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Ok i recently stumbled upon these articles looking a Cyberbullying and they bother me greatly.
I am looking at some of these and very tragic yes, gained some third party reliable sources, I am just unsure if i can Justify them as Worthy of a whole article. Seems to me most could be neutral one or two sentences in a cyber bullying article or any laws that were passed a result. rather than post Slew of AFDs (Especially since a couple have been kept in previous ones) i thought i come here to get some input. Weaponbb7 ( talk) 21:07, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Issue Why are some of these articles titled "suicide of [name]" or "[name] suicide" while others are "death of [name]"? This is not cool. Fix it, Wikipedia -- it's consensus time! :) Alex Douglas ( talk) 14:03, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
I have put up a new set of proposed Tibetan naming conventions. Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Tibetan)#New naming convention proposal. Your comments and feedback are requested.— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 23:30, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Hi please join in the thread at here. Falling rain was compiled in 1995-1996 and lists false population estimated within a 7 km radius and altitude data which reliable government sources and google earth and consistently proved wrong, often dramatically so and oftne lists settlements or draws railway lines which no longer exist. Unfortunately many editors believe this data to be reliable and have used it or linked to it in over 9000 of our encyclopedia articles, presenting the read with false information or directing them to false information through external links. This site has recently been used as a source for the mass creating of generic stubs about Kenyan village. The creator is now aware of the problem and thanks to a Xenobot has now been dealt with but we still have 9000 articles using this as a source/link. I and other well trsuted experienced editors/admins such as User:Darwinek, User:Orderinchaos and User:Satusuro have called for this to be blacklisted asap and did so back in December. Four months later we are still stuck with 9000 links in articles and a lot of data which we know are false. It seems however this is not adequate enough for deletion and that a wider consensus is needed. Please can you comment on the black list page in the link given and offer your views on this situation. Thankyou. Dr. Blofeld White cat 22:18, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Due to this quote by Jimbo found here-
I think that "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." is a good policy. To take the example of a popular book that receives no reviews, what kind of encyclopedia article could you write about it? You could write an original review, but that isn't an encyclopedia article. You could write a plot summary, but that isn't an encyclopedia article. You could do some kind of original research, but that wouldn't be an encyclopedia article.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 09:04, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps we should revisit the old discussion about whether or not plot summaries are "encyclopedic" and should be allowed. In those previous discussion I (and several others) said just summarizing and using the book/movie as the source for a summary is not encyclopedic nor should it be allowed. We were shouted down and told that wasnt true. Jimbo seems to agree with us however... Oh, I know exactly which editors will show up here and say "Jimbo was only talking about articles with ONLY plot summaries...we have fully fleshed out articles" etc etc to explain this away, but if need be we can always go to Him and ask what his thoughts truly are on this for I dont wish to put words in his mouth. So, I'm just suggesting that we revisit this topic as last time it came up with no consensus (or actually I'd say the majority was against using books/movies themselves as sources for plot summaries, just a vocal minority blocked it by being stubborn). Camelbinky ( talk) 03:40, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
So we should write a plot summary on a film and then source it with a Roger Ebert review? That's unfeasible, sorry. Also, WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. — Mike Allen 05:00, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
The fictional work using reliable third-party sources for analysis does not mean that the primary source cannot be used to provide a basic description of the the work. I do not see WP:PSTS mentioned, but it says about using primary sources:
Primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source can be used only to make descriptive statements that can be verified by any educated person without specialist knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source. Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about material found in a primary source. Do not base articles entirely on primary sources. Do not add unsourced material from your personal experience, as that would make Wikipedia a primary source of that material.
If an article on a fictional work has nothing or mostly nothing but a plot summary, that is a problem. A summary can exist as part of the larger coverage. For example, the article should not have 1,000 words of a film's plot if there are only 200 words explaining the film's background. Plot summaries should be a fractional amount of any well-written article about a fictional work. Obviously, that fraction can be debatable, but the primary-source content should not swamp content from reliable third-party sources. Erik ( talk | contribs) 12:13, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I find the quote I think that "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." is a good policy. utterly incomprehensible. I'm working mainly within the comics field, and despite extensive knowledge, and superb resources above and beyond the usual gods, find it frustrating that it is virtually impossible to provide sufficient citations to develop what Wkipedia as a collective entity decides is a good article. Now the argument in the narrower field of comics may miss some of the nuances of Wikipedia in general, but I can't follow that if the only sources are primary, and one is willing to work only within those without conjecture, that they're not acceptable, whilst an external source is accepatble if 'notable' even if wrong - taking it to the extreme - it's ok to do Nazi history through Neo-Nazi research because it's x-party, but not first-hand experience.
I still can't get my head around not being able to synopsise comics, while doing episode guides for tv series is ok. I don't understand how Wikipedia is full of endless pages of stuff without any citations whatsoever (or sometimes any content whatsoever) and there's no complaint, but some get blasted for the same problems. And the drive to 'good article' is often lost in the rule book - although thankfully in my little panelological corner people realise that anything can be the start of a good thing.
Personally, I'll get on with it on the basis that all knowledge should be available, think removing something because it doesn't fit with current thinking is challengeable, and add an article if I think it may add a micron to the sum of human knowledge. Someone else can argue the whys and wherefores of petty argument.
Sometimes we not only miss the forest because of the trees, we forget to make sure the tea bar is open before the crowds arrive to picnic in the woods. Apologies for the edge - I'm tired from a week of not travelling home. Cheers! Archiveangel ( talk) 16:07, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
The 'opposition' keeps making the same error over and over. Let's try this again, from the top:
Can we keep this in mind for the rest of this conversation? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:42, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
It's important to include plot summaries to provide context for commentary. A plot summary without commentary is pretty pointless as an encyclopedia article, but it can be labeled a stub. A book would be a verifiable source for a straightforward description of its own plot. -- Susfele ( talk) 01:23, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
I asked this over at Commons because that's where the image is located, but they don't seem to be too concerned, so I'll ask it here. File:P1000.png is a self-created image with no sourcing as to the scale used. Is there a way to ask for reliable sourcing on an image? Woogee ( talk) 20:11, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Whatever. I get it now. You have to source text, but you can make whatever images you want. If I were to make an image of Barack Obama that's ten feet tall, that would be okay, because it's an image. Thanks for letting me know. I'm done with this. Woogee ( talk) 23:38, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Days of the year ( | 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, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
This proposal is motivated by the merge message which has been at the top of the Extrasolar planet article for some time. I think these boxes are unsightly and detract from readers appeciation of an article. They are aimed at editors, not readers. They also act as an undue weight advertisement for the topic that is to be merged into a main article. I propose that any templates which are aimed at editors rather than readers should only be visible if you log in, or even better appear on the talk page instead. They make Wikipedia look very messy. Qurq ( talk) 23:38, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
A discussion at ANI prompted a proposal to codify our de-facto policy on admitted or suspected pedophiles on Wikipedia. As that isn't really the correct venue for that sort of thing, I'm moving it here. Buddy431 ( talk) 20:21, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
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Everything above was at ANI. Further discussion can take place below this point. Buddy431 ( talk) 20:21, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
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This policy subsection consists of three paragraphs. The third reads as follows:
Several words that have very specific meanings in studies of religion have different meanings in less formal contexts, e.g. fundamentalism and mythology. Wikipedia articles about religious topics should take care to use these words only in their formal senses in order to avoid causing unnecessary offense or misleading the reader. Conversely, editors should not avoid using terminology that has been established by the majority of the current reliable and note worthy sources on a topic out of sympathy for a particular point of view, or concern that readers may confuse the formal and informal meanings. Details about some particular terms can be found at words to avoid.
There has been an ongoing debate at Genesis creation myth as to the proper title of the article. Here is a rough timeline of this debate:
So I'm requesting that this policy be modified to make it clear that when it comes to article titles (as opposed to article bodies), the name used should be one that does not carry loaded connotations to the average reader, which "myth" certainly does. - Lisa ( talk - contribs) 01:32, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Editors may wish to comment at WP:VPM#Add "myth" to WP:LABEL. -- AuthorityTam ( talk) 15:22, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I know that women were largely ignored in historical writings however I feel sure that there are as many interesting women in the world , both past & present as there are men. For some time now I have noticed the almost complete absence of anyone of the female gender on the main page. I would think that items relating to women feature less than 1 in 10 or even 1 in 20. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.214.61.92 ( talk) 11:34, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps this should be a reason for developing articles on particular women, and related topics eg Women as theological figures. Also, for WP to be balanced, 'transgenders, transsexuals and others.' Jackiespeel ( talk) 15:14, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
There are a huge number of examples to be found in our sister Uncyclopedia, here: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/History_of_Woman pietopper ( talk) 20:09, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
The content on the main page is not the byproduct of some nefarious gender-bias program - it's simply derived from the available featured articles, new articles suitable for WP:DYK entries, etc. Working on bringing more articles on women to featured status would increase their presence on the main page. Emily Jensen ( talk) 03:02, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
I was arguing for people improving categories of articles so that they were suitable for FA status. As Karl Marx might have said in a variant on his remark on Feuerbach - The point is not just to describe a weakness on WP but to find ways of improving WP (g). Jackiespeel ( talk) 20:22, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Spam ( | 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, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:User pages ( | 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, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Public domain ( | 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, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
These have apparently been recategorized as " Wikipedia project content guidelines" as opposed to regular "content guidelines". -- Cybercobra (talk) 10:12, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I think there is a serious problem with a level of disparity between what constitutes a notable athlete vs a notable entertainer. The problem is highlighted by two recent RfD discussions (note these are only examples used to illustrate the fundamental problem).
First, consider George Blackmore, a cricketer who once appeared in a single first-class match. He was nominated for deletion, but he was deemed notable according to WP:ATH and WP:CRIN, both of which state that everyone who has ever appeared for any length of time in any top-level professional sporting event is prima facie notable. During the deletion discussion, even the principal author of WP:CRIN lamented that the standard was in need of revision, saying for example:
"I was the main (probably only) author of WP:CRIN and I am uncomfortable with it. I think the author of WP:ATH should be be feeling similar discomfort. I am coming around to the idea of lists that mention those people who were the "extras"... that I don't think can warrant a standalone article."
"But, really, shouldn't the cricket project be taking a step back and reconsidering which cricketers are actually notable? At the end of the day, what exactly is "notable" about someone who played in an odd match somewhere?"
Compare and contrast an entertainer, Claudia Lynx, who once appeared in a guest speaking role on The West Wing. In her nomination for deletion, she is going down in flames because she does not meet WP:ENT, which requires "significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions".
Now to me, George Blackmore and Claudia Lynx are exactly comparable. He made a single appearance in a notable match, she made a single appearance on a notable tv show. The two standards must be made to treat them equally.
Personally, my own opinion is, I feel that WP:ENT has it right, and that Wikipedia is not the place for all the extras, walk-ons, or minor supporting figures whatever their field. In this case, WP:ATH, WP:CRIN, and all the other sport-specific guidelines should be tightened up to include only players who are actually notable in the ordinary sense. (Perhaps those who at least played an entire season?)
If the various sports projects are unwilling to take their scrubs off the table, then the only other way to ensure consistancy is for the entertainment field to put its scrubs on. WP:ENT could be reworded in a way almost exactly parallel to WP:ATH, including anyone who:
Please note that I DO NOT support this; I am just trying to show what a comparable standard would look like. Hopefully everyone can agree that this is not the world we want to live in, and that consequently the athletic standards must be revised. — Rnickel ( talk) 17:08, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I just added a source to WPZS to replace a broken link. I got there without any effort, so I don't understand the lock, except the computer gave me a pop-up asking if I wanted to view non-secure items. Clicking on "no" didn't affect my ability to see the information. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 13:23, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Quick: If you search for "Truth in Lending" you'll see in the first result the article Truth in Lending Act and the summary that Google puts under it includes vandalism that was inserted to it yesterday.
The vandalism was reverted and the IP blocked, but is there anything else we can do? Flagged Revisions? Anything else?..
If this was already discussed, please point me to it. Thanks. -- Amir E. Aharoni ( talk) 21:00, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, WP:NAVHEAD is an essay, and not part of the MOS? But yet, a "related information" section is being added to hundreds of articles to create a section for the navigation boxes. However, if you click on the "printable" version, the navigation boxes are not there, since they are excluded from print, and what remains is a blank section. See World War I for example. Is there something that can be done about this? It would seem as though if this practice is accepted, then this section heading should be excluded from print as well. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 23:17, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't understand why sockpuppetry is such a crime. As long as none of the accounts vandalize, and they aren't being used as meatpuppets, why is it such a big deal? How does it damage Wikipedia? Is it really worth blocking a user indefinitely who has over 1,000 constructive contributions because they use another account? -- The High Fin Sperm Whale 02:32, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ ( | 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, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
As a user who does a lot of work reverting editors, warning them, and pointing them at the policies and guidelines themselves, I get asked this question pretty often: why do we have the policy / guideline in the first place? The common Wikipedian response is to refer the users to the text in the guideline itself or to refer them to other policies which themselves refer to other policies. Our internal guidelines are written primarily for experienced users and they can be very confusing and I feel that Wikipedia itself never gives full answers in plain English to these problems.
