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These are technically not encyclopedic at all. Examples of them are swear words, and
But individual articles like this are nevertheless pretty popular, I tried to write a policy to cover them, and I would appreciate comments on it:
WP:Encyclopedic dictionary articles Lexicograffy ( talk) 18:49, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps like Batman with his batcar this and batplane etc. the world needs to strap on a tool belt with a few new wikis -how about a Wikigossip, and a Wikiconjecture, a Wikidafttheories and a Wikiwhatwikipediarejects ? An editor just dumped 25,000 characters of lovely Hiberno-english words many of then swear words from the Hiberno-English page as some of them were poorly or un- referenced to scholarly sources. Sometimes articles and the site lose richness through over vigourous pruning and rigid interpretation of verifiability and notability and indiscriminate.-- Tumadoireacht ( talk) 02:25, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
A few years earlier, I have "reorganized" the content of the Holidays and observances (H&O) section for each days of the year, making sure that the guideline has consistent writing style and making sure that real holiday is placed in the H&O section.
The guideline for all H&O for 366 articles for each days of the year has been regulated by the H&O guideline in Wikipedia:DOY. However, the current Wikipedia:DOY guideline for the H&O section is too short, unclear, and does not accommodate the many kinds of holidays that is there. As a result, various inconsistent writing styles and various incorrect holidays keep reappearing in the H&O section.
Although the writing style for each of the 366 articles has been made consistent for the past few years, there are still conflicting opinions regarding the formatting (e.g. alphabet sort or not) and the contents (e.g. saint days) that should be included in the H&O section.
Therefore, there is a need to create a new text for the H&O guideline as well as few changes regarding what kind of holidays should be placed in the H&O section.
I would like to invite any interested parties to see and check carefully the proposed expansion of H&O guideline in here and leave comments, critics, or questions in its talk page.
-- Rochelimit ( talk) 20:08, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm at the British Library Editathon in London (see WP:GLAM/BL). I was just having a discussion with a British Library curator and their site uses Microsoft Silverlight but with a fallback option. Are there any policies regarding external links or references and whether or not they point to content that requires proprietary plugins like Silverlight and Adobe Flash? I mean, you don't see that many YouTube links on Wikipedia. I can understand why there might be an issue, but I can't seem to find any policies on this. — Tom Morris 16:29, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
How do porn stars rate being in Wikipedia? For that matter others in the acting profession who are nothing more than bit players. Many of them have won no awards or nominations. And then there are bios written by people who must have been their friend or a relative as there are personal details that only close friends or family would know. I only know of Traci Lords and John Holmes. Traci was a porn star at 18 and washed out at 21 basically. John starred in many films and I have no idea what his claim to fame is. You seem to want only those who have notability as defined by your standards. It also seems if you can not search for it online the information does not exist. I really wonder how objective the all powerful administrators are here at Wikipedia. Sincerely, Dacorbandit ( talk) 02:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
If I, as a trained journalist, said in one of my articles that I am 94% objective, I'd be laughed out of the profession. Coming close to the truth in an article is desirable generally, but claiming to be 94% objective is a little much. The man who wrote the recent WP bio about me (I'm David Joseph Marcou) knows a great deal about my life and career. What is wrong with that? You can't tell me pornstars have their bios written by professors at Harvard or Yale, or maybe they do, though they do put out a lot of publicity, apparently, sort of like government press releases. Sometimes the latter are fairly reliable; sometimes they're not. Personally, I know that it takes a heap of living and a lot of learned wisdom to render generally "objective" judgments, and your editors/administrators might now have obtained as much of either as you think. The man who wrote the Wikipedia bio about me listed 10-11 sources, at the start. He was adding more, with your prompts, and at least half were online, so you didn't even have to go to a library and read a book, though my autobiography isn't online and is only in one or two libraries ("If I Do the Research, the Lord Brings Me Luck"); but I've seen bios on your system with only three sources, and little notability is how I translate the bio material itself, and you keep those bios up there, not slating them for deletion the day they go up, like the one about me. Politics perhaps? Since when isn't the Pulitzer Prize my group and I were nominated for in 2000, not notable? Or the two Pulitzers I'm currently being nominated for? And since when doesn't writing the first article, it still seems to me, about letters from Mother Teresa (17 letters from her to me), which I wrote in 1994 for Catholic Digest, not count as notable? And since when don't photos and books by me in many leading libraries and archives around the world, not count as notable? I've got many works in various Smithsonian Archives; forget my portrait of Bert Hardy and his dogs in the British National Portrait Gallery Collection, though it's a better portrait than most professionals could take, and forget my books in the MOMA Library, the International Center of Photography Library, the George Eastman House Library, and national libraries in many parts of the world. And forget the eight beautiful Presidential Campaign photos of mine published in the NY Times online exhibit 'Documenting the Decade are they not notable? – simply because you can't search my name generally on the NYTimes site and easily find those photos, doesn't mean they're not there. If you look through the exhibit, carefully, you'll see every one of my eight photos there, when hardly anyone else among the hundreds of photographers in that exhibit has more than two photos there. But don't try to forget my son, Matthew, who serves in the US Army, whom I taught to use, when he was 3 years old, a computer keyboard and a camera, both of which he now handles magnificently. In fact, when he was 13, he typed the entire 100,000-word manuscript for the first volume of 'Spirit of America', which I directed and co-edited, and which won a national award. My son, by the way, is a superb young man, and I actually did have something positive to do with his upbringing. You can, I'd guess, forget the 11 years I taught adults writing and photography at a technical college, when we turned out about a dozen good anthologies, formed up, with notable additions, to the group I direct, the American Writers and Photographers Alliance, which has included the likes of Annie Leibovitz, John Loengard, Bert Hardy, Harry Benson, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dmitri Kessel, Vernon Biever, John Biever, Msgr. Bernard McGarty, and sponsors like the owners of Kwik Trip Stores (the Zietlows), and a whole lot of other good people, all of whom contribute to our books. Or the poems and plays I've written, including the sequel to O'Casey's 'Juno and the Paycock', mine being 'Song of Joy--Or the Old Reliables', which was critiqued positively by the National Theatre of Ireland, and successfully produced in 2008. What did I do in my life to warrant such unfair treatment from your administrators-editors? I assure you, though I'm not perfect, I didn't do anything as wrong as what you call “objective criticism” by Wikipedia administrators-editors.-djm. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.202.153.178 ( talk) 04:25, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
I had not finished writing the article at the time it was deleted. Why the rush? I stated it needed some editing and someone commented about better clarification on some points. Perhaps an article should be up for deletion when completed and under review in order to move to the main page. I have nothing against people being porn stars, but I associate pornography with drugs, degrading females, and possibly organized crime. I looked at the notability for porn stars and in my opinion it was drawn up by people who like porn or a group in the porn industry that also drew up the award guidelines. Sincerely, Dacorbandit ( talk) 04:36, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
"It also seems if you can not search for it online the information does not exist."
*facepalm*
There's a reason real academic works rarely cite online sources. A lot of really good info doesn't make it online.--
AerobicFox (
talk) 07:27, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Recently I have been working on cleaning up the usage of {{ cquote}}. That template drops fancy quote graphics around the quoted text - and is for use on pull quotes. WP:MOSQUOTE (and the template doc) say very clearly and unambiguously that it should be used sparsely and only for pull quotes - instead normal quotes should use {{ quote}} or {{ quotation}}. However; I suspect the vast majority of article misuse the template - I've been through about... 100 of the transclusions, and I would say only about 5 to 10 use it for pull quotes. Which is a bit mad. I think the reason it gets misused is because it "looks pretty" (at least, that is why I started using it, wrongly, before reading our guidelines).
The questions I have are:
Any help (particularly fixing the issue :D) is much appreciated! -- Errant ( chat!) 21:12, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
It's not a good idea to go through articles changing this. If people aren't using it the way the MoS says, then consider changing the MoS to bring it into line with actual practice. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 17:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Used to attract attention, especially in long articles, a pull-quote is a small selection of text "pulled out and quoted" in a larger typeface. A pull-quote may be framed by rules, placed within the article, span multiple columns, or be placed in an empty column near the article. Pull-quotes provide a teaser that entices the reader into the story.
— About.com
In the article 0 (year) is claimed that year 0 does not exist. However, look at my comment All counting, including time counting starts from 0, please. -- WPK ( talk) 10:33, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
How many times have we pressed "save page" only to realise that we have forgotten to include the edit summary, tick the "minor edit" box or have omitted useful information or made an obvious typo? Is there any way that edit summaries can be retrospectively amended? Should this ability be restricted to the original editor and, perhaps, admins. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 12:38, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(people)#Proposed_text_for_.22Perpetrators.22
More comments would be welcome. -- FormerIP ( talk) 04:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
A fairly simple question. What is notable about ethnicity? Everybody seems obliged to 'belong' to 'an ethnicity', at least by the norms of contemporary Western culture. If everyone has it, how is their ethnicity notable? It clearly isn't. Yet Wikipedia is plagued by endless disputes about lists of 'ethnicity X', category 'ethnicity Y', and even lists of 'citizens of A who are ethnically one (or more) of X, Y, Z or similar' (see List of Hispanic and Latino Americans). I fail to see how any of this merits inclusion in an encyclopaedia. This is not a database (or at least, it shouldn't be), so why create arbitrary lists and categories about non-notable facts about (supposedly) notable people? I suspect I'm going to told that I'm wrong, but can someone actually tell me why this particular arbitrary social construct is more significant than people's star signs or shoe size? Unless they can, I'd like to suggest we stop this ethnobureaucratic data-mining exercise, and delete all these lists and categories for good. AndyTheGrump ( talk) 21:27, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
{{
sofixit}}
ing it --
slakr\
talk / 22:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)"Notable" is a poor choice of words, seeing as we use it to mean "subject that merits its own article"; using it to further mean "fact that merits inclusion in an article" is just confusing. Or maybe it's intended to equivocate, to implicitly raise the bar for fact inclusion higher than merely verifiable and encyclopedic?
