This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy).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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I've started a discussion Wikipedia talk:Banning policy#Request for comments: Community bans to help clarify our confused policy on banning disruptive editors. - Jehochman Talk 04:28, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello. User:Caroig's {{ Geobox}} template shows up technical categories in all articles which use it, see e.g. Warta Bolesławiecka and Category:Geobox City, Poland which shows up. Caroig said he didn't find any official policy saying that such categories in the article namespace are prohibited. I asked him to alter the Geobox code but he don't want to do that. I can't recall any Infobox which have such categories in article namespace. Caroig insists it is the same as categories regarding cleanup or wikification but I suppose it is not. Can you point me to proper policy or advise what to do, please? Thank you. - Darwinek 15:45, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Nominated to WP:CFD --> here. Please vote and express your opinion. - Darwinek 20:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Is there a standard for handling a set of general references that apply to a large number of pages? The two approaches I've seen are:
Both have received objections by some users. The former doesn't present the information on the same page, while the later can result in an unwieldy list that can appear on all of the associated pages. Either seems preferable to independently maintaining the same list on a multitude of pages. Thanks. — RJH ( talk) 19:33, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
I currently maintain the wikipedia article for the USS Springfield (SSN-761), and am a crewmember of that ship. I'll admit that I haven't added all too much to it, and there's much more that could be done with it. But I keep it up-to-date with all the current information of the command and a brief overview of its operations. Currently the page is rated poorly because of the lack of citations. But when I update the article to reflect that CDR Paul Savage is the commanding officer I don't use a citation. I don't need one. He's my boss, of course I know who the commanding officer is. I know what awards we receive, what operations we're on. I know this because I'm on the ship every day. How am I supposed to reflect this for Wikipedia citations? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Divsky ( talk • contribs) 23:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
I was instructed to take this thought process here. Going from a visual POV, when talking to people I was told to put clean up tags under the infobox templates. It would still place the tag at the top of the article, per guidelines, but it wouldn't throw off the orientation of the pages. The guidelines say top of article but do not specify if that top should be visual or literal. Putting the tag below the infobox on the edit page visually puts the tag at the top of the article, per guidelines, and side by side with the info box. It's visually pleasing and does not throw off the page orientation. The issue is, is it MANDITORY that the tag throws off the page and makes the articles look bad, or is it acceptable for the tag to go below the info box in the edit mode aligning it at the top of the article with the top of the info box? John Black (fiction) being an example of how the Soap Project participants have been instructed. Thank you. CelticGreen 01:28, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
| | | | | | | | | | Infobox | | Large blank space | | | | | | |___________________| | <-- Side of the screen _________________________________________________________ | | Cleanup templates | | | | | |_______________________________________________________| | Article text |
| | <-- Side of the screen _________________________________________________________________ | | Cleanup templates || | || |________________________________________________________________|| | | | | | | Article text | Infobox | | | | | |___________________| |
To see what it actually looks like, again, I would direct you to the John Black (fiction) page. With a widescreen, you don't see any article when the tag is at the top. When it's put below the info box it lands side by side with the infobox but doesn't interfere with the article and there is no blank space. CelticGreen 18:11, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
-- Mr. Z-man 21:15, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
I think that the placement of these temporary messages (whether for cleanup, tone, refs, current event etc) should take into account the structure of the article, rather than the visual appearance, as not everyone views pages in the same skin, or they have their own style or no style applied, or they may not even be viewing the page and they are using a screen reader or a tactile display. These output devices present the information in a linear fashion, starting at the top and working down, so by placing the tag below the infobox, information in the article is presented (that in the infobox), then you get the message, and then the lead section. This confuses the article message and the article content as the message is in the middle of the content, so the message should be placed before content. A good way to find out the linear layout of a page is to view it without any style applied. The Wikipedia:Accessibility guideline provides some layout examples on this. This layout also provides a visual separation between the message and content, showing that the message applies to the infobox content as well, and doesn't mix the two together. Any issues with the visual appearance should be addressed so that the non-visual appearance is still logical and understandable by non-visual users, and the best place to discuss the visual appearance is probably Wikipedia talk:Article message boxes or Template talk:Ambox. Or just fix the articles. matt br 22:11, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
When a contribution is deleted without the deletor and/or wikipedia staff even having the courtesy to contact the contributor and debate the significance, where does the contributor go to debate the significance of the contribution? Especially if the contributor is above average sure the deleter is wrong and should be forced to debate the issue? —Preceding unsigned comment added by OlympedeCleves ( talk • contribs) 17:20, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello,
I was wondering if it would be possible for me to draw simple line illustrations as seen from a book and be able to use them as images for my article without breaking copyright laws. My article is seam types. I would appreciate any feedback.
