This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy).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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It has come to its attention that some more high profile users have semi protected talk pages. This user feels it is a fairly poor idea if wikipedia wants to maintain the same focus of an encyclopedia that can be edited by everyone. If unsigned users can't even discuss problems or that user's edits with the more active of editors than wikipedia is already making a movement from its aims. It seems poor judgement to award a talk page this protection that should be reserved for high-frequency attacked article pages, not for anyone who has a small problem with a couple of vandals posting on their talk page. My reasoning behind this is that talk pages aren't frequented by the "normal user" of wikipedia, while article pages obviously are. Thus a talk page having crap on it for weeks is of much less concern than a high profile article. As well, why an article with semi protection is probably quite (or at least should be) high profile and thus already be at a high level of, for lack of a better word or a word, completeness, thus a much reduced amount of new information needing to be added, while a talk page is a place for discussion and thus is subject to continous modification. While this may sound stupidly minor, and some might say it is easy enough to get an account, it does seem to represent a divergence from the aim of an encyclopedia editable by everyone. It is not trying to say there is no situation that warrants protection, just no talk page.-- AresAndEnyo ( talk) 05:40, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Ignore all rules#Should WP:IAR be ignored? A proposal for expansion.
I propose expanding WP:IAR with the following text:
The core principle of Wikipedia is that it is a free encyclopedia that anyone can . Thus, policy and the will of the community holds no inherently greater authority than the will of the individual user. If a policy or guideline is accepted democratically, but violates the core principle of Wikipedia, it should be ignored. The ability to make constructive edits to Wikipedia is a right, not a privilege, but that right comes with the responsibility to not infringe on the same right by other editors, and thus uphold WP:policy, which includes the duty to oppose policies which hurt Wikipedia.
Also, this wasn't entirely my own idea. See Wikipedia:Laissez-faire and Wikipedia:Editors matter. For those naysayers and policy conservatives, I think that this would get a lot of support, actually. Zenwhat ( talk) 06:19, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Kim Bruning, policies and guidelines are accepted democratically. This goes against core policy, but it's how it's done in practice. Because in practice, it is the majority that defines WP:CONSENSUS (In fact, that's how it's mostly upheld since there is far more edit-warring followed by ArbCom decisions than bold, revert, discuss which isn't even policy). The reason is simple: The only way a policy can be upheld is through digital violence (aka edit-warring). The majority of editors will edit-war to protect their edits. If we go to ArbCom, the majority of admins will wheel-war to protect their edits. So, the majority of normal editors don't determine Wikipedia policy, but the majority of all editors do in practice, because the majority arbitrators determine based on consensus which generally reflects the Wikipedia majority. In order to protect the rights of individual editors from this, Wikipedia:IAR is the natural right to revolt against tyranny.
Wikipedia is a quasi-government that resembles a Constitutional Republic. Its founder, Jimbo, is currently a figurehead like the Queen of England that steps in from time-to-time in order to enforce the fact that individual editors matter. Currently, the focus in Wikipedia policy is on policy responsibilities with no focus on human rights. The result: Wikipedia is run like China (see Bureaucratic collectivism) while simultaneously being blocked from that country. What with the secret mailing lists, this is even further true and if Jimbo knowingly participates in that corruption or suppresses criticism (which I admit is vastly uncertain), that makes him more like Mao Zedong than the Queen. Zenwhat ( talk) 16:00, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Communists block
Wikipedia,
Wikipedia blocks Communists.
Wikipedians are Communists.
Communists are Wikipedians.
When policies are made,
Outlaws are created.
When policies are removed,
There is chaos.
Harmony is found in
the Way.
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.
If you don't trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.
The Master doesn't talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, "Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!"
On Inclusionism vs. Deletionism, Te Ching 2:
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Keep including articles, Wikipedia will be nonsense. Keep deleting articles and Wikipedia will be empty. But is emptiness such a bad thing?