In any case, it's simply ridiculous to argue in the absolute that ethnicity is never relevant. Ethnic divisions often remain within regions after centuries regardless of political boundaries (former Yugoslavia, anyone?), retain community coherence within immigrant populations after many generations, have had distinct and identifiable impacts on certain professions, and have historically been the subject of persecution (to the extreme of ethnic cleansing), and are the basis for cultural pride organizations. So in many cases, it's not only appropriate to mention ethnicity in an encyclopedia article, but necessary for an understanding of the subject. And lists, which index subjects by shared facts (not merely those for which they are notable) are appropriately used to index common heritage, which often correlates with common experiences. So the claim that none of it merits inclusion in an encyclopedia is not even worth arguing with. "If everyone has it, how is it notable?" Everyone has a birthdate, too.
However...ethnicity doesn't always merit mention in a subject's article because not all bio subjects have significant, identifiable ethnicities apart from their nationalities. Those who claim that ethnicity is always relevant (or even meaningfully verifiable) are being no more reasonable than those who claim that it's never relevant. To that extent, I'd agree with the removal of it from infoboxes, if that field somehow compels people to try and fill it in regardless of whether it's meaningful. Infobox fields also can't really include any nuance or explanation, so while it may be worth mentioning in article text that someone had a Cossack grandfather or whatever, it would not be equally appropriate to apply an infobox label on that basis. postdlf ( talk) 16:21, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
What's notable about nationality? Nothing. Being Italian, French or British is hardly a notable feature per se. Yet we continue to indicate nationality in practically all our bios, as far as I know. What's different about ethnicity? I can agree there can be a few contentious cases, but in most cases just follow what reliable sources say and let's stick at that; what's the advantage of removing such information? -- Cyclopia talk 01:16, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
To the OP: Reliable sources, from birth certificate to obituary and most things in between, frequently note a person's ethnicity, and Wikipedia handles biographies from the point of view of presenting accurate and relevant data as found in reliable sources. From a personal, philosophical standpoint, I agree with you that ethnicity is merely a social construct, and carries no more weight than that which society gives it. But oh, what weight society has been giving it down through the ages and still today, wouldn't you agree? After all, who have we been and what have our experiences, opportunities and challenges been but for our social constructs? Before you answer that, I would point out that nationality, religion, democracy, capitalism, and sexuality are "merely" social constructs as well. Abrazame ( talk) 01:55, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Race and ethnicity exist as real concepts. They are also widely viewed as being social constructs, but Wikipedia would disintegrate in an instant if we were to delete all material relating to social constructs. On the other hand, there may be a good case for saying that the ethnic identity (as well as identity in terms of religion, sexuality etc) is often included in WP articles in a way that is WP:UNDUE when it is given prominence in an infobox or in the first line of a lead. IMO it would be a good thing if Wikipedia operated an explicit presumption against this. I think the debate gets confused because there is another (IMO less clear-cut) view out there that identifying a person's race, religion etc (although I concede that sexuality may be a different case here) should be judged according to a higher than normal standard of verifiability. I think care in keeping the two (legitimate in their own ways, but different) debates separate would help to avoid confusion. Just an opinion. -- FormerIP ( talk) 02:58, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
My impression is that "ethnicity" was a fairly uncommon and largely technical word until WWII and its immediate aftermath. What happened then was that the concept of "race" got called into question because
Thus the word "ethnicity" - understood to be some necessarily fuzzy sort of way to refer to, say, a group of people currently sharing a language, place, ties of kinship, etc.- came to be preferred. See, e.g., The Race Question.
The issue is, of course, that some have simply switched to using the word "ethnicity" while keeping - consciously or unconsciously - the mental habits that went with the use of the word "race". If an "ethnicity", however defined, is not used to talk about a set of people, but rather to label, list and classify individuals on the basis of descent - with the inevitable implication that this somehow determines who they truly are - then "ethnicity" is simply being used as a Trojan horse for some sort of nationalism or the same old ideological habits that go with the use of the term "race".
What to do in practice?
Note, moreover, an added advantage of removing category labels and the like consistently. In the current situation, removing or not including a label stating that X was a Foo is taken by some, rightly or wrongly, as an implication that X was not a Foo, or that X was some sort of entity called a Non-Foo. If such labels were not used to begin with, there would be no such implication.
For example: the facts that
Evo Morales grew up bilingual in Spanish and Aymara, that he was born to peasant parents, etc., are interesting and relevant. At the same time, putting "Ethnicity: Aymara" in the infobox seems (to me) to be unnecessary and redundant (in spite of his self-identification as the first indigenous president of his country). If I went and argued for it to be removed now, I could be mistaken to support the position (which I personally find perfectly obnoxious) that Morales is not Aymara, or not Amerindian, for this or that reason (Spanish last name, being educated (see Vargas Llosa's infamous position piece on this), etc.). If the infobox entry were consistently removed, there would be no such implication in its absence - and the article wouldn't lose anything by its absence either.
Feketekave (
talk) 20:10, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
I think one issue with ethnicity on the English-speaking WP is that it is mainly an American construct; the vast majority of Americans are not far generationally removed from another country. However, most other countries (as far as my experience goes) are fairly homogeneous. I apologize to the non-American editors here on the English WP for having to try and understand America's identity crisis.
Angryapathy (
talk) 21:03, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
While I no longer edit Wikipedia, it was always a pet-peeve of mine the bullying that went around, especially at places like AN/I where if you made a complaint about bullying some would come right out and admit, "I dont have to defend my actions, I just have to bloody the witness so you look worse" (exact quote). And I always thought that was a reprehensible action in a court of law, it was just as bad in a place like Wikipedia. I tried numerous times to bring up bullying and have a discussion, and in light of the laws passed in the state of Missouri, USA and the national focus on Albany County, NY, USA bringing to court the first enforcement of an anti-bullying law (there's being one of the broadest- "including the act of communicating through electronic means by posting or disseminating embarrassing, false, or sexual information with no legitimate purpose in order to humiliate, torment or harm another person" and it can be a single time as opposed to ongoing). I think a discussion regarding how bullying is tolerated and implementation of zero-tolerance regardless of a user's contribution history. Have fun discussing. I came only to foster discussion, I have other things to do now. 148.78.249.32 ( talk) 21:19, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Hello, I know Wales has made Wikipedia a charitable organization. Now that Wikipedia has the fifth highest hit count on the Internet it is worth potentially billions of dollars. What internal controls are in place to ensure that it is never privatized by the current management team or others in the future? Remember, money corrupts even the most virtuous!! Perhaps, somebody should create a webpage on this topic. Thank you Zabanio ( talk) 15:44, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
In a recent interview Sue Gardner emphasized that the Foundation would remain a non-profit: "We don't move in the world of IPOs and valuation and investment. We never talk about it, we never think about it."
And this new interview with the main proponent of the 2002 Spanish Wikipedia fork Enciclopedia Libre, where concerns about possible advertising were a main reason, is quite illuminating (look for a summary in next week's Signpost). He claims that it shaped much of the direction that Wikipedia has taken since, and recounts interesting hurdles to the right to fork - they had to copy over articles one by one because Jimmy Wales wouldn't give them access to download the full database. While I am sure that the interview shows only one side of the story, it is nevertheless a really interesting read.
