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Who decides feature articles? A committee of teenage boys? Wikipedia needs to grow up. pointlessforest ( talk) 02:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
There is a current discussion about the posibility of continuing wikipedias in ancient languages, in the list of wikimedia titled Allow new wikis in extinct languages?. if you want to susbcribe to the list enter here. We need know your opinion for taking a decission. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.40.199.236 ( talk) 21:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
if i understand this correctly, you're (someone) suggesting that they start wikipedias in dead tongues... like sanskrit or coptic... now, i dom't mean to sound like a schmuck... but that is one really stupid idea. think about it for a few minutes....
AeturnalNarcosis ( talk) 03:54, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I think it might be a good idea, but the danger would be so few users would edit it it would be easily susceptible to trolling and other shenanigans. JeanLatore 14:57, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
“ | Wikipedia is facing an identity crisis as it is torn between two alternative futures. It can either strive to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation as a trustworthy and credible reference source. These two conflicting visions are at the heart of a bitter struggle inside Wikipedia between “inclusionists”, who believe that applying strict editorial criteria will dampen contributors' enthusiasm for the project, and “deletionists” who argue that Wikipedia should be more cautious and selective about its entries. | ” |
I think it is time we decide which way to go. There have been many failed attempts to address this, but they all failed due to their partisan or limited nature. Generally speaking which way does the community want to go? -- Cat chi? 03:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I just read the article. I value encyclopedias for their educational value, but tend to take a classical view of education. That is, I view it as a process not only of informing, but of intellectual improvement. Encyclopedias are of no value if they do not produce valuable and insightful information. The Economist gave the example of Solidarity leaders and Pokémon characters. I take the view that we should have entries on all Solidarity leaders, but no entries on Pokémon characters (just the show itself). Some works of literature and cinema do have value because they sometimes provide insight through fictional symbolism. They also at times produce social change. Pokémon, on the other hand, is a meaningless children's show with no educational value. I understand that this is a dangerous contradiction, though. I have seen many insightful and notable entries nominated for deletion simply because they were too foreign to the nominator. They appeared not to be notable. So I think we should state clearly that subjects with educational and intellectual value are always notable and shallow subjects are not.-- Awareshiftjk ( talk) 03:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Personally, I believe that it is the balance of inclusionism and deletionism that provides the proper balance that Wikipedia needs to have. The problem is that it needs to be balanced. Tilting too far inclusionist, and you become indiscriminate, go look at a Trivia section to see what I mean. Tilting too far Deletionist, and potentially good articles are shot on sight, before they have the opportunity to become viable, WP:The Heymann Standard. As much as we state that AfD is not cleanup, often times the threat of deletion is the catalyst that drives the article beyond a mere stub. And our wide-scale inclusion criteria is exactly what separates Wikipedia from the rest.. -- RoninBK T C 04:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Suggest the community read C.S. Lewis' book An Experiment in Criticism, where he argued that the value of literature is as much a reflection of the reader as of what is read, and that efforts to divide literature into "highbrow" and "lowbrow" and assuming that "lowbrow" means "not serious" have been a really, really, really bad idea that prevents real literary appreciation and growth. He suggested a moratorium on trying to judge "literary merit" and using a different approach. What's true for literature is true for other things as well. Best, -- Shirahadasha ( talk) 05:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I wish people creating shitty fancruft would use a spell checker. Also, lots of fancruft is part of some huge business franchise, which produces stuff in various formats that are used as sources -thus entire swathes of wiki are "in universe". Really, I don't care how trivial it is, I just wish they could write betterer. Dan Beale-Cocks 22:56, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
The whole content discussion is as old as ... Throughout human cultural history arising trends and opinions of rulers (or the opponents of same) have continuously created, destroyed and recreated. Archeologists make a living digging up what remains and are faced with whether to preserve the Christian mural or chisel it off to reveal the hieroglyphs beneath. French scouts caused uproar and laughter when they removed neolytic "graffiti" from a cave. Just to site a few examples. The list of now famed painters who lived and died without their work being recognized is endless. (Anyone for a Vermeer bonfire?) Knowledge is power, but today's trash may turn into tomorrow's treasure. You'll be hard put to find a book on how to lay a thatched roof in most libraries, since it they are no longer common. Yet university research projects exist trying to preserve and recover this lost art. When I grew up knowing how to use a slide rule was an essential skill. Preserving it would have met the highest standards for "value". My nephew may get to look at one in a museum, since I threw mine out as "junk". The Spanish smelted down "worthless pagan" Inca trinkets to produce items meeting their "high" cultural standards. By declaring a certain knowledge to be "worthless" or "valuable" each preceding generation tries to stamp their own ideas and value systems on the next generation, who are duty bound to resist with all their might in the interest of human progress. What survives or is revived after jumping one or more generations is our "cultural heritage". Now Wikipedia introduces as novel an idea to how knowledge is maintained as democracy was to despotism. I hope the self declared guardians of knowledge are going to die out with one of the following generations. Knowing "Pokemon" characters is as basic a skill to the next generation as knowing "Dr. Seuss" was to mine. There are quotes and proverbs in the literature my generation is leaving behind describing things as "seussian". I hope no one will have deleted the relevant wiki-page when my grandkids stumble over those. So I'd suggest creating a central "graveyard" for deleted pages to save future archeologists and ethnologists some work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 ( talk) 09:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The true problem is in the notability and similar policies. That can make any silly detail of Pokemon super-relevant (maybe millions of hits in Google and stuff like that) while much more relevant artists from non-English, and specially third world countries, countries can pass unadverted or even be deleted as non-notable.
These overall criteria bias the contents of Wikipedia in favor of mere trivia. We need a more academic and, as much as possible, less mediatic approach.
As for the problem with children vandalism, the best solution is surely to stop censoring certain images, so schools start censoring Wikipedia at least in class time. That would save a lot of work to our patrollers.
I am inclusionist for encyclopedic content and for what allows for a more and better of our world. But I am exclusionist for trivia, and the articles on Pokemon, Star Trek, the Simpson... chapters, minor characters, etc. belong to a fanzine or some media not Wikipedia.
Maybe the solution is to create "Wikizine" inside Wikimedia, for such more diverse but less encyclopedic activities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sugaar ( talk • contribs) 05:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Seeing as this thread began with a quote from an article in the Economist I thought it worth mentioning that there is another article about wikipedia in the March 20, 2008 issue of the New York Review of Books, titled "The Charms of Wikipedia". The author describes himself as an "inclusionist" and tells of how he ended up as a defender against article deletions, with a bit of mocking about the notion of "notability". Looks like the article is currently online here. Just thought it might be of interest. Pfly ( talk) 06:44, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not insulting you. I'm saying your philosophy is silly, not you, the person. There's a big difference there. Despite your philosophy, you seem to be a good editor. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 21:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Could part of this problem be solved by actively encouraging the opening of alternate Wiki's? Things like Memory Alpha and Wookieepedia seem to have the capability to host the bulk of information regarding their respective topics, with far less worry about relative importance.
Perhaps I'm an optimist, but I think the complaints of most "inclusionists" would be settled if there is a place that the information they want to share can be hosted. Oberiko ( talk) 18:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree, Oberiko. Also, what you just said is now a part of WP:FICT: Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)#Relocating non-notable fictional material
It might be good to add a "move it elsewhere" section to WP:NOTABILITY, period. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 21:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
What happened to judging articles (and article topics) on their individual merits, as opposed to making sweeping generalisations about an entire subject area or entire class of topics (and entire groups of editors, for that matter)? Why are subjective personal opinions about the importance/unimportance or intellectual/popular/cultural value of a general subject area a part of discussions regarding something as objective as the presence of coverage in reliable source? And finally, what's the story with the Pokémon articles? (Why is it such a common example in these types of discussions?) Thanks, Black Falcon ( Talk) 20:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The rest of the article is just a blind. This is the key item. This is not the first time our deletion system *alone* is presented in an article, and even is mistaken as somehow being the core of wikipedia.
It isn't. It certainly shouldn't be notable or big enough to get articles in prominent magazines, all by itself.
The deletion pages on wikipedia have taken on a life of their own. "Wikipedia won't be able to survive without deletion" you say, but I've heard that before: "Wikipedia won't be able to survive without Esperanza" and "Wikipedia won't be able to survive without the AMA".
I'm skeptical we even need a deletion system. But if we do, perhaps we could make a new one from scratch, that actually follows wiki-principles. (Does anyone still know what those are? ;-) )
-- Kim Bruning ( talk) 22:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC) "bureaucracy, what bureaucracy? he said... while ripping it out and stuffing it under the carpet.
I can understand the need to prune articles that fall into Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, but I do find it somewhat difficult to grasp the need to get rid of articles such as characters from movies / television series' and the like. Can someone (in bullet point notation) lay out the primary reasons? Oberiko ( talk) 15:17, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
So, as they say, "a good compromise leaves nobody happy". Unfortunately, anything involving mass satisfaction requires mass brainwashing. 68.101.123.219 ( talk) 16:56, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
IMHO: It is a noble (and perhaps even achievable) goal to have Wikipedia eventually contain all human knowledge. But to suddenly remove WP:NOTE and open the floodgates to having every kid in the world write an article about him or herself and to have "memorial" articles written about anyone's dead uncle, would be crazy at this point in the project. So extreme inclusionism is as dangerous as extreme deletionism. Wikipedia needs to grow towards "all of human knowledge" slowly. This means that we should consider gradually relaxing our notability standards year by year. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that (for example): "In 2009 we're going to remove the WP:SCHOOL guideline and allow the creation of articles about any school, in 2010, every musician who ever made a recording that was sold commercially and every author who ever published a book is eligable to have an article written about them". This is something we'd want to plan for - a gradual process.
It's already becoming quite difficult to find "notable" subjects about which much is known - yet which do not yet have a Wikipedia article. I think we are actually zeroing in on having written at least something about every subject that falls within our notability standards. This is evident from Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia - the rate of creation of new articles is falling - presumably because we're finding fewer new things to write about.
The cost of disk space is still declining exponentially - but Wikipedia is now only growing linearly - so we should be able to relax the notability rules to allow more stuff at the same dollar cost.
The tricky part is attracting enough editors to maintain that material without declining standards - and I believe that the only way to do that is to make Wikipedia less bureaucratic. There really is a horrible maze of rules - some useful - but many are put there by people who've lost sight of the joy of editing articles and who have taken up Wikipolitics as a full time activity. Relaxing notability standards would be one way to attract new blood. The kid who innocently wants to write an article about his or her school (which IS exceedingly notable by the standards of the kids who go there) - but gets it shredded by the deletionists per-WP:SCHOOL is unlikely to become a full time editor in the future - that first experience with Wikipedia is the crucial one - and it's rarely as pleasant as it used to be (say) 5 years ago. The one who starts off by writing an article about his/her rather uninteresting highschool - and who gets tons of help and encouragement from the community - may well be the one who expands the stubs of 50 other high-importance articles about mathematics in the future.
SteveBaker ( talk) 14:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Wiki is not paper. I will never read articles about Pokemon characters, but they cause no harm to the encyclopedia or my reading experience because I won't see them if I don't go looking for them. This is a non-issue. — Omegatron 00:35, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, they do cause harm, the very instant anyone out there decides not to donate because of legitimate concerns that Wikipedia is in fact an indiscriminate collection of trivia.
Unless a topic is encyclopedic in nature, then it does not belong in the project.
"Yes, they do cause harm, the very instant anyone out there decides not to donate because of legitimate concerns that Wikipedia is in fact an indiscriminate collection of trivia." Individual articles for Pokemon characters don't cause any harm to Wikipedia — although they may hurt Wikia's bottom line. They certainly don't pose as much harm as biographies for living people. Is Bulbasaur going to sue the Wikimedia Foundation for libel? Was it Charmander that killed JFK? The content disclaimer says "Readers should not judge the importance of topics based on their coverage in Wikipedia, nor assume that a topic is important merely because it is the subject of a Wikipedia article." I highly doubt that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation waited to make a donation until TTN redirected all the Pokemon character articles. -- Pixelface ( talk) 22:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
There is a proposal to create a namespace that where deleted pages can still be accessed. This proposal represents a solution to the dilemma raised in the above-mentioned economist article that is compatible with the spirit of inclusionism while also addressing some of the concerns of those who wish to be more stringent about the removal of non-notable articles.
Wikipedia:Don't template the regulars ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
An editor (above) suggests that the user icon gif is a display of unintentional bias. Many other editors (including me) disagreed. I still disagree about the tiny gif of the user icon, but there are several portals, projects and templates that use similar but larger images. Here are some examples-
Also, dark-colored tones are used on images with negative overtones, like in {{ Sockmaster}}. (aw, come on, you know that I have a little of reason, even if I'm mainly joking) -- Enric Naval ( talk) 20:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Ther should be icons!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.106.28.122 ( talk) 18:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Recently I have encountered several categories and templates of which the reason for compilation are at best contestable. However, neither Wikipedia:Templates for Deletion nor Wikipedia:Categories for discussion gives any reference that a category or template that fails to have verifiable, reliable information that is not the product of original research is a ground for removal.
A lot of information is templated. There should be a way to check this information against the guidelines all information needs to be checked against.
Categorisation is a difficult thing, which leads to heated scientific debates in the scientific community. The haphazard categorisation of Wikipedia works for many topics, but there are also many topics where categorisations leads to debates (e.g. ethnic, religious etc.). In these debates verifiability is hardly an issue.
If there is no guideline for this, both categories and templates provide a backdoor to add unsourced information to many articles. This of course opens up a possibility for subtle NPOV pushing.
Is there any way to make a guideline to cover for this.
Personally I was thinking that templates and categories need a references section in their own page. That would not burden every article with the need to reference, while it does fit the rules. I have not seen this anywhere though; so I am pretty sure this is not a rule yet.
Do you have any idea/suggestion how to handle this issue?