On the role that Jimbo Wales plays in Wikipedia and again, about deletionism, Tao Te Ching 11:
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
Zenwhat ( talk) 20:45, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Maybe we need a Wikipedia Supreme Court, made up of people who are a completely separate group from the editors and contributors. 99.226.9.250 ( talk) 15:27, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd to linkify a citation ref to http://blog.myspace.com/... (an official band MySpace blog) at Killa, but it gets blocked by the meta:spam blacklist. I don't care enough right now to get it whitelisted (might as well remove the quote and its ref), but I'd like to ask a more general question: Why is something like "blog?\.myspace\.com" on the blacklist? Can't we deal with MySpace blog spam on an individual basis or using bots? -- Ddxc ( talk) 09:34, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm still collecting more input on a WP:FICT rewrite, but I am curious how to present this rewrite as a proposed guideline and determine if there is WP-wide consensus for it. -- MASEM 04:06, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Masem: You need to figure out a way to use words as bullets, load them into a machine gun called "Effective argument," then gun down all of the people saying, "Who cares, just write an essay, people will be OK with that, who cares, essay, who cares, essay." This isn't always effective at dealing with policy zombies, because like the undead, it may take more than one volley. However, it's the only way. Also, be careful not to use explosive bullets. Just the nice kind, per WP:CIVILITY. Zenwhat ( talk) 07:52, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Category:Real estate and property developers and Category:Businesspeople in real estate is both sub categories of each other. Is this desirable? How does this work with the guideline that article should be placed in the innermost category? Taemyr ( talk) 19:49, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Over the last few weeks, it seems that we've had a fair bit of a clash between the guidelines issued in WP:CORP (Products and Services), as well as generic Notability Guidelines, with regards to the topic of Cellular Phones. While I've not seen as many instances, I'm going to make the assumption that this phenomenon is not limited to just such items.
The main thing that brings this to light is the number of AfDs that come up on the topic; from December 2007 (see User:Aeternitas827/VP_Article_Sidenotes for the list of them in handy table format, should be done shortly), there were 22 AfDs that saw discussion (12 Keep, 2 No consensus, 2 Redir/Merge, 6 Delete--a fair smattering of different outcomes, if you consider Redirect/Merge outcomes to be a delete of sorts as the information no longer exists independently). For the limited number of mobile phones that exists, this is a fairly high number of AfDs and doesn't account for articles deleted with a prod.
In reviewing these discussions, a few main themes come up:
Based on what there is, what needs to be decided on is this:
By no means is this an attempt to do away with articles related to mobile phones. There are clear cut examples (i.e., iPhone, RAZR (the RAZR article has become family-oriented in itself) where notability can be clearly and easily established, and others yet where sources can be found; for the most part though, the sources are lacking and through many discussions, none have surfaced that appear to meet many editors' interpretation of WP:RS (the same refs do meet others' interpretations, and that is acknowledged).
Aeternitas827 ( talk) 09:06, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I've started Wikipedia:Move navigational lists to portal namespace as an idea to move navigational lists into the portal namespace to improve navigation, unclutter Wikipedia's mainspace and give portals greater exposure. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated - Halo ( talk) 12:50, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
The article about the song " Killa" has a quote "It's not what you think, it's about a guy who has hot killa looks!", attributed to <http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=54041721&blogID=308052249>. However, on that page, it says “IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK????? IT'S ABOUT A GUY WHO HAS HOT KILLA LOOKS!!!!!” Yup. (And yes, that's the official band blog.)
