensure that the referenced source exists, but that information attributed to source is actually included in the source.

Second is prevention of unsourced contributions. A better interface to help contributors add footnotes, references and sources would help. Perhaps a prompt for source before new information is added. Find someway to make adding sources easy enough contributors aren’t “put off” by being required to provide citations.

Thirdly, combining the “What’s In; What’s Out”, “What Wikipedia Is Not” and “Importance” is one coherent document based on verifiability as the first level of assessment as opposed to the 5 point system we currently have. (NOTE: I propose keeping the 5-point system as the second level of assessment.)

Finally, I would like to say that I see checking our sources and insisting on the data to verify the information in Wikipedia as being paramount over other tasks we encourage editors to perform, especially deletions. The problem is: source checking isn’t as fun as starting a deletion debate and in fact is real work. Therefore, fact confirmation should be given the same level of division of tasks as other areas: (based on the above 0-3 coding system) such as “find articles without sources”, “verify sources and information”, “review questionable sources.” By implementing the code system, we can auto generate lists of articles with statements coded 0, 1, or 2 to facilitate these lists. Additionally, we should give contributors a chance to revise their articles and include source information before we proceed to the drastic step of deleting articles.AboutWestTulsa 20:32, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You are looking for Everything2. You can find it here. — Xiongtalk 21:44, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)
Thanks for responding to my proposal. Everything2 doesn't really enforce citations either, but thanks for the suggestion. You have helped bring to light a point I glossed over in my initial post. I am not proposing a new set of tags or expand the existing methods much. I don't think we want to develop our own form of HTML like Everything2. Every paragraph (new idea) already should have a citation, and citations already contain links. So, what I mean to recommend is including in citations a simple element as to veracity. The "make it easy for contributors" idea is to offset the fact that people won't want to vigourously cite sources. Software/code enhancements aside, Wikipedia should do better on insisting and checking on sources one way or another. What good are articles without one source, and how are they not candidates for deletion?AboutWestTulsa 22:05, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
You might want to have a look at Wikipedia:Cite your sources and Wikipedia:Reliable sources, where some aspects of these issues have been discussed. Pages without sources can be decent stubs that can be turned into useful articles. IMHO the criterion for inclusion should not be whether an article is any good (by anyone's standard), but whether a topic is encyclopedic. That would mean that if you see a bad article on a worthwhile topic, you'd try to improve the article, rather than deleting it. --MarkSweep 22:30, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I cite things every day. I made a tool which makes it easy to do this called WikiBib. You really shouldn't worry though. As you can tell from the raw data generated by WikiPulse the quality of the encyclopedia is going up rapidly. On March 21 there were an average of 8.99 edits per page, and now only 20 days later it is up to 9.14 and it is continuing to rise. --Alterego 22:33, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
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