This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy).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.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX, AY, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, BJ, BK, BL, BM, BN, BO · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191
I was concerned that some categories are getting diffused unnecessarily, and that we might be hurting ordinary users' ability to search intuitively. So I made an overview-table of the current "diffusion-state" (with suggested "improvements") of major biography categories here: Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Category diffusion overview. - 84user ( talk) 03:26, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Up until 7 October 2004 Wikipedia:Naming conventions carried a top note that said
This was removed by user:UninvitedCompany and relpaced with Category:Wikipedia official policy. On 12 May 2005 user: Radiant! removed the category and added a {{ policy}} top box.
I have put in a WP:RM to move Wikipedia:Naming conventions to some other name, because before Wikipedia:Naming conventions became policy, the page used to say "Naming conventions is a list of guidelines on how to appropriately create and name pages." so the current name was appropriate, but once it became policy, the name is not as clear as it could be. In line with the hierarchy that other policies and guidelines have, I suggest that this page becomes the unambiguous policy page and that the guidelines remain clearly guidelines. Currently it is difficult for a new editor to see clearly that the naming convention is policy with detailed guidelines to explain the policy page rather than a sometimes conflicting amorphous mass.
The discussion for the requested move is at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Requested move— Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 09:56, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
I've demoted the following three sections as false alarms; the {policy} template format was tweaked slightly, but the policies have not been demoted. Nothing to see here. TenOfAllTrades( talk) 18:57, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content no longer marked as a policy
Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Libel no longer marked as a policy
Wikipedia:Libel ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Privacy policy no longer marked as a policy
Wikipedia:Privacy policy ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Proposal to change CSD G7. Thanks. Carcharoth ( talk) 06:16, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
What is this page?
I saw histories on the examples I checked, back to 2003. I wonder how they ended up mirroring the logo. -- Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) ( Talk) 16:48, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
For featured articles, is there a limit to how noteworthy a topic can be before it has much of a chance at gaining FA status. For instance, if a random un-notable village was detailed enough to provide all the information it could possibly provide from the very limited sources out there on it, then could that article reach FA status? I know that FAs tend to be long, but hypothetically, is what I ask, possible? Deamon138 ( talk) 23:37, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
In Ventilation (architecture), there is an image showing how air goes in some vents and out others. I was concerned, however, when I saw how the demonstration was done: by holding a flame up to the ventilator. The "air going in" image shows the flame actually disappearing between the louvers of the vent.
Allowing a flame to be sucked into a ventilator is an extremely foolhardy thing to do. Add some dust (which vent ducts are often filled with) and a bit of bad luck, and you've got a very rapidly-building and hard-to-fight fire. If I advocated that technique to someone, and they then burned down their house, I could probably be found liable. Even if I couldn't be found legally culpable (e.g. I offered an effective disclaimer) it still would seem to be a bad thing to do.
So, here's the policy question: should there be a policy to avoid describing or showing risky behavior when that behavior does not usefully promote the message of the article? Here, for instance, the use of flame has nothing to do with the articles that use this picture. As an alternative, the picture could show the smoke from a cigarette, or the movement of a piece of thin foil or cellophane.
Other (perhaps synthetic) examples that would concern me: someone looking down the barrel of a gun to see the bullet, showing the power of electricity by sparking two household-voltage wires together, showing that some clothes are gasoline-proof by pouring gasoline on them while being worn, someone using a wood lathe whose tie is dangling over the rotating piece, working under a car where the car is clearly unsafely supported, etc.
Examples of behaviors that should not be excluded: a bomb disposal technician at work, a forest fire, a battle, an article on extreme sports, emergency surgery.
Does excluding content such as this seem like a worthwhile policy? If so, could the policy be worded so as properly draw the line (wherever that line should be)?
Dan Griscom ( talk) 20:07, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
(Apologies if this is the wrong venue.) As you may have noticed, we are faced with a growing number of "international reaction" sections and articles. Some of these are quite useful ( International reaction to the 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence), others less enlightening ( International reactions to the 2006 North Korean nuclear test). Anyway, I wonder if it would be wise to try and craft some sort of policy indicating that some international reactions simply are not relevant. A good example was on the Main Page recently: 2008 Indian embassy bombing in Kabul. Clearly the reactions of India and Afghanistan matter. Some of those listed, like Pakistan's and the US', may matter. But can we agree that Bulgaria's and Vietnam's, with all due respect, do not matter? Neither country is in the vicinity of the countries involved, neither is a great power, neither has especially close relations with either, neither said anything remotely unexpected, etc.
Now, I know the obvious question is how exactly one chooses which reactions are notable without violating WP:NPOV. To be sure, there will always be a grey area. But I think it's worth the effort; otherwise we'll see increasing numbers of lists like the North Korea one, which essentially consists of dozens of countries either "condemning" or "strongly condemning" the test. Biruitorul Talk 20:22, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I think that I, and probably a few others such as Dab, Pax, and BalkanFever, am/are in the unique position to inform the pump about such things. The International Reaction to Kosovo article is a fantastic article that allows the main articles such as Kosovo, and Serbia, to remain clutter and clusterf*ck free. It is so vital, and I suggest that no one take any action against the International Reaction article, at least for Kosovo. Please.
Beam 01:56, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
There is no need for new guidelines or policy for such articles. That's Instruction Creep, and it's baaaa baaaa baaaaad. Beam 01:57, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Proposing clarification of when religious sources can be used as reliable sources for religious subjects and viewpoints. The intent of the proposed example is to clarify and explain existing policy, not to make a change. Best, -- Shirahadasha ( talk) 21:08, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I've created an RfC on this one, and attempted to illustrate what I view as the key issue to address in evolving Wikipedia's management of biographies of living people through a conversation you can see here - all thoughts most welcome... Privatemusings ( talk) 02:59, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
With the defamation suit finished and dismissed, there is no longer any rationale for keeping the Barbara Bauer article deleted, unless we are establishing a policy that no critical information about living persons may be included. The article was sourced, and there was a consensus to keep, but it was deleted. I would like to propose that we either follow policy and restore this article, or create new policy under which its continued deletion might be legitimate. Mr. IP ( talk) 15:51, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
On the AFD, I said I wanted to keep article but I did not put bold "keep". Now the next couple people did, some bold "delete" so it looks like a vote roster. why do they do that? Does my comment count less or won't be counted if i dont stick to the format? Homotlfqa83 ( talk) 15:38, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Earlier today, I came across an article that had commentary added right in the middle of it (not as invisible comments, but as article text). I replaced this all with a {{dubious}} tag—it was basically a debate of the validity of a piece of information, with both sides having added references into the article as footnotes—and moved all this commentary to the talk page. I'd like to be able to cite the appropriate policy to show that comments such as these are to be placed on the talk page and not within the article. However, I'm not finding a policy that says anything like this at all! Is this just an unwritten rule, or is it documented somewhere? The commentary isn't an NPOV issue, which would be easier to deal with; rather, it is somewhat an issue of verifiability. The type of argument is irrelevant though, as it is not being dealt with in the appropriate manner. A reference to any policy, guideline, anything at ALL would be lovely! — Skittleys ( talk) 18:33, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Mining/Assessment ( | 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) 18:50, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone know of any cases on any pages were editors were blocked for deleting referenced content?
I am not referring to simple vandalism: I am talking about an editor removing a large section of referenced text against consensus repeatedly.
What policy would this fall under?
I am not looking for reasons why blocking is not possible here, I am looking for cases and policy when blocking editors for deleting referenced content is possible.
If you are not familiar with any cases or policies, I kindly request that you please don't respond. thank you. 76.111.17.14 ( talk) 02:46, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Is there a Wikipedia theme song? If not, we should write one. It would foster our sense of a community, like a fraternity song. Homotlfqa83 ( talk) 23:17, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Oh thanks. But those are all jokey songs set to popular tunes. I was wondering if we had an original community song, and one with a serious bent. Homotlfqa83 ( talk) 15:57, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
(I couldn't work out which policy this most closely related to - feel free to redirect me if this isn't the best place for this.)
If we include in an article a quote which was originally spoken, and the source from which we obtain it contains a written error, is it OK to correct the error?
The specific example I have in mind is a quote in David Berlinski, which currently reads "The interesting argument about the whale [...] is that if its origins where [ sic] land-based originally..." The mistaken "where" is in the written source we have taken the quote from, the [ sic] has been added.
It seems clear to me that the error marked with [ sic] was introduced in transcription, and is not part of the original quote; the correct word and the mistaken word are pronounced quite similarly, so I don't think it would be possible to definitely determine in speech that one had been used in place of the other. This being the case, it seems wrong to mark it as [ sic], suggesting that it is a mistake on the part of the speaker. (This is distinct from the situation if, for example, the quote was "I were [ sic] walking down the street", which would probably indicate a mistake in the original speech.)
I'm always wary about altering direct quotes, though, so I thought I'd seek more opinions. Thoughts? TSP ( talk) 09:33, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I came across Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Typos in quotes, which is a simpler variant of this question. I haven't searched the archives there, but I would not be surprised if it's come up before. Flatscan ( talk) 02:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
-- Mancini ( talk) 16:15, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
The more pernicious problem is that the various language wikipedias each use distinct editorial policies and guidelines. Few look for the level of attribution seen on en, resulting in article translations into English that are often of disappointing quality. LeadSongDog ( talk) 16:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Whats up with people "voting" in bold at the start of each comment on afd? I thought it was not a vote. Or is a vote it is? I'm confused. What is VFD? Whats wrong with that man. Homotlfqa83 ( talk) 22:06, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Why does an article about a partisan tax proposal get to be "featured article" in the English Wikipedia?
