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There's present discussion on WT:NFC about getting a bot to do NFC#10c enforcement (assuring that every article that a non-free image is used it has its name mentioned, as a bare minimum)) as the number of image uses without proper rationales is rising. Those that remember that this task was done in the past via BetaCommandBot, but numerous issues, more dealing with BetaCommand as an editor, but some dealing with the heavy-handedness of NFC enforcement, led to larger problems and the eventual current ban on BetaCommand and the loss of his bot. Even if BetaCommand's ban is removed, I would not anticipate his bot being allowed to run. In the current discussion, the effort is to find a bot programmer and get BAG approval for the task to be run.
But, there is an unresolved point from the previous problems, that being, how exactly should #10c be enforced. There was a rather intense discussion when images were tagged with #10c that, to some, had trivial fixes that should have been corrected by those that were enforcing #10c. Some of these were simple typos, use of extended/accented characters, etc. But others, that some called simple, involved reviewing page histories to find the case of a misplace move. That previous discussion boiled over on the concept of BURDEN and the "good faith" efforts of the enforcers, though I don't think we resolved that as more pressing problems with BetaCommand came forward.
The concern that has been raised is that if we bring a bot forward, with BAG approval, to handle #10c, are we going to run into the same problem where the editor running the bot could expect to be the target of angry editors seeing their images get deleted or even questioned due to the failure to meet #10c due to one typo? Given that NFC is a WMF-directed policy and ergo critical to follow, is there any way to make sure editors understand that this is a mandate that we have been sorely lacking in maintaining even though it is prime for bot work? -- MASEM ( t) 23:02, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, I agree with Farix. The problem is this whole BS "enforcement" approach, which has fostered an inappropriate us vs. them mentality and encouraged some rather poor authoritarian conduct and attitudes. Instead ask how we can bring content into compliance, which reframes it as a community task to fix what can be fixed. postdlf ( talk) 02:12, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia policies on sources are conservative, for good reason. But sometimes this leads to self-inconsistency.
Here's my current bugbear. (I'm not pushing a barrow here. I just want feedback on the policy-level implications, not on the specific problem.) The Ubuntu operating system recently began displaying advertising in the user interface of a core OS component. Wikipedia's adware entry defines adware as "any software package which automatically renders advertisements." A consensus of editors on Talk:Ubuntu (operating system) refused to permit the labelling of Ubuntu as adware without reliable sources, on the grounds that the term "adware" is value-laden/pejorative. On the other hand, a consensus of editors on Talk:Adware refused to permit the modification of adware, either by recognition of the pejorative connotations of the term, and/or by renaming the entry to a value-neutral term, again without citing reliable sources. I've searched. I can find no reliable source documenting a pejorative connotation to "adware", but nor can I find a reliable source for Ubuntu being uncontentiously "adware", I suspect (in light of Talk:Ubuntu (operating system) feedback) because the term indeed has a negative connotation.
That's all by the book, but 1) the resulting encyclopedia is not self-consistent and 2) the resulting encyclopedia is less valuable, because Ubuntu (operating system) is forced to link to a generic entry on advertising, rather than directing the user to an article that is more specific to the type of advertising under discussion. The conservative interpretation of WP:SOURCE means that one article's "innocent until proven guilty" is another article's "guilty until proven innocent". In the Ubuntu entry, "adware" is pejorative until proven otherwise. In the Adware entry, "adware" is non-pejorative until proven otherwise. Mainly because commercial sources can't be bothered writing about these things (there's no advertising money in it for them), there are few or no sources available to document either position.
How widespread is this problem? Is there a good, generally-applicable resolution to it? (I'm back on WP after many years of low activity. It's changed a lot. I post this to present a potential policy problem and listen to the feedback. If I seem to be arguing for any particular solution above, I'm not. If there's one thing I've learned since I've come back it's that almost everyone assumes bad faith now. So please let it be known I'm just raising the issue for discussion.)-- Russell E ( talk) 13:21, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
I can't claim that in diffrent place so I will do this here, in place that I use everyday - Wikipedia. You Americans so desperately want to proof to rest of the world, that you are so unique, that you need to have everything trully yours. Moreover you try to impose those idiotism to the rest of the world. Its long time since I've noticed, that date format on Wiki is changet into MDY. Why, I'm asking? First days pass, after we count some number of days, we reach month and after few months, we have year. Why are you try to change that and force rest of the world to accept that? It's the same with all other aspects of life - weight, measures, speed and so on. Even if you use common known gallons, it must be US gallon, a bit diffrent. same with other units. I'm waiting, when you start to drive on middle of road one way and outside - opposide way. Just to be diffrent. What I'm talking about! What language I'm use? You still understand me? Or I'm speaking complitly diffrent language, some English. You of course using American. Something fall this atumn and so on... Adam 85.164.48.210 ( talk) 20:32, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Adam 85.164.48.210 ( talk) 20:19, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I have opened a Request for Comment regarding WP:NC-TW, which was part of the policy regarding naming conventions related to Taiwan, and Republic of China, but since been removed and marked inactive. There is no current policy placed in place of WP:NC-TW, so the request for comment seeks a replacement for it. - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 06:45, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
As a doctor of medicine, and in my work as a senior surgeon, I find that I have an increasing number of what have been termed 'e-patients'. These are internet savvy patients who are empowered by their internet searches to ask for 'shared decision making' when in consultation with a healthcare professional. In other words, the age of Doctors as Deities is past. They are no longer trusted to always know best in matters of medical care. Patients need advice as to how to sort the good from the bad when doing an online search of their medical condition.
Wikipedia is increasingly seen by medical professionals as a reliable, up to date and well considered and properly referenced source of such information.
My proposal:
Can Wikipedia allow some of its pages to have a "seal or stamp of approval' from recognised authorities in particular fields? The BMA and AMA (medical associations of UK and USA) could be asked to approve (or not) articles pertaining to medical matters eg tonsillitis. The BOA and AAOS (orthopaedic associations of UK and USA) could do the same for Orthopaedic articles eg on arthritis. The BTS and OTA (trauma associations of UK and USA) could do the same for Trauma articles eg on fractures.
I have read the 5 pillars that support Wikipedia and do not think my proposal weakens any one of them.
The freedom for anyone to edit a page has always been Wikipedia's greatest strength but also its Achilles heel. The lack of responsibility for anything that is written by any single person is the fundamental reason for Wikipedia's (unfair) reputation for being an unreliable source when using it to research a topic. My proposal would reverse that and would give Wikipedia official recognition as the World's Premier Encyclopaedia.
An Alexandrian library for the 21st Century, if you prefer!
Thank you. Kevin Newman Consultant Trauma Surgeon in UK — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kevinnewmanortho ( talk • contribs) 11:02, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Said organizations are free to link to the permanent URL of an approved version from their own pages. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 11:32, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
This is not a bad idea, but I doubt that they would want to do it. As soon as they put their stamp of approval on the article, someone will change it, and who knows what the resulting article will say. The high-traffic articles frequently see several changes per day.
On the other hand, we are looking for ways to do better. There is a program in the works to encourage collaboration with outside medical groups. You can read about it at meta:Wikimedia Medicine (note: that's a sister website, so you have to put in your username and password again). You might also contact User:Jmh649 or User:Bluerasberry about your ideas. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 22:58, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
It is a reasonable idea. However, as others have pointed out, this could potentially limit further editing of an "approved" article. Third party organizations are most welcome to copy Wikipedia's text and display it on their own websites as an "approved" version, provided that they display and conform to the CC-BY-SA license. Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:30, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Wow, I didn't think my proposal would merit such interesting debate! Medical organisations are notoriously conservative and suspicious of new ways of disseminating information but have finally dipped their toes into apps and other internet technologies. I agree that Medicine itself has backed some ridiculous treatments over the centuries (lobotomy was mentioned) but in the 21st century the emphasis is very much peer-reviewed acceptance of what may be true. Wikipedia and its new offspring WikiMedicine and WikiSurgery will complement the current medical literature and enhance the public's understanding of what are gigantic subjects. I do not see my request as being prescriptive for a patient's illness or condition but merely informative and up to date. We have a crude rule of thumb in Medicine and Surgery when considering how to advise patients as to the best treatment options: "what would a reasonable body of (professional) men and women do?" This allows for differences of opinion whilst giving the patient some form of choice. There is rarely one correct or best option when giving medical advice as treatment is based on the patient's other co-morbidities, their expectations, their lifestyles, their beliefs and also their physician's experience and skill set. Delivering the best Medical Care is thus a mixture of Art and Science with a little luck thrown in for good measure. By increasing their knowledge base patients can be empowered to receive the best treatment within the many limitations of their particular healthcare systems.
Kevinnewmanortho (
talk) 16:00, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm sympathetic to the goal of the proposer, but think it should be enabled in a slightly different form than proposed. My suggestion would solve the problem of an article subject to change. While it has been noted that a reviewing organization can provide a link (at their site) to the permanent url of the reviewed version, that doesn't easily achieve the goal of providing that view to readers of Wikipedia.
I suggest flipping the option around:
Suppose, for example, that the AMA reviews a particular version of the article on arthritis, and deems it acceptable. Suppose for example, that they like Arthritis 6 November 2012.
What we could do is add a hatnote saying something like:
For a version of this article approved by the AMA see Arthritis 6 November 2012
There would obviously be some bureaucracy involved in getting this started—identifying who at the AMA has the authority to make such a pronouncement, and getting assurances that they would update their reviews on a reasonable time frame (annual or biannual), but this would allow viewers to read the latest version, as well as a version that has been vetted by an official body.
If this took off, we might design a custom diff view, so that people could see differences between the latest version and the vetted version.
I think this has potential.-- SPhilbrick (Talk) 16:14, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
There are a lot of good ideas here. I'm struck by the all-or-nothing views of having the "approved page" appearing on- or off-Wikipedia. Certainly something could be done with "semi-approved" pages "sort of on-Wikipedia." To start off, imagine the following scenarios, the 1st of which could be done NOW, without any real formal approval.
1. The Wikistan Medical Association gets a copy of the freely licensed Mediawiki software and puts it on its own computers. It copies Wikipedia pages, edits them to meet its own standards, with its own standards of who can edit the articles, and links to Wikipedia in the external links section. The resulting articles would be licensed CC-BY-SA and would likely meet the standards of WP:RS, thus this material could be copied back into Wikipedia articles. Perfectly possible right now.
2. The Wikimedia Foundation reaches out to various expert organizations. It helps them start up the Mediawiki software and will link automatically to articles copied to and approved by the new ExpertWiki, possibly in the left hand column right above the different language versions of Wikipedia. The expert group agrees to maintain a given set of standards and license all its articles CC-BY-SA so that, if Wikipedians want, the material can be copied back to Wikipedia. The WMF would need to set up an outreach program and provide the set-up programming, which is a WMF decision, but not one that would be very expensive or out-of-line with its current stated goals.
3.The WMF could do the above on it's own servers, providing technical help all along the line, easy access to images on Commons, toolserver and the like, treating the set of editors from the approving groups as a Wikimedia chapter or thematic group. Why not? Smallbones( smalltalk) 01:28, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Disputed statement ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
I was wondering whether there is, or whether there should be, a policy of when a person's race is mentioned in articles, bio or otherwise. I recently began an RFC here [ [3]], and please feel free to contribute. But it started me thinking about this. I've done some searching on Wikipedia and best as I can tell this appears to dealt with on a case-by-case basis. However, I'm wondering if some basic criteria could not be established. As an example of race being dealt with in context, the first sentence of the lede of the Obama article has always referred to Obama as "a US Senator", "US President", etc. Barak Obama's race was always referenced in the context of his being either "the first" or "the only" US Senator or President. It would have been unacceptable to have had the first sentence of the lede say "Barak Obama is an African-American Senator" or now 'Barak Obama is the African-American President of the United States". But why do we do this? Is this policy?
In the case of the RFC, the article Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese, I couldn't see why the perpetrator's race is mentioned as the article indicates no racial aspect to the crime. The victim's race is mentions only as part of a detailed background, but the race of the perpetrator is included with no additional background detail other than his job. My concern is not for how the perpetrator is portrayed, but, to be perfectly blunt, is it racism to point out the race, without justifying context, of someone associated with a despicable act?
Bottom line, do we have any written criteria on Wikipedia to use as a guide for when race, religion etc. should be mentioned? Then, if we don't, should we? BashBrannigan ( talk) 18:40, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
I always link to the relevant policy or guideline in the edit summary when I revert an article edit. Is this recommended anywhere in a guideline? If not, should it be? -- Anthonyhcole ( talk) 09:07, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
I was recently involved in a dispute resolution were one of the involved members views (I am not referring to myself) appeared to be largely ignored in the final decision because he was away for a few days and unable to contribute to it. Other editors may also have misrepresented his views leading to a strange final decision and subsequent claims he was in agreement to this day. I wonder if there should be formal sections in the DRN in which proposed versions of the article being discussed are inserted, and each member then enters the degree which they agree with each of them? This will provide a fair indication to the volunteer which version everyone is consenting to.