In general, what do we do with these kinds of quotes? My first shot would be to paraphrase the quote as “The song is about "a guy who has hot killa looks"<ref>...</ref>.” But is it appropriate to simply lowercase the quote? And at what cost should these kinds of quotes be avoided? -- Ddxc ( talk) 14:22, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
To ensure that I notify all relevant instances, made an essay at Wikipedia:Silence as consensus → Aza Toth 19:53, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
when i clicked on the Random Article in the navpanel ten times nine wre about US and one about Russia,i believe that wikipedia policy should be to encourage volunteers to research and creat articles proportionately about all continents,once US articles exceed 20% app.ly,there should be a freeze on US articles until all continents catch up.Now very inane and sundry subjects on US find place in wikipedia while India etc have absolutely very few articles.Wikipedia stands as the proof of US citizens' obsession with themselves to the point of neglecting every thing else on the world to oblivion.Policies can change all this wikipedia being USpedia status.We need a really strong move towards keeping knowledge of the world proportionately. Plantgrowreap ( talk) 20:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
To be fair, while the US may make up the bulk of editors here, the English readership is the US, Canada, the Caribbean, the UK, Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and every country where they teach ESL (English as a second language). Adding just India alone into the mix, where English is very common, and the United States is a very small piece of the Wikipedia pie. Lawrence Cohen 17:10, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
It's not just the English Wikipedia with bias on local areas, but all Wikipedias. The Wikipedia-World project has coverage maps of articles with coordinates across different languages for the English, German, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, and Finnish Wikipedia, and a combined coverage map of all Wikipedias. These images don't say anything about quality, but show the number of articles and their area of interest. I'm also assuming that all Wikipedias have coordinates in location related articles to make this comparison method possible, though that's probably not the case. But if it is, then by comparing the English Wikipedia to all Wikipedias together we can see that the other languages mostly add to European areas, while the rest of the world is not significantly better covered than on the English Wikipedia. India however seems to be well represented, it's the "etc" that's lacking. -- Para ( talk) 22:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Clearly this study shows that Russia is heavily overrepresented on the English Wikipedia. -- Golbez ( talk) 22:23, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
The problem with the current 3RR policy is that it personalises a content dispute. In a genuine content dispute between two parties with strong opinions, it sometimes happens that the dispute degenerates into a revert war. In this situation an admin ends up blocking one of the parties, even though both may be equally guilty of revert warring. The problem with this approach is that the admin appears to be taking sides by blocking one party and not the other. A better approach is not to personalise the content dispute by punishing one of the parties, but rather protect the article until the content dispute is settled.
Therefore the 3RR counter should be applied to the article, not the individual. For further detail of this approach see User:Alexia_Death/Accusations_of_collaboration:_3RR_hurts_Wikipedia. Martintg ( talk) 04:16, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
please see Wikipedia_talk:Protection_policy#Request_for_clarification_on_semi-protection. dab (𒁳) 10:59, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I am unhappy with the resolution of a recent AfD discussion (namely, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Barker (athlete)), but my objections raise broader issues that I'd like to discuss in a new topic. Specifically, I'd like to see some guidelines about how to handle notable lists of items, each element of which may or may not be notable on its own.
In the "Barker case", he was an athlete who competed in the 1912 Olympic Games. The event in which he competed is documented at Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metres. This article is really a list in disguise, as it lists the names and results of the 70 men who competed in this event. Clearly the event itself is notable, justifying the existence of that page, but what of the athletes themselves? As discussed on the AfD page, and earlier on this page ( Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Athletes and exemption from WP:N, WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:BIO), there are compelling reasons not to expect that any Olympic competitor is inherently notable by that fact alone. After all, there are about 115,000 unique individuals who have competed in any past Games (about half what I had estimated before, but still a very large number!), but I'm not trying to restart that debate here.
Instead, I'm looking for comments about the more generic problem of lists like these. For example, the current practice appears to be to wikilink all list items. For some editors, that's an invitation to create stub articles for each redlink, which leads us to thousands of stubs like James Barker. Personally, I don't mind redlinks, as the link color tells me if an article exists or not. Also, I can still check "what links here" for redlinks to see if that athlete competed in multiple events and/or multiple Games.
The alternative is to only link names for which an article exists (i.e. the list item is otherwise notable). As an example, I happened across Punch-up in Piestany today, in which the rosters for the two teams contain no redlinks, because several player names are unlinked altogether.
A related issue is the disposition of articles like James Barker (athlete), which was turned into a redirect to 1912 Summer Olympics. I had argued vigorously in the AfD discussion against a redirect of any kind, as I don't think any target is useful. I am also concerned that this might be a precedent — let's say that several other of those athletes in the 1912 100 metres go through the AfD process and those articles aren't kept. We may end up with a results page that is very awkward to navigate as most of the blue-linked names on that list would draw the reader back to the top-level 1912 Games page. What use is that?
