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WP:PLOT has been templated with "disputed or under discussion", so the meta-policy question is: what level of 'dispute' is sufficient for such tagging to occur. The practice is that anyone can label an article with some version of "disputed" (factual, POV, etc.). I see a new trend to label policies as "disputed", which is bit worrisome, as virtually any policy has some detractors, so this precedent could easily degenerate in a mass tagging of policies. VG ☎ 15:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)I previously asked this at WP:AN, but I moved the discussion here per recommendation on that board.
Well, I have started a page where we could pool our whole "section 11" mayham. And until then, lets try not to transwiki anything alright? ViperSnake151 20:48, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Korean wikipedia prohibit to cite something. Becuase original article's copyright lisence is not GFDL.
I can't cite non-GFDL articles?
I saw many non-GFDL citations in english wikipedia.
What is wikimedia foundation's official policy? -- WonRyong ( talk) 08:46, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
What would happen with wikipedia? Mr.K. (talk) 16:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
I believe that this project has already reached the critical mass necessary to survive the death of its initial founder and leader (though, of course, I hope that day is not soon in coming). The Wikimedia Foundation is already established to provide for the financial and legal needs of the project, and the community already is largely in control of its day to day operations. I think that process has in no small part been thanks to Jimbo's increasingly presenting himself as "one more editor" in most issues here, rather than the God-King with unlimited veto power, and indeed his wishes have been overridden in some cases when this has been so. This project is beyond the scope of what any one person could hope to effectively control, but the many who assist in it do an excellent job. Jimbo, anymore, is more of a figurehead than an actual leader; day to day, a given arbitrator, bureaucrat, administrator, or even trusted and established editor has more to do with the direction the project goes. Seraphimblade Talk to me 10:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
What is Wikipedia's policy on the inclusion of contact details (phone numbers, email addresses, snailmail addresses, whatever) in articles? I can't seem to find any statement on the matter by a quick search. I gather that they should never contain personal contact info, but what about contact details of a company/organisation?
Sometimes I see a broken phone number in an article, and I end up fixing it, but I'd like to know in which circumstances the right course of action is actually to remove it altogether. -- Smjg ( talk) 12:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
this incident shows what can happen on the pages of Wikipedia. Various attempts to establish a policy have failed time and again. The problem was they all suggested to help the victim. I propose for this new policy we should just use IP geolocation (using checkuser if nessecary) and calling the police in the user's area. This should make WP:SUICIDE policy and the primary intent should be to sent the issue to the athorities as soon as possible. Any objections?-- Ipatrol ( talk) 20:38, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I think that the traditional and right spelling of Colour should be used for the entry on Colour. Sure, keep the URL the same for proper linking purposes, but at least for the entry have "Colour or color" and a link to the American/Brit spelling differences. That's the way it is for behaviour and neighbour. Please look into this. Regards, 68.111.64.250 ( talk) 15:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
A discussion is under way
here on how to style Spanish surnames after the lead sentence of biographies. The outcome is likely to become Wikipedia policy. Interested editors are invited to comment there.
Unconventional (
talk) 16:48, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
There is a colwidth parameter that can be used with Template:reflist. This specifies a fixed column width (measured in em's) rather than a fixed number of columns. So, for example, {{reflist|colwidth=20em}} specifies that the footnote columns should have a width of 20 ems. On small screens or in small windows with large text size, this reverts back to 1 column, while on large screens, Firefox users get 3 or more columns, depending on the em value specified, and depending on their window and text size. I find the parameter particularly useful for articles that have lots of shortened footnotes (e.g. harvnb cites). It's possible to get 200 refs or so to display on a single screen, which saves users scrolling up or down.
For examples of pages that use this setting, see Muhammad, Millennium '73, or Frank Zappa.
Are there any objections to mentioning this in Wikipedia:Footnotes as an alternative to {{reflist|2}}? Jayen 466 23:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Whilst browsing through a series of articles on various space phenomena, I noticed a large number of captions which read similar to these:
"The "Pillars of Creation" from the Eagle Nebula. Courtesy of NASA/ESA" "Detail of Hubble image. Courtesy of NASA/ESA"
Emphasis mine.
The reason I make mention of this is that it is my understanding that all work taken by STScI (via Hubble) was done under contract to NASA and therefore any work would be immediately under the public domain.
I don't necessarily object to the tags per se, but there is quite a large amount of information in the form of pictures which are displayed without any accreditation on article pages whatsoever as they are being used under fair use. It would appear to be at least a little unfair that we're giving accreditations to groups (where one of the data for the picture on the file page states no such accreditation is required) whilst using images (at least theoretically against a company or person's wishes) and not giving any attributation at all.
I make no claims to knowing much about US copyright law beyond what I've picked up here, but if I've made some kind of huge error can someone point this out, if not would it not be a reasonable suggestions to remove any Courtesy of etc... unless specifically required to keep the image on WP? BigHairRef | Talk 04:06, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Of course Wikipedia admins are going to be predisposed if not compelled to disagree with me, but it's become clear by brief examination that the level of participation, competency in policy lawyering, etc. required for adminship on Wikipedia could not be accomplished without also participating in digital escapism, whether such escapism was (originally) sought by an admin or not. Wikipedia should ask itself, what are the implications of this? What are the implications in scale for having this body's work shaped in the most fundamental ways by this demographic? The amount of scarce effort required invariably creates a sense of ownership, it's a fallacy to classify this phenomenon as a fluke; in being automatic the sense of ownership is quite the opposite.
Admins will be able to cite reasons why I would be predisposed to say so, but this would only serve to prove my contention that a tolerance or competency for lawyering and politicking drives the selection process for the overactive administrative elite on Wikipedia. I believe editors that may have a lot to offer are frequently dissuaded from participation because of the complicated, totalitarian bureaucracy Wikipedia has devolved into as the project has grown. There's probably little use in shedding light on the problem, because this particular flavor of corruption is self-perpetuating. It saddens me to see such a strong concept stifled by its own inertia. Trickrick1985 ( talk) 20:47, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
WP:DFTT, guys... and, uh, WP:CHIPSLAW, too. لenna vecia 04:49, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
From what I read in the original post, Trickrick1985 is saying and/or implying a few things, which I'll quickly summarize:
In further posts, he goes on to suggest that:
On the one hand, many of the points here are reasonable. Point 4 (assuming its premise of totalitarian bureaucracy is sound, which is a separate point) is reasonable: bureaucracies are often disruptive to newbies. Point 5 is especially reasonable, but only in and of itself. Point 6 is reasonable, but can be easily made unreasonable based on context. Point 7 is obvious.
On the other hand, some of these points are debatable, some have critical weaknesses, and some simply seem useless. Point 1 is useless on its own: even if some admins are using Wikipedia as a form of escapism, unless we have reason to believe that that escapism is harming them and not helping them, we need take no action. Point 2 lacks evidence: I can't imagine how this would be testable, let alone justified. Point 3 is debatable: while on the one hand politicking and rules-lawyering are undesirable, on the other hand people who are comfortable with it are best equipped to counter it. It also is somewhat unproven, and it seems irrelevant to the later, more concrete normative points.
While points 5 and 6, the most normative points, are largely reasonable, practical implementations fail in a number of respects. First of all, any easy method of desysopping is potentially subject to gaming, perhaps even by (ironically) the same people who would be targeted for desysopping based on the suggestions made here—in particular, those most adept at rules-lawyering and politicking. While it would be nice to have an easy way to desysop people, it's unlikely that such a system could be created in such a way that it would not be gameable. If such a system existed, I would support it, but I'm doubtful that it exists. Secondly, admins often have to make unpopular decisions: in particular, I can imagine that deletion debates, discussions about the blocking of trolls, major internal discussions, can become controversial enough that the use of almost any admin tool with regard to them (which is often necessary) might be controversial enough that the action, breaking a dilemma, might create bad will towards that person's use of the tools to provoke attempts to desysop them.
I personally wish that Wikipedia could become slightly less bureaucratic, though the fact is that for many processes, it's almost the only way to handle the load: the advantages often outweigh the disadvantages. Building an encyclopedia is a task which needs a certain amount of organization, and while I personally believe that greater tolerance would be a good thing, some centralization is useful with regard to discussion.
What I don't see from this post is any concrete suggestion: how can we easily desysop people fairly and efficiently? How can we reduce the weight of bureaucracy we sometimes face? {{ Nihiltres| talk| log}} 17:36, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I think we should create such an organization.
The community and the admins should call a little "convention," lets set aside about 10 days later this month to discuss these changes. I favor the "strong executive" model for the admin group. The admins should be called upon to select or elect a President, who would effectively be President of Wikipedia, since he is the leader of the admins who themselves are the enforcers of community policy. This President should serve a two year term, which, in internet time, would be a lengthy enough term to really make a mark on the bureaucracy.
The President of the admins would have the power to:
This proposal would lend some much needed structure to the administrator group.