The final decision of course is the volunteers since he/she has to decide not only on consensus but on the quality of the arguments, the history of how they came about, the objections of those who disagree, and existing documentation in the project namespace. but this would provide a quasi-democratic, transparent, formal framework on which to arrive at a decision which does not seem to be the case at present. -- Andromedean ( talk) 10:05, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi All,
Over at Australian Cattle Dog, an editor keeps trying to use "Note" references to inject material that might be otherwise viewed as inappropriate in the article. Is there an article published somewhere which might tell me what is the intended use for the "Note" reference field? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Ebikeguy ( talk) 23:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
The List of unsolved problems in physics article seems to have inbound links from many of the problems that it lists; where these links exist, they are as large margin-floating grey boxes with magazine-style pull quotes (eg. on the Theory of everything article we have a grey pullquote box of "Is string theory, superstring theory, or M-theory, or some other variant on this theme, a step on the road to a "theory of everything", or just a blind alley?"). Is this appropriate? It seems a bit overdramatic, when other lists are just mentioned quietly in the "See also" sections. -- McGeddon ( talk) 17:49, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
I recently reverted this reference [4] in the Vitamin C megadosage article on the grounds that it contravened WP:CIRCULAR. My edit was then reverted with the following statement: Not a circular reference at all. These sources explicitly back the statement made. [5] A comment was also added to my talk page. [6] I would therefore welcome some thoughts/advice on the correct interpretation of WP:CIRCULAR as a means of determining who is correct here. Thanks in advance. Vitaminman ( talk) 16:39, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Just stumbled over this AN thread. Wouldn't it be possible to protect ourselves at least to some extent against such hoaxes by using legal action against someone who demonstrably knows that they are posting counterfactual info? Or, I'm not sure, are hoaxes as a systemic problem on the backburner? -- 87.78.52.67 ( talk) 01:49, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Closed
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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. I propose that much stricter rules be applied to entries referring to living people. I'd go as far as proposing that no entry should be allowed to be about someone unless that person has been dead for at least 10 years. Similarly, companies should only get a page when they've been in business for 10 years. This would keep the platform free from parasitic vanity, promotion, marketing etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.77.19.171 ( talk) 09:17, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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Recently I just read Wikipedia:Handling trivia, and I found quite contradictory ideas. In one way it says "it is not reasonable to disallow all information that some editors feel is unimportant, because that information could be important to some readers.", while in another way it identifies some of the examples as "unimportant". I think this is not made clear throughout the article(For example, it says"Alan Smithee's favorite color is yellow" is not important enough to mention, but what will happen if"some readers" in "it is not reasonable...ome readers." includes someone doing research about people's favorite color?). Are there, if any, useful and acceptable(don't need to be absolutely decisive) ways of judging (e.g. if the thing of this article does not exist, what will happen to the item, picture included?) whether some item is important or not?-- Inspector ( talk) 08:12, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Editorial judgment. There's no escaping it. And then when other editors' judgment differs, you discuss it. Reliable sources are obviously the minimum starting point (if it isn't verifiable, it doesn't go in regardless), but you could write completely trivial articles even limiting yourself to facts that multiple secondary sources report: "Bill Clinton is an American who likes McDonald's. He had a dog named Buddy and owned a Mustang convertible." And you could omit some of the most significant facts about a subject by limiting yourself to secondary sources, such as the population of a community reported in a census. There are no rules we can invent that will prevent us from having to read the materials and understand the subject to decide what is relevant and encyclopedic and what is not. postdlf ( talk) 02:26, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
It has come to my attention that there may be an concerted effort by some to edit any articles that look unfavorably upon the Israeli side of the conflict with the Palestinians and replace them with pro-Israeli propaganda. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-x2DFnGI9Ac )Is this true ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DarkKnight49 ( talk • contribs) 19:13, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
This is a rather unusual notification, but because it directly involves a conundrum surrounding the question of the scope of WP:BLP1E and how much leeway it can allow closing admins in AfDs that is now at the heart of a series of a DRV and three AfD's that seem to be spiraling in not such a good direction and outside observation and input by uninvolved admins and experienced users may be very beneficial. The current situation begins with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jill Kelley, in spite of 28 Keep votes, vs 4 Delete votes (including the nominator) and 5 Redirects, the closing admin decided to delete on the grounds of WP:BLP1E. This then was appealed (by me) at DRV and is now ongoing at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 November 21#Jill Kelley. In the course of other articles' names being mentioned in the DRV, users have then used that to head for three other articles, so far, nominating them for deletion also on the grounds of WP:BLP1E, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Linda Tripp, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eunice Penix, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Natalie Khawam with all three of these being nominated only because someone had mentioned their existence in the Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 November 21#Jill Kelley DRV or related discussions. This is an unhealthy situation that could spiral out of control, with editors basically divided into pro and anti factions as regards the application or not of WP:BLP1E without considering the content of subject matter. Something is not right, and something needs to be done, before further chaos and disruption occurs. Thank you, IZAK ( talk) 20:10, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
So Niteshift, I am not sure what is driving you right now, beyond violating WP:POINT and WP:DONOTDISRUPT and WP:IDONTLIKEIT for issues that have nothing to do with your unknown reasons in keeping the Jill Keely and Natalie Khawam topics off WP? Who are you protecting and what is your agenda? And forget what I am smoking, that is just a gratuitous insult and a red herring that violates WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF. Thanks, IZAK ( talk) 20:52, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
I have reverted an edit (see here) at Opal card as it was:
However that website has a "Copyright and Disclaimer" here'
[12]' that says "This material is copyright but may be reproduced without formal permission or charge for personal, in-house or non-commercial use."so it seem that we may use it, as Wikipedia is 'non-commercial'.
• Does this type of statement suit Wikipedia's copyright© policy? -
220
of
Borg 08:41, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
I am currently putting together an FAQ page for an article related to white supremacism, and am looking in particular for discussions which have established the reliability of the Anti-Defamation League, Southern Poverty Law Center, and similar organizations with respect to the issue of classifying organizations as white supremacist. If we don't have anything on record quite that specific, I'll settle for whatever is closest. Thanks! Evanh2008 ( talk| contribs) 02:02, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Recently, I had to move an article about a song because it had the wrong title - it's called "Take You There" (the Donnie Klang one, not the Sean Kingston one), and someone had created it as "Take Me There." Since I'd already turned it into a redirect to Donnie Klang, I fixed the double-redirect created by the move, and then promptly tagged it for R3; Amatulic deleted it 13 minutes later. But that got me thinking about times I'd seen admins move pages without leaving redirects, and having recently successfully requested the Rollbacker permission, I wondered if there was a way that I could request this right, too. It turns out that, apart from admins, 'crats, and stewards, it's only extended to bots and global rollbackers, and it can't be requested. This surprised me mostly because we allow people to request all sorts of far more sensitive permissions, such as Edit Filter Manager and Account Creator (both of which could be used to cause temporary, but major, disruption to Wikipedia - picture a lockout of all edits, or simultaneous swarms of 20 sockpuppets to every major article on a sensitive topic), so I figured there'd be some way to obtain this flag, even if it had some heavy restrictions on who can get it.
I'm stopping short of outright proposing that we make suppressredirect available at RFR, but I was wondering if some more senior editors could explain the reasoning behind it not being there in the first place. The way I see it, it isn't a particularly dangerous right to give out, especially since you can always just remove it from editors who abuse it (the warnings about misusing rollback have scared me so much that I still haven't even used it!). There's also a huge difference between making a right requestable and granting it frequently - I was manually confirmed because I was on RCP and AIV had been semi-protected, and, since October 1st, that flag has been requested 134 times, and has only been given out to four editors, myself included.
So, as I said, not a proposal yet, just a question about why the status quo is what it is. — Francophonie&Androphilie ( Je vous invite à me parler) 04:32, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Are images supposed to be ineligible for copyright in the United States? If that's the case, why does the WP:NFC say that anything copyrighted in the original source country may also be copyrighted in the United States per URAA? -- George Ho ( talk) 20:34, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
I know Wikipedia's official stance at the moment is that it won't run ads. But given Wikipedia's popularity, it has the potential to generate a lot of revenue. As such, I have two questions:
However, there are two issues to this approach: 1) there is no transparency unless the script author shares the PayPal account information with the WMF, and 2) Wikipedia can get in trouble if something goes wrong (e.g., if the user breaks the ad network's service agreement).
So my second question is: is there any policy against creating an ad placement user script?
Just curious. -- Ixfd64 ( talk) 06:20, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reviewing ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Commons categories ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
When is it appropriate (and when is it inappropriate) to link to an essay on policy and guideline pages... are their limitations, and if so what are they? Blueboar ( talk) 15:53, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Anyone? Blueboar ( talk) 02:42, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
This part of articles is out of hand. Many of the links have no direct relation to the article, while others are simply not notable to the article. It is also constantly abused by advertisers or people trying to promote an idea or topic. It is too much to fix. Why do these sections even exist? Shouldn't it just be for synonyms? I haven't actually read the guideline or policy on this. Sorry if this is in the wrong section. 198.151.130.65 ( talk) 11:40, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
There is also a similar problem with "External links". 198.151.130.65 ( talk) 11:42, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the place to ask but... Is there any way for editors to be alerted when a page is added to a given category (something like a watchlist... but pegged to the category and not the page)? Blueboar ( talk) 14:08, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
The article under question was this. It was first proposed for PROD by me, when the prod was removed, stating that an AfD must be followed. Then I posted it for AfD, during which time a CSD template was added and then removed because the article was under AfD. Finally the AfD closed as no consensus with no prejudice towards speedy deletion because of no quorum.
After the AfD remained inconclusive, I posted the article for CSD when it was removed stating contest speedy deletion as indicating importance/significance ("prominent Islamic scholar") - please start another AfD discussion in a few months if you think this should be deleted.
My question is - 1) Is removing the CSD template allowed under 'contesting' it? [If so, then it looks surreptitiously like PROD] 2) In your opinion, does the article look notable enough to stand? TheOriginalSoni ( talk) 15:51, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
Everything related to global warming takes it as fact. Isn't this bias? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.255.98.244 ( talk) 20:37, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
"When writing articles, there may be cases where making some assumptions is necessary to get through a topic. For example, in writing about evolution, it is not helpful to hash out the creation-evolution controversy on every page. There are virtually no topics that could proceed without making some assumptions that someone would find controversial. This is true not only in evolutionary biology, but also in philosophy, history, physics, etc. It is difficult to draw up a rule, but the following principle may help: there is probably not a good reason to discuss some assumption on a given page, if that assumption is best discussed in depth on some other page. A brief, unobtrusive pointer might be appropriate, however."
Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History#inclusion of prehistoric terms in history of country templates and vice versa. -- Joy [shallot] ( talk) 10:33, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
I have started a RFC regarding allowing bureaucrats to remove the bureaucrat bit, and regarding the regranting of the bureaucrat bit (to bring it into line with the recently-passed policies for administrators). Please see Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats#2012 bureaucrats RFC. -- Rs chen 7754 01:48, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Hello,
I think Wikipedia is a wonderful resource and I'm very disappointed to find that it uses interlocking signs for male and female to indicate that an article has to do with sexuality. I don't expect Wikipedia to be behind the times or exclusionary and I hope this is just an oversight that will be corrected very soon.
Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.168.89.245 ( talk) 02:05, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Dear editors,
Many of you are well aware of the convenience in using web citation as a source. And sometimes, official information are only available online as the only source. But the main problem of citing them is that they tend to disappear within a few years, sometimes even in months. Some articles rely heavily on citing official websites, so when the source links slowly go dead, we're facing a problem of not only link rot but an article rot as well. The current template/tools do not support/suggest archiving or using permalinks, so most editors neglect to archive them. Most of the editors are vigilant on an article only around the time of its creation, or around when it is still a hot topic, but by the time the link and the article rot, the source material will no longer be available, and most editors will no longer care.
I've come across this problem while I was working on an old film's article. It had been so well-sourced with official materials, which means it had been very reliable until the movie distributors decided to stop hosting the information, as it no longer affect their publicity or sales. First-party sources like official websites of products or movies only exist as long as they serve the distributors' sales or publicity. So now we are busy finding and relocating the information, but by now the film is 13 years old, and it was so hard to find any reliable substitute, if at all. And we only have two editors there.
The suggestion to this has already been proposed. Per
Wikipedia:Link rot, we are suggested that we use a web archive like
http://www.webcitation.org to provide us permalinks. But I find that this is not enough. Since the current templates do not support or suggest adding archive date nor archive URL (see below), most editors will take it as the only information required in the blank field is enough. As a result, most articles citing websites have only the URLs and the site themselves as sources, and when they go down, your citation and the reliability of the article with it.
source | template (required) |
common usage | Example 1 article text |
Example 2 article text |
---|---|---|---|---|
website | {{
cite web}} title url |
{{cite web | last = | first = | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = | work = | publisher = | date = | url = | format = | doi = | accessdate = }} |
{{cite web | last = Spiegel | first = Rachel | title = Research: Thalido... | url=http://science-educat... | accessdate = 30 April 2006 }} Spiegel, Rachel. "Research in the News: Thalidomide". Retrieved 30 April 2006. {{cite web | title = | url = | date = | accessdate = }} (Write date as one of the formats shown at
MOS:DATE; e.g. |
{{cite web | last = Hansen | first = James E. | authorlink = James E. Hansen | last2 = Ruedy | first2 = R. | last3 = Sato | first3 = M. | last4 = Lo | first4 = K. | title = GISS Surface Temperature An... | work = | publisher = [[Goddard Institute for... | date = December 15, 2005 | url = http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis... | format = | doi = | accessdate = September 28, 2006 }} Hansen, James E.; Ruedy, R.; Sato, M.; Lo, K. (December 15, 2005). "GISS Surface Temperature Analysis Global Temperature Trends: 2005 Summation". NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Retrieved September 28, 2006. |
{{
Citation}} title url |
{{Citation | last = | first = | author-link = | last2 = | first2 = | author2-link = | title = | date = | year = | url = | accessdate = }} |
{{Citation | last = Spiegel | first = Rachel | title = Research: Thalido... | url=http://science-educat... | accessdate = 30 April 2006 }} Spiegel, Rachel, Research in the News: Thalidomide, retrieved 30 April 2006 |
{{Citation | last1 = Hansen | first1 = James E. | author1-link = James Hansen | last2 = Ruedy | first2 = R. | last3 = Sato | first3 = M. | last4 = Lo | first4 = K. | title = GISS Surface Temperature An... | publisher = [[Goddard Institute for ... | date = December 15, 2005 | url = http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis... | accessdate = September 28, 2006 }} Hansen, James E.; Ruedy, R.; Sato, M.; Lo, K. (December 15, 2005), GISS Surface Temperature Analysis Global Temperature Trends: 2005 Summation, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, retrieved September 28, 2006 |
Not only that, old editors usually use a gadget like Provelt to make citing sources easier. And of course, Provelt follows the citation template and do not provide a box or put archive URLs or archive date.
So to encourage the use of lasting sources and to give an article highest longevity, I suggest we add
|archiveurl= |archivedate= |deadurl=
to the template, and program Provelt to follow the template accordingly. I must emphasis that Provelt needs to be changed as well, as most editors tend to use the easier method. And the Policy and Guidelines should probably suggest archiving first-party sources too. This should fix the problem of link rot and article rot in the long run.
I would like to hear some opinions and suggestions. Anything is appreciated. Anthonydraco ( talk) 10:10, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
Executive summary:
Full rationale:
I am seeing a trend of article creation for things that simply have not occurred yet, such as musician's tours, annual events, etc. These eventually go to AfD, but that invariably becomes a mess. I'm hoping that this is something that has been seen enough in the community to preclude the need to cite examples, but please let me know if I need to start linking AfDs as supporting evidence, and I will.
Now, there is a reasonable expectation of these events happening, but the policies that should preclude article creation have holes in them that need to be plugged in relation to this issue:
There are other policies and guidelines that can be cited in some individual cases (generally CRIME, related to ongoing cases), but invariably, when these things go to AfD, there are a slew of ILIKEIT keep votes with no policy support for said votes (who also tend to abuse the noms and the delete voters). The result is a lot of wasted time on what should be open and shut cases, because the ILIKEIT votes (not policy based) also preclude NAC based on deletes (which are policy-based) because the AfD then becomes "controversial." I'd also note that Wikinews has been eroded by this type of editing, and that has been noticed higher up, to the point of potential closure of that project.
Therefore, there appears to be an issue that is not only wasting editors' time, but is adversely affecting a sister project. Very succinctly, I'd like to see a policy that thoroughly precludes writing about events prior to their occurrence. A third-party source cannot reliably report on an event unless it has happened, and we already disallow speculation in articles as-is. In reality, what is happening is OR based on cobbling information together. I think it is one of those things where fans build their "fan-ness" by doing things like this ("Well, I was the one who created the tour/event article on Wikipedia, so can i have a backstage pass to your next show?")
I'm not sure what to call this new policy, but we pretty much need something with teeth to allow these types of articles to be speedied if possible, and at least to have something better at AfD to back up NAC policy-based closures in the face of ILIKEIT votes (I have an issue with "controversy" in voting being based in "X is notable just because") just so these types of articles aren't diverting admin attention.
