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(sorry for the drift) I never understood why something calling itself an encyclopedia needs notability criteria. Though I'm sure there have been raised many good, rational arguments against this point of view. Paradoctor ( talk) 11:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
My 2 cents is that WP:N is fundamentally too limiting in many cases. I think there are things many people care about where the coverage is in depth but primary (say TV show episodes or Pokemon) where there is plenty of material and interest in the topic by our readers. That said, I generally favor and support WP:N because it's a fairly objective standard and that's darn useful. Otherwise we get too far into debates with people who think covering TV shows (for example) at all is "trivia" and not worthy of coverage here and we end up spending all our time arguing rather than just most :-). I'd love to see something better, but I've no idea what that would be. Hobit ( talk) 06:40, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
WP:N is absolutely necessary. While it's true that Wikipedia is not paper, and so we are not limited by physical space concerns, it is fallacious to proceed to saying that we have unlimited resources. We do not. We, the editors of Wikipedia, are not a limitless resource. A metric of notability serves to help us keep the encyclopedia to a size manageable by the population editing it. The exponential increase in size precipitated by a revocation of the notability guidelines would produce an unmanageable mess, and would only serve to harm the reputation, and ultimately the usefulness, of the encyclopedia. Powers T 13:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree completely that WP:N hurts us more than it helps us. Honestly, back when we had an article on every single Pokemon, did that actually hurt us? Are we better off now? The people saying that Wikipedia will become a "mess" with WP:N are forgetting a few things. First off, what's it to you if someone creates an article on a topic that you don't think is notable? It's not your job to singlehandedly maintain the quality of this encyclopedia. And it's not your job to stand between this encyclopedia and the legions of roving My Little Pony fans out there either. If you don't like an article, and if you don't think that it meets your subjective notion of "notability," then ignore it and get to work building content somewhere else. Disc space isn't the issue, so what is? I have never seen a good explanation of this.
If you drive off Mr. My Little Pony and he goes to Wikia and spends the rest of his days writing oodles of high-quality content about My Little Pony, who has been hurt and who has benefited? I really just don't see how notability is a positive influence on our encyclopedia.
Also, something tells me that a WP:N-free Wikipedia would not be immediately inundated with 1950s weather data, because in such an encyclopedia you not only have to have V and RS, but you have to have the crucial factor of someone caring enough to take the time to put it up. And if someone cares enough to post something, and someone else cares enough to look it up, why shouldn't the two be able to enjoy that information? If people can't find what they are looking for here, they'll go look somewhere else, but if we have people lining up at the door the provide those seekers with what they are after, it makes sense to let them provide it.
Of course, I don't really think that this little discussion here will actually succeed in knocking out one of Wikipedia core content guideline's, but it sure was nice to come here and vent. ; ) -- Cerebellum ( talk) 04:25, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Actually, while Wikipedia is "not paper" (as opposed to some other encyclopedias), it does have a limitation that other encyclopedias don't. Editors of other encyclopedias can generally be trusted (to know what they are writing about etc.), but the editors of Wikipedia (again - generally) cannot... That's what leads to all the policies and guidelines about verifiability, sources etc. And they lead to notability. For if there are no independent sources that discuss the subject, we are going to end up with a "mess" - an article that is "just" non-neutral (a likely result of having sources representing only one side), an article that looks like an advertisement (a likely result if all sources are advertisements), an article that contains "original research" (which is not unlikely to result in falsehoods - and they are probably the worst kind of "mess")... Other encyclopedias might trust their editors to do some "original research", but, unfortunately, we cannot... And that's why (unfortunately) we can only write articles about subjects that "are notable" (are discussed in appropriate sources)... -- Martynas Patasius ( talk) 22:44, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm seeing a conflation of "notability" (which actually is a synonym for the interest taken by "interesting" or "official" people), with "source reliability" which actually has to do with something entirely different, which is truth. There is a huge amount of reliable-source information out there which is likely to be true, but which isn't interesting and thus not notable. Like mundane weather reports from mundane places, decades ago. Who cares that someplace that often gets cloudy skies, had cloudy skies on March 9, 1952? Unless there's some interesting historical event at that time and place it bears on, the answer is: nobody. The same for high school goings on from the same day, even if they made it into some Fische record of some (now disappeared) newspaper. They're like the weather. The routine weather reports from local places are examples of stuff that is WP:RS but not WP:N. Thus, WP:RS does NOT and should not define WP:N, but that bad idea is something I'm seeing proposed above. These two things, N and RS, are two different things, and it takes both to be really worthy of inclusion. Of course, that said, the problem is in defining N in some other way that has nothing to do with RS, and I've had my say about that. It ends up being a game where celebrities identify celebrity, and they themselves are identified the same way. Soon you can be famous for being famous, ala Warhol.
Perhaps the nastiest example of such conflict comes in the area of BLP, where RS is defined in terms of "likely to be true," but then "likely to be true" is defined as "having come from a source identified as reliable." This gets to the epistemological problem of when we admit that our list of standard V sources (you can look them up) are not RS sources (likely to be TRUE), because some things aren't as likely to be reliable as our memories, which aren't available to anybody. So WP:V is not WP:RS, either. For example, I myself am the leading expert on my own life, and if I disagree with something that gets into print about me, from somebody who met me for a few hours, I'm more likely to be right than the "source" is, if we disagree. Especially when a statement I myself made is the source for the information in the "RS" source, which got it from ME, second-hand! And yet, in a deletion fight, the WP:V claim would be taken over mine, even though it came from me originally, and was garbled. Go figure. This is a prime example of what may be called the "celebritization of truth." The idea being that something is more likely to be true, if some "notable" or celebrated person or source claims it, than if an "ordinary person" (like you or me) claims it. Say what? That's an incredibly stupid idea, indeed ridiculous idea on the very face of it, but it's written right into WP's policies. They make no exception for BLP, in part because of a foolish consistancy which is the hobgoblin of little minds. S B H arris 19:53, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
There is at least one academic study of wikipedia which has stated that Wikipedia rules are unevenly enforced, but these conclusions appear only based on general observation.
Okip 12:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
(Akk, formatting craziness here) Why do you need an academic study to see in a place with a large group enforcing the rules, some people will do things different than others? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ ( talk) 14:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
The rules are designed to be enforced unequally. It would be nonsensical to treat experienced users in the same way as a user who has been here for less than a week. We have WP:IAR and most rules give very non-specific "enforcement" provisions specifically so enforcement can be tailored to the situation. Moreover, the people doing the enforcement are volunteers, nobody watches everything and nobody is required to act. Mr. Z-man 17:16, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Our rules are written in such a way as to make a casual reader believe that our rules are enforced equally. Okip 03:55, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Blogs are not allowed as sources in wikipedia. From
WP:RS: self-published media—whether books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, personal pages on social networking sites, Internet forum postings, or tweets—are largely not acceptable.
But newspapers host blogs by their writers, and newspapers are generally WP:RS. From
WP:RS: Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professional journalists or are professionals in the field on which they write and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control.
Question: Is there a distinction between blogs by newspapers which cannot be used as sources in wikipedia, and interactive newspaper columns which can?
e.g.
this lede.blog by nyt.com is alleged to be a blog not an "interactive column", and not a legitimate source for wikipedia in this dispute from
Abdolmalek_Rigi talk page:
:Sorry, what you're quoting does not apply to the blog you used, what you cited is not an "interactive column", it's a blog, and it's not clear if it has any editorial supervision or not. In any case, "may be acceptable as sources" is not good enough when dealing with controversial claims and topics. It is Wikipedia's policy that exceptional claims require exceptional sources, and no blog is an exceptional source. --
Kurdo777 (
talk) 21:24, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
--
BoogaLouie (
talk) 20:29, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability (railway incidents) ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi. I have a question. Can the users put publicity in Wikipedia? I tell this because i think that a lot of userboxes contains the promotion of a thing. For example, this user prefer Wii over Playstation 3 and X Box 360, or This user drinks Coca Cola. I think taht, in a encyclopedia, this typo of dates are irrelevant: you can need a userbot to say taht you write spanish, but you needn't a userbox to say taht you drink cocacola, also, say "I prefer Wii over.." is a type of promotios about Wii.-- HHH Pedrigree ( talk) 15:09, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Thou, Gay, Dude, Craic, Humbug are all articles about words ( Thou is a Featured Article) but WP:NAD prohibits this. It can be argued that the articles go beyond a simple dictionary definition but WP:NAD states:
Note that dictionary and encyclopedia articles do not differ simply on grounds of length. A full dictionary article (as opposed to a stub dictionary article, which is simply where Wiktionary articles start from) or encyclopedic dictionary entry would contain illustrative quotations for each listed meaning; etymologies; translations; inflections; links to related and derived terms; links to synonyms, antonyms, and homophones; a pronunciation guide in various dialects, including links to sound files; and usage notes; and can be very long indeed.
Should WP:DICTIONARY be tweaked to allow these types of articles? If so, how? If not, should these articles be removed? -- NeilN talk to me 17:22, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Given the fragmentation of this discussion over several places now, I want to express my view here now that the word gay has a special significance in that it was deliberately chosen and given a new definition by a part of society which used it as a simple but powerful unifying tool. Sadly, that usage has now led to a further usage as a derogatory adjective, but it's all because it was made to represent a lot more than the simple evolution of a word could ever do. It's not "just a word" HiLo48 ( talk) 02:44, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
I would strongly support modifying WP:NAD to more clearly indicate that a highly restrictive interpretation such as Wolfkeeper's is not supported by community consensus. older ≠ wiser 14:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
I think this might be solved once and for all by just synchronizing WP:NAD with Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a dictionary. As pointed out above the latter specifically says that "In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject..." Clearly in certain cases an indicidual word merits encyclopedic treatment.-- Cúchullain t/ c 16:08, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Please visit and comment at User talk:Jimbo Wales/poll. Fram ( talk) 12:16, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Any user is entitled to have a poll in userspace. The authority, statistical accuracy, or impact of the poll is, naturally, a matter of interpretation.-- Scott Mac (Doc) 10:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I propose either fixing or removing the Macau link. It seems to be broken. Kayau Voting IS evil 11:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
There's a new request for comments on the Manual of Style talk page about whether spaces should be required around disjunctive endashes when a disjunct contains spaces. For example, currently the Manual of Style requires the spaces around the second dash in the phrase:
and the proposal is to omit those spaces. It's been suggested that this RfC be advertised more widely, so I'm mentioning it here. Further comments are welcome. Eubulides ( talk) 16:53, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Discussions are on here ▒ ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ ▒ ―Œ ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣ 19:44, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Proposed policy: Wikipedia:Research
Over the last few months, members of WikiProject Research have been drafting a policy for research of Wikipedia and its users. Specifically, this policy describes a process for recruiting Wikipedia users to participate in research studies, and creates the Subject Recruitment Approvals Group to manage this recruitment through an applications process for recruitment requests similar to the one used by the Bot Approvals Group.
This policy has been designed to facilitate research of Wikipedia while ensuring that studies are not disruptive to the community.
At this time, we are seeking input from the Wikipedia community. Although we have had (sometimes heavy) involvement from non-researcher members of the community, this policy has been largely written by researchers. That is why we are posting to ask for your comments and assistance to turn this draft into a proposal. -- PiperNigrum ( hail| scan) 21:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I've re-vivified this discussion since the proposed policy now has an RFC for becoming an official policy.-- EpochFail( talk| work) 22:38, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Is it OK to point vandals to Uncyclopedia? Many vandals do humorous but destructive edits to WP. Uncyclopedia seems to welcome such edits. I'm wondering if we could, besides giving them a warning, tell them about Uncyclopedia when they vandalize. I've never seen a vandal use the sandbox which they are told to use. But uncyclopedia seems like a place that they will have more fun editing (as they won't be reverted). The problems with this proposal are:
Can someone tell me if it is an aberration of policy? Thx. ManishEarth Talk • Stalk 03:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
By way of a link to the next section, Uncyclopedia is just one of many alternative outlets which unashamedly provide what Wikipedia is not. Certes ( talk) 23:27, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps, analogously, other people could be referred to Wikinfo, where there are no rules of NOR, RS, NPOV, FT, notability, or a lot of WP:NOT. Peter jackson ( talk) 10:41, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
[heading] Last resort: Arbitration [text] If you have taken all other reasonable steps to resolve the dispute, and the dispute is not over the content of an article, you can request Arbitration.
Apparently AWB and SmackBot both tend to add {{ DEFAULTSORT}} tags to everything they can. This is not only redundant in most cases, it "enshrines" incorrect sorting for many pages that need sortkeys but haven't gotten them yet, like those starting with years (e.g., 1982 in home video) or ordinal numbers (e.g., 66th Academy Awards -- although note that this one actually has a correct sortkey on it). I propose a policy that {{ DEFAULTSORT}} tags not be "automatically" (or "semi-automatically") added to articles that begin with numbers. Or, better yet, limit such activity to specific kinds of articles, like people and articles with titles starting with grammatical articles ("the", etc.) -- which are pretty much the only kinds of articles that actually need special sorting in the first place. - dcljr ( talk) 01:01, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
What is the correct defaultsort for 1982 in home video? You could just bring the subhect to AWB's attention first. This is easily fixable. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 09:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed that in the past 4 years it has begun a norm in wikipedia to tell to users "it has been discussed, stop discussing it". But this is completely undemocratic and ultimately a propaganda machine method since as time goes by, gradually, but surely, this "consensus" becomes dated. What is most disgusting, is that such methods of pushing bias and POV are even seen in the most tiny of articles. e.g. here: Talk:PIIGS#Racist.3F This is a very tiny article of a) very few editors b) even a very new topic and people still try to push to users "stop discussing it, it has reached". -- Leladax ( talk) 04:23, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
It is a bit of a balancing act. You certainly need to be able to quickly dismiss reraised requests for a couple of months or you run into the rather nasty problem of WP:Civil POV pushing. Dmcq ( talk) 23:47, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
User_talk:Cygnis_insignis#Blake_template_2 Please comment there. Thanks, Litho derm 05:41, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
This is an option in preferences. Since it's usually a bad, drama inducing idea to mark edits that are not minor as being such, and since nobody ever got yelled at for not marking an edit is minor, I think it may be in WPs best interest to eliminate this option from the preferences menu. It seems to cause more problems than it solves. Thoughts? Beeblebrox ( talk) 20:56, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Azure, the people who abuse the "minor" tag to "put something by" other editors need to be disciplined. Admins should be able to revoke the privilege. Fact is, there are lots of people who have pages watchlisted but are not religiously checking all edits. The minor edit helps them ignore noise, which is always a good thing. I don't know whether the preference needs to be taken out, but minor has an objective definition per WP:MINOR: "typographical corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearrangement of text without modification of content". I don't know whether the option preference needs to be taken out, but the minor rule does need to be enforced. II | ( t - c) 10:24, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Comment: I think it could be allowed for bots (with approval) if their tasks really are to do minor edits. 陣 内 Jinnai 23:45, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
This was proposed as a policy once back in 2006, from what I understand, but was defeated. The version that failed to achieve consensus was significantly different from the current version, and had called for blocking of any user account found to be in use by a child. I feel that since then, based on seeing its advice invoked on many occasions, that the contents of the current version have become standard practice. Also see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Protecting children's privacy, where the original version was rejected, but the principles in the current version of the page were upheld.
Since the role of policy is to document accepted practices, I feel the page should be labeled as such. In summary, the main points of the page seem to be:
Let me know if you support this proposal, or if not, what changes (if any) you'd suggest to better suit this being a policy. Thanks. Equazcion (talk) 05:32, 4 Mar 2010 (UTC)
Doesn't do anything - the proposal recaps a bunch of stuff that's well stated elsewhere (users can edit anonymously, disclosure of personal info discouraged, immature/disruptive users may be blocked/banned, etc) and concludes that 1/ disruptive users may be banned and 2/ non-disruptive users who post personal information should be warned and personal information by or about minors may be oversighted (which is already a stated norm). People who present as minors tend to be scrutinized anyway; disruptive users tend to be removed and in any case personal information is removed, strongly so for minors. If they don't present as minors then there's no way to tell.
If this is aiming to document or highlight a norm, the norms are amply documented and adding this page would be "surface dressing" (the norms it discusses already exist elsewhere). If this is aiming to change a norm it's unlikely to do so and a full RFC on editing by minors would be more appropriate. FT2 ( Talk | email) 14:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
I can understand why WikiProjects choose to categorize pages within their purview as being of 'High-importance' or 'Low-importance' to them, but what is the purpose of categorizing pages as being of 'NA-importance'. 'NA-importance articles' categories, of which there are currently more than 1,200, are essentially dumping grounds for pages that are not articles or lists (i.e., categories, files, templates, redirects, disambiguation pages, project pages, and portal pages), but I can't understand why they are categorized. So, in this context, I would like to pose two questions:
Thank you, -- Black Falcon ( talk) 06:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Top | High | Mid | Low | NA | ??? | Total |
283 | 2,930 | 12,003 | 180,364 | 53,934 | 6,916 | 256,430 |
{{
Chess diagram}}
and {{
Infobox chess player}}
are relevant to
Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess and it's natural to include them as they do relate to the articles. The question then becomes once you've decided to categorise it, how it is best to do so? The Top/High/Mid/Low importance are meant for articles and have little meaning to a template. Putting them in the unassessed
??? is really unhelpful because this is a place you want to see the occurance of new unassessed article. So instead they are allocated into "NA" section.
SunCreator (
talk) 16:36, 6 March 2010 (UTC)I've always been a bit worried that Wikipedia could be censored for real. Wikipedia is subject to US (and, I guess Florida) law because its servers are located in Florida.
Let's say Congress passed a law making it illegal to "cause others to view the American government with contempt" during (say) a string of terrorist attacks on US airplanes around the world. (A similar law was passed in WWI; see the Sedition Act of 1918.) Would the trustees be forced to bring down or drastically alter thousands of current articles, when presented with a federal injunction?
Would Wikipedia, if it had existed in the 1970's, have been allowed to report fully on the Pentagon Papers (including the classified material) while its injunction was being appealed, even though the NY Times was not? Could the US government enjoin us right now from publishing certain articles that provide "expert advise or resources" to terrorist organizations under PATRIOT III?
Sometimes I wish that Wikipedia's servers were spread all over the world, so that that the action of any one government could not overturn the independence of Wikipedia's consensus. What if Wikipedia's servers just happened to be located in China?