(Sorry if this has come up before, this is my first post here). Arnoutf ( talk) 19:54, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I have requested comment here regarding whether WP:SELFPUB should be reorganized to make its meaning more clear. I have explained why I feel it is a good idea, and why it is not, in my opinion, a substantive change. I once did make that edit but was quickly reverted by someone who insisted that the existing wording is perfectly clear and that my distinction was "improper", despite my explanations. My basic reason for this is that five of the restrictions seem to apply to the specific material referenced, while the other two are more general, and the way it is stated now could be misleading. PSWG1920 ( talk) 17:45, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Over the last few days, an editor has been adding unreferenced content to several US municipality pages. When I warned him/her about it, s/he said that s/he would get in contact (I'd assume by email, since these municipalities are scattered nationwide) with the locals. Is an email from an official good enough for referencing? I'm inclined to tell the editor that it's not good enough, since an email isn't published and therefore cannot be a reliable source. Help, please? Nyttend ( talk) 01:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
As of now {{ free media}} is only used on some free image templates (168,000 out of ~300,000). I think it should be used on all free images to make it easier to sort free content. Its similar to {{ non-free media}} and would standardize the practice to group all media into one of the two possible categories. MBisanz talk 03:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
This follows up on a discussion over proposed rewording of the criterion that was advertised here on March 28, pursuant to a discussion on the policy Talk page that began on March 17. Discussion of the proposal (formally made the day before it was advertised here) was lively, detailed, and mission-minded and a clear, unambiguous consensus was reached in support of the revised wording. The change was enacted on April 1.
On April 10, two editors acting on their own initiative, without ever having participated in the discussion or responded to it over the next nine days, and without making even an attempt to forge a new consensus, preemptively reverted the change. I need to make clear that I reverted them, on the basis that substantive changes should never be made to policy language without our standard process of consensus building, let alone in open defiance of that process. The end result is that the page is locked, with a dispute tag. And our entire non-free content policy is brought into disrepute. All comments are welcome here on the non-free content Talk page.— DCGeist ( talk) 05:32, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Debate now centralized at: Wikipedia:NFCC Criterion 8 debate. -- Kim Bruning ( talk) 11:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I have written a new proposal which would allow subjects of BLPs to provide an on-wiki response to his or biography and have it linked to from the article. Any comments, improvements, rejections, and advice would be much appreciated. (This is my first attempt at proposing policy, so please go easy on me...) Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:16, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
This is the English Wikipedia. It's all well and good saying that it's the encyclopedia that anybody can edit, but if a statement is cited with a foreign language source, the majority of editors simply cannot have anything to do with it. I therefor suggests that, as anybody capable of citing with a foreign languuage is capable of translating it, they post a translation of the source on the talk page of the article, under a title referring precisely to the cited statement.
Otherwise (or perhaps, as well), we need to be able to verify that a foreign language source says what it's claimed to say. Sometimes the precise wording of a source in itself is significant.
In short, there's a problem with foreign language sources - particularly with reference to contraversial articles, and even more so where they are on the subject of curent events. What can be done about it?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Crimsone ( talk • contribs) 17:08, April 11, 2008
There should not be (blacklisted) blocked URLs! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.106.28.122 ( talk) 17:58, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
A new account is created in the real name of a notable person (Author/Journalist). They edit their own article a little and one on a major historical news story in which they were involved. Judging from the nature of the edits. I would assume good faith and believe it to be the person, but if in fact it isn't the person the user account is an act of extreme bad faith. The eprson needs educating about Wikipedia's citation requirements, but that apart, they could potentially be a valuable contributor. Question: Is there any formal process for querying the identity of a user and their verifying it (and is it sufficiently polite that they won't take umbrage?). dramatic ( talk) 09:35, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
A discussion concerning the use of image placeholders has opened at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Image placeholders and may be of interest to editors at the village pump. The placeholder images have recently been uploaded to 50,000 articles, and while there has been disagreement about the use of these images in various corners, there has not been a centralized discussion on this issue affecting the community. Please contribute your thoughts and publicize this discussion anywhere you feel would be appropriate. Thank you. Northwesterner1 ( talk) 10:41, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
My 2 cent's worth: I think images are already something of a "master grade" only task. Very few people understand enough to get them to show up where they are supposed to be on the page. If the placeholders could be turned into an easy to use feature it might work. Otherwise you'd just end up with clutter. Easiest would be if you had a button in the icon list above the editing window where contributors could request images. They could then even add a link to a picture they can't use because of policy. Lisa4edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 ( talk) 13:37, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I've been editing the anti-Americaism article. I've been looking at some other anti-national sentiment articles, that were mentioned in the (archived) Talk pages of the article. They all tend to push POV on political matters. The anti-Japanese article, for example, has a section on whaling protests, calling the opposition to whaling racism against Japanese [4]. Meanwhile, the anti-Americanism article cites a protest against a US military base, in the wake of Marines raping a child, as an example of anti-Americanism. (The article has a "Discrimination" sidebar that comes and goes, and includes anti-Americanism in the same category as racism, slavery, and genocide.) All of this is interpreting and labeling the views of other people and societies, often negatively, on political matters.
Proposal: anti-[national sentiment] articles should only be about people who self-declare as anti-[nation]. There are people who describe themselves as anti-American. There can be a neutral article about them and what they believe. Other labeling--anti-Mexican sentiment (the article suggests concern with illegal immigration is prejudice against Mexicans [5]....), anti-Americanism, etc--is just POV pushing, usually with a negative innuendo, often about living people and other ethnicities.
Here's what I wonder: Is it possible to have a policy about this, or is Wikipedia too de-centralized for something like that? Life.temp ( talk) 13:55, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, I found a related policy: Naming conventions (identity) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28identity%29
I propose anti-[nationality] labeling following the same guidlelines, pretty much for the same reasons. From that page:
Where there is doubt, aim for neutrality.
I know I'm immediately going to sound like a killjoy (and a hypocrite, since this April 1 I tried to get in on the fun by jokingly noming WP:AIV for deletion myself, something which I promise never to do again), but I've thought about it and I've come to the conclusion that we should be stricter about disruptive behavior that takes place on April 1. The main reason why is that it divides us. Look at a recent Wikipedia Signpost article and how many users were blocked, then unblocked for April Fools Day "pranks". Some of us may find this stuff funny, but others apparently don't. There are ways to be funny without dividing us. A humorous featured article is an example of one. Be creative, people. And don't even get me started on how people just visitng Wikipedia for the first time view these "pranks".-- Urban Rose 16:18, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I want to know that is there any specific policy regarding filling in the fields of infoboxes(specially Template:Infobox Officeholder). I am asking it after watching some editors removing the sect written along with religion in the religion field of Template:Infobox Officeholder, with the reasoning that only religion is asked in this field. In my point of view if there isn't any policy then one should be there, at least a guideline. -- SMS Talk 19:22, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
It seems patently illogical in the internet age to disclude self-published sources under the absurd garbage-can label of "vanity press". It should be obvious to anyone in the information age that self-published sources are increasingly important sources of information, and can represent reliable and rigorous research. To assign validity entirely to what publishers choose to print, given their dependence upon the market, or their dependence upon self-referential institutional guidelines, is also illogical, because truth is dependent neither upon popularity nor particular institutionalized schools of thought. While the market may provide one indication that many people find value in a source, it is not the sole criterion of truth. And when it comes to schools of thought, the people are entitled to access to information generated outside the box. Self-publishing, while it may indeed provide opportunities for "vanity" publishing consisting of flippant, nonserious work, also constitutes competition against attempts to monopolize validity, and represents a healthy source of dissent. Unless wikipedia wishes to confine its information entirely within manufactured consent, a more open policy about the inclusion of self-published sources is in order. CarlaO'Harris ( talk) 19:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
It is a general point, about many articles on Wikipedia, but does have application to that debate as well. CarlaO'Harris ( talk) 22:12, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
The bot policy rewrite mentioned in a section above has gone live. Community input would be appreciated on WT:BOT to ensure that the changes have consensus and to discuss the possibility of further changes.-- Dycedarg ж 20:48, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I would like to invite you to consider taking part in the AGF Challenge which has been proposed for use in the RfA process [6] by User: Kim Bruning. You can answer in multiple choice format, or using essay answers, or anonymously. You can of course skip any parts of the Challenge you find objectionable or inadvisable.-- Filll ( talk) 14:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:CheckUser ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I was told that all edits made in a consecutively (in a row within a 24 hour period) are counted as one for the purpose of 3RR violations. For example:
Etc.
Is this the way it works? I have read the 3RR policy but I am not clear. Thanks, Mattisse ( Talk) 21:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
<undent> The other thing is, 3RR is, as they say, "an electric fence not an entitlement". In other words, if Editor 2 continues to revert Editor 1 with no discussion, they can be blocked for edit warring and disruptive editing whether they revert 3 edits in a day or 30 edits in a month. Confusing Manifestation( Say hi!) 03:59, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Has no-one else ever found it a bit weird that a vandal who makes 4 (or 40) obviously destructive edits to various articles has to receive a warning and to reoffend before they can even be considered for a block, whereas a careless editor who forgets about 3RR and happens to make four good-faith reverts to an article can be blocked summarily forthwith? -- Kotniski ( talk) 15:18, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Sometimes in vicious edit wars (I have seen mutual 3RR violations with offensive summaries accumulating within 10 minutes). In such cases immediate blocking (of both sides without warning) can be the best thing to calm down the war; and create a bit of stability on mainspace. So no, I would not take away that possibility from the admins. Arnoutf ( talk) 11:23, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Hello, I am 90% of my wikitime present in the Dutch Wikipedia. I recently made an article here for a life coach David Bonham-Carter in my drafts. It was not very long but it had references to a source and I had contact with that man by e-mail. But very soon (after 2 hours) after transfer to the main section, my article was tagged for deletion; main reason: not notable enough. I consented with this opinion and added the tag/template db-author or sth. like this. Now today I come back here and click "my contributions" and I cannot see there any trace of
In our nl.wikipedia.org you will find these signs of past activity without saying.
What the policy here in the mother/father of all wikipedia's ?
Frankly, I am cross by the idea I cannot see under "my contributions" my complete activity, i.e. by means of a red title (= removed/no more existing) David Bonham-Carter on the corresponding correct dates (the making; the editing; the deletion date). And clicking on logs next to my user name I see that the deletion log for Dartelaar is empty. If you answer here, can you put a link in "my talk", please. -- Dartelaar [write me!] 21:54, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
<unindenting> Agree with Duncan, except that you are suggesting that the content of the deleted edit be visible, aren't you? At least it would seem so from the rest of what you wrote. There actually seem to be a few issues here, and I'm not sure what would be involved in getting each of them changed. Let's try a list:
-- Kotniski ( talk) 16:01, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I have to agree, I do not see why anyone should have their own deleted kept from them. In some cases such as Duncan's, the information can be useful to exonerate. To take it one step further, I do not see why I should have to goto an admin to see the contents of those deletions as well. If they are still on the server where over 1,000 admins can see them, why can't I? Lets take some worst case scenarios, say I create an article attacking someone, the article is deleted, yet still available for thousands to see, admins that is, what purpose does it serve to have that content hidden from me? I already know what I wrote, I could just as easily save it, it does not save space nor traffic. For a lighter example, such as those given, say I write an article and go on vacation, the article is deleted while I am away. I can see why it was deleted, but not what happened after I created. If I do not have a copy of the contents, I further do not know what I wrote and how to improve it if it fails on notability, or lacking verifiable sources.
I do not think demeaning is the best way to explain how someone feels when they have to ask permission, its a way of creating a structure. For some items that structure is needed, and yes I know Wikipedia is not a democracy and we do not promote freedom of speech within the encyclopedia, however, if admins are equal to others, then they should not be able to see anymore then others. The idea that admins are equal is fully refuted as we give them more permission to do what no one else can do, this includes the ability to see my own work, work I can not see without asking permission. Consider if you were always allowed to speak, you just had to ask permission to do so first, would you not feel "under" that person?
Just one last point, I am not sure how we can assume the masses would do the absolute worse with access to their own content, however have a policy of assuming good faith. -- I Write Stuff ( talk) 19:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I read the above thread and I am amazed that no one has challenged the false premise argument that preventing access to deleted content somehow prevents deleted articles from being resurected. What a bogus argument! If I am editing something and suspect (or know) my edits might be deleted then all I have to do is open up NotePad and a quick copy/paste of the raw text from the edit screen gives me the full ability to restore the article anytime I feel like starting an edit war!
On the other hand, I have had occassions where I have attempted to add value to an article, been away for a awhile (WP is a hobby, not an occupation or obsession for me), returned and found the article gone. It would have been nice to see what had changed while I was away as I might have been able to improve whatever was the cause for deletion.
Perhaps the solution is to create a new "D"eleted articles namespace called "D-Space:" which would parallel mainspace but with 3 special exceptions.
Related concepts include:
Think of D-Space as like a WikiProject for deleted articles needing improvement. -- Low Sea ( talk) 21:25, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I recently posted about Deletionpedia at the admin's notice board. Basically deletionpedia already collects for some time all articles deleted per AfD, Prod and many per CSD (A7 more or less). So the content of above mentioned article is actually available there [8]. Now I haven't gone yet through above lengthy conversation, but as I've argued in the AN thread, this should have an impact on how we look on deletions. There wasn't much response there under this angle, maybe due tot he fact that admins can see deleted content anyways. -- Tikiwont ( talk) 12:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I think Ignore all rules needs to be amended to include a disclaimer that it should not be cited for admin actions. I've seen this being done a couple times recently, and it just seems totally ridiculous to me. IAR has always been a policy that applied to editing for the most part, in my eyes anyway. Any admin action that goes against policy should have a better explanation than per IAR. Lara ❤ Love 22:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I would like to chime in my with my 2 cents. I think anyone who takes the drastic step of ignoring all the rules in our system in Wikipedia, should be required when asked, why. Perhaps that is all that is needed. I do not think admins should be exempt in their ability to put IAR to use, however I think we should require that anyone invoking it should be required to state why when asked, even if asked by the person who they may have blocked, banned etc. There should be a level of accountability. Personally I see what the writer attempted to accomplish, however, I have never seen a group put such a policy to good use, the ability to ignore the rules as long as you feel it is for the better will just alienate those who got played by the rule and where IAR was used against them. -- I Write Stuff ( talk) 20:09, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Admins need IAR. In fact, I rather feel wikipedia has become far too beaurocratic and IAR isn't cited enough, because the lag beween beaurocracy and positive result creates a festering hole for incivility, personal attacks, aggression and being good at rules even if you aren't good at the subject you're pushing a POV on. I rather feel the ever-more-complicated ruleset, and the increasingly monotonous and banal procedures that arrive from application of the rules to incidents that common sense would previously preside over is getting in the way of people building a better encyclopedia - particularly new editors. New editors come allong and make a few small changes to an article, only to offend someones sensibilities, and get WP:3RR thrown at them, which they quite possibly know nothing about, not understand the significance of, an don't particularly care about (after all, they came here to build an encyclopedia, not spend hours reading all the policy and guideline pages first - and there's a few of them.)