So I want to throw this idea out there to see how it's receive response: How about we place within our policies a clearly visible section that either explains the purpose of the policy (in language non-Wikipedian readers can understand) or links to the discussions and arguments that have produced the policy. The main argument against this is, of course, instruction creep. There could also be wording issues with the summaries of the most contentious policy areas. But I feel that explaining our policy in a way non-Wikipedians could understand would make Wikipedia a friendlier place for newbies and non-Wikipedians, give us less of a Kafkaesque reputation, and it would help outsiders understand why we have the policies we do. Them From Space 00:15, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Why is it that non-admins can't move images? I've been told that it's because of some interaction of the CC-BY license, but I'm not entirely clear on why that would be a problem. Can anyone clarify? Gigs ( talk) 20:23, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Except that we are; see WP:OFFICE. This policy needs to be eliminated, because as long as one small group has complete control over Wikipedia's content and uses this power to suppress information, this policy is a lie. -- J4\/4 < talk> 12:55, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
J4V4 is absolutely right: Wikipedia is censored for certain things. There's also a lot of things that aren't censored here, which is what wp:NOTCENSORED attempts to convey. I agree that it's poorly named. Perhaps better would be "Wikipedia is not censored for everything that anyone might find objectionable". Though to be fair, we censor a lot of stuff only because some people find it objectionable. I agree with the OP: we are censored, so we shouldn't claim we aren't. Our content disclaimer is sufficient, I think. Buddy431 ( talk) 22:51, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Please see this section of Wikipedia talk:NPOV. The NPOV policy currently contains two sections on specific topics: a 534-word section on pseudoscience and a 267-word section on religion. These sections were removed last month as being too specific after an RfC was posted on April 3. [11] The pseudoscience section was moved to WP:FRINGE, [12] and the religion section removed entirely. The sections have now been restored by others on the grounds that consensus was not established, or has changed. Fresh eyes would therefore be appreciated here on talk to decide whether to restore or remove the sections. SlimVirgin talk contribs 00:03, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
Surely the place for a discussion of the merits of the RfC is the RfC itself. It makes no sense to repeat one's arguments at each of the neutral pointers that direct to the RfC. Hans Adler 08:35, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Do_not_disrupt_Wikipedia_to_illustrate_a_point#This_guideline_keeps_instruction_creep_in_place. 18.246.2.83 ( talk) 08:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
It's been a while since I've seen something like this. What is our current best practice for when a highly respected source appears to make a glaring factual error? In current case, the NYTimes appears to have misstated the amount of oil spilled into the Persian Gulf during Gulf War I by two orders of magnitude too high compared to other sources. (If the NYTimes were correct then the amount of oil dumped would be roughly the same as the total global petroleum consumption in a year.) Dragons flight ( talk) 21:19, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
I would appreciate any thoughts on this here. – xeno talk 19:16, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
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It has come to the attention of some users that Speedy Deletion is missing some rules that would allow for quick elimination of some pages that obviously have no encyclopedic value. Many of us are wasting time on AFDs when a page should be eliminated immediately. Here are some examples: Example 1:
Example 2:
Further, both of these pages have the following in common:
I can't see how with any regard to a maintaining a reasonable encyclopedia that these pages could fail a CSD. Why gather 10 or so users to say "yeah, this sucks" when it is obvious that these pages will never contain encyclopedic value? Example 2 takes some research (a google test) to show that the term is essentially made-up, but Example 1 is a slam dunk. Isn't it? I say this with no hint of irony... if I create a page called Reading Books is Fun, and give a list of the best ways to read books (curl up with some tea, perhaps your favorite candles or iPad), would it be speedily deleted? Clearly it should be. But if Writing Stories isn't CSD'd, then I don't know. I really want more CSD methods to eliminate this nonsense immediately. In addition, articles with one editor who have no other edits... these should easily be deleted, especially when the topic is pure WP:OR like these. I look forward to this discussion. — Timneu22 · talk 20:17, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
section breakLet me try this again: Keeping in mind the requirements listed here, could we see an actual, written criterion that specifically defines what is and what is not to be deleted on the basis of said criterion? Looking at the current criteria can give you some clues on how to phrase it and so forth. Beeblebrox ( talk) 15:38, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
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Proposals offered at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Proposal for CSDs: essay and how-to. — Timneu22 · talk 20:47, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Could someone please take a look at Wikipedia_talk:No_original_research#Lead and try to determine if consensus exists and how to proceed? The discussion has stopped and it should be closed.-- SaskatchewanSenator ( talk) 20:14, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
In this hatnore,
It looks like the comma is in the wrong place. When I went back and looked at how another hatnote was done, I realized the intention may have been to put the comma before see.
I was going to use this template because I was looking for a Wikipedia policy and stumbled across the one I needed going from the above hatnote. It's better to have a specific hatnote for what I was using this for because WP:COPY doesn't do what I thought it would.
As a matter of fact, this brings up a possibility for the actual WP:COPY page. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:57, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:List of policies ( | 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, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Summary style ( | 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, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
I stumbled across this while reading an article on Gas-discharge lamps, and it appears that there is a conflict between the use of File:Oxygen.jpg as cover art for an Avalon Album, and for the spectral lines of Oxygen. Should I re-upload one (or both) under a different name(s)? If so, which category would they fall under in the image uploader? Hmmwhatsthisdo ( talk) 00:35, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Numismatics/Style ( | 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, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
The recent reversions at WP:NPOV have increased its length from less than 18kB to more than 43kB. Almost no one reads these policies all the way through. We know this because almost no one reads them at all: NPOV stats for Feb, and when presented with such a daunting document, human nature will mean most people who do visit the page will not read it all, let alone inwardly digest it.
This brings up a more general point. Are the policy pages for scholars in Wikipedia policy, or are they for the millions of people who read and edit Wikipedia articles?
It seems to me that for these policy pages to serve their core audience of volunteer Wikipedia editors, a typical new editor should be able to read and understand each of the core policies in under five minutes. If we allow a reading speed of 20 characters per second (around 200WPM), this means that the pages should be no more than 6kB each. This does not preclude wikilinks to long, complex and detailed essays, histories and the like for those seeking more nuanced views. But the length of these core policies, such as WP:NPOV, should be kept to around 6kB.
What do people think? And for those who answer, please would they indicate whether they have read the current versions of WP:NPOV, WP:NOR and WP:V end to end. Stephen B Streater ( talk) 09:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
This whole "policy" thing has become ridiculous. There are far, far too many policy pages (we'll leave guidelines on one side for the moment, but the same points apply to them too) and the pages are mostly far, far too long. They repeat the same points over and over again, quite often in ways that contradict each other, waffle on about this and that, give examples that don't illustrate what they're claimed to be illustrating, contain whole reams of incomprehensible text (that even experienced editors can't agree on the intended meaning of), and have little relevance to improving the encyclopedia. And when someone makes the effort to tidy them up a bit, various editors come out of the woodwork to revert them, not on any substantial grounds, but apparently because they believe the text has some almost religious value by virtue of it having sat around in a particular form for a particular number of years. It's an embarrassment to this project that we can't even communicate our key principles in a clear, concise and comprehensible manner.-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:21, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Thank you Philcha for suggesting an RFC. It makes sense to collect some ideas from several people together first to make sure we ask the right questions. Perhaps now would be a good time to start discussing what we should ask editors to comment on. Stephen B Streater ( talk) 13:01, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Experienced editors on the main policy page are still considering signficant changes such as this. As one major debate at a time is sufficient, I'll leave it a few more days for the current page to settle. Stephen B Streater ( talk) 15:46, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Fresh input would be appreciated at this section of Wikipedia talk:NPOV. The issue is whether the NPOV policy should contain two sections devoted to specific subject areas—one on pseudoscience, the other on religion—or whether they should be removed. SlimVirgin talk contribs 08:43, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Is there a policy about using potentially copyright-violating websites as sources? The case in point is a Reuters obituary from 2001. It is no longer available at reuters.com, but there is a copy at [17], a memorial page for the subject. That page was used as a reference in Oscar Janiger, but recently an editor removed the ref and left behind a citation needed tag, with "Remove links to copyvio site." as the edit summary. Is it WP policy to never link to websites suspected of copyvios? And is there a better solution than to remove the claims from the article (which must eventually be done if there is no RS)? Thundermaker ( talk) 14:57, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Public domain ( | 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, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I was studying up on CSD just a few minutes ago and I noticed that the Criteria for Speedy deletion for articles lists A1 - A3, A5, A7, A9-A10. This might be a stupid question (and I attempted to do some research on my own), but what happened to A4, A6, and A8? None of the other categories (general, files, user, etc) have irregular numbering. Were A4, A6, and A8 once valid CSD:A that are no longer recognized? What about a renumbering? Can a wiki-veteran please explain? Sapporod1965 ( talk) 02:37, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
For clarifucatio G8 used to deal with talkpages of deleted pages, R1 delt with redirects to deleted or non existant pages, and C3 delt with catagory pages only used for a template and the template is deleted. The Current G8 calls to delete any page that is dependent on a deleted or non-existant page and covers all of these previous examples.-- 76.71.208.197 ( talk) 23:30, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
User account status userboxes, is there policy about displaying user account status userboxes when the user does not have that status, ie. a user displaying "rollbacker" userbox and/or topicon when the user is not a rollbacker ? Mlpearc MESSAGE 16:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
See commons:Commons:News_regarding_the_sexual_content_purge. Not only is FOX back for another round, but the BBC, Slashdot, The Register, and Vanity Fair are weighing in, and it's being discussed in at least five languages. Dcoetzee 07:11, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I just encountered the latest case in which editors had to explicitly mention the difference between a user and his signature, i.e. User:JzG signing as "Guy". I've seen something like this before involving a user leaving Twinkle notices. I don't want to focus on the choice made by these individuals, but on the broader policy question. The current policy ( WP:Signature) says only,
"While not an absolute requirement, it is common practice for a signature to resemble to some degree the user name it represents."
Though I won't generally argue against non-matching signatures, I do feel that:
should use a signature exactly identical to the name on their user page, at least while possessing this status. The reason for this is that these people frequently interact with unskilled and problematic editors, who start calling them by the given name on their signature page, and later might try to reach them at this site, or involve other editors in a dispute who think that's the editor meant.
Does anyone else think the confusion would justify such a demand? Wnt ( talk) 19:00, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
The Oxford Companion to Chess is a chess encyclopedia. On page 252, talking about Milan Matulovic, it says "... he played in the Sousse Interzonal in which, after a little cheating (see j'adoube), he came ninth." Page 185 (the "j'adoube" entry) it says: "... withdrew a losing move saying "Ich spreche j'doube" ; this ruse went unpunished ...". (emphasis added) Is it original synthesis to say that withdrawing a move is cheating? Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 17:23, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure which move he violated because it isn't completely clear to me if he took his hand off the piece. I documented what some other sources say at Milan Matulović, notes 9, 10, and 11. Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 19:37, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Is it permissible, please, to set up a redirection that points to a category page? I am considering recommending that Orphan initialism be retargetted to Category:Orphan initialisms if that is in order. Bridgeplayer ( talk) 18:47, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
I've suggested a change to our soft redirect guideline to allow for more interwiki redirects. If you're interested, head on over and let me know what you think! -- Explodicle ( T/ C) 18:52, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
I nominated Corruption in Russia for AFD, and later I found two templates (cited on the AFD) that are POV magnets. Not really sure how these topics are encyclopedic. Maybe they are, but this seems wrong. Join Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Corruption in Russia for a discussion. — Timneu22 · talk 17:55, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed that some place-name pages, especially those about popular tourist destinations, have "image galleries"; for example, Santorini and Rhodes. Is there any policy about this? Personally, I think they should be discouraged for two reasons. First, they give the page a "travel guide" sort of feel which seems inappropriate to Wikipedia. Second, a lot of these pictures, however nice they may be as pictures, don't really add much to the article: I don't think a picture of a beach or church or village on Rhodes adds much to the article on Rhodes unless the beach/church/village portrayed is either really famous or there is something uniquely Rhodian about it. "Generic" pretty pictures seem to me just decoration. I'd welcome other opinions or pointers to policy. Thanks. Strawberryjampot ( talk) 14:22, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
[T]he use of galleries may be appropriate in Wikipedia articles where a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images. The images in the gallery collectively must have encyclopedic value and add to the reader's understanding of the subject. ... Images in a gallery should be carefully selected, avoiding similar or repetitive images, unless a point of contrast or comparison is being made.
[A] gallery consisting of an indiscriminate collection of images of the article subject should generally either be improved in accordance with the above paragraph or moved to Wikimedia Commons. Links to the Commons categories can be added to the Wikipedia article using the {{ Commons category}} template.
the use of galleries may be appropriate in Wikipedia articles where a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images. The images in the gallery collectively must have encyclopedic value and add to the reader's understanding of the subject. Images in a gallery should be suitably captioned to explain their relevance both to the article subject and to the theme of the gallery, and the gallery should be appropriately titled (unless the theme of the gallery is clear from the context of the article). ...However, Wikipedia is not an image repository. A gallery is not a tool to shoehorn images into an article, and a gallery consisting of an indiscriminate collection of images of the article subject should generally either be improved in accordance with the above paragraph or moved to Wikimedia Commons. ... One rule of thumb to consider: if, due to its content, a gallery would only lend itself to a title along the lines of "Gallery" or "Images of [insert article title]", as opposed to a more descriptive title, the gallery should either be revamped or moved to the Commons.
Strawberry, unlike the other editors, I'd recommend that you start implementing your plan -- just slowly, and starting with the 'worst of the worst' rather than the borderline cases.
Most editors really do want to do the right thing; if you approach articles pleasantly and leave a note about why this specific gallery doesn't happen to comply with the usual advice, then you'll probably get very few complaints. When/if someone complains, please scrupulously avoid anything that might possibly be construed as an edit war. Instead, either have a positive, calm conversation, or just move on to the next article. If you cleaned up just one gallery a day, or even one a week, you'd be doing the project a real service, and no rational person could attack such slow, steady progress as an "attack" on "images". WhatamIdoing ( talk) 21:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Can anyone point to a step-by-step beginner's guide on how to move a gallery to commons? I've looked on both Wikpedia and Commons help, and though there are a lot of things about galleries, I can't find any actual instructions on how to do this. I mean that could be understood by someone who has never added anything to Commons before. Thanks for any information. Strawberryjampot ( talk) 14:47, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
I have some questions about the exact meaning of "move the gallery to Commons," which seems like a simple statement but when you look into doing it turns out to have a number of complications. Where is the proper place to ask for clarification of the policy, and to discuss whether the policy itself needs to be re-worded to be clearer: here, or some other page? Thanks for any advice. 21:50, 15 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Strawberryjampot ( talk • contribs)
Why change Wikipedia's look? It look's a lot less awesome. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Denting5 ( talk • contribs) 02:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Has nothing to do with policy of course. Please keep it on one of the many other venues. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 17:37, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I have found many users which in my opinion are Username violiotions. Some of them contain the words "Rape", "Sex", or even a trademark like User:WindowsNT. Some admins say it is not a username violiotion but I think otherwise. What do you guys think? And can somebody please expand what usernams can be considered "offensive"? -- Tyw7 ( ☎ Contact me! • Contributions) Changing the world one edit at a time! 22:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
I am confused ... and concerned. Why so much interest in controlling other editor's choices of names? Sure, offensive names are undesirable for the comfort level of others but who in the end (barring truly malicious/hateful names and trademarks) I think an editor's name choice should be left undisturbed. Would User:BraAndPanties be considered offensive? Even if the editor was a professional lingerie designer editing on related topics? Let me illustrate with a couple of real life examples: I once worked with a guy named Dick Fuchs and I went to school with a girl named Sally Kuntz. Should we get a court order to force these people to change their real names because they might be considered offensive to some people? What about User:BBROYGBVGW ? Is that name a problem? Ask anyone with any experience in analog electronics and they will tell you this name makes perfect sense. As does User:TQRFJOTLBD to any typist. Just because YOU don't understand the name doesn't mean it has no meaning or value. As far as I am concerned, dabbling in censoring and altering user names is WP:CREEP that is a needless distraction from building Wikipedia. 66.102.204.126 ( talk) 01:39, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Who is the final arbiter of the verifiability of a source? The article's original author? Can his/her "decision" be appealed to some kind of verifiability committee? If an article's author can nix an addition just because he doesn't like what it says (even if the addition is verifiable) it doesn't say much for the "free" part of "Wikipedia; the free encyclopedia".......