Regards, HaeB ( talk) 02:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
I started a discussion at WT:External links#Spam links becoming standard practice. Seems like something others may be interested in. — Timneu22 · talk 17:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Today's featured article demonstrates many of the practical problems with Wikipedia editing and with its administration. I invite contributions to the ongoing discussion here: [3]. The article, of course, by policy, cannot itself be modified by anon users. The given and most important reason for this is protection against vandals. However the policy also protects against criticism of the process of creating a Featured Article. And that? Is dishonest and utterly contrary to Wikipedia goals. 98.210.208.107 ( talk) 23:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Policy question regarding image use and content. I looked in the Manual of Style and Image Use Policy but didn't find anything directly referencing this – so I'm soliciting an opinion / starting a discussion here. While we are all encouraged to upload our own photographs of places, particularly of the articles are lacking pictures and if our work is of decent quality, what about this: a single photographer has uploaded dozens of photographs of places along the California coast, and each one contains a person. It appears to be the same person in each picture. What do you think of this? The person usually has his back to the camera, and sometimes is centered (for example here -- File:17milecypruspoint.jpg) and sometimes is off to the side (as here – File:Guadalupedunes.JPG or here File:Santabarbaraview2.jpg ). Occasionally the pictures fail to illustrate their subject – in File:Gaviotaview.JPG , the pier is within the state park, as is the road shoulder in the foreground, but the picture is really a shot of the coastline and ocean outside of the park. Many of these are lovely pictures but for the figure -- is this a new type of vanity entry? Am I being too sensitive? What does anyone else think? Antandrus (talk) 17:18, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
It isn't necessarily in bad faith; it could just be that these were snapshots that the taker later decided had some information in them, regardless of the friend. I've uploaded several to Commons that happened to have my wife in them because they were taken on vacations. Though she is rather less conspicuous in my photos than these, most of which are street scenes... Still, WP:AGF and all that. It should be purely a matter of whether the photo is informative or if the figure detracts from it, and if you can't tell from a single photo whether it's incidental or vanity, then unless you're going to put more than one in the same article it probably doesn't matter. postdlf ( talk) 03:26, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Thread watchers, please take note that there is now a related discussion on ANI. The thread is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Something fishy on Pelican State beach — Gavia immer ( talk) 02:45, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
There is currently an RFC for WP:ACTIVIST for those who are interested. - Hydroxonium ( H3O+) 07:13, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
I noticed that Methamphetamine has a detailed Synthesis section and links to a synthesis FAQ with more details in its External links. WP:NOTHOWTO aside, isn't a drug synthesis recipe a very detailed and toxicologically dangerous form of medical advice, and as such isn't it prohibited? 71.198.176.22 ( talk) 06:49, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I have some concerns lately about tactics I see taken on random discussion boards. Basically, it goes like this. An anon or a new editor gets involved in a content dispute or disagreement. After some discussion, the more experienced editor(s) point out that the anon/new user "sure have a lot of knowledge about WP for an inexperienced editor" (or something along those lines), basically accusing them of being a sock in a round about way. My concern is that I (and others like me) can be perceived as a new editor, but I have read and followed Wikipedia for years, and could probably cite WP policies with the best of them. In short, I really don't think this is a very good argument and assumes bad faith. I will admit that sure, sometimes a duck is a duck (maybe more often than not), but I think editors (and especially admins) should be VERY careful to label a "new" user as a sock or meat puppet...and I have really seen this happen a lot lately. Most people who "use" Wikipedia don't necesarrily "edit" it until something comes along they feel strongly about (as I did a while back). Thanks,
In Wikipedia talk:Non-free content, there is currently an RfC asking, How should the potential replaceability of non-free by free material be assessed when media of both types is available for an article? The issue affects many articles covering artistic genres as well as those covering other broad topics where much of the applicable media content with significant encyclopedic value is under copyright.— DCGeist ( talk) 12:19, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm posting this over here from Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion discussion here. A discussion about how to encourage more New page patrollers turned to considering why we have so many articles going through NPP that are not by newbies. Currently, to receive Autopatrolled status a user has to either
75 seems a huge number, and the fact that editors have to make a specific request for autopatrolled status means that many probably won't even know there is such a thing. Given that reviewer rights were handed out to every editor in good standing, the query has arisen as to why autopatrolled is so difficult to obtain. Has this been discussed before - no-one in the original discussion was sure why it was set so high. What would the objections be to say giving it automatically to editors with 5 articles or 1000 edits (or some similar arbitrary figure), with the proviso that it will be removed if the editor creates problematic articles? -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 17:14, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
( ←) Here's a concrete proposal:
BTW, some of this work has already been done. See this database query, which produced this list (last spring?). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
75 was picked as the arbitrary starting point with my initial proposal because that is what it had been with the previous system (bot patrols anyone on a whitelist). 20 articles would probably be fine, but administrators should still ensure that past history with BLPs has been OK. NW ( Talk) 19:11, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Have we made any progress on inviting people to apply? Has anyone figured out how to get a useful list out of the toolserver links above? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 01:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I went ahead and boldly created a new page at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Autopatrolled candidates 1 and added users ready to be reviewed for Autopatrol status. It's ready to go if anybody wants to start reviewing. - Hydroxonium ( talk) 03:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Update - In the last couple days, over 400 users have been reviewed and granted Autopatrol rights thanks to two awesome Admins, HJ Mitchell and Acalamari (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). They should be thanked for undertaking such a monumental effort. Thanks guys. - Hydroxonium ( H3O+) 18:46, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
┌─────────────────────────────┘
Update - We are working our way through about 3,000 users total from the old list and new list. Several hundred new users have been added, so hopefully the users at
WP:NPP have been seeing the work go down a little. This has been a very laborious task, so I am going to look in to automating as much as possible for the future. I'll start a thread about that somewhere. -
Hydroxonium (
H3O+) 05:06, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
It's just depressing that today's main page is just soaked with blood. Nearly every item, including the featured article, In the news, and On this day has the word killing, death or war in it. Hurricane Kyle... one indirect death. In the news, bomb attacks... kill... 35 killed... bombing... killing eight Somali pirates... 140 people killed. Then, in On this day, we have armed takeover... Puget Sound War... all day battle... Finnish Civil War... warlord... rebel group. I realize that all these things are topical and relevant, but didn't anything HAPPY ever happen on January 26? I propose that editors choosing these stories include at least one piece of "good news" about science or a discovery or medical breakthrough or something cool about our magically incredible universe. Thank you. Wikipedia rules. -- Torchpratt ( talk) 02:22, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
What is the current community position on citation of the form "XYZ Broadcast News. 16:42 UTC, January 29, 2011."? While I would consider the news to be a reliable source in general, it certainly doesn't make verification very easy in most cases. Personally, they seem better than having no citation, but not great. In particular, what do you do if the television citation seems to be the only source available (e.g. "breaking news") for a surprising or potentially controversial fact? Dragons flight ( talk) 05:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I have no idea where to post this, so I'll try it here. I noticed that User:Tcshasaposse was blocked due to conflict with the WP:NOSHARE policy. On the other hand, these user(s)' additions were quite helpful in the coverage of complexity-theoretic topics, so I wonder whether this issue could be solved in the positive. It would have been a serious loss in qualified input if we'd just told them to go away. Unfortunately, the block entry points to the user talk page, which has been deleted. Comments? Nageh ( talk) 12:49, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee has conducted an internal review of the Audit Subcommittee and is now seeking comment from the community, in particular about the subcommittee's effectiveness to date and ongoing representation from community delegates (" at-large members").
As the October 2009 election yielded few candidates relative to the number of seats available, it has been suggested that filling the non-arbitrator positions by appointment after community consultation (similar to the previous round of CU/OS appointments) would attract a greater number of suitably qualified candidates.
It has also been suggested that greater numbers of community delegates be appointed to ensure adequate ongoing community representation. Should a sufficient number of suitable candidates apply, the committee will appoint three "primary members" along with a number of "standby members" (who will also receive the CheckUser and Oversight privileges) and would stand in should a primary member become inactive or be unable to hear a particular case.
Comments are invited about the above, as well as any other general comments about the Audit Subcommittee. The Arbitration Committee would like to thank outgoing community members Dominic, Jredmond, and MBisanz for their patience and continued participation on the subcommittee while this review process is ongoing.
The next call for applications is provisionally scheduled for 20 February 2011.
For the Arbitration Committee, – xeno talk 18:00, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
When I clicked on the "page view statistics" from an article's edit history, I was shown a button for "Flattr," which is a payment system. See [4]. How is this consistent with Wikipedia policies against advertising? Edison ( talk) 17:17, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
The premise of this post is incorrect, anyway - we just came off several weeks of Wikipedia hounding us with large banner ads to give money. A tiny Flattr button is comparatively benign. -- Golbez ( talk) 20:28, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
What is the policy for the order of links on a disambiguation page? Should they be sorted alphabetically, or semi-alphabetically based on page views. I'm asking as I'd like to know how to order the links on Bing. Smallman12q ( talk) 14:13, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Dispute resolution/Draft ( | 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, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Should we think of WP:COPYVIO as:-
— S Marshall T/ C 00:11, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, along with No original research and Neutral point of view. These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with all three.
I think that it should say:
Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, along with No original research, Neutral point of view, and Do not violate copyright. These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with all of them.
This has met with opposition on the grounds that WP:COPYVIO is not a core content policy. I think it is a core content policy, in that it's a core policy which is about content.— S Marshall T/ C 12:03, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia:Copyright is more appropriate than WP:COPYVIO. In a section called " Copyright in the lead" on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability where there has been a discussion about this issue I made the suggestion that we take a lead from WP:AT and formulate something for the lead of WP:V along the lines of:
These [content] policies, in conjunction with the copyright policy, jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles.
This does away with the need in the body of the content policies to mention copyright, and the inclusion in the lead makes copyright policy a semi-detached member of the three content policies (much as the content policies are for WP:AT). This will hide the complications of copyright (such as copyleft, how much is fair usage, what is plagiarism etc) in the copyright policy, and stop copyright issues from endlessly complicating the three content policies (just as leaving the definition of what is a reliable source in WP:V stops duplication and complication of that term in WP:AT) . -- PBS ( talk) 09:29, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I would like to request that you please look into combining all the various languages in wikipedia.org to make a worldwide database of knowledge. Currently there is no such function available in wikipedia.org and since the people can not learn every language covered by wikipedia.org this would be a valuable resource. While conducting research, information from the European wikipedia.org sites have different information that was graciously translated by people for English-speakers. My resources are limited with information that is not widely dispersed in foreign countries and the inability to translate that information into my own language. Thank you for reviewing my suggestions to further wikipedia and worldwide information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.124.201 ( talk) 20:28, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Contested mergers are often not argued through clearly. That's probably generally agreed (for example see this previous VP discussion). I've been looking for guidance and found this:
Reasons to merge a page include the following: unnecessary duplication of content, significant overlap with the topic of another page, and minimal content that could be covered in or requires the context of a page on a broader topic.
There's a 'rationale' on the same page, but it doesn't go much further. I wonder if there is an essay or something somewhere else which develops this into some kind of guide? Or perhaps experienced editors here can offer advice?
What prompted this enquiry: an editor recently proposed and merged Burlesque (genre) to Burlesque, then another editor recreated Burlesque (genre). There is a duplication issue because the Burlesque (genre) material is currently in both articles. (There is also a closely-related article on Burlesque (literature)). The discussions are here: Talk:Burlesque.
Thank you. -- Klein zach 04:08, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your replies. IMO the difficulty lies with merging (or not) articles of approximately equal importance. (Splitting sub-pages off overlong articles has rarely, if ever, been controversial.) Here are some common scenarios:
In my experience these situations result in poorly-argued discussions that often result in a 'half merge/half split', with a lot of duplicated text (as currently with Burlesque etc.).