Comments, criticisms, opinions? -- RoyGoldsmith ( talk) 17:13, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure about censorship, but Wikipedia should have a contingency plan. The servers may be strong against hackers, but one hurricane and all of that work is gone, including backup. We should have atleast a backup server on the other side of the planet. Even better if it was a server which was immediately updated to mirror the main server, so that people on the other side of the planet get a faster connection to WP and the Tampa server has less load. (Editing should be redirected to Tampa, though, so that we don't have lagged edit conflicts) ManishEarth Talk • Stalk 04:40, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Comment Practical concerns aside, does anybody in here believe we're not going to be P2P-hosted in a few years?
Paradoctor (
talk) 01:14, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
This discussion the vpp consensus refers in part to a user name credit in article space. Although the translation in question is from German to English, surely a simple matter that anyone who reads both languages can do, it is not quite so simple. The material that was translated is "verifiable" in that it is in published works, but it is written in an old form of German and in an old script. Furthermore, the material, although included in some electronic texts, is not widely available (4-5 copies in libraries and not globally available on the internet). The user who translated is fluent in German (says on his user page), as well as other languages. Several people have removed the credit, but I reverted it. Why didn't someone contact me, especially when I kept reverting it? Anyone who actually examined what was being taken out, put back and taken out, and by whom, could see that the translator is an established wikipedia with the proper credentials for specialized translation. If the people removing the link did not realize that it was a specialized translation, then perhaps a note to either me or the other user would have been appropriate, rather than simply high-handedly removing the credit. It seems to me that vpp consensus was reached in a vacuum, rather than with the facts. I strongly disagree with removing this: This is a highly specialized translation of a published source but I'm willing to compromise on this. I will discuss this with him and we will probably put something related to it on the talk page instead. However, in the meantime, until we get that done, please leave it. I will remove the translation credit when we've fully documented the translation on the talk page. Auntieruth55 ( talk) 16:50, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
It appears that the userpage User:JPatrickBedell was oversighted, and that, based on a look at this mirror, the situation did not meet any of the criteria set out in WP:OVERSIGHT for suppression, i.e. Removal of non-public personal information; Removal of potentially libelous information; Removal of copyright infringement; Hiding of blatant attack names on automated lists and logs; or Removal of vandalism. While the Wikimedia Foundation has unquestioned editorial authority over the site, I think it is good policy to reserve oversighting for only those cases that meet the criteria above, in order to preserve the open culture of the wiki.
If there was any objectionable content, editing, blanking or at most deletion would have sufficed. But I am not sure there was even anything particularly objectionable per our guidelines on userpages. Some people have interpreted his comments on his userpage as a suicide note leading up to the 2010 Pentagon shooting, especially in light of his comment about being "determined to see that justice is served in the death of Colonel James Sabow." But that could have been a reference to the successive deletion debates on the James E. Sabow article, particularly when Bedell's own philosophy of " transwikianism" (the wiki editing philosophy that views the effect on the Real World of wiki information as a primary consideration when editing) is taken into account. Further, we have no reason to believe that his account was compromised or that it was created by an impostor.
While I realize that, given the recent tragedy, emotions may be running high in reference to this matter, it is times like this that it is most important to adhere to our standards, lest we be viewed as hypocritical about our philosophy of transparency and openness. Tisane ( talk) 21:29, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
The RFC is progressing here ▒ ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ ▒ ―Œ ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣ 19:38, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Please opine at WT:IRS#RFC on Wikinews as a reliable source. The short version is that we need to re-establish exactly what our current consensus is, due to some recent changes at Wikinews. Blueboar ( talk) 22:32, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:NS6 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi all,
I've perused a few of the earlier discussions about image credits in captions, and while I find the arguments unconvincing, I can at least see where their proponents are coming from. Essentially, the argument goes something like "allowing credits in captions will add clutter and could potentially make wikipedia articles seem like advertising for the image creators.
The move to banish all credits to image description pages seems to me to violate several important tenets of wikipedia style: (1) articles should be self contained (2) article content should be verifiable (3) wikipedia should honor both the letter and spirit of free content licenses (4) wikipedia policies should be follow a consistent set of foundational principles.
To this end, I propose allowing articles to add photo credits in footnotes. This avoids all of the stated problems (clutter, promotion), while keeping articles self contained and verifiable (many users do not know that images are clickable, at least that I've witnessed), making them viable as printable (rather than only screen) documents, and crediting photographers concerned with proper attribution (for instance, as implied by the spirit of CC-BY type licenses).
This brings the citations for images in line with citations for quotations, numerical data, other facts, and even ideas and interpretations used in article text. Adding image creator credits to footnotes is unlikely to be enough incentive for users to add spammy images as self-promotion, and balances the goals of professional clutter-free encyclopedia writing and proper ethically proper credit for image creators.
I'm putting this same text at Wikipedia talk:Captions#Image credits in footnotes.3F, which seems like the appropriate place for the discussion, since several previous discussions of image credits took place there. (As far as I can tell, both numerical majorities and prevailing arguments in all the discussions I've seen have favored crediting image creators, while defenders of the status quo have mostly argued on the basis of "this is already settled, you punks." but that's neither here nor there).
Once again, I suggest directing discussion here
Thanks for your consideration,
jacobolus
(t) 05:08, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Jumamuba ( talk · contribs) vandalized Wikipedia by posting many copies of copyrighted images - about 50 over two months. This is 25 copies per month; on average, about ten every two weeks. Many of these copies were with false licensing information, claiming that he took the pictures, when in reality, he stole the pictures from forums (of course no source information there) such as skyscrapercity.com.
I propose that if a user is known to have likely falsely claimed at least one file as his own, and has been blocked for copyright infringement, then all files he uploaded within one month of the falsely claimed file(s) with an "own work" declaration may be speedily deleted immediately. Evidence for false claims of ownership can be established in a WP:FFD discussion. If a user does not want his files deleted, he should not falsely claim any of them as his own and lose the implicit trust of the community that he will respect copyright. Unfortunately, the current situation is that it takes, according to policy, at least seven days, to get a file deleted because of questionable permission or source info. PleaseStand ( talk) 02:32, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Is it proper or within policy for a rollbacker to rollback his or her own user/talk page after a vandal hit, or should said editor refer elsewhere for help ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mlpearc ( talk • contribs)
I've been going through CAT:FFD, and finding several images where the original listing had been overwritten due to a bug in Twinkle. I've been relisting these, and linking back to the edit where Twinkle overwrote the nomination. If the original nomination (possibly from 2008) was made by a user who had since vanished, should I remove/change the sig in the relisting, in order to help keep the user "vanished"? (It will still be visible in the diff which I link to) עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Proposed deletion (books), an adaptation of the PROD process for Wikipedia-Books has been proposed. Feedback and comments would be appreciated. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:26, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Popular Science magazine has posted their entire 137-year archive, all hosted on Google Books. In the bottom right corner of each page image is, in gray text, the phrase "Copyrighted image", even on old magazines that have fallen into the public domain, like the March 1905 issue I have open in another browser window here. A scan of the original magazine wouldn't have been marred by this, and in the US, the "Copyrighted image" claim is incorrect, per the court ruling that a photograph of a public domain work of art isn't copyrightable. (See Copyfraud.) My question: When I grab full page scans of the old copies of this magazine that have fallen into the public domain, is it considered a "best practice" to use image editing software to simply remove the "Copyrighted image" text? Is it acceptable to just upload the image to en with the "Copyrighted image" text intact, even though this is incorrect and may in the future cause editors to waste time debating whether the image is or is not copyrighted and subject to deletion? (I ask whether it's acceptable because it takes time an effort to hack the text out of every image.) And, finally, does anyone have a link to a Google Books page where I can just grab the highest-res PNG or JPG file of a particular page without having to use their clumsy, awful reader with the scroll arrows and zoom magnifying glass icons? I don't really want to have to take 10 screen captures and stitch them together just to assemble a single page. Comet Tuttle ( talk) 07:23, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
A bit of a debate is rising on the article One shot (music video) numerous videos have been added to the list without citations. Some of these have been added in error because they give the appearance of one continuous shot when in fact the shot changes are well hidden (this has been made easier using modern techniques, though Alfred Hitchcock also did it for Rope (film) in 1948) a lot of these have unreliable secondary/tertiary sources claiming they are "One Shot" but little or no reliable evidence either way.
Now when recently removing some of these to clean the article up, I was asked to provide citable references that they were *not* one shot which I could do for two of the videos. I also added a section explaining why they were not One Shots. The problem now exists that for many there is no academic study/analysis of this field from which a secondary source can be drawn. I did attempt to cite the Primary Source (including the Timecode of the cut) but this has been removed by another editor - citing this reference as "Original Research" because the cut may not be apparent to a casual viewer.
This leads to a rock and a hard-place; if the references stay in we get further tertiary sources taken from Wikipedia. If we remove them entirely they simply get them re-added.
So the question of Wikipedia Policy Remains, is it/should it be acceptable to cite the event within the primary source when there is a lack of secondary sources? I asked the question of do we require a secondary source to cite that Moby Dick begins with the words "Call me Ishmael"? Or do we require to assume a certain level of ability on the part of the reader - i.e; citing the Timecode is not enough because it requires a certain level of technical knowledge to understand what is being seen. A similar literary equivalent might be House of Leaves where the Editor has cited sections of the book which contain Codes but a request for further citations has been made.
My personal opinion is that in either case these videos need to be identified to prevent further error, even if a reliable secondary source cannot yet be found. Then marking the video as Citation Needed or Citing Timecode will encourage further editors to search for sources in places I have't even thought to look for them - or possibly encourage reliable third parties to carry out the required research so that a subsequent editor can cite their work.
Thoughts, additions and comparisons? Stuart.Jamieson ( talk) 10:41, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm on a fact finding mission, and I'm hoping to get some help from the greater wikipedia. WP:ELG, the Exit List Guideline, is a guideline created by User:TwinsMetsFan in September/October of 2006. It was immediately posted as a guideline and part of the manual of style without any (apparent) discussion outside of the one pointed to by the guideline as its basis.
A recently started discussion, which I and a couple others from outside of the United States are questioning, aims to add an amendment to this "guideline". I however, would like to question it's status. This was a guideline discussed by American editors in the American roads wikiproject, and then applied to Wikipedia as a whole as if it were the international standard without ANY discussion outside of the US. As it stands, no project besides the US roads wikiproject, and Canadian road articles created by the members of the US road wikiproject, follows this hidden jem of the manual of style. When I asked that any discussions amending a worldwide guideline be brought up to every road wikiproject that is active, I was refused because it's too tedious. This nullifies the guideline as any sort of non-US standard, and many of the administrators involved in it seem oblivious to the fact that if you aren't discussing this with wikipedia as a whole, it's not a guideline.
I would like to see this demoted as a guideline, and potentially moved from its current title to reflect that it is an American standard. The rest of the world is not going to spell it 'color'. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:52, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
On the closing note it said to start a discussion on WP:VPP concerning the specifics. I am starting this discussion here. Any PROD can be removed by any user? Sapporod1965 ( talk) 21:43, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
A case arose recently where an editor with a community imposed restriction was blocked for commenting on an AfD for an article that editor had created. A number of editors felt this block was unwasie and/or unwarranted. I have therefore created Wikipedia:Standard exception to Projectspace limitations after a discussion at WP:ANI#Specific question. Comment is welcome. DES (talk) 00:12, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
I believe that the points above all easily explain why some concept and baseline for notability is necessary - while not paper, we're not an indiscriminate collection of verifiable information.
That said, understanding that notability as it is treated today as one swing of the pendulum of self-correction on WP is probably a bit too heavy-handed but also a bit too unfocused. I think most editors know how to use notability, but it is clear that most of this inclusist vs deletionist war that's been going on is due to a vicious circle of events that typically start with a heated argument at AFD and lead to ranges of articles being contested. This is often fueled by disagreement for what is appropriate coverage of certain fields relative to other fields (a fact often joked at by the press, which fuels the battles further) - I know one of the biggest is concepts from fictional works (characters, etc.) which some believe are important to be covered but rarely can be covered by secondary sources, thus making the present WP:GNG statement difficult to work with. But this is also true for schools, sports figures, etc.
It is not that notability isn't a bad idea, nor one to be abandoned, but we need to remind people that we a combination of an encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac - to that end, we should be asking ourselves, first and foremost, what is it that we want to cover, and not the negative of what we don't want to cover. Given any field, we should be able to say "Ok, topics that satisfy these conditions from this field that demonstrate notability within that field should be included", and list out specific criteria that avoid subjection assessments. This may not be possible for some fields, but I think most fields can provide a good swath at appropriate topics that, with reasonable assurance, would be part of the encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac. To that end, we already have the various sub-notability guidelines (SNGs) that provide that. Failing the SNG then drops you to our next goalline, the general notability guideline, which says that a topic that shows notability via secondary sources should be included. Mind you, many topics that would meet the field-specific guidelines likely would meet the GNG, but this should not be taken as a sign that the GNG is more important. The GNG is the fallback position of a topic doesn't meet its field's guidelines or if the field lacks any guidelines or falls outside of any known field. When viewed like this, this can significant help discussions at AFDs where notability is in play, because we're not talking about the presence of sources but the appropriateness of the topic for WP: if it is notable in the specific field but lacks sources, we should be more open to keeping it than deletion.
The problem we stuck with is this impression - when you read through policies and guidelines and AFDs - that the only good encyclopedic article is one that has third-party, secondary sources. Granted - verification and avoidance of original research and bias are all important, and third-party, secondary sources are a strong way to get there. But that's satisfying the "encyclopedia" part of WP's mission - gazetteers and almanac are works that tend to just cite facts and not attempt analysis or the like. Not every article on WP needs third-party secondary sources to meet WP's mission. That's not to say that we open the door to thousands of articles by allowing primary, first-person accounts as the only sourcing metric, and that's why, again, the field-specific guidelines of what is actually notable should come into play - there may be some topics within a field that should be included even if the sourcing is otherwise not as strong as one that is provided through secondary sources. Failing the field, then the lack of secondary sources will mean the topic fails the GNG, and we likely would not have a separate article on it.
We still need to make sure that field specific guidelines for inclusion are not overly inclusive compared to others. For example, if a guideline says that a one-time cameo fictional character always gets an article, while we exclude an amateur that plays one time at the Olympics through an athlete-field guideline or a single mom-and-pop business through a business-field guideline, we've got a problem. These field guidelines cannot be developed in a vacuum and should be challenged if they are overly inclusive - or overly exclusive too. We also need to realize that not every topic easily shuffles into established fields, or that new fields may become more obvious over time as we work towards this. We still have the GNG for those.
Basically, the "tl;dr" version of the above is simply that we should be asking ourselves, "what do we want to include in WP" instead of always playing the negative "This doesn't belong in WP". We want to assure ourselves we are covering all topics within individual fields well enough to meet the mission of WP, and being overly reliant on the GNG is harmful. (An argument I've had to point out several times is that while the property of having significant coverage is usually the result of something being wikt:notable, it is not true that having significant coverage is what makes something wikt:notable. There is a small but significant gap between GNG-based notable topics and dictionary-definition-based notable topics. We need to find out how to fill that gap, and field-specific guidelines are one way to do so.) -- MASEM ( t) 16:58, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I'll talk about fiction related articles because it's a good example and, to be honest, the majority of all the squabbling that goes on is about fiction related articles. To my mind, sources are required to address two basic questions regarding Wikipedia articles. Is it true? And why should anyone care? All reliable sources can address the first question, but only reliable secondary ones can answer the other question. That is the main reason why articles on elements of fiction are frowned upon if they only cite the work itself as a source- the question of why anybody should care has not been addressed. And don't think it's not an important question; Wikipedia has been mocked, and its reputation as a serious scholarly resource undermined, for its undue fannish obsession with minute details of popular culture.
There is another, and also very good, reason to insist on independent sources. When an editor writes an article based solely on the work of fiction it is extremely difficult to determine where their reporting of the primary source crosses the line into inappropriate interpretation, speculation or editorializing, or where they place undue weight on one element or another. And it is also true that such articles tend to be very badly written, consist mostly of plot summary without balanced discussion, and can be difficult for subsequent editors to work on. Independent sources mitigate all of these factors.
Masem pointed out that it can sometimes happen that a worthy topic might come along, where everyone can see it's important but by some fluke the sources don't exist or are extraordinarily hard to get at. This is true. It happens. But it does not happen very often, and it's for cases like this that the old motto ignore all rules should be applied. By all means break the rules when it's obviously the right thing to do. We should not generate a set of blanket exemptions to catch the occasional freakishly sourceless worthy topic- because we'll catch so much crap along with it as to make the whole thing more trouble than it's worth. This is especially true in coverage of fiction because the exemptions will inevitably be misused, often deliberately. I would like to make it clear that I don't want to generalize because I know there are a lot of good-faith editors doing a lot of good work in that area, but the sad fact is that when spurious, misleading and irrelevant sourcing happens it's almost always when someone tries to defend a fiction-related article from AfD. Take away or lessen the requirement for independent sourcing and the problem will just get worse. Reyk YO! 10:43, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
OK, but now what if you ARE the authority on something? Let us look at an extreme case that probably won't happen: Stephen Hawking decides to post something on Wikipedia that summarizes his conclusion that his earlier mathematical calculations, showing that the universe originated with a singularity, may be a special case, and that it is quite possible that there was no "Big Bang" after all. I suppose he could wait until his publisher puts this out in hard copy, and then cite himself; but "he da MAN," as we say in the street, so why should he?
Granted, Hawking will get published as a matter of course, so presumably the stuff will get out there sooner or later, and filter back to Wikipedia. But one of the virtues of this encyclopedia, over any other in the world, is that it can promulgate information very quickly relative to a dead-tree publication process that can take months to years. And for every Hawking there are ten thousand perfectly competent scholars, not a few of them without institutional affiliation, doing perfectly sound original work even while primarily engaged in some other discipline. (The translation of the Old West Saxon poem "The Wanderer" by the late attorney Clifford A. Truesdell IV is a good example of this, published three years ago on line but as far as I know still unavailable in hard copy.)
The error, I think, lies in an assumption that original research is somehow unverifiable. But those two assertions are by no means fungible. Independent scholarship can be very sound, and readily replicated by anyone who is willing to take the trouble, while on the other hand there is a great deal of piffle that finds its way into print anyway, even from university presses that should know better (I've worked for some of them). Just because a press publishes something, even a careful scholarly press, is not an absolute guarantee that it is true; and just because a epiece of research hasn't been published yet does not mean that its findings are ipso facto false.
It seems to me that on the one hand, Wikipedia exuberantly celebrates (and rightly, in my view) the ability of regular folks to be self-starters in the collection, editing, and dissemination of information; yet this very same principle seems to me to be flouted in its institutional unwillingness to allow itself to be (on rare occasions, to be sure) a primary source, written by the people who are in a position best to know whereof they speak. That "original research" should instead appear in this connection as though it were a term of opprobrium seems, at least to this independent scholar, both contradictory and more than a little counterproductive.
75.33.43.107 ( talk) 23:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)Nick Humez 14 March 2010
I've noticed that looking at Special:Newpages, there is a notice that says: "Note: articles should not be tagged for speedy deletion as having no context (CSD A1) or no content (CSD A3) moments after creation." I'm not sure how long ago this was added, but I can't recall it being there when I started new page patrol. Was there ever a discussion about this? If so, could someone point me in that direction? Also, I couldn't find this explicitly stated anywhere in our policy about speedy deletion. If this is desirable perhaps we should add that. Jujutacular T · C 23:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Basically what they've done is changed their Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia to state what an encyclopedia is (for their Wikipedia), and then marked a lot of the other policies like Is Not as essai i.e. essays.
This seems to me rather sensible, provided you can define what an Encyclopedia is in the policy. I think they've more or less succeeded.
The problem with the English Wikipedia's policy (which doesn't define encyclopedia in policy, but does so in article space) is that the Encyclopedia article space doesn't really know either, and many encyclopedias are very different from the Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia article has to cover all of them.
The question is, whether we should do the same sort of thing. It probably rests on being able to change Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia acceptably. - Wolfkeeper 15:06, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Recently, the reliable source guideline ( WP:RS) was edited to make it appear that evaluating the impact factor of journals to determine their reliability was prohibited entirely. There is a discussion on the talk page to determine if this is accurate or not at Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources#Impact_factor_usable.3F. Hipocrite ( talk) 18:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
There is an active proposal to turn Wikipedia:Quotations into a guideline.-- Father Goose ( talk) 21:41, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
As soon as I finished clearing out the backlog of expired PRODs a few minutes ago, I went to Category:Proposed deletion and discovered that one of its subcategories is Category:All files proposed for deletion. Why do we have such a category, since only articles are eligible for PROD? Was it once common practice to PROD images? Nyttend ( talk) 01:51, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
A series of discussions at CFD over the last few days have revealed a number of problems in the naming conventions of the top-level categories for inhabited human settlements.
The issues are too wide-ranging to be resolved in the format of a CFD discussion, so I have opened a centralised discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Categorising human settlements to try to find a consensus on how to proceed.
Your contributions will be welcome. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:43, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:NS2 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:User pages ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:User page ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
As a bit of background info, global sysops are a handful of highly-trusted users who have admin tools on all small wikis, as well as those that elect to opt-in. The first batch were recently appointed a couple days back. In my opinion, it would be a good idea for enwiki to opt-in for several reasons. Most notably, global sysops dealing with cross-wiki vandalism won't have to stop at enwiki during low-traffic hours, when we're short on local admins patrolling RC. Language isn't a problem, since all of the current global sysops speak English to some extent. Now, I know this has been unsuccessfully proposed before, but I think it's worth looking into again. – Juliancolton | Talk 14:05, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
We have an apparent proposed policy in development at Wikipedia:Administrator policy. It has been unanimous since late August 2009. We need some work and action regarding this page. Thank you. -- IRP ☎ 00:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
As you can see, this is a draft of proposed changes to Wikipedia:Administrators. -- IRP ☎ 02:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
At the time Wikipedia:Administrators was full of waffle - things that admins shouldn't do - which applied to any editor so were superfluous, tendentious assertions based on leaps of faith from things said by ArbCom which didn't define policy etc etc. Why I chose to wrok on a draft there I really can't remember, but as far as I'm concerned it can be changed back to a redirect if it is useful. We can always dig out the history if we need to. Rich Farmbrough, 14:32, 17 March 2010 (UTC).
Is this a reliable source? I ask because it has come up in an article I'm editing ( Maya Angelou). I reverted an edit because at my first glance, I didn't think it was. The editor who added information supported by this source insists that it is. I mean, to me, it seems like IMdB (which isn't reliable, I know) for plays. When I looked more closely, however, I can see his point, since it isn't edited by anyone like IMdB; it's edited by professionals in theatre. Would someone more knowledgeable give their input about this, please? Thank you. -- Christine ( talk) 04:56, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
In the meantime, please do not use deceptive edit summaries such as "improving ref", when, in fact, you deleted a ref.
Beyond My Ken (
talk) 05:31, 17 March 2010 (UTC) Striking comment that appears to be incorrect -- it looks as if I viewed the article when FSF when in the middle of changing the format of the ref. My apologies.
Beyond My Ken (
talk) 05:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion at Template talk:Hidden archive top#merge discussion: arbitrary break as to whether the language used on the {{ hat}} template (often used to to close disputes) is appropriate. More opinions are requested. – xeno talk 14:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I wonder: wouldn't calling the sources acceptable for Wikipedia " authoritative" instead of " reliable" be more exact? Russian Wikipedia ( ru:Википедия:Авторитетные источники) and Ukrainian Wikipedia ( uk:Вікіпедія:Авторитетні джерела) seem to do so...
Also it looks like the use of "reliable" sometimes has side effects ( [13], [14])... That name might seem to imply that we want sources that report information accurately (do not lie etc.), while in fact it would probably be more accurate to say that we want sources that are known to report information accurately... "Authoritative" would seem to be more accurate in this respect...
Now, of course, "reliable" has one major advantage: it is currently in use. Thus trying to change it at once might not be a good idea. But maybe it would be reasonable to consider changing "reliable" to "reliable, authoritative" in at least some cases? -- Martynas Patasius ( talk) 20:47, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Another option is "reputable." Maurreen ( talk) 18:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC) Or even "acceptable." Maurreen ( talk) 18:22, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Can we do a quick reality check? There will always be boundary issues, whether out totum is "reliable" or "authoritative" or "reputational". This debate started with the OP pointing to a pair of boundary issues with "reliable". That is not anything like evidence for me that there is a problem here that needs fixing. We seem to have fairly quickly blown "authoritative" out of the water. And so now suddenly we're proffering "reputational" as though it is going to be easier to agree that, or less likely to accrue boundary cases. I'm sorry, but it strikes me as nonsense on stilts that without esablishing any real cause, we're being invited to rootle through the thesaurus to choose a different word. And Maurreen; I don't think it is so difficult to determine the extent to which sources "engage in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing", but I promise you that if you anchor policy to something as subjective as reputation, then you'd have entered gun-shoot-foot territory. Really and truly, our problem is not WP:RS but rather that the majority of our writing has not RS whatsoever. Changing a workable definition for either of the inferior definitions suggested in this thread will not well serve wikipedia, and does not have a snowball in hell's chance of happening. -- Tagishsimon (talk) 03:55, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
I wasn't exactly sure where to put this, so I hope here is appropriate.
I noticed that if you look at the pages with italic titles, many of them are not taxonomic names, which, according to the template itself and several associated policy pages, are the only titles with consensus to italicize. Some italicized titles include Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Annals of Mathematics, Nature (journal), BMJ, The Adventures of Tintin, The Day of the Triffids... et cetera; there are many more.
Does this reflect any new consensus? Is it against policy? Should other literature/academic journal articles have their titles italicized for consistency, or should the current italicizations be removed? My first impulse was just to correct it, but when I realized so many were italicized, I decided it would be best not to make such a sweeping change on my own and came here. -- ✶ ♏ ✶ 11:50, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm a little confused about the correct usage of {{ Expand language}} and whenever it should be placed at the article page or the talk page. The rules on this are a mess: Wikipedia:Template messages list it at both the article namespace (as cleanup) and the talk page, Wikipedia:Template messages/Talk namespace includes an example of it among talk page templates, but it links to Wikipedia:Translation for futher information, and this page explains to leave the notice at the article page.
Anyway, none of them seem conclusive or the result of a well-thought discussion: the first ones are mere lists, and the other seems like a help or how-to page. I haven't found any policy or guideline stating rationales of where do each template belongs that may be of use to settle this.
I may explain why should this go at article talk pages, but I'm not sure of the correct place to do it either. The template talk page seems obvious, but there is already an orphaned thread on the topic, started months ago; clearly nobody watches it and a new thread would end the same way. Templates for discussion doesn't seem the right place either, as I wouldn't be requesting deletion of it (in fact, there has been a deletion request before, declined). Do I start the discussion here, at some related noticeboard, open a request for comment...? MBelgrano ( talk) 13:25, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
" Coke mini From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Coke mini is a new 7.5 ounce can packaging of Coca-Cola that debuted in December 2009.[1][2][3] The Atlanta-based soft drink seller plans to also sell smaller cans of its Sprite, Fanta Orange, Cherry Coca-Cola and Barq's Root Beer sodas.[4"
With all the articles carefully rejected because folks reach deep to find a way, here is an article solely devoted to a change in product size?
WTF?
But of course it is carefully footnoted and obviously meets Wiki's quality review standards.
What next? Articles detailing the various Snickers bar weights? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.111.252.18 ( talk) 14:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
This proposal is quite simple. Although it may be already addressed by the policy itself, I believe, just for transparency, it should be added.
Barnstars are not to be used to reference other editors in lieu of personal attacks, whether they be blatant, or veiled, unless the editor being referred to has a long history of abuse, and his indef blocked or bannned, and even then the barnstar must not attack the editor in question, but rather award other editors for combating their abuse.
If not that, then something similar, something that can be worked out, here, on this board.— Dæ dαlus Contribs 04:41, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Please alert me to any updates regarding this discussion, as I will not be watching this page because of it's high traffic.—
Dæ
dαlus
Contribs 04:42, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
I was just perusing the Ace Ventura: Pet Detective article and the plot section is just appalling. It's like it was written by a 12-year-old boy who was watching the movie at the time. Additionally, the section for Jesus Camp seems to be nothing more than a collection of fans' favorite, most outrageous scenes. Is there any policy regarding material in plot sections? I personally don't see any reason for a plot section beyond one or two paragraphs summarizing the film, but I doubt that proposing such a thing would ever go anywhere. Seregain ( talk) 17:23, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Let me start by saying that I am not familiar with the Village Pump, so I'm not sure if this is the right place for my question, but here goes: While editing Cocos (Keeling) Islands, I discovered a link to Outline of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. My first response was bafflement: What is the point of a long list of headings for nonexistent content about a topic that is already covered in an existing article? My impulse is to push for deletion of the outline article. Then I did some investigation and found that there is an entire Outlines project with a group of committed editors behind it. I realized that any move to delete this IMHO useless outline article could set off a political firestorm. Now, having taking a look at some of the Outlines project pages and articles, I see some value in them, but only for large topics, such as a major country, all aspects of which could not be covered in a single article. By contrast, the Cocos Islands are a very small island group with 600 inhabitants. No more than a handful of notable topics can possibly exist for these islands. Without taking a position on the value of the Outlines project as a whole, this would seem to be an example of a topic too small to merit an outline. Are there any policies or guidelines on a minimum scope for outline articles (for example, in numbers of existing articles that could be linked)? Marco polo ( talk) 18:24, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
I am somewhat agnostic about the inclusion of outlines in article-space. The Outline of Japan might have some value, and similar outlines could exist for a few hundred very large content areas. However, I feel very strongly that, if they appear anywhere, outlines need a minimum scope, probably defined in terms of the number of linked, relevant articles. I am not very familiar with how policy is made for Wikipedia. Is there a way that I could propose such a policy? Marco polo ( talk) 19:54, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Something that has quite frustrated me in using Wikipedia is when I search for a term that has an everyday, common-usage, general-consensus, meaning - I end up at a disambiguation page instead. Now here I am NOT referring to terms for which 'genuine' disambiguation is required; but rather terms where there is indeed a Primary Topic the disambiguation page was supposed to refer to - but there is no 'overview article' coherently representing the said Primary Topic, so no referral is made. Rather, you just have links to how different academic disciplines handle that term.
Examples are terms such as self, identity and personality. (There are many more)
Granted, I understand the need for academic hair-splitting, and how such terms may be treated vastly differently in various academic disciplines, or even across sub-disciplines. (This I find especially true of terms that are 'shared' by philosophy / psychology / sociology / etc.. and also between mathematics / computer science / physics)
However, more often than not, in common parlance, we don't use such academic categorizations when using those terms. You don't say "I love my self (philosophy)" or "I am not sure of my identity (social science)". Rather, we refer to this... hazy, blurry, but nonetheless commonly-held, generally-accepted meanings of such words (In fact, such 'blurriness' / uncertainty within these terms may be an impetus for someone to look them up on the first place on Wikipedia).
My point? There is often at least a "lowest common denominator" meaning of such words, and this should be the basis for an 'overview' article on that topic. And this overview article can deal with why various disciplines interpret the term differently, and hence 'guide' the reader to the appropriate discipline-specific article. To me current disambiguation pages utterly fail in this latter regard - the one-sentence explanations, whilst appropriate for differentiating between completely different articles, are very inadequate when articles come down to inter-disciplinary 'hair-splitting' (or at least it may appear that way to lay readers) - hence, lay readers need better 'guidance', and what better place to do it than in an 'overview' article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.255.15.241 ( talk) 09:54, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
There is excessive disambiguation, and disambiguation is not the proper solution for poor general overview articles. Rather, the increased visibility of those general overview articles due to making them the replacement for the disambigs may lead to improvements in their quality. Further, there is nothing to prevent anyone from implementing this. I think this calls for a nice cup of SOFIXIT. Enjoy! <clinks glass and sips> Tisane ( talk) 09:26, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi! On behalf of the FlaggedRevs team, I'd like to announce that Flagged Protection, the proposed use of Flagged Revisions on the English Wikipedia, is ready for more testing. We have made a number of changes to improve clarity and usability for both novices and experienced editors.
If you have an hour or two to devote to testing it, we'd love your thoughts. You need not jump in immediately; we'll be posting updates every week or so. But we'd like it to be in the best shape possible for the upcoming trial. Since we've been working without feedback for too long, I expect this first week or two will be bumpy, but bumps now are preferable to bumps later, so bear with us.
To check it out, start here:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
There's space for questions and discussion on the labs site, and I also welcome direct email and talk page questions.
Thanks, William Pietri ( talk) 23:22, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
I think a good UI would be to have the review UI at the top of old-revision pages, with a diff to the last checked version displayed on activation of the review interface iff there is a previous reviewed version …and a link from diff pages to the review page for the newer of the two revisions, if the diff compares two revisions from the same article (yes, it's possible to diff different articles to one another). The version that's around is acceptable, though—I think at this point I'd prefer FPPR live even if there are a few rough UI edges as long as it works well from a technical point of view. Otherwise, mainly looking forward to updates. Putting updates on the Village Pump is a good idea (though you should, next time, post a link to the discussion on the technical village pump as well, as MZMcBride did this time). {{ Nihiltres| talk| edits|⚡}} 06:28, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Contradictions, in general, are considered faults or errors. For example, if I say that widgets are large, then later say that widgets are small, most people would say that I made a mistake. This is reflected in the large number of WP discussions in which contradictions are considered to be faults: Search results.
Another example is stating that widgets should be written "widgets" but elsewhere stating that the proper spelling is "Widgets" (the capitalization of a word is inconsistent).
Of course, if I said that widgets are large compared to ants and small compared to adult elephants, there is no contradiction and hence no fault. And if I said "A is (not A), where A is a variable representing a truth value, is called a contradiction", then the contained statement "A is (not A)" is not considered a contradiction for which this policy would apply, since it is part of a meta-discussion rather than a 'primary' contradiction.
I propose that WP add a new policy prohibiting such contradictions in WP articles. This includes contradictions within sections, between sections, and between articles. It would exclude contradictions in and between quotations, as well as contradictions (which must be described as such) for which the contradicting statements are supported by WP:RS references (either the same reference or different references).
A quick search indicates that there seems to have been no such proposal in the past. However another quick search indicates many upheld complaints that articles contain contradictions.
This policy would take precedence over WP:NOR, since contradictions are 'internal' problems, like typos, spelling, and grammar, rather than substantive original research.
Please vote, so we can see if there is a consensus for me to make a formal request. David Spector 18:19, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Voting is closed, thank you. I withdraw my informal proposal. Thanks to everyone. @Treasury: "stupid pointless drivel" is quite impolite (it is a personal attack instead of an objective reason for opposition). This violates a WP policy. We don't want to bite or drive away people like me who are trying very hard to help WP. David Spector 14:02, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I think a much better idea would be a guideline called something like "How to deal with contradictions". The guideline would probably start life as an essay and then be upgraded if there is a consensus for that. The essay would talk about the different types of contradiction and how to deal with each one. e.g.
The essay would link to the relevant policies and guidelines, such as WP:Article titles and WP:NPOV. Yaris678 ( talk) 13:19, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Is the TMZ.com a reputable source for wikipedia articles? What about Perez Hilton's newspage? Sapporod1965 ( talk) 05:58, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
As part of a dispute over a merger between {{ hat}} and {{ cot}}, and issue has popped up which could use some debate. The main question is this: When/where/why is it acceptable to use technical tricks - like collapsing tables, collapsing divs, or CSS coloring - to hide/close discussion text? there are a number of cases where this is already conventional:
The last is the contentious one. while we all agree that there are cases where it is useful and beneficial to collapse discussion text and cases where it's abused, we don't really have any clear sense of what is and what isn't responsible usage. There is a vast gray area here (or so it seems to me) where one side is going to think {{
hat}}ing a discussion is a good idea while another side will see it as an offensive form of refactoring, and I've seen that exacerbate talk page conflicts. If we can get clarity on that issue life would be good better.
My original goal (which has now become kind of a side issue) was to merge together all of the discussion-closing templates into one template (for minor reasons - I liked the consistency and simplicity of a single template, and I was thinking of adding some features, such as a debate summary quote box and some color-coding for different types of debate resolution). any input on that would be nice as well. -- Ludwigs2 18:08, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Just dropping a note here; it seems the discussion on how long BLP PRODs should last is ending, with current average of roughly 2 weeks. Anybody who wishes to chime in and has not done so is welcome to at [15]. The Wordsmith Communicate 21:00, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
There is a user (who I won't name here, let's keep it hypothetical for the moment) who refuses to receive perfectly normal messages on their talkpage—"Please communicate with me in private. This sort of exchange does not belong on WP,"—deleting such material and instead asking for missives to be sent via a contact-form hosted on the website of their software business.
I see a number of things wrong with this: it's spamming Wikipedia with links to this (very) commercial site. It's disrupting the normal talkpage system. It's requiring editors to provide their personal email-address, without the user in question revealing theirs.
Any thoughts? If the general view is that the system is inappropriate, I will alert the editor to this discussion. ╟─ Treasury Tag► Speaker─╢ 22:07, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
==Please don't add messages to this page, except for official messages.==
Please contact me directly by using my Contact Us form instead of editing this page. I don't tend to visit here often, and when I do I delete any messages I find. I do discuss specific pages, but prefer to do so on their associated Talk pages whenever possible
I didn't realize there was anything wrong with asking people to email me directly so I can see and respond to messages immediately when I'm around. My heading has been there for years without complaint. But as always I am happy to conform to WP policies and guidelines whenever they are pointed out to me. I am a guest here, and did not mean to flout accepted procedures. I will remove my heading right away. Please accept my apologies. David Spector 23:33, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi: I noticed we don't have a separate speedy deletion category for G3 candidates. Since G3 is for obvious vandalism, that seems to be something we'd want to prioritize over some of the run-of-the-mill speedy deletion candidates. Does anybody object to creating a category, and altering the db-g3 template to place things in it? Ray Talk 23:43, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Proposed deletion (books) ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I feel that it could be helpful to lengthen the amount of time (and edits) that it takes to become an autoconfirmed user from 10 edits and 4 days to 1 month and 100 edits, as theoretically a user could create an account, began editing their user page, make 10 edits (all in their userspace), and then, after 4 days, vandalize a semi-protected article. What I am saying is I think that it would be best to be able to have a longer interval between account-creation and autoconfirmed status, as in some cases some vandalism-only accounts could even attain autoconfirmed status and disrupt semiprotected articles if they edit occasionally (and thus do not recieve a block immediately). Regards. Immunize ( talk) 15:08, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I am concerned that this is a gap in the system that must be addressed. Immunize ( talk) 19:45, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I feel that every incidence of either page-move vandalism or vandalism of a semi-protected article represents a major problem that requires repair, and that the best way to correct the problem is extending the length of time needed to become autoconfirmed. Immunize ( talk) 14:53, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
A recent situation at WP:AN ( Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Keepscases erroneously blocked indefinitely / perm) seems to have highlighted a grey area in our policy - whether or not stewards are permitted to place blocks here at en.wiki on named users following requests at m:Global blocking. Comments invited. – xeno talk 14:03, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Blocking IP addresses#IP block length and comment. Thank you, – xeno talk 16:51, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
I posted this thread a while back and it was archived with no responses. Any thoughts at all? – Juliancolton | Talk 18:06, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
As a bit of background info, global sysops are a handful of highly-trusted users who have admin tools on all small wikis, as well as those that elect to opt-in. The first batch were recently appointed a couple days back. In my opinion, it would be a good idea for enwiki to opt-in for several reasons. Most notably, global sysops dealing with cross-wiki vandalism won't have to stop at enwiki during low-traffic hours, when we're short on local admins patrolling RC. Language isn't a problem, since all of the current global sysops speak English to some extent. Now, I know this has been unsuccessfully proposed before, but I think it's worth looking into again. – Juliancolton | Talk 14:05, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I think we can probably close this as no consensus to opt-in, global sysops can just bring problems to the attention of our local people. As a sidenote, it might be a good idea to have a page where global sysops can come to and report problem users when they do occur. The Wordsmith Communicate 14:18, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Below message copied from Talk:UK Space Agency as relevant to wikipedia as a whole not just this particular image.
Why has the logo been replaced with an altered image that uses a transparent background ? The union jack colours are red, white, and blue. Not red, whatever colour the webpage or web browser is using as a background, and blue.
If this image ever appeared on the front page of wikipedia it would appear red, green and blue in the FA section or red, blue and blue if it was in the in the news section.
More to the point it appears red, black and blue on my web browser, since I browse the web with the browser set-up to use its own bacground colours. Why do people use transparent backgrounds ?
If you want the logo to be slightly off-white then make the image slightly off-white. What is the point of a transparent background ?
The only point of a transparency is so that it merges into the background no matter what the background colour is, but either:
a) you know what the intended background is going to be, in which case why not just make the image that colour ?
or
b) you don't know what the intended background is going to be, in which case you've got no business creating a transparent background in the first place
The union jack is red, white and blue. 81.132.172.20 ( talk) 08:49, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #abd5f5
border colour: #abd5f5
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background colour: #fad67d
border colour: #fad67d
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81.132.172.20 ( talk) 09:14, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #abd5f5
border colour: #abd5f5
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background colour: #fad67d
border colour: #fad67d
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I'm not talking about these specific images. These are just examples. The black background should show you what images appear like on my computer when the image uses the colour "transparent" where it should be using the colour "white". A transparent surround on something like the Hearts fc logo is fine - The problem is when people change not just the surround but the main part of the image itself, like with the Lloyds logo, and thus mix the page colour with the image which goes against Separation of presentation and content and goes against the purpose of html where web page designers should not assume they are in control of the presentation.
background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #abd5f5
border colour: #abd5f5
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background colour: #fad67d
border colour: #fad67d
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Chimage ( talk) 15:18, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
If wikipedia wants to take accesibility seriously, then on a windows pc, go into control panel, accessibility options, display tab, settings button, choose "High contrast black" and then try browsing wikipedia and see the mess that is made by images that mix the content of the image with the page colour. Transparent surround is fine, Transparent bits in the middle of logos and other images is not. Chimage ( talk) 15:25, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
In the Lloyds logo and a zillion other images on wikipedia, the colour white is an integral part of the image and should not be made transparent. Transparent surround fine, but not parts of the image that are properly part of the content of the image. Chimage ( talk) 15:37, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Is there a place to ask if such an essay has been written? Or does anyone know that such an essay exists? It would be a good link to have handy in dispute resolution if it does exist, or if something similar to it exists. I have attempted to search the VP but the terms were too vague for me to find anything. SGGH ping! 18:10, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I am trying to start a debate about defining what news organisations, as a reliable source, are good for and/or not good for. Please see Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources#News_Organisations_section ~ R. T. G 18:35, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
When and by whom can a mergeto tag be removed? I ask this because a certain editor has removed a merger proposal, relating to an article created by him, before a consensus had been reached.-- Nilotpal42 ( talk) 22:37, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
As requested, here's the weekly Flagged Protection update.
This week we've seen a lot of helpful testing from at least 15 people, and we'd love to see more before launch.
To participate, start on our labs site.
To see what we've changed this week, check out the list of items completed.
To see the upcoming work, it's listed in our tracker, under Current and Backlog.
There will likely be more work than that before launch as user feedback comes in; we just added a number of items based on tester feedback. But if this week's feedback is any guide, we don't appear to have much major work remaining.
We expect to release again next week, and each week thereafter until this goes live on the English Wikipedia.
William Pietri ( talk) 01:01, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Dear all,
I propose a simple new feature to be added to any article in Wikipedia that may contain images of a graphic nature - this would basically consist of a small button somewhere on the article giving the user the option to block all the images on that page.
I propose this feature due to the fact that some articles that are fairly neutral in nature tend to contain images that are unsightly, graphic, explicit, and which make it hard to read the text near them (e.g "Nail").
The feature would be as non-intrusive as possible and its purpose is certainly not to patronize users.
Perhaps the feasibility of this option could be reviewed.
Regards -- 188.220.173.129 ( talk) 22:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)tpos1an-- 188.220.173.129 ( talk) 22:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I support the idea. An example of an article that this button could be useful is Meningococcal disease, which features an image of an ill infant with the disease. While I personally am not overly disturbed by the image, there has been question as to weather or not the picture is appropriate on that pages talk page. A feature such as the one you suggested would eliminate such concern, as everyone would be able to choose themselves what they look at. Immunize ( talk) 21:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Maybe have an option to allow the user (if he is signed in) to self block images on a certain page by typin in the page and having a block images option or something? I do not know. Such option i agree would need to be done on a user level.. not as a whole as per Wikipedia is not censored
Evenios ( talk) 07:24, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
While reading an article on the television show Burn Notice, I came across a section at the end of the article listing all of the countries where the show is broadcast as well as the specific network it is shown on in that country. My first reaction was "What the heck is this doing here?" I then removed the section, as I didn't see it as encyclopedic or useful, but was immediately reverted. I put a note on the talk page and am awaiting feedback there, but I am curious as to what Wikipedia policy is on this matter.
This information is not included on the Wikipedia page for all television shows, only some. I think there are three different mutually exclusive positions on this matter: A) This is relevant info and should be on every article about an internationally distributed TV show, B) This info is more appropriate for TVGuide and should not be on any TV show article, or C) It is relevant and useful on some TV articles but not others. If C is the agreed upon answer then the question that must be answered is "What makes this info relevant for some shows but not others?" This question would need to be asked for every individual show if C is indeed Wikipedia policy.
Is there already a policy page which deals with this matter? Thanks 128.223.131.109 ( talk) 19:38, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Recently, as I have reverted vandalism (most of which was from anonymous IP's, I have began to wonder why we do not require logging in for all editors. If this policy was changed, it would not effect wikipedia's promise that it is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" because anyone can log in, and it would probably reduce the amount of vandalism we see quite a bit. Immunize ( talk) 21:33, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
I 100% agree with the view that there should be a mandatory registration and sign in in order to edit. Instead there are enormous expenditures of editor energy eliminating vandalism and frightened proposals for draconian sight-review for all articles. 95% of the problems could be resolved with a simple Sign-In-To-Edit, which I hereby give the WikiJargon Acronym (WJA) SITE. But Wikipedia has a strange inertia-driven culture, so it's not gonna happen because it's SPOOKY. Carrite ( talk) 03:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
But I personally doubt that we would lose that many constructive edits, because nothing prevents someone who otherwise would have edited anonymously from logging in. Immunize ( talk) 13:37, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I feel that in the event that a editor does not put in the effort to log in, it is very unlikely they will become a constructive editor. I am also concerned about the issue that it seems that the policy for dealing with vandalism-only accounts is so much different than our policy for handling vandalism only IP's. While most vandalism-only accounts are indef blocked, most IP's only ever used for vandalism get only a 24-31 hour initial block. I feel it would be more appropriate to indef block all vandalism only IP's, just as we do with vandalism only accounts. Thus, the indef block would force logging in. I also support the idea of flagged revisions, at least on heavily vandalized articles. Best wishes. Immunize ( talk) 21:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Second, I know of no study showing a "proven" negative effect of not allowing IPs to edit. This would need to be randomized and prospective, since any retrospective study of IP edits that is used to project what would happen if registration were required, would be forced to make assumptions about what those great IP-editors would do, if forced to pick out a name and password. The truth is, we don't know. They might be so "pissed off" as to quit. Or not. And in the meantime, other good name-users might become so "pissed off" by IP-user continued vandalism to their work, that THEY might quit. It's a total guess as to which one wins. Personally I think anybody who goes through the arcane work of leaning how to make edits that "stick" on WP, is not likely to balk at the very simple task of registering. You don't even need an email address to do it.
Third, if you yourself edit from and ISP where your IP changes often, you're either editing from a proxy (a no-no) or one of those ISPs with rotating IP-exits, which are EXACTLY the sort of IPs that need to be soft-rangeblocked (with account creation enabled). The reason being that such ISPs are a perfect hide-out for vandals, who cannot be blocked by any means when using them. Best to force vandals who use those ISPs to take a name which CAN be blocked, and (in the meantime) cannot edit semi-protected articles. Persistant vandals from rotating-IP-exit type ISP services have had their entire ISP IP ranges soft-blocked, with NO-account creation enabled (which means only previously-resistered users in that range can use them, but no new users can register), which is even more draconian. But it's within policy. S B H arris 05:03, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Side note: It should be imposed on admins to do a WHOIS and check the identity of the editor. If its a school IP, they should only softblock. Rotating IP's (they will be shown with "status:ALLOCATED PORTABLE" on a WHOIS) should be 24hr blocked (no matter what their block record is) without autoblock, but account creation prevented, and fixed ip's should be blocked by the same guidelines for normal users (24hr, then a week, then a month, etc.), except the block should be a softblock. ManishEarth Talk • Stalk 11:26, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
To be a bit more serious, I find your argument a big disingenuous. It is not true that any editor can edit any page RIGHT NOW. Semi-protected pages make you wait FOUR DAYS. Now, you're promoting the idea that it will destroy WP if we make some people wait the 30 seconds it takes to pick a username and password. Come, now! It takes about that long for a new editor to figure out how to save their new edit. And far longer for a new editor to learn enough rules that their new edit is likely to "stick" and not disappear. Having your edit disappear must be far more disconcerting than getting a message that says "Hi, there! Please pick yourself an anonymous username and a password." So, I don't buy it. S B H arris 20:38, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
A very large number of our editors - many more than any of us realize, more than likely - started out with one or more edits which could easily be considered vandalistic - I myself started here by adding a spam link to a forum where I was/am an administrator. Many IPs which make vandalistic edits, if they continue to edit, turn into productive editors, and blocking IPs from editing would cause us to lose those editors. Even with the fact that I have been an administrator for coming up on a year now, I still edit while logged out myself, for a number of reasons. -- Dinoguy1000 ( talk · contribs) as 67.58.229.153 ( talk) 04:40, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
However, these editors would be just as likely to become productive even if we blocked their IP, as the majority would create accounts and go onto become productive editors. Immunize ( talk) 17:54, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
This is why I feel the best option may simply be making registration universally mandatory, because a message that says "you must log in to wikipedia or create an account to edit" is much less of deterrent from editing than one that says "because of your persistent vandalism, you have been blocked indefinitely from editing". Immunize ( talk) 15:39, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
My opinion is this: I believe on the one hand allowing anyone to edit wikipedia without having to create a user account is a great way for a person to dive in and help out at any time. it allows people to not have to worry about creating a user name and signing up to contribute and indeed a number of very productive edits and contribution have been done by users who never create a user-name.
However i have found for the most part most vandalism i have run across thus far has been by users with just IP addresses shown. The problem also is that a user may be using Wikipedia from more then one location; a school, a public library, from home, from work. from a friends house. In that case a user can have more then one ip address and cause problems time after time by switching to a new location, also many users have non static ip addresses that change every time they get online (dsl services have that). I would think if IP addresses alone were not allowed to edit.. it woudl cut down vastly on the number of vandilsim and incorrect edits to wikipedia. Also perhaps a step further, because a user can simply create a new account with any email.. i even propose that in creating new accounts a user has to wait a certain time period, say something short maybe an hour or two before they are allowed to edit. That way it could also cut down on abuse.
The reason i say this is because we have pretty much a two faced system in wikipedia. No matter how many good faith edits we make...no matter how much time is spent stomping out vandalism and catching bad users.... this will ALWAYs be undermined at least in some small way with vandalism and bad faith users costing the integrity of wikipedia. If the current system we have now is kept in place....this will always be true.
Also keep in mind the more popular wikipedia becomes the more people out there will be interested in causing harm to it. In fact in one study in Wikipedia (forgot the link.. its here somewhere) but it says that the number of "bad faith edits" to good faith edits to wikipedia is rising. In fact to be quite honest i am a bit dissipointed with the number of vandalism edits i am able to find at any given time. Even with the hundreds of users at any one time checking for vandalism and cluebot and other tools. We still have many many bad faith edits per hour in Wikipedia.. some which end up going unchecked for hours if not days..
Unless something is changed we can NEVER bring Wikipedia to being close to the standereds we want for it. I propose in the future that more serious discussion needs to be made on this topic. While on one hand it might close the idea of "anyone being able to edit at any time" It could go a long way to helping bring better credibility to everyone, after all if our goal is to bring the sum of all human knowledge to every person on the planet, should that also mean we should strive our best to make as vandal free as possible? We cant do that with our current set up and to be honest with you i think more time sometimes is wasted fighting vandalism and bad faith edits by ip addresses and users who create brand new accounts within seconds then that same time can be used for making Wikipedia better!
Just my thoughts!
Evenios ( talk) 07:18, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Ugh, anyone who even takes a peep at IP's edits in the recent changes section can see quite clearly see that IPs make probably more useful edits than vandalism. If we took away the right to edit as an IP then the next time they see a spelling or grammar edit in an article and go to correct only to be told to make an account you just know they would think "Sod that" and that's one less helpful edit. It's not going to change and I'm grateful for it, for a multitude of reasons. OohBunnies! Not just any bunnies... 18:39, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
In the last several months, there have been two occasions where I had reason to do some minor editing without bothering to log in. In the first instance, I was blanking a Talk page redirect that was the result of a move and clearly served no purpose, to anyone who actually looked at what I was doing (or my very clear edit summaries) with a conscious mind. But my edit was undone five times as "vandalism," I was warned five times about my "vandalism", and then I was reported for my "vandalism" (and the report was immediately rejected because it obviously wasn't vandalism). In the second and very recent instance, I edited the hatnotes on an article to be more helpful, and again left very clear edit summaries about why I was making these changes. Again, I was undone over and over, by three different people, with no reason given except that because I was an IP, I must be a vandal (yeah, a lot of vandals get their kicks by modifying disambiguation hatnotes, I'm sure). What was really appalling is when I was told by one of these people that if I wanted to edit without being reverted, no matter how legitimate my edits were, I would have to register an account.
Honestly, if it were up to me, I would probably require registration before editing. But as long as our policies do grant unregistered users every right to edit articles, these people who won't even look at an edit before undoing it and labeling the user a vandal simply because they are unregistered are doing Wikipedia a really appalling disservice. Either they can edit, or they can't, but the project shouldn't say that they can edit and then treat them like scum if they do. Propaniac ( talk) 19:20, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Another possible way to reduce vandalism would be to semi-protect more pages after less vandalism than we do currently, meaning, for instance, that we would semi-protect a page after 2 incidences of vandalism rather than 5. Immunize ( talk) 19:41, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
I see we have the eternal question here. Advocating the elimination of edits by IP would not only the continuation of WP:Policy creep, but it would merely move the question to new "anonymous accounts" (sockpuppets et. al.) and insisting upon credentials... which would ultimate destroy the base principle of Wikipedia being edited by "anyone". Ultimately, this would require the establishment of identities to ascertain the actual person who has a specific account (side question: how many of the edits above are by accounts which reflect the actual name of the poster? I can "see" only three or four, including this post). It's a slippery slope, but elimination of edits by IP is not the answer as some people with accounts sometimes edit without signing in for various reasons. B.Wind ( talk) 17:53, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
When an anonymous user fixes a page with stale vandalism, I wonder what percentage of the time a so-called patroller reverts on sight thereby putting the vandalism back into the article, presumably without bothering to actually read the diff first. Based on my own experiences, I'd guess around 30%. This type of attitude is exactly why I don't want to register. I'll still help out when I notice problems, even when you make me feel unwelcome, because I support what you do. But that's the reason why I say what you do rather than what we do. 76.244.148.179 ( talk) 03:27, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
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(sorry for the drift) I never understood why something calling itself an encyclopedia needs notability criteria. Though I'm sure there have been raised many good, rational arguments against this point of view. Paradoctor ( talk) 11:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
My 2 cents is that WP:N is fundamentally too limiting in many cases. I think there are things many people care about where the coverage is in depth but primary (say TV show episodes or Pokemon) where there is plenty of material and interest in the topic by our readers. That said, I generally favor and support WP:N because it's a fairly objective standard and that's darn useful. Otherwise we get too far into debates with people who think covering TV shows (for example) at all is "trivia" and not worthy of coverage here and we end up spending all our time arguing rather than just most :-). I'd love to see something better, but I've no idea what that would be. Hobit ( talk) 06:40, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
WP:N is absolutely necessary. While it's true that Wikipedia is not paper, and so we are not limited by physical space concerns, it is fallacious to proceed to saying that we have unlimited resources. We do not. We, the editors of Wikipedia, are not a limitless resource. A metric of notability serves to help us keep the encyclopedia to a size manageable by the population editing it. The exponential increase in size precipitated by a revocation of the notability guidelines would produce an unmanageable mess, and would only serve to harm the reputation, and ultimately the usefulness, of the encyclopedia. Powers T 13:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree completely that WP:N hurts us more than it helps us. Honestly, back when we had an article on every single Pokemon, did that actually hurt us? Are we better off now? The people saying that Wikipedia will become a "mess" with WP:N are forgetting a few things. First off, what's it to you if someone creates an article on a topic that you don't think is notable? It's not your job to singlehandedly maintain the quality of this encyclopedia. And it's not your job to stand between this encyclopedia and the legions of roving My Little Pony fans out there either. If you don't like an article, and if you don't think that it meets your subjective notion of "notability," then ignore it and get to work building content somewhere else. Disc space isn't the issue, so what is? I have never seen a good explanation of this.
If you drive off Mr. My Little Pony and he goes to Wikia and spends the rest of his days writing oodles of high-quality content about My Little Pony, who has been hurt and who has benefited? I really just don't see how notability is a positive influence on our encyclopedia.
Also, something tells me that a WP:N-free Wikipedia would not be immediately inundated with 1950s weather data, because in such an encyclopedia you not only have to have V and RS, but you have to have the crucial factor of someone caring enough to take the time to put it up. And if someone cares enough to post something, and someone else cares enough to look it up, why shouldn't the two be able to enjoy that information? If people can't find what they are looking for here, they'll go look somewhere else, but if we have people lining up at the door the provide those seekers with what they are after, it makes sense to let them provide it.
Of course, I don't really think that this little discussion here will actually succeed in knocking out one of Wikipedia core content guideline's, but it sure was nice to come here and vent. ; ) -- Cerebellum ( talk) 04:25, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Actually, while Wikipedia is "not paper" (as opposed to some other encyclopedias), it does have a limitation that other encyclopedias don't. Editors of other encyclopedias can generally be trusted (to know what they are writing about etc.), but the editors of Wikipedia (again - generally) cannot... That's what leads to all the policies and guidelines about verifiability, sources etc. And they lead to notability. For if there are no independent sources that discuss the subject, we are going to end up with a "mess" - an article that is "just" non-neutral (a likely result of having sources representing only one side), an article that looks like an advertisement (a likely result if all sources are advertisements), an article that contains "original research" (which is not unlikely to result in falsehoods - and they are probably the worst kind of "mess")... Other encyclopedias might trust their editors to do some "original research", but, unfortunately, we cannot... And that's why (unfortunately) we can only write articles about subjects that "are notable" (are discussed in appropriate sources)... -- Martynas Patasius ( talk) 22:44, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm seeing a conflation of "notability" (which actually is a synonym for the interest taken by "interesting" or "official" people), with "source reliability" which actually has to do with something entirely different, which is truth. There is a huge amount of reliable-source information out there which is likely to be true, but which isn't interesting and thus not notable. Like mundane weather reports from mundane places, decades ago. Who cares that someplace that often gets cloudy skies, had cloudy skies on March 9, 1952? Unless there's some interesting historical event at that time and place it bears on, the answer is: nobody. The same for high school goings on from the same day, even if they made it into some Fische record of some (now disappeared) newspaper. They're like the weather. The routine weather reports from local places are examples of stuff that is WP:RS but not WP:N. Thus, WP:RS does NOT and should not define WP:N, but that bad idea is something I'm seeing proposed above. These two things, N and RS, are two different things, and it takes both to be really worthy of inclusion. Of course, that said, the problem is in defining N in some other way that has nothing to do with RS, and I've had my say about that. It ends up being a game where celebrities identify celebrity, and they themselves are identified the same way. Soon you can be famous for being famous, ala Warhol.
Perhaps the nastiest example of such conflict comes in the area of BLP, where RS is defined in terms of "likely to be true," but then "likely to be true" is defined as "having come from a source identified as reliable." This gets to the epistemological problem of when we admit that our list of standard V sources (you can look them up) are not RS sources (likely to be TRUE), because some things aren't as likely to be reliable as our memories, which aren't available to anybody. So WP:V is not WP:RS, either. For example, I myself am the leading expert on my own life, and if I disagree with something that gets into print about me, from somebody who met me for a few hours, I'm more likely to be right than the "source" is, if we disagree. Especially when a statement I myself made is the source for the information in the "RS" source, which got it from ME, second-hand! And yet, in a deletion fight, the WP:V claim would be taken over mine, even though it came from me originally, and was garbled. Go figure. This is a prime example of what may be called the "celebritization of truth." The idea being that something is more likely to be true, if some "notable" or celebrated person or source claims it, than if an "ordinary person" (like you or me) claims it. Say what? That's an incredibly stupid idea, indeed ridiculous idea on the very face of it, but it's written right into WP's policies. They make no exception for BLP, in part because of a foolish consistancy which is the hobgoblin of little minds. S B H arris 19:53, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
There is at least one academic study of wikipedia which has stated that Wikipedia rules are unevenly enforced, but these conclusions appear only based on general observation.
Okip 12:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
(Akk, formatting craziness here) Why do you need an academic study to see in a place with a large group enforcing the rules, some people will do things different than others? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ ( talk) 14:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
The rules are designed to be enforced unequally. It would be nonsensical to treat experienced users in the same way as a user who has been here for less than a week. We have WP:IAR and most rules give very non-specific "enforcement" provisions specifically so enforcement can be tailored to the situation. Moreover, the people doing the enforcement are volunteers, nobody watches everything and nobody is required to act. Mr. Z-man 17:16, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Our rules are written in such a way as to make a casual reader believe that our rules are enforced equally. Okip 03:55, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Blogs are not allowed as sources in wikipedia. From
WP:RS: self-published media—whether books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, personal pages on social networking sites, Internet forum postings, or tweets—are largely not acceptable.
But newspapers host blogs by their writers, and newspapers are generally WP:RS. From
WP:RS: Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professional journalists or are professionals in the field on which they write and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control.
Question: Is there a distinction between blogs by newspapers which cannot be used as sources in wikipedia, and interactive newspaper columns which can?
e.g.
this lede.blog by nyt.com is alleged to be a blog not an "interactive column", and not a legitimate source for wikipedia in this dispute from
Abdolmalek_Rigi talk page:
:Sorry, what you're quoting does not apply to the blog you used, what you cited is not an "interactive column", it's a blog, and it's not clear if it has any editorial supervision or not. In any case, "may be acceptable as sources" is not good enough when dealing with controversial claims and topics. It is Wikipedia's policy that exceptional claims require exceptional sources, and no blog is an exceptional source. --
Kurdo777 (
talk) 21:24, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
--
BoogaLouie (
talk) 20:29, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability (railway incidents) ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi. I have a question. Can the users put publicity in Wikipedia? I tell this because i think that a lot of userboxes contains the promotion of a thing. For example, this user prefer Wii over Playstation 3 and X Box 360, or This user drinks Coca Cola. I think taht, in a encyclopedia, this typo of dates are irrelevant: you can need a userbot to say taht you write spanish, but you needn't a userbox to say taht you drink cocacola, also, say "I prefer Wii over.." is a type of promotios about Wii.-- HHH Pedrigree ( talk) 15:09, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Thou, Gay, Dude, Craic, Humbug are all articles about words ( Thou is a Featured Article) but WP:NAD prohibits this. It can be argued that the articles go beyond a simple dictionary definition but WP:NAD states:
Note that dictionary and encyclopedia articles do not differ simply on grounds of length. A full dictionary article (as opposed to a stub dictionary article, which is simply where Wiktionary articles start from) or encyclopedic dictionary entry would contain illustrative quotations for each listed meaning; etymologies; translations; inflections; links to related and derived terms; links to synonyms, antonyms, and homophones; a pronunciation guide in various dialects, including links to sound files; and usage notes; and can be very long indeed.
Should WP:DICTIONARY be tweaked to allow these types of articles? If so, how? If not, should these articles be removed? -- NeilN talk to me 17:22, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Given the fragmentation of this discussion over several places now, I want to express my view here now that the word gay has a special significance in that it was deliberately chosen and given a new definition by a part of society which used it as a simple but powerful unifying tool. Sadly, that usage has now led to a further usage as a derogatory adjective, but it's all because it was made to represent a lot more than the simple evolution of a word could ever do. It's not "just a word" HiLo48 ( talk) 02:44, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
I would strongly support modifying WP:NAD to more clearly indicate that a highly restrictive interpretation such as Wolfkeeper's is not supported by community consensus. older ≠ wiser 14:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
I think this might be solved once and for all by just synchronizing WP:NAD with Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a dictionary. As pointed out above the latter specifically says that "In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject..." Clearly in certain cases an indicidual word merits encyclopedic treatment.-- Cúchullain t/ c 16:08, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Please visit and comment at User talk:Jimbo Wales/poll. Fram ( talk) 12:16, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Any user is entitled to have a poll in userspace. The authority, statistical accuracy, or impact of the poll is, naturally, a matter of interpretation.-- Scott Mac (Doc) 10:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I propose either fixing or removing the Macau link. It seems to be broken. Kayau Voting IS evil 11:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
There's a new request for comments on the Manual of Style talk page about whether spaces should be required around disjunctive endashes when a disjunct contains spaces. For example, currently the Manual of Style requires the spaces around the second dash in the phrase:
and the proposal is to omit those spaces. It's been suggested that this RfC be advertised more widely, so I'm mentioning it here. Further comments are welcome. Eubulides ( talk) 16:53, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Discussions are on here ▒ ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ ▒ ―Œ ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣ 19:44, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Proposed policy: Wikipedia:Research
Over the last few months, members of WikiProject Research have been drafting a policy for research of Wikipedia and its users. Specifically, this policy describes a process for recruiting Wikipedia users to participate in research studies, and creates the Subject Recruitment Approvals Group to manage this recruitment through an applications process for recruitment requests similar to the one used by the Bot Approvals Group.
This policy has been designed to facilitate research of Wikipedia while ensuring that studies are not disruptive to the community.
At this time, we are seeking input from the Wikipedia community. Although we have had (sometimes heavy) involvement from non-researcher members of the community, this policy has been largely written by researchers. That is why we are posting to ask for your comments and assistance to turn this draft into a proposal. -- PiperNigrum ( hail| scan) 21:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I've re-vivified this discussion since the proposed policy now has an RFC for becoming an official policy.-- EpochFail( talk| work) 22:38, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Is it OK to point vandals to Uncyclopedia? Many vandals do humorous but destructive edits to WP. Uncyclopedia seems to welcome such edits. I'm wondering if we could, besides giving them a warning, tell them about Uncyclopedia when they vandalize. I've never seen a vandal use the sandbox which they are told to use. But uncyclopedia seems like a place that they will have more fun editing (as they won't be reverted). The problems with this proposal are:
Can someone tell me if it is an aberration of policy? Thx. ManishEarth Talk • Stalk 03:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
By way of a link to the next section, Uncyclopedia is just one of many alternative outlets which unashamedly provide what Wikipedia is not. Certes ( talk) 23:27, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps, analogously, other people could be referred to Wikinfo, where there are no rules of NOR, RS, NPOV, FT, notability, or a lot of WP:NOT. Peter jackson ( talk) 10:41, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
[heading] Last resort: Arbitration [text] If you have taken all other reasonable steps to resolve the dispute, and the dispute is not over the content of an article, you can request Arbitration.
Apparently AWB and SmackBot both tend to add {{ DEFAULTSORT}} tags to everything they can. This is not only redundant in most cases, it "enshrines" incorrect sorting for many pages that need sortkeys but haven't gotten them yet, like those starting with years (e.g., 1982 in home video) or ordinal numbers (e.g., 66th Academy Awards -- although note that this one actually has a correct sortkey on it). I propose a policy that {{ DEFAULTSORT}} tags not be "automatically" (or "semi-automatically") added to articles that begin with numbers. Or, better yet, limit such activity to specific kinds of articles, like people and articles with titles starting with grammatical articles ("the", etc.) -- which are pretty much the only kinds of articles that actually need special sorting in the first place. - dcljr ( talk) 01:01, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
What is the correct defaultsort for 1982 in home video? You could just bring the subhect to AWB's attention first. This is easily fixable. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 09:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed that in the past 4 years it has begun a norm in wikipedia to tell to users "it has been discussed, stop discussing it". But this is completely undemocratic and ultimately a propaganda machine method since as time goes by, gradually, but surely, this "consensus" becomes dated. What is most disgusting, is that such methods of pushing bias and POV are even seen in the most tiny of articles. e.g. here: Talk:PIIGS#Racist.3F This is a very tiny article of a) very few editors b) even a very new topic and people still try to push to users "stop discussing it, it has reached". -- Leladax ( talk) 04:23, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
It is a bit of a balancing act. You certainly need to be able to quickly dismiss reraised requests for a couple of months or you run into the rather nasty problem of WP:Civil POV pushing. Dmcq ( talk) 23:47, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
User_talk:Cygnis_insignis#Blake_template_2 Please comment there. Thanks, Litho derm 05:41, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
This is an option in preferences. Since it's usually a bad, drama inducing idea to mark edits that are not minor as being such, and since nobody ever got yelled at for not marking an edit is minor, I think it may be in WPs best interest to eliminate this option from the preferences menu. It seems to cause more problems than it solves. Thoughts? Beeblebrox ( talk) 20:56, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Azure, the people who abuse the "minor" tag to "put something by" other editors need to be disciplined. Admins should be able to revoke the privilege. Fact is, there are lots of people who have pages watchlisted but are not religiously checking all edits. The minor edit helps them ignore noise, which is always a good thing. I don't know whether the preference needs to be taken out, but minor has an objective definition per WP:MINOR: "typographical corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearrangement of text without modification of content". I don't know whether the option preference needs to be taken out, but the minor rule does need to be enforced. II | ( t - c) 10:24, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Comment: I think it could be allowed for bots (with approval) if their tasks really are to do minor edits. 陣 内 Jinnai 23:45, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
This was proposed as a policy once back in 2006, from what I understand, but was defeated. The version that failed to achieve consensus was significantly different from the current version, and had called for blocking of any user account found to be in use by a child. I feel that since then, based on seeing its advice invoked on many occasions, that the contents of the current version have become standard practice. Also see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Protecting children's privacy, where the original version was rejected, but the principles in the current version of the page were upheld.
Since the role of policy is to document accepted practices, I feel the page should be labeled as such. In summary, the main points of the page seem to be:
Let me know if you support this proposal, or if not, what changes (if any) you'd suggest to better suit this being a policy. Thanks. Equazcion (talk) 05:32, 4 Mar 2010 (UTC)
Doesn't do anything - the proposal recaps a bunch of stuff that's well stated elsewhere (users can edit anonymously, disclosure of personal info discouraged, immature/disruptive users may be blocked/banned, etc) and concludes that 1/ disruptive users may be banned and 2/ non-disruptive users who post personal information should be warned and personal information by or about minors may be oversighted (which is already a stated norm). People who present as minors tend to be scrutinized anyway; disruptive users tend to be removed and in any case personal information is removed, strongly so for minors. If they don't present as minors then there's no way to tell.
If this is aiming to document or highlight a norm, the norms are amply documented and adding this page would be "surface dressing" (the norms it discusses already exist elsewhere). If this is aiming to change a norm it's unlikely to do so and a full RFC on editing by minors would be more appropriate. FT2 ( Talk | email) 14:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
I can understand why WikiProjects choose to categorize pages within their purview as being of 'High-importance' or 'Low-importance' to them, but what is the purpose of categorizing pages as being of 'NA-importance'. 'NA-importance articles' categories, of which there are currently more than 1,200, are essentially dumping grounds for pages that are not articles or lists (i.e., categories, files, templates, redirects, disambiguation pages, project pages, and portal pages), but I can't understand why they are categorized. So, in this context, I would like to pose two questions:
Thank you, -- Black Falcon ( talk) 06:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Top | High | Mid | Low | NA | ??? | Total |
283 | 2,930 | 12,003 | 180,364 | 53,934 | 6,916 | 256,430 |
{{
Chess diagram}}
and {{
Infobox chess player}}
are relevant to
Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess and it's natural to include them as they do relate to the articles. The question then becomes once you've decided to categorise it, how it is best to do so? The Top/High/Mid/Low importance are meant for articles and have little meaning to a template. Putting them in the unassessed
??? is really unhelpful because this is a place you want to see the occurance of new unassessed article. So instead they are allocated into "NA" section.
SunCreator (
talk) 16:36, 6 March 2010 (UTC)I've always been a bit worried that Wikipedia could be censored for real. Wikipedia is subject to US (and, I guess Florida) law because its servers are located in Florida.
Let's say Congress passed a law making it illegal to "cause others to view the American government with contempt" during (say) a string of terrorist attacks on US airplanes around the world. (A similar law was passed in WWI; see the Sedition Act of 1918.) Would the trustees be forced to bring down or drastically alter thousands of current articles, when presented with a federal injunction?
Would Wikipedia, if it had existed in the 1970's, have been allowed to report fully on the Pentagon Papers (including the classified material) while its injunction was being appealed, even though the NY Times was not? Could the US government enjoin us right now from publishing certain articles that provide "expert advise or resources" to terrorist organizations under PATRIOT III?
Sometimes I wish that Wikipedia's servers were spread all over the world, so that that the action of any one government could not overturn the independence of Wikipedia's consensus. What if Wikipedia's servers just happened to be located in China?
Comments, criticisms, opinions? -- RoyGoldsmith ( talk) 17:13, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure about censorship, but Wikipedia should have a contingency plan. The servers may be strong against hackers, but one hurricane and all of that work is gone, including backup. We should have atleast a backup server on the other side of the planet. Even better if it was a server which was immediately updated to mirror the main server, so that people on the other side of the planet get a faster connection to WP and the Tampa server has less load. (Editing should be redirected to Tampa, though, so that we don't have lagged edit conflicts) ManishEarth Talk • Stalk 04:40, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Comment Practical concerns aside, does anybody in here believe we're not going to be P2P-hosted in a few years?
Paradoctor (
talk) 01:14, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
This discussion the vpp consensus refers in part to a user name credit in article space. Although the translation in question is from German to English, surely a simple matter that anyone who reads both languages can do, it is not quite so simple. The material that was translated is "verifiable" in that it is in published works, but it is written in an old form of German and in an old script. Furthermore, the material, although included in some electronic texts, is not widely available (4-5 copies in libraries and not globally available on the internet). The user who translated is fluent in German (says on his user page), as well as other languages. Several people have removed the credit, but I reverted it. Why didn't someone contact me, especially when I kept reverting it? Anyone who actually examined what was being taken out, put back and taken out, and by whom, could see that the translator is an established wikipedia with the proper credentials for specialized translation. If the people removing the link did not realize that it was a specialized translation, then perhaps a note to either me or the other user would have been appropriate, rather than simply high-handedly removing the credit. It seems to me that vpp consensus was reached in a vacuum, rather than with the facts. I strongly disagree with removing this: This is a highly specialized translation of a published source but I'm willing to compromise on this. I will discuss this with him and we will probably put something related to it on the talk page instead. However, in the meantime, until we get that done, please leave it. I will remove the translation credit when we've fully documented the translation on the talk page. Auntieruth55 ( talk) 16:50, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
It appears that the userpage User:JPatrickBedell was oversighted, and that, based on a look at this mirror, the situation did not meet any of the criteria set out in WP:OVERSIGHT for suppression, i.e. Removal of non-public personal information; Removal of potentially libelous information; Removal of copyright infringement; Hiding of blatant attack names on automated lists and logs; or Removal of vandalism. While the Wikimedia Foundation has unquestioned editorial authority over the site, I think it is good policy to reserve oversighting for only those cases that meet the criteria above, in order to preserve the open culture of the wiki.
If there was any objectionable content, editing, blanking or at most deletion would have sufficed. But I am not sure there was even anything particularly objectionable per our guidelines on userpages. Some people have interpreted his comments on his userpage as a suicide note leading up to the 2010 Pentagon shooting, especially in light of his comment about being "determined to see that justice is served in the death of Colonel James Sabow." But that could have been a reference to the successive deletion debates on the James E. Sabow article, particularly when Bedell's own philosophy of " transwikianism" (the wiki editing philosophy that views the effect on the Real World of wiki information as a primary consideration when editing) is taken into account. Further, we have no reason to believe that his account was compromised or that it was created by an impostor.
While I realize that, given the recent tragedy, emotions may be running high in reference to this matter, it is times like this that it is most important to adhere to our standards, lest we be viewed as hypocritical about our philosophy of transparency and openness. Tisane ( talk) 21:29, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
The RFC is progressing here ▒ ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ ▒ ―Œ ♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣ 19:38, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Please opine at WT:IRS#RFC on Wikinews as a reliable source. The short version is that we need to re-establish exactly what our current consensus is, due to some recent changes at Wikinews. Blueboar ( talk) 22:32, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:NS6 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi all,
I've perused a few of the earlier discussions about image credits in captions, and while I find the arguments unconvincing, I can at least see where their proponents are coming from. Essentially, the argument goes something like "allowing credits in captions will add clutter and could potentially make wikipedia articles seem like advertising for the image creators.
The move to banish all credits to image description pages seems to me to violate several important tenets of wikipedia style: (1) articles should be self contained (2) article content should be verifiable (3) wikipedia should honor both the letter and spirit of free content licenses (4) wikipedia policies should be follow a consistent set of foundational principles.
To this end, I propose allowing articles to add photo credits in footnotes. This avoids all of the stated problems (clutter, promotion), while keeping articles self contained and verifiable (many users do not know that images are clickable, at least that I've witnessed), making them viable as printable (rather than only screen) documents, and crediting photographers concerned with proper attribution (for instance, as implied by the spirit of CC-BY type licenses).
This brings the citations for images in line with citations for quotations, numerical data, other facts, and even ideas and interpretations used in article text. Adding image creator credits to footnotes is unlikely to be enough incentive for users to add spammy images as self-promotion, and balances the goals of professional clutter-free encyclopedia writing and proper ethically proper credit for image creators.
I'm putting this same text at Wikipedia talk:Captions#Image credits in footnotes.3F, which seems like the appropriate place for the discussion, since several previous discussions of image credits took place there. (As far as I can tell, both numerical majorities and prevailing arguments in all the discussions I've seen have favored crediting image creators, while defenders of the status quo have mostly argued on the basis of "this is already settled, you punks." but that's neither here nor there).
Once again, I suggest directing discussion here
Thanks for your consideration,
jacobolus
(t) 05:08, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Jumamuba ( talk · contribs) vandalized Wikipedia by posting many copies of copyrighted images - about 50 over two months. This is 25 copies per month; on average, about ten every two weeks. Many of these copies were with false licensing information, claiming that he took the pictures, when in reality, he stole the pictures from forums (of course no source information there) such as skyscrapercity.com.
I propose that if a user is known to have likely falsely claimed at least one file as his own, and has been blocked for copyright infringement, then all files he uploaded within one month of the falsely claimed file(s) with an "own work" declaration may be speedily deleted immediately. Evidence for false claims of ownership can be established in a WP:FFD discussion. If a user does not want his files deleted, he should not falsely claim any of them as his own and lose the implicit trust of the community that he will respect copyright. Unfortunately, the current situation is that it takes, according to policy, at least seven days, to get a file deleted because of questionable permission or source info. PleaseStand ( talk) 02:32, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Is it proper or within policy for a rollbacker to rollback his or her own user/talk page after a vandal hit, or should said editor refer elsewhere for help ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mlpearc ( talk • contribs)
I've been going through CAT:FFD, and finding several images where the original listing had been overwritten due to a bug in Twinkle. I've been relisting these, and linking back to the edit where Twinkle overwrote the nomination. If the original nomination (possibly from 2008) was made by a user who had since vanished, should I remove/change the sig in the relisting, in order to help keep the user "vanished"? (It will still be visible in the diff which I link to) עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Proposed deletion (books), an adaptation of the PROD process for Wikipedia-Books has been proposed. Feedback and comments would be appreciated. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:26, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Popular Science magazine has posted their entire 137-year archive, all hosted on Google Books. In the bottom right corner of each page image is, in gray text, the phrase "Copyrighted image", even on old magazines that have fallen into the public domain, like the March 1905 issue I have open in another browser window here. A scan of the original magazine wouldn't have been marred by this, and in the US, the "Copyrighted image" claim is incorrect, per the court ruling that a photograph of a public domain work of art isn't copyrightable. (See Copyfraud.) My question: When I grab full page scans of the old copies of this magazine that have fallen into the public domain, is it considered a "best practice" to use image editing software to simply remove the "Copyrighted image" text? Is it acceptable to just upload the image to en with the "Copyrighted image" text intact, even though this is incorrect and may in the future cause editors to waste time debating whether the image is or is not copyrighted and subject to deletion? (I ask whether it's acceptable because it takes time an effort to hack the text out of every image.) And, finally, does anyone have a link to a Google Books page where I can just grab the highest-res PNG or JPG file of a particular page without having to use their clumsy, awful reader with the scroll arrows and zoom magnifying glass icons? I don't really want to have to take 10 screen captures and stitch them together just to assemble a single page. Comet Tuttle ( talk) 07:23, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
A bit of a debate is rising on the article One shot (music video) numerous videos have been added to the list without citations. Some of these have been added in error because they give the appearance of one continuous shot when in fact the shot changes are well hidden (this has been made easier using modern techniques, though Alfred Hitchcock also did it for Rope (film) in 1948) a lot of these have unreliable secondary/tertiary sources claiming they are "One Shot" but little or no reliable evidence either way.
Now when recently removing some of these to clean the article up, I was asked to provide citable references that they were *not* one shot which I could do for two of the videos. I also added a section explaining why they were not One Shots. The problem now exists that for many there is no academic study/analysis of this field from which a secondary source can be drawn. I did attempt to cite the Primary Source (including the Timecode of the cut) but this has been removed by another editor - citing this reference as "Original Research" because the cut may not be apparent to a casual viewer.
This leads to a rock and a hard-place; if the references stay in we get further tertiary sources taken from Wikipedia. If we remove them entirely they simply get them re-added.
So the question of Wikipedia Policy Remains, is it/should it be acceptable to cite the event within the primary source when there is a lack of secondary sources? I asked the question of do we require a secondary source to cite that Moby Dick begins with the words "Call me Ishmael"? Or do we require to assume a certain level of ability on the part of the reader - i.e; citing the Timecode is not enough because it requires a certain level of technical knowledge to understand what is being seen. A similar literary equivalent might be House of Leaves where the Editor has cited sections of the book which contain Codes but a request for further citations has been made.
My personal opinion is that in either case these videos need to be identified to prevent further error, even if a reliable secondary source cannot yet be found. Then marking the video as Citation Needed or Citing Timecode will encourage further editors to search for sources in places I have't even thought to look for them - or possibly encourage reliable third parties to carry out the required research so that a subsequent editor can cite their work.
Thoughts, additions and comparisons? Stuart.Jamieson ( talk) 10:41, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm on a fact finding mission, and I'm hoping to get some help from the greater wikipedia. WP:ELG, the Exit List Guideline, is a guideline created by User:TwinsMetsFan in September/October of 2006. It was immediately posted as a guideline and part of the manual of style without any (apparent) discussion outside of the one pointed to by the guideline as its basis.
A recently started discussion, which I and a couple others from outside of the United States are questioning, aims to add an amendment to this "guideline". I however, would like to question it's status. This was a guideline discussed by American editors in the American roads wikiproject, and then applied to Wikipedia as a whole as if it were the international standard without ANY discussion outside of the US. As it stands, no project besides the US roads wikiproject, and Canadian road articles created by the members of the US road wikiproject, follows this hidden jem of the manual of style. When I asked that any discussions amending a worldwide guideline be brought up to every road wikiproject that is active, I was refused because it's too tedious. This nullifies the guideline as any sort of non-US standard, and many of the administrators involved in it seem oblivious to the fact that if you aren't discussing this with wikipedia as a whole, it's not a guideline.
I would like to see this demoted as a guideline, and potentially moved from its current title to reflect that it is an American standard. The rest of the world is not going to spell it 'color'. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:52, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
On the closing note it said to start a discussion on WP:VPP concerning the specifics. I am starting this discussion here. Any PROD can be removed by any user? Sapporod1965 ( talk) 21:43, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
A case arose recently where an editor with a community imposed restriction was blocked for commenting on an AfD for an article that editor had created. A number of editors felt this block was unwasie and/or unwarranted. I have therefore created Wikipedia:Standard exception to Projectspace limitations after a discussion at WP:ANI#Specific question. Comment is welcome. DES (talk) 00:12, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
I believe that the points above all easily explain why some concept and baseline for notability is necessary - while not paper, we're not an indiscriminate collection of verifiable information.
That said, understanding that notability as it is treated today as one swing of the pendulum of self-correction on WP is probably a bit too heavy-handed but also a bit too unfocused. I think most editors know how to use notability, but it is clear that most of this inclusist vs deletionist war that's been going on is due to a vicious circle of events that typically start with a heated argument at AFD and lead to ranges of articles being contested. This is often fueled by disagreement for what is appropriate coverage of certain fields relative to other fields (a fact often joked at by the press, which fuels the battles further) - I know one of the biggest is concepts from fictional works (characters, etc.) which some believe are important to be covered but rarely can be covered by secondary sources, thus making the present WP:GNG statement difficult to work with. But this is also true for schools, sports figures, etc.
It is not that notability isn't a bad idea, nor one to be abandoned, but we need to remind people that we a combination of an encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac - to that end, we should be asking ourselves, first and foremost, what is it that we want to cover, and not the negative of what we don't want to cover. Given any field, we should be able to say "Ok, topics that satisfy these conditions from this field that demonstrate notability within that field should be included", and list out specific criteria that avoid subjection assessments. This may not be possible for some fields, but I think most fields can provide a good swath at appropriate topics that, with reasonable assurance, would be part of the encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac. To that end, we already have the various sub-notability guidelines (SNGs) that provide that. Failing the SNG then drops you to our next goalline, the general notability guideline, which says that a topic that shows notability via secondary sources should be included. Mind you, many topics that would meet the field-specific guidelines likely would meet the GNG, but this should not be taken as a sign that the GNG is more important. The GNG is the fallback position of a topic doesn't meet its field's guidelines or if the field lacks any guidelines or falls outside of any known field. When viewed like this, this can significant help discussions at AFDs where notability is in play, because we're not talking about the presence of sources but the appropriateness of the topic for WP: if it is notable in the specific field but lacks sources, we should be more open to keeping it than deletion.
The problem we stuck with is this impression - when you read through policies and guidelines and AFDs - that the only good encyclopedic article is one that has third-party, secondary sources. Granted - verification and avoidance of original research and bias are all important, and third-party, secondary sources are a strong way to get there. But that's satisfying the "encyclopedia" part of WP's mission - gazetteers and almanac are works that tend to just cite facts and not attempt analysis or the like. Not every article on WP needs third-party secondary sources to meet WP's mission. That's not to say that we open the door to thousands of articles by allowing primary, first-person accounts as the only sourcing metric, and that's why, again, the field-specific guidelines of what is actually notable should come into play - there may be some topics within a field that should be included even if the sourcing is otherwise not as strong as one that is provided through secondary sources. Failing the field, then the lack of secondary sources will mean the topic fails the GNG, and we likely would not have a separate article on it.
We still need to make sure that field specific guidelines for inclusion are not overly inclusive compared to others. For example, if a guideline says that a one-time cameo fictional character always gets an article, while we exclude an amateur that plays one time at the Olympics through an athlete-field guideline or a single mom-and-pop business through a business-field guideline, we've got a problem. These field guidelines cannot be developed in a vacuum and should be challenged if they are overly inclusive - or overly exclusive too. We also need to realize that not every topic easily shuffles into established fields, or that new fields may become more obvious over time as we work towards this. We still have the GNG for those.
Basically, the "tl;dr" version of the above is simply that we should be asking ourselves, "what do we want to include in WP" instead of always playing the negative "This doesn't belong in WP". We want to assure ourselves we are covering all topics within individual fields well enough to meet the mission of WP, and being overly reliant on the GNG is harmful. (An argument I've had to point out several times is that while the property of having significant coverage is usually the result of something being wikt:notable, it is not true that having significant coverage is what makes something wikt:notable. There is a small but significant gap between GNG-based notable topics and dictionary-definition-based notable topics. We need to find out how to fill that gap, and field-specific guidelines are one way to do so.) -- MASEM ( t) 16:58, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I'll talk about fiction related articles because it's a good example and, to be honest, the majority of all the squabbling that goes on is about fiction related articles. To my mind, sources are required to address two basic questions regarding Wikipedia articles. Is it true? And why should anyone care? All reliable sources can address the first question, but only reliable secondary ones can answer the other question. That is the main reason why articles on elements of fiction are frowned upon if they only cite the work itself as a source- the question of why anybody should care has not been addressed. And don't think it's not an important question; Wikipedia has been mocked, and its reputation as a serious scholarly resource undermined, for its undue fannish obsession with minute details of popular culture.
There is another, and also very good, reason to insist on independent sources. When an editor writes an article based solely on the work of fiction it is extremely difficult to determine where their reporting of the primary source crosses the line into inappropriate interpretation, speculation or editorializing, or where they place undue weight on one element or another. And it is also true that such articles tend to be very badly written, consist mostly of plot summary without balanced discussion, and can be difficult for subsequent editors to work on. Independent sources mitigate all of these factors.
Masem pointed out that it can sometimes happen that a worthy topic might come along, where everyone can see it's important but by some fluke the sources don't exist or are extraordinarily hard to get at. This is true. It happens. But it does not happen very often, and it's for cases like this that the old motto ignore all rules should be applied. By all means break the rules when it's obviously the right thing to do. We should not generate a set of blanket exemptions to catch the occasional freakishly sourceless worthy topic- because we'll catch so much crap along with it as to make the whole thing more trouble than it's worth. This is especially true in coverage of fiction because the exemptions will inevitably be misused, often deliberately. I would like to make it clear that I don't want to generalize because I know there are a lot of good-faith editors doing a lot of good work in that area, but the sad fact is that when spurious, misleading and irrelevant sourcing happens it's almost always when someone tries to defend a fiction-related article from AfD. Take away or lessen the requirement for independent sourcing and the problem will just get worse. Reyk YO! 10:43, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
OK, but now what if you ARE the authority on something? Let us look at an extreme case that probably won't happen: Stephen Hawking decides to post something on Wikipedia that summarizes his conclusion that his earlier mathematical calculations, showing that the universe originated with a singularity, may be a special case, and that it is quite possible that there was no "Big Bang" after all. I suppose he could wait until his publisher puts this out in hard copy, and then cite himself; but "he da MAN," as we say in the street, so why should he?
Granted, Hawking will get published as a matter of course, so presumably the stuff will get out there sooner or later, and filter back to Wikipedia. But one of the virtues of this encyclopedia, over any other in the world, is that it can promulgate information very quickly relative to a dead-tree publication process that can take months to years. And for every Hawking there are ten thousand perfectly competent scholars, not a few of them without institutional affiliation, doing perfectly sound original work even while primarily engaged in some other discipline. (The translation of the Old West Saxon poem "The Wanderer" by the late attorney Clifford A. Truesdell IV is a good example of this, published three years ago on line but as far as I know still unavailable in hard copy.)
The error, I think, lies in an assumption that original research is somehow unverifiable. But those two assertions are by no means fungible. Independent scholarship can be very sound, and readily replicated by anyone who is willing to take the trouble, while on the other hand there is a great deal of piffle that finds its way into print anyway, even from university presses that should know better (I've worked for some of them). Just because a press publishes something, even a careful scholarly press, is not an absolute guarantee that it is true; and just because a epiece of research hasn't been published yet does not mean that its findings are ipso facto false.
It seems to me that on the one hand, Wikipedia exuberantly celebrates (and rightly, in my view) the ability of regular folks to be self-starters in the collection, editing, and dissemination of information; yet this very same principle seems to me to be flouted in its institutional unwillingness to allow itself to be (on rare occasions, to be sure) a primary source, written by the people who are in a position best to know whereof they speak. That "original research" should instead appear in this connection as though it were a term of opprobrium seems, at least to this independent scholar, both contradictory and more than a little counterproductive.
75.33.43.107 ( talk) 23:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)Nick Humez 14 March 2010
I've noticed that looking at Special:Newpages, there is a notice that says: "Note: articles should not be tagged for speedy deletion as having no context (CSD A1) or no content (CSD A3) moments after creation." I'm not sure how long ago this was added, but I can't recall it being there when I started new page patrol. Was there ever a discussion about this? If so, could someone point me in that direction? Also, I couldn't find this explicitly stated anywhere in our policy about speedy deletion. If this is desirable perhaps we should add that. Jujutacular T · C 23:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Basically what they've done is changed their Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia to state what an encyclopedia is (for their Wikipedia), and then marked a lot of the other policies like Is Not as essai i.e. essays.
This seems to me rather sensible, provided you can define what an Encyclopedia is in the policy. I think they've more or less succeeded.
The problem with the English Wikipedia's policy (which doesn't define encyclopedia in policy, but does so in article space) is that the Encyclopedia article space doesn't really know either, and many encyclopedias are very different from the Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia article has to cover all of them.
The question is, whether we should do the same sort of thing. It probably rests on being able to change Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia acceptably. - Wolfkeeper 15:06, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Recently, the reliable source guideline ( WP:RS) was edited to make it appear that evaluating the impact factor of journals to determine their reliability was prohibited entirely. There is a discussion on the talk page to determine if this is accurate or not at Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources#Impact_factor_usable.3F. Hipocrite ( talk) 18:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
There is an active proposal to turn Wikipedia:Quotations into a guideline.-- Father Goose ( talk) 21:41, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
As soon as I finished clearing out the backlog of expired PRODs a few minutes ago, I went to Category:Proposed deletion and discovered that one of its subcategories is Category:All files proposed for deletion. Why do we have such a category, since only articles are eligible for PROD? Was it once common practice to PROD images? Nyttend ( talk) 01:51, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
A series of discussions at CFD over the last few days have revealed a number of problems in the naming conventions of the top-level categories for inhabited human settlements.
The issues are too wide-ranging to be resolved in the format of a CFD discussion, so I have opened a centralised discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Categorising human settlements to try to find a consensus on how to proceed.
Your contributions will be welcome. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:43, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:NS2 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:User pages ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:User page ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
As a bit of background info, global sysops are a handful of highly-trusted users who have admin tools on all small wikis, as well as those that elect to opt-in. The first batch were recently appointed a couple days back. In my opinion, it would be a good idea for enwiki to opt-in for several reasons. Most notably, global sysops dealing with cross-wiki vandalism won't have to stop at enwiki during low-traffic hours, when we're short on local admins patrolling RC. Language isn't a problem, since all of the current global sysops speak English to some extent. Now, I know this has been unsuccessfully proposed before, but I think it's worth looking into again. – Juliancolton | Talk 14:05, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
We have an apparent proposed policy in development at Wikipedia:Administrator policy. It has been unanimous since late August 2009. We need some work and action regarding this page. Thank you. -- IRP ☎ 00:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
As you can see, this is a draft of proposed changes to Wikipedia:Administrators. -- IRP ☎ 02:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
At the time Wikipedia:Administrators was full of waffle - things that admins shouldn't do - which applied to any editor so were superfluous, tendentious assertions based on leaps of faith from things said by ArbCom which didn't define policy etc etc. Why I chose to wrok on a draft there I really can't remember, but as far as I'm concerned it can be changed back to a redirect if it is useful. We can always dig out the history if we need to. Rich Farmbrough, 14:32, 17 March 2010 (UTC).
Is this a reliable source? I ask because it has come up in an article I'm editing ( Maya Angelou). I reverted an edit because at my first glance, I didn't think it was. The editor who added information supported by this source insists that it is. I mean, to me, it seems like IMdB (which isn't reliable, I know) for plays. When I looked more closely, however, I can see his point, since it isn't edited by anyone like IMdB; it's edited by professionals in theatre. Would someone more knowledgeable give their input about this, please? Thank you. -- Christine ( talk) 04:56, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
In the meantime, please do not use deceptive edit summaries such as "improving ref", when, in fact, you deleted a ref.
Beyond My Ken (
talk) 05:31, 17 March 2010 (UTC) Striking comment that appears to be incorrect -- it looks as if I viewed the article when FSF when in the middle of changing the format of the ref. My apologies.
Beyond My Ken (
talk) 05:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion at Template talk:Hidden archive top#merge discussion: arbitrary break as to whether the language used on the {{ hat}} template (often used to to close disputes) is appropriate. More opinions are requested. – xeno talk 14:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I wonder: wouldn't calling the sources acceptable for Wikipedia " authoritative" instead of " reliable" be more exact? Russian Wikipedia ( ru:Википедия:Авторитетные источники) and Ukrainian Wikipedia ( uk:Вікіпедія:Авторитетні джерела) seem to do so...
Also it looks like the use of "reliable" sometimes has side effects ( [13], [14])... That name might seem to imply that we want sources that report information accurately (do not lie etc.), while in fact it would probably be more accurate to say that we want sources that are known to report information accurately... "Authoritative" would seem to be more accurate in this respect...
Now, of course, "reliable" has one major advantage: it is currently in use. Thus trying to change it at once might not be a good idea. But maybe it would be reasonable to consider changing "reliable" to "reliable, authoritative" in at least some cases? -- Martynas Patasius ( talk) 20:47, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Another option is "reputable." Maurreen ( talk) 18:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC) Or even "acceptable." Maurreen ( talk) 18:22, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Can we do a quick reality check? There will always be boundary issues, whether out totum is "reliable" or "authoritative" or "reputational". This debate started with the OP pointing to a pair of boundary issues with "reliable". That is not anything like evidence for me that there is a problem here that needs fixing. We seem to have fairly quickly blown "authoritative" out of the water. And so now suddenly we're proffering "reputational" as though it is going to be easier to agree that, or less likely to accrue boundary cases. I'm sorry, but it strikes me as nonsense on stilts that without esablishing any real cause, we're being invited to rootle through the thesaurus to choose a different word. And Maurreen; I don't think it is so difficult to determine the extent to which sources "engage in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing", but I promise you that if you anchor policy to something as subjective as reputation, then you'd have entered gun-shoot-foot territory. Really and truly, our problem is not WP:RS but rather that the majority of our writing has not RS whatsoever. Changing a workable definition for either of the inferior definitions suggested in this thread will not well serve wikipedia, and does not have a snowball in hell's chance of happening. -- Tagishsimon (talk) 03:55, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
I wasn't exactly sure where to put this, so I hope here is appropriate.
I noticed that if you look at the pages with italic titles, many of them are not taxonomic names, which, according to the template itself and several associated policy pages, are the only titles with consensus to italicize. Some italicized titles include Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Annals of Mathematics, Nature (journal), BMJ, The Adventures of Tintin, The Day of the Triffids... et cetera; there are many more.
Does this reflect any new consensus? Is it against policy? Should other literature/academic journal articles have their titles italicized for consistency, or should the current italicizations be removed? My first impulse was just to correct it, but when I realized so many were italicized, I decided it would be best not to make such a sweeping change on my own and came here. -- ✶ ♏ ✶ 11:50, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm a little confused about the correct usage of {{ Expand language}} and whenever it should be placed at the article page or the talk page. The rules on this are a mess: Wikipedia:Template messages list it at both the article namespace (as cleanup) and the talk page, Wikipedia:Template messages/Talk namespace includes an example of it among talk page templates, but it links to Wikipedia:Translation for futher information, and this page explains to leave the notice at the article page.
Anyway, none of them seem conclusive or the result of a well-thought discussion: the first ones are mere lists, and the other seems like a help or how-to page. I haven't found any policy or guideline stating rationales of where do each template belongs that may be of use to settle this.
I may explain why should this go at article talk pages, but I'm not sure of the correct place to do it either. The template talk page seems obvious, but there is already an orphaned thread on the topic, started months ago; clearly nobody watches it and a new thread would end the same way. Templates for discussion doesn't seem the right place either, as I wouldn't be requesting deletion of it (in fact, there has been a deletion request before, declined). Do I start the discussion here, at some related noticeboard, open a request for comment...? MBelgrano ( talk) 13:25, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
" Coke mini From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Coke mini is a new 7.5 ounce can packaging of Coca-Cola that debuted in December 2009.[1][2][3] The Atlanta-based soft drink seller plans to also sell smaller cans of its Sprite, Fanta Orange, Cherry Coca-Cola and Barq's Root Beer sodas.[4"
With all the articles carefully rejected because folks reach deep to find a way, here is an article solely devoted to a change in product size?
WTF?
But of course it is carefully footnoted and obviously meets Wiki's quality review standards.
What next? Articles detailing the various Snickers bar weights? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.111.252.18 ( talk) 14:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
This proposal is quite simple. Although it may be already addressed by the policy itself, I believe, just for transparency, it should be added.
Barnstars are not to be used to reference other editors in lieu of personal attacks, whether they be blatant, or veiled, unless the editor being referred to has a long history of abuse, and his indef blocked or bannned, and even then the barnstar must not attack the editor in question, but rather award other editors for combating their abuse.
If not that, then something similar, something that can be worked out, here, on this board.— Dæ dαlus Contribs 04:41, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Please alert me to any updates regarding this discussion, as I will not be watching this page because of it's high traffic.—
Dæ
dαlus
Contribs 04:42, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
I was just perusing the Ace Ventura: Pet Detective article and the plot section is just appalling. It's like it was written by a 12-year-old boy who was watching the movie at the time. Additionally, the section for Jesus Camp seems to be nothing more than a collection of fans' favorite, most outrageous scenes. Is there any policy regarding material in plot sections? I personally don't see any reason for a plot section beyond one or two paragraphs summarizing the film, but I doubt that proposing such a thing would ever go anywhere. Seregain ( talk) 17:23, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Let me start by saying that I am not familiar with the Village Pump, so I'm not sure if this is the right place for my question, but here goes: While editing Cocos (Keeling) Islands, I discovered a link to Outline of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. My first response was bafflement: What is the point of a long list of headings for nonexistent content about a topic that is already covered in an existing article? My impulse is to push for deletion of the outline article. Then I did some investigation and found that there is an entire Outlines project with a group of committed editors behind it. I realized that any move to delete this IMHO useless outline article could set off a political firestorm. Now, having taking a look at some of the Outlines project pages and articles, I see some value in them, but only for large topics, such as a major country, all aspects of which could not be covered in a single article. By contrast, the Cocos Islands are a very small island group with 600 inhabitants. No more than a handful of notable topics can possibly exist for these islands. Without taking a position on the value of the Outlines project as a whole, this would seem to be an example of a topic too small to merit an outline. Are there any policies or guidelines on a minimum scope for outline articles (for example, in numbers of existing articles that could be linked)? Marco polo ( talk) 18:24, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
I am somewhat agnostic about the inclusion of outlines in article-space. The Outline of Japan might have some value, and similar outlines could exist for a few hundred very large content areas. However, I feel very strongly that, if they appear anywhere, outlines need a minimum scope, probably defined in terms of the number of linked, relevant articles. I am not very familiar with how policy is made for Wikipedia. Is there a way that I could propose such a policy? Marco polo ( talk) 19:54, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Something that has quite frustrated me in using Wikipedia is when I search for a term that has an everyday, common-usage, general-consensus, meaning - I end up at a disambiguation page instead. Now here I am NOT referring to terms for which 'genuine' disambiguation is required; but rather terms where there is indeed a Primary Topic the disambiguation page was supposed to refer to - but there is no 'overview article' coherently representing the said Primary Topic, so no referral is made. Rather, you just have links to how different academic disciplines handle that term.
Examples are terms such as self, identity and personality. (There are many more)
Granted, I understand the need for academic hair-splitting, and how such terms may be treated vastly differently in various academic disciplines, or even across sub-disciplines. (This I find especially true of terms that are 'shared' by philosophy / psychology / sociology / etc.. and also between mathematics / computer science / physics)
However, more often than not, in common parlance, we don't use such academic categorizations when using those terms. You don't say "I love my self (philosophy)" or "I am not sure of my identity (social science)". Rather, we refer to this... hazy, blurry, but nonetheless commonly-held, generally-accepted meanings of such words (In fact, such 'blurriness' / uncertainty within these terms may be an impetus for someone to look them up on the first place on Wikipedia).
My point? There is often at least a "lowest common denominator" meaning of such words, and this should be the basis for an 'overview' article on that topic. And this overview article can deal with why various disciplines interpret the term differently, and hence 'guide' the reader to the appropriate discipline-specific article. To me current disambiguation pages utterly fail in this latter regard - the one-sentence explanations, whilst appropriate for differentiating between completely different articles, are very inadequate when articles come down to inter-disciplinary 'hair-splitting' (or at least it may appear that way to lay readers) - hence, lay readers need better 'guidance', and what better place to do it than in an 'overview' article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.255.15.241 ( talk) 09:54, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
There is excessive disambiguation, and disambiguation is not the proper solution for poor general overview articles. Rather, the increased visibility of those general overview articles due to making them the replacement for the disambigs may lead to improvements in their quality. Further, there is nothing to prevent anyone from implementing this. I think this calls for a nice cup of SOFIXIT. Enjoy! <clinks glass and sips> Tisane ( talk) 09:26, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi! On behalf of the FlaggedRevs team, I'd like to announce that Flagged Protection, the proposed use of Flagged Revisions on the English Wikipedia, is ready for more testing. We have made a number of changes to improve clarity and usability for both novices and experienced editors.
If you have an hour or two to devote to testing it, we'd love your thoughts. You need not jump in immediately; we'll be posting updates every week or so. But we'd like it to be in the best shape possible for the upcoming trial. Since we've been working without feedback for too long, I expect this first week or two will be bumpy, but bumps now are preferable to bumps later, so bear with us.
To check it out, start here:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
There's space for questions and discussion on the labs site, and I also welcome direct email and talk page questions.
Thanks, William Pietri ( talk) 23:22, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
I think a good UI would be to have the review UI at the top of old-revision pages, with a diff to the last checked version displayed on activation of the review interface iff there is a previous reviewed version …and a link from diff pages to the review page for the newer of the two revisions, if the diff compares two revisions from the same article (yes, it's possible to diff different articles to one another). The version that's around is acceptable, though—I think at this point I'd prefer FPPR live even if there are a few rough UI edges as long as it works well from a technical point of view. Otherwise, mainly looking forward to updates. Putting updates on the Village Pump is a good idea (though you should, next time, post a link to the discussion on the technical village pump as well, as MZMcBride did this time). {{ Nihiltres| talk| edits|⚡}} 06:28, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Contradictions, in general, are considered faults or errors. For example, if I say that widgets are large, then later say that widgets are small, most people would say that I made a mistake. This is reflected in the large number of WP discussions in which contradictions are considered to be faults: Search results.
Another example is stating that widgets should be written "widgets" but elsewhere stating that the proper spelling is "Widgets" (the capitalization of a word is inconsistent).
Of course, if I said that widgets are large compared to ants and small compared to adult elephants, there is no contradiction and hence no fault. And if I said "A is (not A), where A is a variable representing a truth value, is called a contradiction", then the contained statement "A is (not A)" is not considered a contradiction for which this policy would apply, since it is part of a meta-discussion rather than a 'primary' contradiction.
I propose that WP add a new policy prohibiting such contradictions in WP articles. This includes contradictions within sections, between sections, and between articles. It would exclude contradictions in and between quotations, as well as contradictions (which must be described as such) for which the contradicting statements are supported by WP:RS references (either the same reference or different references).
A quick search indicates that there seems to have been no such proposal in the past. However another quick search indicates many upheld complaints that articles contain contradictions.
This policy would take precedence over WP:NOR, since contradictions are 'internal' problems, like typos, spelling, and grammar, rather than substantive original research.
Please vote, so we can see if there is a consensus for me to make a formal request. David Spector 18:19, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Voting is closed, thank you. I withdraw my informal proposal. Thanks to everyone. @Treasury: "stupid pointless drivel" is quite impolite (it is a personal attack instead of an objective reason for opposition). This violates a WP policy. We don't want to bite or drive away people like me who are trying very hard to help WP. David Spector 14:02, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I think a much better idea would be a guideline called something like "How to deal with contradictions". The guideline would probably start life as an essay and then be upgraded if there is a consensus for that. The essay would talk about the different types of contradiction and how to deal with each one. e.g.
The essay would link to the relevant policies and guidelines, such as WP:Article titles and WP:NPOV. Yaris678 ( talk) 13:19, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Is the TMZ.com a reputable source for wikipedia articles? What about Perez Hilton's newspage? Sapporod1965 ( talk) 05:58, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
As part of a dispute over a merger between {{ hat}} and {{ cot}}, and issue has popped up which could use some debate. The main question is this: When/where/why is it acceptable to use technical tricks - like collapsing tables, collapsing divs, or CSS coloring - to hide/close discussion text? there are a number of cases where this is already conventional:
The last is the contentious one. while we all agree that there are cases where it is useful and beneficial to collapse discussion text and cases where it's abused, we don't really have any clear sense of what is and what isn't responsible usage. There is a vast gray area here (or so it seems to me) where one side is going to think {{
hat}}ing a discussion is a good idea while another side will see it as an offensive form of refactoring, and I've seen that exacerbate talk page conflicts. If we can get clarity on that issue life would be good better.
My original goal (which has now become kind of a side issue) was to merge together all of the discussion-closing templates into one template (for minor reasons - I liked the consistency and simplicity of a single template, and I was thinking of adding some features, such as a debate summary quote box and some color-coding for different types of debate resolution). any input on that would be nice as well. -- Ludwigs2 18:08, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Just dropping a note here; it seems the discussion on how long BLP PRODs should last is ending, with current average of roughly 2 weeks. Anybody who wishes to chime in and has not done so is welcome to at [15]. The Wordsmith Communicate 21:00, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
There is a user (who I won't name here, let's keep it hypothetical for the moment) who refuses to receive perfectly normal messages on their talkpage—"Please communicate with me in private. This sort of exchange does not belong on WP,"—deleting such material and instead asking for missives to be sent via a contact-form hosted on the website of their software business.
I see a number of things wrong with this: it's spamming Wikipedia with links to this (very) commercial site. It's disrupting the normal talkpage system. It's requiring editors to provide their personal email-address, without the user in question revealing theirs.