Orthohawk ( talk) 22:34, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
Consider this scenario. The article Sealand-Conch Republic relations is nominated for deletion. In the first AFD there are 6 !voters aside from the nominator and the creator. Users A B and C !vote "delete", users D E and F !vote "keep". The AFD closes "no consensus". A few months later the article is nominated again. It stays open for 4 days but only A, B, and C have shown up. Would the creator be justified in informing D, E, and F considering that ABC are already there? I think many would agree that he is per WP:UCS.
Scenario 2. Same article except it's 2 years between nominations. ABC have retired from the project, DEF are still around but haven't !voted and there are 3 new !voters, G, H, and I, all !voting "delete". Would it be acceptable for the creator to inform DEF in this case? Maybe not so clear cut.
I could go on coming up with more scenarios each more vague then the next. The point I'm trying to make though is that I understand why some who are accused of improper canvassing proclaim their innocence despite a "letter of the law" violation. If he sees that the "other side" already has its ducks lined up, he thinks he should be allowed to go line up his ducks.
So I guess what I'm asking is, if a policy discussion (not just AFDs) starts out extremely one sided, could we overlook someone trying to "recruit" other "good faith" editors to give some balance? Of course off wiki canvassing shouldn't be allowed under any circumstance. -- Ron Ritzman ( talk) 23:32, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I feel that given that the ultimate outcome of a vandalism only account is typically an indefinite block, we should use a different warning template that makes it clearer that if the user vandalizes after last warning, not only will they be blocked, but they will be permanently blocked. Immunize ( talk) 20:26, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Discussion originated here.
Lately, images have been added to the infoboxes of a lot of Chicago building/sculpture/etc articles that display a map of the area immediately surrounding the article's subject (see McDonald's Cycle Center for example). Bascially, I find these images to be rather useless considering their size. I also think they are redundant with {{ Coord}}, which gives readers immediate access to a better, more user friendly map. Finally, I think the prominent placement of these maps gives undue weight to the locations of the subjects of these articles and takes away from other more relevant information in the infoboxes. Wikipedia is not an atlas. Considering the fact that this feature has been implimented in several infoboxes now and can be used in any articles, I would like to know what everyone's stance is on these maps in articles and what kind of policy there is concerning it (if any). -- Torsodog Talk 18:09, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
Torso, all places on wikipedia have coordinates. Coordinates however do not visualize the location of a place on an encyclopedia page. Digits mean nothing to the reader unless they look at the place in satellite detail externally. By your perception of this all maps on wikipedia would be redundant because the article has coordinates. Maps are encyclopedic, and it is not as if we are going into overkill here. See Merle Reskin Theatre. I've made a pushpin locator of the Chicago Loop showing its street location and it has a window in the corner indicating where in Chicago it is. Now if people don't know where Chicago is they click the wiki globe or visit the article. The question is whether or not the article is imporved having this map or whether or not it is actually better off without it. I think a simple locator identifying its place on a set map is perfect to casually give the reader an idea of where it is. Then there are Template:Location map United States Chicago to display places further afield giving a wider view. These options are surely a good thing, once we import the French wiki technology with clikcable maps then people can have the choice to zoom in at different levels. But what Torso is seemingly saying here is that all maps on wikipedia are redundant because we have coordinates. No we are not Wiki Atlas but a limited number of maps which inform the reader where the suject is is encyclopedic in my view. Anybody diagree with my view that a map or two locating a place is perfectly acceptable and useful? In my view the current map which Tony changed to, McDonald's Cycle Center because of your concerns about it being redundant to the other map is actually less useful because the Loop map now has a side locator where in Chicago it is. Dr. Blofeld White cat 18:57, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
I think the maps add quite a bit to the articles. I looked at the example above, and it increased my understanding quite a bit in about half a second. I was only vaguely aware of the coord thing, and I don't think the average reader has any idea of what it can do, and probably doesn't want to leave the article to do it. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) 03:21, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Torso and others. Given the scale, the maps are useless unless one is already somewhat familiar with Chicago. Moreover in, say Merle Reskin Theatre, clicking on the map to get a better resolution doesn't work since you simply get the background png. I don't see it as a question of redundancy with the coordinates but it is true that the reader would be best served by getting a map from an external website. I also agree that the maps eat up valuable space and the resulting height of the infobox can collide with images below. On my screen, this is already the case for Chicago Loop (which is not a great example since at least one of the two maps there should be included). Pichpich ( talk) 12:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
See here. Please comment. But I'd have to disagree with you about maps being useless for local buildings. I'm not from Chicago, but I think the map I added to Merle Reskin conveys encyclopedic information. I can look at it and see roughly where the building is located in relation to the coast and also what area of Chicago and Illinois it is from the corner window. This to me is much more informative than no map at all in my thought process. A lot of people do not want to leave the page and looks at google maps. I agree that the ideal would be a zoomable map locator in which the reader can zoom in to exact street level with the building and streets clearly marked and then zoom out and see where it is. This would be ideal, but it may be along time before we get that kind of technology. As it is I've made a clickable mapping proposal for different scale map viewing. Buildings are still locations and as an encyclopedia we must provide the best possbible information of its location to the viewer. Dr. Blofeld White cat 15:20, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
I can't speak to the Chicago article maps, as my focus is more on bridges. A bridge generally doesn't have an address, as a building does. The {{ infobox bridge}} maps give a general idea of where a bridge is. If you want a more specific understanding, you click the {{ coord}} link. I suspect the usefulness of {{ location map}} may be rather article-specific. - Denimadept ( talk) 16:08, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
You know, I never really thought about the fact that buildings have specific addresses. Thinking it over, I think I'm against using these maps for anything that has a physical address that is already in the infobox. That is the only location information needed, in my opinion (there may be special exceptions, of course). If a reader wants to see what is close to the building or how to get there, they can either click the coord template we already provide or look it up on their own. I don't think that information is really needed in an encyclopedia. These maps are good for areas, mountains, bridges, etc though. -- Torsodog Talk 16:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Is there any user group who can view (but not undelete) the deleted contributions of a user? I feel that this would be useful in a number of ways, including being able to, at an RfA, view a candidates deleted articles as well as there CSD tagging.
Immunize (
talk) 13:46, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Hi. I'd like to proposed the creation of a new CSD criterion, CSD#A11, for use by patrollers, vandal reverters, etc.; to cover the rapid removal of any and all totally unsourced BLP pages which exist on WP. I have recently come across an article which fitted the above description, gone to tag it with Twinkle, and discovered that not one of the available CSD criteria fits Unsourced BLP.
Since the material was potentially libellous, I added a db followed by the reason, and was told "Please check WP:CSD for Valid Criteria". I'd say that wholly unreferenced, potentially libellous material about someone most people wouldn't know from a hole in the floor is a damn good reason to get it out of here, and quick.
Your thoughts please? BarkingFish Talk to me | My contributions 21:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
{{
delete|1=reason}}
if CSD criteria don't fit but the page
clearly needs to go.) By the way, the page that you nominated (if it's the "murderer") had references, but they were inline. –
xeno
talk 21:34, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, back on topic. I don't think there should be a CSD for BLP's. My opinion on this is partially influenced by the fact that I do not agree with the automatic deletion of unreferenced BLPs as it is. I think they should be taken to AfD or PRODed if nothing can be found for them. PRODing is probably the best bet in these situations. A perfect example of how I feel, written by someone else. Silver seren C 21:51, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Let me add that if it has libelous information, that's different, but isn't that covered by some other CSD protocol? Silver seren C 21:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Trying out the RevisionDelete feature on my sandbox, I'm finding it useful, but I'm somewhat confused — is there any situation in which I would be prohibited from using RevisionDelete but in which it would be appropriate to delete the entire page history and restore it minus one or two edits? In other words, imagine that there's a page with eight good edits, then one RD2 edit, and most recently a good edit — if it's appropriate to delete the page and restore the nine good edits, would it ever be inappropriate to use RevisionDelete on the RD2 edit? Nyttend ( talk) 02:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Two versions of the section of the NPOV policy alternatively entitled "A simple formulation" or "Assert facts" ( WP:ASF) are up for comparison. Please comment at WT:NPOV#RfC: Which version of "assert facts" do people prefer?.-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:19, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
not a policy related discussion
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It all started because every two weeks I drive past this big empty metal building which used to be a factory. Because the company's name sounds dirty, I thought that might be an incentive to create an article about the company. There was very little on the web about the company except for its takeover by Voestalpine, which, according to newspaper articles still on the web about the factory's troubles, owned 49 percent. That seemed like a good enough reason to add the factory's information to the parent company's article. The problem is that integrating the various facts related to the company with the naughty name introduced some problems in the article, and in the process of solving those problems, I found opportunities to solve other problems with the article. Different sources give different names for Voestalpine--all capitals for the first part, no capitalization whatsoever, umlaut, CamelCase, hyphen, etc.--and let's not even get into the fancy German words. One source said one company called Voestalpine was doing business with another company called Voestalpine. Some sources say one of those companies is owned by Siemens. I found a couple of places where the Siemens company could have redirects to Voestalpine. One was a disambiguation page called Vai. Another possibility was creating a redirect from Siemens VAI to Voestalpine, since German Wikipedia has that article. Since that's only a redirect, is that why English is not showing up in the list of languages for Siemens VAI in German? Anyway, I'm not clear on which company that is. The German Wikipedia articles on these companies are so much more detailed. Perhaps the authors of those articles could offer some guidance. The English sources I found aren't very clear, but there may be more I can find on actual paper, though I don't plan to spend a lot of time on this. A lot of trouble just to be able to say a dirty-sounding word on Wikipedia. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
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Wikipedia_talk:Subject_style_guide#RFC Gnevin ( talk) 09:50, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Hello, we have currently a discussion in the Spanish Wikipedia about the benefits and problems of allowing any user (also IPs and non-autoconfirmed registered users) to create new pages. In this Wikipedia that's not possible. What we would like to understand is:
Can somebody help me with some information? best regards, Poco a poco... ¡adelante! 08:03, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
But the point to evaluate this implementation in other wikis is: was it a good, positive decision for this project? The rate of creation of articles increased, decreased, register any change after the implementation? Did this just avoid the creation of bad articles or also good ones? Wikisilki ( talk) 13:02, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
After rereading the heading to this page, it looks like this is the place to ask the question I referred to above, so here it is. I asked a similar question at the Commons Village Pump but haven't gotten an answer yet. My question is: if you want to delete a gallery from a Wikimedia page and move it to Commons, as the Wikimedia policy provides, what should be done if some images in a gallery don't meet Wikicommons permissions standards? For instance, the checklist at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Moving_images_to_the_Commons says: Is the copyright owner/author identified, or evidence that a search has determined it was anonymous? If no, do not move. Several images in the Wikipedia Rhodes gallery have no Author: field and the contributor user name is a red link. If I'm correct that these images don't qualify for commons (and f I've got this wrong, please tell me), then I can't move the gallery wholesale, right? So do I really have to add the individual images from the Wikipedia Rhodes gallery that do qualify for Commons to Commons one at a time? And do I have to then recreate a gallery with those images in Commons? But in that case I wouldn't really be moving the gallery from Wikipedia to Commons. So I would be tempted just to not create the gallery, but then I also wouldn't be "moving the gallery to Commons" as the Wikpedia policy calls for. So the question is: what is to be done with a Wikipedia gallery that should be moved to commons if a significant number of its images aren't qualified for Commons? A related question is if the Commons tag on a Wikipedia page would bring up a set of pictures identical or close to identical with the gallery on the Wikipedia page, would it in this case conform to the Wikipedia policy to just delete the gallery and leave the the Commons tag, on the grounds the the tag provides a "virtual" gallery (see Antinous for an example.) Thanks for any opinions. Strawberryjampot ( talk) 22:23, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
I have created a request for comment on the flagged revisions trial, motivated by an unexpected, unannounced and publicly undiscussed change of configuration removing the reviewer usergroup. Please weigh in there. Cenarium ( talk) 12:57, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
It's my belief we need to discuss wordsmithing Deletion policy and various XFD guidelines, to ensure consistent wording. I'm not proposing policy changes at this time, simply clarification, but I assume policy wonks will be interested. I've written up the issue here.-- SPhilbrick T 16:14, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
It has been proposed that Wikipedia_:Subject_style_guide be marks as a guideline. See Wikipedia_talk:Subject_style_guide#RFC Gnevin ( talk) 16:40, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Could I propose a minor change in interpretation of this speedy category? At present artles only qualify if the words or the syntax are at variance with normal English usage; that is to say, if that do not make sense. From time to time articles are submitted wherein the usage of language as such is correct, but the actual message of the article itself could be seen as nonsense. Example "my mother is a horse and sleeps in a stable". Obviously vandalism, and speediable as such. But not, within current definitions, nonsense, although it clearly is. There are perhaps more marginal examples, which most of us have seen. Given that the usual safeguards regarding WP:DRV remain in place, is there a consensus to widen the definition of nonsense to encompass this type of edit? I recognise that this requires a slightly greater degree of initiative on the part of the closing admin, but i feel that we are capable of this. -- Anthony.bradbury "talk" 21:49, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Dermatology task force/Categorization ( | 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, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Dermatology task force/Sources ( | 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, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Per comments of Jimbo on Commons, there is now a new interpretation of the existing polices regarding sexual content. Basically all images that might potentially require 2257 record keeping and that do not serve a current educational purpose are to be deleted instantly. Undeletion of these images can be discussed on a case by case basis. The effects of this new policy can already be witnessed by the removal of images in our articles by CommonsDelinker. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 12:29, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
The problem is that CommonsDelinker removes traces of the pic. Someone has to remember just what the pic was AND that it was there. Beyonds the facial pic, I noticed at lolicon a pic was deleted that was a picture of manga (Japanese comics) in a store. It certainly was as far from gratuitous as it gets. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ ( talk) 22:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
One thing this incident is making clear is that relying on images hosted on a site over which the Wikipedia editors and admins have next to no say is probably not in our best interest long-term. Should practices here be changed so that suitably-licensed images are no longer moved to Commons, and should we consider moving images back even if Commons does have a copy right now in order to avoid future disruption if one of the Commons admins does decide to delete them? - makomk ( talk) 11:36, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
I'd support this. Commons has deletion discussions that are essentially behind someone's back. If an image is nominated for deletion or tagged, people on outside wikis get no notice. There is no real opportunity for users on the outside encyclopedias to try and address them. This has come up numerous times. I upload there only because I know they'll be automatically moved there. However if there was ever a problem with one of my images, I'd probably never know until it was too late. I have no other reason to go there. So I only go if I've got something to upload or an image has suddenly been removed from an article. This is intermittent at best. I could go weeks or months without stopping by there.-- Crossmr ( talk) 01:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
After some recent FAC attempts for School Rumble it was suggested I merge multiple reference tags into 1 link for non-contriversial statements (stuff like X number of items exist which might require 6 citations for 6 items). However, looking though policy/guidelines I find nothing to support this and talking with others I've heard other FAC requests that have them combined like that be broken up. I'm wondering what I should do? 陣 内 Jinnai 14:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
I am pleased to advise you that, effective immediately, requests for oversight/suppression will be accepted using the OTRS system. Please bear with us as the Oversight team becomes accustomed to this new method of receiving and replying to requests. We will strive to maintain timely service.
If you have found yourself reporting concerns to the oversight mailing list, please take a moment to add the new email address to your list of contacts: oversight-en-wpwikipedia.org
We look forward to continuing to work with the community in protecting the privacy of editors and others.
For the Oversight team,
Risker (
talk) 04:24, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
My suggestion is that there should be a section on WP:NOTABILITY which clearly defines that settlements or geographical locations are not inherently notable - i.e. that articles concerning settlements and geographical locations which do not meet WP:NOTABILITY should be deleted. All information concerning small settlements which do not meet WP:NOTABILITY should be placed in tables on suitably named pages: for example, if Acebedo was deemed to be non-notable, all information concerning it would be placed on the page List of municipalities in León. Currently, there is no official policy on geographical places. I endorse option two of the dormant policy Wikipedia:Notability (Geographic locations). Claritas ( talk) 16:42, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Consensus and practice has always been that settlements can have their own articles, however small they are. Deletion proposals are routinely speedy closed on that basis. It's that that should be noted in the guidelines so that everyone is aware of it, regardless of the fact that a few deletion-mongers don't like it.-- Kotniski ( talk) 17:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
I copy here the discussion during Novemebr 2009 at What is the policy on villages? Chesdovi ( talk) 10:42, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
I contended on Talk:Su’heita that just as the villages of Bălteni, Boteni, Călugăreni, Conţeşti, Crângaşi, Gămăneşti, Heleşteu, Napclaşarea and Mereni in Conţeşti, Dâmboviţa are not notable and therefore do not warrant their own pages, so too does the same apply to the villages listed at List of Syrian towns and villages destroyed by Israel. Supreme Deliciousness has pointed out, however, that there are individual pages for French villages destroyed in the First World War. Not only that; if you take a look at Category:Communes of Nord for example, most of the communes featured are one liners and have no apparent notability; they could also have a population as small as 58, ( Les Éparges). I have in the past created pages for villages ( Amnaş) but they were immediately merged. What is the official policy on this? Does every village or hamlet that exists or has existed warrant a page? Chesdovi ( talk) 16:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Going by results of previous AFD's on verifiable settlements, the answer is "yes, all villages are notable". You will find complete coverage of all settlements in the United States, and there is no reason why it should be different for other parts of the world. I don't know of any cases of a village being deleted for lack of notability. Whether the settlement still exists does not matter, because notability does not expire. Indeed, the destruction of a village is a historic event which may merit coverage. Sjakkalle (Check!) 16:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- (EC) I suggest that the relevant policy is WP:DEFACTO, at least for places that now exist, and places that have existed can't really lose that notability can they? Ϣere SpielChequers 16:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- You might also want to review the proposals at Wikipedia:Notability (Geographic locations). If you look at the discussion, there is unlikely to be any consensus for deleting any real settlement. Sjakkalle (Check!) 16:19, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- By the way, even a very tiny geographic feature is hard to delete, although the truly insignificant are sometimes merged. I once tried nominating for deletion an article on this island, and it wound up merged, not deleted. Sjakkalle (Check!) 16:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- I hate hate hate the idea that "every place is notable". It is patently false, and I hate seeing it parroted ad nauseum that X village in Y country is notable just because it is/was a village. However, part of this problem is because of the way in which the word "notable" is used on Wikipedia - it is neither consistent with the dictionary definition of the word, nor is it consistent in its use across the project. That said, I have largely reconciled myself with the existence of sub-stub articles on obviously non-notable settlements by taking to heart the statement in one of the five pillars of Wikipedia : "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers" (emphasis added). I no longer think of articles of the type in question as being encyclopedia entries, but rather consider them "gazetteer entries" in compliance with that particular role that Wikipedia serves. Granted, this may be a lot of mental gymnastics on my part, but it's what allows me to reconcile the fact that an article on some obscure hamlet need not be notable to exist :) Sher eth 16:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Could also fall under almanac. I believe every geographical feature should be included. While the particular person who started the article may only know that it is a village in a country, every settlement has hundreds if not thousands of years of history prior to the present, and that certainly is notable. Wikipedia should be the place to find out about villages in who-the-hell-knows-where that you can't find out about elsewhere on the internet. Geographical features are also verifiable by their very nature: they physically exist in the world for anyone to go and check. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:41, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Why is every village ever built more notable than any person ever born? (see Genealogical entries). Chesdovi ( talk) 16:47, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- They aren't; hence my point that notability should not even be discussed at this point. Wikipedia has a capacity as a gazetteer as stated in the five pillars, and thus geographic entries are appropriate so long as they are verifiable. But since Wikipedia is not a geneological database as your link points out, people therefore must be notable as well as being verifiable. Sher eth 16:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- A little research (such as on NewsBank or NewpaperArchive) can turn articles on hamlets with seven residents into nice articles. See Donnan, Iowa and Monti, Iowa for examples. Firsfron of Ronchester 16:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- I suspect that the vast majority of settlements that have ever existed will not reach wikipedia simply because they are long abandoned and have left no trace on the archaeological record. That said we could at some point see an explosion of creation of articles on Masaii bomas as mobile phone editing takes off. However many settlements that are being written up here existed for many centuries and the total population of people who have ever lived in them will in that case be many times their average population Ϣere SpielChequers 17:05, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- They will all reach Wikipedia eventually! Perhaps you are unaware of it, but there is an editor that is going around creating hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles that are just empty stubs for place-names. The last time I raised the issue (back last year) he (or rather the bot he uses) had finished creating articles for every settlement in all countries starting with "A" and most of those starting with "B". Meowy 21:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Hundreds of thousands? Only 50 editors have more than 100,000 total edits. What do these stubs look like? Firsfron of Ronchester 21:24, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- User:Himalayan Explorer, formerly User:Dr. Blofeld, has created 63,375 articles. The location stubs look like this; Babaj Boks. Abductive ( reasoning) 22:08, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- There are other editors who use the same article-creation bot, such as Carlossuarez46, so to be correct I should have said that it is the bot which has created hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles that are just empty stubs for place-names. Meowy 19:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
It may be worth noting here that 4 of the 6 French villages destroyed in the First World War which have not been rebuilt and were used by Supreme Deliciousness to back up inclusion of destroyed Syrian villages were indeed created by User:Dr. Blofeld. Chesdovi ( talk) 23:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- I feel the same way about small communities as I do about high schools -- it is possible to do a reasonable article on them if you take time to research what's unique about them. I've read quite interesting histories of small settlements in local-history books and genealogical sources. But an article that simply says, "Understone is an unincorporated community in Hadleigh County, Maryland at the intersection of routes 18 and 234, 4 miles east of Hadleigh City" is of little use to anyone. -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 02:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- Except perhaps for people looking for directions to Understone? :) Or wanting to know if the town in unincorporated? And as a start to a larger article, a stub is a good starting place: nearly every article on WP began as a stub. Firsfron of Ronchester 03:19, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- ←Every time that I see this sort of topic come up I notice quite a few "These stub articles are useless" reply. That attitude really bothers me, and I would like to encourage those of you who feel that way to at least consider Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress. This is a guess on my part, which is always somewhat dangerous, but I think that many of you are freaking out about the number of articles on Wikipedia.
- There seems to be a contingent that feels worried about the articles that they can't see (or, to put this less delecately, have control issues). To those of you in this group, consider the fact that there are thousands of other editors out there, and that most of us actually seem to have similar views.
- There also seems to be a contingent who, while they never actually state any performance concerns, seems to feel that more articles are somehow hard on the system. Aside from Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, you should all keep in mind that for enterprise level SQL servers running on a server fer, 3 million + items of text (10 million+, including talk pages and templates, etc...) is really a pittance for SQL. There are databases out there that handle trillions of entries. WMF doesn't have to pay money for each article or anything either, so... chill.
- I don't want to sound like a total ideologue here. Wikipedia shouldn't include garage bands, or host my resume, or anything like that. There's a distinct difference between attempting to start pages for what potentially could be a legitimate article and starting a bunch of garage band articles, though. If someone has created 600,000+ stub articles about locations, that's something to celebrate to me, not something which should be panned.
— V = I * R ( talk to Ω) 03:46, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- Wikipedia should be about readers, not editors. A reader comes to an article expecting content, not expecting an empty article. A reader searching for information about the town of Zig in Zagland is not exactly going to be happy to find an article telling him nothing more than "Zig is a town in Zagland" - he will know that already! It diminishes the credibility of Wikipedia as a source of information. However, I know that there are strong vested interests in maximising the number of articles on Wikipedia, and maxmising the number and the rate of creation of newly-created articles, so criticism of the practice of mass place-name stub creation is not going to be successful. Meowy 19:53, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- These stubby place names are often better treated as redirects to entries within the context of an article about a larger geographic unit or as an entry in a list article. When and/or if more verifiable information is found to support a stand-alone article, they can be split out at that time. older ≠ wiser 20:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- A couple of points in reply here. Personally I feel that it is more of a service to our readers to present something other then "Wikipedia doesn't have an article on...". I also think that it's an awfully large assumption to make that people already know that "Zig is a town in Zagland", which if you give any credence at all to the studies showing the lack of knowledge about geography is almost certainly not true. As for redirecting... what would the targets be? I see redirecting as a decent solution to fill out stub articles personally, but I don't see an easy way to redirect a location article to anything else.
— V = I * R ( talk to Ω) 01:00, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- Do you actually use Wikipedia? (Editing Wikipedia is not using Wikipedia!) I first became aware of the vast number of useless place-name stubs when I was searching for information about certain places, and all I found were dozens of article stubs. Every site I found on using Google was worthless - either worthless Wikipedia stubs, or worthless pages from the many sites that use Wikipedia content and so contained no more content that the original Wikipedia stub. It is often said that "if you have nothing to say then best say nothing" - it should be the same for a Wikipedia article. Meowy 16:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- Actually, I'd say that I use Wikipedia more then I edit it. Recently I've been more outspoken and participatory here, but I've relied on Wikipedia since... well, for a long time. I do sympathize with the point that you're making, but I think that it's slightly misplaced here. Consider what you would see in the absence of Wikipedia, in the examples that you are brought up, after all. Would you feel better if Google gave you 100,000 pure garbage links, or 1.5 million links, but the first dozen were Wikipedia and all of its mirrors with (admittedly) sub-par content? I'm not really defending our sub-stub or stub level articles on their own merits, but I think that their better then absolutely nothing.
— V = I * R ( talk to Ω) 17:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)- To the question about targets for location articles, the answer is fairly simple. If all that can be said about the town of Zig is that it is a town in Zagland, redirecting it to a List of cities and towns in Zagland. If Zagland is a large country and such a list would be unmaintainably large, then create individual lists for the provinces/states/whatevers : List of cities and towns in Zug. It's a fairly simple solution to the problem. If and when someone comes along with more information about Zig, then an actual article can go in its place. I have no real issue with sub-stub articles on real locations, but in situations where there is genuinely nothing to say about a place other than that it exists, list articles may well be a good solution. Sher eth 17:13, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- ...Is it always that obvious when the content of an article should be "bumped up" (so to speak) to the next highest category level? I mean, it's fairly easy to look at 10's or 100's of sub-stubs after they are created and say "maybe these should be a single list", but... well, for one thing, that takes extra work, and seeing that fact is often part of the work involved. Probably more important though is the fact that the article's current state says nothing about it's potential state. Just because all that the article creator added is the absolute bare minimum doesn't mean that the article couldn't be (often, greatly) expanded. Even the tiniest populated places tend to have lengthy histories, simply because of human nature, after all (not that those histories are always important outside of the context of the settlement, but still...).
- I think that this is a somewhat philosophical issue, in that I probably personally tend to see and desire the potential from articles, whereas many other people (perhaps yourself included) only see the here and now. That's not intended as a knock on you in any way, as either perspective has it's advantages... but, neither of us should be so iconoclastic in our views as to make the other perspective "foreign".
— V = I * R ( talk to Ω) 17:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- I'm sorry if I was unclear, but I am in no way advocating a reductionist methodology with regards to settlement articles. In fact, when any history on a settlement can be found (verifiable) I fully agree that the preferred outcome would be the creation of a full-fledged article, even if it is still a stubby article. Primarily I was referring to the numerous articles whose content is of the "X is a city in Y" format and contains nothing more than statistical data (geographical coordinates, population figures, etc). These types of articles are well suited to being merged into a tabular list that can present the data in a concise fashion. This should be in no way viewed as discouragement to the creation of full-fledged articles when more information is available. Sher eth 18:18, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
The unanswered question on this is how to define a place as notable;
This is the side of the equation that needs to addressed before even saying a place isnt notable. Gnan garra 11:11, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
(Undent) If communities with fewer than 10 residents each, such as Donnan, Iowa and Monti, Iowa, are notable, any city, town, or village is notable: it just takes a little research and effort by interested editors to extract that data and reference it. Firsfron of Ronchester 03:03, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
@Masem Local sources lose independence How? Independence is about a person/company writing about themselves or paying someone to do it how does a place do that? Gnan garra 03:19, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
"If communities with fewer than 10 residents each ... are notable, any city, town, or village is notable." How exactly does that logically follow?
Furthermore, there are also editorial reasons to up-merge tiny geo articles. A nicely filled-out article on a parish is going to be a lot better than 15 one-line articles reading "Stive Pissleton is a community in Oetleshire". OrangeDog ( τ • ε) 14:19, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
But you have yet to give an example of a non-notable place, so how do we know any non-notable places exist? Silver seren C 20:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
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Ok i recently stumbled upon these articles looking a Cyberbullying and they bother me greatly.
I am looking at some of these and very tragic yes, gained some third party reliable sources, I am just unsure if i can Justify them as Worthy of a whole article. Seems to me most could be neutral one or two sentences in a cyber bullying article or any laws that were passed a result. rather than post Slew of AFDs (Especially since a couple have been kept in previous ones) i thought i come here to get some input. Weaponbb7 ( talk) 21:07, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Issue Why are some of these articles titled "suicide of [name]" or "[name] suicide" while others are "death of [name]"? This is not cool. Fix it, Wikipedia -- it's consensus time! :) Alex Douglas ( talk) 14:03, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
I have put up a new set of proposed Tibetan naming conventions. Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Tibetan)#New naming convention proposal. Your comments and feedback are requested.— Nat Krause( Talk!· What have I done?) 23:30, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Hi please join in the thread at here. Falling rain was compiled in 1995-1996 and lists false population estimated within a 7 km radius and altitude data which reliable government sources and google earth and consistently proved wrong, often dramatically so and oftne lists settlements or draws railway lines which no longer exist. Unfortunately many editors believe this data to be reliable and have used it or linked to it in over 9000 of our encyclopedia articles, presenting the read with false information or directing them to false information through external links. This site has recently been used as a source for the mass creating of generic stubs about Kenyan village. The creator is now aware of the problem and thanks to a Xenobot has now been dealt with but we still have 9000 articles using this as a source/link. I and other well trsuted experienced editors/admins such as User:Darwinek, User:Orderinchaos and User:Satusuro have called for this to be blacklisted asap and did so back in December. Four months later we are still stuck with 9000 links in articles and a lot of data which we know are false. It seems however this is not adequate enough for deletion and that a wider consensus is needed. Please can you comment on the black list page in the link given and offer your views on this situation. Thankyou. Dr. Blofeld White cat 22:18, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Due to this quote by Jimbo found here-
I think that "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." is a good policy. To take the example of a popular book that receives no reviews, what kind of encyclopedia article could you write about it? You could write an original review, but that isn't an encyclopedia article. You could write a plot summary, but that isn't an encyclopedia article. You could do some kind of original research, but that wouldn't be an encyclopedia article.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 09:04, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps we should revisit the old discussion about whether or not plot summaries are "encyclopedic" and should be allowed. In those previous discussion I (and several others) said just summarizing and using the book/movie as the source for a summary is not encyclopedic nor should it be allowed. We were shouted down and told that wasnt true. Jimbo seems to agree with us however... Oh, I know exactly which editors will show up here and say "Jimbo was only talking about articles with ONLY plot summaries...we have fully fleshed out articles" etc etc to explain this away, but if need be we can always go to Him and ask what his thoughts truly are on this for I dont wish to put words in his mouth. So, I'm just suggesting that we revisit this topic as last time it came up with no consensus (or actually I'd say the majority was against using books/movies themselves as sources for plot summaries, just a vocal minority blocked it by being stubborn). Camelbinky ( talk) 03:40, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
So we should write a plot summary on a film and then source it with a Roger Ebert review? That's unfeasible, sorry. Also, WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. — Mike Allen 05:00, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
The fictional work using reliable third-party sources for analysis does not mean that the primary source cannot be used to provide a basic description of the the work. I do not see WP:PSTS mentioned, but it says about using primary sources:
Primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source can be used only to make descriptive statements that can be verified by any educated person without specialist knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source. Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about material found in a primary source. Do not base articles entirely on primary sources. Do not add unsourced material from your personal experience, as that would make Wikipedia a primary source of that material.
If an article on a fictional work has nothing or mostly nothing but a plot summary, that is a problem. A summary can exist as part of the larger coverage. For example, the article should not have 1,000 words of a film's plot if there are only 200 words explaining the film's background. Plot summaries should be a fractional amount of any well-written article about a fictional work. Obviously, that fraction can be debatable, but the primary-source content should not swamp content from reliable third-party sources. Erik ( talk | contribs) 12:13, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I find the quote I think that "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." is a good policy. utterly incomprehensible. I'm working mainly within the comics field, and despite extensive knowledge, and superb resources above and beyond the usual gods, find it frustrating that it is virtually impossible to provide sufficient citations to develop what Wkipedia as a collective entity decides is a good article. Now the argument in the narrower field of comics may miss some of the nuances of Wikipedia in general, but I can't follow that if the only sources are primary, and one is willing to work only within those without conjecture, that they're not acceptable, whilst an external source is accepatble if 'notable' even if wrong - taking it to the extreme - it's ok to do Nazi history through Neo-Nazi research because it's x-party, but not first-hand experience.
I still can't get my head around not being able to synopsise comics, while doing episode guides for tv series is ok. I don't understand how Wikipedia is full of endless pages of stuff without any citations whatsoever (or sometimes any content whatsoever) and there's no complaint, but some get blasted for the same problems. And the drive to 'good article' is often lost in the rule book - although thankfully in my little panelological corner people realise that anything can be the start of a good thing.
Personally, I'll get on with it on the basis that all knowledge should be available, think removing something because it doesn't fit with current thinking is challengeable, and add an article if I think it may add a micron to the sum of human knowledge. Someone else can argue the whys and wherefores of petty argument.
Sometimes we not only miss the forest because of the trees, we forget to make sure the tea bar is open before the crowds arrive to picnic in the woods. Apologies for the edge - I'm tired from a week of not travelling home. Cheers! Archiveangel ( talk) 16:07, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
The 'opposition' keeps making the same error over and over. Let's try this again, from the top:
Can we keep this in mind for the rest of this conversation? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:42, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
It's important to include plot summaries to provide context for commentary. A plot summary without commentary is pretty pointless as an encyclopedia article, but it can be labeled a stub. A book would be a verifiable source for a straightforward description of its own plot. -- Susfele ( talk) 01:23, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
I asked this over at Commons because that's where the image is located, but they don't seem to be too concerned, so I'll ask it here. File:P1000.png is a self-created image with no sourcing as to the scale used. Is there a way to ask for reliable sourcing on an image? Woogee ( talk) 20:11, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Whatever. I get it now. You have to source text, but you can make whatever images you want. If I were to make an image of Barack Obama that's ten feet tall, that would be okay, because it's an image. Thanks for letting me know. I'm done with this. Woogee ( talk) 23:38, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Days of the year ( | 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, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
This proposal is motivated by the merge message which has been at the top of the Extrasolar planet article for some time. I think these boxes are unsightly and detract from readers appeciation of an article. They are aimed at editors, not readers. They also act as an undue weight advertisement for the topic that is to be merged into a main article. I propose that any templates which are aimed at editors rather than readers should only be visible if you log in, or even better appear on the talk page instead. They make Wikipedia look very messy. Qurq ( talk) 23:38, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
A discussion at ANI prompted a proposal to codify our de-facto policy on admitted or suspected pedophiles on Wikipedia. As that isn't really the correct venue for that sort of thing, I'm moving it here. Buddy431 ( talk) 20:21, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
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Everything above was at ANI. Further discussion can take place below this point. Buddy431 ( talk) 20:21, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
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This policy subsection consists of three paragraphs. The third reads as follows:
Several words that have very specific meanings in studies of religion have different meanings in less formal contexts, e.g. fundamentalism and mythology. Wikipedia articles about religious topics should take care to use these words only in their formal senses in order to avoid causing unnecessary offense or misleading the reader. Conversely, editors should not avoid using terminology that has been established by the majority of the current reliable and note worthy sources on a topic out of sympathy for a particular point of view, or concern that readers may confuse the formal and informal meanings. Details about some particular terms can be found at words to avoid.
There has been an ongoing debate at Genesis creation myth as to the proper title of the article. Here is a rough timeline of this debate:
So I'm requesting that this policy be modified to make it clear that when it comes to article titles (as opposed to article bodies), the name used should be one that does not carry loaded connotations to the average reader, which "myth" certainly does. - Lisa ( talk - contribs) 01:32, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Editors may wish to comment at WP:VPM#Add "myth" to WP:LABEL. -- AuthorityTam ( talk) 15:22, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I know that women were largely ignored in historical writings however I feel sure that there are as many interesting women in the world , both past & present as there are men. For some time now I have noticed the almost complete absence of anyone of the female gender on the main page. I would think that items relating to women feature less than 1 in 10 or even 1 in 20. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.214.61.92 ( talk) 11:34, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps this should be a reason for developing articles on particular women, and related topics eg Women as theological figures. Also, for WP to be balanced, 'transgenders, transsexuals and others.' Jackiespeel ( talk) 15:14, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
There are a huge number of examples to be found in our sister Uncyclopedia, here: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/History_of_Woman pietopper ( talk) 20:09, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
The content on the main page is not the byproduct of some nefarious gender-bias program - it's simply derived from the available featured articles, new articles suitable for WP:DYK entries, etc. Working on bringing more articles on women to featured status would increase their presence on the main page. Emily Jensen ( talk) 03:02, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
I was arguing for people improving categories of articles so that they were suitable for FA status. As Karl Marx might have said in a variant on his remark on Feuerbach - The point is not just to describe a weakness on WP but to find ways of improving WP (g). Jackiespeel ( talk) 20:22, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Spam ( | 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, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:User pages ( | 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, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Public domain ( | 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, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
These have apparently been recategorized as " Wikipedia project content guidelines" as opposed to regular "content guidelines". -- Cybercobra (talk) 10:12, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I think there is a serious problem with a level of disparity between what constitutes a notable athlete vs a notable entertainer. The problem is highlighted by two recent RfD discussions (note these are only examples used to illustrate the fundamental problem).
First, consider George Blackmore, a cricketer who once appeared in a single first-class match. He was nominated for deletion, but he was deemed notable according to WP:ATH and WP:CRIN, both of which state that everyone who has ever appeared for any length of time in any top-level professional sporting event is prima facie notable. During the deletion discussion, even the principal author of WP:CRIN lamented that the standard was in need of revision, saying for example:
"I was the main (probably only) author of WP:CRIN and I am uncomfortable with it. I think the author of WP:ATH should be be feeling similar discomfort. I am coming around to the idea of lists that mention those people who were the "extras"... that I don't think can warrant a standalone article."
"But, really, shouldn't the cricket project be taking a step back and reconsidering which cricketers are actually notable? At the end of the day, what exactly is "notable" about someone who played in an odd match somewhere?"
Compare and contrast an entertainer, Claudia Lynx, who once appeared in a guest speaking role on The West Wing. In her nomination for deletion, she is going down in flames because she does not meet WP:ENT, which requires "significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions".
Now to me, George Blackmore and Claudia Lynx are exactly comparable. He made a single appearance in a notable match, she made a single appearance on a notable tv show. The two standards must be made to treat them equally.
Personally, my own opinion is, I feel that WP:ENT has it right, and that Wikipedia is not the place for all the extras, walk-ons, or minor supporting figures whatever their field. In this case, WP:ATH, WP:CRIN, and all the other sport-specific guidelines should be tightened up to include only players who are actually notable in the ordinary sense. (Perhaps those who at least played an entire season?)
If the various sports projects are unwilling to take their scrubs off the table, then the only other way to ensure consistancy is for the entertainment field to put its scrubs on. WP:ENT could be reworded in a way almost exactly parallel to WP:ATH, including anyone who:
Please note that I DO NOT support this; I am just trying to show what a comparable standard would look like. Hopefully everyone can agree that this is not the world we want to live in, and that consequently the athletic standards must be revised. — Rnickel ( talk) 17:08, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I just added a source to WPZS to replace a broken link. I got there without any effort, so I don't understand the lock, except the computer gave me a pop-up asking if I wanted to view non-secure items. Clicking on "no" didn't affect my ability to see the information. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 13:23, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Quick: If you search for "Truth in Lending" you'll see in the first result the article Truth in Lending Act and the summary that Google puts under it includes vandalism that was inserted to it yesterday.
The vandalism was reverted and the IP blocked, but is there anything else we can do? Flagged Revisions? Anything else?..
If this was already discussed, please point me to it. Thanks. -- Amir E. Aharoni ( talk) 21:00, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, WP:NAVHEAD is an essay, and not part of the MOS? But yet, a "related information" section is being added to hundreds of articles to create a section for the navigation boxes. However, if you click on the "printable" version, the navigation boxes are not there, since they are excluded from print, and what remains is a blank section. See World War I for example. Is there something that can be done about this? It would seem as though if this practice is accepted, then this section heading should be excluded from print as well. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 23:17, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't understand why sockpuppetry is such a crime. As long as none of the accounts vandalize, and they aren't being used as meatpuppets, why is it such a big deal? How does it damage Wikipedia? Is it really worth blocking a user indefinitely who has over 1,000 constructive contributions because they use another account? -- The High Fin Sperm Whale 02:32, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ ( | 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, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
As a user who does a lot of work reverting editors, warning them, and pointing them at the policies and guidelines themselves, I get asked this question pretty often: why do we have the policy / guideline in the first place? The common Wikipedian response is to refer the users to the text in the guideline itself or to refer them to other policies which themselves refer to other policies. Our internal guidelines are written primarily for experienced users and they can be very confusing and I feel that Wikipedia itself never gives full answers in plain English to these problems.