How should these situations be handled/resolved? -- Klein zach 01:58, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
The other big problem I find is that in general, discussions on merging or moving articles are underpopulated. There are too many places for editors to review things. I really hoped that merge discussions would be merged into Articles for deletion, as merging is a common outcome there. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 05:04, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Smallbones and I have different opinions about whether Predictions for a second wave of the financial crisis should be kept in Financial crisis (2007–present). By refering to WP:CRYSTAL, Smallbones argues that the predictions are not allowed. However, I think that the policy implies that Wikipedia does not collect unverifiable prediction or editor's own analysis. The predictions in question are verifiable as it referenced to a paper from a peer-reviewed journal. Also, it is common to see predictions in articles, e.g. 2012 contains predictions about Solar eclipse. Another example is 2011 Atlantic hurricane season, which provide predictions of tropical activity. Even if one can argue against a given prediction, we should present the ideas from both sides instead of removing it, like Vulcan (hypothetical planet). I do not want to have an edit war. Please give comments.-- Quest for Truth ( talk) 03:51, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
What is our policy on external links in the body of the article? I'm sure it has been discussed before, but as there is no info on WP:EL there must not be a consensus? I see some discussion currently at WT:EL, and there are tons of topics in the archives. Surely there should at least be some mention in the text of EL so at least people can stop asking what the policy is. I know some of these links are helpful, and some are attempts at refs. Most, however, are either linkspam or links to items that aren't notable enough for articles (check out any List of bands from...' article for examples). Personally, I've always liked the idea of a bot-tagged hidden category, so that we can keep tabs on the good links and get rid of the bad. At the very least, we should make some comment on the practice. Thoughts? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 06:29, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
See this edit. Is that really necessary? It already mentions the order in the text. To have the CBE at the top of the infobox seems overkill. I thought I saw a discussion about this one time but can't remember where I saw it. Garion96 (talk) 21:20, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
When I follow a link (from anywhere) to a Wikimedia project I haven't visited yet, I sometimes get an email in a language I don't speak. The explanation for this is the following.
Getting emails I don't understand just for following a link seems wrong to me, especially because this link can an unidentified link anywhere on the web. But which of the above components is the wrong policy? Or is the fault in something I've done? – b_jonas 17:52, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to tag Jules Verne with {{ reimprove}}? The article, which makes the assertion that Vernes is the father of science fiction has but 4 references, with many sections lacking a reference of any sort. User:Headbomb removed the tag stating "Remove gratuitous templating. There's no set number of references that someone "deserves". Use citation needed tags as needed if you feel some things are not supported by the references and external links)" I don't believe the external links section is designed to serve as a substitute for a references section. Smallman12q ( talk) 23:40, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
I was just wondering about a few technical aspects of blocking that would be inappropriate to test on real users. Is there a practice account that I'm allowed to block and unblock at will? And if not, is it okay to practice on my alternate account? I can't find anything relevant at Wikipedia:Blocking policy. Nyttend ( talk) 03:31, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
The above is my idea for a policy/suggested practice ( Wikipedia:Thanked once, thank twice) to promote civility. This policy (or simply the practice) would also help with the creation of a Wikipedia:Criticizing articles guideline or policy. Hyacinth ( talk) 01:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Actually i was just wondering why moves are marked as minor edits. Simply south.... .. 10:39, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
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I am interested in copying some text licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 material from Knol to a Wikipedia article. The licenses match so I assume this is permissible, but haven't found any suitable template for giving the required attribution. There are templates such as Template:Citizendium but no Knol template. Should such a template be created? Anyone familiar with the policy and requirements regarding such templates? Marokwitz ( talk) 07:23, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
I've recently had several edits reverted by recent change (RC) patrollers. My edits may have been good or bad, but they were not vandalism. They should not have been reverted by editors who didn't take the time to read the article or the Talk page or the article history; the editors shouldn't have labelled me a vandal. So, what concerns me about it is that it happened three times. It appears to be a systemic problem.
The summary of the sequence is: 1) I took out ("blanked") some newly added material and gave a reason in the summary, 2) I did it again (since my revert was reverted by an opposing editor), and didn't repeat my summary, 3) I was reverted for vandalism via GLOO, 4) I undid that without summary, and was reverted again for vandalism via HG, 5) Again, I restored the edit this time with a new and longer edit summary, and 6) Again, I was reverted for vandalism via GLOO. In the last case, my edit--with a summary--was reverted within 3 minutes. I hadn't even finished typing my comment on the Talk page before it was reverted.
None of the patrollers who reverted me had any opinion about the content; they weren't regular editors of the article. They were acting on false positives for vandalism. Uncorrected false positives add fuel to budding edit wars and are generally disruptive. A bot can robotically revert according to some algorithm. Human editors should be accountable for their edits, and for doing things like checking article histories and Talk pages to make sure their accusations of vandalism are accurate. In the ensuing discussion, the patrollers have asserted that the first two false positives were my fault because I didn't use an edit summary. They have argued that they don't have time to check the Talk page. I disagree.
If RC patrollers refuse to take care in reverting, they should not be allowed to patrol. Maybe some sort of limit on the number of false positives, and removal of rollback rights when a limit is breached, would help fine tune patrolling.
The article in question's history is here: [ [5]]. There is a discussion of the issue on my Talk page [ [6]] (you have to scroll down to the paragraph beginning "I have to jump in here. I'm another one of the RC patrollers..." Note: there has been a fair amount of heat in this issue. I'm not trying to defend or apologize for my behavior (except to note that undoing the false positives was considered edit warring by me). I want a discussion of RC patrolling and policy. Should the de facto definition of vandalism be: "any content removal without an edit summary." That's what it has become, among some RC patrollers. Mindbunny ( talk) 07:38, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Reminder: ...there has been a fair amount of heat in this issue. I'm not trying to defend or apologize for my behavior (except to note that undoing the false positives was considered edit warring by me). I want a discussion of RC patrolling and policy. Should the de facto definition of vandalism be: "any content removal without an edit summary." Mindbunny ( talk) 00:22, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
First, I would like to apologize again for instigating this entire tradgedy of errors. Second, let me at least share my rules of thumb for reverting section blanking and submit them for scrutiny and comment.
So in this case it was a sourced section removed with no edit summary. I think I looked at one of Mindbunny's previous reversions in the article and hit the other one with no edit summary. FYI, GLOO allows one to look at the history of the page, but not the talk page or a full view the page itself (which I consider major drawbacks of the tool). What I suspect happened next is that since Mindbunny was warned by myself, s/he showed up red in Huggle for Discospinster after reverting, who then reverted again (and gave a better revert reason, as GLOO unfortunately offers only one message). The next day when reverting, Mindbunny probably showed up red in GLOO for Bped1985, even though s/he used an edit summary and discussed the issue on the talk page due to the previous warnings from myself and Discospinster. Mindbunny, justifiably feeling bitten, then lashed out at all of the aforementioned editors. And Drama Ensued. With regards to the issue of the time-criticalness of RCP, I'm going to disagree a bit with my esteemed colleagues above. RCP is the primary defense mechanism against vandalism in obscure articles. Not every article has an active wikipedian watching it. In an ideal world, there would be enough RCP'ers that every edit on the 'pedia could be closely scrutinized. In the real world, there aren't enough people monitoring the edits to do that. (I can show plenty of edits to my watchlisted articles that were missed by RC patrol for hours). So there is some time pressure to check as many edits as possible, as there is not necessarily someone else to check those edits you can't get to on RCP. There's a balance between speed and accuracy, but with experience the former goes up and the latter approaches zero, as vandalism tends to follow certain patterns like I outlined above regarding section blanking. Sailsbystars ( talk) 01:10, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
From my Talk page history:
The issue is a red herring anyway. The reverts were made by editors making multiple revert per hour, obviously not because they had carefully read the article; they have admitted they never looked at the Talk page. You do that when you think there's vandalism. Berean Hunter has misunderstood the situation in other ways, but that's beside the point. This forum is for discussing policy.
Policies to consider:
I need help in re-wording WP:MOSTM to avoid the exceptions for " iPod" and " eBay" and allow a more consistent rule to only use lower-case names when the term becomes popularized as such; otherwise, use the exact spelling for variety (or spin-off) product names as they are spelled. See: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(trademarks) about:
The policy has been inconsistent, advising to not "invent" names, but people have respelled the museum name "SPAM Museum" (as "Spam Museum") because they saw the word " SPAM" rather than a formal museum name, which should retain the original spelling, as would " iPhone 4" rather than becoming "Iphone Four". Join the discussion on that talk-page. This is a simple rule to define. - Wikid77 10:44, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
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Thinking to hard about the license gives me a headache, but if I understand it correctly it is required that attribution follow an edit. So, if for some reason a user moved their talk page to a new name, blanked that page, and restored the content back to their current talk page without the history, that would break the chain of attribution, right? (We'll get to why anyone would do this later, right now I'm just after the answer to if this is a violation of the licensing) Beeblebrox ( talk) 08:53, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
involved pages are User talk:Porchcrop and User talk:Porchcrop/Older version, discussion already started at User talk:Porchcrop#page move confusion. It's late here, I'm going to bed, hopefully somebody who knows this licensing stuff can take a look here. Beeblebrox ( talk) 09:00, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
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Hello
My first attempt to put my Big Bang Hypothesis on Wikipedia was removed in 2007. I have now further developed my hypothesis and it is perfectly logical, fits many observations by others and I believe it is at the very least worthy of discussion. I would also like to receive a wide audience for it and critical comment to help me develop it further. I make it clear that it is a hypothesis, that is how all theories start out and I would like it published on Wikipedia please.