Any thoughts? If the general view is that the system is inappropriate, I will alert the editor to this discussion. ╟─ Treasury Tag► Speaker─╢ 22:07, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
==Please don't add messages to this page, except for official messages.==
Please contact me directly by using my Contact Us form instead of editing this page. I don't tend to visit here often, and when I do I delete any messages I find. I do discuss specific pages, but prefer to do so on their associated Talk pages whenever possible
I didn't realize there was anything wrong with asking people to email me directly so I can see and respond to messages immediately when I'm around. My heading has been there for years without complaint. But as always I am happy to conform to WP policies and guidelines whenever they are pointed out to me. I am a guest here, and did not mean to flout accepted procedures. I will remove my heading right away. Please accept my apologies. David Spector 23:33, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi: I noticed we don't have a separate speedy deletion category for G3 candidates. Since G3 is for obvious vandalism, that seems to be something we'd want to prioritize over some of the run-of-the-mill speedy deletion candidates. Does anybody object to creating a category, and altering the db-g3 template to place things in it? Ray Talk 23:43, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Proposed deletion (books) ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I feel that it could be helpful to lengthen the amount of time (and edits) that it takes to become an autoconfirmed user from 10 edits and 4 days to 1 month and 100 edits, as theoretically a user could create an account, began editing their user page, make 10 edits (all in their userspace), and then, after 4 days, vandalize a semi-protected article. What I am saying is I think that it would be best to be able to have a longer interval between account-creation and autoconfirmed status, as in some cases some vandalism-only accounts could even attain autoconfirmed status and disrupt semiprotected articles if they edit occasionally (and thus do not recieve a block immediately). Regards. Immunize ( talk) 15:08, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I am concerned that this is a gap in the system that must be addressed. Immunize ( talk) 19:45, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I feel that every incidence of either page-move vandalism or vandalism of a semi-protected article represents a major problem that requires repair, and that the best way to correct the problem is extending the length of time needed to become autoconfirmed. Immunize ( talk) 14:53, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
A recent situation at WP:AN ( Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Keepscases erroneously blocked indefinitely / perm) seems to have highlighted a grey area in our policy - whether or not stewards are permitted to place blocks here at en.wiki on named users following requests at m:Global blocking. Comments invited. – xeno talk 14:03, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Blocking IP addresses#IP block length and comment. Thank you, – xeno talk 16:51, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
I posted this thread a while back and it was archived with no responses. Any thoughts at all? – Juliancolton | Talk 18:06, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
As a bit of background info, global sysops are a handful of highly-trusted users who have admin tools on all small wikis, as well as those that elect to opt-in. The first batch were recently appointed a couple days back. In my opinion, it would be a good idea for enwiki to opt-in for several reasons. Most notably, global sysops dealing with cross-wiki vandalism won't have to stop at enwiki during low-traffic hours, when we're short on local admins patrolling RC. Language isn't a problem, since all of the current global sysops speak English to some extent. Now, I know this has been unsuccessfully proposed before, but I think it's worth looking into again. – Juliancolton | Talk 14:05, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I think we can probably close this as no consensus to opt-in, global sysops can just bring problems to the attention of our local people. As a sidenote, it might be a good idea to have a page where global sysops can come to and report problem users when they do occur. The Wordsmith Communicate 14:18, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Below message copied from Talk:UK Space Agency as relevant to wikipedia as a whole not just this particular image.
Why has the logo been replaced with an altered image that uses a transparent background ? The union jack colours are red, white, and blue. Not red, whatever colour the webpage or web browser is using as a background, and blue.
If this image ever appeared on the front page of wikipedia it would appear red, green and blue in the FA section or red, blue and blue if it was in the in the news section.
More to the point it appears red, black and blue on my web browser, since I browse the web with the browser set-up to use its own bacground colours. Why do people use transparent backgrounds ?
If you want the logo to be slightly off-white then make the image slightly off-white. What is the point of a transparent background ?
The only point of a transparency is so that it merges into the background no matter what the background colour is, but either:
a) you know what the intended background is going to be, in which case why not just make the image that colour ?
or
b) you don't know what the intended background is going to be, in which case you've got no business creating a transparent background in the first place
The union jack is red, white and blue. 81.132.172.20 ( talk) 08:49, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #abd5f5
border colour: #abd5f5
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background colour: #fad67d
border colour: #fad67d
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81.132.172.20 ( talk) 09:14, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #abd5f5
border colour: #abd5f5
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background colour: #fad67d
border colour: #fad67d
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I'm not talking about these specific images. These are just examples. The black background should show you what images appear like on my computer when the image uses the colour "transparent" where it should be using the colour "white". A transparent surround on something like the Hearts fc logo is fine - The problem is when people change not just the surround but the main part of the image itself, like with the Lloyds logo, and thus mix the page colour with the image which goes against Separation of presentation and content and goes against the purpose of html where web page designers should not assume they are in control of the presentation.
background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #00ff00
border colour: #00ff00
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background colour: #abd5f5
border colour: #abd5f5
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background colour: #fad67d
border colour: #fad67d
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Chimage ( talk) 15:18, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
If wikipedia wants to take accesibility seriously, then on a windows pc, go into control panel, accessibility options, display tab, settings button, choose "High contrast black" and then try browsing wikipedia and see the mess that is made by images that mix the content of the image with the page colour. Transparent surround is fine, Transparent bits in the middle of logos and other images is not. Chimage ( talk) 15:25, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
In the Lloyds logo and a zillion other images on wikipedia, the colour white is an integral part of the image and should not be made transparent. Transparent surround fine, but not parts of the image that are properly part of the content of the image. Chimage ( talk) 15:37, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Is there a place to ask if such an essay has been written? Or does anyone know that such an essay exists? It would be a good link to have handy in dispute resolution if it does exist, or if something similar to it exists. I have attempted to search the VP but the terms were too vague for me to find anything. SGGH ping! 18:10, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I am trying to start a debate about defining what news organisations, as a reliable source, are good for and/or not good for. Please see Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources#News_Organisations_section ~ R. T. G 18:35, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
When and by whom can a mergeto tag be removed? I ask this because a certain editor has removed a merger proposal, relating to an article created by him, before a consensus had been reached.-- Nilotpal42 ( talk) 22:37, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
As requested, here's the weekly Flagged Protection update.
This week we've seen a lot of helpful testing from at least 15 people, and we'd love to see more before launch.
To participate, start on our labs site.
To see what we've changed this week, check out the list of items completed.
To see the upcoming work, it's listed in our tracker, under Current and Backlog.
There will likely be more work than that before launch as user feedback comes in; we just added a number of items based on tester feedback. But if this week's feedback is any guide, we don't appear to have much major work remaining.
We expect to release again next week, and each week thereafter until this goes live on the English Wikipedia.
William Pietri ( talk) 01:01, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Dear all,
I propose a simple new feature to be added to any article in Wikipedia that may contain images of a graphic nature - this would basically consist of a small button somewhere on the article giving the user the option to block all the images on that page.
I propose this feature due to the fact that some articles that are fairly neutral in nature tend to contain images that are unsightly, graphic, explicit, and which make it hard to read the text near them (e.g "Nail").
The feature would be as non-intrusive as possible and its purpose is certainly not to patronize users.
Perhaps the feasibility of this option could be reviewed.
Regards -- 188.220.173.129 ( talk) 22:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)tpos1an-- 188.220.173.129 ( talk) 22:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I support the idea. An example of an article that this button could be useful is Meningococcal disease, which features an image of an ill infant with the disease. While I personally am not overly disturbed by the image, there has been question as to weather or not the picture is appropriate on that pages talk page. A feature such as the one you suggested would eliminate such concern, as everyone would be able to choose themselves what they look at. Immunize ( talk) 21:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Maybe have an option to allow the user (if he is signed in) to self block images on a certain page by typin in the page and having a block images option or something? I do not know. Such option i agree would need to be done on a user level.. not as a whole as per Wikipedia is not censored
Evenios ( talk) 07:24, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
While reading an article on the television show Burn Notice, I came across a section at the end of the article listing all of the countries where the show is broadcast as well as the specific network it is shown on in that country. My first reaction was "What the heck is this doing here?" I then removed the section, as I didn't see it as encyclopedic or useful, but was immediately reverted. I put a note on the talk page and am awaiting feedback there, but I am curious as to what Wikipedia policy is on this matter.
This information is not included on the Wikipedia page for all television shows, only some. I think there are three different mutually exclusive positions on this matter: A) This is relevant info and should be on every article about an internationally distributed TV show, B) This info is more appropriate for TVGuide and should not be on any TV show article, or C) It is relevant and useful on some TV articles but not others. If C is the agreed upon answer then the question that must be answered is "What makes this info relevant for some shows but not others?" This question would need to be asked for every individual show if C is indeed Wikipedia policy.
Is there already a policy page which deals with this matter? Thanks 128.223.131.109 ( talk) 19:38, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Recently, as I have reverted vandalism (most of which was from anonymous IP's, I have began to wonder why we do not require logging in for all editors. If this policy was changed, it would not effect wikipedia's promise that it is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" because anyone can log in, and it would probably reduce the amount of vandalism we see quite a bit. Immunize ( talk) 21:33, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
I 100% agree with the view that there should be a mandatory registration and sign in in order to edit. Instead there are enormous expenditures of editor energy eliminating vandalism and frightened proposals for draconian sight-review for all articles. 95% of the problems could be resolved with a simple Sign-In-To-Edit, which I hereby give the WikiJargon Acronym (WJA) SITE. But Wikipedia has a strange inertia-driven culture, so it's not gonna happen because it's SPOOKY. Carrite ( talk) 03:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
But I personally doubt that we would lose that many constructive edits, because nothing prevents someone who otherwise would have edited anonymously from logging in. Immunize ( talk) 13:37, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I feel that in the event that a editor does not put in the effort to log in, it is very unlikely they will become a constructive editor. I am also concerned about the issue that it seems that the policy for dealing with vandalism-only accounts is so much different than our policy for handling vandalism only IP's. While most vandalism-only accounts are indef blocked, most IP's only ever used for vandalism get only a 24-31 hour initial block. I feel it would be more appropriate to indef block all vandalism only IP's, just as we do with vandalism only accounts. Thus, the indef block would force logging in. I also support the idea of flagged revisions, at least on heavily vandalized articles. Best wishes. Immunize ( talk) 21:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Second, I know of no study showing a "proven" negative effect of not allowing IPs to edit. This would need to be randomized and prospective, since any retrospective study of IP edits that is used to project what would happen if registration were required, would be forced to make assumptions about what those great IP-editors would do, if forced to pick out a name and password. The truth is, we don't know. They might be so "pissed off" as to quit. Or not. And in the meantime, other good name-users might become so "pissed off" by IP-user continued vandalism to their work, that THEY might quit. It's a total guess as to which one wins. Personally I think anybody who goes through the arcane work of leaning how to make edits that "stick" on WP, is not likely to balk at the very simple task of registering. You don't even need an email address to do it.
Third, if you yourself edit from and ISP where your IP changes often, you're either editing from a proxy (a no-no) or one of those ISPs with rotating IP-exits, which are EXACTLY the sort of IPs that need to be soft-rangeblocked (with account creation enabled). The reason being that such ISPs are a perfect hide-out for vandals, who cannot be blocked by any means when using them. Best to force vandals who use those ISPs to take a name which CAN be blocked, and (in the meantime) cannot edit semi-protected articles. Persistant vandals from rotating-IP-exit type ISP services have had their entire ISP IP ranges soft-blocked, with NO-account creation enabled (which means only previously-resistered users in that range can use them, but no new users can register), which is even more draconian. But it's within policy. S B H arris 05:03, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Side note: It should be imposed on admins to do a WHOIS and check the identity of the editor. If its a school IP, they should only softblock. Rotating IP's (they will be shown with "status:ALLOCATED PORTABLE" on a WHOIS) should be 24hr blocked (no matter what their block record is) without autoblock, but account creation prevented, and fixed ip's should be blocked by the same guidelines for normal users (24hr, then a week, then a month, etc.), except the block should be a softblock. ManishEarth Talk • Stalk 11:26, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
To be a bit more serious, I find your argument a big disingenuous. It is not true that any editor can edit any page RIGHT NOW. Semi-protected pages make you wait FOUR DAYS. Now, you're promoting the idea that it will destroy WP if we make some people wait the 30 seconds it takes to pick a username and password. Come, now! It takes about that long for a new editor to figure out how to save their new edit. And far longer for a new editor to learn enough rules that their new edit is likely to "stick" and not disappear. Having your edit disappear must be far more disconcerting than getting a message that says "Hi, there! Please pick yourself an anonymous username and a password." So, I don't buy it. S B H arris 20:38, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
A very large number of our editors - many more than any of us realize, more than likely - started out with one or more edits which could easily be considered vandalistic - I myself started here by adding a spam link to a forum where I was/am an administrator. Many IPs which make vandalistic edits, if they continue to edit, turn into productive editors, and blocking IPs from editing would cause us to lose those editors. Even with the fact that I have been an administrator for coming up on a year now, I still edit while logged out myself, for a number of reasons. -- Dinoguy1000 ( talk · contribs) as 67.58.229.153 ( talk) 04:40, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
However, these editors would be just as likely to become productive even if we blocked their IP, as the majority would create accounts and go onto become productive editors. Immunize ( talk) 17:54, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
This is why I feel the best option may simply be making registration universally mandatory, because a message that says "you must log in to wikipedia or create an account to edit" is much less of deterrent from editing than one that says "because of your persistent vandalism, you have been blocked indefinitely from editing". Immunize ( talk) 15:39, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
My opinion is this: I believe on the one hand allowing anyone to edit wikipedia without having to create a user account is a great way for a person to dive in and help out at any time. it allows people to not have to worry about creating a user name and signing up to contribute and indeed a number of very productive edits and contribution have been done by users who never create a user-name.
However i have found for the most part most vandalism i have run across thus far has been by users with just IP addresses shown. The problem also is that a user may be using Wikipedia from more then one location; a school, a public library, from home, from work. from a friends house. In that case a user can have more then one ip address and cause problems time after time by switching to a new location, also many users have non static ip addresses that change every time they get online (dsl services have that). I would think if IP addresses alone were not allowed to edit.. it woudl cut down vastly on the number of vandilsim and incorrect edits to wikipedia. Also perhaps a step further, because a user can simply create a new account with any email.. i even propose that in creating new accounts a user has to wait a certain time period, say something short maybe an hour or two before they are allowed to edit. That way it could also cut down on abuse.
The reason i say this is because we have pretty much a two faced system in wikipedia. No matter how many good faith edits we make...no matter how much time is spent stomping out vandalism and catching bad users.... this will ALWAYs be undermined at least in some small way with vandalism and bad faith users costing the integrity of wikipedia. If the current system we have now is kept in place....this will always be true.
Also keep in mind the more popular wikipedia becomes the more people out there will be interested in causing harm to it. In fact in one study in Wikipedia (forgot the link.. its here somewhere) but it says that the number of "bad faith edits" to good faith edits to wikipedia is rising. In fact to be quite honest i am a bit dissipointed with the number of vandalism edits i am able to find at any given time. Even with the hundreds of users at any one time checking for vandalism and cluebot and other tools. We still have many many bad faith edits per hour in Wikipedia.. some which end up going unchecked for hours if not days..
Unless something is changed we can NEVER bring Wikipedia to being close to the standereds we want for it. I propose in the future that more serious discussion needs to be made on this topic. While on one hand it might close the idea of "anyone being able to edit at any time" It could go a long way to helping bring better credibility to everyone, after all if our goal is to bring the sum of all human knowledge to every person on the planet, should that also mean we should strive our best to make as vandal free as possible? We cant do that with our current set up and to be honest with you i think more time sometimes is wasted fighting vandalism and bad faith edits by ip addresses and users who create brand new accounts within seconds then that same time can be used for making Wikipedia better!
Just my thoughts!
Evenios ( talk) 07:18, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Ugh, anyone who even takes a peep at IP's edits in the recent changes section can see quite clearly see that IPs make probably more useful edits than vandalism. If we took away the right to edit as an IP then the next time they see a spelling or grammar edit in an article and go to correct only to be told to make an account you just know they would think "Sod that" and that's one less helpful edit. It's not going to change and I'm grateful for it, for a multitude of reasons. OohBunnies! Not just any bunnies... 18:39, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
In the last several months, there have been two occasions where I had reason to do some minor editing without bothering to log in. In the first instance, I was blanking a Talk page redirect that was the result of a move and clearly served no purpose, to anyone who actually looked at what I was doing (or my very clear edit summaries) with a conscious mind. But my edit was undone five times as "vandalism," I was warned five times about my "vandalism", and then I was reported for my "vandalism" (and the report was immediately rejected because it obviously wasn't vandalism). In the second and very recent instance, I edited the hatnotes on an article to be more helpful, and again left very clear edit summaries about why I was making these changes. Again, I was undone over and over, by three different people, with no reason given except that because I was an IP, I must be a vandal (yeah, a lot of vandals get their kicks by modifying disambiguation hatnotes, I'm sure). What was really appalling is when I was told by one of these people that if I wanted to edit without being reverted, no matter how legitimate my edits were, I would have to register an account.
Honestly, if it were up to me, I would probably require registration before editing. But as long as our policies do grant unregistered users every right to edit articles, these people who won't even look at an edit before undoing it and labeling the user a vandal simply because they are unregistered are doing Wikipedia a really appalling disservice. Either they can edit, or they can't, but the project shouldn't say that they can edit and then treat them like scum if they do. Propaniac ( talk) 19:20, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Another possible way to reduce vandalism would be to semi-protect more pages after less vandalism than we do currently, meaning, for instance, that we would semi-protect a page after 2 incidences of vandalism rather than 5. Immunize ( talk) 19:41, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
I see we have the eternal question here. Advocating the elimination of edits by IP would not only the continuation of WP:Policy creep, but it would merely move the question to new "anonymous accounts" (sockpuppets et. al.) and insisting upon credentials... which would ultimate destroy the base principle of Wikipedia being edited by "anyone". Ultimately, this would require the establishment of identities to ascertain the actual person who has a specific account (side question: how many of the edits above are by accounts which reflect the actual name of the poster? I can "see" only three or four, including this post). It's a slippery slope, but elimination of edits by IP is not the answer as some people with accounts sometimes edit without signing in for various reasons. B.Wind ( talk) 17:53, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
When an anonymous user fixes a page with stale vandalism, I wonder what percentage of the time a so-called patroller reverts on sight thereby putting the vandalism back into the article, presumably without bothering to actually read the diff first. Based on my own experiences, I'd guess around 30%. This type of attitude is exactly why I don't want to register. I'll still help out when I notice problems, even when you make me feel unwelcome, because I support what you do. But that's the reason why I say what you do rather than what we do. 76.244.148.179 ( talk) 03:27, 29 March 2010 (UTC)