To summarize, I'm looking for feedback on:
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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It has come to its attention that some more high profile users have semi protected talk pages. This user feels it is a fairly poor idea if wikipedia wants to maintain the same focus of an encyclopedia that can be edited by everyone. If unsigned users can't even discuss problems or that user's edits with the more active of editors than wikipedia is already making a movement from its aims. It seems poor judgement to award a talk page this protection that should be reserved for high-frequency attacked article pages, not for anyone who has a small problem with a couple of vandals posting on their talk page. My reasoning behind this is that talk pages aren't frequented by the "normal user" of wikipedia, while article pages obviously are. Thus a talk page having crap on it for weeks is of much less concern than a high profile article. As well, why an article with semi protection is probably quite (or at least should be) high profile and thus already be at a high level of, for lack of a better word or a word, completeness, thus a much reduced amount of new information needing to be added, while a talk page is a place for discussion and thus is subject to continous modification. While this may sound stupidly minor, and some might say it is easy enough to get an account, it does seem to represent a divergence from the aim of an encyclopedia editable by everyone. It is not trying to say there is no situation that warrants protection, just no talk page.-- AresAndEnyo ( talk) 05:40, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Ignore all rules#Should WP:IAR be ignored? A proposal for expansion.
I propose expanding WP:IAR with the following text:
The core principle of Wikipedia is that it is a free encyclopedia that anyone can . Thus, policy and the will of the community holds no inherently greater authority than the will of the individual user. If a policy or guideline is accepted democratically, but violates the core principle of Wikipedia, it should be ignored. The ability to make constructive edits to Wikipedia is a right, not a privilege, but that right comes with the responsibility to not infringe on the same right by other editors, and thus uphold WP:policy, which includes the duty to oppose policies which hurt Wikipedia.
Also, this wasn't entirely my own idea. See Wikipedia:Laissez-faire and Wikipedia:Editors matter. For those naysayers and policy conservatives, I think that this would get a lot of support, actually. Zenwhat ( talk) 06:19, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Kim Bruning, policies and guidelines are accepted democratically. This goes against core policy, but it's how it's done in practice. Because in practice, it is the majority that defines WP:CONSENSUS (In fact, that's how it's mostly upheld since there is far more edit-warring followed by ArbCom decisions than bold, revert, discuss which isn't even policy). The reason is simple: The only way a policy can be upheld is through digital violence (aka edit-warring). The majority of editors will edit-war to protect their edits. If we go to ArbCom, the majority of admins will wheel-war to protect their edits. So, the majority of normal editors don't determine Wikipedia policy, but the majority of all editors do in practice, because the majority arbitrators determine based on consensus which generally reflects the Wikipedia majority. In order to protect the rights of individual editors from this, Wikipedia:IAR is the natural right to revolt against tyranny.
Wikipedia is a quasi-government that resembles a Constitutional Republic. Its founder, Jimbo, is currently a figurehead like the Queen of England that steps in from time-to-time in order to enforce the fact that individual editors matter. Currently, the focus in Wikipedia policy is on policy responsibilities with no focus on human rights. The result: Wikipedia is run like China (see Bureaucratic collectivism) while simultaneously being blocked from that country. What with the secret mailing lists, this is even further true and if Jimbo knowingly participates in that corruption or suppresses criticism (which I admit is vastly uncertain), that makes him more like Mao Zedong than the Queen. Zenwhat ( talk) 16:00, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Communists block
Wikipedia,
Wikipedia blocks Communists.
Wikipedians are Communists.
Communists are Wikipedians.
When policies are made,
Outlaws are created.
When policies are removed,
There is chaos.
Harmony is found in
the Way.
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.
If you don't trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.
The Master doesn't talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, "Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!"
On Inclusionism vs. Deletionism, Te Ching 2:
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Keep including articles, Wikipedia will be nonsense. Keep deleting articles and Wikipedia will be empty. But is emptiness such a bad thing?