Another problem is that right now the each admin is something of a "jack of all trades," in that he can perform any of the multifarious roles that admins have (part enforcer, part counsellor, part ambassador, etc.) Perhaps the new Wikipedia admin system would have defined cohorts within the admin body, where each group specialized in a particular role.
Brandon Rochelle ( talk) 18:17, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
User Trick Rick fleshed out some important points in the proposal with which I agree, namely:
We're giving away an encyclopedia, which is usually something that is sold. I think that right there is enough evidence to say we're all batshit insane. EVula // talk // ☯ // 01:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
An interesting RfC is ongoing about the actions of admin Slrubenstein ( talk · contribs), who overturned a block of one of his allies, Mathsci ( talk · contribs), without consulting with the blocking admin, Charles Matthews ( talk · contribs). Specific questions being covered:
Comments and opinions are welcome at: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/SlrubensteinII. -- El on ka 17:13, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Recently, I've heard a couple of people speculate that Jimbo's role on English Wikipedia lacks consensus. I suspect this is false-- I think there is strong consensus for his role. But admittedly, we don't actually have a policy that specifies this.
So I'd call for eyes at: Wikipedia:Project Leader, where I've attempted to just spell out what his special role currently is.
In particular:
-- Alecmconroy ( talk) 05:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Good articles are reviewed and often have to be declassified due to new contributions. Shouldn't these articles be protected or semi-protected, or reviewed periodically by trusted users, so we can actually increase the number of these articles? If an article is unlikely to need regular changes, such as a cd, mathematical concept or profile of a deceased person, then users ought to need permission to edit it so it won't get abused, and wikipedia will slowly grow its stock of good articles, making it more acceptable as an authoritative source of information. 194.81.36.61 ( talk) 11:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)wnsc
Sorry - I posted that the term heavy metal's origins were cited on DVD BLACK SABBATH-THE LAST SUPPER, and having rewatched it Ican't find it! I would amend the article but college network software Bloxx bars me from the page - please could someone check this fact isn't in the article. I may have mixed it up with the DVD Heavy Metal: louder than life, but I haven't checked yet. Thanks! 194.81.36.61 ( talk) 13:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)wnsc
Since the names of geotagged articles are used on things like Google Maps & Google Earth (and others), should geotagged articles about planned (or planned, but aborted) features reflect their status? For example, Allandale railway station was recently moved to Allandale railway station (proposed), but that move was reverted. I don't think that this should be decided on a per-article basis, without an over-arching policy, so I've started a discussion at Naming conventions#Planned or aborted geographical features. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:01, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Please see Minden, Louisiana. There are several articles about mayors of Minden, Louisiana who otherwise have no notability. Is the mayor of a small town notable enough to have an article? Little Red Riding Hood talk 02:22, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
I recently posted a proposal on the proposals section of the VP aimed at improving the comprehensibility of articles. Far too many Wikipedia articles are hard to understand even for well-educated readers. However, I think that before we figure out how to better address this major problem, we need to determine what Wikipedia's policy is or should be on comprehensibility. It is clear that not every article is going to be instantly comprehensible to every reader.
Below, I've posted some precepts that I hope we can agree on. If we can agree on the root ideas, we can then discuss how to ensure they are taken into account by editors.
Re Mwalcoff, you're describing the way that many good writers here already work. We try to make each article accessible to the type of person who is likely to look it up; so addition should be written at a very different level than Peano axioms. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:55, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
OK, so most people agree articles should be comprehensible, yet many, especially in the applied sciences and computer science, are not. What can be done to better address this major shortcoming in Wikipedia? -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 22:30, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
I posted the following in the discussion page of the Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection article, but I thought I'd post this here as well to get more thoughts on the matter. I just requested semi-protection for the article Joe Sakic, as it was a featured article on Wikipedia's main page today (November 12, 2008); however, semi-protection was declined, seemingly for the standard of not semi-protecting featured articles when they're displayed on the main page. As I pointed out in my request, though, there were many vandalized edits that got looked over; thus, they weren't reverted. A lot of backtracking had to be done. The majority of edits on main page featured articles are vandalism. When there are any edits that happen to actually be constructive, they're usually done by established editors. So, factoring all that in, what's the problem with semi-protecting main page featured articles until they're no longer on the main page? It seems as if more harm than good comes out of the current policy. -- Luke4545 ( talk) 18:30, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Wikipeida contains a lot of "Glossary" articles... These seem to contradict the first item in our WP:NOT guideline... Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Perhaps there is some subtle difference between a dictionary and a glossary, but if so it isn't outlined anywhere, so many of these articles are little more than mini-dictionaries with words and definitions (and in many cases the definitions listed are editor created which I think would violate WP:NOR and WP:V, as well as NOT). However, there is a strong argument that these pages are very useful... which calls into question the entire "Wikipedia is not a dictionary statement". In any case, we are currently discussing this issue at WT:NOT, and could use outside opinions... please stop by and add your comments. Questions needing resolving include: Is there a difference between a Dictionary and a Glossary? If so, what is it? If not, how do we justify having all these Glossary articles? Blueboar ( talk) 17:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, glossaries have a long-standing place in Wikipedia, and there is a Wikiproject aimed at improving them (as well as how many are needed and not yet built). Perhaps what is needed is a better understanding of the different respective purposes glossaries and dictionaries serve. That would help to better clarify what belongs where – and I’ll append my thoughts on what material is best captured by Wikipedia vice Wiktionary.
WP:LIST gives a good succinct description of the purpose of an encyclopedic glossary: “A Glossary page presents definitions for specialized terms in a subject area. Glossaries contain a small working vocabulary and definitions for important or frequently encountered concepts, usually including idioms or metaphors useful in a subject area.” They can be simple lists of terms or presented in a contextual format that provides context for related sub-topics as a handy browsing aid (cf. Glossary of alternative medicine). Dictionaries are much broader in scope and besides simple definitions, addresses such things as a word’s part of speech, pronunciation, etymology, alternate spellings, the spelling of different tenses, and may provide usage quotes.
In essence, dictionaries focus on individual words, per se, while glossaries are more concerned with terms and their meanings within the context of a specific and explicitly focused topical area.
With respect to dictionaries, a glossary is indeed a sort of sub-dictionary that focuses on words and phrases frequently encountered in works in a specialized area of knowledge. Its chief value is that an extensive range of terms related to a given topic can be found in one place for handy reference and quick browsing, as opposed to repeated look-up in a compendious resource like an unabridged dictionary. These terms may often be unlinked in a Wikipedia article (including to Wiktionary), and one need not searching back through a long article for the first-time link, if there is one.
I think the dividing line between what better belongs in Wiktionary than in Wikipedia are lists strictly of slang terms (which is best handled as exemplified by Military slang and wikt:Appendix:Military slang), and lists of “general language” terms (words and abbreviations) not focused on a technical subject (such as are many provided in Wiktionary’s Appendices – although I notice a few there that should probably be here as glossaries). Acronyms are a different can of worms, and are probably best treated as glossary-like lists.
Thoughts? Askari Mark (Talk) 20:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
The Transhumanist 22:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
I have a feeling I'm about to open a serious Pandora's box here, but here goes anyway. The issue at hand is Motl Brody. He has been declared brain dead, and therefore dead by the laws of the jurisdiction he is in (Washington DC). His parents claim that because he has heart and lung activity, he is still alive. Because this is America, the issue will be resolved by the court system. Until the courts resolve this issue, do we refer to Motl in the past or present tense? (For the record, please do not debate here whether he is or is not dead. The issue at hand is whether we accept the local jurisdiction's definition of death, the family's definition of death, or if WP has its own absolute definition) -- Bachrach44 ( talk) 21:38, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
I absolutely disagree in the strongest possible way! To pick a side in this case is a horrible thing for wikipedia to do. And if you need a reliable source, then his - Motl's - Rabbi counts for a whole lot more than some random newspaper. Or even a controversial law (he's alive in New York, but dead in DC?). If you need a guideline I would suggest going by what the person themself would chose, and I'm sure Motl would follow his Rabbi. Ariel. ( talk) 14:31, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
I'd consider local law and the attending health care professionals more authoritative than the parents or the family rabbi as to whether someone is legally or biologically dead. The Washington Post, the "random newspaper" in question, just reported that the doctors and hospital declared death and that this was consistent with DC law; it's obviously reliable for that purpose. The WP article can obviously describe that the family and their rabbi have a differing viewpoint, but until a court, panel of reviewing physicians, or other relevant institution accepts that viewpoint, it shouldn't be given undue weight so as to authoritatively determine facts (or prevent facts from being determined) within a WP article. Postdlf ( talk) 15:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Mordechai Dov Brody (nicknamed Motl or Motyl) (born 1996), a 12-year-old hasidic boy from Brooklyn, suffered from a terminal brain tumor and was declared legally dead on November 4, 2008. However, his parents refused to accept the legal definition of death on religious grounds because his heart is still beating.