Thank you, Snap pea 23:15, 26 October 2007 (UTC)Snap_pea Snap pea 23:15, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
There appears to be some inconsistency/ambiguity in this policy. WP:CONTEXT currently states the following re: date wikilinking:
[[25 March]] [[2004]]
— or day and month — [[February 10]]
— should be linked for date preference formatting.The guideline states that one should only link to days of the year "if it is likely to deepen readers' understanding of a topic" - but in what way could linking to individual days ever deepen readers' understanding of a particular topic? Day pages are by definition a hodge-podge of information about things that happened on that particular day in history, how could this information ever be relevant to a particular topic? I would submit, almost never, so such day-date pages should almost never be linked, but in practice people seem to be linking them all the time. So this policy appears to be inconsistent with current practice.
Also the first paragraph says "Dates when they contain a day, month, and year...should be linked for date preference formatting. It's a little ambiguous, because it appears to indicate that such dates "should be linked" at all times. Shouldn't it read "When dates containing a day, month, and year are linked, they...should be linked for date preference formatting."? That would remove the ambiguity. Is this ambiguity perhaps the reason so many people add day-date links to pages, because they think they are supposed to? Gatoclass 07:47, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
About 2000 new articles are deleted every day, most of them via speedy deletion. Currently, a person can register at Wikipedia and immediately create an article. Such a new editor, however, cannot move pages or edit semi-protected pages until becoming "autoconfirmed", which currently requires a four-day waiting period. (See Wikipedia:User access levels for details.)
What do others think about applying the autoconfirm criteria to the function of creating new pages, so that the newly registered editors would have to wait four days before creating an article?
(Note that the createtalk function, for creating talk pages, is separate, and would remain as is, available immediately upon registering.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
I was a little confused, and wondered if someone could clarify what is and is not acceptable. If an admin makes comments on your talk page, ie. warnings, blocks, etc - is it acceptable to remove these comments, rather than archiving them? Sennen goroshi 03:38, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
We are discussing the wording of the banning policy in light of recent disagreements between administrators over how to apply the policy and the conditions under which an administrator may unblock a user. - Jehochman Talk 15:12, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
There is a proposal to add this text to the policy page, Wikipedia:No personal attacks:
It is intended to reflect the current consensus on such issues. Comments are welcome at Wikipedia talk:No personal attacks#A growing agreement? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 18:46, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
I think the arguments at http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/10/31/0328239.shtml need to be considered. Herve661 03:14, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
I've written a new essay Wikipedia:Don't "call a spade a spade", partly in order to reply WP:SPADE, with which I heartily disagree, and partly to give form to the "How to win a content dispute" essay I've been thinking for months about writing. I welcome any feedback or improvements. Cheers. - GTBacchus( talk) 06:26, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
I have added my own apostate thoughts to the talk page of your fine essay. I suppose I will be pilloried. Ah, well. -- Ravpapa 06:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
If this is not the correct place to ask, please direct me to the correct page.
A couple of threads above, I asked a question about correct sources, as did PalaceGuard008 in the thread following. Blueboar offered to mediate and I put a great deal of work into formulating my "Issues". This occurred on the Caisson (Asian architecture) talk page. Since then I have been the object of continue incivility, snide remarks, sarcasm, and accusation of bad faith on the part of PalaceGuard008 to the point that I can no longer participate in the discussion. My pleas for civility and Assume Good Faith were ignored. This has been going on for five days now. I complained as frequently as I dared. I finally notified Blueboar that because of the incvility, sarcasm, assumptions of bad faith that were going unchecked I could no longer continue responding on the article talk page. At that point (yesterday) Blueboar issued on lukewarm suggestion to PalacaGuard008 that he lower the sarcasm level, and PalaceGuard008 apologized on my page but blamed his behavior on the frustration he says I caused.