On the role that Jimbo Wales plays in Wikipedia and again, about deletionism, Tao Te Ching 11:
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
Zenwhat ( talk) 20:45, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Maybe we need a Wikipedia Supreme Court, made up of people who are a completely separate group from the editors and contributors. 99.226.9.250 ( talk) 15:27, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd to linkify a citation ref to http://blog.myspace.com/... (an official band MySpace blog) at Killa, but it gets blocked by the meta:spam blacklist. I don't care enough right now to get it whitelisted (might as well remove the quote and its ref), but I'd like to ask a more general question: Why is something like "blog?\.myspace\.com" on the blacklist? Can't we deal with MySpace blog spam on an individual basis or using bots? -- Ddxc ( talk) 09:34, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm still collecting more input on a WP:FICT rewrite, but I am curious how to present this rewrite as a proposed guideline and determine if there is WP-wide consensus for it. -- MASEM 04:06, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Masem: You need to figure out a way to use words as bullets, load them into a machine gun called "Effective argument," then gun down all of the people saying, "Who cares, just write an essay, people will be OK with that, who cares, essay, who cares, essay." This isn't always effective at dealing with policy zombies, because like the undead, it may take more than one volley. However, it's the only way. Also, be careful not to use explosive bullets. Just the nice kind, per WP:CIVILITY. Zenwhat ( talk) 07:52, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Category:Real estate and property developers and Category:Businesspeople in real estate is both sub categories of each other. Is this desirable? How does this work with the guideline that article should be placed in the innermost category? Taemyr ( talk) 19:49, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Over the last few weeks, it seems that we've had a fair bit of a clash between the guidelines issued in WP:CORP (Products and Services), as well as generic Notability Guidelines, with regards to the topic of Cellular Phones. While I've not seen as many instances, I'm going to make the assumption that this phenomenon is not limited to just such items.
The main thing that brings this to light is the number of AfDs that come up on the topic; from December 2007 (see User:Aeternitas827/VP_Article_Sidenotes for the list of them in handy table format, should be done shortly), there were 22 AfDs that saw discussion (12 Keep, 2 No consensus, 2 Redir/Merge, 6 Delete--a fair smattering of different outcomes, if you consider Redirect/Merge outcomes to be a delete of sorts as the information no longer exists independently). For the limited number of mobile phones that exists, this is a fairly high number of AfDs and doesn't account for articles deleted with a prod.
In reviewing these discussions, a few main themes come up:
Based on what there is, what needs to be decided on is this:
By no means is this an attempt to do away with articles related to mobile phones. There are clear cut examples (i.e., iPhone, RAZR (the RAZR article has become family-oriented in itself) where notability can be clearly and easily established, and others yet where sources can be found; for the most part though, the sources are lacking and through many discussions, none have surfaced that appear to meet many editors' interpretation of WP:RS (the same refs do meet others' interpretations, and that is acknowledged).
Aeternitas827 ( talk) 09:06, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I've started Wikipedia:Move navigational lists to portal namespace as an idea to move navigational lists into the portal namespace to improve navigation, unclutter Wikipedia's mainspace and give portals greater exposure. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated - Halo ( talk) 12:50, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
The article about the song " Killa" has a quote "It's not what you think, it's about a guy who has hot killa looks!", attributed to <http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=54041721&blogID=308052249>. However, on that page, it says “IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK????? IT'S ABOUT A GUY WHO HAS HOT KILLA LOOKS!!!!!” Yup. (And yes, that's the official band blog.)