Template:United States presidential election, 2008, IMHO, is a bit too wide - an accessibility issue, I believe - and quite huge. Do we have any clear guidelines to help reign this in or is this a non-issue? -- Banjeboi 14:02, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
I am wanting clarification on the most basic stuff. The question arose from Talk:List_of_One_Piece_characters for statements like "Luffy is character in One Piece." "Zoro weilds three swords" "One Piece is an anime" which are considered common knowledge and could be easily verifable by someone who looked at a visage of the item. The article does not have any info on where to draw the line with popular culture, nor is WP:fict any real help here either. Jinnai ( talk) 19:19, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
I have been watching a number of pages for some time now and I often see large chunks of useful information being removed from pages because it has not been referenced. Whilst I have no objection with people/bots enforcing this fundamental rule of Wikipedia, I sometime feel that the community in general is loosing by this form of control. Sometimes information that is not referenced is not always wrong or controversial but is in fact useful. An example is when historical information is recorded from peoples memories. Would it not be a good policy to request people move unreferenced material to Wikinfo [1] and put a link to it in place rather than just removing it entirely? I believe such a policy would be beneficial and consistent with the principles of both the Wikipeadia and Wikinfo sites. Also such cross promotion will bring awareness to the Wikinfo site and hopefully help overt such problems in the future. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wildplum69 ( talk • contribs) 23:41, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi everyone. This discussion in a nutshell: should relatively stable, static templates such as {{ unsigned}} with tens of thousands of transclusions be substituted? Recently, a few bots who were performing this function were taken down due to a lack of consensus, so you know what this means. Time to discuss 'til heat death of the universe!
Previous discussions can be found here and a bit right hurr.
If I may note, nobody actually knows what'll happen if we substitute all of these (speaking in technical terms, that is); after all, Brion has said that it probably won't affect performance that much, though I'm skeptical as this goes against everything WP:SUBST has taught me.
P.S. oh, I almost forgot to mention, WP:SUBST is the base policy that I'm talking about here. Master of Puppets Call me MoP! :) 23:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Now, before you jump on me, my first instinct is to say "no."
But let me paint a scene for you and see if, sometimes, circumstances alter cases. What I hope to achieve by this is a discussion based on the circumstances that may, in a minor way, have an influence on the policy. I'm not entirely sure where the best place to hold such a discussion is, so have placed it here as a start.
Let us take a piece of software that does something that a number of its users find to be objectionable rather than a simple bug. Those users ask for help on help forums, or blog about the issue. Neither of those styles of source are reliable sources according to our definition. However, Google and other search engines pick up the many separate areas of discussion.
From this one may see clearly that there is an issue. However it could be said that stating this clear fact (that there is an issue) is distillation to produce original research. I can see that with clarity.
Yet, if there are no reliable sources according to the WP definition, despite the forums and blogs being in themselves authoritative, and in some cases the manufacturer or vendor's own support forums, we appear not to be able to include the fact that there is contention, by definition.
I recognise completely that WP is not a newspaper, and its job is not to include news per se. Yet I am not sure that such coverage on forums is news, exactly.
You probably need an example. Please be clear: I am not lobbying for my edits to prevail when I point you at it. Consensus is consensus. Policies are policies. The example is Norton PC Checkup and the results, now removed (see its talk page) for some (many?) users' displeasure with its arrival as a bundle with other software. Obviously it does not record anyone's pleasure! That does not appear on forums etc.
So I come back to my question: Are there valid exceptions for Original Research? Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 10:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
I have found many entries for politicians on disambiguation pages who do not have articles. There is often a bluelink to the legislature to which they belong instead, which on the face of it puts it in compliance with MOS:DAB. However, the article will often only list the name. An example is Mary Murphy where I can see that there is a Mary Murphy in the Minnesota House of Representatives. But following through to the Minnesota article I find no further significant information on Mary Murphy other than that she is listed as a member and her party. So the question is, is there any point of her being on the dab page? Are we just wasting our readers time directing them to look through an article which ultimately is going to tell them no more than they already knew?
I looked at WP:BIO hoping that might provide some guidance but found it laughably unhelpful on politicians. According to that guideline, politicians are intrinsically notable if they have held international, national or first-level sub-national political office. In the case of Guernsey, first-level would be parish councillors, and rather small parishes at that. The whole thing seems very US-(or at least big country)-centric. SpinningSpark 15:50, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to start some discussion on maybe changing the naming convention on stand-alone lists as listed at Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists. I am doing this as the current way of how some lists are named has been problematic and has led to quite a few AFDs for lists such as List of X people, List of people who Y, etc.; the big one right now being Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of bow tie wearers (4th nomination).
I would possibly suggest a change to perhaps List of notable X people or List of notable people who Y or something along those lines. Otherwise, we are going to keep having these AFDs in which the arguments for and against deletion are the same each and every time. Any suggestions? MuZemike ( talk) 20:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:No original research#Regarding maps being "primary sources" according to this policy -- Rschen7754 ( T C) 05:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
At Wikipedia talk:External links, I have proposed a significant change to our guidelines on External Links, expressly discouraging the addition of certain kinds of commercial links, to give us a clearer policy to cite. I am specifically asking that we explicitily ban links in articles about general services or products that link to providers of those services. For example, the addition of the link "www.mcdonalds.com" would be an inappropriate addition to fast food. I understand that this is probably covered in a round-about way by other restrictions, but to make it explicit may help avoid the sorts of edit wars we see at numerous articles over the addition of links to MANY articles. Please carry on the discussion at Wikipedia talk:External links and not here. I am only posting this here to generate some interest in discussing the policy change. Thank you. -- Jayron32. talk. contribs 18:35, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
This has been common practice for ages, and I was surprised that no guideline existed for it. I created this a while back as an essay, and think it ought to be a guideline. Does anybody disagree, or wish to help me expand it? If general consensus here appears to be in support of proposing it as a guideline, I will. Dendodge Talk Contribs 13:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Note: Swinglineboy G and JBackus13 are blocked sockpuppets of a banned user, JeanLatore/Wiki_brah. Darkspots ( talk) 19:03, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Three Wiki_brah socks, is enough already. Darkspots ( talk) 04:10, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
So yeah, I know that they say what will happen if Wikipedia allows paid advertising. Yeah yeah, like everyone will get upset and fork off, start their own Wiki, and all that. But its not like EVERYONE would leave. Some people, especially the newer ones, will stay. Even if a majority of editors left some would stay behind and continue to contribute to Wikipedia even with ads. But what would result? "Wikipedia" still would continue to get mad google hits and attract new users in its post-advertising era, and those disgruntled editors who left in the wake of advertising would be at what would become a wanna-be "forked off" project, not THE wikipedia, which would linger on in obscurity. Wikipedia will thrive even if many of its productive editors left -- no one is irrplaceable, and on the internet, people leave all the time anyway. How many of the productive editors and admins from four years ago (2004) are still here, for instance? The conclusion here is that if and when Wikipedia does decide to allow paid advertisements, it will not suffer one bit for it. Your thoughts welcome. Swinglineboy G ( talk) 18:08, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
No, i'm just saying the main reason that advertising has been nixed is because of the massive editor opposition to it and their threats to boycott or leave. My point was that their threats have no weight to them. Wikipedia has a critical mass of its own now, regardless of its individual editors. I guess I was just using advertising as an example to prove that. Swinglineboy G ( talk) 18:22, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
I am interested in that discussion. Do you know where to find it? What if wikipedia would allow ads but explicitly not entertain any demands. Just be like hey I got your money now naff off. Swinglineboy G ( talk) 19:40, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Comment. I agree completely. Essays i just read on Wikipedia:Advertisements suggest that Wikipedia might be able to raise nearly $1,000,000,000.00 a year in advertising revenue. That's larger than the budget of some smaller states in the USA and most developing nations! I think Wikipedia should jump on this opportunity, put away a modest 10% for growth and investment in Wikipedia, then divide the rest up and sent something of a "dividend" cheque to each editor at the end of each fiscal year. Said payments could be based upon the number, and quality, of his edits throughout the year. Even if the dividend simply were equally split by registered users (8.1 million I read), the payout still would be in the neighbourhood of 80-90 dollars. But if the divdent were equitably split as a function of edit quality, edit count, and active service to the wiki, then each of the active 2,000 or so users would get quite a large payout each year. If wikipedia does do ads, then it is obvious that they should give most of the money not to charity, but to the wikipedians. This also would deflate much criticism of advertising! JBackus13 ( talk) 02:08, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
(unindent)
I support on/off buttons for opt-in ads on a nonprofit Wikipedia for all readers (via cookies). |
-- Timeshifter ( talk) 14:53, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
The simplest and easiest managed way of raising ad money would be to use Amazon's existing partenership scheme. We don't need full ads, just a change that means anytime any book is listed with an ISBN in an article, the reader would see a little link beside it saying "review this book on Amazon". It's fairly useful for the reader to be able to do that, and if of course he then buys it, the foundation would get cash. If readers are annoyed by it, they can set preferences and opt out. Strictly speaking it isn't advertising, since there is no "hey buy this" on out site, just a link to where you can see if it is in print and what the cost is, if you want. Given that wikipedia is often the first port of call for someone interested in a subject, the number of people interested in buying on of the books listed might be quite high. It also solves the problem of add selection, as the "ads" would be selected by those constructing sources and further reading sections. And I imagine, all products linked from