I have been in touch with the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. They say I have to disprove existing theory first, which amounts to proving a negative as they agree. I believe my hypothesis enhances current theory and fits current observations. Surely there must be some room on Wikipedia for a perfectly logical hypothesis. If my hypothesis is correct it would be ground breaking and lead to a far better understanding of the Universe. On a practical note it could also lead to a machine that could build objects from any energy source, including that we currently term as matter. It would enable a kind of 3 dimensional fax machine, which would greatly assist our exploration of the Universe.
Your help would be appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bwallum ( talk • contribs) 11:16, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Below is the current template for tagging files after a non-free image or sound clip is reduced in size to meet fair use guidelines.
The previous version(s) of this file are non-free and are no longer being used in articles. Therefore, they fail the Wikipedia
non-free content criteria and will be deleted on February 11, 2011. The current version will not be deleted, only previous revision(s). Administrators: If there are no problems with the current version, and it meets the non-free content criteria, please delete the previous version(s) under F5 on February 11, 2011 (seven days after February 4, 2011, when this template was added). Otherwise, please revert the file back to the last acceptable version. Once you're done, remove this tag. Use "change visibility", checking only the "Delete file content" option, in order to preserve the upload history in the "File history" section. |
As you can see, it stipulates that after seven days an administrator can come by and delete the previous, larger version from the page history.
My proposal is simple, eliminate the seven day waiting period.
I have asked multiple people and have yet to find an answer as to how it is useful. In 99.9% of cases, this is a straight resize (or a resize with a minor crop to remove excess white space or a border.) Now, many resizes use a script, and Dashbot automatically resizes any images with the resize tag once a day. For the .1 percent of the time where the resize tag is used maliciously, to remove competing images in an edit war over images, or other such nonsense, removing the seven day waiting period would really have no effect, because it is the deleting administrator's job, whether it's seven days or seven seconds after the changes are made, to make sure that before he deletes the previous versions, that the change is a correct one. It says that in the template already.
With that, I rest my case and open this proposal up for consideration. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:52, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Why the rush? The old versions are not visible in any articles. In the unlikely event that a legal complaint is made in the 7-day period, then the foundation can delete the old version immediately. I don't believe this has ever happened yet. OrangeDog ( τ • ε) 12:18, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Table this? Honestly I think this was the wrong forum for this. Most people seem to have an inaccurate view of the process, it's scope, and it's participants. This is very much a behind the scenes service performed by experienced users. DashBOT itself does not go out hunting for things to resize, it is given its workload by around dozen people with knowledge of the resizing process and knowledge of fair use guidelines. It's so obscure and low impact that I can't think of any cases where it's been used abusively, and if there were any, they would have to be so blatant that any admin would notice them. In the end it boils down to efficiency (the clean up after yourself as you go principal) versus mitigating abuse. Contrary to the comments by Wnt and Nagle, there really is no capacity nor history of abuse in this process. I would have thought therefore that we should lean heavily towards clean as you go. OrangeDog's view, however, is reflective of the community's wait before you delete attitude. At this point, others should feel free to chip in, but barring a dramatic reversal of consensus, I'm ready to table this indefinitely. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:54, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm not amuZed AT-ALL to see one of my former contributions being arrogated by another person and, later, being deleted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Ten_Bulls&action=historysubmit&diff=381564932&oldid=352411446
Being interested in Zen, I gathered, a while ago, the complete 'ox herding' series, downloaded the files, arranged them, created the necessary "fair use rationale" (which is less easy for a non-native speaker) &c. and uploaded the file in WP-allowed format GIF. Took some 3+hours.
I recently noticed that user:Hugahoody downloaded same file, saved it as PNG, re-uploaded it, using same description+rationale, under his own name. Any idiot could have done such within <10min (~1-2min for download, ~3-4min for opening the file and saving it in another format, and another ~1-2min for re-upload the file under his own name). The GIF I originally created and uploaded was afterwards deleted, some day.
Question:
Is this the way contributions to WP shall be handled in the future?
NB: The 2 files on the right edge of this article are no "PD", either. Maybe, Mr. or kid 'Hug~~' takes the time to copy my rationale+file_description over thoseones.
FY ("For Your" information)
[w.] 10:47, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't understand your a). Your b) is wrong: the explanation given was that png supports Lossless data compression and Alpha compositing, neither of which rely on data in the original gif. I slightly sympathise with you in that the person who converted it was incredibly rude not to acknowledge your upload. But I'm not really down with the hissy fit thing. People are sometimes thoughtless. Quite how that translates into "Is this the way contributions to WP shall be handled in the future?" is beyond me. --
Tagishsimon
(talk) 19:53, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
[w.] 08:29, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
I haven't heard much about Pending Changes, so I looked back at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Closure, which so far as I know, was the last thing that happened with this. This discussion/poll, closed as of last September, says "The scheduled two-month trial has ended. The community should now decide if the implementation is to be continued, and it should discuss possible adaptations, in terms of policy. Developers have indicated it would be too complex to turn off the feature, then turn it back on in case the decision is in favor of continuing the implementation, so they will wait for the community decision — unless it takes more than a month, in which case they will turn off the feature."
I don't see anything there or in Help:Pending changes about any subsequent resolution, and there are still between 500 and 1000 pages in Special:StablePages.
Did the decision about what to do with PC ever happen? Did the promised technical upgrades ever occur? Are we still in the same "two months" and the same "month" as we were last September? Wnt ( talk) 21:48, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
Oh, there's also a Wikipedia:Pending changes/Straw poll on interim usage, which occurred somewhat after the previous, with a "hard close date of December 31, 2010". Wnt ( talk) 08:33, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
This is a matter of importance to Wikipedia editors of every language.
According to the policy currently in force, photographs of these exceptional buildings must be deleted from Commons.
Some editors take the view that, as it stands, this policy damages our fundamental mission as an educational resource. Others are happy for things to stay as they are.
You are invited to contribute to the debate at:
and on the talk page of
If you find you are not logged in when you look at these pages then see m:Help:Unified login or you can go directly to Special:MergeAccount to globalise your login. 9carney ( talk) 17:56, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team ( | 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, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Volunteer response team ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Stub templates are meaningless content. Any one can see quickly whether or not an article is a stub. More important is the fact that they do not influence the rate of editing. Every incomplete article is, by definition, a target for expanding. It will happen spontaneously and naturally. If the article is important, it will grow fast. If there is needed an expert, it will grow slowly. No one will see a stub template and think "Hey, this is a stub, I have to expand it immediately".
If there is a need for improving the article, the discussion page is the appropiate and perfect place to dump a stub template. Even more effective. In the article, it is meaningless and redundant.
See also the absurd discussion at the WikiProject Chemicals (scroll to the second part of the discussion).-- Wickey-nl ( talk) 15:34, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
I do see some value in having the stub-templates. It categorises the articles as having 'a problem' (however obvious), and putting them in groups like the category system makes sense as it would allow to group the small articles at least per WikiProject/Subject. I think that further sub-sub-categorising of the stubs is something that should be handled by the projects. There my personal thought would be to keep the stub-categories rather broad, and to keep the number of stub categories to a minimum. The real catagorisation can be done in the conventional way, it is not the task of the stub-templates to do that. However, it may depend on how big a Project-wide stub-category becomes to decide that some sub-sub-categorisation is necessary - but if an article is in categories A, B, C, D, and E, which are all a subset of category F, then stubbing generally is fine in 'stub category F' - if there are one or two categories, it may make sense to put it in the appropriate stub sub-category (note that while there may be only few categories necessary for a page, it may fall under a larger number of WikiProjects - each with their own stub-categorisation, which may massively increase the number of stub-categories, and may result in the list of stub-marks being larger than the article itself - that would be silly.
I don't have a specific preference for the place - mainspace or talkpage - both make sense, it has been a long-standing custom to have them in mainspace, moving them to talkspace would probably need a broad discussion, and a massive cleanup (for a long time, as editors may be unaware of the change in policy and still place them in mainspace). -- Dirk Beetstra T C 09:24, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Someone asked me to help recruit recruit students to edit Wikipedia. That led to my going on my usual soap box to say that Wikipedia needs more experts. As is, articles such as search engine technology and statistical physics have zero references, although the personal life of Charlie Sheen is pretty up to date and the "marketing table" at Britney Spears products looks really impressive.
To be a credible encyclopedia, Wikipedia needs to recruit and "maintain" more experts. I would like to fix both search engine technology and statistical physics, but that would have to wait until 2013, given that in 2011 I am planning to fix all the articles related to computer generated imagery and in 2012 deal with the many scattered articles of robotics, both categories being in need of serious help. And I have not seen anyone work on these articles in a serious way. I can not single-handedly fix them all this decade. So we do need to recruit and maintain experts.
I think the Online Ambassadors programs need to be extended to have a specific focus on the recruitment of "top experts", say 5 professors per field, e.g. 5 professors who know the internet to go and fix the search engine technology related articles. It is just embarrassing for Wikipedia not to have solid information on search engines.
The experts need to be given attention in an ongoing manner, so they will stay with Wikipedia. I am not into long policy discussions, apart from using soap boxes to suggest things. Who can start a program to find experts, give them some type of special treatment so they will work for free and fix these articles? Those of you who know policy should really do something. Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 10:12, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
So there is not always a chance we can find an expert in a field able to write a Wiki article. This problem is compounded by the fact we expect a "common man" reading/comprehension level in most articles.
I'm not sure what you mean by "red carpet" in this context. All I'm saying is that there's no single answer to the issue that Jarry1250 mentioned, and that trying to make a policy to answer it could actually have the effect of making things worse. Mr. Z-man 20:55, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
History, I just don't know what you want us to do. We can't force experts to edit and, those who did show up, often left in a huff because they don't like being questioned by non-experts. — The Hand That Feeds You: Bite 16:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Encouraging expert involvement is a great aim; and anything practical to do that should be encouraged. But there are issues:
Just food for thought; if the aim is to encourage expert involvement then those taking an active role should also be working on ways to mitigate the problems caused by expertise :) -- Errant ( chat!) 16:28, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
History, the Students program is because we already get students coming to Wikipedia to make edits. Often, it's because a teacher/professor had the bad idea to make an assignment out of editing Wikipedia, without knowing the site rules. Trying to correlate that to encouraging expert participation doesn't work. — The Hand That Feeds You: Bite 15:01, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Just wondering, and checking my impressions. Can anyone point me to the latest serious WP: policy or guidance change? IMO, those who wrote them some years ago, now are the admins+ blocking change. What happened with "If needed, break every rule" I grew up with? - DePiep ( talk) 19:24, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
( edit conflict)re Tagishsimon: Your final turn "What makes you think they might not. Where, indeed, are you coming from?" says that you want to make it personal. Not me. Is not what I asked (twice not, actually). Now you do not explain what triggered your tone of reaction, (I have no fixed idea, my Q's are open as you can read). And, reading what you wrote, you did not answer my Q. No one link available? - DePiep ( talk) 19:54, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
(All reactions are appreciated possibly without response. Worth investigating and more. - DePiep ( talk) 21:13, 10 February 2011 (UTC))
I came across the article November 14 2005 Brisbane bomb hoax which raised several ethical questions. This particular article probably fails notability under WP:EFFECT and I may prod it later but I was curious in general if there are policies or essays regarding articles about when and when not to have articles on events caused by criminal hoaxers. In some sense, the article itself is a monument to their hoax and could be seen as a reward by those mentalities that are attracted to such activities as bomb scares or arson. Jason Quinn ( talk) 22:35, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
I have a question guys..recently at Template talk:Infobox Historic Site#Red links i have made mention of the using of red font for link colours. I am pointing to Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates#Navigation templates as our rule of thumd to not use red links for articles that have a name space. However it has been pointed out that at Wikipedia:Link color we actually show editors how to use red front. Is this not s bit confusing. Are red links ok or not? And if not should we not make a note at Wikipedia:Link color that red and for that matter a certain blue is reserved. As mentioned before in the past user-functionality should outweigh aesthetics in all cases. There is no edit wars- just has come to my attention that this is not clear. Moxy ( talk) 17:31, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
The time for vagueness is over, I strongly feel we need some clear guides as to how this is to be used. See Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment February 2011. Beeblebrox ( talk) 23:54, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Proposal_to_merge_two_subsections where I am proposing the merger of WP:NOTDIR and WP:IINFO. The overlap is large, so why not have a shorter stronger section and easier navigability? Casliber ( talk · contribs) 00:14, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable ( | 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, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Through wikisignpost's twitter feed, i read this blogpost:
my daughter (a sophomore in high school) was given an assignment to introduce errors into Wikipedia. Presumably, the intention was to demonstrate that entries could be 'unreliable'. Now, she chose a popular page, and had her changes corrected almost straightaway, to the extent that it was not possible to complete the assignment as given. In fact, she ended up being barred from editing pages as her behavior was seen as unacceptable.
My doubt is do we have a policy to deal with otherwise respectable institutions like schools disrupting wikipedia?. (stern warning, blanket block etc?)-- Sodabottle ( talk) 09:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
I ran into a similar problem at Digital divide-4 editors suddenly appeared adding large, sourced sections to the article. Now, that's generally a good thing, except for the fact that a lot of what they added also contained original research, or was misorganized, or duplicated the same concept as elsewhere in the article, or...So, hey, these are all teachable moments. The odd thing, of course, was that this happened all at once. After asking for a while, I got one of the students to admit that this was a class assignment. I asked for the Wikipedia username of the students teacher so that I could talk to her, or for her to talk to me, and the student said that the teacher doesn't have a username, and doesn't really edit Wikipedia. That was really disappointing, especially since we're putting a lot of effort into the Class/Online Ambassador program specifically to make this happen well. There's nothing wrong with a teacher encouraging students to edit Wikipedia, but it was disturbing that she had done so without even knowing anything about how we work, what our policies are, and good editing behavior. I kind-of wonder what happened, since one of the students had about 90% of xyr work stripped out by me (pulling out the OR and NPOV points), while other editors points remained (because they were closer to sources, thus more compatible with our ethos). Not sure where I'm going with this, but its a weird place to have teachers asking students to get more involved but not giving the tools to do so...or, as in the OP's situation, to deliberately disrupt what we do. Qwyrxian ( talk) 11:18, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
FWIW, see also this 20 April 2007 AN/I I raised about a professor's "demonstration" vandalism for class. -- JHunterJ ( talk) 17:09, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
I looked up Wikipedia:Attribution but it's about attributing other content within Wikipedia. Is there a guide to the citation required?
CC-by-sa (human readable version) says "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work)." Where is this specified? Someone I spoke with from another wiki said that the Wikipedia requirement was to be attributed with a link, therefore a link in the "External links" section on their page is adequate. I suspect that's wrong, but where can I point them for correct info? Thanks. -- Chriswaterguy talk 02:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
WP:DEADLINK and WP:DEADREF give conflicting advice about dealing with dead links used to support article content. Please join the conversation at WT:CITE to help us decide how to resolve the conflicting advice in our guidelines. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 22:17, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Input is needed for WP:Notability (video games) as the WikiProject Video games is trying to streamline their guideline and items off of it that really wouldn't be appropriate for a MOS-style guideline (its not one atm, but its been proposed to be moved to one by others). The notability of video games has been contentious and the GNG doesn't really give enough advice when dealing with some specific circumstances surrounding video games. 陣 内 Jinnai 20:33, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't think the community has consented to advertising through different gadgets, like the mwembed by Kaltura (see bugzilla:23965) or the link to the Georgia Tech school provided in the ProveIt referencing tool (see Special:Preferences and the link: [17]). This seems like contrary to WP:SPAM to me: "Adding external links to an article or user page for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed, and is considered to be spam." What do you think? -- Eleassar my talk 17:15, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Hello I just stumbled upon a reference in microsoft word. I clicked on it just like anything else and was expecting a webpage to come up. Imagine my horror and confusion when a Word document opened. I removed it in this diff. [18]
I searched but couldn't find anything - would it ever be acceptable to have a link/reference in Word? If not, can a bot remove all occurrences?
Thank you. -- CutOffTies ( talk) 14:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
In response to the icon question: see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 81#External link icons proposal and User:Gadget850/ExternalLinkIcons. -— Gadget850 (Ed) talk —Preceding undated comment added 18:22, 19 February 2011 (UTC).
(
Microsoft Word document)
instead of a picture.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 19:20, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
I have started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Recommendation to reword some of the rules suggesting to clarify the rules of use for AWB. Any comments suggestions and input are requested. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:37, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
The recent closing of a move proposal has prompted a question in my mind and I'm interested to see others' views. Many users (incl. admins) have identification icons displayed on their user pages declaring religious, political,or national affiliations, and interests, hobbies, skills etc. What came up was a question over whether someone with a particular religious icon should be closing and making a determination on a particularly emotionally charged ethical subject. I took the view that anyone (and this particularly applies to admins) making a decision on behalf of the community (as opposed to simply editing) should be seen to be neutral as well as actually being neutral, and it was a question of natural justice that no one should be a 'judge in his own cause' (or, at least, a cause closely associated with one of his 'icons'). Many disagreed (some angrily [wrongly] believing it was a breach of WP:NPA) with this, the main contrary points being either it's effectively an 'ad hominem' attack or someone with a particular icon can't automatically be labeled as not neutral or these people have publicly declared their position which is better than concealing it. For me, though, I still think that it prejudices at least the appearance of neutrality. It also concerns me that it may indicate a particularly fervent belief in X which could be inconsistent with neutrality i.e it's one thing to believe/be affiliated with X, it's quite another to want to tell everyone about it. Just to be clear, I'm only talking about the most controversial and highly-charged issues where admin. decisions are being taken (not general editing). So, should these issues be allowed to be brought up/taken into account in determining who should make such decisions?. Oh, and I'm not talking about the case that prompted this - I'm raising it as a general issue for consideration DeCausa ( talk) 15:15, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm strongly opposing this. Even the suggestion that someone is acting in a bias manner because of their religious or other beliefs is against the spirit of WP:AGF. There is no reason a Christian editor(which makes up a huge percent of editors on Wikipedia) should have their motives questioned on Christianity-related pages simply for being Christian(or any other belief). If you disagree with someone's actions then challenge the action, cite policy against the action but do not challenge the user in place of that. AerobicFox ( talk) 19:31, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Administrators are not moderators. They must close discussions taking into account the consensus, not their own opinion of what should be done (which may be welcomed, but discussing it as editors like any other). If an admin closes a discussion with a result againt the consensus achieved (which may or may not be the result of his own bias), then that's something that would merit being reported. The fact itself of having a bias, not. MBelgrano ( talk) 20:11, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Most editors (admins are editors too) tend to work in subject areas in which they are already familiar. While it does require care, editing or making decisions in a subject area with which one is familiar does not mean the editor/admin has a conflict of interest or cannot maintain a neutral point of view. To quote part of something I wrote months back: "...nor would it be a conflict of interest for me to write about MediaWiki or Wikipedia because I've contributed here."
This is something I've become quite vocal about due to a past conflict with a now indef'd editor, and while this was probably an extreme case, it does show another area in which Wikipedia desperately needs improvement. To sum up an otherwise massive story, this particular editor took joy in actually following me from article to article (as well as categories, templates, etc) in order to make false accusations that I was violating NPOV, COI, [insert guideline/policy here], etc. (I later discovered that this individual had done the same sort of things to many other editors, in a serial-type fashion moving from editor to editor, most of whom eventually stopped editing and left Wikipedia completely.) In my case, this individual targeted me both on and off-wiki for roughly 18 months before they were indef'd on Wikipedia for making personal attacks towards me.