Anyway... that said, to offer a theoretical example I suspect may be more palatable to people (diplomacy is of course the foundation of politics, and there's always politics behind any democracy, assuming Wikipedia to indeed be democratic (well, more than not anyway)...
I have been on wikiepdia for a few weeks and mostly concentrate on law and music & entertainment related topics, in article-space and createing new articles. After a few relatively good experiences in created articles that sustained AFD with constructive commentary it gave me a rather brilliant idea to help the Wikipadia:
Yes! But I think the excitement this new systeme will generate will not only energize the community as a whole but also draw thousands of new users to the site!! This procedure would vastly emprove the articles, culling the chaff, and cultivating the cream/wheat... We coud weigh the merits of EVERY NEW ARTICLE from here on out!! Wow! JeanLatore ( talk) 20:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Burden of evidence ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
A discussion on enabling global blocking on wikimedia is taking place on meta. — Werdna talk 01:13, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Unless somebody can explain to me why we tolerate IP edits at all? If a person can't figure out how to generate a username and a password, why would we want them to be editing here? What am I missing? Semi-protection obviously works to stop vandalism, or it wouldn't be used. What possible argument is there, that admits sprotection works in some heavily vandal-targetted places, BUT somehow would not work even better, if used automatically everyplace? If we did this, anybody anyplace could still edit. They'd just need a password and some personal responsibility. S B H arris 07:06, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Or do these editors only start articles, and never improve articles which are well on the way to featured status? How do you know? I'm trying to keep myself from slapping a citation needed tag on your statement. Got examples? Got examples where you can show that some IP user contributed massive amounts of work, but would have been too lazy to pick out a username and password, if they had been required to? I just do not believe it and I'm pretty sure you can't can't prove it, or even support it. If it ever happens, I do not believe it happens enough to be worth noticing.
Look, I'm a scientist. This is a question which is answerable by a simple experiment, since we all have strong opinons, but no data. We simply sprotect all the articles that start with "A" and then the compare the created content and vandalism as compared with a similar number of articles that start with "B", which we leave as is. Now, no doubt somebody's going to come hopping up and say that "We don't even have the monitoring tools to tell if this is working or not." Okay. Then that means YOU DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER, EITHER. But you think you do. You're writing a lot of policy and you're sprotecting some articles and not others, by the seat of your pants. Well, the seat of my pants says something else. The reason this suggestion is "perennial" is that I'm far from alone in that judgement.
Addendum: I went to the perennial proposals page above and looked at the cites, and found exactly what I expected: epidemiology. Epidemiology proves nothing. For example, we have a cite from somebody's blog (It's amazing what becomes WP:V when it supports the conclusions of the Foundation [9]) that most of the content (by number of letters) of the average article comes from users whose total contribution to the entire encyclopedia is relatively minor. Which is not supprising. And many of them are IP users. Again not surprising. But we don't know the key thing which is being assumed from this data, which is that if we required all these IP editors to register a username, they'd all go away and wouldn't do what they did. WE JUST DON'T KNOW THAT without doing the experiment. We do know that most vandalism is done by IP editors. Do we need to have an experiment to see what would happen if we made them all create usernames? The one class of people (good IP editors) wants to add content to a small area they know a lot about. They are presumably more motivated than the other type of person (bad IP editors) who wants no more than to erase a page and add an obsenity. Anyway, the bottom line is that this entire foundation policy is not really supported by any good data. The people who make it, just think it is. S B H arris 22:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Commenting generally on this: I would never have become a Wikipedia editor if I had had to register first. Having zero barriers to editing is a curse, as SBHarris points out, but also a blessing, as he fails to point out. And just as he points out that there's no data to support the "benefits" of allowing IPs to edit, there's no data to support the benefits of not allowing them to edit. Will we get less vandalism as a result? Probably, though it's not clear how much less. Will we get fewer good contributions (and contributors) as well? Also probably.
A certain amount of messiness is inherent in making Wikipedia "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit". The messiness is minimally damaging and easy to repair (although if you're a vandal-patroller, it is easy for one's view of this to get distorted). But the benefit of the openness is what made the encyclopedia. Barriers to entry are barriers to entry. We can and do ban serial vandals, after the fact. Toward everybody else, we want to offer no barriers to entry. Go ahead, click that button. [edit]. Right there. Welcome.-- Father Goose ( talk) 02:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I think that it is also worth noting that Flagged Revisions has the potential to completely change the way that we use semi-protection and change the way that vandals interact with the site. If Flagged Revisions is a success, it might make almost all protection irrelevant. -- Arctic Gnome ( talk • contribs) 02:46, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Sbharris, as a scientist, I imagine that you wish policies to be based on evidence. Here is the scientific evidence on anonymous editors:
How to explain this? I dunno. It's French and Dutch contributors being looked at, and it's possible that it's not the same in the US. It's also possible that we're merely seeing some kind of selection pressure on both nameusers and IP users over "time". I would expect that vandal-killing makes the surviving nameusers into a better group over time (vandal nameusers being eliminated), and this is seen. While a more lenient policy on blocking IPs allows vandals there to continue vandalizing, while the good IP users leave over time to become productive nameusers. Thus, overall quality for IP users tends to DROP with edit-count, as this group retains its vandals better, and its subgroup of committed good editors leave to register.
The article really doesn't look at any longitudinal patterns, tho, and it's always dangerous to infer them (If you do that with Florida, you infer from cross sections that the average person there learns Spanish in childhood, then later English, and then finally at the end of their lives, Yiddish..).
Now, how can use the data from this? It's hard to know. This study suggests that most new IP users generate as good content as new name users. I don't know how to fit that with my own perception, and that found by other papers, that most vandalism comes from IP accounts with few edits. It's a bit contradictory. By contrast, both this paper and my own experience suggests that IP users with a lot of edits are likely contributing poor quality, and need to be got rid of somehow, either by forcing them to register (the paper says this is actually a policy in the French and Dutch Wikipedias?) or else by stopping the coddling of IP vandal accounts (which now happens due to the possibility of them being shared educational institution IPs).
Lastly, there's the question of what would happen to the good-newbie IP users (what the paper calls Good Samaritans), if we require them to register. To what extent would they simply not participate and never register or contribute? We don't know. This paper doesn't help us find out. Perhaps, given the extremely low edit-counts this paper deals with (mean is about 10), the change in policy might be that newbie IP users are allowed 10 or 20 edits as an IP before they must register. That gets all those supposedly good edits, but at least kills the vandal IPs with the TALK pages that have 100 warnings. I think that would satisfy many objections here. It would also tend to discourage present coddling of vandal IP accounts, due to the knowledge that that users there are supposed to register eventually anyway. You can't both simultaneously hold that our best content comes from IP accounts with few edits, and also hold that we should continue to coddle sharred school IP accounts with many edits, most of which are vandal-edits. Nobody beleives we're talking about the same thing, there. Agree? S B H arris 23:39, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Want to kill the project? Easy, just stop people from editing. This proposal would do that. If people never start editing, they never become Wikipedians. – Luna Santin ( talk) 20:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Why would a company give out free samples? If we only consider the cost it's loony. Yet lots of people who get a free sample will end up buying the product. Editing without the hassle of registering is like a free sample. It may be a generation thing, but the myspace generation has apparently not yet grown up enough to contribute the majority of edits. Us older folks, for the most part, don't like to register at every site we visit. But we still have a couple of decades more accumulated nuggets of knowledge. As to why IPS edit at rather high quality. Here's a highly unreferenced theory. You come to a wiki page to find information. If what you find is well written you look at a page in your particular field of interest. Since you know quite a bit about that subject there's the "That's not quite right." and the "That's not even the half of it." effect. Somehow that nags. After a while you look at the edit page and write some text and copy out the "decorations" from another part. (Then someone's going to complain it's not referenced and you'll have to look into it or s.o. else fixes that.) Someone who registers on the other hand does that either because they like editing (and at some point the fountain of their knowledge runneth dry.) Or they are forced to because they want to create a page or do something else that requires registration. Anyway, keep the free samples coming or your "customers" won't buy. Lisa4edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 ( talk) 11:40, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I see this proposal being raised time and time again over the future years until one day, I think it will be enacted -- when Wikipedia stabilises and within striking distance of acceptability as an encyclopedia. JeanLatore ( talk) 21:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Support, Oppose, Note, Comment? - Doug Youvan ( talk) 07:28, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Assume "Editors" is plural: Is it currently feasible to see all of WP as it stood on a previous date with all hyperlinks in place? - Doug Youvan ( talk) 14:24, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Hope you're all older than 18 and no one's logging in from the office. There are very few places that aren't your home and wouldn't block that. Remember back when "Starhustler" was changed to "Stargazer" because it kept getting blocked?? Lisa4edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 ( talk) 12:07, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm a relative n00b to this place, I've only been editing for two months, and I seem to be confused about something. Policy states that plot summaries of films do not normally need to be cited (unless you are providing an original interpretation of the plot), and that information about video games can be cited from the manual or the game itself. I take this to mean that all works of fiction such as tv, movies, novels, and games, may serve as primary sources for basic information about the works such as plot elements, game mechanics, and so on. Yet time and time again, I see editors screaming "OR! OR! OR!" whenever they see unsourced information about works of fiction in articles. Time and again, I see articles nominated for deletion becuase they contain unsourced lists of trivia taken from works of fiction because the nominator considers it original research. My question is, when writing about works of fiction, when is it necessary to cite the primary source? Almost every film article I've seen has plot summaries with absolutely no citations, yet trivial articles about video games and television seem to be held to a higher standard simply because they are viewed as cruft. Can someone explain to me why "In episode 42 John trips over a rock" is decried as OR while "In Halloween Horror IV Jason stabs a girl in the neck" is perfectly OK? I know I'm treading into the waters of "inclusionism vs. deletionism" but I'm sick of reading the hypocrisy taking place on AfD discussions. TRIVIA is not the same thing as OR. -- ErgoSum88 ( talk) 05:56, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I am new to Wikipedia as an editor and want some assistance in understanding how it works. I have been browsing through Wikipedia for a long time and have been observing that Wikipedia editors use dummy names or pseudonyms in order to hide their identitities. Now it is theoretically possible for one person to register with several dummy names. Similarly, a group of ideolgues bent upon spreading a particluar ideology can joun together, hiding their identities and act in unison to create a false impression. Now I have some questions- (i) Are multiple dummies by the same person allowed? (ii) Does Wikipedia record the PC ID number of editors who chek in as registered users as they do for anonymous editors? (iii) Does Wikipedia make any effort to identify dummy editors? Please enlighten me on these points. - Shyamal Gupta ( talk) 13:05, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanations and links. - Shyamal Gupta ( talk) 06:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
One user has suggested that signing (four tilde business) is totally voluntary. Surely this isn't true? — TreasuryTag— t— c 14:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
The very fact that it is possible to leave comments without even being logged in (or even having an account for that matter) makes it quite clear that signatures are not required, only requested as a courtesy for clarity of discussion. When many people are talking it is nice to be clear who said what so you can "connect the dots". -- Low Sea ( talk) 14:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
"There is no such thing as voluntary but not voluntary"... yes there is, and if you don't understand it, I've not got the energy to explain it to you. — TreasuryTag— t— c 15:06, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I think we can all agree that a signature helps people tell whose comment is whose and that not leaving a signature confounds this distinction. WP:SIG says it "is good etiquette and facilitates discussion by helping other users to identify the author of a particular comment", and that when someone does not sign that it is "a good idea to notify users, especially new users, that they should sign their comments". So take what you will from that, I would say the you should sign, but that we don't have a policy requiring it. (1 == 2)Until 15:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
If a source is used but not mentioned, does that constitute a copyright (or related) violation if there is no exact citation but:
Thanks, Guido den Broeder ( talk) 00:41, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG! ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Am I missing something here? - jc37 02:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Does this violate WP:COI?-- Urban Rose 00:42, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Nah, just write in the main namespace, and maybe' put a disclaimer on the talk page like "I might not be entirely neutral here... just FYI, please NPOVize".
Rule 1 of the wiki is: Use the fine wiki. :-)
-- Kim Bruning ( talk) 11:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Guido den Broeder ( talk) 00:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
This is a procedural/how-to question related to establishing policy ... I have found a WP essay written by another I feel has great potential to make an excellent guideline (or even policy) and I would like to know the correct process for doing that. I am certain there is a need for consensus building but where does that discussion take place and how are people made aware of the discussion at all? -- Low Sea ( talk) 06:35, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I am offended by them having a page, this is not due to personal disagreements but rather due to the fact that many of my ancestors were killed by them. This is an honest question please answer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.87.216 ( talk • contribs)
I recently made a series of edits in the Second Chechen War article. my edits. A user ended up reverting all of my edits because he said I was breaking copyright laws. I'm almost positive that I have not. I copy/pasted a couple very small sentences/half sentences that present statistical facts, and the one large paragraph I added wasn't a copy paste at all, but a collection of factual information completely reworded from the referenced article. You can see the user "warned" me on my talk page after I reinserted and re-re-worded the larger paragraph. Is he wrong or should I start getting ready for a 6-12 month vacation? LokiiT ( talk) 17:58, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I was going over the history of Guns N Roses and then wiki'd over to Hollywood Rose and was curious to see how that was covered. I saw my friend Jimmy Swan had been included in the article as he should and when I clicked the link I got a totally different person. Same name, but different person.
Fast forward to today and he has posted a message asking how to get that flaw fixed. I told him I would look into it.
How is the istance of two people with same name handled?
Thank you very much.
-- Qwiksilver ( talk) 20:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
-- Qwiksilver ( talk) 22:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Hello,
I tried to save a new version of Beagle conflict and got following message:
... The following link has triggered our spam protection filter: http://www. la nacion . com
Either that exact link, or a portion of it (typically the root domain name) is currently blacklisted. ...
La Nación is really fundamental as source for many articles over Argentina and I can't believe that "La Nacion" is sending spam.
Can any Admin checks the reason?