So I want to throw this idea out there to see how it's receive response: How about we place within our policies a clearly visible section that either explains the purpose of the policy (in language non-Wikipedian readers can understand) or links to the discussions and arguments that have produced the policy. The main argument against this is, of course, instruction creep. There could also be wording issues with the summaries of the most contentious policy areas. But I feel that explaining our policy in a way non-Wikipedians could understand would make Wikipedia a friendlier place for newbies and non-Wikipedians, give us less of a Kafkaesque reputation, and it would help outsiders understand why we have the policies we do. Them From Space 00:15, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Why is it that non-admins can't move images? I've been told that it's because of some interaction of the CC-BY license, but I'm not entirely clear on why that would be a problem. Can anyone clarify? Gigs ( talk) 20:23, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Except that we are; see WP:OFFICE. This policy needs to be eliminated, because as long as one small group has complete control over Wikipedia's content and uses this power to suppress information, this policy is a lie. -- J4\/4 < talk> 12:55, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
J4V4 is absolutely right: Wikipedia is censored for certain things. There's also a lot of things that aren't censored here, which is what wp:NOTCENSORED attempts to convey. I agree that it's poorly named. Perhaps better would be "Wikipedia is not censored for everything that anyone might find objectionable". Though to be fair, we censor a lot of stuff only because some people find it objectionable. I agree with the OP: we are censored, so we shouldn't claim we aren't. Our content disclaimer is sufficient, I think. Buddy431 ( talk) 22:51, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Please see this section of Wikipedia talk:NPOV. The NPOV policy currently contains two sections on specific topics: a 534-word section on pseudoscience and a 267-word section on religion. These sections were removed last month as being too specific after an RfC was posted on April 3. [11] The pseudoscience section was moved to WP:FRINGE, [12] and the religion section removed entirely. The sections have now been restored by others on the grounds that consensus was not established, or has changed. Fresh eyes would therefore be appreciated here on talk to decide whether to restore or remove the sections. SlimVirgin talk contribs 00:03, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
Surely the place for a discussion of the merits of the RfC is the RfC itself. It makes no sense to repeat one's arguments at each of the neutral pointers that direct to the RfC. Hans Adler 08:35, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Do_not_disrupt_Wikipedia_to_illustrate_a_point#This_guideline_keeps_instruction_creep_in_place. 18.246.2.83 ( talk) 08:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
It's been a while since I've seen something like this. What is our current best practice for when a highly respected source appears to make a glaring factual error? In current case, the NYTimes appears to have misstated the amount of oil spilled into the Persian Gulf during Gulf War I by two orders of magnitude too high compared to other sources. (If the NYTimes were correct then the amount of oil dumped would be roughly the same as the total global petroleum consumption in a year.) Dragons flight ( talk) 21:19, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
I would appreciate any thoughts on this here. – xeno talk 19:16, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
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It has come to the attention of some users that Speedy Deletion is missing some rules that would allow for quick elimination of some pages that obviously have no encyclopedic value. Many of us are wasting time on AFDs when a page should be eliminated immediately. Here are some examples: Example 1:
Example 2:
Further, both of these pages have the following in common:
I can't see how with any regard to a maintaining a reasonable encyclopedia that these pages could fail a CSD. Why gather 10 or so users to say "yeah, this sucks" when it is obvious that these pages will never contain encyclopedic value? Example 2 takes some research (a google test) to show that the term is essentially made-up, but Example 1 is a slam dunk. Isn't it? I say this with no hint of irony... if I create a page called Reading Books is Fun, and give a list of the best ways to read books (curl up with some tea, perhaps your favorite candles or iPad), would it be speedily deleted? Clearly it should be. But if Writing Stories isn't CSD'd, then I don't know. I really want more CSD methods to eliminate this nonsense immediately. In addition, articles with one editor who have no other edits... these should easily be deleted, especially when the topic is pure WP:OR like these. I look forward to this discussion. — Timneu22 · talk 20:17, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
section breakLet me try this again: Keeping in mind the requirements listed here, could we see an actual, written criterion that specifically defines what is and what is not to be deleted on the basis of said criterion? Looking at the current criteria can give you some clues on how to phrase it and so forth. Beeblebrox ( talk) 15:38, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
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Proposals offered at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Proposal for CSDs: essay and how-to. — Timneu22 · talk 20:47, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Could someone please take a look at Wikipedia_talk:No_original_research#Lead and try to determine if consensus exists and how to proceed? The discussion has stopped and it should be closed.-- SaskatchewanSenator ( talk) 20:14, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
In this hatnore,
It looks like the comma is in the wrong place. When I went back and looked at how another hatnote was done, I realized the intention may have been to put the comma before see.
I was going to use this template because I was looking for a Wikipedia policy and stumbled across the one I needed going from the above hatnote. It's better to have a specific hatnote for what I was using this for because WP:COPY doesn't do what I thought it would.
As a matter of fact, this brings up a possibility for the actual WP:COPY page. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:57, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:List of policies ( | 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, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Summary style ( | 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, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
I stumbled across this while reading an article on Gas-discharge lamps, and it appears that there is a conflict between the use of File:Oxygen.jpg as cover art for an Avalon Album, and for the spectral lines of Oxygen. Should I re-upload one (or both) under a different name(s)? If so, which category would they fall under in the image uploader? Hmmwhatsthisdo ( talk) 00:35, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Numismatics/Style ( | 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, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
The recent reversions at WP:NPOV have increased its length from less than 18kB to more than 43kB. Almost no one reads these policies all the way through. We know this because almost no one reads them at all: NPOV stats for Feb, and when presented with such a daunting document, human nature will mean most people who do visit the page will not read it all, let alone inwardly digest it.
This brings up a more general point. Are the policy pages for scholars in Wikipedia policy, or are they for the millions of people who read and edit Wikipedia articles?
It seems to me that for these policy pages to serve their core audience of volunteer Wikipedia editors, a typical new editor should be able to read and understand each of the core policies in under five minutes. If we allow a reading speed of 20 characters per second (around 200WPM), this means that the pages should be no more than 6kB each. This does not preclude wikilinks to long, complex and detailed essays, histories and the like for those seeking more nuanced views. But the length of these core policies, such as WP:NPOV, should be kept to around 6kB.
What do people think? And for those who answer, please would they indicate whether they have read the current versions of WP:NPOV, WP:NOR and WP:V end to end. Stephen B Streater ( talk) 09:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
This whole "policy" thing has become ridiculous. There are far, far too many policy pages (we'll leave guidelines on one side for the moment, but the same points apply to them too) and the pages are mostly far, far too long. They repeat the same points over and over again, quite often in ways that contradict each other, waffle on about this and that, give examples that don't illustrate what they're claimed to be illustrating, contain whole reams of incomprehensible text (that even experienced editors can't agree on the intended meaning of), and have little relevance to improving the encyclopedia. And when someone makes the effort to tidy them up a bit, various editors come out of the woodwork to revert them, not on any substantial grounds, but apparently because they believe the text has some almost religious value by virtue of it having sat around in a particular form for a particular number of years. It's an embarrassment to this project that we can't even communicate our key principles in a clear, concise and comprehensible manner.-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:21, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Thank you Philcha for suggesting an RFC. It makes sense to collect some ideas from several people together first to make sure we ask the right questions. Perhaps now would be a good time to start discussing what we should ask editors to comment on. Stephen B Streater ( talk) 13:01, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Experienced editors on the main policy page are still considering signficant changes such as this. As one major debate at a time is sufficient, I'll leave it a few more days for the current page to settle. Stephen B Streater ( talk) 15:46, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Fresh input would be appreciated at this section of Wikipedia talk:NPOV. The issue is whether the NPOV policy should contain two sections devoted to specific subject areas—one on pseudoscience, the other on religion—or whether they should be removed. SlimVirgin talk contribs 08:43, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Is there a policy about using potentially copyright-violating websites as sources? The case in point is a Reuters obituary from 2001. It is no longer available at reuters.com, but there is a copy at [17], a memorial page for the subject. That page was used as a reference in Oscar Janiger, but recently an editor removed the ref and left behind a citation needed tag, with "Remove links to copyvio site." as the edit summary. Is it WP policy to never link to websites suspected of copyvios? And is there a better solution than to remove the claims from the article (which must eventually be done if there is no RS)? Thundermaker ( talk) 14:57, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Public domain ( | 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, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I was studying up on CSD just a few minutes ago and I noticed that the Criteria for Speedy deletion for articles lists A1 - A3, A5, A7, A9-A10. This might be a stupid question (and I attempted to do some research on my own), but what happened to A4, A6, and A8? None of the other categories (general, files, user, etc) have irregular numbering. Were A4, A6, and A8 once valid CSD:A that are no longer recognized? What about a renumbering? Can a wiki-veteran please explain? Sapporod1965 ( talk) 02:37, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
For clarifucatio G8 used to deal with talkpages of deleted pages, R1 delt with redirects to deleted or non existant pages, and C3 delt with catagory pages only used for a template and the template is deleted. The Current G8 calls to delete any page that is dependent on a deleted or non-existant page and covers all of these previous examples.-- 76.71.208.197 ( talk) 23:30, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
User account status userboxes, is there policy about displaying user account status userboxes when the user does not have that status, ie. a user displaying "rollbacker" userbox and/or topicon when the user is not a rollbacker ? Mlpearc MESSAGE 16:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
See commons:Commons:News_regarding_the_sexual_content_purge. Not only is FOX back for another round, but the BBC, Slashdot, The Register, and Vanity Fair are weighing in, and it's being discussed in at least five languages. Dcoetzee 07:11, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I just encountered the latest case in which editors had to explicitly mention the difference between a user and his signature, i.e. User:JzG signing as "Guy". I've seen something like this before involving a user leaving Twinkle notices. I don't want to focus on the choice made by these individuals, but on the broader policy question. The current policy ( WP:Signature) says only,
"While not an absolute requirement, it is common practice for a signature to resemble to some degree the user name it represents."
Though I won't generally argue against non-matching signatures, I do feel that:
should use a signature exactly identical to the name on their user page, at least while possessing this status. The reason for this is that these people frequently interact with unskilled and problematic editors, who start calling them by the given name on their signature page, and later might try to reach them at this site, or involve other editors in a dispute who think that's the editor meant.
Does anyone else think the confusion would justify such a demand? Wnt ( talk) 19:00, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
The Oxford Companion to Chess is a chess encyclopedia. On page 252, talking about Milan Matulovic, it says "... he played in the Sousse Interzonal in which, after a little cheating (see j'adoube), he came ninth." Page 185 (the "j'adoube" entry) it says: "... withdrew a losing move saying "Ich spreche j'doube" ; this ruse went unpunished ...". (emphasis added) Is it original synthesis to say that withdrawing a move is cheating? Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 17:23, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure which move he violated because it isn't completely clear to me if he took his hand off the piece. I documented what some other sources say at Milan Matulović, notes 9, 10, and 11. Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 19:37, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Is it permissible, please, to set up a redirection that points to a category page? I am considering recommending that Orphan initialism be retargetted to Category:Orphan initialisms if that is in order. Bridgeplayer ( talk) 18:47, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
I've suggested a change to our soft redirect guideline to allow for more interwiki redirects. If you're interested, head on over and let me know what you think! -- Explodicle ( T/ C) 18:52, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
I nominated Corruption in Russia for AFD, and later I found two templates (cited on the AFD) that are POV magnets. Not really sure how these topics are encyclopedic. Maybe they are, but this seems wrong. Join Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Corruption in Russia for a discussion. — Timneu22 · talk 17:55, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed that some place-name pages, especially those about popular tourist destinations, have "image galleries"; for example, Santorini and Rhodes. Is there any policy about this? Personally, I think they should be discouraged for two reasons. First, they give the page a "travel guide" sort of feel which seems inappropriate to Wikipedia. Second, a lot of these pictures, however nice they may be as pictures, don't really add much to the article: I don't think a picture of a beach or church or village on Rhodes adds much to the article on Rhodes unless the beach/church/village portrayed is either really famous or there is something uniquely Rhodian about it. "Generic" pretty pictures seem to me just decoration. I'd welcome other opinions or pointers to policy. Thanks. Strawberryjampot ( talk) 14:22, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
[T]he use of galleries may be appropriate in Wikipedia articles where a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images. The images in the gallery collectively must have encyclopedic value and add to the reader's understanding of the subject. ... Images in a gallery should be carefully selected, avoiding similar or repetitive images, unless a point of contrast or comparison is being made.
[A] gallery consisting of an indiscriminate collection of images of the article subject should generally either be improved in accordance with the above paragraph or moved to Wikimedia Commons. Links to the Commons categories can be added to the Wikipedia article using the {{ Commons category}} template.
the use of galleries may be appropriate in Wikipedia articles where a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images. The images in the gallery collectively must have encyclopedic value and add to the reader's understanding of the subject. Images in a gallery should be suitably captioned to explain their relevance both to the article subject and to the theme of the gallery, and the gallery should be appropriately titled (unless the theme of the gallery is clear from the context of the article). ...However, Wikipedia is not an image repository. A gallery is not a tool to shoehorn images into an article, and a gallery consisting of an indiscriminate collection of images of the article subject should generally either be improved in accordance with the above paragraph or moved to Wikimedia Commons. ... One rule of thumb to consider: if, due to its content, a gallery would only lend itself to a title along the lines of "Gallery" or "Images of [insert article title]", as opposed to a more descriptive title, the gallery should either be revamped or moved to the Commons.
Strawberry, unlike the other editors, I'd recommend that you start implementing your plan -- just slowly, and starting with the 'worst of the worst' rather than the borderline cases.
Most editors really do want to do the right thing; if you approach articles pleasantly and leave a note about why this specific gallery doesn't happen to comply with the usual advice, then you'll probably get very few complaints. When/if someone complains, please scrupulously avoid anything that might possibly be construed as an edit war. Instead, either have a positive, calm conversation, or just move on to the next article. If you cleaned up just one gallery a day, or even one a week, you'd be doing the project a real service, and no rational person could attack such slow, steady progress as an "attack" on "images". WhatamIdoing ( talk) 21:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Can anyone point to a step-by-step beginner's guide on how to move a gallery to commons? I've looked on both Wikpedia and Commons help, and though there are a lot of things about galleries, I can't find any actual instructions on how to do this. I mean that could be understood by someone who has never added anything to Commons before. Thanks for any information. Strawberryjampot ( talk) 14:47, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
I have some questions about the exact meaning of "move the gallery to Commons," which seems like a simple statement but when you look into doing it turns out to have a number of complications. Where is the proper place to ask for clarification of the policy, and to discuss whether the policy itself needs to be re-worded to be clearer: here, or some other page? Thanks for any advice. 21:50, 15 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Strawberryjampot ( talk • contribs)
Why change Wikipedia's look? It look's a lot less awesome. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Denting5 ( talk • contribs) 02:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Has nothing to do with policy of course. Please keep it on one of the many other venues. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 17:37, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I have found many users which in my opinion are Username violiotions. Some of them contain the words "Rape", "Sex", or even a trademark like User:WindowsNT. Some admins say it is not a username violiotion but I think otherwise. What do you guys think? And can somebody please expand what usernams can be considered "offensive"? -- Tyw7 ( ☎ Contact me! • Contributions) Changing the world one edit at a time! 22:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
I am confused ... and concerned. Why so much interest in controlling other editor's choices of names? Sure, offensive names are undesirable for the comfort level of others but who in the end (barring truly malicious/hateful names and trademarks) I think an editor's name choice should be left undisturbed. Would User:BraAndPanties be considered offensive? Even if the editor was a professional lingerie designer editing on related topics? Let me illustrate with a couple of real life examples: I once worked with a guy named Dick Fuchs and I went to school with a girl named Sally Kuntz. Should we get a court order to force these people to change their real names because they might be considered offensive to some people? What about User:BBROYGBVGW ? Is that name a problem? Ask anyone with any experience in analog electronics and they will tell you this name makes perfect sense. As does User:TQRFJOTLBD to any typist. Just because YOU don't understand the name doesn't mean it has no meaning or value. As far as I am concerned, dabbling in censoring and altering user names is WP:CREEP that is a needless distraction from building Wikipedia. 66.102.204.126 ( talk) 01:39, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Who is the final arbiter of the verifiability of a source? The article's original author? Can his/her "decision" be appealed to some kind of verifiability committee? If an article's author can nix an addition just because he doesn't like what it says (even if the addition is verifiable) it doesn't say much for the "free" part of "Wikipedia; the free encyclopedia".......