Nothing I did was intentional on my part. I was doing my best.
Please, where can I go for help on this? I need some help with being bullied on that article. Thank you. Mattisse 14:13, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
The above article addresses an issue that, it seems to me, may affect Wikipedia. In the case described, a Texas teenager is suing an Australian company that used a CC-licensed image of her, placed on Flickr by the photographer, in an advertisement. The teenager's rights to her own image were violated by using it for a commercial purpose without her permission or release (or so her lawyer is arguing).
As you know, Wikipedia's image policy requires that images be usable in commercial contexts. Many images in Wikipedia (and the Commons for that matter) are copied from Flickr under CC licensing. If any of these contain images of individuals, there could be legal problems if those images are used in a commercial context, per the above.
Is this an issue or is there something I'm missing here?
-- Powers T 14:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
In the US (I limit myself to the US only because I know the law in the US the best) the only use class substantially limited by publicity rights is the right to use an identifiable image of a person to promote something. Like trademarks, you can think of this as a kind of anti-fraud law: You can't use someone's picture to make it look like they endorse your product when they really don't. It's a very limited class of use.
Asking if Wikipedia content is restricted to being used in those ways is missing the point, somewhat. Wikipedia is not. True, but nothing about Wikipedia's licensing terms forbids you from somehow using Wikipedia to commit murder, for example. Yet committing murder using Wikipedia content is still illegal and we do not consider Wikipedia to be non-free as a result.
This entire subject should be much more interesting to Commons than Wikipedia. Commons is, in part, a free content replacement for commercial stock archives. Many stock images come with rights releases, but by no means do all of them, and you will pretty much never find an image of a famous person with a rights release in a stock archive (although there will be many images of famous people...). For this reason it would be useful if commons would collect releases for some images to improve their parity with the commercial stock galleries. -- Gmaxwell 22:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
A discussion about changing the COI guideline to improve expert retention has begun at Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Scientists_and_Experts. Comments are welcome. - Jehochman Talk 15:29, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Numerous articles in Wiki talk about countries having wishes, demands and such. I feel this hardly ever the case. It is usually a pars pro toto.
I have seen several opinion poles suggesting that the citizens of countries do not agree with their governments, on the issues reported.
Therefore ,would it not be better to speak of administrations or governements? Examples: The Bush administration rejects the Kyoto Protocol, while I know of poles which indicate that most american citizens are in favour on ratifying it. America boycots Cuba: I have seen reports on various forums stating that most american citizens are against the Cuban boycot.
Has this issues been adressed somewhere?
Aixroot 16:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
A user has now discovered that nndb uses referral codes in its links to Amazon which generate profit for the site i.e. here on the NNDB Spider Man 3 article. It may well be that some Wikipedia users are associated with this site and are behind mass adding of links to articles. I consider the site inappropriate to link to as it usually has a lot less information than can be expected in a featured article which is one of the requirements at WP:EL. I believe having a template for this site just encourages some people to link to it as they think somehow that Wikipedia is endorsing the link by having a template - I would appreciate people's comments on the deletion debate for the template, and the NNDB discussion page. Thanks Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 01:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm having problems with an IP that keeps adding a scroll box to List of turnpikes in Virginia and West Virginia and several other lists in Category:Pre-freeway turnpikes in the United States. -- NE2 01:06, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
On Decommissioned highway, someone is trying to use dictionary definitions that don't mention highways and apply them to highways. For instance, see this old revision. Can somebody please help? Thank you. -- NE2 21:42, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, am I allowed to use a wet noodle? I was under the impression that you preferred to use a wet trout! ;-P ~ user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 04:03, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Frequently I see articles that say things like "will be released spring 2009". This may be useful for people in the northern hemisphere, but it's a bit more complicated for us here in the southern. Any chance we could put in a policy stating that release dates should be according to the quarter of the year (that is, quarter 1 for Jan-Mar)?