Bye, -- Keysanger ( talk) 07:56, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
nacion dot com
- I'll go and see if we can get the rule reconfigured.
x42bn6
Talk
Mess 11:45, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Fixed on Meta - apologies for the inconvenience -- Herby talk thyme 11:52, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Overcategorization/User categories ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Per this round of vandalism page moves, which apparently weren't such simple things to fix, perhaps move-protecting policy pages would be a good idea, unless we can come up with a better method of reverting moves. Equazcion •✗/ C • 19:57, 17 Apr 2008 (UTC)
Input would be appreciated at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#American. Question regarding use of "American" to describe persons from the United States. – Luna Santin ( talk) 22:44, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to put a new guideline up for discussion: Be cruel. It is actually not new, but a translation of the German guideline/help page de:Wikipedia:Sei grausam, which seems to be accepted on the same level as AGF and the likes. The dutch and slovak wikipedias have also adopted this useful concept. -- Dschwen 22:12, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
A little while back I wrote an article on AABB, formerly the American Association of Blood Banks (now international and dealing with more than just blood, the acronym no longer stands for anything). The page was originally a redirect to a computer graphics term. Given the users on wikipedia, I'm guessing that the original article was more likely to be noteworthy to most readers, but is there anything written on what "leads" in disambiguation? A full disambiguation page seems excessive for two articles. Somedumbyankee ( talk) 17:45, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
For those interested in copyright issues, I have proposed a change to {{ PD}}, a deprecated tempate, in which new images uploaded with this license tag after 1 May 2008 would be eligible for speedy deletion in accordance with {{ nld}}. I think this is necessary because the template has been deprecated for over two years and we still get new images with this license tag. This may be controversial due the fact of this template's usage on hundreds, if not thousands, of images, and I definitely welcome any comments on this approach, which is similar to the one which was used for {{ Military Insignia}}. Any comments or feedback are welcome. If this announcement was more appropriate to another forum, please feel free to move it there and let me know. Kelly hi! 01:24, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Extended discussion moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Image:User.gif: unintended bias?. Mr. Z-man 22:04, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Many fiction articles are being created and deleted due to violation of our notability policies. That's a fact, whether one likes it or not. There is however some inefficiency here: there are quite a few wikis out there dedicated to creating encyclopedias on a given fictional series/verse/whatever. Yet while many of them could accept direct cut and paste copies of articles deleted on our project, we don't have an efficient way of finding out that they exist, notifying them that article of interest to them is about to be deleted, and transwikifying the content. This should be remedied somehow. Perhaps we should create a list of such fiction pedias by topic, each linked to a relevant category or main article on Wikipedia, and have some bot process that would update that list with 'this recently AfD/deleted article may be relevant to this project' (this could be possible with a little tweaking of User:AlexNewArtBot, for example). Thoughts? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:36, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
I never really got it off the ground, or properly formatted the page, but this idea might fit nicely into WikiProject Transwiki. -- Ned Scott 04:17, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
"For a more complete description of the plot, see XXXXX at the XXXXXpedia."
I know this subject has come up before but I would like to bring it up again because I think the editorial tags that clutter up the wikipedia detract from its readability and usefulness.
Editorial comments belong on the talk page. They are not content. Furthermore, I think putting these tags on pages violates the essential spirit of the wikipedia which is to contribute. If an editor thinks a page needs "cleanup" they should clean it up, not whine about it with a tag that just clutters up the page even more.
In all honesty you could put "needs references" on practically every single page in the wikipedia. There is always somebody who thinks information is not documented thoroughly enough (you should meet some of my university professors). If an editor thinks an article needs some additional documentation they should spend the 5 hours in the library satisfying their lust for authority instead of click-criticizing other people's articles with inadequacy tags.
There will always be whiners who are never satisfied with an article please make them put their blarny on the talk page and leave the content page for content. John Chamberlain ( talk) 21:34, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
{{
Original research}}
or {{
Unencyclopedic}}
.(outdent) I think the use of tagging is less to draw the attention of editors to what needs fixing, and more to draw the attention of the reader to what assertions he/she should or shouldn't be trusting. If they were designed primarily to draw editors' attention to things that needed fixing, then the talk page would be a perfectly appropriate place for them. Since most of them are for the benefit of readers (although that's not true of {{uncategorized}}, {{orphan}}, {{deadend}}, and their ilk), they should stay in the article. Sarcasticidealist ( talk) 01:16, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I am not disputing the usefulness of the tags. I am saying (1) the usefulness of the tags is outweighed by the negative clutter value they have to the majority of readers, and (2) the talk page is a more logical place to put the tag.
FOLLOWUP: I just saw the new "Page Under Construction" tag. Unbelievable. This is exactly what is wrong with the Wikipedia tag system. "Under Construction" notices are a classic example of bad page design and all HTML editing guides emphatically warn amateur web page creators from using "Under Construction" notices, yet here we are putting this clutter on thousands of Wikipedia pages despite years of professional editors warning against it. I realize that the Wikipedia policy board does not have professional editors on it, but seriously they should at least read Strunk & White so they have some clue about good practices. Wikipedia editorial policy seems to be turning into amateur hour. Too many cooks? John Chamberlain ( talk) 21:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
What does one do if there is concern that an editor had made false citations in a potential Featured Article, and has then prevaricated more blatantly in his defense of the citation. (In other words, if there is evidence of both.) Fowler&fowler «Talk» 18:29, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I recently proposed the following change to
WP:User talk page. Another user disagreed so I have brought it here:
I suggest changing the fact that users may remove warnings to:
Users may remove incorrect warnings instantly, but correct warnings can be deleted after a period of 31 days. It is preferred that a record of blocks be kept but this is not necessary.
Or similar. What does anyone else think?
George D. Watson (Dendodge).
Talk
Help 22:10, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
It's not all bad news however. What you could do is ask for a bot to be created (for use by all "vandal fighters") that could extract the warning history for you. Bots are good at drudge tasks and they do not require making policy changes or the cooperation of the offenders. -- Low Sea ( talk) 16:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
When placing warnings, use adequate edit summaries. If you do that, page history is one click away, and gives you a perfectly good date-sorted overview of previous warnings. If you do not use adequate edit summaries, you get what's coming to you. ;-) -- Kim Bruning ( talk) 17:31, 17 April 2008 (UTC) In fact, you should always use good edit summaries, not just when placing warnings. ;-)
I have made a proposal for a guideline on Wikipedia:Relevance. I have been extensively involved with many attempts to come up with a guideline for this (formerly as User:WikiLen). All attempts have failed to achieve consensus, even as simple as a disambiguation page. This is the first attempt with a terse version -- in the style of WP:IAR. It seems like a reasonably good compromise for all the concerns expressed by editors. For those new to this, a list of issues:
Additional talk page comments can be found here. — Len Raymond ( talk) 21:23, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Above at another discussion (sprotect all articles) a user talked about Flagged Revisions. On its page there is very little explication (in lay terms) what that policy or programme will do. Can anyone explain it to me? And is this in use already (the art. was from 07)? And where can we discuss it more JeanLatore ( talk) 22:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
My understanding from the notes on the Wikipedia:Flagged revisions and the MediaWiki site, the idea of Flagged revisions is that the "outside world" does not see the latest article revision, but the latest revision which has been marked "ok". The idea is that readers who are not logged in will not see any vandalism, because the revision where the vandalism occurred will not get marked "ok".
The question of who gets to mark a revision ok is a bit murky and up for debate (the feature is still not turned on for Wikipedia). On one extreme, any logged in editor will be able to "ok" a revision. At the other, only admins or maybe longtime editors will have that ability. It seems like the initial plan is to "sighting" rights to pretty much any editor with an account and email address. Hope that helps. -- Marcinjeske ( talk) 05:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay - Wikipedia wants to be an encyclopaedia that covers everything. But please - can we hold back some on the uberscience spouting forth way too early on too many articles? Science is already the new religion, but please can we stop it overcoming easy reading and easy access to information, which should be an encyclopaedias foremost aim?
Cant the UberScience squad be relegated to a sub-section of article structure? For example: introductory explanatory section, followed by 'The Science' or something like that, so that normal human beings who dont want technicalities and scio-pedantica (yes, i made that term up) shoved down their throats every time we want to casually browse wikipedia? It would make the information far more accessible to a broader range of people.
i find it occurring way too often on wikipedia. And i do mean even on terms which may be considered scientific. It may surprise the scio-pedantics, but some people just want casual, plain english explanations and understandings. They REALLY dont want, or, very importantly, need, to be overloaded with techno-babble in the opening paragraphs and laden with complex diagrams etcetera etcetera in the top third of the page, regardless of its accuracy (how about a simple picture first, complex detail second?). And yes - i do mean even when referring to organic compounds and scientific items.
I know attention to detail is the pet-love of science, but it is possible to retain the attention to detail but in plain english, and then unlease the full force of the scientific mind a little later, when the lay person has already more-than-likely got what they need from the basics.
the structure suggested above allows all the current information to remain, but puts it in a specific section of article structure, meaning people can access information, and be able to read it comfortably and share it with non-scio-pedantics without being overwhelmed with oft-unecessary information.
What say ye all?—Preceding unsigned comment added by The Living Stone ( talk • contribs) 00:09, April 18, 2008
First point taken, though i would not be the first to suggest such a thing. Second point - It wasnt meant to 'win people over', it was meant to make a point, but i have edited out a sentence or two you may have been upset by, since that wasnt my intention - I may be the first to mention this, but im fairly certain im not the first to feel it - perhaps i voice the frustration of many? My point is that 'encyclopaedic' doesnt have to mean 'scientific paper', which is what many wikipedia articles seem to have become. If you had not taken offense, you would have seen that I suggested retaining all content, but altering the structure to make wikipedia more welcoming.
Here are my examples (though my frustration has been accumulating over time over various articles, this is my first comment).
I was explaining to my sister and niece about why chocolate makes her (my niece) hyper and then grumpy. I was explaining about caffeine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine) and theobromine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine) found in chocolate ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate). Lets look at the caffeine example first: Paragraph one follows my complaint above, opening with an off-putting "Caffeine is a bitter white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that acts as a psychoactive stimulant drug and a mild diuretic (speeds up urine production)[2] in humans and other animals." The remainding paragraphs are far more approachable, but my niece (and even my sister), had they been unsupervised, would never have got to them because they would not have even got to the end of the first sentence without assuming the whole article was going to be beyond their reach and going elsewhere. The theobromine article offers very little in the way of approachability when a very nice paragraph could have been written about its history and its effects on, and use by, humans eg centred around the roots of its name as 'food of the gods' and the use of its primary carrier, the cacao/cocoa bean as being actual currency to the ancient mesoamericans because of its constituent drugs and their uses of it, and the following uses of it around the world. The chocolate article is handled much more approachably, simply because scio-speak has been kept managed, but it does not give enough detail on its primary components which make chocolate what it is - namely caffeine and theobromine. Just because these are 'drugs' it doesnt mean they need to be written about as science papers.
My intention was not to cause offense, but to raise what i feel is a highly relevant point - If wikipedia is going to come up first-page on most search engines for most subjects, shouldnt approachability be priority? There is no loss of quality or content with this, only a careful attention to structure. Lets look at the caffeine opening sentence again - what does that actually tell us? Its bitter. its white. Its a drug. crystalline-xanthine-alkaloid-diuretic are not informative terms to the vast majority of people, despite scientific accuracy, and instead of informing, they put off. Caffeine is a bitter white drug ...discovered by (the following sentence leading in). There is no loss of basic infomation, even 'psychoactive and 'diuretic' could be left in for extra detail, but that information is enough for the vast majority of enquirers, along with the remainder of the article. The scientific technical terms only inform the minority of searchers, and most of them already have alternative resources where this information is readily avaialable - non-scientists do not. All I am suggesting is that instead of getting first-dibs on the article, the technicalities should be put in a technical sub-section. All enquirers would have access to exactly the same information, is just that no-one would be put off, whereas just now, i am sure they are. These articles are just small examples, but they are not isolated, just prevalent in my attention. i am happy to return here with a vaster list if its required, but the only point im suggesting is one of structural re-consideration for editorial guidelines. -- The Living Stone ( talk) 02:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I would like to be able to flag individual individual edits for concealment by administrators. In particular, things which are edit-analogs to legally-required WP:SPEEDY criteria, including:
Plus G7/Author requests deletion but only if the content could put the author in personal or legal jeopardy, e.g. "oops I accidentally posted my social security number."
Please consider adding this feature to Wikipedia. davidwr/( talk)/( contribs)/( e-mail) 02:20, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Sometime in the near(?) future the experimental Special:Revisiondelete, which is precisely what this is, will go live (don't ask me, I can't tell). MER-C 03:49, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Style guide ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:50, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not interested in opening the debate, just to understand if it has been closed. I have been told that equating intelligent design with creationism is not a point of view but a principle of the Wikipedia somehow related to the WP:NPOV policy. Was this ever declared as a principle. And if so, where?
Who or what on the Wikipedia has the power to declare such applications of policy as principle? patsw ( talk) 01:05, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
By far the overwhelming majority of the experts in this area acknowledge that intelligent design=creationism. This covers a wide range of experts, from both the creationist and the mainstream scientific and academic communities, and is well supported by multiple peer-reviewed publications, as well as the opinion of a US federal court. It is also supported by multiple primary sources from the intelligent design community itself, including the Wedge document and public pronouncements of Philip E. Johnson and others. So in those cases, NPOV states that we represent the views in proportion to their prominence. The only significant group that claims intelligent design is not creationism is a small lobbying group that does so for reasons to try to trick the US legal system, and attempt to deceive the US judiciary, but only when they make statements for public consumption, not when they are trying to appeal to their base and to raise money. So far this strategy has not worked, and appears to be getting abandoned. The Expelled movie is an example of this strategy being partly abandoned because they have been associating intelligent design with the existence of God.-- Filll ( talk) 02:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Dr. Ronald Numbers is an agnostic, a very prominent critic of ID, a past president of the History of Science Society, and the author of the most widely cited history of creationism (which Salon magazine calls "probably the most definitive history of anti-evolutionism"). But he says that the claim that ID is creationism "doesn't hold a lot of water." Here's what he told Salon:
I intended this to be a meta-discussion that equating intelligent design with creationism is not a point of view but a principle of the Wikipedia somehow related to the WP:NPOV policy. I'm ready to conclude that for some editors big science is a non-arguable force majure that gets deployed at the discretion of editors. I disagree with it, of course, but I see the design behind it as clever means of promoting a point of view to the exclusion of others. I concede. patsw ( talk) 04:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Comment. The village pump is not really the place for this kind of discourse. Anyone is welcome to discuss their issues on the article's talk page. If people cannot peacefully reach an agreement, there are people who can help. If anyone intends to stump in favor of one POV or another, there are other places for that. Vassyana ( talk) 04:31, 17 April 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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Who decides feature articles? A committee of teenage boys? Wikipedia needs to grow up. pointlessforest ( talk) 02:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
There is a current discussion about the posibility of continuing wikipedias in ancient languages, in the list of wikimedia titled Allow new wikis in extinct languages?. if you want to susbcribe to the list enter here. We need know your opinion for taking a decission. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.40.199.236 ( talk) 21:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
if i understand this correctly, you're (someone) suggesting that they start wikipedias in dead tongues... like sanskrit or coptic... now, i dom't mean to sound like a schmuck... but that is one really stupid idea. think about it for a few minutes....