A consumption tax is just a way to give rich people yet another tax break see http://www.geocities.com/agihard/flattax.html
But even if the "fair" tax really were fair, or even if the article started out with a reasonable criticism of the idea (which actually comes only after a lot of reading), I would not support giving ANY new political policy proposal free exposure by making it "featured article" in a not-for-profit venture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Agihard ( talk • contribs) 18:17, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
There is a user who pops up infrequently and does nothing but foment arguments on user talk and article talk pages. I checked his contribs, and of the 150 edits (roughly) that are there, only one is not a userpage or talk page of some type (and that was a TfD comment). It's not quite NOT#SOCIAL, but it's clearly something that's not related to writing an encyclopedia. Do we have a policy that covers nonconstructive use of WP? MSJapan ( talk) 17:34, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Keep on topic: Talk pages are for discussing the article, not for general conversation about the article's subject (much less other subjects). Keep discussions on the topic of how to improve the associated article. Irrelevant discussions are subject to removal.
I think we should carve wikipedia up into different sectors, like a politics sector, a general sector, a science sector, etc.. Each sector will have their own version of the wiki rules. Articles wil belong to the general sector by default. Articles can be moved to a different sector by consensus of the editors.
This may reduce some persistent disputes on some articles. E.g. the wiki articles on scientific topics have a different standard for reliable sources and verifiability than articles on politics. Usually this is not a problem, as on each article there is a consensus for using a different standard (e.g to only allow peer reviewed sources published in the leading journals).
In case of some scientific articles that attract editors who usually edit politics articles we see persistent poblems, e.g. global warming and evolution. On the Global Warming page we end up having to defend the consensus about appropriate sources over and over again. The editor who dissents in this case may have the wiki law on his side, so he can disregard the consensus. This then leads to RFCs like this one, but the outcome is usually that we are wrong as "it is merely a content dispute" :( .
So, it would be better if we had the wiki law on our side. By consensus, the global warming and all other science article would belong to a science sector of wikipedia and dissenting editors who would like some editorial by a global warming sceptic in the Wall Street Journal (a reliable source according to wikipedia) to be included, would either have to change the wiki rules for the science sector (unlikely that he would succeed in that), or find a consensus to move the article from the science sector to, e.g. the politics sector.
There are also other benifits. We can e.g. be more strict with articles about pseudoscienctific topics. They sometimes have a majority of editors who are believers in the theory. But if the article is in the science category, they would have to stick to the more stringent rules for sourcing. If they don't like that, then they can always move their article to a non-scientific sector of wikipedia. The end result is that all the articles in the science sector can be trusted to contain reliable scientific information.
Count Iblis ( talk) 23:16, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
I have noticed 3 articles on local student chapters of IEEE.
Are these notable enough, per WP:N? -- Ragib ( talk) 06:07, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
The objective behind striving for a more civilized society is to ensure security to people in all spheres of life. Recently, the world witnessed the tragic attempts, on the part of a few irrational and extremist groups, to lampoon personalities and concepts that are sacred to over a billion muslims worldwide. Perhaps those who would like to argue for "freedom of speech" should look at such problems in a broader perspective. Freedom is a beautiful concept. Yet rape, assault and murder are still considered crimes no matter how much a criminal argues that he is "free to live and do as he wills". Point being, FREEDOM is a collective concept whereby an individual is free only as long as he respects the rights of others. Hence the golden rule: Live, and let live. Similarly, it is expected of any civilized society, organization or individual to actively discourage that which is unethical.
Keeping it short and to the point, I would, in light of the above mentioned reasoning, like to propose that WIKIPEDIA make it a policy to remove any content from its webpages and online media that is repulsive to people from any religious, ethnic or racial background IF they protest and appeal for its removal.
I hope that other WIKI users will also second this proposal with the intention of respecting the sentiments of others.
Thankyou,
M M Sheikh. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.44.242.18 ( talk) 10:51, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
This is a complete non-starter and will never happen for a number of reasons. First, if we removed articles because various religious groups asked us to - this would breach our own core rules on neutrality. We don't take sides on matters of rebellious offence, we just report on them when they are notable. If we put your proposal into action - we would have to remove articles such as Piss Christ, Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy because the images and language used in the articles are offensive to some people. Extending the chain, we could be asked to remove Harry Potter simply because some religious people think that it promotes the devil. Simply put - wikipedia is a secular encyclopaedia with a neutral point of view - and there is no change of this proposal being adopted. -- Allemandtando ( talk) 11:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
like to propose that WIKIPEDIA make it a policy to remove any content from its webpages and online media that is repulsive to people from any religious, ethnic or racial background IF they protest and appeal for its removal. That all seems fairly clear to me. -- Allemandtando ( talk) 12:14, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Observing the initial poster's policy would inevitably result in the removal of all content related to Islam, the very principles and existence of which offend many practitioners of other competing faiths. I think we'd eventually have a Wikipedia consisting of nothing but kitten and rainbow articles. But even then we couldn't explain where kittens or rainbows came from, because that's going to offend someone. Postdlf ( talk) 16:41, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, our rule of neutral point of view are non-negotiable. Whitewashing religious articles for no other reason than the fact that the (insert religious text here)-thumpers see some negative material makes no sense. I find your comparisons of documenting criticism of a religion to rape, assault and murder quite amusing; the two are so separate, they don't even begin to intersect. Those are crimes. They cause physical harm to people. Documenting religious criticism in an encyclopedia only causes harm to you if you have some pretty severe psychological issues, and you'd be pretty hard-pressed to get the jurisdiction Wikipedia's servers are hosted on to make that connection. They don't operate under Sharia law there (yet).
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia without any particular religious affiliation or bias. Allowing a "Protect teh Muslimz" screen leads down a slippery slope. We aren't going to bind ourselves to some super-conservative ultra-religious viewpoint for no reason. [Conservapedia|The only religiously-affiliated encyclopedia] I know of is a complete and utter failure because of its unwillingness to follow a neutral point of view, which is necessary in any useful academic pursuit.
So, no, we aren't going to throw the principles upon which we stand for the benefit of a particular subset of readers (i.e, religious folk) who find negative material offensive. Welcome to real life; not everyone shares your personal opinion about everything, there are bound to be academic, physical, philosophical, etc, conflicts. One of the functions we have is to document those conflicts, regardless of the opinions of any of the parties involved. Celarnor Talk to me 04:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
For an example of compromise on such an issue done right (at least in my opinion), please see
Bahá'u'lláh, in the "Photograph" section. This is of course different from the
Muhammad situation in that the image in question is a photograph (an accurate depiction) rather than a painting, but I really think the editors at
Bahá'u'lláh have managed to get an "everybody wins" situation here.
Bahá'í readers get some warning (the presence of a "Photograph" heading in the table of contents should ring alarm bells), and the encyclopaedia gets a photograph of the subject. --
tiny plastic Grey Knight
⊖ 12:19, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Is there really any need to have these two separate categories? Is there any practical difference between them except for slightly different location on a sliding scale of ignorability? I quite often see debates as to whether particular pages (I think it was WP:Naming conventions most recently) ought to be marked as policies or guidelines, and I was wondering whether it made any practical difference (if not, then it's a waste of people's time maintaining and arguing about the distinction). -- Kotniski ( talk) 10:32, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
WP:IAR: ( #) Policies: ( ####### ) Guidelines: ( ###################### ) Essays: ( ############# )
I've updated the WP:Policies and guidelines page ( WP:Policies and guidelines#Policy and guideline pages) to take account of the views expressed here. Further tweaks welcome.-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:59, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Can a Wikipedia have an article that asks visitors to submit the titles of new articles they want written?
Dylan Borg ( talk) 10:09, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Because this issue comes up often and can be a source of contention, I am proposing adding a paragraph to the existing WP:NPOV/FAQ#religion with a more careful and clearer explanation of language to use and how to present the subject to implement WP:NPOV in articles involving disputes between religious views and historians/scientists etc. Doubtless the proposal can be improved. Best, -- Shirahadasha ( talk) 22:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
I've posted a proposal to semiprotect the Template: namespace at the proposals section of the Village pump. Please comment there. — Ilmari Karonen ( talk) 03:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
This is a proposal for a method that could allow controversial pages under long-term protection to be unprotected without falling back into edit-warring.
The problem of continued protection came to my attention regarding What the Bleep Do We Know!?; that article has been protected since February, resulting in a stalled article. I first proposed this method on the Bleep talk page. There were questions about related policy issues, so I thought of proposing this procedure here, to find out if it might be a good plan for long-term protected articles in general; and also to request comment on the situation at that particular article (I'll also add a link to this section on the article talk page).
Background: Page protection due to edit-warring is intended to cool the situation so that after a short time the page can return to normal editing. Some pages have so much entrenched controversy that edit-warring returns immediately, resulting in long-term protection. But long-term page protection is incompatible with the basic idea of Wikipedia, so it's preferable to find a way to unprotect those pages, if that can be done without giving in to disruption.
Milestone consensus versions: A big issue with unprotecting during edit wars is that when pages are re-protected, they can end up in worse condition than when the prior protection was removed. Admins protecting a page in emergency situations can't be expected to know the content issues, and are expected not to impose their own ideas about which is the best version.
This can be addressed by identifying the most recent milestone version for an article, so that if the page must be re-protected, the admin is provided with a specific diff to revert to, as part of the protection process.
Proposed procedure:
Milestone versions would allow unprotection without allowing edit-warriors to try and impose non-consensed changes to get the page protected on a preferred version, because any protection would always revert to an agreed version. If there is no agreed-version, then it would remain stuck at the random one that was initially protected.