From what I've witnessed and experienced, I think a much larger issue which might be better to consider and address is a general lack of accountability. While everyone makes a mistake once in awhile (no one is perfect), by in large editors are not held accountable for their actions when it comes to things such as bad AfD nominations, questionable page moves, etc. I can't count the number of times I've seen computing and technology related articles which covered subjects which would have been familiar to readers who were familiar with larger computing/technology subtopics that were sent to AfD without the nom doing any research first. I've also seen this from AfD participants. Basically, "Delete: I've never heard of it, so it can't be notable, Wikipedia doesn't need an article on this".
I also can't help but wonder how much Wikipedia was set back in terms of growth and improvement by the individual I mentioned above who took joy in attacking other editors. Because nearly all the editors this individual targeted eventually just gave up (I refused to give up, which cost me in other ways), we lost contributors who would have otherwise improved existing articles or created new content. How much did we lose simply because this individual was not held accountable for their actions earlier on? I really feel that a lack of accountability might actually be more the core issue with some of what you are trying to address above. -- Tothwolf ( talk) 05:14, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
Does anyone remember the userbox wars? -- Donald Albury 10:39, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Here's the problem. It is reasonable to suggest that someone carrying a belief/position usebox has a view or an opinion in that area. It is less reasonable, but understandable, to suggest that this influences their decision making process in closing discussions. BUT what about the myriad of people without a userbox, they might have even stronger views in that area - and, so, their close is potentially even more strongly influenced! Bottom line is we cannot second guess anyone's motives. The only way we can judge someone here is on their actions; so you look at that close and see if it is in line with consensus (after all, an closers only aim is to judge consensus, not make an opinion). If it is not then questioning their motives and beliefs is not the right process; that they may or may not exist is irrelevant. We question their approach to the process of closing a discussion and perhaps stop them from interacting in those areas if it becomes habit to try to bypass consensus. But the thing is; people hold opinions about everything - mostly we are pretty good at avoiding influence from them, so it is good faith to assume we are doing so. FWIW I carry a userbox noting my personal "beliefs" with a link to a page explaining perhaps my strongest bias, and why I try to avoid interacting in those areas. -- Errant ( chat!) 12:06, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
I couldn't agree with DeCausa more that anyone flaunting their allegiance to a particular "side" of a debate would be unwise to close a debate abut that subject, or indeed to perform contentious reverts in that area. Unfortunately these are often the only experts or indeed interested editors we have in an area, and sometimes the expert knowledge is essential, interest also helps.
Rich
Farmbrough, 15:12, 20 February 2011 (UTC).
Being concerned about a possible COI of a closer makes sense, but I believe the proposal would be wholly ineffective. The determined COI closer could simply choose to remove the userbox(es). (By the same token, one can add userboxes that misrepresent one's own identity, which may have its advantages to a COI editor as well.) The way things are set up currently, probably the only way to effectively contest a COI closure would be to demonstrate the COI through diffs throughout the closer's editing history, which could admittedly be rather cumbersome (I'd like to see more Wikipedia advanced search options). One might argue that Wikipedia should require all editors to edit under their full legal names and city of residence, having provided legal evidence of the same to register, and COI would under those circumstances likely be considerably easier to demonstrate. However, I really don't see that ever happening.
Шизомби (Sz) (
talk) 15:59, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
I know this has been discussed to death, but I'm not aware of any relevant policy or consensus. From what I can tell, in articles: decades go from xxx0-xxx9. Centuries go from xx01-xx00. Millenniums from x001-x000. Is there an MoS guideline, consensus, policy or anything that covers this? I'm so sick of the arguing. I'm under the impression that although technically these groupings span from the year 1, not the year 0, society simply ignores this and recognizes '9's as endings, '0's as beginnings. Swarm X 07:39, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
What is Wikipedia? I am certain you will agree it is more than an attractive set of pixel-bound volumes resting upon the digital shelves of our second-living rooms. For myself, I have not yet decided exactly what Wikipedia is, but I am enjoying the process of discovery this question entails.
Perhaps for a moment we might consider our encyclopedia as a world in itself; a biosphere; a collection of living and nonliving things, interacting together within a framework of natural laws, subject to environmental pressures and natural selection, powered by solar energy, continuously changing and continuously seeking equilibrium.
This equilibrium is essential to the natural diversity of life, indeed ultimately to the survival of all life. Nature seems to love diversity; it seldom fills an ecological niche with one species when twenty can survive. This diversity in turn lends strength to nature through resilience and endless adaptations. So it is with our encyclopedia. Articles flourish and multiply. They divide. They wither, then spring up again in new forms. The environment changes and life evolves; new ideas, new technologies, new realities, new articles and new perspectives on old articles.
But not all our ecosystems are equally diverse and resilient. Some receive less rainfall, less sun. Some environments are harsh; they can only support slow, gradual steady growth. Some can only recover from trauma over a long period of time.
Please join me in taking just a moment to reflect upon what kind of encyclopedia, what kind of world, if you will, we wish to see when we peer in through these little LED displays. Shall it be one filled with diversity? Diversity of thought, diversity of ideas, diversity of culture. Can this diversity give us the strength and resilience to withstand change and grow? I say Yes.
The evolutionary process of our encyclopedia need not be solely a matter of mindless natural selection, and survival of the fittest. That's not how you make a good encyclopedia anyway. Science in medieval Islam and Mathematics in medieval Islam will take a long time to recover. First, there was the abuse and neglect. Overly enthusiastic editing, with no one around to stop the excesses. And in the end, it only took a couple of editors with a chainsaw to bring several hundred years of the shared history of our world crashing down. There is an issue we need to confront here in our little world. It's being discussed, it's being studied, but we don't really seem to have faced it straight on. Yet. It's about the effects of systemic bias on our encyclopedia.
Aquib ( talk) 01:51, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
To the extent that it is reasonable that articles about individuals require that the individual meet notability criteria, I would suggest that also in order for an article to exceed a certain length, say, 100 words, further criteria be met.
This was inspired by the lengthy David Icke article -- I am not sure, but I would guess that it is longer than the article on, say, Bertrand Russel. (Actually, it looks close.)
I don't know if storage space is an issue for Wikipedia and this is not why I am proposing this. Obviously, long articles can be edited after they are written, but I would argue that requiring special permission to create lengthy articles would encourage at least better writing and as mentioned is consistent with the sentiment that underlies the notability requirement.-- Jrm2007 ( talk) 13:10, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
One hundred words was meant as a for instance and is almost certainly too low; a generous default for even low-notability bios would be okay. And the primary motivation is not to encourage better writing -- it is to do whatever good things the notability requirement does. I am saying that in the same way including non-notable person's bio in Wikipedia is considered "bad", devoting too much space to an insuffiently notable person's bio must also be bad.
What is the purpose of the notability requirement? Is it valuable? If so, I suggest that article length should be governed then also by degree of notability. Frankly, whatever it takes to shorten articles like Icke's would be great. Jrm2007 ( talk) 16:19, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
Okay, here is how I think my idea would work in practice. In the same way an article can be a candidate for deletion on the basis of lack of notability, I am suggesting an analogous thing: an article is candidate for shortening on the basis of lack of sufficient notability. This is not saying, delete the article, it is saying justify the length or shorten it. I can object to the length and ask someone who is more familiar with topic to fix it -- my objection to length should not mean that I myself have to shorten it. Jrm2007 ( talk) 16:31, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
I think that, for the purposes of Jrm2007's proposal, a better choice of articles would be Pokemon and Rock blasting. I could see how an outsider, not familiar with how we build articles, could come along and see the disparity in length between the two subjects, and think that its perverse that the Pokemon article is longer than the Rock blasting article. I'm not saying I support this proposal, just that I can see where Jrm2007 is coming from. RadManCF ☢ open frequency 22:23, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't support any restriction on the length of articles. (except of course, that they have to be verifiable, sourced, and not copied or plagiarized) The notability process is already more trouble than it's worth, without adding extra steps. And a length limit would put editors at each other's throats even more than now, trying to delete good material just so they can add their own. Wikipedia has a much better answer with summary style and an ever expanding series of sub-articles for major topics (or at least topics of interest to contributors).
Wnt (
talk) 18:31, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
Another aspect of this is the subtle POV-push of expanding an article to bolster the reputation of the subject. An example: one of the longest articles (and possibly the longest) on a post-WW2 British politician is Enoch Powell. It's 133kb + spin-off articles (for reference, in comparison Margaret Thatcher is 113kb and Tony Blair is 107kb). (For those that don't know, Powell was a right-wing politician who became prominent in the early 70s and late 60s as a rsult of advocating allegedly racist policies, but ultimately having little impact on British politics. His main claim to fame is hived off into a 25k article.) There's some dubious parts of the text, but on the whole it reads reasonably NPOV. However, the length is, to my mind, a more subtle way of giving the subject greater importance than desreved, and quite a subtle way of pushing a POV, IMO. DeCausa ( talk) 18:33, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
Ideal as it would be to steer editors from long articles on subjects of limited notability or importance to short articles on subjects of great notability or importance, I don't know how that could practically be done. More advanced wiki software might be able to, when someone clicks an edit link on a long article, put suggestions of short articles in similar categories as the long one with wikilinks to them above the open edit window. But the software would have no way of knowing how notable or important those other articles are, so it could end up suggesting non-notable things grow, and that would defeat the purpose. I guess Watson (artificial intelligence software) might be able to recognize someday how impactful a subject has been, but he'd probably end up rewriting all the articles himself rather than make suggestions to mere people who won't do as good a job.