AeturnalNarcosis ( talk) 03:54, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I think it might be a good idea, but the danger would be so few users would edit it it would be easily susceptible to trolling and other shenanigans. JeanLatore 14:57, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
“ | Wikipedia is facing an identity crisis as it is torn between two alternative futures. It can either strive to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation as a trustworthy and credible reference source. These two conflicting visions are at the heart of a bitter struggle inside Wikipedia between “inclusionists”, who believe that applying strict editorial criteria will dampen contributors' enthusiasm for the project, and “deletionists” who argue that Wikipedia should be more cautious and selective about its entries. | ” |
I think it is time we decide which way to go. There have been many failed attempts to address this, but they all failed due to their partisan or limited nature. Generally speaking which way does the community want to go? -- Cat chi? 03:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I just read the article. I value encyclopedias for their educational value, but tend to take a classical view of education. That is, I view it as a process not only of informing, but of intellectual improvement. Encyclopedias are of no value if they do not produce valuable and insightful information. The Economist gave the example of Solidarity leaders and Pokémon characters. I take the view that we should have entries on all Solidarity leaders, but no entries on Pokémon characters (just the show itself). Some works of literature and cinema do have value because they sometimes provide insight through fictional symbolism. They also at times produce social change. Pokémon, on the other hand, is a meaningless children's show with no educational value. I understand that this is a dangerous contradiction, though. I have seen many insightful and notable entries nominated for deletion simply because they were too foreign to the nominator. They appeared not to be notable. So I think we should state clearly that subjects with educational and intellectual value are always notable and shallow subjects are not.-- Awareshiftjk ( talk) 03:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Personally, I believe that it is the balance of inclusionism and deletionism that provides the proper balance that Wikipedia needs to have. The problem is that it needs to be balanced. Tilting too far inclusionist, and you become indiscriminate, go look at a Trivia section to see what I mean. Tilting too far Deletionist, and potentially good articles are shot on sight, before they have the opportunity to become viable, WP:The Heymann Standard. As much as we state that AfD is not cleanup, often times the threat of deletion is the catalyst that drives the article beyond a mere stub. And our wide-scale inclusion criteria is exactly what separates Wikipedia from the rest.. -- RoninBK T C 04:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Suggest the community read C.S. Lewis' book An Experiment in Criticism, where he argued that the value of literature is as much a reflection of the reader as of what is read, and that efforts to divide literature into "highbrow" and "lowbrow" and assuming that "lowbrow" means "not serious" have been a really, really, really bad idea that prevents real literary appreciation and growth. He suggested a moratorium on trying to judge "literary merit" and using a different approach. What's true for literature is true for other things as well. Best, -- Shirahadasha ( talk) 05:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I wish people creating shitty fancruft would use a spell checker. Also, lots of fancruft is part of some huge business franchise, which produces stuff in various formats that are used as sources -thus entire swathes of wiki are "in universe". Really, I don't care how trivial it is, I just wish they could write betterer. Dan Beale-Cocks 22:56, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
The whole content discussion is as old as ... Throughout human cultural history arising trends and opinions of rulers (or the opponents of same) have continuously created, destroyed and recreated. Archeologists make a living digging up what remains and are faced with whether to preserve the Christian mural or chisel it off to reveal the hieroglyphs beneath. French scouts caused uproar and laughter when they removed neolytic "graffiti" from a cave. Just to site a few examples. The list of now famed painters who lived and died without their work being recognized is endless. (Anyone for a Vermeer bonfire?) Knowledge is power, but today's trash may turn into tomorrow's treasure. You'll be hard put to find a book on how to lay a thatched roof in most libraries, since it they are no longer common. Yet university research projects exist trying to preserve and recover this lost art. When I grew up knowing how to use a slide rule was an essential skill. Preserving it would have met the highest standards for "value". My nephew may get to look at one in a museum, since I threw mine out as "junk". The Spanish smelted down "worthless pagan" Inca trinkets to produce items meeting their "high" cultural standards. By declaring a certain knowledge to be "worthless" or "valuable" each preceding generation tries to stamp their own ideas and value systems on the next generation, who are duty bound to resist with all their might in the interest of human progress. What survives or is revived after jumping one or more generations is our "cultural heritage". Now Wikipedia introduces as novel an idea to how knowledge is maintained as democracy was to despotism. I hope the self declared guardians of knowledge are going to die out with one of the following generations. Knowing "Pokemon" characters is as basic a skill to the next generation as knowing "Dr. Seuss" was to mine. There are quotes and proverbs in the literature my generation is leaving behind describing things as "seussian". I hope no one will have deleted the relevant wiki-page when my grandkids stumble over those. So I'd suggest creating a central "graveyard" for deleted pages to save future archeologists and ethnologists some work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 ( talk) 09:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The true problem is in the notability and similar policies. That can make any silly detail of Pokemon super-relevant (maybe millions of hits in Google and stuff like that) while much more relevant artists from non-English, and specially third world countries, countries can pass unadverted or even be deleted as non-notable.
These overall criteria bias the contents of Wikipedia in favor of mere trivia. We need a more academic and, as much as possible, less mediatic approach.
As for the problem with children vandalism, the best solution is surely to stop censoring certain images, so schools start censoring Wikipedia at least in class time. That would save a lot of work to our patrollers.
I am inclusionist for encyclopedic content and for what allows for a more and better of our world. But I am exclusionist for trivia, and the articles on Pokemon, Star Trek, the Simpson... chapters, minor characters, etc. belong to a fanzine or some media not Wikipedia.
Maybe the solution is to create "Wikizine" inside Wikimedia, for such more diverse but less encyclopedic activities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sugaar ( talk • contribs) 05:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Seeing as this thread began with a quote from an article in the Economist I thought it worth mentioning that there is another article about wikipedia in the March 20, 2008 issue of the New York Review of Books, titled "The Charms of Wikipedia". The author describes himself as an "inclusionist" and tells of how he ended up as a defender against article deletions, with a bit of mocking about the notion of "notability". Looks like the article is currently online here. Just thought it might be of interest. Pfly ( talk) 06:44, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not insulting you. I'm saying your philosophy is silly, not you, the person. There's a big difference there. Despite your philosophy, you seem to be a good editor. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 21:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Could part of this problem be solved by actively encouraging the opening of alternate Wiki's? Things like Memory Alpha and Wookieepedia seem to have the capability to host the bulk of information regarding their respective topics, with far less worry about relative importance.
Perhaps I'm an optimist, but I think the complaints of most "inclusionists" would be settled if there is a place that the information they want to share can be hosted. Oberiko ( talk) 18:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree, Oberiko. Also, what you just said is now a part of WP:FICT: Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)#Relocating non-notable fictional material
It might be good to add a "move it elsewhere" section to WP:NOTABILITY, period. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 21:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
What happened to judging articles (and article topics) on their individual merits, as opposed to making sweeping generalisations about an entire subject area or entire class of topics (and entire groups of editors, for that matter)? Why are subjective personal opinions about the importance/unimportance or intellectual/popular/cultural value of a general subject area a part of discussions regarding something as objective as the presence of coverage in reliable source? And finally, what's the story with the Pokémon articles? (Why is it such a common example in these types of discussions?) Thanks, Black Falcon ( Talk) 20:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The rest of the article is just a blind. This is the key item. This is not the first time our deletion system *alone* is presented in an article, and even is mistaken as somehow being the core of wikipedia.
It isn't. It certainly shouldn't be notable or big enough to get articles in prominent magazines, all by itself.
The deletion pages on wikipedia have taken on a life of their own. "Wikipedia won't be able to survive without deletion" you say, but I've heard that before: "Wikipedia won't be able to survive without Esperanza" and "Wikipedia won't be able to survive without the AMA".
I'm skeptical we even need a deletion system. But if we do, perhaps we could make a new one from scratch, that actually follows wiki-principles. (Does anyone still know what those are? ;-) )
-- Kim Bruning ( talk) 22:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC) "bureaucracy, what bureaucracy? he said... while ripping it out and stuffing it under the carpet.
I can understand the need to prune articles that fall into Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, but I do find it somewhat difficult to grasp the need to get rid of articles such as characters from movies / television series' and the like. Can someone (in bullet point notation) lay out the primary reasons? Oberiko ( talk) 15:17, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
So, as they say, "a good compromise leaves nobody happy". Unfortunately, anything involving mass satisfaction requires mass brainwashing. 68.101.123.219 ( talk) 16:56, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
IMHO: It is a noble (and perhaps even achievable) goal to have Wikipedia eventually contain all human knowledge. But to suddenly remove WP:NOTE and open the floodgates to having every kid in the world write an article about him or herself and to have "memorial" articles written about anyone's dead uncle, would be crazy at this point in the project. So extreme inclusionism is as dangerous as extreme deletionism. Wikipedia needs to grow towards "all of human knowledge" slowly. This means that we should consider gradually relaxing our notability standards year by year. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that (for example): "In 2009 we're going to remove the WP:SCHOOL guideline and allow the creation of articles about any school, in 2010, every musician who ever made a recording that was sold commercially and every author who ever published a book is eligable to have an article written about them". This is something we'd want to plan for - a gradual process.
It's already becoming quite difficult to find "notable" subjects about which much is known - yet which do not yet have a Wikipedia article. I think we are actually zeroing in on having written at least something about every subject that falls within our notability standards. This is evident from Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia - the rate of creation of new articles is falling - presumably because we're finding fewer new things to write about.
The cost of disk space is still declining exponentially - but Wikipedia is now only growing linearly - so we should be able to relax the notability rules to allow more stuff at the same dollar cost.
The tricky part is attracting enough editors to maintain that material without declining standards - and I believe that the only way to do that is to make Wikipedia less bureaucratic. There really is a horrible maze of rules - some useful - but many are put there by people who've lost sight of the joy of editing articles and who have taken up Wikipolitics as a full time activity. Relaxing notability standards would be one way to attract new blood. The kid who innocently wants to write an article about his or her school (which IS exceedingly notable by the standards of the kids who go there) - but gets it shredded by the deletionists per-WP:SCHOOL is unlikely to become a full time editor in the future - that first experience with Wikipedia is the crucial one - and it's rarely as pleasant as it used to be (say) 5 years ago. The one who starts off by writing an article about his/her rather uninteresting highschool - and who gets tons of help and encouragement from the community - may well be the one who expands the stubs of 50 other high-importance articles about mathematics in the future.
SteveBaker ( talk) 14:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Wiki is not paper. I will never read articles about Pokemon characters, but they cause no harm to the encyclopedia or my reading experience because I won't see them if I don't go looking for them. This is a non-issue. — Omegatron 00:35, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, they do cause harm, the very instant anyone out there decides not to donate because of legitimate concerns that Wikipedia is in fact an indiscriminate collection of trivia.
Unless a topic is encyclopedic in nature, then it does not belong in the project.
"Yes, they do cause harm, the very instant anyone out there decides not to donate because of legitimate concerns that Wikipedia is in fact an indiscriminate collection of trivia." Individual articles for Pokemon characters don't cause any harm to Wikipedia — although they may hurt Wikia's bottom line. They certainly don't pose as much harm as biographies for living people. Is Bulbasaur going to sue the Wikimedia Foundation for libel? Was it Charmander that killed JFK? The content disclaimer says "Readers should not judge the importance of topics based on their coverage in Wikipedia, nor assume that a topic is important merely because it is the subject of a Wikipedia article." I highly doubt that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation waited to make a donation until TTN redirected all the Pokemon character articles. -- Pixelface ( talk) 22:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
There is a proposal to create a namespace that where deleted pages can still be accessed. This proposal represents a solution to the dilemma raised in the above-mentioned economist article that is compatible with the spirit of inclusionism while also addressing some of the concerns of those who wish to be more stringent about the removal of non-notable articles.
Wikipedia:Don't template the regulars ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
An editor (above) suggests that the user icon gif is a display of unintentional bias. Many other editors (including me) disagreed. I still disagree about the tiny gif of the user icon, but there are several portals, projects and templates that use similar but larger images. Here are some examples-
Also, dark-colored tones are used on images with negative overtones, like in {{ Sockmaster}}. (aw, come on, you know that I have a little of reason, even if I'm mainly joking) -- Enric Naval ( talk) 20:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Ther should be icons!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.106.28.122 ( talk) 18:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Recently I have encountered several categories and templates of which the reason for compilation are at best contestable. However, neither Wikipedia:Templates for Deletion nor Wikipedia:Categories for discussion gives any reference that a category or template that fails to have verifiable, reliable information that is not the product of original research is a ground for removal.
A lot of information is templated. There should be a way to check this information against the guidelines all information needs to be checked against.
Categorisation is a difficult thing, which leads to heated scientific debates in the scientific community. The haphazard categorisation of Wikipedia works for many topics, but there are also many topics where categorisations leads to debates (e.g. ethnic, religious etc.). In these debates verifiability is hardly an issue.
If there is no guideline for this, both categories and templates provide a backdoor to add unsourced information to many articles. This of course opens up a possibility for subtle NPOV pushing.
Is there any way to make a guideline to cover for this.
Personally I was thinking that templates and categories need a references section in their own page. That would not burden every article with the need to reference, while it does fit the rules. I have not seen this anywhere though; so I am pretty sure this is not a rule yet.
Do you have any idea/suggestion how to handle this issue?