Penis would be genetailia or sexual health related.--
Scott MacDonald (
talk) 15:40, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Comment This thread is not up to the usual Wiki_brah standard. Delicious carbuncle ( talk) 16:07, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
So............... how much revenue will advertising bring? Is it $10 million a year, as suggested by another user above, or is it $1,000,000,000? That is obviously a huge disparity; does anyone know? I can see passing on it if its just $10 mil, but $1 billion? Man, gimme a piece of that shit! Does wikipedia know what it can do with that kind of money -- like buying Encyclopedia britannica, for example? Or funding its own military force like Blackwater Worldwide or some such other worthwhile endeavor. JBackus13 ( talk) 22:53, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Dividends based on edit count? Any suggestions on how I should spend my $3,000,000? -- Carnildo ( talk) 01:15, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Well the thing is wikipedia can't keep the money, since its a non-profit. So the only thing they could do is pass the profits (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) to somewhere else. The U.S. government would prefer that the money be passed onto taxable entities-- the users, so the gov't could collect income taxes on it. And the editors do have a "stake" in wikipedia based on the equitable value of their contributions to wikipedia. Thus, Wikipedia will be a "pass through" non-profit where the revenue is taxed when it "passes through" to the users themselves. That way the government benefits, and the user benefits, for even after taxes, that's a lot of money. Like carnildo said, he would stand to gross $3m, which would still be about $1.8 million, post-tax. JBackus13 ( talk) 04:31, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
"Disadvantaged" parts of the world are rife with corruption and graft. If Wikipedia started paying Africans and other third-worlders money to edit chances are this money would be intercepted by the warlords and public officials, not doing the average "wikipedian" in Africa the slightest good. This money would simply be used to fund war and human rights violations. Swinglineboy G ( talk) 15:14, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
There is nothing new under the sun... First, estimates of ad revenue are just that: Estimates. Revenues depend on supply and demand. All of Wikipedia suddenly being open for advertising would greatly increase the supply of ad space. Selling in bulk always decreases the price. And apart from editors leaving, there also is the question of donations. Would you donate to a Wikipedia that's raking in cash hand over hand via ads? Also, ads need infrastructure. So part of the revenue would immediately go towards more servers and bandwidth. Developers, currently often volunteers, would also expect to be paid. Assume US$250000 per developer per year if you have to pay real costs (and that is probably rather low). I would be surprised if a solidly argued business case even exists. And I'd only trust it if the author backs it by guaranteeing an increase in revenue - and a faster one than Wikimedia has managed on donations alone. As for the the idea of paying "dividends" to editors? Just image the overhead, and the possibilities for abuse. How do you evaluate the quality of contributions? If you reward quantity, be prepared for an invasion of bots. In short, this idea seems to be completely unworkable. -- Stephan Schulz ( talk) 17:46, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, if not dividends (I am opposed to that myself), Wikipedia should then keep the profits. Become a for-profit corporation. Imagine what Mr. Wales could buy with all that money. Not to mention offering stock in Wikipedia, which would raise more billions of dollars. Seriously, this kind of money being put to use in the the economy would do a lot to stave off the financial crisis and coming recession. JBackus13 ( talk) 04:13, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
I support on/off buttons for opt-in ads on a nonprofit Wikipedia for all readers (via cookies). |
The trolling by Swinglineboy G and JBackus13 became very obvious with their later comments. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 13:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
no ads |
This user stands against advertisements on Wikipedia. |
For balance. :)
Celarnor
Talk to me 13:08, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Comment. Direct advertising is not the only choice we have. Indirect advertising would work too. For example; the Google search box. See: Wikipedia:Advertisements#Income from search tools on wikipedia pages. For example; from AdSense#AdSense for search is this:
A variation of this allows the non-profit Mozilla Foundation to raise around $60 million dollars a year. They put Google search as a dropdown option in their Firefox browser search form at the top of all their browsers. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 14:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
(Unindent) When Special:Search does a Google search of Wikipedia it uses a variation of this:
Specifically, it uses the following sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org format:
As with most links there is no intermediary involved. The URL goes directly to Google. It pulls up a Google site-search page. That results page has standard Google text ads on the side. That is where the ad money comes into the picture. It is not a web-wide search, but it is still a Google search results page with ads. There is a possibility of a financial arrangement being made with Google to place the Special:Search form (without the checkbox table) at the top left of every Wikipedia page. Similar arrangements could be made with Yahoo, Microsoft and other search engine providers to be in the dropdown menu.
There is no problem with "non-RS/blacklist/spam sites" since those search results and ads are not on Wikipedia pages. Any source link or external link on Wikipedia (including searchforms) can lead to "non-RS/blacklist/spam sites" being linked on the external link page. Wikipedia can not control what other pages link to.
Even more money could be made by putting an option to search web-wide too. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 02:41, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
(unindent) The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Search engine optimization (SEO) only works if companies are able to add links to their sites and products. Spam links are currently controlled by the many spam admins and spam-watching editors on Wikipedia. Most editors keep an eye out for questionable external links. Wikipedia results are already at or near the top of many, if not most, searches on Google. A site-search engine will matter little concerning already ongoing SEO-motivated spam links.
Here is a schematic of a possible search form at the top left of the page.
There is plenty of room for the search form at the top of the page. The left half of the page is available on my 17 inch monitor.
The search form at Special:Search combined with the dropdown menu there is not that long. "Advanced search" can be shortened to just "Search". The form itself can be shortened slightly. The whole thing would then fit fine at the top of the page.
It would use currently unused space (unused by registered users). The Wikipedia logo at the top left can be pushed down a quarter inch. The sidebar search form can be removed to keep the sidebar short. The sidebar search form would be unneeded because it would be a duplicate search form. The "Go" button can be moved next to the top search form. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 03:39, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
If somebody is proposing something, could they start a new thread at WP:VPR, please? This appears to be a very confused discussion, that is taking up almost half the VPP page... If there is still relevant ongoing discussion about advertising, could we perhaps have a summary? -- Quiddity ( talk) 23:56, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Additional input is sought. Please see this discussion:
Over a year ago, an attempt was made to set a policy on the situations in which IMDb could be used as a reliable source (if any). The discussion is here WP:CIMDB. A heated debate on this has just started up again. Anyone wanting to contribute is invited to do so: here. GDallimore ( Talk) 11:22, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
There's currently a section on WP:MOSNUM ( MOS:UNLINKYEARS) that reads (as of this comment):
- Linking: Dates (years, months, day and month, full dates) should not be linked, unless there is a reason to do so. More information can be found at WP:CONTEXT#Dates.
- Autoformatting: Dates should not be linked purely for the purpose of autoformatting (even though in the past this was considered desirable).
As the edit history for the page shows, the section is currently very much disputed by those discussing it on the talk page. Despite this, bots have been run and other people are using semi-automatic scripts to mass-remove date linking. The community consensus on this issue is not clear at all. I'm starting this thread to (hopefully) resolve several issues:
It would be more conducive to discussion if people running date delinking scripts could stop pending an actual resolution to this debate. Mr. Z-man 03:24, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Vandalism usually does not last long in high traffic articles, but it leaves clutter in the edit history, often constituting the majority of edits. This makes it very difficult and time-consuming to sift through when anyone is actually looking for constructive changes or earlier versions. So I'm wondering if there should be a way of separating out, or highlighting, edits leaving no net change (vandal edits and the edits that revert them) so those can be overlooked. Either admins or any confirmed registered users could tag edits as nonconstructive. Then the edit history could be split into two columns, one for each; or the nonconstructive edits could be marked in grey highlighting. As long as the end result is not to cause edit warring over whether edits are constructive or nonconstructive, or to make edit histories even more unreadable and unsearchable... Thoughts? Postdlf ( talk) 19:13, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I think people who are trusted with certain tools should be able to simply remove an obviously disruptive edit from the history altogether when they revert it. There's no reason we should allow vandals to harm us by clogging up the database and lists of changes, often with offensive or illegal material. Clearly we would have to be careful about who we give such a privilege to, and some system of monitoring (at least a temporary dump of such changes) would have to be in place, but it would have numerous benefits.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:42, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
User:Thatsineed uploaded a number of images with pre-emptive template:Replaceable fair use disputed tags. See Image:Kamal Hasan-Dasavatharam10.jpg for an example. I've already asked to identify said pages but would it be better to remove the tags (and thus from Category:Replaceable fair use images disputed) or leave them there in case someone actually does dispute the rationale? Perhaps a bot could move the argument to the talk page with a link to the old text from the front? -- Ricky81682 ( talk) 07:47, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
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WP:PLOT has been templated with "disputed or under discussion", so the meta-policy question is: what level of 'dispute' is sufficient for such tagging to occur. The practice is that anyone can label an article with some version of "disputed" (factual, POV, etc.). I see a new trend to label policies as "disputed", which is bit worrisome, as virtually any policy has some detractors, so this precedent could easily degenerate in a mass tagging of policies. VG ☎ 15:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)I previously asked this at WP:AN, but I moved the discussion here per recommendation on that board.
