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I have been on WP for a while, and in that time I have noticed a fair amount of confusion and disagreement about WP:OR, WP:SYN and related issues for numeric information, numeric data, algebraic formulae, calculations, graphs, charts, tables, etc.
However, I was under the impression that simple calculations like converting fractions into percentages for comparison with other percentages is permissable. For example, from Wikipedia:Attribution#What_is_not_original_research.3F:
Editors may make straightforward mathematical calculations or logical deductions based on fully attributed data that neither change the significance of the data nor require additional assumptions beyond what is in the source. It should be possible for any reader without specialist knowledge to understand the deductions. For example, if a published source gives the numbers of votes cast in an election by candidate, it is not original research to include percentages alongside the numbers, so long as it is a simple calculation and the vote counts all come from the same source. Deductions of this nature should not be made if they serve to advance a position, or if they are based on source material published about a topic other than the one at hand.
Nevertheless, I see this results in never ending fights, over and over. For example, if 3 sources give their survey results as percentages and one source gives their survey results as a ratio, surely one is allowed to convert the ratio into a percentage for comparison purposes. However, some dispute this.
Also, suppose a source states that a quantity X of fluid is certain to contain one molecule. Nevertheless, a more thoughtful examination of the problem makes it clear that the quantity X contains at least one molecule. Is this OR to state this correctly, rather than as the source does (presumably because of a typo or slipup)?
Another example is when a source states that a container contains 10 gallons. However, this is only roughly correct, since a more careful but simple calculation shows that the container contains 8.9 gallons. Is it OR to state or note the correct figure?
Another example is when a probability is left out of a calculation. For example, suppose that the source states that one must consume X gallons of a liquid to get at least one molecule of a substance. However, using simple probability, it is clear that consuming X gallons only gives one a chance of 95% of getting one molecule of the substance. It is OR to include the 95%?
Thank you.-- Filll ( talk) 14:43, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Our non-mathematical articles routinely paraphrase sources, indeed extensive quoting is discouraged. A paraphrase may be precise, imprecise, but appropriate ("Smith was an 18th century author" where source says Smith lived from 1750 to 1802) or downright misleading. We make editorial judgement on these issues all the time. There is no difference in mathematical formulas and conversions, except, perhaps, some objective criteria for validity in many situations.-- agr ( talk) 14:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Assume good faith ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it does seem like it would make more sense for it to be a guideline. Guidelines can have more examples, etc. Obuibo Mbstpo ( talk) 13:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi; I use AWB a fair bit, often reaching 6-12 edits per minute. The "rules" section states that accounts making more than a few edits per minute should apply for a bot account - is this necessary in my case, would you say? I mainly just do disambig, typos... that sort of thing. User:TreasuryTag/Sig2 08:59, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, no WP:BOT is policy, and quite clear on the point: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval is required if one does 6-12 edits per minute. Even if the end of the requested approval is: you don't need to do anything specific, continue as you are doing not being a bot. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 09:33, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
While users re-adding themselves to deleted categories is one thing, users re-adding themselves to parent categories is quite another. While those diffs are quite old, the user currently remains in the category as discussions on the matter didn't really result in any conclusive remedy. The category was removed, the discussion died down and was archived, and sometime afterward it was re-added. Can the UCFD decision be enforced? If not, what is the point of designating something as a parent category in the first place? On UCFD should we no longer nominate categories to depopulate of individual users? It would indeed seem pointless if it can't be enforced. The arguments made in the above discussion about redlinked categories that the disruption caused by re-adding redlinks is minimal doesn't equally apply to this scenerio, as the category does exist and the category is alive and well in the category tree. I've asked the user to remove himself yet again, which was refused. What recourse? If the answer is do nothing, then that is essentially saying UCFD decisions are not binding. If that's what the community wants, then fine, but let's not pretend they are by keeping the process around. VegaDark ( talk) 07:02, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if this is a very simple question but, if I redirect a page, should I clear the talk page of all quality/importance assessment templates, etc.?
Thanks, Daniel99091 ( talk) 08:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC).
Article Religious violence in India is giving totally one sided and wrong picture of India , So I have started a constructive article at Religious harmony in India and requested every constructive Wikipedian to contribute article
Is it policy problem or policing with some policy I do not know, some people deleted my effort to create an article at Sandbox first then they shifted the same to my personal user space here User:Mahitgar/Religious harmony in India so ,how do I invite other contributors for contributing in to this article at my personal user space?