From a policy perspective, I would indicate the following items as a starting point:
In the end, I think a new policy could address several outstanding issues across Wikipedia and contribute to a higher quality of content. MSJapan ( talk) 01:28, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
A speedy delete is a terrible idea. A not-so-terrible idea is to create some sub-policy pages for crystal ball. So, have a crystal ball page for music tours, a crystal ball page for elections, sports events, etc. That would give something more relevant and specific to cite in these deletion discussion when they happen. Ego White Tray ( talk) 13:32, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Why are we encouraging people to donate to the Wikimedia Foundation by means of the predatory Amazon.com, the most effective destroyer of small booksellers on the planet? This makes me sick to my stomach, to see us helping them profit in order to garner some more donations. We might as well prostitute ourselves to Wal-Mart! I am not sure I can continue to participate in this project if we are to abandon all trace of ethics this way. -- Orange Mike | Talk 16:17, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
( edit conflict) I don't understand what ethics has do to with small booksellers. Make no mistake, I love small booksellers, but what's unethical in having online book sellers? I find them highly ethical -I can buy stuff on Amazon I could never find here around in Italy. -- Cyclopia talk 16:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
I recently posted a link on my Facebook page about "take your child to a bookstore day", and got a three paragraph screed from an opinionated friend who didn't like the promotion of bookstores to the exclusion of libraries, particularly given what she saw as the prohibitive cost of new books for many struggling families. I'm sure someone in turn could find something to criticize about promoting libraries. You should never be surprised when your pet issue isn't someone else's. postdlf ( talk) 18:52, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Apparently I am alone in thinking that Wikipedians would be literate enough to understand that there is a difference between booksellers as vital sources of diverse information and opinions to the world, and the makers of tallow candles or laundromats. Apparently you all think it's okay that Amazon is the sole surviving source of books for enormous swaths of this planet, and you see no value in actual physical bookshops whose owners serve as sources of suggestions, dissent, criticism and spontaneity to would-be readers. I seem to be alone (outside of most of the publishing industry across the world) in understanding the danger of allowing a single gigantic company to monopolize the flow of books to a majority of the human race. Heil Bezos! I will shut up. (I also apologize for having been stupidly honest enough to mention that I work [for sub-fastfood wages, I might add, after 34 years in the trade] for what's left of an independent bookshop that refuses to be a slave or tributary of Amazon's paying extortionary tolls: I thought it was a good thing to disclose potential COI, but it has brought me nothing but slander and attacks for my folly.) -- Orange Mike | Talk 19:00, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
It has also been brought to my attention that Amazon has invested an undisclosed sum of money in Wikia, Jimbo Wales' for-profit wiki operation. Readers may form their own conclusions. -- Orange Mike | Talk 20:29, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
You are a part of a dying industry, and while I empathise with your personal loss and nostalgia, I cannot find a cause to object to the change. I have not walked to a bookstore in years, and purchased less than a half-dozen books made of dead trees in as many years. Walking to a bookstore is an eminently lesser alternatives than being able to purchase and read a book in minutes when I need it on my electronic devices.
You regret the time that there was a thriving business of book printing, distribution, storage and sale. I celebrate their obsolescence since it means I can now get more books, faster, and in a more convenient format. — Coren (talk) 23:31, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
... on Jimbo's talk page. (Note that there was an announcement of another major Amazon investment in Wikia on 30 November 2012.) Andreas JN 466 07:21, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
If an electronic-only publication is cited as a secondary source, how is it decided whether or not it should be taken seriously as a reliable source? There's definitely a privileging of print sources over electronic when it comes to reviewers questioning references; how do I support the source? Alexa rankings? Longevity? Business capital behind it? I need some pointers here. It's unusual for a book to be questioned as a reliable source, apparently, but blogs/emagazines aren't given the benefit of the doubt if the reviewer hasn't heard of them before. Guidelines? OttawaAC ( talk) 03:28, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
While I don't want to get this discussion sidetracked, I do see sites like io9 that call themselves a blog, but they do have editors and some sort of review where the content does get vetted. I have seen some knee jerk reactions where this particular source is yanked out of articles simply because it is considered a blog... and I don't think it necessarily is the same as a solo website that is just one person musing, sort of like the Chaos Manor Blog by Jerry Pournelle. This is an issue that needs a little more work as increasingly there are some sources of information like io9 that have some useful information that could be put into some articles but some overly zealous editors are removing these links and declaring them as unreliable sources purely because of the assumption that a blog is automatically unreliable. I do think that something which has editorial review should be at least considered for reliability. On the other hand, sources like examiner.com can appear to look like a reliable source, but extensive discussion (and not just that one link) would suggest otherwise.
I even got into a couple discussions a while ago about "official blogs" that are sometimes done by companies who try to interact with their fans/customers a little more closely. An example of this is the Telsa Motors blog that arguably could be called a series of more casually written press released, as they do represent official communications from the company. Admittedly they are primary sources that need to be used judiciously, but to throw them out as unreliable and that they can't be used in article development is contrary to policy as well.
This isn't as cut and dried as you would think, where your first reaction on a site may not necessarily be correct. There definitely is a blurring of what would normally be considered a reliable source, and is a sort of continuum of reliability from flat out unreliable sources to something that would generally be considered rock solid reliable such as an article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. I would call io9 in this context more reliable than a personal blog and certainly examiner.com, but less reliable than the LA Times or the Washington Post and those less reliable than Science, Nature, or the New England Journal of Medicine.
As for where to weigh the sources and their quality, raise the issue on the talk page of the respective article you are editing. Usually there are some people who do have a clue about the industry the topic is related to (for a person, a product, or a company especially) and is best resolved on that talk page when possible. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard should, in my own opinion, be reserved for those situations where the talk page simply doesn't resolve the issue and consensus isn't achieved. -- Robert Horning ( talk) 00:36, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Hello all, There is a discussion at ANI about the use of primary sources and birth dates. One user had added a bunch of birth dates, sourced to a reliable primary source. That is against our BLP policy WP:BLPPRIMARY which specifically says
"Do not use public records that include personal details, such as date of birth, home value, traffic citations, vehicle registrations, and home or business addresses."
(Emphasis added)
Clearly the intent is to protect privacy, but given that dates of birth are common elements in most paper encyclopedias, this seems a bit restrictive. I'm hoping to either A) get a deeper appreciation for the justification of this or B) get consenosus to remove "date of birth" from that element of BLPPRIMARY. I'll post a link to this discussion on the BLP talk page. Hobit ( talk) 02:52, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
To go back to the BLP policy language, I note that it says about primary sources generally to use them with caution, but says not to use "public records" at all, a mere subset of primary sources. Do you have a problem with a restriction on public records, and if so, which public records do you think we should use and why? Or do you think we are too restrictive with primary sources as a whole? postdlf ( talk) 16:41, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Note that the material quoted above is relates only to the use of primary sources for birth dates. This is not the only guidance about birth dates in WP:BLP. It also states (in part): "Wikipedia includes full names and dates of birth that have been widely published by reliable sources, or by sources linked to the subject such that it may reasonably be inferred that the subject does not object. If the subject complains about the inclusion of the date of birth, or the person is borderline notable, err on the side of caution and simply list the year". In other words, we should not be adding dates of birth at all, unless they are widely reported (or published by the subject themselves), and only then if the person is notable (eg do not put dates of birth for spouses, etc). I suggest people who do not understand the rationale for this read WP:BLP in full. Delicious carbuncle ( talk) 17:22, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
"date of birth" "identity theft"
. I think the folks here claiming DOB is irrelevant to identity theft have a
WP:RANDY problem.
66.127.54.40 (
talk) 23:07, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Obviously leaving the DOB out of a WP biography won't stop an advanced persistent threat from getting the info, but that's not the idea. Locking your house when you go out won't even stop a doofus with a screwdriver, but that doesn't make it sensible to leave it unlocked. Having some friction in these places is a good thing, as it slows down the doofuses and gets them to turn their attention elsewhere. 66.127.54.40 ( talk) 07:59, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Commons categories ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
At present our policy on signatures in non-Latin characters is that editors with names in non-Latin character sets are "encouraged" to add Latin characters as a courtesy to other users. I really think that should be upgraded to a mandatory requirement. (Wild notions dept.: possibly even to the point where the signature settings would warn you if your signature doesn't contain at least one Latin word, but I'm sure somebody would find a reason to balk at that.)
Please note that I'm not suggesting that we ban non-Latin names. (That's a bad idea; see much previous discussion.) — Hex (❝?!❞) 21:13, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
If you need to address the user by name, then use cut and paste. If you need links to the person's userpages, then find the name in the page history.I do hope you're not paid to design software.
Do you really want to block people over this?That was implied by the word mandatory, which you saw fit to explain back to me. Honestly, are you this condescending to everybody? — Hex (❝?!❞) 17:10, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
There is a monthly contest (see Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links#DAB Challenge leaderboard) to see who can fix the most links to disambiguation pages. I would like to offer a small but meaningful cash prize to whoever wins next month's contest, and I would like to make sure that the community does not consider this to be a violation of any policies. I do not think that it should be considered "paid editing" because the prize would be based solely on the number of errors fixed, without seeking to promote the editing of any particular article, or imposing any particular point of view. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:58, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Given that there is no way in hell I would ever give my actual name and address to "some guy on Wikipedia" (which I would have to do in order to collect the cash prize).. I think I will pass. Blueboar ( talk) 00:11, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
I received a spam email advertising the services of this company: https://www.wiki-pr.com/ Apparently what they do is they charge companies money to create and maintain wikipedia pages about their companies Is there anything that can be done about this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.188.129.99 ( talk) 19:40, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
147.188.129.99 ( talk) 20:19, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
What is prompting me to start this policy discussion is an AfD over an article I just created, and the ongoing debate that I am having with the AfD proposer and myself. I also want to state here "for the record" that I am not trying to do forum shopping, and I expect that AfD will be evaluated and be dealt with as per policy and by intelligent people dealing with the situation in due course.
The issue I have is that the AfD proposer basically suggested that almost any article that is created on Wikipedia should be started in the User namespace until it is polished and "ready for prime time". I think that is not only a silly argument, but it is also contrary to established policy. That for some people new to Wikipedia it might be useful to have some mentors who can guide you through the process of creating a new Wikipedia article, I believe the AfC process can and ought to be an optional system, not something mandatory.
I'll also note that for 100% of the articles that I've started over the past 3-4 years, each and every one of them has been slapped with an AfD (most of them even PROD'd for a speedy delete). I have also had a 100% survival rate for all of those articles where the nomination for deletion was overturned and kept. That is a waste of not only my time but the admins and others who are participating in the AfD process. I don't start these articles until I know there are sufficient sources and otherwise I think they actually merit inclusion in Wikipedia.
All I'm asking is for a little bit of breathing room when starting a new article.... so I can actually put in the references I've found and to actually write the article. I don't think this should be happening in my user space, but if that is what the consensus of those who participate here on Wikipedia want... I'm willing to go through the steps to make that formal policy so that anything added to the main namespace which doesn't fit a B class article or better should be speedy deleted or userfied. That seems to be the standard I'm seeing here too. I'm not trying to be disruptive here, but should article creation in the main namespace be a thing of the past? -- Robert Horning ( talk) 22:41, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
To me, the problem here sounds like this analogy: "Every time I drive down Highway 1, there's traffic. I could take Highway 2, which would get me there in the same amount of time and drive the same distance, but the Highway 1 shouldn't have traffic so I should be able to use it." There are two solutions: 1 - Userfy to start, which honestly I cannot see why you are so averse to doing so. 2 - When you start the article as a stub, make sure you add 2 reliable sources to the article, so when someone patrols it, they see that the subject meets Wikipedia's inclusion criteria. If you have these sources, add them when you start. If you don't, userfy for a short while. Nothing is lost in the world by waiting a few days or hours before adding an article to mainspace. Angryapathy ( talk) 16:57, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
This is probably a little bit snarky, but "fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me." if you are tired of your usourced stub articles immediately getting hit with AfD tags, then either create the stubs in user space or dont save until you have appropriate sources. if you keep grabbing on to the boiling kettle without protective gear, you shouldnt expect NOT to get burned. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:45, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
As someone who is fairly active in AFD discussions, I do notice the change of perspective on this. Back when I started editing there was a lot more tolerance for stubs than there is now, and there are whole classes of articles for which there is little or no toleration for stubs. Articles on corporations is one of those, and certain types of biographies are another. In both cases, it seems to me, the problem is the same: the only real standard for notability is references, so an under-referenced article is take as prima facie evidence against notability. This is in contrast to, for example, athletes and politicians, for which there are straightforward standards which can be applied to the text of the article even if the material is uncited. Given the steady rain of promotional articles for businesses and products and musicians, this approach is somewhat understandable, but it would save a lot of grief if AFD nominators would do the few basic web searches which it is often enough apparent they didn't bother with. That said, I don't see how we're going to get away from this. It's not unreasonable to expect the basic research to be done by authors. But if we go this way we really need to spell out the expectation. Mangoe ( talk) 21:33, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
My frustration with AfD has been pretty clear for a while. I think that a culture has developed, where WP:BEFORE is not particularly well respected (particularly regarding stubs). Further, there are some articles, for example organisations and particularly some subsets of organisations, or articles regarding people, places and things where coverage is primarily in a foreign language, where an assumption of non-notability is carried too far. My particular area, schools, is a world of two opposites. While on one side high schools are considered automagically (spelling deliberate) notable, primary schools have an almost insurmountable bar to cross before they're considered notable (primarily because there are those who consider WP:OUTCOMES to be policy and read the sentence "Most elementary (primary) and middle schools that don't source a clear claim to notability are now getting merged or redirected in AfD" without registering the word "most" and/or the phrase "that don't source a clear claim to notability").
Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Middle_Harbour_Public_School_(2nd_nomination), sent to AfD together with an unprecedented ~200 other school-related articles, was completely farcical. A top ranked school educationally, and also the site of a road rule change that is now pervasive throughout Australia, and it was still considered not worthy enough, primarily by people with no interest whatsoever in schools.
How to fix it though? No idea. Sorry. Wish I was able to help. ˜ danjel [ talk | contribs ] 08:17, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
I feel sad that the guy that started this thread, gets every single article he creates taken to AFD. I am also very sad to hear that so many agree that articles should start in the namespace until they are "ready" for publication on Wikipedia (which is not at all policy and still doesn't stop the article from showing up on a Google seach by the way) but what bothers me the most about all of this is that there seems to be little input that the entire point of Wikipedia is collaboration. Articles should not be the product of a single editor. Not that they should be deleted for it, but that others should be willing to help contribute more. The more eyes and input on an article, the better it will be. We are allowed to create stub articles for the very reason that others can add information and build it to GA or FA standards. I feel this is about working together and this thread is something of symptom of Wikipedia growing ever more towards a few established editors in a number of areas. Work together and improve the project and the article and try to find a way to save things...if they can be. Sure we have a lot of promotional stuff to worry about, but somethings that are being pushed as promotion are notable in themselves so we don't just delete it as it makes it difficult to recreate it later.-- Amadscientist ( talk) 22:42, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I am currently working on and off on about a dozne new articles, some of them like "
Parliament Square, Edinburgh" (that was created this week) was created in situ without any earlier construction, others like
William Govan took much longer to create and were created in my sandpit before being copied to article space. For me it depends on the complexity of the subject and how many sources need to be summarised to fashion an article (horses for course). However even with simple stubs like the Square I never save the text to create an article in article space before creating a stub with cited reliable sources, so if an reader happens to find the page before any more edits take place it is still up a useful standard. Since the creation of the Govan article in February this year there have been a total of 8 different editors who have worked on it. In the case of the Square four editors in in three days. So perhaps stubs on notable topics can encourage more collaboration than fully formed articles (where I have noticed a tendency for some editors of such articles to exhibit ownership that can lead to less collaboration). --
PBS (
talk) 20:51, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Create a namespace that is unpublished and completely invisible. Only logged in users could see it. All new articles would start off in this invisible namespace. This is exactly the same thing as starting an article in userspace but it allows collaboration, which userfied articles don't allow. These new articles wouldn't need to be tagged or sent to AfD because they don't exist, they're invisible exactly like userfied articles. Another benefit would be that it would act just the autoconfirmed article creation trial { WP:ACTRIAL) because new users don't have the move right. New users wouldn't be able to publish these new articles (move them to main article space) until they are autoconfirmed. This would give them time to learn our policies. The WMF has been looking in to something like this for over a year as part of Page Curation and would likely allow WP:ACTRIAL to run in this fashion, at least for a limited time until it is proven. 64.40.54.49 ( talk) 15:20, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
"if something is completely invisible, how would anyone find it to collaborate, except by invitation?"The space would be searchable by logged in users. I specifically left out a lot of details so people could focus on the main idea. Many of the details have already been worked out over the last year. You can find many of them here. Do you feel the basic idea has merit in any shape or form? 64.40.54.49 ( talk) 17:16, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm semi-active at AFD and I don't see a lot of nominations of brand-new articles except where it looks wp:snow that it isn't wp::notable. What I DO see a lot of is medium-age articles where wp:notability-suitable sources exist but so far no editors have found or added them. After all, only a tiny fraction of editors have the duo of being willing and able to seek and incorporate wp:notability type sources for a particular article specifically for the purpose of showing wp:notability.North8000 ( talk) 14:55, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clementine (The Walking Dead) This AFD was started *16 minutes* after the article was created. It's not a CRYSTAL (the game the character is in is out), and far from BLP/COI issues. It was just not well sourced. The creating author added sources within a few hours, and I will note that, likely happenstance, the actress for the character had just won a major vidoe game industry award for her portrayal of that character. While I understand Robert Horning's frustration above but also the fact that that article in question was a huge target for COI/CRYSTAL problems even after sources were added, here's a case where the article is fine but otherwise lacking immediate sources after the first edit and thus nominated for deletion right away. That is a problem in terms of acting too fast. -- MASEM ( t) 14:38, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Just two points of what I said above that probably (my fault) have been misunderstood:
Hope it's clearer now. -- Cyclopia talk 16:04, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Image use policy has been moved to Wikipedia:Image use suggestions, and it's no longer marked as a policy. Edokter left a comment about it at WP:AN, to which I responded by beginning a discussion — it probably should have been somewhere else, but I didn't think of that at first. Please either join in the discussion there or move it to a more appropriate place and discuss there. Nyttend ( talk) 12:47, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
This issue was the latest in a series of disagreements which have shown up what a dire state the supporting policies and guidelines about images are.
