Great rant :-) -- Elian Talk 14:42, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, I agree with your critique of the use of the vandalism protection tags. Those viewing Wikipedia solely for the purpose of reading are disturbed for no good reason, and these are probably the majority of visitors. Your "solution" that the tag should be placed on the discussion page does not seem correct, for now you are assuming that the majority of people who actually try to edit Wikipedia are familiar with discussion pages. I strongly feel that when an article is protected and a given user cannot edit for any reason, when he presses the "edit" tab he should be brought to a special page where an explanation is given why he is unable to edit the article in question. That would be the appropriate place for those tags, although once such a mechanism is in place the need for using tags is questionable (just using redirects to standard warning pages would seem a better solution).
On the other hand, I strongly disagree with your dismissal of the "spoiler tag" as unencyclopedic. I am sure you are correct that some uses of spoiler tags, such as the one you cite in "Romeo and Juliet", are either hard to justify or just wrong. But I think you are confusing "unencyclopedic" with "un-paper-encyclopedic". Yes, there are no "spoiler tag" warnings in paper encyclopedias. On the other hand, paper encyclopedia articles also don't have "Trivia" sections which could easily mention plot details of literary or cinematic works which are only vaguely associated with the main subject of an article. For example, if a famous scene of a famous movie is filmed in a particular location which is largely more interesting for other reasons, it strikes me as perfectly reasonable that there be a spoiler warning before revealing the details of the scene when citing it as an interesting but minor piece of information in the article about the location. See Agatha Christie for a spoiler warning which I feel is much more justifiable.
In fact, I would argue that the text-only spoiler tag is the kind of protection mechanism I'd expect in a paper encyclopedia and that information which is justifiably protected by such a tag in Wikipedia should by default not be visible until the user takes voluntary action (one obvious possibility being his clicking the warning). TheGoblin 19:54, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Checking a few book and movie articles on the German Wikipedia, I can't find a single spoiler warning there. I wouldn't be surprised if the Germans have got this right as well. Maybe you will find this interesting. The vote/discussion there is quite contrary to the recent debate concerning the deletion of the spoiler template. -- Lightlike 20:20, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you that the big boxy tags at the top are something quite atrocious. How do you feel about the little icons in the top right-hand corner? I can't think of any examples at the moment. But those, I feel, are unobtrusive and friendly, whilst still telling people something. They could link to a full notice explaining what they mean. What do you think about coming in the night and changing all of the tags into top-right icons? It would be quite easy to change the templates (unless they are protected). — D a niel (‽) 16:12, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Great rant, Shanes. I had never thought about these issues, at least, not nearly as consciously as you have. I totally agree with you on the protection and current tags, and I tend to disagree respectfully with you on the spoiler tags. Now here's my question: How do we make this happen? Are we vandals if we start moving these tags to, say, the bottom of the article? Unschool 16:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
There is meta page on the German wikipedia about this. The general argument for prohibiting spoiler tags on the German wikipedia goes: A reader comes to an encyclopedia to learn about a certain topic and that it is very irritating to put tags in places where the editors suspects to be information the reader might not want to learn about. The simple solution: If you don't want to lead the reader into learning about the plot, leave the choice to the reader and simply put a headline that says "plot" over the section that deals with the plot, thereby giving all the neccessary indication in the form of continuous text the rest of the article should use as well. -- 84.137.60.59 14:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
This has to be one of the most sane, lucid, and well-considered essays on wikipedia editing etiquette that I have read to date. I wish we could just put it to a vote and make it happen. Jerry lavoie 17:59, 14 January 2007 (UTC) I am the user now called Jerry 16:26, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear the creation of the Sprotected2 template I made has benefited you :) — Moe 00:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
You just spoiled Romeo & Juliet for me!
Sorry.. couldn't resist. Bellpepper 20:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I was recently engaged in a discussion elsewhere with another editor, in which I asserted the logic and intent of this essay was pertinent to stacking of deletion and maintenance templates on newly-created articles. The article in question no longer exists (for good reasons), but I am left with a lingering concern about a lack of policy in regard to what I call template stacking. The article was a new one, obviously created by a new user who was not aware of our notability procedure. The article was not speedied or prodded (although it was a clear candidate for speedy), but rather put up for AfD right away. An editor reviewing the AfD thought it was a good candidate for Speedy, so in addition to !voting that way at the AfD, he added a CSD template to the article, below the existing AfD template. Another editor, also a visitor to the AfD, added a "an editor has expressed concern about..." template below the other two. The actual article was 1 inch in height on my browser (MSIE 1024x768), and the stack of templates was 3 inches.
My concern is that in such an early stage of editing, several outcomes could have occurred which are beneficial to the editor who created the article and all readers who happen to read the article during this time:
Instead, the editor who added the article was never consulted, and a stack of templates arrived at his article in a short period of time. He probably got pissed off and went away forever, and any readers who went to the page would have gotten confused by the messages, and may have left forever as well.
So Shanes, I would like to ask you if the spirit and intention of your essay also apply to deletion process and maintenance template stacking?
Thanks, Jerry 15:39, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Unschool suggested I read this page as he had seen similar thoughts which I have written. It seems that there are more people who agree on this issue than is at first apparent please see Wikipedia:Template standardisation/article and its talk page. -- Philip Baird Shearer 08:29, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Note that there have been several efforts to get rid of the spoiler tag, and that most other-language wikis don't have one, and that many people such as myself use CSS to hide those tags. One of those perennial debates. >Radiant< 11:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Good stuff .. I hadn't thought deeply about any of this but now it is mentioned I see that all these things must be banished asap onto talk pages or hidden away in disgrace.
"many people such as myself use CSS to hide those tags" - how would this work? (I know about CSS but not wiki-wise.)
Could something equally eloquent be written on the topic of info-boxes which seem to me to be worse still as they are a permanent feature of the article and often leave no room for anything much on the first screen except the contents tag ... and what about that too ... I would like it to disappear when I 'hide' it, not sit there in full view albeit diminished. -- roundhouse 14:38, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Great point. Obviously helpful as an editor, but from the point of view of a reader I can imagine it being quite annoying. In fact, before I started editing Wikipedia (August 2006) there were far less of these round.
Anyway, I have a suggestion: Perhaps do your idea of smaller icons or maybe just make it so that they are only visible (like HTML comments are) on the edit page, not the article (with the possible exception of unsourced articles, really current events, and some others -- which should be made less intrusive like you said). Personally, I think that the spoiler warning should stay. -- Jatkins ( talk | contribs) 16:04, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Shanes, your wonderful rant continues to make waves. User:Notmyhandle has now created a small icon to go into the upper right corner and replace the hideous cleanup tag. Please take a look at it, and then, assuming you like it, go to Template talk:Cleanup, and leave a supporting comment. Unschool 14:37, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I pretty much agree with you. I think the protected pages and current events are the same issue. Spoilers is completely different issue and I happen to more or less agree with you, but I don't think the problem is that they are self references. The problem is they are needless. If in the film, This is Not A Real Film the murderer is John and you find that out in the end then the plot summary should not mention it at the beginning. Film criticism is different because critics will mention the parts they find to be important and you should always expect there to be spoilers mixed in. If articles are written properly then it shouldn't be a big deal. But, it's still a separate issue from the first two.
But, here's why I think your first two are correct. Vandalism needlessly assumes the person will edit. Instead, having view page sources and if they click that there should be a clearly visible message saying why they can't edit. That way only editors are shown the message. Over time people will realize that view source = can't edit. For current events if they people are actually reading the articles they know it's a current event.
Here is where I have problems with where this is going... the proposal for the small cleanup box. The cleanup box tells readers about the state of the article. Yeah, it's also to tell editors to fix up the page but this is important for the reader to know as well. If a page needs to be cleaned up then readers should know... just like if there are concerns about references or neutrality readers should also know. The goal in this policy should be to do the least damage. Use section NPOV / unreferenced tags when possible. But some things readers should know because while they are self-references the provide the reader important information. We don't want readers to be misled by pages. I think it's clear that NPOV and unreferenced should stay. Cleanup and wikify aren't as important for the reader but I still think they provide a service... so, I don't want this feeling of "make Wikipedia look professional" lead us to remove notices which serve to inform readers about problems in our articles. They don't need to the article is protect and they don't need a neon sign saying it's current. But they need to know when an article is dirty, inaccurate or otherwise. gren グレン 03:08, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
I just want to say I appreciate your descision to remove the tag here. I thought it was goin to have to be a featured article or something before the tag was taken off. I can assure you I will continue to add references as they become available to me. Hopefully by the end of the summer: as far as my references go. Lets just say - Its certainly good to see the lack of citations box no more. I might suggest an article class system (with perfect in the regions of the year 3000). This could be an editor notice, or maybe a notice at the bottom. At the top info boxes if anything discourage contributors and readers alike (generally). Once again... regards!!!!
WikieWikieWikie ( talk) 20:16, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Shhhhh, don't tell anyone, but have you looked carefully at WP:LEAD lately? I can't figure out who snuck it in and why, but take a look at the references section. Unschool ( talk) 02:39, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Shanes, I can't believe I missed this discussion until it was already over! Saw it on the Signpost, and wow, it's just one more example of how you were totally ahead of the curve. You are the Michael Jordan of Wikipedia. Thanks! Un sch ool 06:39, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Great article, IMHO. I was just noticing some heavily tagged articles earlier today. One of the reasons I love Wikipedia is for it's lack of adverts. And many/(most?) tag boxes resemble adverts. Especially in terms of how they affect the flow of the avereage reader. While some may, at times, be useful and relevant article pages, many which refer to editorial functions 'under-the-hood' should stay there. 'Under-the-hood' that is. Edit pages, Talk pages, and perhaps User pages but not Article pages. Or at least not at the top. Following or in a sidebar perhaps.
Well, that's my bit scribbled in the dust of this page.
Thanks Shanes,
-- Kevjonesin ( talk) 18:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Tags are one of the few ways to alert readers that the material that they are about to encounter should be approached with suspicion. If wikipedia editors in general do not wish articles to be viewed with suspicion, they should organize to stop tolerating the rampant abuse of WP principles, esp. of POV and citation, the latter abuse flying in the face of academic understandings of plagiarism (which includes lifting of ideas, see also WP:Plagiarism). Allowing multi-year presence of sentences, paragraphs, and entire sections of factual (non-common knowledge, non-segue) material to appear without citation must end, and without tag messages, there is little hope to stimulate change, or to prevent our intellectually misleading readers until change occurs. To allow this travesty to continue is to say "trust us, this is true", and a tag is often the only way to alert the reader that they might be foolish to do so. I write this comment as a regular editor in the sciences, who teaches and publishes in the standard press, but who cannot allow students to use Wikipedia articles in the sciences for the inaccuracies and misattributions they very often contain (see article Refrigerant), and/or the poor standards of intellectual honesty that are maintained (see article Species), and so poor examples of science exposition that they indeed are. LeProf. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.179.92.36 ( talk) 14:26, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Great rant :-) -- Elian Talk 14:42, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, I agree with your critique of the use of the vandalism protection tags. Those viewing Wikipedia solely for the purpose of reading are disturbed for no good reason, and these are probably the majority of visitors. Your "solution" that the tag should be placed on the discussion page does not seem correct, for now you are assuming that the majority of people who actually try to edit Wikipedia are familiar with discussion pages. I strongly feel that when an article is protected and a given user cannot edit for any reason, when he presses the "edit" tab he should be brought to a special page where an explanation is given why he is unable to edit the article in question. That would be the appropriate place for those tags, although once such a mechanism is in place the need for using tags is questionable (just using redirects to standard warning pages would seem a better solution).
On the other hand, I strongly disagree with your dismissal of the "spoiler tag" as unencyclopedic. I am sure you are correct that some uses of spoiler tags, such as the one you cite in "Romeo and Juliet", are either hard to justify or just wrong. But I think you are confusing "unencyclopedic" with "un-paper-encyclopedic". Yes, there are no "spoiler tag" warnings in paper encyclopedias. On the other hand, paper encyclopedia articles also don't have "Trivia" sections which could easily mention plot details of literary or cinematic works which are only vaguely associated with the main subject of an article. For example, if a famous scene of a famous movie is filmed in a particular location which is largely more interesting for other reasons, it strikes me as perfectly reasonable that there be a spoiler warning before revealing the details of the scene when citing it as an interesting but minor piece of information in the article about the location. See Agatha Christie for a spoiler warning which I feel is much more justifiable.
In fact, I would argue that the text-only spoiler tag is the kind of protection mechanism I'd expect in a paper encyclopedia and that information which is justifiably protected by such a tag in Wikipedia should by default not be visible until the user takes voluntary action (one obvious possibility being his clicking the warning). TheGoblin 19:54, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Checking a few book and movie articles on the German Wikipedia, I can't find a single spoiler warning there. I wouldn't be surprised if the Germans have got this right as well. Maybe you will find this interesting. The vote/discussion there is quite contrary to the recent debate concerning the deletion of the spoiler template. -- Lightlike 20:20, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you that the big boxy tags at the top are something quite atrocious. How do you feel about the little icons in the top right-hand corner? I can't think of any examples at the moment. But those, I feel, are unobtrusive and friendly, whilst still telling people something. They could link to a full notice explaining what they mean. What do you think about coming in the night and changing all of the tags into top-right icons? It would be quite easy to change the templates (unless they are protected). — D a niel (‽) 16:12, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Great rant, Shanes. I had never thought about these issues, at least, not nearly as consciously as you have. I totally agree with you on the protection and current tags, and I tend to disagree respectfully with you on the spoiler tags. Now here's my question: How do we make this happen? Are we vandals if we start moving these tags to, say, the bottom of the article? Unschool 16:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
There is meta page on the German wikipedia about this. The general argument for prohibiting spoiler tags on the German wikipedia goes: A reader comes to an encyclopedia to learn about a certain topic and that it is very irritating to put tags in places where the editors suspects to be information the reader might not want to learn about. The simple solution: If you don't want to lead the reader into learning about the plot, leave the choice to the reader and simply put a headline that says "plot" over the section that deals with the plot, thereby giving all the neccessary indication in the form of continuous text the rest of the article should use as well. -- 84.137.60.59 14:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
This has to be one of the most sane, lucid, and well-considered essays on wikipedia editing etiquette that I have read to date. I wish we could just put it to a vote and make it happen. Jerry lavoie 17:59, 14 January 2007 (UTC) I am the user now called Jerry 16:26, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear the creation of the Sprotected2 template I made has benefited you :) — Moe 00:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
You just spoiled Romeo & Juliet for me!
Sorry.. couldn't resist. Bellpepper 20:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I was recently engaged in a discussion elsewhere with another editor, in which I asserted the logic and intent of this essay was pertinent to stacking of deletion and maintenance templates on newly-created articles. The article in question no longer exists (for good reasons), but I am left with a lingering concern about a lack of policy in regard to what I call template stacking. The article was a new one, obviously created by a new user who was not aware of our notability procedure. The article was not speedied or prodded (although it was a clear candidate for speedy), but rather put up for AfD right away. An editor reviewing the AfD thought it was a good candidate for Speedy, so in addition to !voting that way at the AfD, he added a CSD template to the article, below the existing AfD template. Another editor, also a visitor to the AfD, added a "an editor has expressed concern about..." template below the other two. The actual article was 1 inch in height on my browser (MSIE 1024x768), and the stack of templates was 3 inches.
My concern is that in such an early stage of editing, several outcomes could have occurred which are beneficial to the editor who created the article and all readers who happen to read the article during this time:
Instead, the editor who added the article was never consulted, and a stack of templates arrived at his article in a short period of time. He probably got pissed off and went away forever, and any readers who went to the page would have gotten confused by the messages, and may have left forever as well.
So Shanes, I would like to ask you if the spirit and intention of your essay also apply to deletion process and maintenance template stacking?
Thanks, Jerry 15:39, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Unschool suggested I read this page as he had seen similar thoughts which I have written. It seems that there are more people who agree on this issue than is at first apparent please see Wikipedia:Template standardisation/article and its talk page. -- Philip Baird Shearer 08:29, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Note that there have been several efforts to get rid of the spoiler tag, and that most other-language wikis don't have one, and that many people such as myself use CSS to hide those tags. One of those perennial debates. >Radiant< 11:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Good stuff .. I hadn't thought deeply about any of this but now it is mentioned I see that all these things must be banished asap onto talk pages or hidden away in disgrace.
"many people such as myself use CSS to hide those tags" - how would this work? (I know about CSS but not wiki-wise.)
Could something equally eloquent be written on the topic of info-boxes which seem to me to be worse still as they are a permanent feature of the article and often leave no room for anything much on the first screen except the contents tag ... and what about that too ... I would like it to disappear when I 'hide' it, not sit there in full view albeit diminished. -- roundhouse 14:38, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Great point. Obviously helpful as an editor, but from the point of view of a reader I can imagine it being quite annoying. In fact, before I started editing Wikipedia (August 2006) there were far less of these round.
Anyway, I have a suggestion: Perhaps do your idea of smaller icons or maybe just make it so that they are only visible (like HTML comments are) on the edit page, not the article (with the possible exception of unsourced articles, really current events, and some others -- which should be made less intrusive like you said). Personally, I think that the spoiler warning should stay. -- Jatkins ( talk | contribs) 16:04, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Shanes, your wonderful rant continues to make waves. User:Notmyhandle has now created a small icon to go into the upper right corner and replace the hideous cleanup tag. Please take a look at it, and then, assuming you like it, go to Template talk:Cleanup, and leave a supporting comment. Unschool 14:37, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I pretty much agree with you. I think the protected pages and current events are the same issue. Spoilers is completely different issue and I happen to more or less agree with you, but I don't think the problem is that they are self references. The problem is they are needless. If in the film, This is Not A Real Film the murderer is John and you find that out in the end then the plot summary should not mention it at the beginning. Film criticism is different because critics will mention the parts they find to be important and you should always expect there to be spoilers mixed in. If articles are written properly then it shouldn't be a big deal. But, it's still a separate issue from the first two.
But, here's why I think your first two are correct. Vandalism needlessly assumes the person will edit. Instead, having view page sources and if they click that there should be a clearly visible message saying why they can't edit. That way only editors are shown the message. Over time people will realize that view source = can't edit. For current events if they people are actually reading the articles they know it's a current event.
Here is where I have problems with where this is going... the proposal for the small cleanup box. The cleanup box tells readers about the state of the article. Yeah, it's also to tell editors to fix up the page but this is important for the reader to know as well. If a page needs to be cleaned up then readers should know... just like if there are concerns about references or neutrality readers should also know. The goal in this policy should be to do the least damage. Use section NPOV / unreferenced tags when possible. But some things readers should know because while they are self-references the provide the reader important information. We don't want readers to be misled by pages. I think it's clear that NPOV and unreferenced should stay. Cleanup and wikify aren't as important for the reader but I still think they provide a service... so, I don't want this feeling of "make Wikipedia look professional" lead us to remove notices which serve to inform readers about problems in our articles. They don't need to the article is protect and they don't need a neon sign saying it's current. But they need to know when an article is dirty, inaccurate or otherwise. gren グレン 03:08, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
I just want to say I appreciate your descision to remove the tag here. I thought it was goin to have to be a featured article or something before the tag was taken off. I can assure you I will continue to add references as they become available to me. Hopefully by the end of the summer: as far as my references go. Lets just say - Its certainly good to see the lack of citations box no more. I might suggest an article class system (with perfect in the regions of the year 3000). This could be an editor notice, or maybe a notice at the bottom. At the top info boxes if anything discourage contributors and readers alike (generally). Once again... regards!!!!
WikieWikieWikie ( talk) 20:16, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Shhhhh, don't tell anyone, but have you looked carefully at WP:LEAD lately? I can't figure out who snuck it in and why, but take a look at the references section. Unschool ( talk) 02:39, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Shanes, I can't believe I missed this discussion until it was already over! Saw it on the Signpost, and wow, it's just one more example of how you were totally ahead of the curve. You are the Michael Jordan of Wikipedia. Thanks! Un sch ool 06:39, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Great article, IMHO. I was just noticing some heavily tagged articles earlier today. One of the reasons I love Wikipedia is for it's lack of adverts. And many/(most?) tag boxes resemble adverts. Especially in terms of how they affect the flow of the avereage reader. While some may, at times, be useful and relevant article pages, many which refer to editorial functions 'under-the-hood' should stay there. 'Under-the-hood' that is. Edit pages, Talk pages, and perhaps User pages but not Article pages. Or at least not at the top. Following or in a sidebar perhaps.
Well, that's my bit scribbled in the dust of this page.
Thanks Shanes,
-- Kevjonesin ( talk) 18:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Tags are one of the few ways to alert readers that the material that they are about to encounter should be approached with suspicion. If wikipedia editors in general do not wish articles to be viewed with suspicion, they should organize to stop tolerating the rampant abuse of WP principles, esp. of POV and citation, the latter abuse flying in the face of academic understandings of plagiarism (which includes lifting of ideas, see also WP:Plagiarism). Allowing multi-year presence of sentences, paragraphs, and entire sections of factual (non-common knowledge, non-segue) material to appear without citation must end, and without tag messages, there is little hope to stimulate change, or to prevent our intellectually misleading readers until change occurs. To allow this travesty to continue is to say "trust us, this is true", and a tag is often the only way to alert the reader that they might be foolish to do so. I write this comment as a regular editor in the sciences, who teaches and publishes in the standard press, but who cannot allow students to use Wikipedia articles in the sciences for the inaccuracies and misattributions they very often contain (see article Refrigerant), and/or the poor standards of intellectual honesty that are maintained (see article Species), and so poor examples of science exposition that they indeed are. LeProf. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.179.92.36 ( talk) 14:26, 5 December 2013 (UTC)