While I do want to go with rules over here at en wiki , but if a semi regular visitor like me gets baffled while creating new articles here , I wonder what a totally new guy may be facing here while creating his or her first article ! Mahitgar ( talk) 17:02, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
We have been trying to get people to realize that breaking news belongs on Wikinews and not on Wikipedia. This afternoon's announcement about NY Governor Spitzer has now unleashed a rush to put the latest and most up-to-date "report" in the artcle about him. The problem is that most of this "reporting" has either been factually wrong or is shear speculation... In the last fifteen minutes the article has stated that "it has been reported that" ... "he is expected to resign" (he did not), "he admitted to being involved" (he did not), and has repeated a host of other allegations, speculations and inaccurate statements made by the media. This is Wikipedia at its worst. Here we are, not really knowing all that much about a breaking news event... and everyone wants to write about it. Given that this is a BLP, we MUST be very very careful about what we "report". I really think we need to be strict here. All of this should be directed to Wikinews until we actually know something beyond what was said two minutes ago on whatever news show we happen to be currently watching. Blueboar ( talk) 20:00, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
If the Gov. does resign over these allegations, even if true, it would make us, once again, a laughingstock in Europe. Who really cares if he did or not? I myself patronize high price prostitutes and strippers on a regular basis, in addition to having a beautiful wife and a girlfriend as well. Average White Dork ( talk) 20:20, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
The reliance of this policy page on Jimbo's thoughts should be zero. He's been more or less caught with unclean hands once again, proving that bios of non-notable people (people not in paper dictionaries) are a CORE problem of Wikipedia. Just by reason of existence. Just by BEING there, they present an unending source of problems (legal, moral, time, money), and an unending source of temptation for those in power. Thus, I propose (for the zillionth time) that we do away with the damn things. Period. No exceptions except for LIVING people famous/notable enough to be in the Britannica, or some other paper encyclopedia. For dead people, this is not a problem, any trivial person has room in Wikipedia, since it's not paper-- who cares?
And by the way, this proposal will fix the problems with Jimbo's bio, also. None of those bad things need go in, however well sourced. Jimbo's bio just won't exist until he gets famous enough to be up in a paper encyclopedia. Which probably won't happen in his life time anyway. S B H arris 21:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
(outdent) Look at your own entries. Of those last 2000, 500 of them are encyclopedias of home video movies. How many are paper general encyclopedias, which is what I propose? Not many. And once again, I'm making this proposal so WE don't have to fight about who is "notable" enough to be here, since it's totally unanswerable, and fundamentally corrupting. We just have to let a very few sources, who already have terrible space and money problems, do picking for us. So you'll get your Bush and Clinton, but you won't get your Wales or Siegenthaler or Rachel Marsden or Daniel Brandt or Seth Finkelstein or Jeff Merkey or anybody else who's caused endless trouble which all could totally have been avoided. If you can find any of them in any general encyclopedia in your list, I'll eat my hat. S B H arris 22:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
The biggest problem (as I've also raised on the parallel BLP talk page discussion) is that for this proposal to be at all meaningful, it would encompass all statements made about any living person in any article; it wouldn't just limit the number of biographical articles. So Wikipedia could not mention Jimbo Wales. An article on the New York Yankees could not mention any player or manager that did not have their own article in some print encyclopedia somewhere. An article on a country, city, or other political subdivision could not mention any office-holders that print encyclopedias had not bothered to document. The article on George W. Bush could not mention Jenna Bush. It would eviscerate just about every article dealing with any contemporary subject, business, culture, politics, etc., if only the most famous people (as some print encyclopedia has arbitrary determined based on size limitations) could be mentioned or discussed in relation to that topic. Postdlf ( talk) 23:07, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I have to say that I find many of the objections to this proposal a little weird. It would be pretty easy to come up with an exhaustive list of encylopaedias that could be used for this policy. As for the suggestion that it violates current policy, of course it does - that's why it needs to be proposed and discussed. That's how policy is changed. I find User:Postdlf's point to be an excellent one (I think that this proposal, if implemented, would result in a lot of BLP-creep into other articles, and not really solve all the issues that User:Sbharris is hoping) but I don't really think it's enough on which to scuttle the proposal. So I'm not going to dance around: I oppose this proposal just because I think that there should be room in a non-paper encyclopaedia for living people who are insufficiently notable to make it into paper encyclopaedias. I recognize that this can cause problems, and there are things we can do to mitigate these problems (automatic semi-protection of BLPs, for example, and a broadened policy on whose biographies get deleted upon request). But this proposal goes too far and would do too much damage to the encyclopaedia's content. Sarcasticidealist ( talk) 23:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
A silly and unworkable idea. Paper encyclopaedias, because of limited space, choose to exclude people who would warrant a position for practical reasons. People who have worked in them (I have) know in practice that perfectly valid entries get dropped with the response of "we really should have X in, but we haven't the room". Why should Wikipedia, which doesn't have the same space limitations, follow that rule? FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 00:07, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Split from the above section; and I suggested this on the BLP talk page. Wouldn't this solve a great many problems outright?
To avoid problems, wouldn't it be just easier to enforce notability standards to any possibly contentious material? In other words, if Lawrence Cohen (me) was notable for whatever previous reasons, and got accused of incident x, that it can't be mentioned in the article about Lawrence Cohen unless that factoid(s) was reported by multiple non-trivial sources? Lawrence § t/ e 22:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
(outdent) However, it's currently accepted that one-off mentions are included for various little foibles, for example. If I were a British rock star and a London paper reported I was photographed doing lines of cocaine off the buttocks of my girlfriend Some UK fashion model, then someone would add a one-line note to my bio. And to be honest, it wouldn't be generally contested. Applying a very, very basic and simple notability test to contentious/negative facts in existing BLP articles would be a pad lock on doing harm. To do this, all we need to do is change this line in BLP
Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Verifiability, or is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Wikipedia:No original research).
To...
Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Verifiability, is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Wikipedia:No original research), or is not itself covered by several non-trivial reliable sources that are independent of each other.
...thats it. That way, it means that only events that more than one indepent source cover is worthy to include. Simple, easy. Lawrence § t/ e 23:10, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Requiring multiple reliable sources to mention a contentious fact is one thing; requiring multiple such sources to non-trivially cover it sets the bar much too high and violates WP:NPOV. Besides, notability guidelines do not and should not directly limit article content. Black Falcon ( Talk) 00:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Extensive discussion on this can be found here on the BLP talk page. Lawrence § t/ e 00:42, 11 March 2008 (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 have been on WP for a while, and in that time I have noticed a fair amount of confusion and disagreement about WP:OR, WP:SYN and related issues for numeric information, numeric data, algebraic formulae, calculations, graphs, charts, tables, etc.
However, I was under the impression that simple calculations like converting fractions into percentages for comparison with other percentages is permissable. For example, from Wikipedia:Attribution#What_is_not_original_research.3F:
Editors may make straightforward mathematical calculations or logical deductions based on fully attributed data that neither change the significance of the data nor require additional assumptions beyond what is in the source. It should be possible for any reader without specialist knowledge to understand the deductions. For example, if a published source gives the numbers of votes cast in an election by candidate, it is not original research to include percentages alongside the numbers, so long as it is a simple calculation and the vote counts all come from the same source. Deductions of this nature should not be made if they serve to advance a position, or if they are based on source material published about a topic other than the one at hand.
Nevertheless, I see this results in never ending fights, over and over. For example, if 3 sources give their survey results as percentages and one source gives their survey results as a ratio, surely one is allowed to convert the ratio into a percentage for comparison purposes. However, some dispute this.
Also, suppose a source states that a quantity X of fluid is certain to contain one molecule. Nevertheless, a more thoughtful examination of the problem makes it clear that the quantity X contains at least one molecule. Is this OR to state this correctly, rather than as the source does (presumably because of a typo or slipup)?
Another example is when a source states that a container contains 10 gallons. However, this is only roughly correct, since a more careful but simple calculation shows that the container contains 8.9 gallons. Is it OR to state or note the correct figure?
Another example is when a probability is left out of a calculation. For example, suppose that the source states that one must consume X gallons of a liquid to get at least one molecule of a substance. However, using simple probability, it is clear that consuming X gallons only gives one a chance of 95% of getting one molecule of the substance. It is OR to include the 95%?
Thank you.-- Filll ( talk) 14:43, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Our non-mathematical articles routinely paraphrase sources, indeed extensive quoting is discouraged. A paraphrase may be precise, imprecise, but appropriate ("Smith was an 18th century author" where source says Smith lived from 1750 to 1802) or downright misleading. We make editorial judgement on these issues all the time. There is no difference in mathematical formulas and conversions, except, perhaps, some objective criteria for validity in many situations.-- agr ( talk) 14:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Assume good faith ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it does seem like it would make more sense for it to be a guideline. Guidelines can have more examples, etc. Obuibo Mbstpo ( talk) 13:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi; I use AWB a fair bit, often reaching 6-12 edits per minute. The "rules" section states that accounts making more than a few edits per minute should apply for a bot account - is this necessary in my case, would you say? I mainly just do disambig, typos... that sort of thing. User:TreasuryTag/Sig2 08:59, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, no WP:BOT is policy, and quite clear on the point: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval is required if one does 6-12 edits per minute. Even if the end of the requested approval is: you don't need to do anything specific, continue as you are doing not being a bot. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 09:33, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
While users re-adding themselves to deleted categories is one thing, users re-adding themselves to parent categories is quite another. While those diffs are quite old, the user currently remains in the category as discussions on the matter didn't really result in any conclusive remedy. The category was removed, the discussion died down and was archived, and sometime afterward it was re-added. Can the UCFD decision be enforced? If not, what is the point of designating something as a parent category in the first place? On UCFD should we no longer nominate categories to depopulate of individual users? It would indeed seem pointless if it can't be enforced. The arguments made in the above discussion about redlinked categories that the disruption caused by re-adding redlinks is minimal doesn't equally apply to this scenerio, as the category does exist and the category is alive and well in the category tree. I've asked the user to remove himself yet again, which was refused. What recourse? If the answer is do nothing, then that is essentially saying UCFD decisions are not binding. If that's what the community wants, then fine, but let's not pretend they are by keeping the process around. VegaDark ( talk) 07:02, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if this is a very simple question but, if I redirect a page, should I clear the talk page of all quality/importance assessment templates, etc.?
Thanks, Daniel99091 ( talk) 08:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC).
Article Religious violence in India is giving totally one sided and wrong picture of India , So I have started a constructive article at Religious harmony in India and requested every constructive Wikipedian to contribute article
Is it policy problem or policing with some policy I do not know, some people deleted my effort to create an article at Sandbox first then they shifted the same to my personal user space here User:Mahitgar/Religious harmony in India so ,how do I invite other contributors for contributing in to this article at my personal user space?
While I do want to go with rules over here at en wiki , but if a semi regular visitor like me gets baffled while creating new articles here , I wonder what a totally new guy may be facing here while creating his or her first article ! Mahitgar ( talk) 17:02, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
We have been trying to get people to realize that breaking news belongs on Wikinews and not on Wikipedia. This afternoon's announcement about NY Governor Spitzer has now unleashed a rush to put the latest and most up-to-date "report" in the artcle about him. The problem is that most of this "reporting" has either been factually wrong or is shear speculation... In the last fifteen minutes the article has stated that "it has been reported that" ... "he is expected to resign" (he did not), "he admitted to being involved" (he did not), and has repeated a host of other allegations, speculations and inaccurate statements made by the media. This is Wikipedia at its worst. Here we are, not really knowing all that much about a breaking news event... and everyone wants to write about it. Given that this is a BLP, we MUST be very very careful about what we "report". I really think we need to be strict here. All of this should be directed to Wikinews until we actually know something beyond what was said two minutes ago on whatever news show we happen to be currently watching. Blueboar ( talk) 20:00, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
If the Gov. does resign over these allegations, even if true, it would make us, once again, a laughingstock in Europe. Who really cares if he did or not? I myself patronize high price prostitutes and strippers on a regular basis, in addition to having a beautiful wife and a girlfriend as well. Average White Dork ( talk) 20:20, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
The reliance of this policy page on Jimbo's thoughts should be zero. He's been more or less caught with unclean hands once again, proving that bios of non-notable people (people not in paper dictionaries) are a CORE problem of Wikipedia. Just by reason of existence. Just by BEING there, they present an unending source of problems (legal, moral, time, money), and an unending source of temptation for those in power. Thus, I propose (for the zillionth time) that we do away with the damn things. Period. No exceptions except for LIVING people famous/notable enough to be in the Britannica, or some other paper encyclopedia. For dead people, this is not a problem, any trivial person has room in Wikipedia, since it's not paper-- who cares?
And by the way, this proposal will fix the problems with Jimbo's bio, also. None of those bad things need go in, however well sourced. Jimbo's bio just won't exist until he gets famous enough to be up in a paper encyclopedia. Which probably won't happen in his life time anyway. S B H arris 21:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
(outdent) Look at your own entries. Of those last 2000, 500 of them are encyclopedias of home video movies. How many are paper general encyclopedias, which is what I propose? Not many. And once again, I'm making this proposal so WE don't have to fight about who is "notable" enough to be here, since it's totally unanswerable, and fundamentally corrupting. We just have to let a very few sources, who already have terrible space and money problems, do picking for us. So you'll get your Bush and Clinton, but you won't get your Wales or Siegenthaler or Rachel Marsden or Daniel Brandt or Seth Finkelstein or Jeff Merkey or anybody else who's caused endless trouble which all could totally have been avoided. If you can find any of them in any general encyclopedia in your list, I'll eat my hat. S B H arris 22:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
The biggest problem (as I've also raised on the parallel BLP talk page discussion) is that for this proposal to be at all meaningful, it would encompass all statements made about any living person in any article; it wouldn't just limit the number of biographical articles. So Wikipedia could not mention Jimbo Wales. An article on the New York Yankees could not mention any player or manager that did not have their own article in some print encyclopedia somewhere. An article on a country, city, or other political subdivision could not mention any office-holders that print encyclopedias had not bothered to document. The article on George W. Bush could not mention Jenna Bush. It would eviscerate just about every article dealing with any contemporary subject, business, culture, politics, etc., if only the most famous people (as some print encyclopedia has arbitrary determined based on size limitations) could be mentioned or discussed in relation to that topic. Postdlf ( talk) 23:07, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I have to say that I find many of the objections to this proposal a little weird. It would be pretty easy to come up with an exhaustive list of encylopaedias that could be used for this policy. As for the suggestion that it violates current policy, of course it does - that's why it needs to be proposed and discussed. That's how policy is changed. I find User:Postdlf's point to be an excellent one (I think that this proposal, if implemented, would result in a lot of BLP-creep into other articles, and not really solve all the issues that User:Sbharris is hoping) but I don't really think it's enough on which to scuttle the proposal. So I'm not going to dance around: I oppose this proposal just because I think that there should be room in a non-paper encyclopaedia for living people who are insufficiently notable to make it into paper encyclopaedias. I recognize that this can cause problems, and there are things we can do to mitigate these problems (automatic semi-protection of BLPs, for example, and a broadened policy on whose biographies get deleted upon request). But this proposal goes too far and would do too much damage to the encyclopaedia's content. Sarcasticidealist ( talk) 23:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
A silly and unworkable idea. Paper encyclopaedias, because of limited space, choose to exclude people who would warrant a position for practical reasons. People who have worked in them (I have) know in practice that perfectly valid entries get dropped with the response of "we really should have X in, but we haven't the room". Why should Wikipedia, which doesn't have the same space limitations, follow that rule? FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 00:07, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Split from the above section; and I suggested this on the BLP talk page. Wouldn't this solve a great many problems outright?
To avoid problems, wouldn't it be just easier to enforce notability standards to any possibly contentious material? In other words, if Lawrence Cohen (me) was notable for whatever previous reasons, and got accused of incident x, that it can't be mentioned in the article about Lawrence Cohen unless that factoid(s) was reported by multiple non-trivial sources? Lawrence § t/ e 22:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
(outdent) However, it's currently accepted that one-off mentions are included for various little foibles, for example. If I were a British rock star and a London paper reported I was photographed doing lines of cocaine off the buttocks of my girlfriend Some UK fashion model, then someone would add a one-line note to my bio. And to be honest, it wouldn't be generally contested. Applying a very, very basic and simple notability test to contentious/negative facts in existing BLP articles would be a pad lock on doing harm. To do this, all we need to do is change this line in BLP
Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Verifiability, or is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Wikipedia:No original research).
To...
Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Verifiability, is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Wikipedia:No original research), or is not itself covered by several non-trivial reliable sources that are independent of each other.
...thats it. That way, it means that only events that more than one indepent source cover is worthy to include. Simple, easy. Lawrence § t/ e 23:10, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Requiring multiple reliable sources to mention a contentious fact is one thing; requiring multiple such sources to non-trivially cover it sets the bar much too high and violates WP:NPOV. Besides, notability guidelines do not and should not directly limit article content. Black Falcon ( Talk) 00:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Extensive discussion on this can be found here on the BLP talk page. Lawrence § t/ e 00:42, 11 March 2008 (UTC)