At the moment we have:
Note also the existence of Wikipedia:Copyright, which isn't really about media.
As the main ones, the numbers in the first bracket are views/month. I believe the problem here is really the allocation of topics between them is arbitrary. I've worked in this area before, about six months ago, and there were clearly some disagreement like this one about what ought to be policy or a guideline or neither. There is also the issue of whether we're speaking to uploaders or editors. I think we'd do better to reorganise it like this:
Image upload policy If we take, for example, Wikipedia:Image use policy it has several sections about uploading that I think should be the new Wikipedia:Image upload policy: ss. Requirements; Rules of thumb; Copyright and licensing (User-created images, Free licenses, Public domain, Fair use images); Deleting images; Image titles and file names; Format; Privacy rights. It has some subsections that I feel should be included: Uploaded image size; Animated images; Watermarks, credits, and distortions. The section "Consideration of image download size" from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images would also be included, merging with "Format". These are all a) aimed at uploaders b) have either a legal or technical basis. They aren't advisory, they are firm rules (all rules have exceptions).
Image use guidelines Wikipedia:Image use guidelines would be everything advisory about the use of media. So, again, looking at Wikipedia:Image use policy I can see things which are aimed at the editor, not uploader; that are about getting the best out of images. They are about size, placement, context: Placement; Displayed image size; the first half of section "Content", before the subheading. It would also take in most of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images: How to place an image; Choosing images; Image preferences. The section "Making images available" should be removed, or rehoused. It's distinctly incongruous - I'm not sure anyone comes to this page when seeking help about finding images. Parts of it might be relevant to upload policy.
Conclusions The effect of all of this would be to make it easier to point someone to the right page for them; it would help remove redundant sections and duplications; it would ensure that policy in particular is kept as concise as possible; it would help each to be more understandable since at the moment they switch between types of reader and tone. I know there's going to be some inertia to achieve this, but I do think it's something that needs to happen - and any wrinkles ironed out after. I haven't mentioned above what the new "Image use policy" might look like; I attempted to remove from "Image use policy" those parts I thought should be a guideline (Section "Placement") but was reverted, as I recall on at least partly the basis that it should be policy (to my mind, it was at least, part of the wrong policy page). So the idea there is to look at the new "Image use guidelines" and work out what, if anything, should be policy.
Do you think I should draft versions of these pages, or am I barking up the wrong tree? Grandiose ( me, talk, contribs) 19:54, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Having drafted the relevant pages I've started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Image_policy_and_guideline about adopting the drafts. Grandiose ( me, talk, contribs) 23:20, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
I am hoping to start a discussion with this posting. I posted something like this at Wikipedia talk:Recent years before but that page seems to have little action...
I find the recent years articles to be too watered down for my liking. These pages used to contain list of important happenings which was interesting to read through and go to the individual articles. On the other hand I am aware these pages also stuffed with useless trivia. I do not like either extreme to be honest.
Currently, few people seem to be dictating the inclusion criteria through quick reverts. It seems like the very guideline mentioned is being enforced rather than referenced. Discussion seems secondary if at all relevant as visible on the talk page. Rollback is seldom used to revert new entries without a rationale effectively being treated like vandalism, this is in my view an abuse of rollback.
Inclusion criteria itself seems problematic as well - at least to me. Below are some examples of important events that I'd not dismiss as simple trivia
This matters because, recent years articles tend to stay in the top 100 most visited articles so these pages are our most viewed content and topics posted there will allow people to learn more about what had happened recently. This is what an Encyclopedia supposed to be about.
-- A Certain White Cat chi? 06:36, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Extended content
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Some incidents from
2012 in aviation
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Extended content
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Some incidents from
2012
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Proposal for removing prefixes "Islamic views on xyz" | ||
I have started a request move to remove the prefixes Attached with the Prophets in Islam to there Names as in Islam. Like Islamic views on Abraham → Ibrahim as it becomes difficult to search the topic. Please participate in the discussion at Talk:Page Thanks. -- Ibrahim ebi ( talk) 18:13, 14 December 2012 (UTC) |
This is a notice concerning an RfC concerning the access and handling of confidential information by arbcom members and oversighters. And also changes policy concerning the granting and retaining of the Oversight user-right. - jc37 11:36, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features) ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
There is currently an RfC on whether to formally adopt the draft feedback response guidelines as a Wikipedia guideline, input appreciated. Callanecc ( talk • contribs • logs) 04:41, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion to alter the WP:BURDEN section of the Verifiability policy found on its talk page here.-- Amadscientist ( talk) 01:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I hope this is the right place for this question. Just wondering, when an article is deleted (eg AfD/prod), what stops its creator (using the same account or another) from putting it back up with either the same name or a slightly different one (eg "Purple paperclips" vs "Paperclips coloured purple")? Cheers, 1292simon ( talk) 11:58, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
There is a long DYK for Christmas thread that is about posting a mention on the Main Page to honor the achievements of one editor. Any comments should be posted there. — Maile ( talk) 13:49, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
A proposal regarding the essay WP:MMANOT has been made suggesting that the essay be promoted to the level of guideline. Please feel free to look in at both the proposed guideline and the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mixed martial arts/MMA notability/Archive 8#Promotion from Essay to Guideline and contribute where appropriate. Hasteur ( talk) 18:15, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
I've written an article on a rather narrow subject: that of how to format references to sources that are part of a quotation used in a WP article. This topic doesn't come up too often, but there are several ways to do it. A user space version of this article is found at User:Brews ohare/Citations inside quotations.
An earlier version of this article placed directly in WP:Project namespace was criticized as having had too little input from other editors. The idea also was raised that such essays are inappropriate to namespace until they have several authors, or perhaps until they can demonstrate a lot of readership. These views can be found on the proposed article Talk page.
Discussion of these objections and of the article itself are invited on its Talk page. Brews ohare ( talk) 23:02, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
On the occasion of Wilhelm II, German Emperor: In German usually a dot is added to the Roman numeral, so he is written Wilhelm II. in German. I guess each language has its own conventions for this case, which is why I want to discuss whether it would make sense a) to write these names in the way usual in their mother tongues or b) to set up redirects in these ways? -- KnightMove ( talk) 17:04, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Please comment at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Meta-ness looking for a wider audience than I think may be regularly monitoring that talk page. Gaijin42 ( talk) 22:15, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Oversight/FAQ ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
I have come across a few articles that have had edit wars over words like colour/color. Many of these have the dialect tag for the article on the talk page but many editors don't see it or ignore it. I would just like to feel out opinions on whether it would be worth proposing that when the dialect has consensus then an edit notice is placed automatically somehow on the article if the dialect tag is on the talk page. At least two of these articles have had the same edit wars and discussions crop up every few weeks/months/years. This may save future editing time and discussions if all pages that have a consensus on the dialect had an edit notice placed at the top of the edit window. The template wording could also be changed to add "Consensus has decided on this dialect. If you wish to open discussion again on it then bring it up on the talk page. Until then expect your changes to be reverted." type thing-- Canoe1967 ( talk) 19:04, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
. It seems that others on one talk page don't like overbearing edit notices. Forget I even mentioned it. Revdelete or oversight this post as well in case others come up with my silly idea. (kidding)-- Canoe1967 ( talk) 17:36, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
As a result of some recent FFD/DRV issues that have spilled into a pending ArbCom case, I'm looking to get input on a change to the Files for Deletion process, specifically to add a required notification on talk pages of articles that use the affected image/media file, currently an optional step, as to garner more input for FFDs and avoid some of the issues involved. The discussion is at WT:FFD#Making article page notification mandatory. -- MASEM ( t) 16:57, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
Article titles are determined by the policy at WP:TITLE, which consists, at last count, of 70 pages of naming conventions along with the main page at WP:Article titles. In the past a favorite rationale for moving pages, such as moving Michelson-Morley experiment to Michelson–Morley experiment is to cite MOS, thinking that WP:TITLE specifies the letters to use, but MOS specifies the punctuation to use. The MOS consists of 71 pages, so if this was a valid argument, a total of 142 pages would be used to decide titles. To eliminate this, a new page called WP:Title punctuation has been proposed, which includes everything that is needed to deciding punctuation and accent marks without needing to refer to the 71 pages of the MOS. Apteva ( talk) 00:55, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Title punctuation ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
As we generally try to deny recognition to disruptive editors, it strikes me that we might want to set Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets and its children as hidden categories. It would further reduce the visibility of their actions to the outside world without losing any useful information for logged-in editors. — Hex (❝?!❞) 08:54, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
I am quoting from fb post:
WASHINGTON, DC -- As many people speculate on whether the "NYPD boots cop" story is propaganda, it is noteworthy that the US Government is stepping up its cyber propaganda. With new "Persona Management" software, a single agent can control 10 or more fake personas ("sockpuppets") to spread fake stories and images in order to manipulate public opinion. That same agent can leave pro-government comments or otherwise troll key areas on social media networks.
Critics will likely complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.
A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.
US GOVERNMENT STEPPING UP ITS CYBER PROPAGANDA http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
I think admins should check the validity of arguments, not the number of editors involved.
Wikilawyering can help keep information suppressed. How many admins work for Operations ?
-- Mick2 ( talk) 17:56, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:People by year ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Following from this [22] issue on ANI, it has been shown that there a lot of articles on the results of individual events from notable swimming competitions, for example 2012 FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) – Men's 100 metre butterfly. (Again, to be clear, the larger competition of multiple events, 2012 FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) is fine). Note that this would extend to the Olympic swimming articles (eg of the Swimming at the 2012 Summer Olympics coverage, individual events like Swimming at the 2012 Summer Olympics – Men's 50 metre freestyle would be a problem) as well as any other sports (eg Alpine skiing at the 2010 Winter Olympics – Men's downhill)
I would argue that the event articles as they are shown are very inappropriate for WP for several reasons:
There's also another argument to be made here , and that's in light of having to deal with the MMA walled garden; there, we (we being the general established editor base) are trying to show the newer/outside editors that maintain the MMA space that articles on the individual events are not appropriate for WP. If we say that to them, but at the same time consider these swimming event articles as just fine, we are being hypocrites to the MMA people. As I think most agree that the appropriateness of individual MMA event articles is not there, I think we do need to consider deleting these as well.
I'd like to see what the consensus is here, and if it for deleting pages, go about removing them outside of the normal AFD cycle after some period to allow those that may have a reason to be kept to be fixed up. -- MASEM ( t) 19:39, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
I think the bottom line for MMA articles is WP:OTHERSTUFF; just because there are events on individual events in other sports does not mean that individual MMA events must have them too, any more than deleting articles on individual MMA events requires you to go on a tear through WP Olympics coverage. If you or others are going to force that kind of foolish consistency (cf. Emerson, Ralph Waldo) than you will merely force me and others to become a vocal defender of the MMA articles, about which I presently could not care less either way. postdlf ( talk) 19:57, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
But re: Olympics, I'd be shocked if it could not be shown that every individual Olympics event satisfies GNG. I'd also consider it a pretty clear IAR case even if that couldn't be shown, as in no way could I see our encyclopedia being improved by that information being removed. I look at Swimming at the 2012 Summer Olympics – Men's 50 metre freestyle, for example, and I see nothing but bluelinks, which means there's also a good case for this satisfying WP:LISTPURP both as a navigational list (participating in an Olympic event is a pretty significant fact about an individual, and a pretty significant shared fact for grouping athletes together) in addition to its value as an informational list. Not that I think it needs to be characterized as such a list to save it, but it also makes sense to me to see its value in that light. postdlf ( talk) 20:31, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Our "list of X by year" sports article do tend to be problematic... they present useful information... but... it is the type of information that to my mind belongs in an Almanac, not in an Encyclopedia. Why have we never created a WikiAlmanac sister project for the sort of list articles we are talking about? Blueboar ( talk) 14:25, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't see that anyone else has mentioned this RfC started Nov 30. People seem to think they are about to make some big policy change, so it seemed proper to bring this here. (I don't come here much so I assume announcement is ok.) CarolMooreDC 22:25, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:NS14 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
#REDIRECT [[Wikipedia:Categorization]] {{WP:NS14}}
What is the policy (and rationale) on writing out or using numerals for centuries? In other words, should we write 7th century or seventh century, 20th century or twentieth century (excluding the cases where the words come at the beginning of a sentence or are quotations, proper names or some other special cases)? Kdammers ( talk) 11:47, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
There should be a formalized process for challenging the closure of a talk page discussion. The relevant Wikipedia: page isn't helpful. A few months back I was involved in a discussion that I thought was closed prematurely. I made no progress discussing the matter on the closing admin's talk page; after that I was at a loss as to what to do. Someone at Help Desk pointed me to WP:AN/I, but there I was told to go to WP:DRN. At DRN there were several rounds of discussion before it was concluded that this was a conduct dispute rather than a content dispute, so I should go back to AN/I. Finally back at AN/I some administrators made a decision.
Long story short, if there was a specific forum designated for such closure challenges then a lot of people would have wasted a lot less time. -- Nstrauss ( talk) 09:05, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Unaware of any of this before this VPP post, but after reading the above and the prior, related threads, this is clear WP:FORUMSHOPping and WP:IDHT disruption in my view. I don't think anyone is obliged at this point to explain to Nstrauss yet again that WP:CONSENSUS does not grant any editor a heckler's veto, so if you are completely unable to get anyone else to agree with you on any content issue then that's it. You cannot unilaterally insist that the issue is still open. I think Nstrauss should be blocked if he starts another thread on this again. postdlf ( talk) 00:14, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, Monty845, for assuming good faith. That is all I was hoping for and I believe your addition is appropriate. To PBS, Beeblebrox, and postdlf, thanks for engaging in administrator groupthink. Phooey to all of you. -- Nstrauss ( talk) 21:24, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:NS14 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
Further input is welcome at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Formula One#Flagicons.