Orthohawk ( talk) 22:34, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
Consider this scenario. The article Sealand-Conch Republic relations is nominated for deletion. In the first AFD there are 6 !voters aside from the nominator and the creator. Users A B and C !vote "delete", users D E and F !vote "keep". The AFD closes "no consensus". A few months later the article is nominated again. It stays open for 4 days but only A, B, and C have shown up. Would the creator be justified in informing D, E, and F considering that ABC are already there? I think many would agree that he is per WP:UCS.
Scenario 2. Same article except it's 2 years between nominations. ABC have retired from the project, DEF are still around but haven't !voted and there are 3 new !voters, G, H, and I, all !voting "delete". Would it be acceptable for the creator to inform DEF in this case? Maybe not so clear cut.
I could go on coming up with more scenarios each more vague then the next. The point I'm trying to make though is that I understand why some who are accused of improper canvassing proclaim their innocence despite a "letter of the law" violation. If he sees that the "other side" already has its ducks lined up, he thinks he should be allowed to go line up his ducks.
So I guess what I'm asking is, if a policy discussion (not just AFDs) starts out extremely one sided, could we overlook someone trying to "recruit" other "good faith" editors to give some balance? Of course off wiki canvassing shouldn't be allowed under any circumstance. -- Ron Ritzman ( talk) 23:32, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I feel that given that the ultimate outcome of a vandalism only account is typically an indefinite block, we should use a different warning template that makes it clearer that if the user vandalizes after last warning, not only will they be blocked, but they will be permanently blocked. Immunize ( talk) 20:26, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Discussion originated here.
Lately, images have been added to the infoboxes of a lot of Chicago building/sculpture/etc articles that display a map of the area immediately surrounding the article's subject (see McDonald's Cycle Center for example). Bascially, I find these images to be rather useless considering their size. I also think they are redundant with {{ Coord}}, which gives readers immediate access to a better, more user friendly map. Finally, I think the prominent placement of these maps gives undue weight to the locations of the subjects of these articles and takes away from other more relevant information in the infoboxes. Wikipedia is not an atlas. Considering the fact that this feature has been implimented in several infoboxes now and can be used in any articles, I would like to know what everyone's stance is on these maps in articles and what kind of policy there is concerning it (if any). -- Torsodog Talk 18:09, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
Torso, all places on wikipedia have coordinates. Coordinates however do not visualize the location of a place on an encyclopedia page. Digits mean nothing to the reader unless they look at the place in satellite detail externally. By your perception of this all maps on wikipedia would be redundant because the article has coordinates. Maps are encyclopedic, and it is not as if we are going into overkill here. See Merle Reskin Theatre. I've made a pushpin locator of the Chicago Loop showing its street location and it has a window in the corner indicating where in Chicago it is. Now if people don't know where Chicago is they click the wiki globe or visit the article. The question is whether or not the article is imporved having this map or whether or not it is actually better off without it. I think a simple locator identifying its place on a set map is perfect to casually give the reader an idea of where it is. Then there are Template:Location map United States Chicago to display places further afield giving a wider view. These options are surely a good thing, once we import the French wiki technology with clikcable maps then people can have the choice to zoom in at different levels. But what Torso is seemingly saying here is that all maps on wikipedia are redundant because we have coordinates. No we are not Wiki Atlas but a limited number of maps which inform the reader where the suject is is encyclopedic in my view. Anybody diagree with my view that a map or two locating a place is perfectly acceptable and useful? In my view the current map which Tony changed to, McDonald's Cycle Center because of your concerns about it being redundant to the other map is actually less useful because the Loop map now has a side locator where in Chicago it is. Dr. Blofeld White cat 18:57, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
I think the maps add quite a bit to the articles. I looked at the example above, and it increased my understanding quite a bit in about half a second. I was only vaguely aware of the coord thing, and I don't think the average reader has any idea of what it can do, and probably doesn't want to leave the article to do it. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) 03:21, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Torso and others. Given the scale, the maps are useless unless one is already somewhat familiar with Chicago. Moreover in, say Merle Reskin Theatre, clicking on the map to get a better resolution doesn't work since you simply get the background png. I don't see it as a question of redundancy with the coordinates but it is true that the reader would be best served by getting a map from an external website. I also agree that the maps eat up valuable space and the resulting height of the infobox can collide with images below. On my screen, this is already the case for Chicago Loop (which is not a great example since at least one of the two maps there should be included). Pichpich ( talk) 12:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
See here. Please comment. But I'd have to disagree with you about maps being useless for local buildings. I'm not from Chicago, but I think the map I added to Merle Reskin conveys encyclopedic information. I can look at it and see roughly where the building is located in relation to the coast and also what area of Chicago and Illinois it is from the corner window. This to me is much more informative than no map at all in my thought process. A lot of people do not want to leave the page and looks at google maps. I agree that the ideal would be a zoomable map locator in which the reader can zoom in to exact street level with the building and streets clearly marked and then zoom out and see where it is. This would be ideal, but it may be along time before we get that kind of technology. As it is I've made a clickable mapping proposal for different scale map viewing. Buildings are still locations and as an encyclopedia we must provide the best possbible information of its location to the viewer. Dr. Blofeld White cat 15:20, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
I can't speak to the Chicago article maps, as my focus is more on bridges. A bridge generally doesn't have an address, as a building does. The {{ infobox bridge}} maps give a general idea of where a bridge is. If you want a more specific understanding, you click the {{ coord}} link. I suspect the usefulness of {{ location map}} may be rather article-specific. - Denimadept ( talk) 16:08, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
You know, I never really thought about the fact that buildings have specific addresses. Thinking it over, I think I'm against using these maps for anything that has a physical address that is already in the infobox. That is the only location information needed, in my opinion (there may be special exceptions, of course). If a reader wants to see what is close to the building or how to get there, they can either click the coord template we already provide or look it up on their own. I don't think that information is really needed in an encyclopedia. These maps are good for areas, mountains, bridges, etc though. -- Torsodog Talk 16:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Is there any user group who can view (but not undelete) the deleted contributions of a user? I feel that this would be useful in a number of ways, including being able to, at an RfA, view a candidates deleted articles as well as there CSD tagging.
Immunize (
talk) 13:46, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Hi. I'd like to proposed the creation of a new CSD criterion, CSD#A11, for use by patrollers, vandal reverters, etc.; to cover the rapid removal of any and all totally unsourced BLP pages which exist on WP. I have recently come across an article which fitted the above description, gone to tag it with Twinkle, and discovered that not one of the available CSD criteria fits Unsourced BLP.
Since the material was potentially libellous, I added a db followed by the reason, and was told "Please check WP:CSD for Valid Criteria". I'd say that wholly unreferenced, potentially libellous material about someone most people wouldn't know from a hole in the floor is a damn good reason to get it out of here, and quick.
Your thoughts please? BarkingFish Talk to me | My contributions 21:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
{{
delete|1=reason}}
if CSD criteria don't fit but the page
clearly needs to go.) By the way, the page that you nominated (if it's the "murderer") had references, but they were inline. –
xeno
talk 21:34, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, back on topic. I don't think there should be a CSD for BLP's. My opinion on this is partially influenced by the fact that I do not agree with the automatic deletion of unreferenced BLPs as it is. I think they should be taken to AfD or PRODed if nothing can be found for them. PRODing is probably the best bet in these situations. A perfect example of how I feel, written by someone else. Silver seren C 21:51, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Let me add that if it has libelous information, that's different, but isn't that covered by some other CSD protocol? Silver seren C 21:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Trying out the RevisionDelete feature on my sandbox, I'm finding it useful, but I'm somewhat confused — is there any situation in which I would be prohibited from using RevisionDelete but in which it would be appropriate to delete the entire page history and restore it minus one or two edits? In other words, imagine that there's a page with eight good edits, then one RD2 edit, and most recently a good edit — if it's appropriate to delete the page and restore the nine good edits, would it ever be inappropriate to use RevisionDelete on the RD2 edit? Nyttend ( talk) 02:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Two versions of the section of the NPOV policy alternatively entitled "A simple formulation" or "Assert facts" ( WP:ASF) are up for comparison. Please comment at WT:NPOV#RfC: Which version of "assert facts" do people prefer?.-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:19, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
not a policy related discussion
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It all started because every two weeks I drive past this big empty metal building which used to be a factory. Because the company's name sounds dirty, I thought that might be an incentive to create an article about the company. There was very little on the web about the company except for its takeover by Voestalpine, which, according to newspaper articles still on the web about the factory's troubles, owned 49 percent. That seemed like a good enough reason to add the factory's information to the parent company's article. The problem is that integrating the various facts related to the company with the naughty name introduced some problems in the article, and in the process of solving those problems, I found opportunities to solve other problems with the article. Different sources give different names for Voestalpine--all capitals for the first part, no capitalization whatsoever, umlaut, CamelCase, hyphen, etc.--and let's not even get into the fancy German words. One source said one company called Voestalpine was doing business with another company called Voestalpine. Some sources say one of those companies is owned by Siemens. I found a couple of places where the Siemens company could have redirects to Voestalpine. One was a disambiguation page called Vai. Another possibility was creating a redirect from Siemens VAI to Voestalpine, since German Wikipedia has that article. Since that's only a redirect, is that why English is not showing up in the list of languages for Siemens VAI in German? Anyway, I'm not clear on which company that is. The German Wikipedia articles on these companies are so much more detailed. Perhaps the authors of those articles could offer some guidance. The English sources I found aren't very clear, but there may be more I can find on actual paper, though I don't plan to spend a lot of time on this. A lot of trouble just to be able to say a dirty-sounding word on Wikipedia. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
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Wikipedia_talk:Subject_style_guide#RFC Gnevin ( talk) 09:50, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Hello, we have currently a discussion in the Spanish Wikipedia about the benefits and problems of allowing any user (also IPs and non-autoconfirmed registered users) to create new pages. In this Wikipedia that's not possible. What we would like to understand is:
Can somebody help me with some information? best regards, Poco a poco... ¡adelante! 08:03, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
But the point to evaluate this implementation in other wikis is: was it a good, positive decision for this project? The rate of creation of articles increased, decreased, register any change after the implementation? Did this just avoid the creation of bad articles or also good ones? Wikisilki ( talk) 13:02, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
After rereading the heading to this page, it looks like this is the place to ask the question I referred to above, so here it is. I asked a similar question at the Commons Village Pump but haven't gotten an answer yet. My question is: if you want to delete a gallery from a Wikimedia page and move it to Commons, as the Wikimedia policy provides, what should be done if some images in a gallery don't meet Wikicommons permissions standards? For instance, the checklist at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Moving_images_to_the_Commons says: Is the copyright owner/author identified, or evidence that a search has determined it was anonymous? If no, do not move. Several images in the Wikipedia Rhodes gallery have no Author: field and the contributor user name is a red link. If I'm correct that these images don't qualify for commons (and f I've got this wrong, please tell me), then I can't move the gallery wholesale, right? So do I really have to add the individual images from the Wikipedia Rhodes gallery that do qualify for Commons to Commons one at a time? And do I have to then recreate a gallery with those images in Commons? But in that case I wouldn't really be moving the gallery from Wikipedia to Commons. So I would be tempted just to not create the gallery, but then I also wouldn't be "moving the gallery to Commons" as the Wikpedia policy calls for. So the question is: what is to be done with a Wikipedia gallery that should be moved to commons if a significant number of its images aren't qualified for Commons? A related question is if the Commons tag on a Wikipedia page would bring up a set of pictures identical or close to identical with the gallery on the Wikipedia page, would it in this case conform to the Wikipedia policy to just delete the gallery and leave the the Commons tag, on the grounds the the tag provides a "virtual" gallery (see Antinous for an example.) Thanks for any opinions. Strawberryjampot ( talk) 22:23, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
I have created a request for comment on the flagged revisions trial, motivated by an unexpected, unannounced and publicly undiscussed change of configuration removing the reviewer usergroup. Please weigh in there. Cenarium ( talk) 12:57, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
It's my belief we need to discuss wordsmithing Deletion policy and various XFD guidelines, to ensure consistent wording. I'm not proposing policy changes at this time, simply clarification, but I assume policy wonks will be interested. I've written up the issue here.-- SPhilbrick T 16:14, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
It has been proposed that Wikipedia_:Subject_style_guide be marks as a guideline. See Wikipedia_talk:Subject_style_guide#RFC Gnevin ( talk) 16:40, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Could I propose a minor change in interpretation of this speedy category? At present artles only qualify if the words or the syntax are at variance with normal English usage; that is to say, if that do not make sense. From time to time articles are submitted wherein the usage of language as such is correct, but the actual message of the article itself could be seen as nonsense. Example "my mother is a horse and sleeps in a stable". Obviously vandalism, and speediable as such. But not, within current definitions, nonsense, although it clearly is. There are perhaps more marginal examples, which most of us have seen. Given that the usual safeguards regarding WP:DRV remain in place, is there a consensus to widen the definition of nonsense to encompass this type of edit? I recognise that this requires a slightly greater degree of initiative on the part of the closing admin, but i feel that we are capable of this. -- Anthony.bradbury "talk" 21:49, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Dermatology task force/Categorization ( | 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, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Dermatology task force/Sources ( | 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, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Per comments of Jimbo on Commons, there is now a new interpretation of the existing polices regarding sexual content. Basically all images that might potentially require 2257 record keeping and that do not serve a current educational purpose are to be deleted instantly. Undeletion of these images can be discussed on a case by case basis. The effects of this new policy can already be witnessed by the removal of images in our articles by CommonsDelinker. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 12:29, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
The problem is that CommonsDelinker removes traces of the pic. Someone has to remember just what the pic was AND that it was there. Beyonds the facial pic, I noticed at lolicon a pic was deleted that was a picture of manga (Japanese comics) in a store. It certainly was as far from gratuitous as it gets. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ ( talk) 22:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
One thing this incident is making clear is that relying on images hosted on a site over which the Wikipedia editors and admins have next to no say is probably not in our best interest long-term. Should practices here be changed so that suitably-licensed images are no longer moved to Commons, and should we consider moving images back even if Commons does have a copy right now in order to avoid future disruption if one of the Commons admins does decide to delete them? - makomk ( talk) 11:36, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
I'd support this. Commons has deletion discussions that are essentially behind someone's back. If an image is nominated for deletion or tagged, people on outside wikis get no notice. There is no real opportunity for users on the outside encyclopedias to try and address them. This has come up numerous times. I upload there only because I know they'll be automatically moved there. However if there was ever a problem with one of my images, I'd probably never know until it was too late. I have no other reason to go there. So I only go if I've got something to upload or an image has suddenly been removed from an article. This is intermittent at best. I could go weeks or months without stopping by there.-- Crossmr ( talk) 01:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
After some recent FAC attempts for School Rumble it was suggested I merge multiple reference tags into 1 link for non-contriversial statements (stuff like X number of items exist which might require 6 citations for 6 items). However, looking though policy/guidelines I find nothing to support this and talking with others I've heard other FAC requests that have them combined like that be broken up. I'm wondering what I should do? 陣 内 Jinnai 14:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
I am pleased to advise you that, effective immediately, requests for oversight/suppression will be accepted using the OTRS system. Please bear with us as the Oversight team becomes accustomed to this new method of receiving and replying to requests. We will strive to maintain timely service.