Perhaps it would be useful to test this method at What the Bleep Do We Know!? to find out how it works. Maybe it has hidden problems that would be revealed in a test, but if it works, it could be applied to various articles with long-term edit warring issues. -- Jack-A-Roe ( talk) 18:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Um, protection is not supposed to protect the "right version". Protection is a temporary measure. That's the end of it. ScienceApologist ( talk) 18:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
The What the Bleep Do We Know!? article was unprotected today. Perhaps this method can be used there if edit warring resumes. -- Jack-A-Roe ( talk) 00:40, 15 July 2008 (UTC) I've posted a note for the protecting/unprotecting admin, with a link to this discussion. -- Jack-A-Roe ( talk) 00:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I think that this is a reasonable idea; the one potential problem I see is that there may be no version that everyone agrees upon. I can see mediation being used to create such an agreed-upon version by consensus, but that can be a long and painful process. I would be willing to give it a try with What the Bleep, should it become a problem again, but that would depend on the editors' agreement to participate in such a process. Keilana| Parlez ici 03:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I've recently started to get involved in reviewing articles for GA status, and I ran across FBI Buffalo Field Office, which doesn't appear to meet notability criteria since it's a branch of a larger organization. It had some media coverage for involvement with the Buffalo Six, but as far as I can tell that was an FBI operation generally that happened to involve this branch and the notability is "credited" to the main organization.
1. Is the topic notable enough for an article generally? 2. Is strict compliance with notability guidelines a requirement for good articles? 3. Is a parent article's notability sufficient to give notability to daughter articles in this case? (i.e. FBI is notable->FBI field offices notable->specific FBI field office notable).
Thoughts? SDY ( talk) 23:57, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Some changes have been proposed to WP:NPOV, particularly the "tone" section. Please join the discussion at WT:NPOV. Best, -- Shirahadasha ( talk) 01:18, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Please see: Wikipedia:Obscure public information. Please direct discussion to the talk page. -- Tango ( talk) 21:08, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't stub categories be hidden as they are for maintenance purposes? - Icewedge ( talk) 00:47, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if this has been suggested before, WP's "search engine" makes me want to kill kittens.
I would like to provoke discussion on this point I was mulling over, and I'm certainly not taking a stand either way as to what or if anything should be done about it, just that it looks like there might be a problem with how Wikipedia handles this: information such as, and this was what caused the thought to occur to me, dosages on medications, strikes me as needing protection. Is the facility for people to edit this quickly more important than the off-chance that someone opens a page a millisecond after a prankster changes a dosage information amount to have two more 0s, and ends up overdosing?
To the "anyone taking medical advice from Wikipedia needs their head checked" point of view - 1. it has been put there which implies its suitability for use, and 2., so what? Should Wikipedia not strive to be better?
I was also thinking about possible implementations of this. Can sub-areas of pages be protected with the current system? I envisage a differently-coloured box around the area on (in this example) dosage information, and edits to it need to be explicitly approved by a few people before they go through.
I have focused on the case of medicine dosages, but I'm sure this idea extends to other areas - I'm just not compos mentis enough at this point to think of any. I'd also like to apologize for not using an account... but I'm a lazy git.
Again, just a thought, I hope something good comes of someone reading it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.245.146.124 ( talk) 11:29, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
MEDMOS seems to cover this adequately, saying not to include dosage information except where exceptionally necessary. I can see the 'daily dose of aspirin for heart health' being an exampple of the notable doses exception, with proper citation, for example, but most prescription medicines shouldn't have dosage info per the MEDMOS. It may be necessary to propose a policy adjustment about this point, WP:DOSAGE, perhaps, but I'd check with the legal department first. Protecting the pages however, is a bad idea as it discourages other useful edits. ThuranX ( talk) 22:37, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
Flatscan ( talk) 21:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Filing an AfD for a contested merge was suggested in this archived AN/I thread and its preceding merge discussion. There has been opposition to taking this content dispute to AfD, which is not a listed dispute resolution step. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations was eventually filed.—add AfD Flatscan ( talk) 00:57, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I was recently involved with a disputed split/merge that was eventually nominated at AfD. Although I thought such a nomination was discouraged, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Taser controversy attracted sufficient outside input and resolved the dispute. Steps preceding the nomination:
In my opinion, AfD worked well for this example because the merge was argued on Wikipedia policy, not specific and specialized knowledge. My guess is that lack of specific interest and/or reluctance to enter an existing content dispute hurt the RfC's success.
A way of looking at AfD is that it asks this question: "Does Wikipedia need an article on this subject?" Delete and Merge/redirect both answer "no". Flatscan ( talk) 21:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Proposed mergers already exists, but it is an optional step. My experience is that there is little collected guidelines regarding merge discussions, which may lead to protracted disputes over whether the relevant procedural precedent was followed. Flatscan ( talk) 21:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Global rights usage ( | 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) 18:49, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
It has always been held as standard that disambiguation pages only showed favoritism to a topic if it defines the term. By this I will give an example: U2 (disambiguation) use to look like this. The fact that there is U2, a band, U-2 a plane, and U2, a series of boats, all notable in their individual fields, showed that there is no primary "definition" of U2. Like all other terms, proper nouns are not favored in anyway. For other instances, see this or this. The first line has always been used to define the term, but proper nouns are not definitions. The definition would be "a name".
The reason why this was put in place was to settle various edit wars between people who would think that their page is more notable in another, and the fact that Wikipedia covers the whole planet, it would be almost impossible to tell which "deserves" to be at top. Only on pages like school was a page allowed to be in the definition, since it is not a proper noun.
However, a small group of people at MoS have been trying to change this, even though the wording is quite clear that it is supposed to define the term at the top. MoS is very important, and it is strange that such radical alterations will be made to many pages. The most troubling thing is that their point of view will lead only to future edit warring. As you can see above in the disambiguation pages that I listed, there is quite a lot of standard history and consensus to verify my point, and that such systematizing of the disambiguation page is the only way to keep people from "favoring" certain pages. Ottava Rima ( talk) 22:43, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
An example of why JHunter's actions result in something completely wrong: This shows a change. The user JHunter moved just "Sam Johnson" up, so there are two "primary uses" (according to the definition of the term that he uses). This also ignores the variant "Samuel Curtis Johnson, Sr." and "Samuel Curtis Johnson, Jr. " as primary uses, because they claim that anything without a disambiguation note behind it is a primary use.
As you can see from triangle, only definitions are "primary uses" - i.e. this term means "blank" in which field (examples: "Places named Triangle include:" and "Groups named Triangle include:"). Thus, "___ is a name" is a primary use, while "____ did this" is not. Ottava Rima ( talk) 00:13, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
An actual condensed definition of Propaganda needs only three words Binary Emotional Rhetoric.
binary emotional rhetoric is a short and concise definition of propaganda that is consistent with the seven various forms of propaganda indicated by The Institute For Propaganda Analysis, The Fine Art of Propaganda -- A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches. The original Institute For Propaganda Analysis, Inc. was located at 130 Morningside Drive, New York, NY and was established in October 1937, to conduct objective, non-partisan studies in the field of propaganda and public opinion. A non-profit organization it sought to help the intelligent citizen detect and analyze propaganda, by revealing the agencies, techniques and devices used by the propagandist.
The Institute For Propaganda Analysis published the results of its researches in monthly bulletins and in special reports, of which "The Fine Art of Propaganda" -- A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches is one. At the same time, the Institute For Propaganda Analysis conducted an educational program in adult study groups, and in Junior High Schools, High Schools, and Colleges.
Officers at the Institute For Propaganda Analysis, Inc.: President, E. C. Lindeman, New York School of Social Work; Vice President, Kirtley Mather, Harvard University; Executive Secretary, Clyde R. Miller, Teachers College, Columbia University; Treasurer, Ned H. Dearborn, New York University.
Advisory Board: Frank E. Baker, Milwaukee State Teachers College; Charles A. Beard; Hadley Cantril, Princeton University; Edgar Dale, Ohio State University; Leonard Doob, Yale University; Paul Douglas, University of Chicago; Gladys Murphy Graham, University of California at Los Angeles; F. Ernest Johnson, Teachers College, Columbia University; Grayson N. Kefauver, Stanford University; William Heard Kilpatrick; Robert S. Lynd, Columbia University; Malcom S. MacLean, University of Minnesota; Ernest O. Melby, Northwestern University; James E. Mendenhall, Stephens; Robert K. Speer, New York University.
Staff: Editorial Director, Harold Lavine; Educational Director, Violet Edwards
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, "The Fine Art of Propaganda", A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches, Edited by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee, Copyright, 1939, Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. New York -- Typography by Robert Josephy, Printed in the United States of America by Quinn & Boden Company, Inc., Rahway, N. J.
Binary Emotional Rhetoric was derived from an exhaustive analysis of "The Fine Art of Propaganda", A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches and each type or use of propaganda can be broken down to three words:
Propaganda = binary emotional rhetoric
Binary emotional rhetoric is a proper easy to understand definition.
Wikipedia's editing out of this simple easy to understand definition of propaganda is obfuscating the definition of propaganda, rather than making the definition easily understood by the common masses for use in propaganda analysis.
It is plain to see that it was the intention of The Institute For Propaganda Analysis to make a way for all U. S. citizens to be able to understand how propaganda is used.
Since it has been determined by Congress that propaganda can no longer be used against American citizens of the United States, it is necessary that an easy definition be available.
No content listed violates any copyright. No text was copied from any other website. There is no reason to delete this content. <personal information redacted>
MarthaA ( talk) 00:42, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
MarthaA ( talk) 00:42, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
The first sentence of the September 11, 2001 attacks article is original research. Please give advice.
In 2004, there was debate on what to call the article. The current article name was the name selected.
Wikipedia Manual of Style suggests that usually we use the title of the article in the first sentence of the article. However, in this case it is original research because if you look at CNN, BBC, CBC, CBS, they do not use the term "September 11, 2001 attacks". WP uses it like a name of a TV episode, very unencyclopedic. Google "September 11, 2001 attacks" and only the wikipedia article shows. On the first google page, there is NO links to CNN, BBC, CBC, CBS, etc.
We should avoid original research and not use the name of a made up title in the first sentence. For example, the original research version reads "The September 11, 2001 attacks (often referred to as 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States. It is OR to use a made up name in this context.
Better suggestions include: On September 11, 2001 (often referred to as 9/11), there were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States.
This is a subtle difference but it avoid the subtle OR. OR, even subtle OR, is strictly prohibited by WP.