In general, what do we do with these kinds of quotes? My first shot would be to paraphrase the quote as “The song is about "a guy who has hot killa looks"<ref>...</ref>.” But is it appropriate to simply lowercase the quote? And at what cost should these kinds of quotes be avoided? -- Ddxc ( talk) 14:22, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
To ensure that I notify all relevant instances, made an essay at Wikipedia:Silence as consensus → Aza Toth 19:53, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
when i clicked on the Random Article in the navpanel ten times nine wre about US and one about Russia,i believe that wikipedia policy should be to encourage volunteers to research and creat articles proportionately about all continents,once US articles exceed 20% app.ly,there should be a freeze on US articles until all continents catch up.Now very inane and sundry subjects on US find place in wikipedia while India etc have absolutely very few articles.Wikipedia stands as the proof of US citizens' obsession with themselves to the point of neglecting every thing else on the world to oblivion.Policies can change all this wikipedia being USpedia status.We need a really strong move towards keeping knowledge of the world proportionately. Plantgrowreap ( talk) 20:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
To be fair, while the US may make up the bulk of editors here, the English readership is the US, Canada, the Caribbean, the UK, Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and every country where they teach ESL (English as a second language). Adding just India alone into the mix, where English is very common, and the United States is a very small piece of the Wikipedia pie. Lawrence Cohen 17:10, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
It's not just the English Wikipedia with bias on local areas, but all Wikipedias. The Wikipedia-World project has coverage maps of articles with coordinates across different languages for the English, German, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, and Finnish Wikipedia, and a combined coverage map of all Wikipedias. These images don't say anything about quality, but show the number of articles and their area of interest. I'm also assuming that all Wikipedias have coordinates in location related articles to make this comparison method possible, though that's probably not the case. But if it is, then by comparing the English Wikipedia to all Wikipedias together we can see that the other languages mostly add to European areas, while the rest of the world is not significantly better covered than on the English Wikipedia. India however seems to be well represented, it's the "etc" that's lacking. -- Para ( talk) 22:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Clearly this study shows that Russia is heavily overrepresented on the English Wikipedia. -- Golbez ( talk) 22:23, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
The problem with the current 3RR policy is that it personalises a content dispute. In a genuine content dispute between two parties with strong opinions, it sometimes happens that the dispute degenerates into a revert war. In this situation an admin ends up blocking one of the parties, even though both may be equally guilty of revert warring. The problem with this approach is that the admin appears to be taking sides by blocking one party and not the other. A better approach is not to personalise the content dispute by punishing one of the parties, but rather protect the article until the content dispute is settled.
Therefore the 3RR counter should be applied to the article, not the individual. For further detail of this approach see User:Alexia_Death/Accusations_of_collaboration:_3RR_hurts_Wikipedia. Martintg ( talk) 04:16, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
please see Wikipedia_talk:Protection_policy#Request_for_clarification_on_semi-protection. dab (𒁳) 10:59, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I am unhappy with the resolution of a recent AfD discussion (namely, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Barker (athlete)), but my objections raise broader issues that I'd like to discuss in a new topic. Specifically, I'd like to see some guidelines about how to handle notable lists of items, each element of which may or may not be notable on its own.
In the "Barker case", he was an athlete who competed in the 1912 Olympic Games. The event in which he competed is documented at Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metres. This article is really a list in disguise, as it lists the names and results of the 70 men who competed in this event. Clearly the event itself is notable, justifying the existence of that page, but what of the athletes themselves? As discussed on the AfD page, and earlier on this page ( Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Athletes and exemption from WP:N, WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:BIO), there are compelling reasons not to expect that any Olympic competitor is inherently notable by that fact alone. After all, there are about 115,000 unique individuals who have competed in any past Games (about half what I had estimated before, but still a very large number!), but I'm not trying to restart that debate here.
Instead, I'm looking for comments about the more generic problem of lists like these. For example, the current practice appears to be to wikilink all list items. For some editors, that's an invitation to create stub articles for each redlink, which leads us to thousands of stubs like James Barker. Personally, I don't mind redlinks, as the link color tells me if an article exists or not. Also, I can still check "what links here" for redlinks to see if that athlete competed in multiple events and/or multiple Games.
The alternative is to only link names for which an article exists (i.e. the list item is otherwise notable). As an example, I happened across Punch-up in Piestany today, in which the rosters for the two teams contain no redlinks, because several player names are unlinked altogether.
A related issue is the disposition of articles like James Barker (athlete), which was turned into a redirect to 1912 Summer Olympics. I had argued vigorously in the AfD discussion against a redirect of any kind, as I don't think any target is useful. I am also concerned that this might be a precedent — let's say that several other of those athletes in the 1912 100 metres go through the AfD process and those articles aren't kept. We may end up with a results page that is very awkward to navigate as most of the blue-linked names on that list would draw the reader back to the top-level 1912 Games page. What use is that?
To summarize, I'm looking for feedback on: