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The following is a quote copied from a user's talk page as placed by User:BetacommandBot:
Thanks for uploading Image:Rc-cola-bottle.JPG. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you. BetacommandBot ( talk) 17:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
The template {{ AFDWarning}} is but automatically on people's talk pages to inform them that a page they were involved in has been dropped on AFD. I believe it is overly verbose for the task; for instance, since it will often be sent to long-term editors, there really is no need for it to explain how signatures work. I'd like to prune it to the essentials, but would like some outside opinion on that. >Radiant< 23:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
If a user uploads an image with a valid fair-use rationale for some article, but then includes it in a gallery of "pictures I have uploaded" on their userpage, is this OK? It seems to me to be a violation of the fair-use policy; clearly there can be no fair-use rationale for using the image on the userpage. Should I just go in and remove the image from the userpage and leave a note, or should I leave a note for the user asking them to remove it themselves? - htonl ( talk) 01:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
well there are a number of changes recently made to wiki, well number 1 is that i have over 4billion dollars
Someone should write some code for the next revision of MediaWiki that adjusts your how certain words appear based on your IP, sort of like autocorrect in OpenOffice. Canada-kawaii 01:54, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
As part of the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Privatemusings arbitration case it has been noted that the sockpuppetry policy had "diverged from established norms at some points". It is not alone. Other policies have been rewritten by parties in dispute in order to enable their behaviour.
I would like to suggest that all policies marked as such (with {{ policy}}) be protected indefinitely, and any edits made solely on the basis of consensus on the discussion page and an {{ editprotected}} request handled by an independent admin not part of the discussion.
This is not proposed in order to create bureaucracy, but in order to maintain a stable policy base so that people have a realistic chance of keeping wihtin policy, and to avoid the absurdity of arbitrators and administrators fishing through past versions of policy to find out whether a given act violated the policy as written on that day. Guy ( Help!) 23:48, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Possibly not a bad idea... policy pages, if not watched very carefully, can become a hodgepodge of random editors pet peeves and personal quirks writ large... everyone wants to add their own little thing, and most of these people mean well... but the end result is often a few core ideas with 50 minor things tacked on here and there, it's not very coherent. One problem with this plan is that it could make it hard to change the current state of policies... which evidently isn't very good in some places. -- W.marsh 02:30, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Certainly worth trying for awhile. If we find the policies are getting too stagnant, then we can put them on a schedule for review maybe. FloNight ♥♥♥ —Preceding comment was added at 02:38, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Let's be real - the people accused (no comment on the validity of the accusations; haven't looked at the case) of editing policy to enable their administrative actions are (of course) admins. If they were A) already knowingly going against current policy [if they didn't know, why change it] and B) changing policy against consensus; why would they not just edit the page anyway? What on earth does this accomplish?— Random832 03:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
This has been proposed before for the exact same reason. For what it's worth, I agree with the idea. It should be difficult for people to change policies to support their own agenda. Graham 87 06:45, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Guy, I came here to laugh at you but instead find myself praising your brilliance. I'm astounded that a solution so elegant and simple has not been proposed before. east.718 at 11:39, November 25, 2007
I don't like it, but it does seem necessary unfortunately, so I also support this. Garion96 (talk) 11:48, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
"The absurdity of arbitrators and administrators fishing through past versions of policy to find out whether a given act violated the policy as written on that day." As far as I am aware, Wikipedia:Disruptive editing hasn't change. Just because an editor who specializes in throwing out red herrings for admins to follow doesn't mean they should be followed. And yes, I agree that policies susceptible to being rewritten by parties to enable questionable behavior may be protected as you suggest. -- Jreferee t/ c 16:14, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Won't this encourage wikilawyering? If the ArbCom is actually fishing through policy page history to determine if an editors' actions are in line with nominal policies on particular days in the past, then frankly they're doing it wrong. Full protection of policy pages isn't the answer in that case; the ArbCom – and all Wikipedians who are trying to enforce policy – ought to be aware that the absolute letter of any policy or guideline is not the be-all and end-all. We are much more interested in maintaining the spirit of our rules—and even then, we enforce the rules only as a means to maintaining and improving the encyclopedia.
If an editor is doing something that is harmful to the encyclopedia, we ask them to stop. If an editor persists in deliberately doing things a reasonable person would think disruptive, we sanction. If there is disagreement about whether or not an action is harmful, we have a discussion. We don't hew to the bright line of the nitpicky wording of policies—that leads to the refrain that all of us (including Guy) have seen on AN/I in defense of one obnoxious act or another: "Show me the exact policy that says what I'm doing isn't allowed!". Permanent protection of policy pages will exacerbate those cries: "If there's no consensus to disallow my behaviour in policy, you can't block me for it and ArbCom can't sanction me for it!" While such arguments will get short shrift from individuals exercising common sense, there will nevertheless be cries of 'admin abuse!' and endless wikidrama from individuals who need letter-perfect adherence to these etched-in-stone policies.
Under the present system, such wikilawyering occasionally leads us to update the policy to close the loophole. More often, we acknowledge that there will be edge and pathological cases that our policy doesn't contemplate, and opt to use our best, collective judgement in the future. We realize that modifying policy to fit every odd case or specific situation is an exercise in futility (not to mention a risk of WP:BEANS) and that rewriting policy over single, rare occurrences can have unintended consequences.
Wikipedia policies evolve because it is sometimes useful to codify the practices and standards we refer to on a regular basis rather than having to reinvent the wheel each time we face a situation; they're specific expressions of commonly-used interpretations of the five pillars and the policy trifecta. (Indeed, I could see the value of permanently protecting short, sweet versions of those policies and those policies alone, and pushing everything that's interpretation of them off into regular, editable policy pages.) Wikipedia is not a legal system or an experiment in government; we don't attempt to control behaviour through a complex set of preestablished laws. Making the change to full protection of all policy pages will, I'm afraid, encourage the misconception that Wikipedia is a nomic and that policy pages are to be interpreted in a most lawyerly fashion. TenOfAllTrades( talk) 16:28, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I oppose this on principle, per my earlier comments and TenOfAllTrades. Gives a wrong impression of how wikipedia works - and that is more dangerous than anything.-- Docg 01:59, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Disagree per DocG and TenOfAllTrades. The people I've seen editing policy pages during a dispute to make them look better have the technical ability to edit protected pages. Better to leave them unprotected so that such edits during dispute can be reverted by anyone. Without a much stronger method of gathering input and testing consensus the suggestion is not viable. GRBerry 14:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm ambivalent about this suggestion -- although willing to live with the outcome, at least for a while. On one hand, it does appear to be a good idea -- at least for some of the policies; this will silence the argument "but how do I know the rules won't change?" And it will be one area where we need not worry about edit wars. On the other hand, this weakens one of the reasons for
ignore all rules: by locking these pages down, instead of encouraging people to follow the spirit of the policies, it encourages them to follow the letter. --
llywrch (
talk) 19:59, 27 November 2007 (UTC) On second thought, after seeing
this thread below, which is about the related discussion on
Wikipedia talk:No original research, I am against this proposal. Right now, there is no worry that some crank might successfully weasel something into one policy or another that prevents us from writing useful content, so Wikipedians like me can leave these discussions to the policy wonks, cranks & so forth & concentrate on writing & improving articles. The possibility that one of these policies might actually be locked in a bad version (which is not
the wrong version) would mean that the rest of us would have to regularly police these timesinks, & not have the time to write. I'll admit it: when I post here, or at
WP:AN, or at
WP:AN/I, & at similar places I'm slacking. However, if spending time in these fora were a requirement to write the articles I have been doing -- I'll leave. --
llywrch (
talk) 20:37, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking the same thing the other day, but if we want to do that, we first need to cut down on the number of policy pages, especially in the "behaviour" section. A new, much pruned core set of stable policies needs to be devised, and it needs to concentrate on the creation and maintenance of content, not on micromanaging of user behaviour in backspace. Zocky | picture popups 11:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Agree, but with the caveat that admins may not edit policy pages for any reason whatsoever without first discussing it on the talk page. Period. (Or full stop, according to your preference.) All edits should be discussed on the talk page, and in the case of large changes, planned on a draft page. They should be implemented either unanimously or with discussion that results in a consensus. A link to all major changes should be added to WP:VPT, {{ cent}}, WP:RFC, and/or WP:AN, as appropriate. Otherwise, I oppose this measure per GRBerry. Gracenotes T § 18:19, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
This is a philosophy shift from longstanding practice. One of Jimbo's fundamental principles (not necessarily policy) is that "'You can edit this page right now' is a core guiding check on everything that we do. We must respect this principle as sacred." I agree with Jimbo. Policy pages are Wikipedia pages too, and have benefitted greatly from the Wikipedia philosophy of WP:BOLD. If we lock them down, there will be three effects:
I don't think we want any of these consequences. COGDEN 04:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
May you consider just for a moment, that what as served the project well for 3 years, may also serve the project for another ten? Change for the sake of change, is not good practice. The community will find consensus when it needs it to change policy. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:41, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Oppose per my comments at the Admins Noticeboard, where this discussion has recently started. Anything which further divides admins from ordinary users is bad for everyone - it adds to feelings of "us and them", it reduces transparency, it gives admins a policy-making rôle which they were never intended to have, and it increases the risk of admin abuse. Being an admin, we are often told, is "no big deal - admins are ordinary editors". This proposal drives a coach and horses through that principle. We should be improving the way wikipedia gains consensus for policy and involving a broader, more representative section of the community in making policy. Preventing most editors from editing policy pages will reduce participation, increase bad-feeling and harm the Wikipedia. DuncanHill ( talk) 10:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
This (policy protection) is a profoundly bad idea that fails totally to connect with how consensus editing and development works. Insisting that you must have an admin's permission to update policies either by way of correction or bold proposal is wrong and creates a police-guard around the policies in question. Anyone can edit this encyclopedia, and its policies exist and mutate only because of that fact. If the motiviation to this is vandalism, then you know where to get off, and if it's bad changes to those policies well, just revert then discuss. There is no effect to either vandalism or a non-consensus change since neither carry any actual weight at all. Splash - tk 13:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Random832 said it well above: Administors are people, too. (I can attest to that, I'm one myself). I don't think the distinction should be between admins and ordinary editors, but between discussed changes and undiscussed changes. Moreover, there are plenty of changes by non-admins or even IP accounts, such as interwiki links, for which we should not create an unnecessary hurdle. Therefore, I propose the following:
A similar system is currently working very well on WT:SLR. — Sebastian 23:31, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
No, I think this proposal runs contrary to the idea of a wiki. It would probably have a chilling effect on constructive edits to these policy pages. Also, I think that sometimes users who are accused of violating policy (e.g. sockpuppetry) begin taking an interest in that policy at that point, and decide to make edits with the intent of bettering the policy. It's not necessarily just people wanting to legalize their own behavior. Sarsaparilla 04:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Am I strange to suggest that you should "merely" check to ensure your edit reflects consensus? -- Kim Bruning ( talk) 04:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm uncomfortable with the general idea of protecting the policy pages, for many of the reasons discussed above, but mostly because of a gut feeling it's un-Wikipedia-like. Edit wars on protected pages are wheel wars, and it seems it might even escalate things on hotly-contested debates (raising the stakes of each edit). However, since there's so much interest in doing something, might I suggest a laboratory of democracy, and try it a couple of different ways on a couple of different pages, and see what happens? Use Guy's proposal on 2-3 policy pages, use Sebastian's sort of overlooked proposal on 2-3 pages, and, noting jossi's comment above, enforce more strictly the current statement in the policy box on 2-3 pages. Don't change anything in the other policies. See what happens it 1-2 months. -- barneca ( talk) 01:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Policy | Policy policy | Comments |
---|---|---|
Wikipedia:Ignore all rules ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) | First talk, then implement | |
Please add your proposals in the table. — Sebastian 02:19, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
a novel of concept
i hate you
I found the following notice in the external links section of a couple of articles:
<!--===========================({{NoMoreLinks}})===============================
| DO NOT ADD MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE. WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A COLLECTION OF |
| LINKS. If you think that your link might be useful, do not add it here, |
| but put it on this article's discussion page first or submit your link |
| to the appropriate category at the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org)|
| and link back to that category using the {{dmoz}} template. |
| |
| Links that have not been verified WILL BE DELETED. |
| See [[Wikipedia:External links]] and [[Wikipedia:Spam]] for details |
===========================({{NoMoreLinks}})===============================-->
The sections I found them in were empty except for a single link. See external links section of Life extension and the Genetics article.
The notice is disturbing for three reasons:
I believe use of this notice should be discontinued, and that the notice should be removed from articles.
The notice itself is not a page, and therefore, a TfD is insufficient. The template:NoMoreLinks should be nominated for deletion if the notice is determined by the community to be inappropriate.
The Transhumanist 03:06, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I replaced it on the two page mentioned. I note that the EL section of Life Extension has a number of links, not just one-- some quite dubious, which I will remove later. I consider it a very appropriate place for such a template. Genetics had only one link at present, abut I want to trace the history of earlier links there before deciding it is unnecessary. I know many other pages where the template has been very useful indeed. If we are agree on the wording, we can try to hunt them down & fix DGG ( talk) 07:38, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
This has been on my mind lately: Can there ever be a reason/scenario when an ad would be an acceptable source for something added here? I contribute a'lot to magic here and some very old publications have ads for various manufacturers and magicians who started out very "small", but now are "big" names in the world of entertainment and sometimes I think it might add to the encyclopedic value here to note some of these old ads. 02:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Should there be some policy as to what profanities you can and can't use? I personally do not appreciate reading the f-word while doing my research, and would like to at least see it as f***. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LinuxMercedes ( talk • contribs) 00:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Hellhi fuck
OK. I've searched for policies/guidelines/contacts for this and found none: What should we do when someone makes real-world violent threats on Wikipedia? In the case I have in mind, the threats weren't against a Wikipedia editor (as far as I know), just against someone identified by first and last name. They stated they would "shoot" that person.
The edits in question are here. I'll point out that aside from the threat, the edit looks like the old, commonplace act of juvenile libel. So chances are it's not serious. But it's a threat to shoot someone.
Now, as for the obvious, easy stuff: I've done that. Reverted the edits and warned the editor against vandalism. But I don't know what else to do, or how.
It's possible that the threat is serious. If I think there's a likelihood someone might get shot over this, perhaps I should inform law enforcement. Two problems:
What I'm looking for is, something like "there's already a policy on this, here it is" or "you should notify the such-and-such list about this" or "there's nothing you/we can do; just forget it" or "we haven't dealt with this before, let's have a discussion and maybe come up with a policy."
-- Why Not A Duck 21:52, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Currently, there is no good way to speedily delete hoaxes. There have been suggestions to delete them as pure vandalism (G3) and nonsense (G1). They both need stretching to accomodate this. I for one am very much opposed to stretching speedy criteria. It either conforms to the CSD, or it doesn't. What triggered me to suggest adding this criterion, is this AfD. The correspondings articles talk page indicates good faith, which rules out vandalism. Nonsense shold only be applied to completely incoherent things. The WP:CSD explicity declare that hoaxes are not speedily deletable as nonsense. A new speedy category for unreferenced hoaxes would fill this gap. Martijn Hoekstra ( talk) 00:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Sometimes, a clearly outlandish hoax can be nailed as either pure vandalism or nonsense (an article about a Martian landing on Jupiter, a fifty-foot-tall dust mite, or Mozart using a fusion-powered amplifier), but generally if it's at least plausible it should go to AfD for further investigation. Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:41, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
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The following is a quote copied from a user's talk page as placed by User:BetacommandBot:
Thanks for uploading Image:Rc-cola-bottle.JPG. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you. BetacommandBot ( talk) 17:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
The template {{ AFDWarning}} is but automatically on people's talk pages to inform them that a page they were involved in has been dropped on AFD. I believe it is overly verbose for the task; for instance, since it will often be sent to long-term editors, there really is no need for it to explain how signatures work. I'd like to prune it to the essentials, but would like some outside opinion on that. >Radiant< 23:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
If a user uploads an image with a valid fair-use rationale for some article, but then includes it in a gallery of "pictures I have uploaded" on their userpage, is this OK? It seems to me to be a violation of the fair-use policy; clearly there can be no fair-use rationale for using the image on the userpage. Should I just go in and remove the image from the userpage and leave a note, or should I leave a note for the user asking them to remove it themselves? - htonl ( talk) 01:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
well there are a number of changes recently made to wiki, well number 1 is that i have over 4billion dollars
Someone should write some code for the next revision of MediaWiki that adjusts your how certain words appear based on your IP, sort of like autocorrect in OpenOffice. Canada-kawaii 01:54, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
As part of the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Privatemusings arbitration case it has been noted that the sockpuppetry policy had "diverged from established norms at some points". It is not alone. Other policies have been rewritten by parties in dispute in order to enable their behaviour.
I would like to suggest that all policies marked as such (with {{ policy}}) be protected indefinitely, and any edits made solely on the basis of consensus on the discussion page and an {{ editprotected}} request handled by an independent admin not part of the discussion.
This is not proposed in order to create bureaucracy, but in order to maintain a stable policy base so that people have a realistic chance of keeping wihtin policy, and to avoid the absurdity of arbitrators and administrators fishing through past versions of policy to find out whether a given act violated the policy as written on that day. Guy ( Help!) 23:48, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Possibly not a bad idea... policy pages, if not watched very carefully, can become a hodgepodge of random editors pet peeves and personal quirks writ large... everyone wants to add their own little thing, and most of these people mean well... but the end result is often a few core ideas with 50 minor things tacked on here and there, it's not very coherent. One problem with this plan is that it could make it hard to change the current state of policies... which evidently isn't very good in some places. -- W.marsh 02:30, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Certainly worth trying for awhile. If we find the policies are getting too stagnant, then we can put them on a schedule for review maybe. FloNight ♥♥♥ —Preceding comment was added at 02:38, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Let's be real - the people accused (no comment on the validity of the accusations; haven't looked at the case) of editing policy to enable their administrative actions are (of course) admins. If they were A) already knowingly going against current policy [if they didn't know, why change it] and B) changing policy against consensus; why would they not just edit the page anyway? What on earth does this accomplish?— Random832 03:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
This has been proposed before for the exact same reason. For what it's worth, I agree with the idea. It should be difficult for people to change policies to support their own agenda. Graham 87 06:45, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Guy, I came here to laugh at you but instead find myself praising your brilliance. I'm astounded that a solution so elegant and simple has not been proposed before. east.718 at 11:39, November 25, 2007
I don't like it, but it does seem necessary unfortunately, so I also support this. Garion96 (talk) 11:48, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
"The absurdity of arbitrators and administrators fishing through past versions of policy to find out whether a given act violated the policy as written on that day." As far as I am aware, Wikipedia:Disruptive editing hasn't change. Just because an editor who specializes in throwing out red herrings for admins to follow doesn't mean they should be followed. And yes, I agree that policies susceptible to being rewritten by parties to enable questionable behavior may be protected as you suggest. -- Jreferee t/ c 16:14, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Won't this encourage wikilawyering? If the ArbCom is actually fishing through policy page history to determine if an editors' actions are in line with nominal policies on particular days in the past, then frankly they're doing it wrong. Full protection of policy pages isn't the answer in that case; the ArbCom – and all Wikipedians who are trying to enforce policy – ought to be aware that the absolute letter of any policy or guideline is not the be-all and end-all. We are much more interested in maintaining the spirit of our rules—and even then, we enforce the rules only as a means to maintaining and improving the encyclopedia.
If an editor is doing something that is harmful to the encyclopedia, we ask them to stop. If an editor persists in deliberately doing things a reasonable person would think disruptive, we sanction. If there is disagreement about whether or not an action is harmful, we have a discussion. We don't hew to the bright line of the nitpicky wording of policies—that leads to the refrain that all of us (including Guy) have seen on AN/I in defense of one obnoxious act or another: "Show me the exact policy that says what I'm doing isn't allowed!". Permanent protection of policy pages will exacerbate those cries: "If there's no consensus to disallow my behaviour in policy, you can't block me for it and ArbCom can't sanction me for it!" While such arguments will get short shrift from individuals exercising common sense, there will nevertheless be cries of 'admin abuse!' and endless wikidrama from individuals who need letter-perfect adherence to these etched-in-stone policies.
Under the present system, such wikilawyering occasionally leads us to update the policy to close the loophole. More often, we acknowledge that there will be edge and pathological cases that our policy doesn't contemplate, and opt to use our best, collective judgement in the future. We realize that modifying policy to fit every odd case or specific situation is an exercise in futility (not to mention a risk of WP:BEANS) and that rewriting policy over single, rare occurrences can have unintended consequences.
Wikipedia policies evolve because it is sometimes useful to codify the practices and standards we refer to on a regular basis rather than having to reinvent the wheel each time we face a situation; they're specific expressions of commonly-used interpretations of the five pillars and the policy trifecta. (Indeed, I could see the value of permanently protecting short, sweet versions of those policies and those policies alone, and pushing everything that's interpretation of them off into regular, editable policy pages.) Wikipedia is not a legal system or an experiment in government; we don't attempt to control behaviour through a complex set of preestablished laws. Making the change to full protection of all policy pages will, I'm afraid, encourage the misconception that Wikipedia is a nomic and that policy pages are to be interpreted in a most lawyerly fashion. TenOfAllTrades( talk) 16:28, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I oppose this on principle, per my earlier comments and TenOfAllTrades. Gives a wrong impression of how wikipedia works - and that is more dangerous than anything.-- Docg 01:59, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Disagree per DocG and TenOfAllTrades. The people I've seen editing policy pages during a dispute to make them look better have the technical ability to edit protected pages. Better to leave them unprotected so that such edits during dispute can be reverted by anyone. Without a much stronger method of gathering input and testing consensus the suggestion is not viable. GRBerry 14:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm ambivalent about this suggestion -- although willing to live with the outcome, at least for a while. On one hand, it does appear to be a good idea -- at least for some of the policies; this will silence the argument "but how do I know the rules won't change?" And it will be one area where we need not worry about edit wars. On the other hand, this weakens one of the reasons for
ignore all rules: by locking these pages down, instead of encouraging people to follow the spirit of the policies, it encourages them to follow the letter. --
llywrch (
talk) 19:59, 27 November 2007 (UTC) On second thought, after seeing
this thread below, which is about the related discussion on
Wikipedia talk:No original research, I am against this proposal. Right now, there is no worry that some crank might successfully weasel something into one policy or another that prevents us from writing useful content, so Wikipedians like me can leave these discussions to the policy wonks, cranks & so forth & concentrate on writing & improving articles. The possibility that one of these policies might actually be locked in a bad version (which is not
the wrong version) would mean that the rest of us would have to regularly police these timesinks, & not have the time to write. I'll admit it: when I post here, or at
WP:AN, or at
WP:AN/I, & at similar places I'm slacking. However, if spending time in these fora were a requirement to write the articles I have been doing -- I'll leave. --
llywrch (
talk) 20:37, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking the same thing the other day, but if we want to do that, we first need to cut down on the number of policy pages, especially in the "behaviour" section. A new, much pruned core set of stable policies needs to be devised, and it needs to concentrate on the creation and maintenance of content, not on micromanaging of user behaviour in backspace. Zocky | picture popups 11:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Agree, but with the caveat that admins may not edit policy pages for any reason whatsoever without first discussing it on the talk page. Period. (Or full stop, according to your preference.) All edits should be discussed on the talk page, and in the case of large changes, planned on a draft page. They should be implemented either unanimously or with discussion that results in a consensus. A link to all major changes should be added to WP:VPT, {{ cent}}, WP:RFC, and/or WP:AN, as appropriate. Otherwise, I oppose this measure per GRBerry. Gracenotes T § 18:19, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
This is a philosophy shift from longstanding practice. One of Jimbo's fundamental principles (not necessarily policy) is that "'You can edit this page right now' is a core guiding check on everything that we do. We must respect this principle as sacred." I agree with Jimbo. Policy pages are Wikipedia pages too, and have benefitted greatly from the Wikipedia philosophy of WP:BOLD. If we lock them down, there will be three effects:
I don't think we want any of these consequences. COGDEN 04:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
May you consider just for a moment, that what as served the project well for 3 years, may also serve the project for another ten? Change for the sake of change, is not good practice. The community will find consensus when it needs it to change policy. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:41, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Oppose per my comments at the Admins Noticeboard, where this discussion has recently started. Anything which further divides admins from ordinary users is bad for everyone - it adds to feelings of "us and them", it reduces transparency, it gives admins a policy-making rôle which they were never intended to have, and it increases the risk of admin abuse. Being an admin, we are often told, is "no big deal - admins are ordinary editors". This proposal drives a coach and horses through that principle. We should be improving the way wikipedia gains consensus for policy and involving a broader, more representative section of the community in making policy. Preventing most editors from editing policy pages will reduce participation, increase bad-feeling and harm the Wikipedia. DuncanHill ( talk) 10:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
This (policy protection) is a profoundly bad idea that fails totally to connect with how consensus editing and development works. Insisting that you must have an admin's permission to update policies either by way of correction or bold proposal is wrong and creates a police-guard around the policies in question. Anyone can edit this encyclopedia, and its policies exist and mutate only because of that fact. If the motiviation to this is vandalism, then you know where to get off, and if it's bad changes to those policies well, just revert then discuss. There is no effect to either vandalism or a non-consensus change since neither carry any actual weight at all. Splash - tk 13:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Random832 said it well above: Administors are people, too. (I can attest to that, I'm one myself). I don't think the distinction should be between admins and ordinary editors, but between discussed changes and undiscussed changes. Moreover, there are plenty of changes by non-admins or even IP accounts, such as interwiki links, for which we should not create an unnecessary hurdle. Therefore, I propose the following:
A similar system is currently working very well on WT:SLR. — Sebastian 23:31, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
No, I think this proposal runs contrary to the idea of a wiki. It would probably have a chilling effect on constructive edits to these policy pages. Also, I think that sometimes users who are accused of violating policy (e.g. sockpuppetry) begin taking an interest in that policy at that point, and decide to make edits with the intent of bettering the policy. It's not necessarily just people wanting to legalize their own behavior. Sarsaparilla 04:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Am I strange to suggest that you should "merely" check to ensure your edit reflects consensus? -- Kim Bruning ( talk) 04:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm uncomfortable with the general idea of protecting the policy pages, for many of the reasons discussed above, but mostly because of a gut feeling it's un-Wikipedia-like. Edit wars on protected pages are wheel wars, and it seems it might even escalate things on hotly-contested debates (raising the stakes of each edit). However, since there's so much interest in doing something, might I suggest a laboratory of democracy, and try it a couple of different ways on a couple of different pages, and see what happens? Use Guy's proposal on 2-3 policy pages, use Sebastian's sort of overlooked proposal on 2-3 pages, and, noting jossi's comment above, enforce more strictly the current statement in the policy box on 2-3 pages. Don't change anything in the other policies. See what happens it 1-2 months. -- barneca ( talk) 01:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Policy | Policy policy | Comments |
---|---|---|
Wikipedia:Ignore all rules ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) | First talk, then implement | |
Please add your proposals in the table. — Sebastian 02:19, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
a novel of concept
i hate you
I found the following notice in the external links section of a couple of articles:
<!--===========================({{NoMoreLinks}})===============================
| DO NOT ADD MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE. WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A COLLECTION OF |
| LINKS. If you think that your link might be useful, do not add it here, |
| but put it on this article's discussion page first or submit your link |
| to the appropriate category at the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org)|
| and link back to that category using the {{dmoz}} template. |
| |
| Links that have not been verified WILL BE DELETED. |
| See [[Wikipedia:External links]] and [[Wikipedia:Spam]] for details |
===========================({{NoMoreLinks}})===============================-->
The sections I found them in were empty except for a single link. See external links section of Life extension and the Genetics article.
The notice is disturbing for three reasons:
I believe use of this notice should be discontinued, and that the notice should be removed from articles.
The notice itself is not a page, and therefore, a TfD is insufficient. The template:NoMoreLinks should be nominated for deletion if the notice is determined by the community to be inappropriate.
The Transhumanist 03:06, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I replaced it on the two page mentioned. I note that the EL section of Life Extension has a number of links, not just one-- some quite dubious, which I will remove later. I consider it a very appropriate place for such a template. Genetics had only one link at present, abut I want to trace the history of earlier links there before deciding it is unnecessary. I know many other pages where the template has been very useful indeed. If we are agree on the wording, we can try to hunt them down & fix DGG ( talk) 07:38, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
This has been on my mind lately: Can there ever be a reason/scenario when an ad would be an acceptable source for something added here? I contribute a'lot to magic here and some very old publications have ads for various manufacturers and magicians who started out very "small", but now are "big" names in the world of entertainment and sometimes I think it might add to the encyclopedic value here to note some of these old ads. 02:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Should there be some policy as to what profanities you can and can't use? I personally do not appreciate reading the f-word while doing my research, and would like to at least see it as f***. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LinuxMercedes ( talk • contribs) 00:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Hellhi fuck
OK. I've searched for policies/guidelines/contacts for this and found none: What should we do when someone makes real-world violent threats on Wikipedia? In the case I have in mind, the threats weren't against a Wikipedia editor (as far as I know), just against someone identified by first and last name. They stated they would "shoot" that person.
The edits in question are here. I'll point out that aside from the threat, the edit looks like the old, commonplace act of juvenile libel. So chances are it's not serious. But it's a threat to shoot someone.
Now, as for the obvious, easy stuff: I've done that. Reverted the edits and warned the editor against vandalism. But I don't know what else to do, or how.
It's possible that the threat is serious. If I think there's a likelihood someone might get shot over this, perhaps I should inform law enforcement. Two problems:
What I'm looking for is, something like "there's already a policy on this, here it is" or "you should notify the such-and-such list about this" or "there's nothing you/we can do; just forget it" or "we haven't dealt with this before, let's have a discussion and maybe come up with a policy."
-- Why Not A Duck 21:52, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Currently, there is no good way to speedily delete hoaxes. There have been suggestions to delete them as pure vandalism (G3) and nonsense (G1). They both need stretching to accomodate this. I for one am very much opposed to stretching speedy criteria. It either conforms to the CSD, or it doesn't. What triggered me to suggest adding this criterion, is this AfD. The correspondings articles talk page indicates good faith, which rules out vandalism. Nonsense shold only be applied to completely incoherent things. The WP:CSD explicity declare that hoaxes are not speedily deletable as nonsense. A new speedy category for unreferenced hoaxes would fill this gap. Martijn Hoekstra ( talk) 00:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Sometimes, a clearly outlandish hoax can be nailed as either pure vandalism or nonsense (an article about a Martian landing on Jupiter, a fifty-foot-tall dust mite, or Mozart using a fusion-powered amplifier), but generally if it's at least plausible it should go to AfD for further investigation. Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:41, 6 December 2007 (UTC)