Zaij —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 16:00, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
It's not that hard to say the range of months then. Otherwise wikipedia is relaying false information (because for the southern hemisphere, that information IS false. If we're allowing the "release in fall 2009", we may as well let any misleading information on wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 00:01, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
The difference between timezones and seasonal zones is that while seasons may vary, months do not. Hence having something say "released in spring 2009" when referring to the southern hemisphere, the months are clear cut - September October November, and so are not original research. Just as if there was a new storage device a fraction of the size of a cd. If the press release said its dimensions were 4 inches by 4 inches, a change to metric would be acceptable. Let me reiterate, there is no original research when you're changing a season to the months. There's just a simple conversion of measuring systems. When it comes to timezones, there is no alternative measurement for a worldwide time, there is only location specific. For anyone in the southern hemisphere the information IS false, as it is not coming out at the time stipulated in the article. It comes out 6 months before (or after).
-Zaij —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 11:19, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
No, because they left a narrow scope of when it is going to be released. I'm sure that the vast majority of people in the USA know that spring does not last 9 months. Seasons do not have a random element where summer starts in June in 2006 and in December in 2008. There is a reference point, where the season related to the three months that the season corresponds to from the location of the company, is that reference point. If it were not the case, no one would know what months the seasons would be in and the notion of regular fixed seasons would be meaningless.
It is not deliberately "left wide" as they list the release as in a certain quarter of the year. Just as if they'd said they were to release their product in October 2006, you'd know that the release would be between October 1st and October 31st, 2006. The difference between the example I just gave and what I'm trying to argue is that months do not change according to what part of the globe you're in.
-Zaij —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 17:43, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
No, it's not original research. Look, that season corresponds to a certain set of dates depending on where the product is released. It's not ambiguous because there is a set time frame for the season to occur. Hence, it's merely converting between one measuring system and another. Plan and Simple. So saying "spring 2009" about a product being released in Melbourne, Australia would be converted to "September - November 2009", because those are the months that Spring in Melbourne fall. It's the same as converting from faranheit to celcius. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 22:52, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I never said anything about TV seasons, you did. Look, I'm not going to argue with you because you're clearly not getting it. Plus, I think I asked this question in the wrong place, can anyone tell me where I should put this as a policy proposal and what I should do to get it there? I'm not very good with this editing of pages, give me some nice phpbb anyday. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 00:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
WP:SEASON already prefers the avoidance of using seasons to identify periods of time. 86.21.74.40 22:45, 4 November 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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I've started a discussion Wikipedia talk:Banning policy#Request for comments: Community bans to help clarify our confused policy on banning disruptive editors. - Jehochman Talk 04:28, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello. User:Caroig's {{ Geobox}} template shows up technical categories in all articles which use it, see e.g. Warta Bolesławiecka and Category:Geobox City, Poland which shows up. Caroig said he didn't find any official policy saying that such categories in the article namespace are prohibited. I asked him to alter the Geobox code but he don't want to do that. I can't recall any Infobox which have such categories in article namespace. Caroig insists it is the same as categories regarding cleanup or wikification but I suppose it is not. Can you point me to proper policy or advise what to do, please? Thank you. - Darwinek 15:45, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Nominated to WP:CFD --> here. Please vote and express your opinion. - Darwinek 20:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Is there a standard for handling a set of general references that apply to a large number of pages? The two approaches I've seen are:
Both have received objections by some users. The former doesn't present the information on the same page, while the later can result in an unwieldy list that can appear on all of the associated pages. Either seems preferable to independently maintaining the same list on a multitude of pages. Thanks. — RJH ( talk) 19:33, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
I currently maintain the wikipedia article for the USS Springfield (SSN-761), and am a crewmember of that ship. I'll admit that I haven't added all too much to it, and there's much more that could be done with it. But I keep it up-to-date with all the current information of the command and a brief overview of its operations. Currently the page is rated poorly because of the lack of citations. But when I update the article to reflect that CDR Paul Savage is the commanding officer I don't use a citation. I don't need one. He's my boss, of course I know who the commanding officer is. I know what awards we receive, what operations we're on. I know this because I'm on the ship every day. How am I supposed to reflect this for Wikipedia citations? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Divsky ( talk • contribs) 23:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