Well, I have started a page where we could pool our whole "section 11" mayham. And until then, lets try not to transwiki anything alright? ViperSnake151 20:48, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Korean wikipedia prohibit to cite something. Becuase original article's copyright lisence is not GFDL.
I can't cite non-GFDL articles?
I saw many non-GFDL citations in english wikipedia.
What is wikimedia foundation's official policy? -- WonRyong ( talk) 08:46, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
What would happen with wikipedia? Mr.K. (talk) 16:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
I believe that this project has already reached the critical mass necessary to survive the death of its initial founder and leader (though, of course, I hope that day is not soon in coming). The Wikimedia Foundation is already established to provide for the financial and legal needs of the project, and the community already is largely in control of its day to day operations. I think that process has in no small part been thanks to Jimbo's increasingly presenting himself as "one more editor" in most issues here, rather than the God-King with unlimited veto power, and indeed his wishes have been overridden in some cases when this has been so. This project is beyond the scope of what any one person could hope to effectively control, but the many who assist in it do an excellent job. Jimbo, anymore, is more of a figurehead than an actual leader; day to day, a given arbitrator, bureaucrat, administrator, or even trusted and established editor has more to do with the direction the project goes. Seraphimblade Talk to me 10:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
What is Wikipedia's policy on the inclusion of contact details (phone numbers, email addresses, snailmail addresses, whatever) in articles? I can't seem to find any statement on the matter by a quick search. I gather that they should never contain personal contact info, but what about contact details of a company/organisation?
Sometimes I see a broken phone number in an article, and I end up fixing it, but I'd like to know in which circumstances the right course of action is actually to remove it altogether. -- Smjg ( talk) 12:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
this incident shows what can happen on the pages of Wikipedia. Various attempts to establish a policy have failed time and again. The problem was they all suggested to help the victim. I propose for this new policy we should just use IP geolocation (using checkuser if nessecary) and calling the police in the user's area. This should make WP:SUICIDE policy and the primary intent should be to sent the issue to the athorities as soon as possible. Any objections?-- Ipatrol ( talk) 20:38, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I think that the traditional and right spelling of Colour should be used for the entry on Colour. Sure, keep the URL the same for proper linking purposes, but at least for the entry have "Colour or color" and a link to the American/Brit spelling differences. That's the way it is for behaviour and neighbour. Please look into this. Regards, 68.111.64.250 ( talk) 15:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
A discussion is under way
here on how to style Spanish surnames after the lead sentence of biographies. The outcome is likely to become Wikipedia policy. Interested editors are invited to comment there.
Unconventional (
talk) 16:48, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
There is a colwidth parameter that can be used with Template:reflist. This specifies a fixed column width (measured in em's) rather than a fixed number of columns. So, for example, {{reflist|colwidth=20em}} specifies that the footnote columns should have a width of 20 ems. On small screens or in small windows with large text size, this reverts back to 1 column, while on large screens, Firefox users get 3 or more columns, depending on the em value specified, and depending on their window and text size. I find the parameter particularly useful for articles that have lots of shortened footnotes (e.g. harvnb cites). It's possible to get 200 refs or so to display on a single screen, which saves users scrolling up or down.
For examples of pages that use this setting, see Muhammad, Millennium '73, or Frank Zappa.
Are there any objections to mentioning this in Wikipedia:Footnotes as an alternative to {{reflist|2}}? Jayen 466 23:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Whilst browsing through a series of articles on various space phenomena, I noticed a large number of captions which read similar to these:
"The "Pillars of Creation" from the Eagle Nebula. Courtesy of NASA/ESA" "Detail of Hubble image. Courtesy of NASA/ESA"
Emphasis mine.
The reason I make mention of this is that it is my understanding that all work taken by STScI (via Hubble) was done under contract to NASA and therefore any work would be immediately under the public domain.
I don't necessarily object to the tags per se, but there is quite a large amount of information in the form of pictures which are displayed without any accreditation on article pages whatsoever as they are being used under fair use. It would appear to be at least a little unfair that we're giving accreditations to groups (where one of the data for the picture on the file page states no such accreditation is required) whilst using images (at least theoretically against a company or person's wishes) and not giving any attributation at all.
I make no claims to knowing much about US copyright law beyond what I've picked up here, but if I've made some kind of huge error can someone point this out, if not would it not be a reasonable suggestions to remove any Courtesy of etc... unless specifically required to keep the image on WP? BigHairRef | Talk 04:06, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Of course Wikipedia admins are going to be predisposed if not compelled to disagree with me, but it's become clear by brief examination that the level of participation, competency in policy lawyering, etc. required for adminship on Wikipedia could not be accomplished without also participating in digital escapism, whether such escapism was (originally) sought by an admin or not. Wikipedia should ask itself, what are the implications of this? What are the implications in scale for having this body's work shaped in the most fundamental ways by this demographic? The amount of scarce effort required invariably creates a sense of ownership, it's a fallacy to classify this phenomenon as a fluke; in being automatic the sense of ownership is quite the opposite.
Admins will be able to cite reasons why I would be predisposed to say so, but this would only serve to prove my contention that a tolerance or competency for lawyering and politicking drives the selection process for the overactive administrative elite on Wikipedia. I believe editors that may have a lot to offer are frequently dissuaded from participation because of the complicated, totalitarian bureaucracy Wikipedia has devolved into as the project has grown. There's probably little use in shedding light on the problem, because this particular flavor of corruption is self-perpetuating. It saddens me to see such a strong concept stifled by its own inertia. Trickrick1985 ( talk) 20:47, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
WP:DFTT, guys... and, uh, WP:CHIPSLAW, too. لenna vecia 04:49, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
From what I read in the original post, Trickrick1985 is saying and/or implying a few things, which I'll quickly summarize:
In further posts, he goes on to suggest that:
On the one hand, many of the points here are reasonable. Point 4 (assuming its premise of totalitarian bureaucracy is sound, which is a separate point) is reasonable: bureaucracies are often disruptive to newbies. Point 5 is especially reasonable, but only in and of itself. Point 6 is reasonable, but can be easily made unreasonable based on context. Point 7 is obvious.
On the other hand, some of these points are debatable, some have critical weaknesses, and some simply seem useless. Point 1 is useless on its own: even if some admins are using Wikipedia as a form of escapism, unless we have reason to believe that that escapism is harming them and not helping them, we need take no action. Point 2 lacks evidence: I can't imagine how this would be testable, let alone justified. Point 3 is debatable: while on the one hand politicking and rules-lawyering are undesirable, on the other hand people who are comfortable with it are best equipped to counter it. It also is somewhat unproven, and it seems irrelevant to the later, more concrete normative points.
While points 5 and 6, the most normative points, are largely reasonable, practical implementations fail in a number of respects. First of all, any easy method of desysopping is potentially subject to gaming, perhaps even by (ironically) the same people who would be targeted for desysopping based on the suggestions made here—in particular, those most adept at rules-lawyering and politicking. While it would be nice to have an easy way to desysop people, it's unlikely that such a system could be created in such a way that it would not be gameable. If such a system existed, I would support it, but I'm doubtful that it exists. Secondly, admins often have to make unpopular decisions: in particular, I can imagine that deletion debates, discussions about the blocking of trolls, major internal discussions, can become controversial enough that the use of almost any admin tool with regard to them (which is often necessary) might be controversial enough that the action, breaking a dilemma, might create bad will towards that person's use of the tools to provoke attempts to desysop them.
I personally wish that Wikipedia could become slightly less bureaucratic, though the fact is that for many processes, it's almost the only way to handle the load: the advantages often outweigh the disadvantages. Building an encyclopedia is a task which needs a certain amount of organization, and while I personally believe that greater tolerance would be a good thing, some centralization is useful with regard to discussion.
What I don't see from this post is any concrete suggestion: how can we easily desysop people fairly and efficiently? How can we reduce the weight of bureaucracy we sometimes face? {{ Nihiltres| talk| log}} 17:36, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I think we should create such an organization.
The community and the admins should call a little "convention," lets set aside about 10 days later this month to discuss these changes. I favor the "strong executive" model for the admin group. The admins should be called upon to select or elect a President, who would effectively be President of Wikipedia, since he is the leader of the admins who themselves are the enforcers of community policy. This President should serve a two year term, which, in internet time, would be a lengthy enough term to really make a mark on the bureaucracy.
The President of the admins would have the power to:
This proposal would lend some much needed structure to the administrator group.
Another problem is that right now the each admin is something of a "jack of all trades," in that he can perform any of the multifarious roles that admins have (part enforcer, part counsellor, part ambassador, etc.) Perhaps the new Wikipedia admin system would have defined cohorts within the admin body, where each group specialized in a particular role.
Brandon Rochelle ( talk) 18:17, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
User Trick Rick fleshed out some important points in the proposal with which I agree, namely:
We're giving away an encyclopedia, which is usually something that is sold. I think that right there is enough evidence to say we're all batshit insane. EVula // talk // ☯ // 01:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
An interesting RfC is ongoing about the actions of admin Slrubenstein ( talk · contribs), who overturned a block of one of his allies, Mathsci ( talk · contribs), without consulting with the blocking admin, Charles Matthews ( talk · contribs). Specific questions being covered:
Comments and opinions are welcome at: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/SlrubensteinII. -- El on ka 17:13, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Recently, I've heard a couple of people speculate that Jimbo's role on English Wikipedia lacks consensus. I suspect this is false-- I think there is strong consensus for his role. But admittedly, we don't actually have a policy that specifies this.
So I'd call for eyes at: Wikipedia:Project Leader, where I've attempted to just spell out what his special role currently is.
In particular:
-- Alecmconroy ( talk) 05:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Good articles are reviewed and often have to be declassified due to new contributions. Shouldn't these articles be protected or semi-protected, or reviewed periodically by trusted users, so we can actually increase the number of these articles? If an article is unlikely to need regular changes, such as a cd, mathematical concept or profile of a deceased person, then users ought to need permission to edit it so it won't get abused, and wikipedia will slowly grow its stock of good articles, making it more acceptable as an authoritative source of information. 194.81.36.61 ( talk) 11:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)wnsc
Sorry - I posted that the term heavy metal's origins were cited on DVD BLACK SABBATH-THE LAST SUPPER, and having rewatched it Ican't find it! I would amend the article but college network software Bloxx bars me from the page - please could someone check this fact isn't in the article. I may have mixed it up with the DVD Heavy Metal: louder than life, but I haven't checked yet. Thanks! 194.81.36.61 ( talk) 13:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)wnsc
Since the names of geotagged articles are used on things like Google Maps & Google Earth (and others), should geotagged articles about planned (or planned, but aborted) features reflect their status? For example, Allandale railway station was recently moved to Allandale railway station (proposed), but that move was reverted. I don't think that this should be decided on a per-article basis, without an over-arching policy, so I've started a discussion at Naming conventions#Planned or aborted geographical features. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:01, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Please see Minden, Louisiana. There are several articles about mayors of Minden, Louisiana who otherwise have no notability. Is the mayor of a small town notable enough to have an article? Little Red Riding Hood talk 02:22, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
I recently posted a proposal on the proposals section of the VP aimed at improving the comprehensibility of articles. Far too many Wikipedia articles are hard to understand even for well-educated readers. However, I think that before we figure out how to better address this major problem, we need to determine what Wikipedia's policy is or should be on comprehensibility. It is clear that not every article is going to be instantly comprehensible to every reader.
Below, I've posted some precepts that I hope we can agree on. If we can agree on the root ideas, we can then discuss how to ensure they are taken into account by editors.
Re Mwalcoff, you're describing the way that many good writers here already work. We try to make each article accessible to the type of person who is likely to look it up; so addition should be written at a very different level than Peano axioms. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:55, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
OK, so most people agree articles should be comprehensible, yet many, especially in the applied sciences and computer science, are not. What can be done to better address this major shortcoming in Wikipedia? -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 22:30, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
I posted the following in the discussion page of the Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection article, but I thought I'd post this here as well to get more thoughts on the matter. I just requested semi-protection for the article Joe Sakic, as it was a featured article on Wikipedia's main page today (November 12, 2008); however, semi-protection was declined, seemingly for the standard of not semi-protecting featured articles when they're displayed on the main page. As I pointed out in my request, though, there were many vandalized edits that got looked over; thus, they weren't reverted. A lot of backtracking had to be done. The majority of edits on main page featured articles are vandalism. When there are any edits that happen to actually be constructive, they're usually done by established editors. So, factoring all that in, what's the problem with semi-protecting main page featured articles until they're no longer on the main page? It seems as if more harm than good comes out of the current policy. -- Luke4545 ( talk) 18:30, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Wikipeida contains a lot of "Glossary" articles... These seem to contradict the first item in our WP:NOT guideline... Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Perhaps there is some subtle difference between a dictionary and a glossary, but if so it isn't outlined anywhere, so many of these articles are little more than mini-dictionaries with words and definitions (and in many cases the definitions listed are editor created which I think would violate WP:NOR and WP:V, as well as NOT). However, there is a strong argument that these pages are very useful... which calls into question the entire "Wikipedia is not a dictionary statement". In any case, we are currently discussing this issue at WT:NOT, and could use outside opinions... please stop by and add your comments. Questions needing resolving include: Is there a difference between a Dictionary and a Glossary? If so, what is it? If not, how do we justify having all these Glossary articles? Blueboar ( talk) 17:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, glossaries have a long-standing place in Wikipedia, and there is a Wikiproject aimed at improving them (as well as how many are needed and not yet built). Perhaps what is needed is a better understanding of the different respective purposes glossaries and dictionaries serve. That would help to better clarify what belongs where – and I’ll append my thoughts on what material is best captured by Wikipedia vice Wiktionary.
WP:LIST gives a good succinct description of the purpose of an encyclopedic glossary: “A Glossary page presents definitions for specialized terms in a subject area. Glossaries contain a small working vocabulary and definitions for important or frequently encountered concepts, usually including idioms or metaphors useful in a subject area.” They can be simple lists of terms or presented in a contextual format that provides context for related sub-topics as a handy browsing aid (cf. Glossary of alternative medicine). Dictionaries are much broader in scope and besides simple definitions, addresses such things as a word’s part of speech, pronunciation, etymology, alternate spellings, the spelling of different tenses, and may provide usage quotes.
In essence, dictionaries focus on individual words, per se, while glossaries are more concerned with terms and their meanings within the context of a specific and explicitly focused topical area.
With respect to dictionaries, a glossary is indeed a sort of sub-dictionary that focuses on words and phrases frequently encountered in works in a specialized area of knowledge. Its chief value is that an extensive range of terms related to a given topic can be found in one place for handy reference and quick browsing, as opposed to repeated look-up in a compendious resource like an unabridged dictionary. These terms may often be unlinked in a Wikipedia article (including to Wiktionary), and one need not searching back through a long article for the first-time link, if there is one.
I think the dividing line between what better belongs in Wiktionary than in Wikipedia are lists strictly of slang terms (which is best handled as exemplified by Military slang and wikt:Appendix:Military slang), and lists of “general language” terms (words and abbreviations) not focused on a technical subject (such as are many provided in Wiktionary’s Appendices – although I notice a few there that should probably be here as glossaries). Acronyms are a different can of worms, and are probably best treated as glossary-like lists.
Thoughts? Askari Mark (Talk) 20:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
The Transhumanist 22:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
I have a feeling I'm about to open a serious Pandora's box here, but here goes anyway. The issue at hand is Motl Brody. He has been declared brain dead, and therefore dead by the laws of the jurisdiction he is in (Washington DC). His parents claim that because he has heart and lung activity, he is still alive. Because this is America, the issue will be resolved by the court system. Until the courts resolve this issue, do we refer to Motl in the past or present tense? (For the record, please do not debate here whether he is or is not dead. The issue at hand is whether we accept the local jurisdiction's definition of death, the family's definition of death, or if WP has its own absolute definition) -- Bachrach44 ( talk) 21:38, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
I absolutely disagree in the strongest possible way! To pick a side in this case is a horrible thing for wikipedia to do. And if you need a reliable source, then his - Motl's - Rabbi counts for a whole lot more than some random newspaper. Or even a controversial law (he's alive in New York, but dead in DC?). If you need a guideline I would suggest going by what the person themself would chose, and I'm sure Motl would follow his Rabbi. Ariel. ( talk) 14:31, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
I'd consider local law and the attending health care professionals more authoritative than the parents or the family rabbi as to whether someone is legally or biologically dead. The Washington Post, the "random newspaper" in question, just reported that the doctors and hospital declared death and that this was consistent with DC law; it's obviously reliable for that purpose. The WP article can obviously describe that the family and their rabbi have a differing viewpoint, but until a court, panel of reviewing physicians, or other relevant institution accepts that viewpoint, it shouldn't be given undue weight so as to authoritatively determine facts (or prevent facts from being determined) within a WP article. Postdlf ( talk) 15:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Mordechai Dov Brody (nicknamed Motl or Motyl) (born 1996), a 12-year-old hasidic boy from Brooklyn, suffered from a terminal brain tumor and was declared legally dead on November 4, 2008. However, his parents refused to accept the legal definition of death on religious grounds because his heart is still beating.