The current version is also bad prose because it defines "attacks" as "...attacks". This is bad but not as bad as the OR violation. Presumptive ( talk) 03:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
I was involved in the earlier debate. The attacks happened in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC, all in the United States. The characterization of them by the local and national authorities carries substantial weight in how to describe them in the Wikipedia. It was not an OR synthesis to describe them as it appeared then and now. patsw ( talk) 12:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
Forgive my curiosity, Presumptive, but what would be the ideal title of this article in your opinion? — CharlotteWebb 18:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
Google introduced Knol. Can we use the information on it and cite it as a reference in Wikipedia? -- Quest for Truth ( talk) 10:42, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Throwaway accounts can be using Wikipedia to transmit secret messages to each other all over the world, By posting them as articles that are going to be speedy deleted. Its a good way to send messages anonymously and secretly. Moop Fan 17 ( talk) 18:20, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Speedy deletion has a number of benefits to the encyclopædia - the removal of copyright violations and biography of living people violations (either of which, if allowed to remain on Wikipedia, could imperil the project legally), and the removal of patent nonsense, which has no potential to improve the Wikipedia. It also has a number of drawbacks, as its over-zealous use can drive off new editors, or embitter more established editors. I would like to propose that Speedy deletion be restricted to cases of Copyright violation, BLP issues, and patent nonsense/gibberish, and prod adopted in its place where there are questions as to notability. This change would retain the beneficial and protective aspects of the speedy deletion process, while enabling editors to address notability concerns in a more reasonable time-scale. DuncanHill ( talk) 13:31, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm about to create a new article, and notice that the user interface is helpfully giving me the first sentence from a series of articles that have been deleted. I'll redact the key information: one choice entry reads "??? ??? is a douchebag who goes to ??? High School. He jacks off 5 to 7 times a day and is a flaming homosexual.Furthermore, everone ha...' ".
If I were ??? ???, I might be a bit upset that visitors to this otherwise blank page are greeted with this & four other versions in similar vein - "He tries his hardest to be normal, but never quite succeeds."
Is there a purpose in providing this log at the top of blank pages which have deletion histories? When do privacy concerns outweigh the supposed advantage? Would anyone like to discuss this with the mediawiki developers? -- Tagishsimon (talk) 20:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
There is a proposal to autoconfirm admins. Best, NonvocalScream ( talk) 21:24, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
I've recently come across problems where there have been conflicts between the Protection system and the AFD process. Articles undergoing the AFD process have been fully protected for other reasons. However as part of the AFD process is to permit the editing of the article in order to improve it so it can be kept. While the 'editprotected' template can be used this is slow, cumbersome, not newbie-friendly and requires an admin to implement which discourages attempts to improve the article. There is also a problem of perceived bias. If an article is AFD'd then protected it could appear that the protection is there to prevent improvement of the article to ensure it's deletion - it would be very easy for an admin with a personal bias against an article to AFD it (or ask another editor to do so), protect the article to prevent improvement and deny 'editprotected' requests in order to get the article deleted.
I believe we must formulate a new policy to prevent this conflict. If an article is undergoing AFD then as a matter of policy Full Protection must NOT be applied to allow all the functions of the AFD process to be exercised. Likewise any attempt to AFD an article via the 'editprotected' template must be denied outright. Semi-protection may be appropiate but should be used with caution if the article is undergoing AFD and should not be used unless absolutely necessary.
I invite all interested editors to comment. Exxolon ( talk) 19:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Discussion about the real life implementation of this guideline is at its talk page. Please contribute with your comments. Lakinekaki ( talk) 00:01, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
If it's downgraded to an essay, than we'll truly know something problematic affecting alot of mainspace articles. Beam 03:31, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
(outdent)Good sir, I assure you, I understand. I feel that WP:Fringe serves a purpose that WP:Weight and WP:NPOV can't serve alone. As i say, someone could base weight on the the amount of google hits or because 40 professors talk about it. That's where WP:Fringe comes in and saves us all. Beam 04:41, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Assuming that I'm the primary author, can I re-use an article I've written for Wikipedia for Knol? If so, should I go-about it by getting permission from other invested contributers? 142.9.1.100 ( talk) 12:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I asked Mike Godwin this question. The GFDL/CC license incompatibility is a secondary, rather minor, issue. The big issue is that in order to contribute to google knol, you have to grant Google a non-transferable you-can-do-whatever-you-want-with-this style license. If you aren't the copyright holder of the Wikipedia material in question, you cannot do this. Raul654 ( talk) 18:08, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Following from the WP:GEOBOT proposal a few weeks ago, I'm trying to gather a consensus for a new guideline on [[Wikipedia:Notability (Geographic locations). I've started a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(Geographic_locations)#Using_an_Atlas_as_a_source_for_notability and would appreciate any comments (there not here!) Thanks AndrewRT( Talk) 13:49, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Citing_sources#The name of the publisher, Wikipedia talk:Reusing Wikipedia content, Wikimedia Communications Committee's talk page.
As Wikipedia matures there is a growing problem with plagiarism of Wikipedia articles, and how it affects Wikipedia.
If a reliable sources (not a mirror) uses Wikipedia information and does not cite Wikipedia as a source, unless one is very aware of the history of an article this can lead to loops where information deleted as unsourced, and is then put back on the page in all innocence by a new editor because it is in a reliable source. I think we need a mechanism to record these copies that appear in a reliable source when they do not credit Wikipedia content.
Now there may well be a page that records such usage. But if there is then it needs to be more widely publicised (what is it?). If there is not then I think we need to create one. One possible format would be that of Wikipedia:Press coverage. -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 09:52, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Having though about it a little more I think a better way to go would be to distribute the information by producing a template for the top of the article's talk page (with a category). Then it would be available to editors who edit the page but are not aware of the existence of a particular list page. -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 12:53, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Just a quick announcement; I've written an essay that might be of interest to watchers of this page, whose responses are more than welcome. Thanks, Skomorokh 15:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Recurring items on ITN ( | 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) 18:49, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I find that it is quite confusing when a disambiguation page does not end with "(disambiguation)", and especially when the page's title followed by "(disambiguation)" does not redirect to it. For instance, although Mole (disambiguation) redirects to Mole, there is no such page (at time of writing) as Taxi (disambiguation), and the disambiguation page is, instead, Taxi. This is annoying when you are looking for an article in which a word is used in what is not its most obvious context and type Something (disambiguation) hoping that will show you where to go, only to find that in this particular case, Something does not talk about what everyone first thinks of when they think of the word, unlike Thingy, which does; but is, rather, the disambiguation page.
This inconsistency can be quite irritating at times and so I suggest that Something always talk about the most common definition of "Something" and Something (disambiguation) give you a list of "Something"-related articles. So, could someone make a bot that automatically changes disambiguation pages like Something (or, to give a specific example, Taxi) to Something (disambiguation)? It Is Me Here ( talk) 16:34, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Taxi (disambiguation). It's not a redlink anymore, because WP:BEANS are cool. SDY ( talk) 21:41, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Hate to put in a pramgatic issue. Even if we adopt this, how can this ever be consistently implemented. If we cannot enforce it; or "bot" it, I don't think this will fly. Arnoutf ( talk) 21:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Why would we want to do this? This proposal is far more confusing then our current set up -- T- rex 14:58, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't know that it's worth moving all of them, but I do think it would be worthwhile to make sure that if Foo is a disambig page then Foo (disambiguation) always exists and points to it. A bot could create those redirects without much trouble. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:18, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
If agreement forms I can do the bot work. Here are possible options that have been mentioned.
I'm interested to know how people feel about those three options. I think that #2 is slightly preferable to #3 because it leaves things in a more uniform state, and that #4 adds unnecessary complexity. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:38, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
One problem with reversing the current set up (no primary topic yields a disambiguation page at "base name" and, when needed, a redirect from "base name (disambiguation)") to the new proposal (no primary topic yields a redirect "base name" to "base name (disambiguation)" is that it will likely result in more edit wars at the base name redirect as editors continue to change the target from the redirect (no primary topic) to the article they feel is the primary topic. Since I don't see the additional benefits as described above (the two solutions seem otherwise equivalent), I don't think a change in the setup is needed. -- JHunterJ ( talk) 20:09, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Do nothing. The fourth option requires assuming every new casual browser to Wikipedia learn a system to fully use our site, which is defintiely not good. rearranging crap just for sake of uniformity isn't needed either. Lift and Mercury are perfect cases for leaving things alone. The casual user comes in, types in one of those, and gets taken right to where they need to be, a list of pages that might be what they need. I personally saw a friend's parent get bounced to a disambig and immediately type in their topic again, not understanding it at first. After explanation, he got it, but why should he have that to begin with? In cases of equal likelihood of intent, then using it as a redirect is fine as is, otherwise hatnote to the disambig, like we already do. Don't mess with success when there are plenty of flaws in this system. ThuranX ( talk) 22:30, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
For interested parties, a discussion regarding the bot is now going on at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 108#Bot creation of disambiguation redirects. Cheers, -- Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 03:50, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Not all disambiguation pages should end with "(disambiguation)". Take the Mercury example. I reckon that Mercury (element) and Mercury (planet) are equally popular, and if not, there are other topics that are. If two things are equally notable, then how do you decide which one gets the non-bracketed page, and which gets a bracket? You don't. Both get the brackets and then you get something like Mercury. I don't mind a bot coming along and redirecting Mercury (disambiguation) to Mercury (which already does by the way, but that's just an example. Deamon138 ( talk) 22:13, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
It appears that whenever articles are published in the Wikipedia that cover certain topics they are attacked by every means from nomination for deletion to making the article so nebulous that it might as well not be published. This effort appears to be carried out by members of various special interest groups for such artificial reasons as "protecting trade secrets" at best and "protecting documentation sales" at worst. Is this particular threat against Wikipedia article existence and viability recognized by the administration of the Wikipedia? -- adaptron ( talk) 04:58, 26 July 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.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX, AY, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, BJ, BK, BL, BM, BN, BO · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191
I was concerned that some categories are getting diffused unnecessarily, and that we might be hurting ordinary users' ability to search intuitively. So I made an overview-table of the current "diffusion-state" (with suggested "improvements") of major biography categories here: Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Category diffusion overview. - 84user ( talk) 03:26, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Up until 7 October 2004 Wikipedia:Naming conventions carried a top note that said
This was removed by user:UninvitedCompany and relpaced with Category:Wikipedia official policy. On 12 May 2005 user: Radiant! removed the category and added a {{ policy}} top box.
I have put in a WP:RM to move Wikipedia:Naming conventions to some other name, because before Wikipedia:Naming conventions became policy, the page used to say "Naming conventions is a list of guidelines on how to appropriately create and name pages." so the current name was appropriate, but once it became policy, the name is not as clear as it could be. In line with the hierarchy that other policies and guidelines have, I suggest that this page becomes the unambiguous policy page and that the guidelines remain clearly guidelines. Currently it is difficult for a new editor to see clearly that the naming convention is policy with detailed guidelines to explain the policy page rather than a sometimes conflicting amorphous mass.
The discussion for the requested move is at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Requested move— Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 09:56, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
I've demoted the following three sections as false alarms; the {policy} template format was tweaked slightly, but the policies have not been demoted. Nothing to see here. TenOfAllTrades( talk) 18:57, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content no longer marked as a policy
Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Libel no longer marked as a policy
Wikipedia:Libel ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Privacy policy no longer marked as a policy
Wikipedia:Privacy policy ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:51, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Proposal to change CSD G7. Thanks. Carcharoth ( talk) 06:16, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
What is this page?
I saw histories on the examples I checked, back to 2003. I wonder how they ended up mirroring the logo. -- Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) ( Talk) 16:48, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
For featured articles, is there a limit to how noteworthy a topic can be before it has much of a chance at gaining FA status. For instance, if a random un-notable village was detailed enough to provide all the information it could possibly provide from the very limited sources out there on it, then could that article reach FA status? I know that FAs tend to be long, but hypothetically, is what I ask, possible? Deamon138 ( talk) 23:37, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
In Ventilation (architecture), there is an image showing how air goes in some vents and out others. I was concerned, however, when I saw how the demonstration was done: by holding a flame up to the ventilator. The "air going in" image shows the flame actually disappearing between the louvers of the vent.
Allowing a flame to be sucked into a ventilator is an extremely foolhardy thing to do. Add some dust (which vent ducts are often filled with) and a bit of bad luck, and you've got a very rapidly-building and hard-to-fight fire. If I advocated that technique to someone, and they then burned down their house, I could probably be found liable. Even if I couldn't be found legally culpable (e.g. I offered an effective disclaimer) it still would seem to be a bad thing to do.
So, here's the policy question: should there be a policy to avoid describing or showing risky behavior when that behavior does not usefully promote the message of the article? Here, for instance, the use of flame has nothing to do with the articles that use this picture. As an alternative, the picture could show the smoke from a cigarette, or the movement of a piece of thin foil or cellophane.
Other (perhaps synthetic) examples that would concern me: someone looking down the barrel of a gun to see the bullet, showing the power of electricity by sparking two household-voltage wires together, showing that some clothes are gasoline-proof by pouring gasoline on them while being worn, someone using a wood lathe whose tie is dangling over the rotating piece, working under a car where the car is clearly unsafely supported, etc.
Examples of behaviors that should not be excluded: a bomb disposal technician at work, a forest fire, a battle, an article on extreme sports, emergency surgery.
Does excluding content such as this seem like a worthwhile policy? If so, could the policy be worded so as properly draw the line (wherever that line should be)?
Dan Griscom ( talk) 20:07, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
(Apologies if this is the wrong venue.) As you may have noticed, we are faced with a growing number of "international reaction" sections and articles. Some of these are quite useful ( International reaction to the 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence), others less enlightening ( International reactions to the 2006 North Korean nuclear test). Anyway, I wonder if it would be wise to try and craft some sort of policy indicating that some international reactions simply are not relevant. A good example was on the Main Page recently: 2008 Indian embassy bombing in Kabul. Clearly the reactions of India and Afghanistan matter. Some of those listed, like Pakistan's and the US', may matter. But can we agree that Bulgaria's and Vietnam's, with all due respect, do not matter? Neither country is in the vicinity of the countries involved, neither is a great power, neither has especially close relations with either, neither said anything remotely unexpected, etc.
Now, I know the obvious question is how exactly one chooses which reactions are notable without violating WP:NPOV. To be sure, there will always be a grey area. But I think it's worth the effort; otherwise we'll see increasing numbers of lists like the North Korea one, which essentially consists of dozens of countries either "condemning" or "strongly condemning" the test. Biruitorul Talk 20:22, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I think that I, and probably a few others such as Dab, Pax, and BalkanFever, am/are in the unique position to inform the pump about such things. The International Reaction to Kosovo article is a fantastic article that allows the main articles such as Kosovo, and Serbia, to remain clutter and clusterf*ck free. It is so vital, and I suggest that no one take any action against the International Reaction article, at least for Kosovo. Please.
Beam 01:56, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
There is no need for new guidelines or policy for such articles. That's Instruction Creep, and it's baaaa baaaa baaaaad. Beam 01:57, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Proposing clarification of when religious sources can be used as reliable sources for religious subjects and viewpoints. The intent of the proposed example is to clarify and explain existing policy, not to make a change. Best, -- Shirahadasha ( talk) 21:08, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I've created an RfC on this one, and attempted to illustrate what I view as the key issue to address in evolving Wikipedia's management of biographies of living people through a conversation you can see here - all thoughts most welcome... Privatemusings ( talk) 02:59, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
With the defamation suit finished and dismissed, there is no longer any rationale for keeping the Barbara Bauer article deleted, unless we are establishing a policy that no critical information about living persons may be included. The article was sourced, and there was a consensus to keep, but it was deleted. I would like to propose that we either follow policy and restore this article, or create new policy under which its continued deletion might be legitimate. Mr. IP ( talk) 15:51, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
On the AFD, I said I wanted to keep article but I did not put bold "keep". Now the next couple people did, some bold "delete" so it looks like a vote roster. why do they do that? Does my comment count less or won't be counted if i dont stick to the format? Homotlfqa83 ( talk) 15:38, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Earlier today, I came across an article that had commentary added right in the middle of it (not as invisible comments, but as article text). I replaced this all with a {{dubious}} tag—it was basically a debate of the validity of a piece of information, with both sides having added references into the article as footnotes—and moved all this commentary to the talk page. I'd like to be able to cite the appropriate policy to show that comments such as these are to be placed on the talk page and not within the article. However, I'm not finding a policy that says anything like this at all! Is this just an unwritten rule, or is it documented somewhere? The commentary isn't an NPOV issue, which would be easier to deal with; rather, it is somewhat an issue of verifiability. The type of argument is irrelevant though, as it is not being dealt with in the appropriate manner. A reference to any policy, guideline, anything at ALL would be lovely! — Skittleys ( talk) 18:33, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Mining/Assessment ( | 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) 18:50, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone know of any cases on any pages were editors were blocked for deleting referenced content?
I am not referring to simple vandalism: I am talking about an editor removing a large section of referenced text against consensus repeatedly.
What policy would this fall under?
I am not looking for reasons why blocking is not possible here, I am looking for cases and policy when blocking editors for deleting referenced content is possible.
If you are not familiar with any cases or policies, I kindly request that you please don't respond. thank you. 76.111.17.14 ( talk) 02:46, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Is there a Wikipedia theme song? If not, we should write one. It would foster our sense of a community, like a fraternity song. Homotlfqa83 ( talk) 23:17, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Oh thanks. But those are all jokey songs set to popular tunes. I was wondering if we had an original community song, and one with a serious bent. Homotlfqa83 ( talk) 15:57, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
(I couldn't work out which policy this most closely related to - feel free to redirect me if this isn't the best place for this.)
If we include in an article a quote which was originally spoken, and the source from which we obtain it contains a written error, is it OK to correct the error?
The specific example I have in mind is a quote in David Berlinski, which currently reads "The interesting argument about the whale [...] is that if its origins where [ sic] land-based originally..." The mistaken "where" is in the written source we have taken the quote from, the [ sic] has been added.
It seems clear to me that the error marked with [ sic] was introduced in transcription, and is not part of the original quote; the correct word and the mistaken word are pronounced quite similarly, so I don't think it would be possible to definitely determine in speech that one had been used in place of the other. This being the case, it seems wrong to mark it as [ sic], suggesting that it is a mistake on the part of the speaker. (This is distinct from the situation if, for example, the quote was "I were [ sic] walking down the street", which would probably indicate a mistake in the original speech.)
I'm always wary about altering direct quotes, though, so I thought I'd seek more opinions. Thoughts? TSP ( talk) 09:33, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I came across Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Typos in quotes, which is a simpler variant of this question. I haven't searched the archives there, but I would not be surprised if it's come up before. Flatscan ( talk) 02:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
-- Mancini ( talk) 16:15, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
The more pernicious problem is that the various language wikipedias each use distinct editorial policies and guidelines. Few look for the level of attribution seen on en, resulting in article translations into English that are often of disappointing quality. LeadSongDog ( talk) 16:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Whats up with people "voting" in bold at the start of each comment on afd? I thought it was not a vote. Or is a vote it is? I'm confused. What is VFD? Whats wrong with that man. Homotlfqa83 ( talk) 22:06, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Why does an article about a partisan tax proposal get to be "featured article" in the English Wikipedia?
A consumption tax is just a way to give rich people yet another tax break see http://www.geocities.com/agihard/flattax.html
But even if the "fair" tax really were fair, or even if the article started out with a reasonable criticism of the idea (which actually comes only after a lot of reading), I would not support giving ANY new political policy proposal free exposure by making it "featured article" in a not-for-profit venture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Agihard ( talk • contribs) 18:17, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
There is a user who pops up infrequently and does nothing but foment arguments on user talk and article talk pages. I checked his contribs, and of the 150 edits (roughly) that are there, only one is not a userpage or talk page of some type (and that was a TfD comment). It's not quite NOT#SOCIAL, but it's clearly something that's not related to writing an encyclopedia. Do we have a policy that covers nonconstructive use of WP? MSJapan ( talk) 17:34, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Keep on topic: Talk pages are for discussing the article, not for general conversation about the article's subject (much less other subjects). Keep discussions on the topic of how to improve the associated article. Irrelevant discussions are subject to removal.
I think we should carve wikipedia up into different sectors, like a politics sector, a general sector, a science sector, etc.. Each sector will have their own version of the wiki rules. Articles wil belong to the general sector by default. Articles can be moved to a different sector by consensus of the editors.
This may reduce some persistent disputes on some articles. E.g. the wiki articles on scientific topics have a different standard for reliable sources and verifiability than articles on politics. Usually this is not a problem, as on each article there is a consensus for using a different standard (e.g to only allow peer reviewed sources published in the leading journals).
In case of some scientific articles that attract editors who usually edit politics articles we see persistent poblems, e.g. global warming and evolution. On the Global Warming page we end up having to defend the consensus about appropriate sources over and over again. The editor who dissents in this case may have the wiki law on his side, so he can disregard the consensus. This then leads to RFCs like this one, but the outcome is usually that we are wrong as "it is merely a content dispute" :( .
So, it would be better if we had the wiki law on our side. By consensus, the global warming and all other science article would belong to a science sector of wikipedia and dissenting editors who would like some editorial by a global warming sceptic in the Wall Street Journal (a reliable source according to wikipedia) to be included, would either have to change the wiki rules for the science sector (unlikely that he would succeed in that), or find a consensus to move the article from the science sector to, e.g. the politics sector.
There are also other benifits. We can e.g. be more strict with articles about pseudoscienctific topics. They sometimes have a majority of editors who are believers in the theory. But if the article is in the science category, they would have to stick to the more stringent rules for sourcing. If they don't like that, then they can always move their article to a non-scientific sector of wikipedia. The end result is that all the articles in the science sector can be trusted to contain reliable scientific information.
Count Iblis ( talk) 23:16, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
I have noticed 3 articles on local student chapters of IEEE.
Are these notable enough, per WP:N? -- Ragib ( talk) 06:07, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
The objective behind striving for a more civilized society is to ensure security to people in all spheres of life. Recently, the world witnessed the tragic attempts, on the part of a few irrational and extremist groups, to lampoon personalities and concepts that are sacred to over a billion muslims worldwide. Perhaps those who would like to argue for "freedom of speech" should look at such problems in a broader perspective. Freedom is a beautiful concept. Yet rape, assault and murder are still considered crimes no matter how much a criminal argues that he is "free to live and do as he wills". Point being, FREEDOM is a collective concept whereby an individual is free only as long as he respects the rights of others. Hence the golden rule: Live, and let live. Similarly, it is expected of any civilized society, organization or individual to actively discourage that which is unethical.
Keeping it short and to the point, I would, in light of the above mentioned reasoning, like to propose that WIKIPEDIA make it a policy to remove any content from its webpages and online media that is repulsive to people from any religious, ethnic or racial background IF they protest and appeal for its removal.
I hope that other WIKI users will also second this proposal with the intention of respecting the sentiments of others.
Thankyou,
M M Sheikh. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.44.242.18 ( talk) 10:51, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
This is a complete non-starter and will never happen for a number of reasons. First, if we removed articles because various religious groups asked us to - this would breach our own core rules on neutrality. We don't take sides on matters of rebellious offence, we just report on them when they are notable. If we put your proposal into action - we would have to remove articles such as Piss Christ, Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy because the images and language used in the articles are offensive to some people. Extending the chain, we could be asked to remove Harry Potter simply because some religious people think that it promotes the devil. Simply put - wikipedia is a secular encyclopaedia with a neutral point of view - and there is no change of this proposal being adopted. -- Allemandtando ( talk) 11:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
like to propose that WIKIPEDIA make it a policy to remove any content from its webpages and online media that is repulsive to people from any religious, ethnic or racial background IF they protest and appeal for its removal. That all seems fairly clear to me. -- Allemandtando ( talk) 12:14, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Observing the initial poster's policy would inevitably result in the removal of all content related to Islam, the very principles and existence of which offend many practitioners of other competing faiths. I think we'd eventually have a Wikipedia consisting of nothing but kitten and rainbow articles. But even then we couldn't explain where kittens or rainbows came from, because that's going to offend someone. Postdlf ( talk) 16:41, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, our rule of neutral point of view are non-negotiable. Whitewashing religious articles for no other reason than the fact that the (insert religious text here)-thumpers see some negative material makes no sense. I find your comparisons of documenting criticism of a religion to rape, assault and murder quite amusing; the two are so separate, they don't even begin to intersect. Those are crimes. They cause physical harm to people. Documenting religious criticism in an encyclopedia only causes harm to you if you have some pretty severe psychological issues, and you'd be pretty hard-pressed to get the jurisdiction Wikipedia's servers are hosted on to make that connection. They don't operate under Sharia law there (yet).
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia without any particular religious affiliation or bias. Allowing a "Protect teh Muslimz" screen leads down a slippery slope. We aren't going to bind ourselves to some super-conservative ultra-religious viewpoint for no reason. [Conservapedia|The only religiously-affiliated encyclopedia] I know of is a complete and utter failure because of its unwillingness to follow a neutral point of view, which is necessary in any useful academic pursuit.
So, no, we aren't going to throw the principles upon which we stand for the benefit of a particular subset of readers (i.e, religious folk) who find negative material offensive. Welcome to real life; not everyone shares your personal opinion about everything, there are bound to be academic, physical, philosophical, etc, conflicts. One of the functions we have is to document those conflicts, regardless of the opinions of any of the parties involved. Celarnor Talk to me 04:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
For an example of compromise on such an issue done right (at least in my opinion), please see
Bahá'u'lláh, in the "Photograph" section. This is of course different from the
Muhammad situation in that the image in question is a photograph (an accurate depiction) rather than a painting, but I really think the editors at
Bahá'u'lláh have managed to get an "everybody wins" situation here.
Bahá'í readers get some warning (the presence of a "Photograph" heading in the table of contents should ring alarm bells), and the encyclopaedia gets a photograph of the subject. --
tiny plastic Grey Knight
⊖ 12:19, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Is there really any need to have these two separate categories? Is there any practical difference between them except for slightly different location on a sliding scale of ignorability? I quite often see debates as to whether particular pages (I think it was WP:Naming conventions most recently) ought to be marked as policies or guidelines, and I was wondering whether it made any practical difference (if not, then it's a waste of people's time maintaining and arguing about the distinction). -- Kotniski ( talk) 10:32, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
WP:IAR: ( #) Policies: ( ####### ) Guidelines: ( ###################### ) Essays: ( ############# )
I've updated the WP:Policies and guidelines page ( WP:Policies and guidelines#Policy and guideline pages) to take account of the views expressed here. Further tweaks welcome.-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:59, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Can a Wikipedia have an article that asks visitors to submit the titles of new articles they want written?
Dylan Borg ( talk) 10:09, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Because this issue comes up often and can be a source of contention, I am proposing adding a paragraph to the existing WP:NPOV/FAQ#religion with a more careful and clearer explanation of language to use and how to present the subject to implement WP:NPOV in articles involving disputes between religious views and historians/scientists etc. Doubtless the proposal can be improved. Best, -- Shirahadasha ( talk) 22:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
I've posted a proposal to semiprotect the Template: namespace at the proposals section of the Village pump. Please comment there. — Ilmari Karonen ( talk) 03:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
This is a proposal for a method that could allow controversial pages under long-term protection to be unprotected without falling back into edit-warring.
The problem of continued protection came to my attention regarding What the Bleep Do We Know!?; that article has been protected since February, resulting in a stalled article. I first proposed this method on the Bleep talk page. There were questions about related policy issues, so I thought of proposing this procedure here, to find out if it might be a good plan for long-term protected articles in general; and also to request comment on the situation at that particular article (I'll also add a link to this section on the article talk page).
Background: Page protection due to edit-warring is intended to cool the situation so that after a short time the page can return to normal editing. Some pages have so much entrenched controversy that edit-warring returns immediately, resulting in long-term protection. But long-term page protection is incompatible with the basic idea of Wikipedia, so it's preferable to find a way to unprotect those pages, if that can be done without giving in to disruption.
Milestone consensus versions: A big issue with unprotecting during edit wars is that when pages are re-protected, they can end up in worse condition than when the prior protection was removed. Admins protecting a page in emergency situations can't be expected to know the content issues, and are expected not to impose their own ideas about which is the best version.
This can be addressed by identifying the most recent milestone version for an article, so that if the page must be re-protected, the admin is provided with a specific diff to revert to, as part of the protection process.
Proposed procedure:
Milestone versions would allow unprotection without allowing edit-warriors to try and impose non-consensed changes to get the page protected on a preferred version, because any protection would always revert to an agreed version. If there is no agreed-version, then it would remain stuck at the random one that was initially protected.
Perhaps it would be useful to test this method at What the Bleep Do We Know!? to find out how it works. Maybe it has hidden problems that would be revealed in a test, but if it works, it could be applied to various articles with long-term edit warring issues. -- Jack-A-Roe ( talk) 18:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Um, protection is not supposed to protect the "right version". Protection is a temporary measure. That's the end of it. ScienceApologist ( talk) 18:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
The What the Bleep Do We Know!? article was unprotected today. Perhaps this method can be used there if edit warring resumes. -- Jack-A-Roe ( talk) 00:40, 15 July 2008 (UTC) I've posted a note for the protecting/unprotecting admin, with a link to this discussion. -- Jack-A-Roe ( talk) 00:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I think that this is a reasonable idea; the one potential problem I see is that there may be no version that everyone agrees upon. I can see mediation being used to create such an agreed-upon version by consensus, but that can be a long and painful process. I would be willing to give it a try with What the Bleep, should it become a problem again, but that would depend on the editors' agreement to participate in such a process. Keilana| Parlez ici 03:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I've recently started to get involved in reviewing articles for GA status, and I ran across FBI Buffalo Field Office, which doesn't appear to meet notability criteria since it's a branch of a larger organization. It had some media coverage for involvement with the Buffalo Six, but as far as I can tell that was an FBI operation generally that happened to involve this branch and the notability is "credited" to the main organization.
1. Is the topic notable enough for an article generally? 2. Is strict compliance with notability guidelines a requirement for good articles? 3. Is a parent article's notability sufficient to give notability to daughter articles in this case? (i.e. FBI is notable->FBI field offices notable->specific FBI field office notable).
Thoughts? SDY ( talk) 23:57, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Some changes have been proposed to WP:NPOV, particularly the "tone" section. Please join the discussion at WT:NPOV. Best, -- Shirahadasha ( talk) 01:18, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Please see: Wikipedia:Obscure public information. Please direct discussion to the talk page. -- Tango ( talk) 21:08, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't stub categories be hidden as they are for maintenance purposes? - Icewedge ( talk) 00:47, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if this has been suggested before, WP's "search engine" makes me want to kill kittens.
I would like to provoke discussion on this point I was mulling over, and I'm certainly not taking a stand either way as to what or if anything should be done about it, just that it looks like there might be a problem with how Wikipedia handles this: information such as, and this was what caused the thought to occur to me, dosages on medications, strikes me as needing protection. Is the facility for people to edit this quickly more important than the off-chance that someone opens a page a millisecond after a prankster changes a dosage information amount to have two more 0s, and ends up overdosing?
To the "anyone taking medical advice from Wikipedia needs their head checked" point of view - 1. it has been put there which implies its suitability for use, and 2., so what? Should Wikipedia not strive to be better?
I was also thinking about possible implementations of this. Can sub-areas of pages be protected with the current system? I envisage a differently-coloured box around the area on (in this example) dosage information, and edits to it need to be explicitly approved by a few people before they go through.
I have focused on the case of medicine dosages, but I'm sure this idea extends to other areas - I'm just not compos mentis enough at this point to think of any. I'd also like to apologize for not using an account... but I'm a lazy git.
Again, just a thought, I hope something good comes of someone reading it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.245.146.124 ( talk) 11:29, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
MEDMOS seems to cover this adequately, saying not to include dosage information except where exceptionally necessary. I can see the 'daily dose of aspirin for heart health' being an exampple of the notable doses exception, with proper citation, for example, but most prescription medicines shouldn't have dosage info per the MEDMOS. It may be necessary to propose a policy adjustment about this point, WP:DOSAGE, perhaps, but I'd check with the legal department first. Protecting the pages however, is a bad idea as it discourages other useful edits. ThuranX ( talk) 22:37, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
Flatscan ( talk) 21:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Filing an AfD for a contested merge was suggested in this archived AN/I thread and its preceding merge discussion. There has been opposition to taking this content dispute to AfD, which is not a listed dispute resolution step. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations was eventually filed.—add AfD Flatscan ( talk) 00:57, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I was recently involved with a disputed split/merge that was eventually nominated at AfD. Although I thought such a nomination was discouraged, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Taser controversy attracted sufficient outside input and resolved the dispute. Steps preceding the nomination:
In my opinion, AfD worked well for this example because the merge was argued on Wikipedia policy, not specific and specialized knowledge. My guess is that lack of specific interest and/or reluctance to enter an existing content dispute hurt the RfC's success.
A way of looking at AfD is that it asks this question: "Does Wikipedia need an article on this subject?" Delete and Merge/redirect both answer "no". Flatscan ( talk) 21:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Proposed mergers already exists, but it is an optional step. My experience is that there is little collected guidelines regarding merge discussions, which may lead to protracted disputes over whether the relevant procedural precedent was followed. Flatscan ( talk) 21:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Global rights usage ( | 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) 18:49, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
It has always been held as standard that disambiguation pages only showed favoritism to a topic if it defines the term. By this I will give an example: U2 (disambiguation) use to look like this. The fact that there is U2, a band, U-2 a plane, and U2, a series of boats, all notable in their individual fields, showed that there is no primary "definition" of U2. Like all other terms, proper nouns are not favored in anyway. For other instances, see this or this. The first line has always been used to define the term, but proper nouns are not definitions. The definition would be "a name".
The reason why this was put in place was to settle various edit wars between people who would think that their page is more notable in another, and the fact that Wikipedia covers the whole planet, it would be almost impossible to tell which "deserves" to be at top. Only on pages like school was a page allowed to be in the definition, since it is not a proper noun.
However, a small group of people at MoS have been trying to change this, even though the wording is quite clear that it is supposed to define the term at the top. MoS is very important, and it is strange that such radical alterations will be made to many pages. The most troubling thing is that their point of view will lead only to future edit warring. As you can see above in the disambiguation pages that I listed, there is quite a lot of standard history and consensus to verify my point, and that such systematizing of the disambiguation page is the only way to keep people from "favoring" certain pages. Ottava Rima ( talk) 22:43, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
An example of why JHunter's actions result in something completely wrong: This shows a change. The user JHunter moved just "Sam Johnson" up, so there are two "primary uses" (according to the definition of the term that he uses). This also ignores the variant "Samuel Curtis Johnson, Sr." and "Samuel Curtis Johnson, Jr. " as primary uses, because they claim that anything without a disambiguation note behind it is a primary use.
As you can see from triangle, only definitions are "primary uses" - i.e. this term means "blank" in which field (examples: "Places named Triangle include:" and "Groups named Triangle include:"). Thus, "___ is a name" is a primary use, while "____ did this" is not. Ottava Rima ( talk) 00:13, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
An actual condensed definition of Propaganda needs only three words Binary Emotional Rhetoric.
binary emotional rhetoric is a short and concise definition of propaganda that is consistent with the seven various forms of propaganda indicated by The Institute For Propaganda Analysis, The Fine Art of Propaganda -- A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches. The original Institute For Propaganda Analysis, Inc. was located at 130 Morningside Drive, New York, NY and was established in October 1937, to conduct objective, non-partisan studies in the field of propaganda and public opinion. A non-profit organization it sought to help the intelligent citizen detect and analyze propaganda, by revealing the agencies, techniques and devices used by the propagandist.
The Institute For Propaganda Analysis published the results of its researches in monthly bulletins and in special reports, of which "The Fine Art of Propaganda" -- A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches is one. At the same time, the Institute For Propaganda Analysis conducted an educational program in adult study groups, and in Junior High Schools, High Schools, and Colleges.
Officers at the Institute For Propaganda Analysis, Inc.: President, E. C. Lindeman, New York School of Social Work; Vice President, Kirtley Mather, Harvard University; Executive Secretary, Clyde R. Miller, Teachers College, Columbia University; Treasurer, Ned H. Dearborn, New York University.
Advisory Board: Frank E. Baker, Milwaukee State Teachers College; Charles A. Beard; Hadley Cantril, Princeton University; Edgar Dale, Ohio State University; Leonard Doob, Yale University; Paul Douglas, University of Chicago; Gladys Murphy Graham, University of California at Los Angeles; F. Ernest Johnson, Teachers College, Columbia University; Grayson N. Kefauver, Stanford University; William Heard Kilpatrick; Robert S. Lynd, Columbia University; Malcom S. MacLean, University of Minnesota; Ernest O. Melby, Northwestern University; James E. Mendenhall, Stephens; Robert K. Speer, New York University.
Staff: Editorial Director, Harold Lavine; Educational Director, Violet Edwards
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, "The Fine Art of Propaganda", A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches, Edited by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee, Copyright, 1939, Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. New York -- Typography by Robert Josephy, Printed in the United States of America by Quinn & Boden Company, Inc., Rahway, N. J.
Binary Emotional Rhetoric was derived from an exhaustive analysis of "The Fine Art of Propaganda", A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches and each type or use of propaganda can be broken down to three words:
Propaganda = binary emotional rhetoric
Binary emotional rhetoric is a proper easy to understand definition.
Wikipedia's editing out of this simple easy to understand definition of propaganda is obfuscating the definition of propaganda, rather than making the definition easily understood by the common masses for use in propaganda analysis.
It is plain to see that it was the intention of The Institute For Propaganda Analysis to make a way for all U. S. citizens to be able to understand how propaganda is used.
Since it has been determined by Congress that propaganda can no longer be used against American citizens of the United States, it is necessary that an easy definition be available.
No content listed violates any copyright. No text was copied from any other website. There is no reason to delete this content. <personal information redacted>
MarthaA ( talk) 00:42, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
MarthaA ( talk) 00:42, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
The first sentence of the September 11, 2001 attacks article is original research. Please give advice.
In 2004, there was debate on what to call the article. The current article name was the name selected.
Wikipedia Manual of Style suggests that usually we use the title of the article in the first sentence of the article. However, in this case it is original research because if you look at CNN, BBC, CBC, CBS, they do not use the term "September 11, 2001 attacks". WP uses it like a name of a TV episode, very unencyclopedic. Google "September 11, 2001 attacks" and only the wikipedia article shows. On the first google page, there is NO links to CNN, BBC, CBC, CBS, etc.
We should avoid original research and not use the name of a made up title in the first sentence. For example, the original research version reads "The September 11, 2001 attacks (often referred to as 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States. It is OR to use a made up name in this context.
Better suggestions include: On September 11, 2001 (often referred to as 9/11), there were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States.
This is a subtle difference but it avoid the subtle OR. OR, even subtle OR, is strictly prohibited by WP.