I was instructed to take this thought process here. Going from a visual POV, when talking to people I was told to put clean up tags under the infobox templates. It would still place the tag at the top of the article, per guidelines, but it wouldn't throw off the orientation of the pages. The guidelines say top of article but do not specify if that top should be visual or literal. Putting the tag below the infobox on the edit page visually puts the tag at the top of the article, per guidelines, and side by side with the info box. It's visually pleasing and does not throw off the page orientation. The issue is, is it MANDITORY that the tag throws off the page and makes the articles look bad, or is it acceptable for the tag to go below the info box in the edit mode aligning it at the top of the article with the top of the info box? John Black (fiction) being an example of how the Soap Project participants have been instructed. Thank you. CelticGreen 01:28, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
| | | | | | | | | | Infobox | | Large blank space | | | | | | |___________________| | <-- Side of the screen _________________________________________________________ | | Cleanup templates | | | | | |_______________________________________________________| | Article text |
| | <-- Side of the screen _________________________________________________________________ | | Cleanup templates || | || |________________________________________________________________|| | | | | | | Article text | Infobox | | | | | |___________________| |
To see what it actually looks like, again, I would direct you to the John Black (fiction) page. With a widescreen, you don't see any article when the tag is at the top. When it's put below the info box it lands side by side with the infobox but doesn't interfere with the article and there is no blank space. CelticGreen 18:11, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
-- Mr. Z-man 21:15, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
I think that the placement of these temporary messages (whether for cleanup, tone, refs, current event etc) should take into account the structure of the article, rather than the visual appearance, as not everyone views pages in the same skin, or they have their own style or no style applied, or they may not even be viewing the page and they are using a screen reader or a tactile display. These output devices present the information in a linear fashion, starting at the top and working down, so by placing the tag below the infobox, information in the article is presented (that in the infobox), then you get the message, and then the lead section. This confuses the article message and the article content as the message is in the middle of the content, so the message should be placed before content. A good way to find out the linear layout of a page is to view it without any style applied. The Wikipedia:Accessibility guideline provides some layout examples on this. This layout also provides a visual separation between the message and content, showing that the message applies to the infobox content as well, and doesn't mix the two together. Any issues with the visual appearance should be addressed so that the non-visual appearance is still logical and understandable by non-visual users, and the best place to discuss the visual appearance is probably Wikipedia talk:Article message boxes or Template talk:Ambox. Or just fix the articles. matt br 22:11, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
When a contribution is deleted without the deletor and/or wikipedia staff even having the courtesy to contact the contributor and debate the significance, where does the contributor go to debate the significance of the contribution? Especially if the contributor is above average sure the deleter is wrong and should be forced to debate the issue? —Preceding unsigned comment added by OlympedeCleves ( talk • contribs) 17:20, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello,
I was wondering if it would be possible for me to draw simple line illustrations as seen from a book and be able to use them as images for my article without breaking copyright laws. My article is seam types. I would appreciate any feedback.
Thank you, Snap pea 23:15, 26 October 2007 (UTC)Snap_pea Snap pea 23:15, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
There appears to be some inconsistency/ambiguity in this policy. WP:CONTEXT currently states the following re: date wikilinking:
[[25 March]] [[2004]]
— or day and month — [[February 10]]
— should be linked for date preference formatting.The guideline states that one should only link to days of the year "if it is likely to deepen readers' understanding of a topic" - but in what way could linking to individual days ever deepen readers' understanding of a particular topic? Day pages are by definition a hodge-podge of information about things that happened on that particular day in history, how could this information ever be relevant to a particular topic? I would submit, almost never, so such day-date pages should almost never be linked, but in practice people seem to be linking them all the time. So this policy appears to be inconsistent with current practice.
Also the first paragraph says "Dates when they contain a day, month, and year...should be linked for date preference formatting. It's a little ambiguous, because it appears to indicate that such dates "should be linked" at all times. Shouldn't it read "When dates containing a day, month, and year are linked, they...should be linked for date preference formatting."? That would remove the ambiguity. Is this ambiguity perhaps the reason so many people add day-date links to pages, because they think they are supposed to? Gatoclass 07:47, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
About 2000 new articles are deleted every day, most of them via speedy deletion. Currently, a person can register at Wikipedia and immediately create an article. Such a new editor, however, cannot move pages or edit semi-protected pages until becoming "autoconfirmed", which currently requires a four-day waiting period. (See Wikipedia:User access levels for details.)
What do others think about applying the autoconfirm criteria to the function of creating new pages, so that the newly registered editors would have to wait four days before creating an article?
(Note that the createtalk function, for creating talk pages, is separate, and would remain as is, available immediately upon registering.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
I was a little confused, and wondered if someone could clarify what is and is not acceptable. If an admin makes comments on your talk page, ie. warnings, blocks, etc - is it acceptable to remove these comments, rather than archiving them? Sennen goroshi 03:38, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
We are discussing the wording of the banning policy in light of recent disagreements between administrators over how to apply the policy and the conditions under which an administrator may unblock a user. - Jehochman Talk 15:12, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
There is a proposal to add this text to the policy page, Wikipedia:No personal attacks:
It is intended to reflect the current consensus on such issues. Comments are welcome at Wikipedia talk:No personal attacks#A growing agreement? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 18:46, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
I think the arguments at http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/10/31/0328239.shtml need to be considered. Herve661 03:14, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
I've written a new essay Wikipedia:Don't "call a spade a spade", partly in order to reply WP:SPADE, with which I heartily disagree, and partly to give form to the "How to win a content dispute" essay I've been thinking for months about writing. I welcome any feedback or improvements. Cheers. - GTBacchus( talk) 06:26, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
I have added my own apostate thoughts to the talk page of your fine essay. I suppose I will be pilloried. Ah, well. -- Ravpapa 06:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
If this is not the correct place to ask, please direct me to the correct page.
A couple of threads above, I asked a question about correct sources, as did PalaceGuard008 in the thread following. Blueboar offered to mediate and I put a great deal of work into formulating my "Issues". This occurred on the Caisson (Asian architecture) talk page. Since then I have been the object of continue incivility, snide remarks, sarcasm, and accusation of bad faith on the part of PalaceGuard008 to the point that I can no longer participate in the discussion. My pleas for civility and Assume Good Faith were ignored. This has been going on for five days now. I complained as frequently as I dared. I finally notified Blueboar that because of the incvility, sarcasm, assumptions of bad faith that were going unchecked I could no longer continue responding on the article talk page. At that point (yesterday) Blueboar issued on lukewarm suggestion to PalacaGuard008 that he lower the sarcasm level, and PalaceGuard008 apologized on my page but blamed his behavior on the frustration he says I caused.
Nothing I did was intentional on my part. I was doing my best.
Please, where can I go for help on this? I need some help with being bullied on that article. Thank you. Mattisse 14:13, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
The above article addresses an issue that, it seems to me, may affect Wikipedia. In the case described, a Texas teenager is suing an Australian company that used a CC-licensed image of her, placed on Flickr by the photographer, in an advertisement. The teenager's rights to her own image were violated by using it for a commercial purpose without her permission or release (or so her lawyer is arguing).
As you know, Wikipedia's image policy requires that images be usable in commercial contexts. Many images in Wikipedia (and the Commons for that matter) are copied from Flickr under CC licensing. If any of these contain images of individuals, there could be legal problems if those images are used in a commercial context, per the above.
Is this an issue or is there something I'm missing here?
-- Powers T 14:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
In the US (I limit myself to the US only because I know the law in the US the best) the only use class substantially limited by publicity rights is the right to use an identifiable image of a person to promote something. Like trademarks, you can think of this as a kind of anti-fraud law: You can't use someone's picture to make it look like they endorse your product when they really don't. It's a very limited class of use.
Asking if Wikipedia content is restricted to being used in those ways is missing the point, somewhat. Wikipedia is not. True, but nothing about Wikipedia's licensing terms forbids you from somehow using Wikipedia to commit murder, for example. Yet committing murder using Wikipedia content is still illegal and we do not consider Wikipedia to be non-free as a result.
This entire subject should be much more interesting to Commons than Wikipedia. Commons is, in part, a free content replacement for commercial stock archives. Many stock images come with rights releases, but by no means do all of them, and you will pretty much never find an image of a famous person with a rights release in a stock archive (although there will be many images of famous people...). For this reason it would be useful if commons would collect releases for some images to improve their parity with the commercial stock galleries. -- Gmaxwell 22:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
A discussion about changing the COI guideline to improve expert retention has begun at Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Scientists_and_Experts. Comments are welcome. - Jehochman Talk 15:29, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Numerous articles in Wiki talk about countries having wishes, demands and such. I feel this hardly ever the case. It is usually a pars pro toto.
I have seen several opinion poles suggesting that the citizens of countries do not agree with their governments, on the issues reported.
Therefore ,would it not be better to speak of administrations or governements? Examples: The Bush administration rejects the Kyoto Protocol, while I know of poles which indicate that most american citizens are in favour on ratifying it. America boycots Cuba: I have seen reports on various forums stating that most american citizens are against the Cuban boycot.
Has this issues been adressed somewhere?
Aixroot 16:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
A user has now discovered that nndb uses referral codes in its links to Amazon which generate profit for the site i.e. here on the NNDB Spider Man 3 article. It may well be that some Wikipedia users are associated with this site and are behind mass adding of links to articles. I consider the site inappropriate to link to as it usually has a lot less information than can be expected in a featured article which is one of the requirements at WP:EL. I believe having a template for this site just encourages some people to link to it as they think somehow that Wikipedia is endorsing the link by having a template - I would appreciate people's comments on the deletion debate for the template, and the NNDB discussion page. Thanks Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 01:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm having problems with an IP that keeps adding a scroll box to List of turnpikes in Virginia and West Virginia and several other lists in Category:Pre-freeway turnpikes in the United States. -- NE2 01:06, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
On Decommissioned highway, someone is trying to use dictionary definitions that don't mention highways and apply them to highways. For instance, see this old revision. Can somebody please help? Thank you. -- NE2 21:42, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, am I allowed to use a wet noodle? I was under the impression that you preferred to use a wet trout! ;-P ~ user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 04:03, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Frequently I see articles that say things like "will be released spring 2009". This may be useful for people in the northern hemisphere, but it's a bit more complicated for us here in the southern. Any chance we could put in a policy stating that release dates should be according to the quarter of the year (that is, quarter 1 for Jan-Mar)?
Zaij —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 16:00, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
It's not that hard to say the range of months then. Otherwise wikipedia is relaying false information (because for the southern hemisphere, that information IS false. If we're allowing the "release in fall 2009", we may as well let any misleading information on wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 00:01, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
The difference between timezones and seasonal zones is that while seasons may vary, months do not. Hence having something say "released in spring 2009" when referring to the southern hemisphere, the months are clear cut - September October November, and so are not original research. Just as if there was a new storage device a fraction of the size of a cd. If the press release said its dimensions were 4 inches by 4 inches, a change to metric would be acceptable. Let me reiterate, there is no original research when you're changing a season to the months. There's just a simple conversion of measuring systems. When it comes to timezones, there is no alternative measurement for a worldwide time, there is only location specific. For anyone in the southern hemisphere the information IS false, as it is not coming out at the time stipulated in the article. It comes out 6 months before (or after).
-Zaij —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 11:19, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
No, because they left a narrow scope of when it is going to be released. I'm sure that the vast majority of people in the USA know that spring does not last 9 months. Seasons do not have a random element where summer starts in June in 2006 and in December in 2008. There is a reference point, where the season related to the three months that the season corresponds to from the location of the company, is that reference point. If it were not the case, no one would know what months the seasons would be in and the notion of regular fixed seasons would be meaningless.
It is not deliberately "left wide" as they list the release as in a certain quarter of the year. Just as if they'd said they were to release their product in October 2006, you'd know that the release would be between October 1st and October 31st, 2006. The difference between the example I just gave and what I'm trying to argue is that months do not change according to what part of the globe you're in.
-Zaij —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 17:43, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
No, it's not original research. Look, that season corresponds to a certain set of dates depending on where the product is released. It's not ambiguous because there is a set time frame for the season to occur. Hence, it's merely converting between one measuring system and another. Plan and Simple. So saying "spring 2009" about a product being released in Melbourne, Australia would be converted to "September - November 2009", because those are the months that Spring in Melbourne fall. It's the same as converting from faranheit to celcius. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 22:52, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I never said anything about TV seasons, you did. Look, I'm not going to argue with you because you're clearly not getting it. Plus, I think I asked this question in the wrong place, can anyone tell me where I should put this as a policy proposal and what I should do to get it there? I'm not very good with this editing of pages, give me some nice phpbb anyday. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.4.43 ( talk) 00:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
WP:SEASON already prefers the avoidance of using seasons to identify periods of time. 86.21.74.40 22:45, 4 November 2007 (UTC)