Template:United States presidential election, 2008, IMHO, is a bit too wide - an accessibility issue, I believe - and quite huge. Do we have any clear guidelines to help reign this in or is this a non-issue? -- Banjeboi 14:02, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
I am wanting clarification on the most basic stuff. The question arose from Talk:List_of_One_Piece_characters for statements like "Luffy is character in One Piece." "Zoro weilds three swords" "One Piece is an anime" which are considered common knowledge and could be easily verifable by someone who looked at a visage of the item. The article does not have any info on where to draw the line with popular culture, nor is WP:fict any real help here either. Jinnai ( talk) 19:19, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
I have been watching a number of pages for some time now and I often see large chunks of useful information being removed from pages because it has not been referenced. Whilst I have no objection with people/bots enforcing this fundamental rule of Wikipedia, I sometime feel that the community in general is loosing by this form of control. Sometimes information that is not referenced is not always wrong or controversial but is in fact useful. An example is when historical information is recorded from peoples memories. Would it not be a good policy to request people move unreferenced material to Wikinfo [1] and put a link to it in place rather than just removing it entirely? I believe such a policy would be beneficial and consistent with the principles of both the Wikipeadia and Wikinfo sites. Also such cross promotion will bring awareness to the Wikinfo site and hopefully help overt such problems in the future. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wildplum69 ( talk • contribs) 23:41, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi everyone. This discussion in a nutshell: should relatively stable, static templates such as {{ unsigned}} with tens of thousands of transclusions be substituted? Recently, a few bots who were performing this function were taken down due to a lack of consensus, so you know what this means. Time to discuss 'til heat death of the universe!
Previous discussions can be found here and a bit right hurr.
If I may note, nobody actually knows what'll happen if we substitute all of these (speaking in technical terms, that is); after all, Brion has said that it probably won't affect performance that much, though I'm skeptical as this goes against everything WP:SUBST has taught me.
P.S. oh, I almost forgot to mention, WP:SUBST is the base policy that I'm talking about here. Master of Puppets Call me MoP! :) 23:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Now, before you jump on me, my first instinct is to say "no."
But let me paint a scene for you and see if, sometimes, circumstances alter cases. What I hope to achieve by this is a discussion based on the circumstances that may, in a minor way, have an influence on the policy. I'm not entirely sure where the best place to hold such a discussion is, so have placed it here as a start.
Let us take a piece of software that does something that a number of its users find to be objectionable rather than a simple bug. Those users ask for help on help forums, or blog about the issue. Neither of those styles of source are reliable sources according to our definition. However, Google and other search engines pick up the many separate areas of discussion.
From this one may see clearly that there is an issue. However it could be said that stating this clear fact (that there is an issue) is distillation to produce original research. I can see that with clarity.
Yet, if there are no reliable sources according to the WP definition, despite the forums and blogs being in themselves authoritative, and in some cases the manufacturer or vendor's own support forums, we appear not to be able to include the fact that there is contention, by definition.
I recognise completely that WP is not a newspaper, and its job is not to include news per se. Yet I am not sure that such coverage on forums is news, exactly.
You probably need an example. Please be clear: I am not lobbying for my edits to prevail when I point you at it. Consensus is consensus. Policies are policies. The example is Norton PC Checkup and the results, now removed (see its talk page) for some (many?) users' displeasure with its arrival as a bundle with other software. Obviously it does not record anyone's pleasure! That does not appear on forums etc.
So I come back to my question: Are there valid exceptions for Original Research? Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 10:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
I have found many entries for politicians on disambiguation pages who do not have articles. There is often a bluelink to the legislature to which they belong instead, which on the face of it puts it in compliance with MOS:DAB. However, the article will often only list the name. An example is Mary Murphy where I can see that there is a Mary Murphy in the Minnesota House of Representatives. But following through to the Minnesota article I find no further significant information on Mary Murphy other than that she is listed as a member and her party. So the question is, is there any point of her being on the dab page? Are we just wasting our readers time directing them to look through an article which ultimately is going to tell them no more than they already knew?
I looked at WP:BIO hoping that might provide some guidance but found it laughably unhelpful on politicians. According to that guideline, politicians are intrinsically notable if they have held international, national or first-level sub-national political office. In the case of Guernsey, first-level would be parish councillors, and rather small parishes at that. The whole thing seems very US-(or at least big country)-centric. SpinningSpark 15:50, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to start some discussion on maybe changing the naming convention on stand-alone lists as listed at Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists. I am doing this as the current way of how some lists are named has been problematic and has led to quite a few AFDs for lists such as List of X people, List of people who Y, etc.; the big one right now being Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of bow tie wearers (4th nomination).
I would possibly suggest a change to perhaps List of notable X people or List of notable people who Y or something along those lines. Otherwise, we are going to keep having these AFDs in which the arguments for and against deletion are the same each and every time. Any suggestions? MuZemike ( talk) 20:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:No original research#Regarding maps being "primary sources" according to this policy -- Rschen7754 ( T C) 05:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
At Wikipedia talk:External links, I have proposed a significant change to our guidelines on External Links, expressly discouraging the addition of certain kinds of commercial links, to give us a clearer policy to cite. I am specifically asking that we explicitily ban links in articles about general services or products that link to providers of those services. For example, the addition of the link "www.mcdonalds.com" would be an inappropriate addition to fast food. I understand that this is probably covered in a round-about way by other restrictions, but to make it explicit may help avoid the sorts of edit wars we see at numerous articles over the addition of links to MANY articles. Please carry on the discussion at Wikipedia talk:External links and not here. I am only posting this here to generate some interest in discussing the policy change. Thank you. -- Jayron32. talk. contribs 18:35, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
This has been common practice for ages, and I was surprised that no guideline existed for it. I created this a while back as an essay, and think it ought to be a guideline. Does anybody disagree, or wish to help me expand it? If general consensus here appears to be in support of proposing it as a guideline, I will. Dendodge Talk Contribs 13:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Note: Swinglineboy G and JBackus13 are blocked sockpuppets of a banned user, JeanLatore/Wiki_brah. Darkspots ( talk) 19:03, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Three Wiki_brah socks, is enough already. Darkspots ( talk) 04:10, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
So yeah, I know that they say what will happen if Wikipedia allows paid advertising. Yeah yeah, like everyone will get upset and fork off, start their own Wiki, and all that. But its not like EVERYONE would leave. Some people, especially the newer ones, will stay. Even if a majority of editors left some would stay behind and continue to contribute to Wikipedia even with ads. But what would result? "Wikipedia" still would continue to get mad google hits and attract new users in its post-advertising era, and those disgruntled editors who left in the wake of advertising would be at what would become a wanna-be "forked off" project, not THE wikipedia, which would linger on in obscurity. Wikipedia will thrive even if many of its productive editors left -- no one is irrplaceable, and on the internet, people leave all the time anyway. How many of the productive editors and admins from four years ago (2004) are still here, for instance? The conclusion here is that if and when Wikipedia does decide to allow paid advertisements, it will not suffer one bit for it. Your thoughts welcome. Swinglineboy G ( talk) 18:08, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
No, i'm just saying the main reason that advertising has been nixed is because of the massive editor opposition to it and their threats to boycott or leave. My point was that their threats have no weight to them. Wikipedia has a critical mass of its own now, regardless of its individual editors. I guess I was just using advertising as an example to prove that. Swinglineboy G ( talk) 18:22, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
I am interested in that discussion. Do you know where to find it? What if wikipedia would allow ads but explicitly not entertain any demands. Just be like hey I got your money now naff off. Swinglineboy G ( talk) 19:40, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Comment. I agree completely. Essays i just read on Wikipedia:Advertisements suggest that Wikipedia might be able to raise nearly $1,000,000,000.00 a year in advertising revenue. That's larger than the budget of some smaller states in the USA and most developing nations! I think Wikipedia should jump on this opportunity, put away a modest 10% for growth and investment in Wikipedia, then divide the rest up and sent something of a "dividend" cheque to each editor at the end of each fiscal year. Said payments could be based upon the number, and quality, of his edits throughout the year. Even if the dividend simply were equally split by registered users (8.1 million I read), the payout still would be in the neighbourhood of 80-90 dollars. But if the divdent were equitably split as a function of edit quality, edit count, and active service to the wiki, then each of the active 2,000 or so users would get quite a large payout each year. If wikipedia does do ads, then it is obvious that they should give most of the money not to charity, but to the wikipedians. This also would deflate much criticism of advertising! JBackus13 ( talk) 02:08, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
(unindent)
I support on/off buttons for opt-in ads on a nonprofit Wikipedia for all readers (via cookies). |
-- Timeshifter ( talk) 14:53, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