Although this is specifically about flagicons, it also goes to the more general issue of some WikiProjects just opting to completely ignore aspects of the Manual of Style, or in some cases even core content policies, sometimes (as in this case) without even attempting to present a rationale that would outweight the considerations behind the respective part of the MOS. -- 213.196.218.39 ( talk) 14:07, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Still a good relevant question in general. Neither is policy, but wp:mos carries some weight, whereas project guides are overreaching if they claim or imply to be anything beyond just recommendations. North8000 ( talk) 13:45, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
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There's present discussion on WT:NFC about getting a bot to do NFC#10c enforcement (assuring that every article that a non-free image is used it has its name mentioned, as a bare minimum)) as the number of image uses without proper rationales is rising. Those that remember that this task was done in the past via BetaCommandBot, but numerous issues, more dealing with BetaCommand as an editor, but some dealing with the heavy-handedness of NFC enforcement, led to larger problems and the eventual current ban on BetaCommand and the loss of his bot. Even if BetaCommand's ban is removed, I would not anticipate his bot being allowed to run. In the current discussion, the effort is to find a bot programmer and get BAG approval for the task to be run.
But, there is an unresolved point from the previous problems, that being, how exactly should #10c be enforced. There was a rather intense discussion when images were tagged with #10c that, to some, had trivial fixes that should have been corrected by those that were enforcing #10c. Some of these were simple typos, use of extended/accented characters, etc. But others, that some called simple, involved reviewing page histories to find the case of a misplace move. That previous discussion boiled over on the concept of BURDEN and the "good faith" efforts of the enforcers, though I don't think we resolved that as more pressing problems with BetaCommand came forward.
The concern that has been raised is that if we bring a bot forward, with BAG approval, to handle #10c, are we going to run into the same problem where the editor running the bot could expect to be the target of angry editors seeing their images get deleted or even questioned due to the failure to meet #10c due to one typo? Given that NFC is a WMF-directed policy and ergo critical to follow, is there any way to make sure editors understand that this is a mandate that we have been sorely lacking in maintaining even though it is prime for bot work? -- MASEM ( t) 23:02, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, I agree with Farix. The problem is this whole BS "enforcement" approach, which has fostered an inappropriate us vs. them mentality and encouraged some rather poor authoritarian conduct and attitudes. Instead ask how we can bring content into compliance, which reframes it as a community task to fix what can be fixed. postdlf ( talk) 02:12, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia policies on sources are conservative, for good reason. But sometimes this leads to self-inconsistency.
Here's my current bugbear. (I'm not pushing a barrow here. I just want feedback on the policy-level implications, not on the specific problem.) The Ubuntu operating system recently began displaying advertising in the user interface of a core OS component. Wikipedia's adware entry defines adware as "any software package which automatically renders advertisements." A consensus of editors on Talk:Ubuntu (operating system) refused to permit the labelling of Ubuntu as adware without reliable sources, on the grounds that the term "adware" is value-laden/pejorative. On the other hand, a consensus of editors on Talk:Adware refused to permit the modification of adware, either by recognition of the pejorative connotations of the term, and/or by renaming the entry to a value-neutral term, again without citing reliable sources. I've searched. I can find no reliable source documenting a pejorative connotation to "adware", but nor can I find a reliable source for Ubuntu being uncontentiously "adware", I suspect (in light of Talk:Ubuntu (operating system) feedback) because the term indeed has a negative connotation.
That's all by the book, but 1) the resulting encyclopedia is not self-consistent and 2) the resulting encyclopedia is less valuable, because Ubuntu (operating system) is forced to link to a generic entry on advertising, rather than directing the user to an article that is more specific to the type of advertising under discussion. The conservative interpretation of WP:SOURCE means that one article's "innocent until proven guilty" is another article's "guilty until proven innocent". In the Ubuntu entry, "adware" is pejorative until proven otherwise. In the Adware entry, "adware" is non-pejorative until proven otherwise. Mainly because commercial sources can't be bothered writing about these things (there's no advertising money in it for them), there are few or no sources available to document either position.
How widespread is this problem? Is there a good, generally-applicable resolution to it? (I'm back on WP after many years of low activity. It's changed a lot. I post this to present a potential policy problem and listen to the feedback. If I seem to be arguing for any particular solution above, I'm not. If there's one thing I've learned since I've come back it's that almost everyone assumes bad faith now. So please let it be known I'm just raising the issue for discussion.)-- Russell E ( talk) 13:21, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
I can't claim that in diffrent place so I will do this here, in place that I use everyday - Wikipedia. You Americans so desperately want to proof to rest of the world, that you are so unique, that you need to have everything trully yours. Moreover you try to impose those idiotism to the rest of the world. Its long time since I've noticed, that date format on Wiki is changet into MDY. Why, I'm asking? First days pass, after we count some number of days, we reach month and after few months, we have year. Why are you try to change that and force rest of the world to accept that? It's the same with all other aspects of life - weight, measures, speed and so on. Even if you use common known gallons, it must be US gallon, a bit diffrent. same with other units. I'm waiting, when you start to drive on middle of road one way and outside - opposide way. Just to be diffrent. What I'm talking about! What language I'm use? You still understand me? Or I'm speaking complitly diffrent language, some English. You of course using American. Something fall this atumn and so on... Adam 85.164.48.210 ( talk) 20:32, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Adam 85.164.48.210 ( talk) 20:19, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I have opened a Request for Comment regarding WP:NC-TW, which was part of the policy regarding naming conventions related to Taiwan, and Republic of China, but since been removed and marked inactive. There is no current policy placed in place of WP:NC-TW, so the request for comment seeks a replacement for it. - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 06:45, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
As a doctor of medicine, and in my work as a senior surgeon, I find that I have an increasing number of what have been termed 'e-patients'. These are internet savvy patients who are empowered by their internet searches to ask for 'shared decision making' when in consultation with a healthcare professional. In other words, the age of Doctors as Deities is past. They are no longer trusted to always know best in matters of medical care. Patients need advice as to how to sort the good from the bad when doing an online search of their medical condition.
Wikipedia is increasingly seen by medical professionals as a reliable, up to date and well considered and properly referenced source of such information.
My proposal:
Can Wikipedia allow some of its pages to have a "seal or stamp of approval' from recognised authorities in particular fields? The BMA and AMA (medical associations of UK and USA) could be asked to approve (or not) articles pertaining to medical matters eg tonsillitis. The BOA and AAOS (orthopaedic associations of UK and USA) could do the same for Orthopaedic articles eg on arthritis. The BTS and OTA (trauma associations of UK and USA) could do the same for Trauma articles eg on fractures.
I have read the 5 pillars that support Wikipedia and do not think my proposal weakens any one of them.
The freedom for anyone to edit a page has always been Wikipedia's greatest strength but also its Achilles heel. The lack of responsibility for anything that is written by any single person is the fundamental reason for Wikipedia's (unfair) reputation for being an unreliable source when using it to research a topic. My proposal would reverse that and would give Wikipedia official recognition as the World's Premier Encyclopaedia.
An Alexandrian library for the 21st Century, if you prefer!
Thank you. Kevin Newman Consultant Trauma Surgeon in UK — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kevinnewmanortho ( talk • contribs) 11:02, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Said organizations are free to link to the permanent URL of an approved version from their own pages. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 11:32, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
This is not a bad idea, but I doubt that they would want to do it. As soon as they put their stamp of approval on the article, someone will change it, and who knows what the resulting article will say. The high-traffic articles frequently see several changes per day.
On the other hand, we are looking for ways to do better. There is a program in the works to encourage collaboration with outside medical groups. You can read about it at meta:Wikimedia Medicine (note: that's a sister website, so you have to put in your username and password again). You might also contact User:Jmh649 or User:Bluerasberry about your ideas. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 22:58, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
It is a reasonable idea. However, as others have pointed out, this could potentially limit further editing of an "approved" article. Third party organizations are most welcome to copy Wikipedia's text and display it on their own websites as an "approved" version, provided that they display and conform to the CC-BY-SA license. Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:30, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Wow, I didn't think my proposal would merit such interesting debate! Medical organisations are notoriously conservative and suspicious of new ways of disseminating information but have finally dipped their toes into apps and other internet technologies. I agree that Medicine itself has backed some ridiculous treatments over the centuries (lobotomy was mentioned) but in the 21st century the emphasis is very much peer-reviewed acceptance of what may be true. Wikipedia and its new offspring WikiMedicine and WikiSurgery will complement the current medical literature and enhance the public's understanding of what are gigantic subjects. I do not see my request as being prescriptive for a patient's illness or condition but merely informative and up to date. We have a crude rule of thumb in Medicine and Surgery when considering how to advise patients as to the best treatment options: "what would a reasonable body of (professional) men and women do?" This allows for differences of opinion whilst giving the patient some form of choice. There is rarely one correct or best option when giving medical advice as treatment is based on the patient's other co-morbidities, their expectations, their lifestyles, their beliefs and also their physician's experience and skill set. Delivering the best Medical Care is thus a mixture of Art and Science with a little luck thrown in for good measure. By increasing their knowledge base patients can be empowered to receive the best treatment within the many limitations of their particular healthcare systems.
Kevinnewmanortho (
talk) 16:00, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm sympathetic to the goal of the proposer, but think it should be enabled in a slightly different form than proposed. My suggestion would solve the problem of an article subject to change. While it has been noted that a reviewing organization can provide a link (at their site) to the permanent url of the reviewed version, that doesn't easily achieve the goal of providing that view to readers of Wikipedia.
I suggest flipping the option around:
Suppose, for example, that the AMA reviews a particular version of the article on arthritis, and deems it acceptable. Suppose for example, that they like Arthritis 6 November 2012.
What we could do is add a hatnote saying something like:
For a version of this article approved by the AMA see Arthritis 6 November 2012
There would obviously be some bureaucracy involved in getting this started—identifying who at the AMA has the authority to make such a pronouncement, and getting assurances that they would update their reviews on a reasonable time frame (annual or biannual), but this would allow viewers to read the latest version, as well as a version that has been vetted by an official body.
If this took off, we might design a custom diff view, so that people could see differences between the latest version and the vetted version.
I think this has potential.-- SPhilbrick (Talk) 16:14, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
There are a lot of good ideas here. I'm struck by the all-or-nothing views of having the "approved page" appearing on- or off-Wikipedia. Certainly something could be done with "semi-approved" pages "sort of on-Wikipedia." To start off, imagine the following scenarios, the 1st of which could be done NOW, without any real formal approval.
1. The Wikistan Medical Association gets a copy of the freely licensed Mediawiki software and puts it on its own computers. It copies Wikipedia pages, edits them to meet its own standards, with its own standards of who can edit the articles, and links to Wikipedia in the external links section. The resulting articles would be licensed CC-BY-SA and would likely meet the standards of WP:RS, thus this material could be copied back into Wikipedia articles. Perfectly possible right now.
2. The Wikimedia Foundation reaches out to various expert organizations. It helps them start up the Mediawiki software and will link automatically to articles copied to and approved by the new ExpertWiki, possibly in the left hand column right above the different language versions of Wikipedia. The expert group agrees to maintain a given set of standards and license all its articles CC-BY-SA so that, if Wikipedians want, the material can be copied back to Wikipedia. The WMF would need to set up an outreach program and provide the set-up programming, which is a WMF decision, but not one that would be very expensive or out-of-line with its current stated goals.
3.The WMF could do the above on it's own servers, providing technical help all along the line, easy access to images on Commons, toolserver and the like, treating the set of editors from the approving groups as a Wikimedia chapter or thematic group. Why not? Smallbones( smalltalk) 01:28, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Disputed statement ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
I was wondering whether there is, or whether there should be, a policy of when a person's race is mentioned in articles, bio or otherwise. I recently began an RFC here [ [3]], and please feel free to contribute. But it started me thinking about this. I've done some searching on Wikipedia and best as I can tell this appears to dealt with on a case-by-case basis. However, I'm wondering if some basic criteria could not be established. As an example of race being dealt with in context, the first sentence of the lede of the Obama article has always referred to Obama as "a US Senator", "US President", etc. Barak Obama's race was always referenced in the context of his being either "the first" or "the only" US Senator or President. It would have been unacceptable to have had the first sentence of the lede say "Barak Obama is an African-American Senator" or now 'Barak Obama is the African-American President of the United States". But why do we do this? Is this policy?
In the case of the RFC, the article Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese, I couldn't see why the perpetrator's race is mentioned as the article indicates no racial aspect to the crime. The victim's race is mentions only as part of a detailed background, but the race of the perpetrator is included with no additional background detail other than his job. My concern is not for how the perpetrator is portrayed, but, to be perfectly blunt, is it racism to point out the race, without justifying context, of someone associated with a despicable act?
Bottom line, do we have any written criteria on Wikipedia to use as a guide for when race, religion etc. should be mentioned? Then, if we don't, should we? BashBrannigan ( talk) 18:40, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
I always link to the relevant policy or guideline in the edit summary when I revert an article edit. Is this recommended anywhere in a guideline? If not, should it be? -- Anthonyhcole ( talk) 09:07, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
I was recently involved in a dispute resolution were one of the involved members views (I am not referring to myself) appeared to be largely ignored in the final decision because he was away for a few days and unable to contribute to it. Other editors may also have misrepresented his views leading to a strange final decision and subsequent claims he was in agreement to this day. I wonder if there should be formal sections in the DRN in which proposed versions of the article being discussed are inserted, and each member then enters the degree which they agree with each of them? This will provide a fair indication to the volunteer which version everyone is consenting to.
The final decision of course is the volunteers since he/she has to decide not only on consensus but on the quality of the arguments, the history of how they came about, the objections of those who disagree, and existing documentation in the project namespace. but this would provide a quasi-democratic, transparent, formal framework on which to arrive at a decision which does not seem to be the case at present. -- Andromedean ( talk) 10:05, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi All,
Over at Australian Cattle Dog, an editor keeps trying to use "Note" references to inject material that might be otherwise viewed as inappropriate in the article. Is there an article published somewhere which might tell me what is the intended use for the "Note" reference field? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Ebikeguy ( talk) 23:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
The List of unsolved problems in physics article seems to have inbound links from many of the problems that it lists; where these links exist, they are as large margin-floating grey boxes with magazine-style pull quotes (eg. on the Theory of everything article we have a grey pullquote box of "Is string theory, superstring theory, or M-theory, or some other variant on this theme, a step on the road to a "theory of everything", or just a blind alley?"). Is this appropriate? It seems a bit overdramatic, when other lists are just mentioned quietly in the "See also" sections. -- McGeddon ( talk) 17:49, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
I recently reverted this reference [4] in the Vitamin C megadosage article on the grounds that it contravened WP:CIRCULAR. My edit was then reverted with the following statement: Not a circular reference at all. These sources explicitly back the statement made. [5] A comment was also added to my talk page. [6] I would therefore welcome some thoughts/advice on the correct interpretation of WP:CIRCULAR as a means of determining who is correct here. Thanks in advance. Vitaminman ( talk) 16:39, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Just stumbled over this AN thread. Wouldn't it be possible to protect ourselves at least to some extent against such hoaxes by using legal action against someone who demonstrably knows that they are posting counterfactual info? Or, I'm not sure, are hoaxes as a systemic problem on the backburner? -- 87.78.52.67 ( talk) 01:49, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Closed
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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. I propose that much stricter rules be applied to entries referring to living people. I'd go as far as proposing that no entry should be allowed to be about someone unless that person has been dead for at least 10 years. Similarly, companies should only get a page when they've been in business for 10 years. This would keep the platform free from parasitic vanity, promotion, marketing etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.77.19.171 ( talk) 09:17, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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Recently I just read Wikipedia:Handling trivia, and I found quite contradictory ideas. In one way it says "it is not reasonable to disallow all information that some editors feel is unimportant, because that information could be important to some readers.", while in another way it identifies some of the examples as "unimportant". I think this is not made clear throughout the article(For example, it says"Alan Smithee's favorite color is yellow" is not important enough to mention, but what will happen if"some readers" in "it is not reasonable...ome readers." includes someone doing research about people's favorite color?). Are there, if any, useful and acceptable(don't need to be absolutely decisive) ways of judging (e.g. if the thing of this article does not exist, what will happen to the item, picture included?) whether some item is important or not?-- Inspector ( talk) 08:12, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Editorial judgment. There's no escaping it. And then when other editors' judgment differs, you discuss it. Reliable sources are obviously the minimum starting point (if it isn't verifiable, it doesn't go in regardless), but you could write completely trivial articles even limiting yourself to facts that multiple secondary sources report: "Bill Clinton is an American who likes McDonald's. He had a dog named Buddy and owned a Mustang convertible." And you could omit some of the most significant facts about a subject by limiting yourself to secondary sources, such as the population of a community reported in a census. There are no rules we can invent that will prevent us from having to read the materials and understand the subject to decide what is relevant and encyclopedic and what is not. postdlf ( talk) 02:26, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
It has come to my attention that there may be an concerted effort by some to edit any articles that look unfavorably upon the Israeli side of the conflict with the Palestinians and replace them with pro-Israeli propaganda. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-x2DFnGI9Ac )Is this true ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DarkKnight49 ( talk • contribs) 19:13, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
This is a rather unusual notification, but because it directly involves a conundrum surrounding the question of the scope of WP:BLP1E and how much leeway it can allow closing admins in AfDs that is now at the heart of a series of a DRV and three AfD's that seem to be spiraling in not such a good direction and outside observation and input by uninvolved admins and experienced users may be very beneficial. The current situation begins with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jill Kelley, in spite of 28 Keep votes, vs 4 Delete votes (including the nominator) and 5 Redirects, the closing admin decided to delete on the grounds of WP:BLP1E. This then was appealed (by me) at DRV and is now ongoing at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 November 21#Jill Kelley. In the course of other articles' names being mentioned in the DRV, users have then used that to head for three other articles, so far, nominating them for deletion also on the grounds of WP:BLP1E, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Linda Tripp, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eunice Penix, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Natalie Khawam with all three of these being nominated only because someone had mentioned their existence in the Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 November 21#Jill Kelley DRV or related discussions. This is an unhealthy situation that could spiral out of control, with editors basically divided into pro and anti factions as regards the application or not of WP:BLP1E without considering the content of subject matter. Something is not right, and something needs to be done, before further chaos and disruption occurs. Thank you, IZAK ( talk) 20:10, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
So Niteshift, I am not sure what is driving you right now, beyond violating WP:POINT and WP:DONOTDISRUPT and WP:IDONTLIKEIT for issues that have nothing to do with your unknown reasons in keeping the Jill Keely and Natalie Khawam topics off WP? Who are you protecting and what is your agenda? And forget what I am smoking, that is just a gratuitous insult and a red herring that violates WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF. Thanks, IZAK ( talk) 20:52, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
I have reverted an edit (see here) at Opal card as it was:
However that website has a "Copyright and Disclaimer" here'
[12]' that says "This material is copyright but may be reproduced without formal permission or charge for personal, in-house or non-commercial use."so it seem that we may use it, as Wikipedia is 'non-commercial'.
• Does this type of statement suit Wikipedia's copyright© policy? -
220
of
Borg 08:41, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
I am currently putting together an FAQ page for an article related to white supremacism, and am looking in particular for discussions which have established the reliability of the Anti-Defamation League, Southern Poverty Law Center, and similar organizations with respect to the issue of classifying organizations as white supremacist. If we don't have anything on record quite that specific, I'll settle for whatever is closest. Thanks! Evanh2008 ( talk| contribs) 02:02, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Recently, I had to move an article about a song because it had the wrong title - it's called "Take You There" (the Donnie Klang one, not the Sean Kingston one), and someone had created it as "Take Me There." Since I'd already turned it into a redirect to Donnie Klang, I fixed the double-redirect created by the move, and then promptly tagged it for R3; Amatulic deleted it 13 minutes later. But that got me thinking about times I'd seen admins move pages without leaving redirects, and having recently successfully requested the Rollbacker permission, I wondered if there was a way that I could request this right, too. It turns out that, apart from admins, 'crats, and stewards, it's only extended to bots and global rollbackers, and it can't be requested. This surprised me mostly because we allow people to request all sorts of far more sensitive permissions, such as Edit Filter Manager and Account Creator (both of which could be used to cause temporary, but major, disruption to Wikipedia - picture a lockout of all edits, or simultaneous swarms of 20 sockpuppets to every major article on a sensitive topic), so I figured there'd be some way to obtain this flag, even if it had some heavy restrictions on who can get it.
I'm stopping short of outright proposing that we make suppressredirect available at RFR, but I was wondering if some more senior editors could explain the reasoning behind it not being there in the first place. The way I see it, it isn't a particularly dangerous right to give out, especially since you can always just remove it from editors who abuse it (the warnings about misusing rollback have scared me so much that I still haven't even used it!). There's also a huge difference between making a right requestable and granting it frequently - I was manually confirmed because I was on RCP and AIV had been semi-protected, and, since October 1st, that flag has been requested 134 times, and has only been given out to four editors, myself included.
So, as I said, not a proposal yet, just a question about why the status quo is what it is. — Francophonie&Androphilie ( Je vous invite à me parler) 04:32, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Are images supposed to be ineligible for copyright in the United States? If that's the case, why does the WP:NFC say that anything copyrighted in the original source country may also be copyrighted in the United States per URAA? -- George Ho ( talk) 20:34, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
I know Wikipedia's official stance at the moment is that it won't run ads. But given Wikipedia's popularity, it has the potential to generate a lot of revenue. As such, I have two questions:
However, there are two issues to this approach: 1) there is no transparency unless the script author shares the PayPal account information with the WMF, and 2) Wikipedia can get in trouble if something goes wrong (e.g., if the user breaks the ad network's service agreement).
So my second question is: is there any policy against creating an ad placement user script?
Just curious. -- Ixfd64 ( talk) 06:20, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reviewing ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Commons categories ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
When is it appropriate (and when is it inappropriate) to link to an essay on policy and guideline pages... are their limitations, and if so what are they? Blueboar ( talk) 15:53, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Anyone? Blueboar ( talk) 02:42, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
This part of articles is out of hand. Many of the links have no direct relation to the article, while others are simply not notable to the article. It is also constantly abused by advertisers or people trying to promote an idea or topic. It is too much to fix. Why do these sections even exist? Shouldn't it just be for synonyms? I haven't actually read the guideline or policy on this. Sorry if this is in the wrong section. 198.151.130.65 ( talk) 11:40, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
There is also a similar problem with "External links". 198.151.130.65 ( talk) 11:42, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the place to ask but... Is there any way for editors to be alerted when a page is added to a given category (something like a watchlist... but pegged to the category and not the page)? Blueboar ( talk) 14:08, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
The article under question was this. It was first proposed for PROD by me, when the prod was removed, stating that an AfD must be followed. Then I posted it for AfD, during which time a CSD template was added and then removed because the article was under AfD. Finally the AfD closed as no consensus with no prejudice towards speedy deletion because of no quorum.
After the AfD remained inconclusive, I posted the article for CSD when it was removed stating contest speedy deletion as indicating importance/significance ("prominent Islamic scholar") - please start another AfD discussion in a few months if you think this should be deleted.
My question is - 1) Is removing the CSD template allowed under 'contesting' it? [If so, then it looks surreptitiously like PROD] 2) In your opinion, does the article look notable enough to stand? TheOriginalSoni ( talk) 15:51, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
Everything related to global warming takes it as fact. Isn't this bias? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.255.98.244 ( talk) 20:37, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
"When writing articles, there may be cases where making some assumptions is necessary to get through a topic. For example, in writing about evolution, it is not helpful to hash out the creation-evolution controversy on every page. There are virtually no topics that could proceed without making some assumptions that someone would find controversial. This is true not only in evolutionary biology, but also in philosophy, history, physics, etc. It is difficult to draw up a rule, but the following principle may help: there is probably not a good reason to discuss some assumption on a given page, if that assumption is best discussed in depth on some other page. A brief, unobtrusive pointer might be appropriate, however."
Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History#inclusion of prehistoric terms in history of country templates and vice versa. -- Joy [shallot] ( talk) 10:33, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
I have started a RFC regarding allowing bureaucrats to remove the bureaucrat bit, and regarding the regranting of the bureaucrat bit (to bring it into line with the recently-passed policies for administrators). Please see Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats#2012 bureaucrats RFC. -- Rs chen 7754 01:48, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Hello,
I think Wikipedia is a wonderful resource and I'm very disappointed to find that it uses interlocking signs for male and female to indicate that an article has to do with sexuality. I don't expect Wikipedia to be behind the times or exclusionary and I hope this is just an oversight that will be corrected very soon.
Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.168.89.245 ( talk) 02:05, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Dear editors,
Many of you are well aware of the convenience in using web citation as a source. And sometimes, official information are only available online as the only source. But the main problem of citing them is that they tend to disappear within a few years, sometimes even in months. Some articles rely heavily on citing official websites, so when the source links slowly go dead, we're facing a problem of not only link rot but an article rot as well. The current template/tools do not support/suggest archiving or using permalinks, so most editors neglect to archive them. Most of the editors are vigilant on an article only around the time of its creation, or around when it is still a hot topic, but by the time the link and the article rot, the source material will no longer be available, and most editors will no longer care.
I've come across this problem while I was working on an old film's article. It had been so well-sourced with official materials, which means it had been very reliable until the movie distributors decided to stop hosting the information, as it no longer affect their publicity or sales. First-party sources like official websites of products or movies only exist as long as they serve the distributors' sales or publicity. So now we are busy finding and relocating the information, but by now the film is 13 years old, and it was so hard to find any reliable substitute, if at all. And we only have two editors there.
The suggestion to this has already been proposed. Per
Wikipedia:Link rot, we are suggested that we use a web archive like
http://www.webcitation.org to provide us permalinks. But I find that this is not enough. Since the current templates do not support or suggest adding archive date nor archive URL (see below), most editors will take it as the only information required in the blank field is enough. As a result, most articles citing websites have only the URLs and the site themselves as sources, and when they go down, your citation and the reliability of the article with it.
source | template (required) |
common usage | Example 1 article text |
Example 2 article text |
---|---|---|---|---|
website | {{
cite web}} title url |
{{cite web | last = | first = | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = | work = | publisher = | date = | url = | format = | doi = | accessdate = }} |
{{cite web | last = Spiegel | first = Rachel | title = Research: Thalido... | url=http://science-educat... | accessdate = 30 April 2006 }} Spiegel, Rachel. "Research in the News: Thalidomide". Retrieved 30 April 2006. {{cite web | title = | url = | date = | accessdate = }} (Write date as one of the formats shown at
MOS:DATE; e.g. |
{{cite web | last = Hansen | first = James E. | authorlink = James E. Hansen | last2 = Ruedy | first2 = R. | last3 = Sato | first3 = M. | last4 = Lo | first4 = K. | title = GISS Surface Temperature An... | work = | publisher = [[Goddard Institute for... | date = December 15, 2005 | url = http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis... | format = | doi = | accessdate = September 28, 2006 }} Hansen, James E.; Ruedy, R.; Sato, M.; Lo, K. (December 15, 2005). "GISS Surface Temperature Analysis Global Temperature Trends: 2005 Summation". NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Retrieved September 28, 2006. |
{{
Citation}} title url |
{{Citation | last = | first = | author-link = | last2 = | first2 = | author2-link = | title = | date = | year = | url = | accessdate = }} |
{{Citation | last = Spiegel | first = Rachel | title = Research: Thalido... | url=http://science-educat... | accessdate = 30 April 2006 }} Spiegel, Rachel, Research in the News: Thalidomide, retrieved 30 April 2006 |
{{Citation | last1 = Hansen | first1 = James E. | author1-link = James Hansen | last2 = Ruedy | first2 = R. | last3 = Sato | first3 = M. | last4 = Lo | first4 = K. | title = GISS Surface Temperature An... | publisher = [[Goddard Institute for ... | date = December 15, 2005 | url = http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis... | accessdate = September 28, 2006 }} Hansen, James E.; Ruedy, R.; Sato, M.; Lo, K. (December 15, 2005), GISS Surface Temperature Analysis Global Temperature Trends: 2005 Summation, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, retrieved September 28, 2006 |
Not only that, old editors usually use a gadget like Provelt to make citing sources easier. And of course, Provelt follows the citation template and do not provide a box or put archive URLs or archive date.
So to encourage the use of lasting sources and to give an article highest longevity, I suggest we add
|archiveurl= |archivedate= |deadurl=
to the template, and program Provelt to follow the template accordingly. I must emphasis that Provelt needs to be changed as well, as most editors tend to use the easier method. And the Policy and Guidelines should probably suggest archiving first-party sources too. This should fix the problem of link rot and article rot in the long run.
I would like to hear some opinions and suggestions. Anything is appreciated. Anthonydraco ( talk) 10:10, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
Executive summary:
Full rationale:
I am seeing a trend of article creation for things that simply have not occurred yet, such as musician's tours, annual events, etc. These eventually go to AfD, but that invariably becomes a mess. I'm hoping that this is something that has been seen enough in the community to preclude the need to cite examples, but please let me know if I need to start linking AfDs as supporting evidence, and I will.
Now, there is a reasonable expectation of these events happening, but the policies that should preclude article creation have holes in them that need to be plugged in relation to this issue:
There are other policies and guidelines that can be cited in some individual cases (generally CRIME, related to ongoing cases), but invariably, when these things go to AfD, there are a slew of ILIKEIT keep votes with no policy support for said votes (who also tend to abuse the noms and the delete voters). The result is a lot of wasted time on what should be open and shut cases, because the ILIKEIT votes (not policy based) also preclude NAC based on deletes (which are policy-based) because the AfD then becomes "controversial." I'd also note that Wikinews has been eroded by this type of editing, and that has been noticed higher up, to the point of potential closure of that project.
Therefore, there appears to be an issue that is not only wasting editors' time, but is adversely affecting a sister project. Very succinctly, I'd like to see a policy that thoroughly precludes writing about events prior to their occurrence. A third-party source cannot reliably report on an event unless it has happened, and we already disallow speculation in articles as-is. In reality, what is happening is OR based on cobbling information together. I think it is one of those things where fans build their "fan-ness" by doing things like this ("Well, I was the one who created the tour/event article on Wikipedia, so can i have a backstage pass to your next show?")
I'm not sure what to call this new policy, but we pretty much need something with teeth to allow these types of articles to be speedied if possible, and at least to have something better at AfD to back up NAC policy-based closures in the face of ILIKEIT votes (I have an issue with "controversy" in voting being based in "X is notable just because") just so these types of articles aren't diverting admin attention.
From a policy perspective, I would indicate the following items as a starting point:
In the end, I think a new policy could address several outstanding issues across Wikipedia and contribute to a higher quality of content. MSJapan ( talk) 01:28, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
A speedy delete is a terrible idea. A not-so-terrible idea is to create some sub-policy pages for crystal ball. So, have a crystal ball page for music tours, a crystal ball page for elections, sports events, etc. That would give something more relevant and specific to cite in these deletion discussion when they happen. Ego White Tray ( talk) 13:32, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Why are we encouraging people to donate to the Wikimedia Foundation by means of the predatory Amazon.com, the most effective destroyer of small booksellers on the planet? This makes me sick to my stomach, to see us helping them profit in order to garner some more donations. We might as well prostitute ourselves to Wal-Mart! I am not sure I can continue to participate in this project if we are to abandon all trace of ethics this way. -- Orange Mike | Talk 16:17, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
( edit conflict) I don't understand what ethics has do to with small booksellers. Make no mistake, I love small booksellers, but what's unethical in having online book sellers? I find them highly ethical -I can buy stuff on Amazon I could never find here around in Italy. -- Cyclopia talk 16:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
I recently posted a link on my Facebook page about "take your child to a bookstore day", and got a three paragraph screed from an opinionated friend who didn't like the promotion of bookstores to the exclusion of libraries, particularly given what she saw as the prohibitive cost of new books for many struggling families. I'm sure someone in turn could find something to criticize about promoting libraries. You should never be surprised when your pet issue isn't someone else's. postdlf ( talk) 18:52, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Apparently I am alone in thinking that Wikipedians would be literate enough to understand that there is a difference between booksellers as vital sources of diverse information and opinions to the world, and the makers of tallow candles or laundromats. Apparently you all think it's okay that Amazon is the sole surviving source of books for enormous swaths of this planet, and you see no value in actual physical bookshops whose owners serve as sources of suggestions, dissent, criticism and spontaneity to would-be readers. I seem to be alone (outside of most of the publishing industry across the world) in understanding the danger of allowing a single gigantic company to monopolize the flow of books to a majority of the human race. Heil Bezos! I will shut up. (I also apologize for having been stupidly honest enough to mention that I work [for sub-fastfood wages, I might add, after 34 years in the trade] for what's left of an independent bookshop that refuses to be a slave or tributary of Amazon's paying extortionary tolls: I thought it was a good thing to disclose potential COI, but it has brought me nothing but slander and attacks for my folly.) -- Orange Mike | Talk 19:00, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
It has also been brought to my attention that Amazon has invested an undisclosed sum of money in Wikia, Jimbo Wales' for-profit wiki operation. Readers may form their own conclusions. -- Orange Mike | Talk 20:29, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
You are a part of a dying industry, and while I empathise with your personal loss and nostalgia, I cannot find a cause to object to the change. I have not walked to a bookstore in years, and purchased less than a half-dozen books made of dead trees in as many years. Walking to a bookstore is an eminently lesser alternatives than being able to purchase and read a book in minutes when I need it on my electronic devices.
You regret the time that there was a thriving business of book printing, distribution, storage and sale. I celebrate their obsolescence since it means I can now get more books, faster, and in a more convenient format. — Coren (talk) 23:31, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
... on Jimbo's talk page. (Note that there was an announcement of another major Amazon investment in Wikia on 30 November 2012.) Andreas JN 466 07:21, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
If an electronic-only publication is cited as a secondary source, how is it decided whether or not it should be taken seriously as a reliable source? There's definitely a privileging of print sources over electronic when it comes to reviewers questioning references; how do I support the source? Alexa rankings? Longevity? Business capital behind it? I need some pointers here. It's unusual for a book to be questioned as a reliable source, apparently, but blogs/emagazines aren't given the benefit of the doubt if the reviewer hasn't heard of them before. Guidelines? OttawaAC ( talk) 03:28, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
While I don't want to get this discussion sidetracked, I do see sites like io9 that call themselves a blog, but they do have editors and some sort of review where the content does get vetted. I have seen some knee jerk reactions where this particular source is yanked out of articles simply because it is considered a blog... and I don't think it necessarily is the same as a solo website that is just one person musing, sort of like the Chaos Manor Blog by Jerry Pournelle. This is an issue that needs a little more work as increasingly there are some sources of information like io9 that have some useful information that could be put into some articles but some overly zealous editors are removing these links and declaring them as unreliable sources purely because of the assumption that a blog is automatically unreliable. I do think that something which has editorial review should be at least considered for reliability. On the other hand, sources like examiner.com can appear to look like a reliable source, but extensive discussion (and not just that one link) would suggest otherwise.
I even got into a couple discussions a while ago about "official blogs" that are sometimes done by companies who try to interact with their fans/customers a little more closely. An example of this is the Telsa Motors blog that arguably could be called a series of more casually written press released, as they do represent official communications from the company. Admittedly they are primary sources that need to be used judiciously, but to throw them out as unreliable and that they can't be used in article development is contrary to policy as well.
This isn't as cut and dried as you would think, where your first reaction on a site may not necessarily be correct. There definitely is a blurring of what would normally be considered a reliable source, and is a sort of continuum of reliability from flat out unreliable sources to something that would generally be considered rock solid reliable such as an article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. I would call io9 in this context more reliable than a personal blog and certainly examiner.com, but less reliable than the LA Times or the Washington Post and those less reliable than Science, Nature, or the New England Journal of Medicine.
As for where to weigh the sources and their quality, raise the issue on the talk page of the respective article you are editing. Usually there are some people who do have a clue about the industry the topic is related to (for a person, a product, or a company especially) and is best resolved on that talk page when possible. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard should, in my own opinion, be reserved for those situations where the talk page simply doesn't resolve the issue and consensus isn't achieved. -- Robert Horning ( talk) 00:36, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Hello all, There is a discussion at ANI about the use of primary sources and birth dates. One user had added a bunch of birth dates, sourced to a reliable primary source. That is against our BLP policy WP:BLPPRIMARY which specifically says
"Do not use public records that include personal details, such as date of birth, home value, traffic citations, vehicle registrations, and home or business addresses."
(Emphasis added)
Clearly the intent is to protect privacy, but given that dates of birth are common elements in most paper encyclopedias, this seems a bit restrictive. I'm hoping to either A) get a deeper appreciation for the justification of this or B) get consenosus to remove "date of birth" from that element of BLPPRIMARY. I'll post a link to this discussion on the BLP talk page. Hobit ( talk) 02:52, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
To go back to the BLP policy language, I note that it says about primary sources generally to use them with caution, but says not to use "public records" at all, a mere subset of primary sources. Do you have a problem with a restriction on public records, and if so, which public records do you think we should use and why? Or do you think we are too restrictive with primary sources as a whole? postdlf ( talk) 16:41, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Note that the material quoted above is relates only to the use of primary sources for birth dates. This is not the only guidance about birth dates in WP:BLP. It also states (in part): "Wikipedia includes full names and dates of birth that have been widely published by reliable sources, or by sources linked to the subject such that it may reasonably be inferred that the subject does not object. If the subject complains about the inclusion of the date of birth, or the person is borderline notable, err on the side of caution and simply list the year". In other words, we should not be adding dates of birth at all, unless they are widely reported (or published by the subject themselves), and only then if the person is notable (eg do not put dates of birth for spouses, etc). I suggest people who do not understand the rationale for this read WP:BLP in full. Delicious carbuncle ( talk) 17:22, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
"date of birth" "identity theft"
. I think the folks here claiming DOB is irrelevant to identity theft have a
WP:RANDY problem.
66.127.54.40 (
talk) 23:07, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Obviously leaving the DOB out of a WP biography won't stop an advanced persistent threat from getting the info, but that's not the idea. Locking your house when you go out won't even stop a doofus with a screwdriver, but that doesn't make it sensible to leave it unlocked. Having some friction in these places is a good thing, as it slows down the doofuses and gets them to turn their attention elsewhere. 66.127.54.40 ( talk) 07:59, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Commons categories ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
At present our policy on signatures in non-Latin characters is that editors with names in non-Latin character sets are "encouraged" to add Latin characters as a courtesy to other users. I really think that should be upgraded to a mandatory requirement. (Wild notions dept.: possibly even to the point where the signature settings would warn you if your signature doesn't contain at least one Latin word, but I'm sure somebody would find a reason to balk at that.)
Please note that I'm not suggesting that we ban non-Latin names. (That's a bad idea; see much previous discussion.) — Hex (❝?!❞) 21:13, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
If you need to address the user by name, then use cut and paste. If you need links to the person's userpages, then find the name in the page history.I do hope you're not paid to design software.
Do you really want to block people over this?That was implied by the word mandatory, which you saw fit to explain back to me. Honestly, are you this condescending to everybody? — Hex (❝?!❞) 17:10, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
There is a monthly contest (see Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links#DAB Challenge leaderboard) to see who can fix the most links to disambiguation pages. I would like to offer a small but meaningful cash prize to whoever wins next month's contest, and I would like to make sure that the community does not consider this to be a violation of any policies. I do not think that it should be considered "paid editing" because the prize would be based solely on the number of errors fixed, without seeking to promote the editing of any particular article, or imposing any particular point of view. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:58, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Given that there is no way in hell I would ever give my actual name and address to "some guy on Wikipedia" (which I would have to do in order to collect the cash prize).. I think I will pass. Blueboar ( talk) 00:11, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
I received a spam email advertising the services of this company: https://www.wiki-pr.com/ Apparently what they do is they charge companies money to create and maintain wikipedia pages about their companies Is there anything that can be done about this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.188.129.99 ( talk) 19:40, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
147.188.129.99 ( talk) 20:19, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
What is prompting me to start this policy discussion is an AfD over an article I just created, and the ongoing debate that I am having with the AfD proposer and myself. I also want to state here "for the record" that I am not trying to do forum shopping, and I expect that AfD will be evaluated and be dealt with as per policy and by intelligent people dealing with the situation in due course.
The issue I have is that the AfD proposer basically suggested that almost any article that is created on Wikipedia should be started in the User namespace until it is polished and "ready for prime time". I think that is not only a silly argument, but it is also contrary to established policy. That for some people new to Wikipedia it might be useful to have some mentors who can guide you through the process of creating a new Wikipedia article, I believe the AfC process can and ought to be an optional system, not something mandatory.
I'll also note that for 100% of the articles that I've started over the past 3-4 years, each and every one of them has been slapped with an AfD (most of them even PROD'd for a speedy delete). I have also had a 100% survival rate for all of those articles where the nomination for deletion was overturned and kept. That is a waste of not only my time but the admins and others who are participating in the AfD process. I don't start these articles until I know there are sufficient sources and otherwise I think they actually merit inclusion in Wikipedia.
All I'm asking is for a little bit of breathing room when starting a new article.... so I can actually put in the references I've found and to actually write the article. I don't think this should be happening in my user space, but if that is what the consensus of those who participate here on Wikipedia want... I'm willing to go through the steps to make that formal policy so that anything added to the main namespace which doesn't fit a B class article or better should be speedy deleted or userfied. That seems to be the standard I'm seeing here too. I'm not trying to be disruptive here, but should article creation in the main namespace be a thing of the past? -- Robert Horning ( talk) 22:41, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
To me, the problem here sounds like this analogy: "Every time I drive down Highway 1, there's traffic. I could take Highway 2, which would get me there in the same amount of time and drive the same distance, but the Highway 1 shouldn't have traffic so I should be able to use it." There are two solutions: 1 - Userfy to start, which honestly I cannot see why you are so averse to doing so. 2 - When you start the article as a stub, make sure you add 2 reliable sources to the article, so when someone patrols it, they see that the subject meets Wikipedia's inclusion criteria. If you have these sources, add them when you start. If you don't, userfy for a short while. Nothing is lost in the world by waiting a few days or hours before adding an article to mainspace. Angryapathy ( talk) 16:57, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
This is probably a little bit snarky, but "fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me." if you are tired of your usourced stub articles immediately getting hit with AfD tags, then either create the stubs in user space or dont save until you have appropriate sources. if you keep grabbing on to the boiling kettle without protective gear, you shouldnt expect NOT to get burned. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:45, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
As someone who is fairly active in AFD discussions, I do notice the change of perspective on this. Back when I started editing there was a lot more tolerance for stubs than there is now, and there are whole classes of articles for which there is little or no toleration for stubs. Articles on corporations is one of those, and certain types of biographies are another. In both cases, it seems to me, the problem is the same: the only real standard for notability is references, so an under-referenced article is take as prima facie evidence against notability. This is in contrast to, for example, athletes and politicians, for which there are straightforward standards which can be applied to the text of the article even if the material is uncited. Given the steady rain of promotional articles for businesses and products and musicians, this approach is somewhat understandable, but it would save a lot of grief if AFD nominators would do the few basic web searches which it is often enough apparent they didn't bother with. That said, I don't see how we're going to get away from this. It's not unreasonable to expect the basic research to be done by authors. But if we go this way we really need to spell out the expectation. Mangoe ( talk) 21:33, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
My frustration with AfD has been pretty clear for a while. I think that a culture has developed, where WP:BEFORE is not particularly well respected (particularly regarding stubs). Further, there are some articles, for example organisations and particularly some subsets of organisations, or articles regarding people, places and things where coverage is primarily in a foreign language, where an assumption of non-notability is carried too far. My particular area, schools, is a world of two opposites. While on one side high schools are considered automagically (spelling deliberate) notable, primary schools have an almost insurmountable bar to cross before they're considered notable (primarily because there are those who consider WP:OUTCOMES to be policy and read the sentence "Most elementary (primary) and middle schools that don't source a clear claim to notability are now getting merged or redirected in AfD" without registering the word "most" and/or the phrase "that don't source a clear claim to notability").
Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Middle_Harbour_Public_School_(2nd_nomination), sent to AfD together with an unprecedented ~200 other school-related articles, was completely farcical. A top ranked school educationally, and also the site of a road rule change that is now pervasive throughout Australia, and it was still considered not worthy enough, primarily by people with no interest whatsoever in schools.
How to fix it though? No idea. Sorry. Wish I was able to help. ˜ danjel [ talk | contribs ] 08:17, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
I feel sad that the guy that started this thread, gets every single article he creates taken to AFD. I am also very sad to hear that so many agree that articles should start in the namespace until they are "ready" for publication on Wikipedia (which is not at all policy and still doesn't stop the article from showing up on a Google seach by the way) but what bothers me the most about all of this is that there seems to be little input that the entire point of Wikipedia is collaboration. Articles should not be the product of a single editor. Not that they should be deleted for it, but that others should be willing to help contribute more. The more eyes and input on an article, the better it will be. We are allowed to create stub articles for the very reason that others can add information and build it to GA or FA standards. I feel this is about working together and this thread is something of symptom of Wikipedia growing ever more towards a few established editors in a number of areas. Work together and improve the project and the article and try to find a way to save things...if they can be. Sure we have a lot of promotional stuff to worry about, but somethings that are being pushed as promotion are notable in themselves so we don't just delete it as it makes it difficult to recreate it later.-- Amadscientist ( talk) 22:42, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I am currently working on and off on about a dozne new articles, some of them like "
Parliament Square, Edinburgh" (that was created this week) was created in situ without any earlier construction, others like
William Govan took much longer to create and were created in my sandpit before being copied to article space. For me it depends on the complexity of the subject and how many sources need to be summarised to fashion an article (horses for course). However even with simple stubs like the Square I never save the text to create an article in article space before creating a stub with cited reliable sources, so if an reader happens to find the page before any more edits take place it is still up a useful standard. Since the creation of the Govan article in February this year there have been a total of 8 different editors who have worked on it. In the case of the Square four editors in in three days. So perhaps stubs on notable topics can encourage more collaboration than fully formed articles (where I have noticed a tendency for some editors of such articles to exhibit ownership that can lead to less collaboration). --
PBS (
talk) 20:51, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Create a namespace that is unpublished and completely invisible. Only logged in users could see it. All new articles would start off in this invisible namespace. This is exactly the same thing as starting an article in userspace but it allows collaboration, which userfied articles don't allow. These new articles wouldn't need to be tagged or sent to AfD because they don't exist, they're invisible exactly like userfied articles. Another benefit would be that it would act just the autoconfirmed article creation trial { WP:ACTRIAL) because new users don't have the move right. New users wouldn't be able to publish these new articles (move them to main article space) until they are autoconfirmed. This would give them time to learn our policies. The WMF has been looking in to something like this for over a year as part of Page Curation and would likely allow WP:ACTRIAL to run in this fashion, at least for a limited time until it is proven. 64.40.54.49 ( talk) 15:20, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
"if something is completely invisible, how would anyone find it to collaborate, except by invitation?"The space would be searchable by logged in users. I specifically left out a lot of details so people could focus on the main idea. Many of the details have already been worked out over the last year. You can find many of them here. Do you feel the basic idea has merit in any shape or form? 64.40.54.49 ( talk) 17:16, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm semi-active at AFD and I don't see a lot of nominations of brand-new articles except where it looks wp:snow that it isn't wp::notable. What I DO see a lot of is medium-age articles where wp:notability-suitable sources exist but so far no editors have found or added them. After all, only a tiny fraction of editors have the duo of being willing and able to seek and incorporate wp:notability type sources for a particular article specifically for the purpose of showing wp:notability.North8000 ( talk) 14:55, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clementine (The Walking Dead) This AFD was started *16 minutes* after the article was created. It's not a CRYSTAL (the game the character is in is out), and far from BLP/COI issues. It was just not well sourced. The creating author added sources within a few hours, and I will note that, likely happenstance, the actress for the character had just won a major vidoe game industry award for her portrayal of that character. While I understand Robert Horning's frustration above but also the fact that that article in question was a huge target for COI/CRYSTAL problems even after sources were added, here's a case where the article is fine but otherwise lacking immediate sources after the first edit and thus nominated for deletion right away. That is a problem in terms of acting too fast. -- MASEM ( t) 14:38, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Just two points of what I said above that probably (my fault) have been misunderstood:
Hope it's clearer now. -- Cyclopia talk 16:04, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Image use policy has been moved to Wikipedia:Image use suggestions, and it's no longer marked as a policy. Edokter left a comment about it at WP:AN, to which I responded by beginning a discussion — it probably should have been somewhere else, but I didn't think of that at first. Please either join in the discussion there or move it to a more appropriate place and discuss there. Nyttend ( talk) 12:47, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
This issue was the latest in a series of disagreements which have shown up what a dire state the supporting policies and guidelines about images are.