The current version is also bad prose because it defines "attacks" as "...attacks". This is bad but not as bad as the OR violation. Presumptive ( talk) 03:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
I was involved in the earlier debate. The attacks happened in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC, all in the United States. The characterization of them by the local and national authorities carries substantial weight in how to describe them in the Wikipedia. It was not an OR synthesis to describe them as it appeared then and now. patsw ( talk) 12:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
Forgive my curiosity, Presumptive, but what would be the ideal title of this article in your opinion? — CharlotteWebb 18:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
Google introduced Knol. Can we use the information on it and cite it as a reference in Wikipedia? -- Quest for Truth ( talk) 10:42, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Throwaway accounts can be using Wikipedia to transmit secret messages to each other all over the world, By posting them as articles that are going to be speedy deleted. Its a good way to send messages anonymously and secretly. Moop Fan 17 ( talk) 18:20, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Speedy deletion has a number of benefits to the encyclopædia - the removal of copyright violations and biography of living people violations (either of which, if allowed to remain on Wikipedia, could imperil the project legally), and the removal of patent nonsense, which has no potential to improve the Wikipedia. It also has a number of drawbacks, as its over-zealous use can drive off new editors, or embitter more established editors. I would like to propose that Speedy deletion be restricted to cases of Copyright violation, BLP issues, and patent nonsense/gibberish, and prod adopted in its place where there are questions as to notability. This change would retain the beneficial and protective aspects of the speedy deletion process, while enabling editors to address notability concerns in a more reasonable time-scale. DuncanHill ( talk) 13:31, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm about to create a new article, and notice that the user interface is helpfully giving me the first sentence from a series of articles that have been deleted. I'll redact the key information: one choice entry reads "??? ??? is a douchebag who goes to ??? High School. He jacks off 5 to 7 times a day and is a flaming homosexual.Furthermore, everone ha...' ".
If I were ??? ???, I might be a bit upset that visitors to this otherwise blank page are greeted with this & four other versions in similar vein - "He tries his hardest to be normal, but never quite succeeds."
Is there a purpose in providing this log at the top of blank pages which have deletion histories? When do privacy concerns outweigh the supposed advantage? Would anyone like to discuss this with the mediawiki developers? -- Tagishsimon (talk) 20:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
There is a proposal to autoconfirm admins. Best, NonvocalScream ( talk) 21:24, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
I've recently come across problems where there have been conflicts between the Protection system and the AFD process. Articles undergoing the AFD process have been fully protected for other reasons. However as part of the AFD process is to permit the editing of the article in order to improve it so it can be kept. While the 'editprotected' template can be used this is slow, cumbersome, not newbie-friendly and requires an admin to implement which discourages attempts to improve the article. There is also a problem of perceived bias. If an article is AFD'd then protected it could appear that the protection is there to prevent improvement of the article to ensure it's deletion - it would be very easy for an admin with a personal bias against an article to AFD it (or ask another editor to do so), protect the article to prevent improvement and deny 'editprotected' requests in order to get the article deleted.
I believe we must formulate a new policy to prevent this conflict. If an article is undergoing AFD then as a matter of policy Full Protection must NOT be applied to allow all the functions of the AFD process to be exercised. Likewise any attempt to AFD an article via the 'editprotected' template must be denied outright. Semi-protection may be appropiate but should be used with caution if the article is undergoing AFD and should not be used unless absolutely necessary.
I invite all interested editors to comment. Exxolon ( talk) 19:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Discussion about the real life implementation of this guideline is at its talk page. Please contribute with your comments. Lakinekaki ( talk) 00:01, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
If it's downgraded to an essay, than we'll truly know something problematic affecting alot of mainspace articles. Beam 03:31, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
(outdent)Good sir, I assure you, I understand. I feel that WP:Fringe serves a purpose that WP:Weight and WP:NPOV can't serve alone. As i say, someone could base weight on the the amount of google hits or because 40 professors talk about it. That's where WP:Fringe comes in and saves us all. Beam 04:41, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Assuming that I'm the primary author, can I re-use an article I've written for Wikipedia for Knol? If so, should I go-about it by getting permission from other invested contributers? 142.9.1.100 ( talk) 12:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I asked Mike Godwin this question. The GFDL/CC license incompatibility is a secondary, rather minor, issue. The big issue is that in order to contribute to google knol, you have to grant Google a non-transferable you-can-do-whatever-you-want-with-this style license. If you aren't the copyright holder of the Wikipedia material in question, you cannot do this. Raul654 ( talk) 18:08, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Following from the WP:GEOBOT proposal a few weeks ago, I'm trying to gather a consensus for a new guideline on [[Wikipedia:Notability (Geographic locations). I've started a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(Geographic_locations)#Using_an_Atlas_as_a_source_for_notability and would appreciate any comments (there not here!) Thanks AndrewRT( Talk) 13:49, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Citing_sources#The name of the publisher, Wikipedia talk:Reusing Wikipedia content, Wikimedia Communications Committee's talk page.
As Wikipedia matures there is a growing problem with plagiarism of Wikipedia articles, and how it affects Wikipedia.
If a reliable sources (not a mirror) uses Wikipedia information and does not cite Wikipedia as a source, unless one is very aware of the history of an article this can lead to loops where information deleted as unsourced, and is then put back on the page in all innocence by a new editor because it is in a reliable source. I think we need a mechanism to record these copies that appear in a reliable source when they do not credit Wikipedia content.
Now there may well be a page that records such usage. But if there is then it needs to be more widely publicised (what is it?). If there is not then I think we need to create one. One possible format would be that of Wikipedia:Press coverage. -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 09:52, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Having though about it a little more I think a better way to go would be to distribute the information by producing a template for the top of the article's talk page (with a category). Then it would be available to editors who edit the page but are not aware of the existence of a particular list page. -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 12:53, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Just a quick announcement; I've written an essay that might be of interest to watchers of this page, whose responses are more than welcome. Thanks, Skomorokh 15:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Recurring items on ITN ( | 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) 18:49, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I find that it is quite confusing when a disambiguation page does not end with "(disambiguation)", and especially when the page's title followed by "(disambiguation)" does not redirect to it. For instance, although Mole (disambiguation) redirects to Mole, there is no such page (at time of writing) as Taxi (disambiguation), and the disambiguation page is, instead, Taxi. This is annoying when you are looking for an article in which a word is used in what is not its most obvious context and type Something (disambiguation) hoping that will show you where to go, only to find that in this particular case, Something does not talk about what everyone first thinks of when they think of the word, unlike Thingy, which does; but is, rather, the disambiguation page.
This inconsistency can be quite irritating at times and so I suggest that Something always talk about the most common definition of "Something" and Something (disambiguation) give you a list of "Something"-related articles. So, could someone make a bot that automatically changes disambiguation pages like Something (or, to give a specific example, Taxi) to Something (disambiguation)? It Is Me Here ( talk) 16:34, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Taxi (disambiguation). It's not a redlink anymore, because WP:BEANS are cool. SDY ( talk) 21:41, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Hate to put in a pramgatic issue. Even if we adopt this, how can this ever be consistently implemented. If we cannot enforce it; or "bot" it, I don't think this will fly. Arnoutf ( talk) 21:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Why would we want to do this? This proposal is far more confusing then our current set up -- T- rex 14:58, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't know that it's worth moving all of them, but I do think it would be worthwhile to make sure that if Foo is a disambig page then Foo (disambiguation) always exists and points to it. A bot could create those redirects without much trouble. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:18, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
If agreement forms I can do the bot work. Here are possible options that have been mentioned.
I'm interested to know how people feel about those three options. I think that #2 is slightly preferable to #3 because it leaves things in a more uniform state, and that #4 adds unnecessary complexity. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:38, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
One problem with reversing the current set up (no primary topic yields a disambiguation page at "base name" and, when needed, a redirect from "base name (disambiguation)") to the new proposal (no primary topic yields a redirect "base name" to "base name (disambiguation)" is that it will likely result in more edit wars at the base name redirect as editors continue to change the target from the redirect (no primary topic) to the article they feel is the primary topic. Since I don't see the additional benefits as described above (the two solutions seem otherwise equivalent), I don't think a change in the setup is needed. -- JHunterJ ( talk) 20:09, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Do nothing. The fourth option requires assuming every new casual browser to Wikipedia learn a system to fully use our site, which is defintiely not good. rearranging crap just for sake of uniformity isn't needed either. Lift and Mercury are perfect cases for leaving things alone. The casual user comes in, types in one of those, and gets taken right to where they need to be, a list of pages that might be what they need. I personally saw a friend's parent get bounced to a disambig and immediately type in their topic again, not understanding it at first. After explanation, he got it, but why should he have that to begin with? In cases of equal likelihood of intent, then using it as a redirect is fine as is, otherwise hatnote to the disambig, like we already do. Don't mess with success when there are plenty of flaws in this system. ThuranX ( talk) 22:30, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
For interested parties, a discussion regarding the bot is now going on at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 108#Bot creation of disambiguation redirects. Cheers, -- Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 03:50, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Not all disambiguation pages should end with "(disambiguation)". Take the Mercury example. I reckon that Mercury (element) and Mercury (planet) are equally popular, and if not, there are other topics that are. If two things are equally notable, then how do you decide which one gets the non-bracketed page, and which gets a bracket? You don't. Both get the brackets and then you get something like Mercury. I don't mind a bot coming along and redirecting Mercury (disambiguation) to Mercury (which already does by the way, but that's just an example. Deamon138 ( talk) 22:13, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
It appears that whenever articles are published in the Wikipedia that cover certain topics they are attacked by every means from nomination for deletion to making the article so nebulous that it might as well not be published. This effort appears to be carried out by members of various special interest groups for such artificial reasons as "protecting trade secrets" at best and "protecting documentation sales" at worst. Is this particular threat against Wikipedia article existence and viability recognized by the administration of the Wikipedia? -- adaptron ( talk) 04:58, 26 July 2008 (UTC)