(Sorry if this has come up before, this is my first post here). Arnoutf ( talk) 19:54, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I have requested comment here regarding whether WP:SELFPUB should be reorganized to make its meaning more clear. I have explained why I feel it is a good idea, and why it is not, in my opinion, a substantive change. I once did make that edit but was quickly reverted by someone who insisted that the existing wording is perfectly clear and that my distinction was "improper", despite my explanations. My basic reason for this is that five of the restrictions seem to apply to the specific material referenced, while the other two are more general, and the way it is stated now could be misleading. PSWG1920 ( talk) 17:45, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Over the last few days, an editor has been adding unreferenced content to several US municipality pages. When I warned him/her about it, s/he said that s/he would get in contact (I'd assume by email, since these municipalities are scattered nationwide) with the locals. Is an email from an official good enough for referencing? I'm inclined to tell the editor that it's not good enough, since an email isn't published and therefore cannot be a reliable source. Help, please? Nyttend ( talk) 01:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
As of now {{ free media}} is only used on some free image templates (168,000 out of ~300,000). I think it should be used on all free images to make it easier to sort free content. Its similar to {{ non-free media}} and would standardize the practice to group all media into one of the two possible categories. MBisanz talk 03:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
This follows up on a discussion over proposed rewording of the criterion that was advertised here on March 28, pursuant to a discussion on the policy Talk page that began on March 17. Discussion of the proposal (formally made the day before it was advertised here) was lively, detailed, and mission-minded and a clear, unambiguous consensus was reached in support of the revised wording. The change was enacted on April 1.
On April 10, two editors acting on their own initiative, without ever having participated in the discussion or responded to it over the next nine days, and without making even an attempt to forge a new consensus, preemptively reverted the change. I need to make clear that I reverted them, on the basis that substantive changes should never be made to policy language without our standard process of consensus building, let alone in open defiance of that process. The end result is that the page is locked, with a dispute tag. And our entire non-free content policy is brought into disrepute. All comments are welcome here on the non-free content Talk page.— DCGeist ( talk) 05:32, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Debate now centralized at: Wikipedia:NFCC Criterion 8 debate. -- Kim Bruning ( talk) 11:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I have written a new proposal which would allow subjects of BLPs to provide an on-wiki response to his or biography and have it linked to from the article. Any comments, improvements, rejections, and advice would be much appreciated. (This is my first attempt at proposing policy, so please go easy on me...) Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:16, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
This is the English Wikipedia. It's all well and good saying that it's the encyclopedia that anybody can edit, but if a statement is cited with a foreign language source, the majority of editors simply cannot have anything to do with it. I therefor suggests that, as anybody capable of citing with a foreign languuage is capable of translating it, they post a translation of the source on the talk page of the article, under a title referring precisely to the cited statement.
Otherwise (or perhaps, as well), we need to be able to verify that a foreign language source says what it's claimed to say. Sometimes the precise wording of a source in itself is significant.
In short, there's a problem with foreign language sources - particularly with reference to contraversial articles, and even more so where they are on the subject of curent events. What can be done about it?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Crimsone ( talk • contribs) 17:08, April 11, 2008
There should not be (blacklisted) blocked URLs! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.106.28.122 ( talk) 17:58, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
A new account is created in the real name of a notable person (Author/Journalist). They edit their own article a little and one on a major historical news story in which they were involved. Judging from the nature of the edits. I would assume good faith and believe it to be the person, but if in fact it isn't the person the user account is an act of extreme bad faith. The eprson needs educating about Wikipedia's citation requirements, but that apart, they could potentially be a valuable contributor. Question: Is there any formal process for querying the identity of a user and their verifying it (and is it sufficiently polite that they won't take umbrage?). dramatic ( talk) 09:35, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
A discussion concerning the use of image placeholders has opened at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Image placeholders and may be of interest to editors at the village pump. The placeholder images have recently been uploaded to 50,000 articles, and while there has been disagreement about the use of these images in various corners, there has not been a centralized discussion on this issue affecting the community. Please contribute your thoughts and publicize this discussion anywhere you feel would be appropriate. Thank you. Northwesterner1 ( talk) 10:41, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
My 2 cent's worth: I think images are already something of a "master grade" only task. Very few people understand enough to get them to show up where they are supposed to be on the page. If the placeholders could be turned into an easy to use feature it might work. Otherwise you'd just end up with clutter. Easiest would be if you had a button in the icon list above the editing window where contributors could request images. They could then even add a link to a picture they can't use because of policy. Lisa4edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 ( talk) 13:37, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I've been editing the anti-Americaism article. I've been looking at some other anti-national sentiment articles, that were mentioned in the (archived) Talk pages of the article. They all tend to push POV on political matters. The anti-Japanese article, for example, has a section on whaling protests, calling the opposition to whaling racism against Japanese [4]. Meanwhile, the anti-Americanism article cites a protest against a US military base, in the wake of Marines raping a child, as an example of anti-Americanism. (The article has a "Discrimination" sidebar that comes and goes, and includes anti-Americanism in the same category as racism, slavery, and genocide.) All of this is interpreting and labeling the views of other people and societies, often negatively, on political matters.
Proposal: anti-[national sentiment] articles should only be about people who self-declare as anti-[nation]. There are people who describe themselves as anti-American. There can be a neutral article about them and what they believe. Other labeling--anti-Mexican sentiment (the article suggests concern with illegal immigration is prejudice against Mexicans [5]....), anti-Americanism, etc--is just POV pushing, usually with a negative innuendo, often about living people and other ethnicities.
Here's what I wonder: Is it possible to have a policy about this, or is Wikipedia too de-centralized for something like that? Life.temp ( talk) 13:55, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, I found a related policy: Naming conventions (identity) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28identity%29
I propose anti-[nationality] labeling following the same guidlelines, pretty much for the same reasons. From that page:
Where there is doubt, aim for neutrality.
I know I'm immediately going to sound like a killjoy (and a hypocrite, since this April 1 I tried to get in on the fun by jokingly noming WP:AIV for deletion myself, something which I promise never to do again), but I've thought about it and I've come to the conclusion that we should be stricter about disruptive behavior that takes place on April 1. The main reason why is that it divides us. Look at a recent Wikipedia Signpost article and how many users were blocked, then unblocked for April Fools Day "pranks". Some of us may find this stuff funny, but others apparently don't. There are ways to be funny without dividing us. A humorous featured article is an example of one. Be creative, people. And don't even get me started on how people just visitng Wikipedia for the first time view these "pranks".-- Urban Rose 16:18, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I want to know that is there any specific policy regarding filling in the fields of infoboxes(specially Template:Infobox Officeholder). I am asking it after watching some editors removing the sect written along with religion in the religion field of Template:Infobox Officeholder, with the reasoning that only religion is asked in this field. In my point of view if there isn't any policy then one should be there, at least a guideline. -- SMS Talk 19:22, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
It seems patently illogical in the internet age to disclude self-published sources under the absurd garbage-can label of "vanity press". It should be obvious to anyone in the information age that self-published sources are increasingly important sources of information, and can represent reliable and rigorous research. To assign validity entirely to what publishers choose to print, given their dependence upon the market, or their dependence upon self-referential institutional guidelines, is also illogical, because truth is dependent neither upon popularity nor particular institutionalized schools of thought. While the market may provide one indication that many people find value in a source, it is not the sole criterion of truth. And when it comes to schools of thought, the people are entitled to access to information generated outside the box. Self-publishing, while it may indeed provide opportunities for "vanity" publishing consisting of flippant, nonserious work, also constitutes competition against attempts to monopolize validity, and represents a healthy source of dissent. Unless wikipedia wishes to confine its information entirely within manufactured consent, a more open policy about the inclusion of self-published sources is in order. CarlaO'Harris ( talk) 19:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
It is a general point, about many articles on Wikipedia, but does have application to that debate as well. CarlaO'Harris ( talk) 22:12, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
The bot policy rewrite mentioned in a section above has gone live. Community input would be appreciated on WT:BOT to ensure that the changes have consensus and to discuss the possibility of further changes.-- Dycedarg ж 20:48, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I would like to invite you to consider taking part in the AGF Challenge which has been proposed for use in the RfA process [6] by User: Kim Bruning. You can answer in multiple choice format, or using essay answers, or anonymously. You can of course skip any parts of the Challenge you find objectionable or inadvisable.-- Filll ( talk) 14:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:CheckUser ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I was told that all edits made in a consecutively (in a row within a 24 hour period) are counted as one for the purpose of 3RR violations. For example:
Etc.
Is this the way it works? I have read the 3RR policy but I am not clear. Thanks, Mattisse ( Talk) 21:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
<undent> The other thing is, 3RR is, as they say, "an electric fence not an entitlement". In other words, if Editor 2 continues to revert Editor 1 with no discussion, they can be blocked for edit warring and disruptive editing whether they revert 3 edits in a day or 30 edits in a month. Confusing Manifestation( Say hi!) 03:59, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Has no-one else ever found it a bit weird that a vandal who makes 4 (or 40) obviously destructive edits to various articles has to receive a warning and to reoffend before they can even be considered for a block, whereas a careless editor who forgets about 3RR and happens to make four good-faith reverts to an article can be blocked summarily forthwith? -- Kotniski ( talk) 15:18, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Sometimes in vicious edit wars (I have seen mutual 3RR violations with offensive summaries accumulating within 10 minutes). In such cases immediate blocking (of both sides without warning) can be the best thing to calm down the war; and create a bit of stability on mainspace. So no, I would not take away that possibility from the admins. Arnoutf ( talk) 11:23, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Hello, I am 90% of my wikitime present in the Dutch Wikipedia. I recently made an article here for a life coach David Bonham-Carter in my drafts. It was not very long but it had references to a source and I had contact with that man by e-mail. But very soon (after 2 hours) after transfer to the main section, my article was tagged for deletion; main reason: not notable enough. I consented with this opinion and added the tag/template db-author or sth. like this. Now today I come back here and click "my contributions" and I cannot see there any trace of
In our nl.wikipedia.org you will find these signs of past activity without saying.
What the policy here in the mother/father of all wikipedia's ?
Frankly, I am cross by the idea I cannot see under "my contributions" my complete activity, i.e. by means of a red title (= removed/no more existing) David Bonham-Carter on the corresponding correct dates (the making; the editing; the deletion date). And clicking on logs next to my user name I see that the deletion log for Dartelaar is empty. If you answer here, can you put a link in "my talk", please. -- Dartelaar [write me!] 21:54, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
<unindenting> Agree with Duncan, except that you are suggesting that the content of the deleted edit be visible, aren't you? At least it would seem so from the rest of what you wrote. There actually seem to be a few issues here, and I'm not sure what would be involved in getting each of them changed. Let's try a list:
-- Kotniski ( talk) 16:01, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I have to agree, I do not see why anyone should have their own deleted kept from them. In some cases such as Duncan's, the information can be useful to exonerate. To take it one step further, I do not see why I should have to goto an admin to see the contents of those deletions as well. If they are still on the server where over 1,000 admins can see them, why can't I? Lets take some worst case scenarios, say I create an article attacking someone, the article is deleted, yet still available for thousands to see, admins that is, what purpose does it serve to have that content hidden from me? I already know what I wrote, I could just as easily save it, it does not save space nor traffic. For a lighter example, such as those given, say I write an article and go on vacation, the article is deleted while I am away. I can see why it was deleted, but not what happened after I created. If I do not have a copy of the contents, I further do not know what I wrote and how to improve it if it fails on notability, or lacking verifiable sources.
I do not think demeaning is the best way to explain how someone feels when they have to ask permission, its a way of creating a structure. For some items that structure is needed, and yes I know Wikipedia is not a democracy and we do not promote freedom of speech within the encyclopedia, however, if admins are equal to others, then they should not be able to see anymore then others. The idea that admins are equal is fully refuted as we give them more permission to do what no one else can do, this includes the ability to see my own work, work I can not see without asking permission. Consider if you were always allowed to speak, you just had to ask permission to do so first, would you not feel "under" that person?
Just one last point, I am not sure how we can assume the masses would do the absolute worse with access to their own content, however have a policy of assuming good faith. -- I Write Stuff ( talk) 19:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I read the above thread and I am amazed that no one has challenged the false premise argument that preventing access to deleted content somehow prevents deleted articles from being resurected. What a bogus argument! If I am editing something and suspect (or know) my edits might be deleted then all I have to do is open up NotePad and a quick copy/paste of the raw text from the edit screen gives me the full ability to restore the article anytime I feel like starting an edit war!
On the other hand, I have had occassions where I have attempted to add value to an article, been away for a awhile (WP is a hobby, not an occupation or obsession for me), returned and found the article gone. It would have been nice to see what had changed while I was away as I might have been able to improve whatever was the cause for deletion.
Perhaps the solution is to create a new "D"eleted articles namespace called "D-Space:" which would parallel mainspace but with 3 special exceptions.
Related concepts include:
Think of D-Space as like a WikiProject for deleted articles needing improvement. -- Low Sea ( talk) 21:25, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I recently posted about Deletionpedia at the admin's notice board. Basically deletionpedia already collects for some time all articles deleted per AfD, Prod and many per CSD (A7 more or less). So the content of above mentioned article is actually available there [8]. Now I haven't gone yet through above lengthy conversation, but as I've argued in the AN thread, this should have an impact on how we look on deletions. There wasn't much response there under this angle, maybe due tot he fact that admins can see deleted content anyways. -- Tikiwont ( talk) 12:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I think Ignore all rules needs to be amended to include a disclaimer that it should not be cited for admin actions. I've seen this being done a couple times recently, and it just seems totally ridiculous to me. IAR has always been a policy that applied to editing for the most part, in my eyes anyway. Any admin action that goes against policy should have a better explanation than per IAR. Lara ❤ Love 22:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I would like to chime in my with my 2 cents. I think anyone who takes the drastic step of ignoring all the rules in our system in Wikipedia, should be required when asked, why. Perhaps that is all that is needed. I do not think admins should be exempt in their ability to put IAR to use, however I think we should require that anyone invoking it should be required to state why when asked, even if asked by the person who they may have blocked, banned etc. There should be a level of accountability. Personally I see what the writer attempted to accomplish, however, I have never seen a group put such a policy to good use, the ability to ignore the rules as long as you feel it is for the better will just alienate those who got played by the rule and where IAR was used against them. -- I Write Stuff ( talk) 20:09, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Admins need IAR. In fact, I rather feel wikipedia has become far too beaurocratic and IAR isn't cited enough, because the lag beween beaurocracy and positive result creates a festering hole for incivility, personal attacks, aggression and being good at rules even if you aren't good at the subject you're pushing a POV on. I rather feel the ever-more-complicated ruleset, and the increasingly monotonous and banal procedures that arrive from application of the rules to incidents that common sense would previously preside over is getting in the way of people building a better encyclopedia - particularly new editors. New editors come allong and make a few small changes to an article, only to offend someones sensibilities, and get WP:3RR thrown at them, which they quite possibly know nothing about, not understand the significance of, an don't particularly care about (after all, they came here to build an encyclopedia, not spend hours reading all the policy and guideline pages first - and there's a few of them.)
Anyway... that said, to offer a theoretical example I suspect may be more palatable to people (diplomacy is of course the foundation of politics, and there's always politics behind any democracy, assuming Wikipedia to indeed be democratic (well, more than not anyway)...
I have been on wikiepdia for a few weeks and mostly concentrate on law and music & entertainment related topics, in article-space and createing new articles. After a few relatively good experiences in created articles that sustained AFD with constructive commentary it gave me a rather brilliant idea to help the Wikipadia:
Yes! But I think the excitement this new systeme will generate will not only energize the community as a whole but also draw thousands of new users to the site!! This procedure would vastly emprove the articles, culling the chaff, and cultivating the cream/wheat... We coud weigh the merits of EVERY NEW ARTICLE from here on out!! Wow! JeanLatore ( talk) 20:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Burden of evidence ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
A discussion on enabling global blocking on wikimedia is taking place on meta. — Werdna talk 01:13, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Unless somebody can explain to me why we tolerate IP edits at all? If a person can't figure out how to generate a username and a password, why would we want them to be editing here? What am I missing? Semi-protection obviously works to stop vandalism, or it wouldn't be used. What possible argument is there, that admits sprotection works in some heavily vandal-targetted places, BUT somehow would not work even better, if used automatically everyplace? If we did this, anybody anyplace could still edit. They'd just need a password and some personal responsibility. S B H arris 07:06, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Or do these editors only start articles, and never improve articles which are well on the way to featured status? How do you know? I'm trying to keep myself from slapping a citation needed tag on your statement. Got examples? Got examples where you can show that some IP user contributed massive amounts of work, but would have been too lazy to pick out a username and password, if they had been required to? I just do not believe it and I'm pretty sure you can't can't prove it, or even support it. If it ever happens, I do not believe it happens enough to be worth noticing.
Look, I'm a scientist. This is a question which is answerable by a simple experiment, since we all have strong opinons, but no data. We simply sprotect all the articles that start with "A" and then the compare the created content and vandalism as compared with a similar number of articles that start with "B", which we leave as is. Now, no doubt somebody's going to come hopping up and say that "We don't even have the monitoring tools to tell if this is working or not." Okay. Then that means YOU DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER, EITHER. But you think you do. You're writing a lot of policy and you're sprotecting some articles and not others, by the seat of your pants. Well, the seat of my pants says something else. The reason this suggestion is "perennial" is that I'm far from alone in that judgement.
Addendum: I went to the perennial proposals page above and looked at the cites, and found exactly what I expected: epidemiology. Epidemiology proves nothing. For example, we have a cite from somebody's blog (It's amazing what becomes WP:V when it supports the conclusions of the Foundation [9]) that most of the content (by number of letters) of the average article comes from users whose total contribution to the entire encyclopedia is relatively minor. Which is not supprising. And many of them are IP users. Again not surprising. But we don't know the key thing which is being assumed from this data, which is that if we required all these IP editors to register a username, they'd all go away and wouldn't do what they did. WE JUST DON'T KNOW THAT without doing the experiment. We do know that most vandalism is done by IP editors. Do we need to have an experiment to see what would happen if we made them all create usernames? The one class of people (good IP editors) wants to add content to a small area they know a lot about. They are presumably more motivated than the other type of person (bad IP editors) who wants no more than to erase a page and add an obsenity. Anyway, the bottom line is that this entire foundation policy is not really supported by any good data. The people who make it, just think it is. S B H arris 22:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Commenting generally on this: I would never have become a Wikipedia editor if I had had to register first. Having zero barriers to editing is a curse, as SBHarris points out, but also a blessing, as he fails to point out. And just as he points out that there's no data to support the "benefits" of allowing IPs to edit, there's no data to support the benefits of not allowing them to edit. Will we get less vandalism as a result? Probably, though it's not clear how much less. Will we get fewer good contributions (and contributors) as well? Also probably.
A certain amount of messiness is inherent in making Wikipedia "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit". The messiness is minimally damaging and easy to repair (although if you're a vandal-patroller, it is easy for one's view of this to get distorted). But the benefit of the openness is what made the encyclopedia. Barriers to entry are barriers to entry. We can and do ban serial vandals, after the fact. Toward everybody else, we want to offer no barriers to entry. Go ahead, click that button. [edit]. Right there. Welcome.-- Father Goose ( talk) 02:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I think that it is also worth noting that Flagged Revisions has the potential to completely change the way that we use semi-protection and change the way that vandals interact with the site. If Flagged Revisions is a success, it might make almost all protection irrelevant. -- Arctic Gnome ( talk • contribs) 02:46, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Sbharris, as a scientist, I imagine that you wish policies to be based on evidence. Here is the scientific evidence on anonymous editors:
How to explain this? I dunno. It's French and Dutch contributors being looked at, and it's possible that it's not the same in the US. It's also possible that we're merely seeing some kind of selection pressure on both nameusers and IP users over "time". I would expect that vandal-killing makes the surviving nameusers into a better group over time (vandal nameusers being eliminated), and this is seen. While a more lenient policy on blocking IPs allows vandals there to continue vandalizing, while the good IP users leave over time to become productive nameusers. Thus, overall quality for IP users tends to DROP with edit-count, as this group retains its vandals better, and its subgroup of committed good editors leave to register.
The article really doesn't look at any longitudinal patterns, tho, and it's always dangerous to infer them (If you do that with Florida, you infer from cross sections that the average person there learns Spanish in childhood, then later English, and then finally at the end of their lives, Yiddish..).
Now, how can use the data from this? It's hard to know. This study suggests that most new IP users generate as good content as new name users. I don't know how to fit that with my own perception, and that found by other papers, that most vandalism comes from IP accounts with few edits. It's a bit contradictory. By contrast, both this paper and my own experience suggests that IP users with a lot of edits are likely contributing poor quality, and need to be got rid of somehow, either by forcing them to register (the paper says this is actually a policy in the French and Dutch Wikipedias?) or else by stopping the coddling of IP vandal accounts (which now happens due to the possibility of them being shared educational institution IPs).
Lastly, there's the question of what would happen to the good-newbie IP users (what the paper calls Good Samaritans), if we require them to register. To what extent would they simply not participate and never register or contribute? We don't know. This paper doesn't help us find out. Perhaps, given the extremely low edit-counts this paper deals with (mean is about 10), the change in policy might be that newbie IP users are allowed 10 or 20 edits as an IP before they must register. That gets all those supposedly good edits, but at least kills the vandal IPs with the TALK pages that have 100 warnings. I think that would satisfy many objections here. It would also tend to discourage present coddling of vandal IP accounts, due to the knowledge that that users there are supposed to register eventually anyway. You can't both simultaneously hold that our best content comes from IP accounts with few edits, and also hold that we should continue to coddle sharred school IP accounts with many edits, most of which are vandal-edits. Nobody beleives we're talking about the same thing, there. Agree? S B H arris 23:39, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Want to kill the project? Easy, just stop people from editing. This proposal would do that. If people never start editing, they never become Wikipedians. – Luna Santin ( talk) 20:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Why would a company give out free samples? If we only consider the cost it's loony. Yet lots of people who get a free sample will end up buying the product. Editing without the hassle of registering is like a free sample. It may be a generation thing, but the myspace generation has apparently not yet grown up enough to contribute the majority of edits. Us older folks, for the most part, don't like to register at every site we visit. But we still have a couple of decades more accumulated nuggets of knowledge. As to why IPS edit at rather high quality. Here's a highly unreferenced theory. You come to a wiki page to find information. If what you find is well written you look at a page in your particular field of interest. Since you know quite a bit about that subject there's the "That's not quite right." and the "That's not even the half of it." effect. Somehow that nags. After a while you look at the edit page and write some text and copy out the "decorations" from another part. (Then someone's going to complain it's not referenced and you'll have to look into it or s.o. else fixes that.) Someone who registers on the other hand does that either because they like editing (and at some point the fountain of their knowledge runneth dry.) Or they are forced to because they want to create a page or do something else that requires registration. Anyway, keep the free samples coming or your "customers" won't buy. Lisa4edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 ( talk) 11:40, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I see this proposal being raised time and time again over the future years until one day, I think it will be enacted -- when Wikipedia stabilises and within striking distance of acceptability as an encyclopedia. JeanLatore ( talk) 21:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Support, Oppose, Note, Comment? - Doug Youvan ( talk) 07:28, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Assume "Editors" is plural: Is it currently feasible to see all of WP as it stood on a previous date with all hyperlinks in place? - Doug Youvan ( talk) 14:24, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Hope you're all older than 18 and no one's logging in from the office. There are very few places that aren't your home and wouldn't block that. Remember back when "Starhustler" was changed to "Stargazer" because it kept getting blocked?? Lisa4edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 ( talk) 12:07, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm a relative n00b to this place, I've only been editing for two months, and I seem to be confused about something. Policy states that plot summaries of films do not normally need to be cited (unless you are providing an original interpretation of the plot), and that information about video games can be cited from the manual or the game itself. I take this to mean that all works of fiction such as tv, movies, novels, and games, may serve as primary sources for basic information about the works such as plot elements, game mechanics, and so on. Yet time and time again, I see editors screaming "OR! OR! OR!" whenever they see unsourced information about works of fiction in articles. Time and again, I see articles nominated for deletion becuase they contain unsourced lists of trivia taken from works of fiction because the nominator considers it original research. My question is, when writing about works of fiction, when is it necessary to cite the primary source? Almost every film article I've seen has plot summaries with absolutely no citations, yet trivial articles about video games and television seem to be held to a higher standard simply because they are viewed as cruft. Can someone explain to me why "In episode 42 John trips over a rock" is decried as OR while "In Halloween Horror IV Jason stabs a girl in the neck" is perfectly OK? I know I'm treading into the waters of "inclusionism vs. deletionism" but I'm sick of reading the hypocrisy taking place on AfD discussions. TRIVIA is not the same thing as OR. -- ErgoSum88 ( talk) 05:56, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I am new to Wikipedia as an editor and want some assistance in understanding how it works. I have been browsing through Wikipedia for a long time and have been observing that Wikipedia editors use dummy names or pseudonyms in order to hide their identitities. Now it is theoretically possible for one person to register with several dummy names. Similarly, a group of ideolgues bent upon spreading a particluar ideology can joun together, hiding their identities and act in unison to create a false impression. Now I have some questions- (i) Are multiple dummies by the same person allowed? (ii) Does Wikipedia record the PC ID number of editors who chek in as registered users as they do for anonymous editors? (iii) Does Wikipedia make any effort to identify dummy editors? Please enlighten me on these points. - Shyamal Gupta ( talk) 13:05, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanations and links. - Shyamal Gupta ( talk) 06:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
One user has suggested that signing (four tilde business) is totally voluntary. Surely this isn't true? — TreasuryTag— t— c 14:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
The very fact that it is possible to leave comments without even being logged in (or even having an account for that matter) makes it quite clear that signatures are not required, only requested as a courtesy for clarity of discussion. When many people are talking it is nice to be clear who said what so you can "connect the dots". -- Low Sea ( talk) 14:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
"There is no such thing as voluntary but not voluntary"... yes there is, and if you don't understand it, I've not got the energy to explain it to you. — TreasuryTag— t— c 15:06, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I think we can all agree that a signature helps people tell whose comment is whose and that not leaving a signature confounds this distinction. WP:SIG says it "is good etiquette and facilitates discussion by helping other users to identify the author of a particular comment", and that when someone does not sign that it is "a good idea to notify users, especially new users, that they should sign their comments". So take what you will from that, I would say the you should sign, but that we don't have a policy requiring it. (1 == 2)Until 15:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
If a source is used but not mentioned, does that constitute a copyright (or related) violation if there is no exact citation but:
Thanks, Guido den Broeder ( talk) 00:41, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG! ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Am I missing something here? - jc37 02:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Does this violate WP:COI?-- Urban Rose 00:42, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Nah, just write in the main namespace, and maybe' put a disclaimer on the talk page like "I might not be entirely neutral here... just FYI, please NPOVize".
Rule 1 of the wiki is: Use the fine wiki. :-)
-- Kim Bruning ( talk) 11:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Guido den Broeder ( talk) 00:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
This is a procedural/how-to question related to establishing policy ... I have found a WP essay written by another I feel has great potential to make an excellent guideline (or even policy) and I would like to know the correct process for doing that. I am certain there is a need for consensus building but where does that discussion take place and how are people made aware of the discussion at all? -- Low Sea ( talk) 06:35, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I am offended by them having a page, this is not due to personal disagreements but rather due to the fact that many of my ancestors were killed by them. This is an honest question please answer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.87.216 ( talk • contribs)
I recently made a series of edits in the Second Chechen War article. my edits. A user ended up reverting all of my edits because he said I was breaking copyright laws. I'm almost positive that I have not. I copy/pasted a couple very small sentences/half sentences that present statistical facts, and the one large paragraph I added wasn't a copy paste at all, but a collection of factual information completely reworded from the referenced article. You can see the user "warned" me on my talk page after I reinserted and re-re-worded the larger paragraph. Is he wrong or should I start getting ready for a 6-12 month vacation? LokiiT ( talk) 17:58, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I was going over the history of Guns N Roses and then wiki'd over to Hollywood Rose and was curious to see how that was covered. I saw my friend Jimmy Swan had been included in the article as he should and when I clicked the link I got a totally different person. Same name, but different person.
Fast forward to today and he has posted a message asking how to get that flaw fixed. I told him I would look into it.
How is the istance of two people with same name handled?
Thank you very much.
-- Qwiksilver ( talk) 20:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
-- Qwiksilver ( talk) 22:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Hello,
I tried to save a new version of Beagle conflict and got following message:
... The following link has triggered our spam protection filter: http://www. la nacion . com
Either that exact link, or a portion of it (typically the root domain name) is currently blacklisted. ...
La Nación is really fundamental as source for many articles over Argentina and I can't believe that "La Nacion" is sending spam.
Can any Admin checks the reason?
Bye, -- Keysanger ( talk) 07:56, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
nacion dot com
- I'll go and see if we can get the rule reconfigured.
x42bn6
Talk
Mess 11:45, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Fixed on Meta - apologies for the inconvenience -- Herby talk thyme 11:52, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Overcategorization/User categories ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Per this round of vandalism page moves, which apparently weren't such simple things to fix, perhaps move-protecting policy pages would be a good idea, unless we can come up with a better method of reverting moves. Equazcion •✗/ C • 19:57, 17 Apr 2008 (UTC)
Input would be appreciated at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#American. Question regarding use of "American" to describe persons from the United States. – Luna Santin ( talk) 22:44, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to put a new guideline up for discussion: Be cruel. It is actually not new, but a translation of the German guideline/help page de:Wikipedia:Sei grausam, which seems to be accepted on the same level as AGF and the likes. The dutch and slovak wikipedias have also adopted this useful concept. -- Dschwen 22:12, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
A little while back I wrote an article on AABB, formerly the American Association of Blood Banks (now international and dealing with more than just blood, the acronym no longer stands for anything). The page was originally a redirect to a computer graphics term. Given the users on wikipedia, I'm guessing that the original article was more likely to be noteworthy to most readers, but is there anything written on what "leads" in disambiguation? A full disambiguation page seems excessive for two articles. Somedumbyankee ( talk) 17:45, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
For those interested in copyright issues, I have proposed a change to {{ PD}}, a deprecated tempate, in which new images uploaded with this license tag after 1 May 2008 would be eligible for speedy deletion in accordance with {{ nld}}. I think this is necessary because the template has been deprecated for over two years and we still get new images with this license tag. This may be controversial due the fact of this template's usage on hundreds, if not thousands, of images, and I definitely welcome any comments on this approach, which is similar to the one which was used for {{ Military Insignia}}. Any comments or feedback are welcome. If this announcement was more appropriate to another forum, please feel free to move it there and let me know. Kelly hi! 01:24, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Extended discussion moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Image:User.gif: unintended bias?. Mr. Z-man 22:04, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Many fiction articles are being created and deleted due to violation of our notability policies. That's a fact, whether one likes it or not. There is however some inefficiency here: there are quite a few wikis out there dedicated to creating encyclopedias on a given fictional series/verse/whatever. Yet while many of them could accept direct cut and paste copies of articles deleted on our project, we don't have an efficient way of finding out that they exist, notifying them that article of interest to them is about to be deleted, and transwikifying the content. This should be remedied somehow. Perhaps we should create a list of such fiction pedias by topic, each linked to a relevant category or main article on Wikipedia, and have some bot process that would update that list with 'this recently AfD/deleted article may be relevant to this project' (this could be possible with a little tweaking of User:AlexNewArtBot, for example). Thoughts? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:36, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
I never really got it off the ground, or properly formatted the page, but this idea might fit nicely into WikiProject Transwiki. -- Ned Scott 04:17, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
"For a more complete description of the plot, see XXXXX at the XXXXXpedia."
I know this subject has come up before but I would like to bring it up again because I think the editorial tags that clutter up the wikipedia detract from its readability and usefulness.
Editorial comments belong on the talk page. They are not content. Furthermore, I think putting these tags on pages violates the essential spirit of the wikipedia which is to contribute. If an editor thinks a page needs "cleanup" they should clean it up, not whine about it with a tag that just clutters up the page even more.
In all honesty you could put "needs references" on practically every single page in the wikipedia. There is always somebody who thinks information is not documented thoroughly enough (you should meet some of my university professors). If an editor thinks an article needs some additional documentation they should spend the 5 hours in the library satisfying their lust for authority instead of click-criticizing other people's articles with inadequacy tags.
There will always be whiners who are never satisfied with an article please make them put their blarny on the talk page and leave the content page for content. John Chamberlain ( talk) 21:34, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
{{
Original research}}
or {{
Unencyclopedic}}
.(outdent) I think the use of tagging is less to draw the attention of editors to what needs fixing, and more to draw the attention of the reader to what assertions he/she should or shouldn't be trusting. If they were designed primarily to draw editors' attention to things that needed fixing, then the talk page would be a perfectly appropriate place for them. Since most of them are for the benefit of readers (although that's not true of {{uncategorized}}, {{orphan}}, {{deadend}}, and their ilk), they should stay in the article. Sarcasticidealist ( talk) 01:16, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I am not disputing the usefulness of the tags. I am saying (1) the usefulness of the tags is outweighed by the negative clutter value they have to the majority of readers, and (2) the talk page is a more logical place to put the tag.
FOLLOWUP: I just saw the new "Page Under Construction" tag. Unbelievable. This is exactly what is wrong with the Wikipedia tag system. "Under Construction" notices are a classic example of bad page design and all HTML editing guides emphatically warn amateur web page creators from using "Under Construction" notices, yet here we are putting this clutter on thousands of Wikipedia pages despite years of professional editors warning against it. I realize that the Wikipedia policy board does not have professional editors on it, but seriously they should at least read Strunk & White so they have some clue about good practices. Wikipedia editorial policy seems to be turning into amateur hour. Too many cooks? John Chamberlain ( talk) 21:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
What does one do if there is concern that an editor had made false citations in a potential Featured Article, and has then prevaricated more blatantly in his defense of the citation. (In other words, if there is evidence of both.) Fowler&fowler «Talk» 18:29, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I recently proposed the following change to
WP:User talk page. Another user disagreed so I have brought it here:
I suggest changing the fact that users may remove warnings to:
Users may remove incorrect warnings instantly, but correct warnings can be deleted after a period of 31 days. It is preferred that a record of blocks be kept but this is not necessary.
Or similar. What does anyone else think?
George D. Watson (Dendodge).
Talk
Help 22:10, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
It's not all bad news however. What you could do is ask for a bot to be created (for use by all "vandal fighters") that could extract the warning history for you. Bots are good at drudge tasks and they do not require making policy changes or the cooperation of the offenders. -- Low Sea ( talk) 16:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
When placing warnings, use adequate edit summaries. If you do that, page history is one click away, and gives you a perfectly good date-sorted overview of previous warnings. If you do not use adequate edit summaries, you get what's coming to you. ;-) -- Kim Bruning ( talk) 17:31, 17 April 2008 (UTC) In fact, you should always use good edit summaries, not just when placing warnings. ;-)
I have made a proposal for a guideline on Wikipedia:Relevance. I have been extensively involved with many attempts to come up with a guideline for this (formerly as User:WikiLen). All attempts have failed to achieve consensus, even as simple as a disambiguation page. This is the first attempt with a terse version -- in the style of WP:IAR. It seems like a reasonably good compromise for all the concerns expressed by editors. For those new to this, a list of issues:
Additional talk page comments can be found here. — Len Raymond ( talk) 21:23, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Above at another discussion (sprotect all articles) a user talked about Flagged Revisions. On its page there is very little explication (in lay terms) what that policy or programme will do. Can anyone explain it to me? And is this in use already (the art. was from 07)? And where can we discuss it more JeanLatore ( talk) 22:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
My understanding from the notes on the Wikipedia:Flagged revisions and the MediaWiki site, the idea of Flagged revisions is that the "outside world" does not see the latest article revision, but the latest revision which has been marked "ok". The idea is that readers who are not logged in will not see any vandalism, because the revision where the vandalism occurred will not get marked "ok".
The question of who gets to mark a revision ok is a bit murky and up for debate (the feature is still not turned on for Wikipedia). On one extreme, any logged in editor will be able to "ok" a revision. At the other, only admins or maybe longtime editors will have that ability. It seems like the initial plan is to "sighting" rights to pretty much any editor with an account and email address. Hope that helps. -- Marcinjeske ( talk) 05:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay - Wikipedia wants to be an encyclopaedia that covers everything. But please - can we hold back some on the uberscience spouting forth way too early on too many articles? Science is already the new religion, but please can we stop it overcoming easy reading and easy access to information, which should be an encyclopaedias foremost aim?
Cant the UberScience squad be relegated to a sub-section of article structure? For example: introductory explanatory section, followed by 'The Science' or something like that, so that normal human beings who dont want technicalities and scio-pedantica (yes, i made that term up) shoved down their throats every time we want to casually browse wikipedia? It would make the information far more accessible to a broader range of people.
i find it occurring way too often on wikipedia. And i do mean even on terms which may be considered scientific. It may surprise the scio-pedantics, but some people just want casual, plain english explanations and understandings. They REALLY dont want, or, very importantly, need, to be overloaded with techno-babble in the opening paragraphs and laden with complex diagrams etcetera etcetera in the top third of the page, regardless of its accuracy (how about a simple picture first, complex detail second?). And yes - i do mean even when referring to organic compounds and scientific items.
I know attention to detail is the pet-love of science, but it is possible to retain the attention to detail but in plain english, and then unlease the full force of the scientific mind a little later, when the lay person has already more-than-likely got what they need from the basics.
the structure suggested above allows all the current information to remain, but puts it in a specific section of article structure, meaning people can access information, and be able to read it comfortably and share it with non-scio-pedantics without being overwhelmed with oft-unecessary information.
What say ye all?—Preceding unsigned comment added by The Living Stone ( talk • contribs) 00:09, April 18, 2008
First point taken, though i would not be the first to suggest such a thing. Second point - It wasnt meant to 'win people over', it was meant to make a point, but i have edited out a sentence or two you may have been upset by, since that wasnt my intention - I may be the first to mention this, but im fairly certain im not the first to feel it - perhaps i voice the frustration of many? My point is that 'encyclopaedic' doesnt have to mean 'scientific paper', which is what many wikipedia articles seem to have become. If you had not taken offense, you would have seen that I suggested retaining all content, but altering the structure to make wikipedia more welcoming.
Here are my examples (though my frustration has been accumulating over time over various articles, this is my first comment).
I was explaining to my sister and niece about why chocolate makes her (my niece) hyper and then grumpy. I was explaining about caffeine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine) and theobromine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine) found in chocolate ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate). Lets look at the caffeine example first: Paragraph one follows my complaint above, opening with an off-putting "Caffeine is a bitter white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that acts as a psychoactive stimulant drug and a mild diuretic (speeds up urine production)[2] in humans and other animals." The remainding paragraphs are far more approachable, but my niece (and even my sister), had they been unsupervised, would never have got to them because they would not have even got to the end of the first sentence without assuming the whole article was going to be beyond their reach and going elsewhere. The theobromine article offers very little in the way of approachability when a very nice paragraph could have been written about its history and its effects on, and use by, humans eg centred around the roots of its name as 'food of the gods' and the use of its primary carrier, the cacao/cocoa bean as being actual currency to the ancient mesoamericans because of its constituent drugs and their uses of it, and the following uses of it around the world. The chocolate article is handled much more approachably, simply because scio-speak has been kept managed, but it does not give enough detail on its primary components which make chocolate what it is - namely caffeine and theobromine. Just because these are 'drugs' it doesnt mean they need to be written about as science papers.
My intention was not to cause offense, but to raise what i feel is a highly relevant point - If wikipedia is going to come up first-page on most search engines for most subjects, shouldnt approachability be priority? There is no loss of quality or content with this, only a careful attention to structure. Lets look at the caffeine opening sentence again - what does that actually tell us? Its bitter. its white. Its a drug. crystalline-xanthine-alkaloid-diuretic are not informative terms to the vast majority of people, despite scientific accuracy, and instead of informing, they put off. Caffeine is a bitter white drug ...discovered by (the following sentence leading in). There is no loss of basic infomation, even 'psychoactive and 'diuretic' could be left in for extra detail, but that information is enough for the vast majority of enquirers, along with the remainder of the article. The scientific technical terms only inform the minority of searchers, and most of them already have alternative resources where this information is readily avaialable - non-scientists do not. All I am suggesting is that instead of getting first-dibs on the article, the technicalities should be put in a technical sub-section. All enquirers would have access to exactly the same information, is just that no-one would be put off, whereas just now, i am sure they are. These articles are just small examples, but they are not isolated, just prevalent in my attention. i am happy to return here with a vaster list if its required, but the only point im suggesting is one of structural re-consideration for editorial guidelines. -- The Living Stone ( talk) 02:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I would like to be able to flag individual individual edits for concealment by administrators. In particular, things which are edit-analogs to legally-required WP:SPEEDY criteria, including:
Plus G7/Author requests deletion but only if the content could put the author in personal or legal jeopardy, e.g. "oops I accidentally posted my social security number."
Please consider adding this feature to Wikipedia. davidwr/( talk)/( contribs)/( e-mail) 02:20, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Sometime in the near(?) future the experimental Special:Revisiondelete, which is precisely what this is, will go live (don't ask me, I can't tell). MER-C 03:49, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Style guide ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:50, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not interested in opening the debate, just to understand if it has been closed. I have been told that equating intelligent design with creationism is not a point of view but a principle of the Wikipedia somehow related to the WP:NPOV policy. Was this ever declared as a principle. And if so, where?
Who or what on the Wikipedia has the power to declare such applications of policy as principle? patsw ( talk) 01:05, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
By far the overwhelming majority of the experts in this area acknowledge that intelligent design=creationism. This covers a wide range of experts, from both the creationist and the mainstream scientific and academic communities, and is well supported by multiple peer-reviewed publications, as well as the opinion of a US federal court. It is also supported by multiple primary sources from the intelligent design community itself, including the Wedge document and public pronouncements of Philip E. Johnson and others. So in those cases, NPOV states that we represent the views in proportion to their prominence. The only significant group that claims intelligent design is not creationism is a small lobbying group that does so for reasons to try to trick the US legal system, and attempt to deceive the US judiciary, but only when they make statements for public consumption, not when they are trying to appeal to their base and to raise money. So far this strategy has not worked, and appears to be getting abandoned. The Expelled movie is an example of this strategy being partly abandoned because they have been associating intelligent design with the existence of God.-- Filll ( talk) 02:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Dr. Ronald Numbers is an agnostic, a very prominent critic of ID, a past president of the History of Science Society, and the author of the most widely cited history of creationism (which Salon magazine calls "probably the most definitive history of anti-evolutionism"). But he says that the claim that ID is creationism "doesn't hold a lot of water." Here's what he told Salon:
I intended this to be a meta-discussion that equating intelligent design with creationism is not a point of view but a principle of the Wikipedia somehow related to the WP:NPOV policy. I'm ready to conclude that for some editors big science is a non-arguable force majure that gets deployed at the discretion of editors. I disagree with it, of course, but I see the design behind it as clever means of promoting a point of view to the exclusion of others. I concede. patsw ( talk) 04:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Comment. The village pump is not really the place for this kind of discourse. Anyone is welcome to discuss their issues on the article's talk page. If people cannot peacefully reach an agreement, there are people who can help. If anyone intends to stump in favor of one POV or another, there are other places for that. Vassyana ( talk) 04:31, 17 April 2008 (UTC)