At the moment we have:
Note also the existence of Wikipedia:Copyright, which isn't really about media.
As the main ones, the numbers in the first bracket are views/month. I believe the problem here is really the allocation of topics between them is arbitrary. I've worked in this area before, about six months ago, and there were clearly some disagreement like this one about what ought to be policy or a guideline or neither. There is also the issue of whether we're speaking to uploaders or editors. I think we'd do better to reorganise it like this:
Image upload policy If we take, for example, Wikipedia:Image use policy it has several sections about uploading that I think should be the new Wikipedia:Image upload policy: ss. Requirements; Rules of thumb; Copyright and licensing (User-created images, Free licenses, Public domain, Fair use images); Deleting images; Image titles and file names; Format; Privacy rights. It has some subsections that I feel should be included: Uploaded image size; Animated images; Watermarks, credits, and distortions. The section "Consideration of image download size" from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images would also be included, merging with "Format". These are all a) aimed at uploaders b) have either a legal or technical basis. They aren't advisory, they are firm rules (all rules have exceptions).
Image use guidelines Wikipedia:Image use guidelines would be everything advisory about the use of media. So, again, looking at Wikipedia:Image use policy I can see things which are aimed at the editor, not uploader; that are about getting the best out of images. They are about size, placement, context: Placement; Displayed image size; the first half of section "Content", before the subheading. It would also take in most of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images: How to place an image; Choosing images; Image preferences. The section "Making images available" should be removed, or rehoused. It's distinctly incongruous - I'm not sure anyone comes to this page when seeking help about finding images. Parts of it might be relevant to upload policy.
Conclusions The effect of all of this would be to make it easier to point someone to the right page for them; it would help remove redundant sections and duplications; it would ensure that policy in particular is kept as concise as possible; it would help each to be more understandable since at the moment they switch between types of reader and tone. I know there's going to be some inertia to achieve this, but I do think it's something that needs to happen - and any wrinkles ironed out after. I haven't mentioned above what the new "Image use policy" might look like; I attempted to remove from "Image use policy" those parts I thought should be a guideline (Section "Placement") but was reverted, as I recall on at least partly the basis that it should be policy (to my mind, it was at least, part of the wrong policy page). So the idea there is to look at the new "Image use guidelines" and work out what, if anything, should be policy.
Do you think I should draft versions of these pages, or am I barking up the wrong tree? Grandiose ( me, talk, contribs) 19:54, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Having drafted the relevant pages I've started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Image_policy_and_guideline about adopting the drafts. Grandiose ( me, talk, contribs) 23:20, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
I am hoping to start a discussion with this posting. I posted something like this at Wikipedia talk:Recent years before but that page seems to have little action...
I find the recent years articles to be too watered down for my liking. These pages used to contain list of important happenings which was interesting to read through and go to the individual articles. On the other hand I am aware these pages also stuffed with useless trivia. I do not like either extreme to be honest.
Currently, few people seem to be dictating the inclusion criteria through quick reverts. It seems like the very guideline mentioned is being enforced rather than referenced. Discussion seems secondary if at all relevant as visible on the talk page. Rollback is seldom used to revert new entries without a rationale effectively being treated like vandalism, this is in my view an abuse of rollback.
Inclusion criteria itself seems problematic as well - at least to me. Below are some examples of important events that I'd not dismiss as simple trivia
This matters because, recent years articles tend to stay in the top 100 most visited articles so these pages are our most viewed content and topics posted there will allow people to learn more about what had happened recently. This is what an Encyclopedia supposed to be about.
-- A Certain White Cat chi? 06:36, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Extended content
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Some incidents from
2012 in aviation
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Extended content
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Some incidents from
2012
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Proposal for removing prefixes "Islamic views on xyz" | ||
I have started a request move to remove the prefixes Attached with the Prophets in Islam to there Names as in Islam. Like Islamic views on Abraham → Ibrahim as it becomes difficult to search the topic. Please participate in the discussion at Talk:Page Thanks. -- Ibrahim ebi ( talk) 18:13, 14 December 2012 (UTC) |
This is a notice concerning an RfC concerning the access and handling of confidential information by arbcom members and oversighters. And also changes policy concerning the granting and retaining of the Oversight user-right. - jc37 11:36, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features) ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
There is currently an RfC on whether to formally adopt the draft feedback response guidelines as a Wikipedia guideline, input appreciated. Callanecc ( talk • contribs • logs) 04:41, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion to alter the WP:BURDEN section of the Verifiability policy found on its talk page here.-- Amadscientist ( talk) 01:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I hope this is the right place for this question. Just wondering, when an article is deleted (eg AfD/prod), what stops its creator (using the same account or another) from putting it back up with either the same name or a slightly different one (eg "Purple paperclips" vs "Paperclips coloured purple")? Cheers, 1292simon ( talk) 11:58, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
There is a long DYK for Christmas thread that is about posting a mention on the Main Page to honor the achievements of one editor. Any comments should be posted there. — Maile ( talk) 13:49, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
A proposal regarding the essay WP:MMANOT has been made suggesting that the essay be promoted to the level of guideline. Please feel free to look in at both the proposed guideline and the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mixed martial arts/MMA notability/Archive 8#Promotion from Essay to Guideline and contribute where appropriate. Hasteur ( talk) 18:15, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
I've written an article on a rather narrow subject: that of how to format references to sources that are part of a quotation used in a WP article. This topic doesn't come up too often, but there are several ways to do it. A user space version of this article is found at User:Brews ohare/Citations inside quotations.
An earlier version of this article placed directly in WP:Project namespace was criticized as having had too little input from other editors. The idea also was raised that such essays are inappropriate to namespace until they have several authors, or perhaps until they can demonstrate a lot of readership. These views can be found on the proposed article Talk page.
Discussion of these objections and of the article itself are invited on its Talk page. Brews ohare ( talk) 23:02, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
On the occasion of Wilhelm II, German Emperor: In German usually a dot is added to the Roman numeral, so he is written Wilhelm II. in German. I guess each language has its own conventions for this case, which is why I want to discuss whether it would make sense a) to write these names in the way usual in their mother tongues or b) to set up redirects in these ways? -- KnightMove ( talk) 17:04, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Please comment at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Meta-ness looking for a wider audience than I think may be regularly monitoring that talk page. Gaijin42 ( talk) 22:15, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Oversight/FAQ ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
I have come across a few articles that have had edit wars over words like colour/color. Many of these have the dialect tag for the article on the talk page but many editors don't see it or ignore it. I would just like to feel out opinions on whether it would be worth proposing that when the dialect has consensus then an edit notice is placed automatically somehow on the article if the dialect tag is on the talk page. At least two of these articles have had the same edit wars and discussions crop up every few weeks/months/years. This may save future editing time and discussions if all pages that have a consensus on the dialect had an edit notice placed at the top of the edit window. The template wording could also be changed to add "Consensus has decided on this dialect. If you wish to open discussion again on it then bring it up on the talk page. Until then expect your changes to be reverted." type thing-- Canoe1967 ( talk) 19:04, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
. It seems that others on one talk page don't like overbearing edit notices. Forget I even mentioned it. Revdelete or oversight this post as well in case others come up with my silly idea. (kidding)-- Canoe1967 ( talk) 17:36, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
As a result of some recent FFD/DRV issues that have spilled into a pending ArbCom case, I'm looking to get input on a change to the Files for Deletion process, specifically to add a required notification on talk pages of articles that use the affected image/media file, currently an optional step, as to garner more input for FFDs and avoid some of the issues involved. The discussion is at WT:FFD#Making article page notification mandatory. -- MASEM ( t) 16:57, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
Article titles are determined by the policy at WP:TITLE, which consists, at last count, of 70 pages of naming conventions along with the main page at WP:Article titles. In the past a favorite rationale for moving pages, such as moving Michelson-Morley experiment to Michelson–Morley experiment is to cite MOS, thinking that WP:TITLE specifies the letters to use, but MOS specifies the punctuation to use. The MOS consists of 71 pages, so if this was a valid argument, a total of 142 pages would be used to decide titles. To eliminate this, a new page called WP:Title punctuation has been proposed, which includes everything that is needed to deciding punctuation and accent marks without needing to refer to the 71 pages of the MOS. Apteva ( talk) 00:55, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Title punctuation ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
As we generally try to deny recognition to disruptive editors, it strikes me that we might want to set Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets and its children as hidden categories. It would further reduce the visibility of their actions to the outside world without losing any useful information for logged-in editors. — Hex (❝?!❞) 08:54, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
I am quoting from fb post:
WASHINGTON, DC -- As many people speculate on whether the "NYPD boots cop" story is propaganda, it is noteworthy that the US Government is stepping up its cyber propaganda. With new "Persona Management" software, a single agent can control 10 or more fake personas ("sockpuppets") to spread fake stories and images in order to manipulate public opinion. That same agent can leave pro-government comments or otherwise troll key areas on social media networks.
Critics will likely complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.
A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.
US GOVERNMENT STEPPING UP ITS CYBER PROPAGANDA http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
I think admins should check the validity of arguments, not the number of editors involved.
Wikilawyering can help keep information suppressed. How many admins work for Operations ?
-- Mick2 ( talk) 17:56, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:People by year ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Following from this [22] issue on ANI, it has been shown that there a lot of articles on the results of individual events from notable swimming competitions, for example 2012 FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) – Men's 100 metre butterfly. (Again, to be clear, the larger competition of multiple events, 2012 FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) is fine). Note that this would extend to the Olympic swimming articles (eg of the Swimming at the 2012 Summer Olympics coverage, individual events like Swimming at the 2012 Summer Olympics – Men's 50 metre freestyle would be a problem) as well as any other sports (eg Alpine skiing at the 2010 Winter Olympics – Men's downhill)
I would argue that the event articles as they are shown are very inappropriate for WP for several reasons:
There's also another argument to be made here , and that's in light of having to deal with the MMA walled garden; there, we (we being the general established editor base) are trying to show the newer/outside editors that maintain the MMA space that articles on the individual events are not appropriate for WP. If we say that to them, but at the same time consider these swimming event articles as just fine, we are being hypocrites to the MMA people. As I think most agree that the appropriateness of individual MMA event articles is not there, I think we do need to consider deleting these as well.
I'd like to see what the consensus is here, and if it for deleting pages, go about removing them outside of the normal AFD cycle after some period to allow those that may have a reason to be kept to be fixed up. -- MASEM ( t) 19:39, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
I think the bottom line for MMA articles is WP:OTHERSTUFF; just because there are events on individual events in other sports does not mean that individual MMA events must have them too, any more than deleting articles on individual MMA events requires you to go on a tear through WP Olympics coverage. If you or others are going to force that kind of foolish consistency (cf. Emerson, Ralph Waldo) than you will merely force me and others to become a vocal defender of the MMA articles, about which I presently could not care less either way. postdlf ( talk) 19:57, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
But re: Olympics, I'd be shocked if it could not be shown that every individual Olympics event satisfies GNG. I'd also consider it a pretty clear IAR case even if that couldn't be shown, as in no way could I see our encyclopedia being improved by that information being removed. I look at Swimming at the 2012 Summer Olympics – Men's 50 metre freestyle, for example, and I see nothing but bluelinks, which means there's also a good case for this satisfying WP:LISTPURP both as a navigational list (participating in an Olympic event is a pretty significant fact about an individual, and a pretty significant shared fact for grouping athletes together) in addition to its value as an informational list. Not that I think it needs to be characterized as such a list to save it, but it also makes sense to me to see its value in that light. postdlf ( talk) 20:31, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Our "list of X by year" sports article do tend to be problematic... they present useful information... but... it is the type of information that to my mind belongs in an Almanac, not in an Encyclopedia. Why have we never created a WikiAlmanac sister project for the sort of list articles we are talking about? Blueboar ( talk) 14:25, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't see that anyone else has mentioned this RfC started Nov 30. People seem to think they are about to make some big policy change, so it seemed proper to bring this here. (I don't come here much so I assume announcement is ok.) CarolMooreDC 22:25, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:NS14 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
#REDIRECT [[Wikipedia:Categorization]] {{WP:NS14}}
What is the policy (and rationale) on writing out or using numerals for centuries? In other words, should we write 7th century or seventh century, 20th century or twentieth century (excluding the cases where the words come at the beginning of a sentence or are quotations, proper names or some other special cases)? Kdammers ( talk) 11:47, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
There should be a formalized process for challenging the closure of a talk page discussion. The relevant Wikipedia: page isn't helpful. A few months back I was involved in a discussion that I thought was closed prematurely. I made no progress discussing the matter on the closing admin's talk page; after that I was at a loss as to what to do. Someone at Help Desk pointed me to WP:AN/I, but there I was told to go to WP:DRN. At DRN there were several rounds of discussion before it was concluded that this was a conduct dispute rather than a content dispute, so I should go back to AN/I. Finally back at AN/I some administrators made a decision.
Long story short, if there was a specific forum designated for such closure challenges then a lot of people would have wasted a lot less time. -- Nstrauss ( talk) 09:05, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Unaware of any of this before this VPP post, but after reading the above and the prior, related threads, this is clear WP:FORUMSHOPping and WP:IDHT disruption in my view. I don't think anyone is obliged at this point to explain to Nstrauss yet again that WP:CONSENSUS does not grant any editor a heckler's veto, so if you are completely unable to get anyone else to agree with you on any content issue then that's it. You cannot unilaterally insist that the issue is still open. I think Nstrauss should be blocked if he starts another thread on this again. postdlf ( talk) 00:14, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, Monty845, for assuming good faith. That is all I was hoping for and I believe your addition is appropriate. To PBS, Beeblebrox, and postdlf, thanks for engaging in administrator groupthink. Phooey to all of you. -- Nstrauss ( talk) 21:24, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:NS14 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
Further input is welcome at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Formula One#Flagicons.
Although this is specifically about flagicons, it also goes to the more general issue of some WikiProjects just opting to completely ignore aspects of the Manual of Style, or in some cases even core content policies, sometimes (as in this case) without even attempting to present a rationale that would outweight the considerations behind the respective part of the MOS. -- 213.196.218.39 ( talk) 14:07, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Still a good relevant question in general. Neither is policy, but wp:mos carries some weight, whereas project guides are overreaching if they claim or imply to be anything beyond just recommendations. North8000 ( talk) 13:45, 24 December 2012 (UTC)