If you have found yourself reporting concerns to the oversight mailing list, please take a moment to add the new email address to your list of contacts: oversight-en-wpwikipedia.org
We look forward to continuing to work with the community in protecting the privacy of editors and others.
For the Oversight team,
Risker (
talk) 04:24, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
My suggestion is that there should be a section on WP:NOTABILITY which clearly defines that settlements or geographical locations are not inherently notable - i.e. that articles concerning settlements and geographical locations which do not meet WP:NOTABILITY should be deleted. All information concerning small settlements which do not meet WP:NOTABILITY should be placed in tables on suitably named pages: for example, if Acebedo was deemed to be non-notable, all information concerning it would be placed on the page List of municipalities in León. Currently, there is no official policy on geographical places. I endorse option two of the dormant policy Wikipedia:Notability (Geographic locations). Claritas ( talk) 16:42, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Consensus and practice has always been that settlements can have their own articles, however small they are. Deletion proposals are routinely speedy closed on that basis. It's that that should be noted in the guidelines so that everyone is aware of it, regardless of the fact that a few deletion-mongers don't like it.-- Kotniski ( talk) 17:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
I copy here the discussion during Novemebr 2009 at What is the policy on villages? Chesdovi ( talk) 10:42, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
I contended on Talk:Su’heita that just as the villages of Bălteni, Boteni, Călugăreni, Conţeşti, Crângaşi, Gămăneşti, Heleşteu, Napclaşarea and Mereni in Conţeşti, Dâmboviţa are not notable and therefore do not warrant their own pages, so too does the same apply to the villages listed at List of Syrian towns and villages destroyed by Israel. Supreme Deliciousness has pointed out, however, that there are individual pages for French villages destroyed in the First World War. Not only that; if you take a look at Category:Communes of Nord for example, most of the communes featured are one liners and have no apparent notability; they could also have a population as small as 58, ( Les Éparges). I have in the past created pages for villages ( Amnaş) but they were immediately merged. What is the official policy on this? Does every village or hamlet that exists or has existed warrant a page? Chesdovi ( talk) 16:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Going by results of previous AFD's on verifiable settlements, the answer is "yes, all villages are notable". You will find complete coverage of all settlements in the United States, and there is no reason why it should be different for other parts of the world. I don't know of any cases of a village being deleted for lack of notability. Whether the settlement still exists does not matter, because notability does not expire. Indeed, the destruction of a village is a historic event which may merit coverage. Sjakkalle (Check!) 16:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- (EC) I suggest that the relevant policy is WP:DEFACTO, at least for places that now exist, and places that have existed can't really lose that notability can they? Ϣere SpielChequers 16:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- You might also want to review the proposals at Wikipedia:Notability (Geographic locations). If you look at the discussion, there is unlikely to be any consensus for deleting any real settlement. Sjakkalle (Check!) 16:19, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- By the way, even a very tiny geographic feature is hard to delete, although the truly insignificant are sometimes merged. I once tried nominating for deletion an article on this island, and it wound up merged, not deleted. Sjakkalle (Check!) 16:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- I hate hate hate the idea that "every place is notable". It is patently false, and I hate seeing it parroted ad nauseum that X village in Y country is notable just because it is/was a village. However, part of this problem is because of the way in which the word "notable" is used on Wikipedia - it is neither consistent with the dictionary definition of the word, nor is it consistent in its use across the project. That said, I have largely reconciled myself with the existence of sub-stub articles on obviously non-notable settlements by taking to heart the statement in one of the five pillars of Wikipedia : "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers" (emphasis added). I no longer think of articles of the type in question as being encyclopedia entries, but rather consider them "gazetteer entries" in compliance with that particular role that Wikipedia serves. Granted, this may be a lot of mental gymnastics on my part, but it's what allows me to reconcile the fact that an article on some obscure hamlet need not be notable to exist :) Sher eth 16:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Could also fall under almanac. I believe every geographical feature should be included. While the particular person who started the article may only know that it is a village in a country, every settlement has hundreds if not thousands of years of history prior to the present, and that certainly is notable. Wikipedia should be the place to find out about villages in who-the-hell-knows-where that you can't find out about elsewhere on the internet. Geographical features are also verifiable by their very nature: they physically exist in the world for anyone to go and check. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:41, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Why is every village ever built more notable than any person ever born? (see Genealogical entries). Chesdovi ( talk) 16:47, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- They aren't; hence my point that notability should not even be discussed at this point. Wikipedia has a capacity as a gazetteer as stated in the five pillars, and thus geographic entries are appropriate so long as they are verifiable. But since Wikipedia is not a geneological database as your link points out, people therefore must be notable as well as being verifiable. Sher eth 16:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- A little research (such as on NewsBank or NewpaperArchive) can turn articles on hamlets with seven residents into nice articles. See Donnan, Iowa and Monti, Iowa for examples. Firsfron of Ronchester 16:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- I suspect that the vast majority of settlements that have ever existed will not reach wikipedia simply because they are long abandoned and have left no trace on the archaeological record. That said we could at some point see an explosion of creation of articles on Masaii bomas as mobile phone editing takes off. However many settlements that are being written up here existed for many centuries and the total population of people who have ever lived in them will in that case be many times their average population Ϣere SpielChequers 17:05, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- They will all reach Wikipedia eventually! Perhaps you are unaware of it, but there is an editor that is going around creating hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles that are just empty stubs for place-names. The last time I raised the issue (back last year) he (or rather the bot he uses) had finished creating articles for every settlement in all countries starting with "A" and most of those starting with "B". Meowy 21:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Hundreds of thousands? Only 50 editors have more than 100,000 total edits. What do these stubs look like? Firsfron of Ronchester 21:24, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- User:Himalayan Explorer, formerly User:Dr. Blofeld, has created 63,375 articles. The location stubs look like this; Babaj Boks. Abductive ( reasoning) 22:08, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- There are other editors who use the same article-creation bot, such as Carlossuarez46, so to be correct I should have said that it is the bot which has created hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles that are just empty stubs for place-names. Meowy 19:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
It may be worth noting here that 4 of the 6 French villages destroyed in the First World War which have not been rebuilt and were used by Supreme Deliciousness to back up inclusion of destroyed Syrian villages were indeed created by User:Dr. Blofeld. Chesdovi ( talk) 23:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- I feel the same way about small communities as I do about high schools -- it is possible to do a reasonable article on them if you take time to research what's unique about them. I've read quite interesting histories of small settlements in local-history books and genealogical sources. But an article that simply says, "Understone is an unincorporated community in Hadleigh County, Maryland at the intersection of routes 18 and 234, 4 miles east of Hadleigh City" is of little use to anyone. -- Mwalcoff ( talk) 02:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- Except perhaps for people looking for directions to Understone? :) Or wanting to know if the town in unincorporated? And as a start to a larger article, a stub is a good starting place: nearly every article on WP began as a stub. Firsfron of Ronchester 03:19, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- ←Every time that I see this sort of topic come up I notice quite a few "These stub articles are useless" reply. That attitude really bothers me, and I would like to encourage those of you who feel that way to at least consider Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress. This is a guess on my part, which is always somewhat dangerous, but I think that many of you are freaking out about the number of articles on Wikipedia.
- There seems to be a contingent that feels worried about the articles that they can't see (or, to put this less delecately, have control issues). To those of you in this group, consider the fact that there are thousands of other editors out there, and that most of us actually seem to have similar views.
- There also seems to be a contingent who, while they never actually state any performance concerns, seems to feel that more articles are somehow hard on the system. Aside from Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, you should all keep in mind that for enterprise level SQL servers running on a server fer, 3 million + items of text (10 million+, including talk pages and templates, etc...) is really a pittance for SQL. There are databases out there that handle trillions of entries. WMF doesn't have to pay money for each article or anything either, so... chill.
- I don't want to sound like a total ideologue here. Wikipedia shouldn't include garage bands, or host my resume, or anything like that. There's a distinct difference between attempting to start pages for what potentially could be a legitimate article and starting a bunch of garage band articles, though. If someone has created 600,000+ stub articles about locations, that's something to celebrate to me, not something which should be panned.
— V = I * R ( talk to Ω) 03:46, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- Wikipedia should be about readers, not editors. A reader comes to an article expecting content, not expecting an empty article. A reader searching for information about the town of Zig in Zagland is not exactly going to be happy to find an article telling him nothing more than "Zig is a town in Zagland" - he will know that already! It diminishes the credibility of Wikipedia as a source of information. However, I know that there are strong vested interests in maximising the number of articles on Wikipedia, and maxmising the number and the rate of creation of newly-created articles, so criticism of the practice of mass place-name stub creation is not going to be successful. Meowy 19:53, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- These stubby place names are often better treated as redirects to entries within the context of an article about a larger geographic unit or as an entry in a list article. When and/or if more verifiable information is found to support a stand-alone article, they can be split out at that time. older ≠ wiser 20:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- A couple of points in reply here. Personally I feel that it is more of a service to our readers to present something other then "Wikipedia doesn't have an article on...". I also think that it's an awfully large assumption to make that people already know that "Zig is a town in Zagland", which if you give any credence at all to the studies showing the lack of knowledge about geography is almost certainly not true. As for redirecting... what would the targets be? I see redirecting as a decent solution to fill out stub articles personally, but I don't see an easy way to redirect a location article to anything else.
— V = I * R ( talk to Ω) 01:00, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- Do you actually use Wikipedia? (Editing Wikipedia is not using Wikipedia!) I first became aware of the vast number of useless place-name stubs when I was searching for information about certain places, and all I found were dozens of article stubs. Every site I found on using Google was worthless - either worthless Wikipedia stubs, or worthless pages from the many sites that use Wikipedia content and so contained no more content that the original Wikipedia stub. It is often said that "if you have nothing to say then best say nothing" - it should be the same for a Wikipedia article. Meowy 16:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- Actually, I'd say that I use Wikipedia more then I edit it. Recently I've been more outspoken and participatory here, but I've relied on Wikipedia since... well, for a long time. I do sympathize with the point that you're making, but I think that it's slightly misplaced here. Consider what you would see in the absence of Wikipedia, in the examples that you are brought up, after all. Would you feel better if Google gave you 100,000 pure garbage links, or 1.5 million links, but the first dozen were Wikipedia and all of its mirrors with (admittedly) sub-par content? I'm not really defending our sub-stub or stub level articles on their own merits, but I think that their better then absolutely nothing.
— V = I * R ( talk to Ω) 17:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)- To the question about targets for location articles, the answer is fairly simple. If all that can be said about the town of Zig is that it is a town in Zagland, redirecting it to a List of cities and towns in Zagland. If Zagland is a large country and such a list would be unmaintainably large, then create individual lists for the provinces/states/whatevers : List of cities and towns in Zug. It's a fairly simple solution to the problem. If and when someone comes along with more information about Zig, then an actual article can go in its place. I have no real issue with sub-stub articles on real locations, but in situations where there is genuinely nothing to say about a place other than that it exists, list articles may well be a good solution. Sher eth 17:13, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- ...Is it always that obvious when the content of an article should be "bumped up" (so to speak) to the next highest category level? I mean, it's fairly easy to look at 10's or 100's of sub-stubs after they are created and say "maybe these should be a single list", but... well, for one thing, that takes extra work, and seeing that fact is often part of the work involved. Probably more important though is the fact that the article's current state says nothing about it's potential state. Just because all that the article creator added is the absolute bare minimum doesn't mean that the article couldn't be (often, greatly) expanded. Even the tiniest populated places tend to have lengthy histories, simply because of human nature, after all (not that those histories are always important outside of the context of the settlement, but still...).
- I think that this is a somewhat philosophical issue, in that I probably personally tend to see and desire the potential from articles, whereas many other people (perhaps yourself included) only see the here and now. That's not intended as a knock on you in any way, as either perspective has it's advantages... but, neither of us should be so iconoclastic in our views as to make the other perspective "foreign".
— V = I * R ( talk to Ω) 17:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- I'm sorry if I was unclear, but I am in no way advocating a reductionist methodology with regards to settlement articles. In fact, when any history on a settlement can be found (verifiable) I fully agree that the preferred outcome would be the creation of a full-fledged article, even if it is still a stubby article. Primarily I was referring to the numerous articles whose content is of the "X is a city in Y" format and contains nothing more than statistical data (geographical coordinates, population figures, etc). These types of articles are well suited to being merged into a tabular list that can present the data in a concise fashion. This should be in no way viewed as discouragement to the creation of full-fledged articles when more information is available. Sher eth 18:18, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
The unanswered question on this is how to define a place as notable;
This is the side of the equation that needs to addressed before even saying a place isnt notable. Gnan garra 11:11, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
(Undent) If communities with fewer than 10 residents each, such as Donnan, Iowa and Monti, Iowa, are notable, any city, town, or village is notable: it just takes a little research and effort by interested editors to extract that data and reference it. Firsfron of Ronchester 03:03, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
@Masem Local sources lose independence How? Independence is about a person/company writing about themselves or paying someone to do it how does a place do that? Gnan garra 03:19, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
"If communities with fewer than 10 residents each ... are notable, any city, town, or village is notable." How exactly does that logically follow?
Furthermore, there are also editorial reasons to up-merge tiny geo articles. A nicely filled-out article on a parish is going to be a lot better than 15 one-line articles reading "Stive Pissleton is a community in Oetleshire". OrangeDog ( τ • ε) 14:19, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
But you have yet to give an example of a non-notable place, so how do we know any non-notable places exist? Silver seren C 20:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)