The simplest and easiest managed way of raising ad money would be to use Amazon's existing partenership scheme. We don't need full ads, just a change that means anytime any book is listed with an ISBN in an article, the reader would see a little link beside it saying "review this book on Amazon". It's fairly useful for the reader to be able to do that, and if of course he then buys it, the foundation would get cash. If readers are annoyed by it, they can set preferences and opt out. Strictly speaking it isn't advertising, since there is no "hey buy this" on out site, just a link to where you can see if it is in print and what the cost is, if you want. Given that wikipedia is often the first port of call for someone interested in a subject, the number of people interested in buying on of the books listed might be quite high. It also solves the problem of add selection, as the "ads" would be selected by those constructing sources and further reading sections. And I imagine, all products linked from
Penis would be genetailia or sexual health related.--
Scott MacDonald (
talk) 15:40, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Comment This thread is not up to the usual Wiki_brah standard. Delicious carbuncle ( talk) 16:07, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
So............... how much revenue will advertising bring? Is it $10 million a year, as suggested by another user above, or is it $1,000,000,000? That is obviously a huge disparity; does anyone know? I can see passing on it if its just $10 mil, but $1 billion? Man, gimme a piece of that shit! Does wikipedia know what it can do with that kind of money -- like buying Encyclopedia britannica, for example? Or funding its own military force like Blackwater Worldwide or some such other worthwhile endeavor. JBackus13 ( talk) 22:53, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Dividends based on edit count? Any suggestions on how I should spend my $3,000,000? -- Carnildo ( talk) 01:15, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Well the thing is wikipedia can't keep the money, since its a non-profit. So the only thing they could do is pass the profits (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) to somewhere else. The U.S. government would prefer that the money be passed onto taxable entities-- the users, so the gov't could collect income taxes on it. And the editors do have a "stake" in wikipedia based on the equitable value of their contributions to wikipedia. Thus, Wikipedia will be a "pass through" non-profit where the revenue is taxed when it "passes through" to the users themselves. That way the government benefits, and the user benefits, for even after taxes, that's a lot of money. Like carnildo said, he would stand to gross $3m, which would still be about $1.8 million, post-tax. JBackus13 ( talk) 04:31, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
"Disadvantaged" parts of the world are rife with corruption and graft. If Wikipedia started paying Africans and other third-worlders money to edit chances are this money would be intercepted by the warlords and public officials, not doing the average "wikipedian" in Africa the slightest good. This money would simply be used to fund war and human rights violations. Swinglineboy G ( talk) 15:14, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
There is nothing new under the sun... First, estimates of ad revenue are just that: Estimates. Revenues depend on supply and demand. All of Wikipedia suddenly being open for advertising would greatly increase the supply of ad space. Selling in bulk always decreases the price. And apart from editors leaving, there also is the question of donations. Would you donate to a Wikipedia that's raking in cash hand over hand via ads? Also, ads need infrastructure. So part of the revenue would immediately go towards more servers and bandwidth. Developers, currently often volunteers, would also expect to be paid. Assume US$250000 per developer per year if you have to pay real costs (and that is probably rather low). I would be surprised if a solidly argued business case even exists. And I'd only trust it if the author backs it by guaranteeing an increase in revenue - and a faster one than Wikimedia has managed on donations alone. As for the the idea of paying "dividends" to editors? Just image the overhead, and the possibilities for abuse. How do you evaluate the quality of contributions? If you reward quantity, be prepared for an invasion of bots. In short, this idea seems to be completely unworkable. -- Stephan Schulz ( talk) 17:46, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, if not dividends (I am opposed to that myself), Wikipedia should then keep the profits. Become a for-profit corporation. Imagine what Mr. Wales could buy with all that money. Not to mention offering stock in Wikipedia, which would raise more billions of dollars. Seriously, this kind of money being put to use in the the economy would do a lot to stave off the financial crisis and coming recession. JBackus13 ( talk) 04:13, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
I support on/off buttons for opt-in ads on a nonprofit Wikipedia for all readers (via cookies). |
The trolling by Swinglineboy G and JBackus13 became very obvious with their later comments. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 13:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
no ads |
This user stands against advertisements on Wikipedia. |
For balance. :)
Celarnor
Talk to me 13:08, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Comment. Direct advertising is not the only choice we have. Indirect advertising would work too. For example; the Google search box. See: Wikipedia:Advertisements#Income from search tools on wikipedia pages. For example; from AdSense#AdSense for search is this:
A variation of this allows the non-profit Mozilla Foundation to raise around $60 million dollars a year. They put Google search as a dropdown option in their Firefox browser search form at the top of all their browsers. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 14:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
(Unindent) When Special:Search does a Google search of Wikipedia it uses a variation of this:
Specifically, it uses the following sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org format:
As with most links there is no intermediary involved. The URL goes directly to Google. It pulls up a Google site-search page. That results page has standard Google text ads on the side. That is where the ad money comes into the picture. It is not a web-wide search, but it is still a Google search results page with ads. There is a possibility of a financial arrangement being made with Google to place the Special:Search form (without the checkbox table) at the top left of every Wikipedia page. Similar arrangements could be made with Yahoo, Microsoft and other search engine providers to be in the dropdown menu.
There is no problem with "non-RS/blacklist/spam sites" since those search results and ads are not on Wikipedia pages. Any source link or external link on Wikipedia (including searchforms) can lead to "non-RS/blacklist/spam sites" being linked on the external link page. Wikipedia can not control what other pages link to.
Even more money could be made by putting an option to search web-wide too. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 02:41, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
(unindent) The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Search engine optimization (SEO) only works if companies are able to add links to their sites and products. Spam links are currently controlled by the many spam admins and spam-watching editors on Wikipedia. Most editors keep an eye out for questionable external links. Wikipedia results are already at or near the top of many, if not most, searches on Google. A site-search engine will matter little concerning already ongoing SEO-motivated spam links.
Here is a schematic of a possible search form at the top left of the page.
There is plenty of room for the search form at the top of the page. The left half of the page is available on my 17 inch monitor.
The search form at Special:Search combined with the dropdown menu there is not that long. "Advanced search" can be shortened to just "Search". The form itself can be shortened slightly. The whole thing would then fit fine at the top of the page.
It would use currently unused space (unused by registered users). The Wikipedia logo at the top left can be pushed down a quarter inch. The sidebar search form can be removed to keep the sidebar short. The sidebar search form would be unneeded because it would be a duplicate search form. The "Go" button can be moved next to the top search form. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 03:39, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
If somebody is proposing something, could they start a new thread at WP:VPR, please? This appears to be a very confused discussion, that is taking up almost half the VPP page... If there is still relevant ongoing discussion about advertising, could we perhaps have a summary? -- Quiddity ( talk) 23:56, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Additional input is sought. Please see this discussion:
Over a year ago, an attempt was made to set a policy on the situations in which IMDb could be used as a reliable source (if any). The discussion is here WP:CIMDB. A heated debate on this has just started up again. Anyone wanting to contribute is invited to do so: here. GDallimore ( Talk) 11:22, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
There's currently a section on WP:MOSNUM ( MOS:UNLINKYEARS) that reads (as of this comment):
- Linking: Dates (years, months, day and month, full dates) should not be linked, unless there is a reason to do so. More information can be found at WP:CONTEXT#Dates.
- Autoformatting: Dates should not be linked purely for the purpose of autoformatting (even though in the past this was considered desirable).
As the edit history for the page shows, the section is currently very much disputed by those discussing it on the talk page. Despite this, bots have been run and other people are using semi-automatic scripts to mass-remove date linking. The community consensus on this issue is not clear at all. I'm starting this thread to (hopefully) resolve several issues:
It would be more conducive to discussion if people running date delinking scripts could stop pending an actual resolution to this debate. Mr. Z-man 03:24, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Vandalism usually does not last long in high traffic articles, but it leaves clutter in the edit history, often constituting the majority of edits. This makes it very difficult and time-consuming to sift through when anyone is actually looking for constructive changes or earlier versions. So I'm wondering if there should be a way of separating out, or highlighting, edits leaving no net change (vandal edits and the edits that revert them) so those can be overlooked. Either admins or any confirmed registered users could tag edits as nonconstructive. Then the edit history could be split into two columns, one for each; or the nonconstructive edits could be marked in grey highlighting. As long as the end result is not to cause edit warring over whether edits are constructive or nonconstructive, or to make edit histories even more unreadable and unsearchable... Thoughts? Postdlf ( talk) 19:13, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I think people who are trusted with certain tools should be able to simply remove an obviously disruptive edit from the history altogether when they revert it. There's no reason we should allow vandals to harm us by clogging up the database and lists of changes, often with offensive or illegal material. Clearly we would have to be careful about who we give such a privilege to, and some system of monitoring (at least a temporary dump of such changes) would have to be in place, but it would have numerous benefits.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:42, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
User:Thatsineed uploaded a number of images with pre-emptive template:Replaceable fair use disputed tags. See Image:Kamal Hasan-Dasavatharam10.jpg for an example. I've already asked to identify said pages but would it be better to remove the tags (and thus from Category:Replaceable fair use images disputed) or leave them there in case someone actually does dispute the rationale? Perhaps a bot could move the argument to the talk page with a link to the old text from the front? -- Ricky81682 ( talk) 07:47, 20 November 2008 (UTC)