Anyway, it's not the size that matters, it's what you do with it. With regard to the Icke article, in a number of instances the references used are primary source documents by Icke himself. Apart from the issues of OR and UNDUE with the use of primary sources, per the WP:SPS and WP:ABOUTSELF sections of WP:Verifiability, in the case of Icke, the only time an Icke reference should ever appear is when it's in the form of: <ref>{{Reliable third-party source reference}} citing {{David Icke questionable self-published source reference}}</ref>. It's odd, but that doesn't seem to have been brought up on that article's talk page. Шизомби (Sz) ( talk) 04:44, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
There has been some argument that certain main space content does not require references. These arguments tend to be about lists or article stubs, but could be about any main space content. The rational being the per Wikipedia:Verifiability, only content "challenged or likely to be challenged" actually needs to be referenced. I am officially challenging any main space content (article, stub, list, disambiguation page) that is completely without references, currently on Wikipedia. You may also consider it likely that I will challenge any new content added without references. Anyone that would like assist in adding references is welcome to join me at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles where we have been working on this task since May 2007. Our back log is huge, over 250,000 article. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:56, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Challenging millions of articles simultaneously, most of which you cant have read - that sounds like a job for WP:SPIDERMAN (grin). Seriously, this has been debated at WP:V over and over, and the consensus that has formed is that references are only required for certain things. The idea that you could get around this consensus by formally "challenging" things you haven't read is a little too legalistic for our system. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:48, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Andrew Lancaster was right, I didn't mean to create a "good faith" condition and never should have put that in there. So it should say to amend it to say that the challenge is to include raising a question (any question) beyond just its lack of a citation. Sincerely, North8000 ( talk) 20:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
"There has been some argument that certain main space content does not require references. These arguments tend to be about lists or article stubs" Citations on lists was discussed recently at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 45#Verification of lists. A discussion about stubs is currently ongoing at Template talk:Unreferenced#Proposal.
JeepdaySock you challenge seems to be potentially very pointy. Errant makes some good points which I would sum up as a challenge to un-cited content has to be base on a test of reasonableness if it is not to be seen as disruptive. BTW I have just checked Main Page and today it has neither citations or an unreferenced template ( BEANS)-- PBS ( talk) 00:49, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
This keeps coming up, so I want to point this out again.
is not the same as
Deleting an unreferenced article just because nobody bothered to add references in some arbitrary timeframe is not helpful. We should be adding references not deleting. Only after a serious attempt to reference an article has been made — only then should we start thinking about deletion. Thank you. - Hydroxonium ( H3O+) 03:05, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
┌────────────────────────────┘
I, and many others, routinely add references to unreferenced articles. Many sit for years, but I have never come across one that had false information in it. As for "refimprove", I will add references for the things I can easily find but I usually leave the refimprove tag in place. I must admit that I loath having to add references to somebody else's article. It sucks and I wish people did it from that start — but — per policy, that is not a reason to delete in and of itself. -
Hydroxonium (
H3O+) 14:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
North8000's proposal to add "a challenge is to include raising a question about the material other than that it is uncited." is worth further consideration. It is unfortunately common for editors to state that they are "challenging" all uncited content in an article and remove it. I don't think this is what is intended by the policy (neither is Jeepday's "official challenge"). Fortunately, Jeepday is too reasonable to suggest deleting all uncited content. Not all editors are.-- SaskatchewanSenator ( talk) 20:16, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
I want to bring to your attention an actual case, which exemplifies the problem of "challenging" unsourced material. In particular, the editor systematically threw out sentence after sentence, even sourced ones, and then brought it to AfD. This is not a single case, this is happening again and again. Here is the AfD discussion: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Acupuncture_point (some editor restored the content previous to deletion). Input by regulars welcome. Nageh ( talk) 18:12, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
After all, this one was a false positive. Nageh ( talk) 22:36, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
And what about challenging the factual accuracy of well-referenced statements? I'll give two local examples:
What are we to do about well-sourced nonsense?-- Robert EA Harvey ( talk) 09:36, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
In example #1, if the fact of the Hall's construction is verifiable then clearly there is a factual, but sourced, inaccuracy and it can sensibly be removed. Probably the same in the second example, though I have not looked into the specifics for now. There is a general misconception that WP:V and WP:TRUTH can be boiled down to "Wikipedia reports what exists in reliable sources, even if it is inaccurate". It is the latter that is incorrect; so long as we can show the inaccuracy trivially there is no issue with removing it. WP:V simply defines the basis of inclusion of material, not defining the extent to which material may be included. WP:TRUTH is a humorous chastisement for those who are here to invoke their own opinions on what is accurate - bypassing the process of reliable publishing. It is not a general indictment against due diligence over material. To be 100% clear; in the first example, the trivially verifiable dates involved means that the sources can be considered unreliable for that specific claim, making it unverified. -- Errant ( chat!) 12:05, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
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These are technically not encyclopedic at all. Examples of them are swear words, and
But individual articles like this are nevertheless pretty popular, I tried to write a policy to cover them, and I would appreciate comments on it:
WP:Encyclopedic dictionary articles Lexicograffy ( talk) 18:49, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps like Batman with his batcar this and batplane etc. the world needs to strap on a tool belt with a few new wikis -how about a Wikigossip, and a Wikiconjecture, a Wikidafttheories and a Wikiwhatwikipediarejects ? An editor just dumped 25,000 characters of lovely Hiberno-english words many of then swear words from the Hiberno-English page as some of them were poorly or un- referenced to scholarly sources. Sometimes articles and the site lose richness through over vigourous pruning and rigid interpretation of verifiability and notability and indiscriminate.-- Tumadoireacht ( talk) 02:25, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
A few years earlier, I have "reorganized" the content of the Holidays and observances (H&O) section for each days of the year, making sure that the guideline has consistent writing style and making sure that real holiday is placed in the H&O section.
The guideline for all H&O for 366 articles for each days of the year has been regulated by the H&O guideline in Wikipedia:DOY. However, the current Wikipedia:DOY guideline for the H&O section is too short, unclear, and does not accommodate the many kinds of holidays that is there. As a result, various inconsistent writing styles and various incorrect holidays keep reappearing in the H&O section.
Although the writing style for each of the 366 articles has been made consistent for the past few years, there are still conflicting opinions regarding the formatting (e.g. alphabet sort or not) and the contents (e.g. saint days) that should be included in the H&O section.
Therefore, there is a need to create a new text for the H&O guideline as well as few changes regarding what kind of holidays should be placed in the H&O section.
I would like to invite any interested parties to see and check carefully the proposed expansion of H&O guideline in here and leave comments, critics, or questions in its talk page.
-- Rochelimit ( talk) 20:08, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm at the British Library Editathon in London (see WP:GLAM/BL). I was just having a discussion with a British Library curator and their site uses Microsoft Silverlight but with a fallback option. Are there any policies regarding external links or references and whether or not they point to content that requires proprietary plugins like Silverlight and Adobe Flash? I mean, you don't see that many YouTube links on Wikipedia. I can understand why there might be an issue, but I can't seem to find any policies on this. — Tom Morris 16:29, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
How do porn stars rate being in Wikipedia? For that matter others in the acting profession who are nothing more than bit players. Many of them have won no awards or nominations. And then there are bios written by people who must have been their friend or a relative as there are personal details that only close friends or family would know. I only know of Traci Lords and John Holmes. Traci was a porn star at 18 and washed out at 21 basically. John starred in many films and I have no idea what his claim to fame is. You seem to want only those who have notability as defined by your standards. It also seems if you can not search for it online the information does not exist. I really wonder how objective the all powerful administrators are here at Wikipedia. Sincerely, Dacorbandit ( talk) 02:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
If I, as a trained journalist, said in one of my articles that I am 94% objective, I'd be laughed out of the profession. Coming close to the truth in an article is desirable generally, but claiming to be 94% objective is a little much. The man who wrote the recent WP bio about me (I'm David Joseph Marcou) knows a great deal about my life and career. What is wrong with that? You can't tell me pornstars have their bios written by professors at Harvard or Yale, or maybe they do, though they do put out a lot of publicity, apparently, sort of like government press releases. Sometimes the latter are fairly reliable; sometimes they're not. Personally, I know that it takes a heap of living and a lot of learned wisdom to render generally "objective" judgments, and your editors/administrators might now have obtained as much of either as you think. The man who wrote the Wikipedia bio about me listed 10-11 sources, at the start. He was adding more, with your prompts, and at least half were online, so you didn't even have to go to a library and read a book, though my autobiography isn't online and is only in one or two libraries ("If I Do the Research, the Lord Brings Me Luck"); but I've seen bios on your system with only three sources, and little notability is how I translate the bio material itself, and you keep those bios up there, not slating them for deletion the day they go up, like the one about me. Politics perhaps? Since when isn't the Pulitzer Prize my group and I were nominated for in 2000, not notable? Or the two Pulitzers I'm currently being nominated for? And since when doesn't writing the first article, it still seems to me, about letters from Mother Teresa (17 letters from her to me), which I wrote in 1994 for Catholic Digest, not count as notable? And since when don't photos and books by me in many leading libraries and archives around the world, not count as notable? I've got many works in various Smithsonian Archives; forget my portrait of Bert Hardy and his dogs in the British National Portrait Gallery Collection, though it's a better portrait than most professionals could take, and forget my books in the MOMA Library, the International Center of Photography Library, the George Eastman House Library, and national libraries in many parts of the world. And forget the eight beautiful Presidential Campaign photos of mine published in the NY Times online exhibit 'Documenting the Decade are they not notable? – simply because you can't search my name generally on the NYTimes site and easily find those photos, doesn't mean they're not there. If you look through the exhibit, carefully, you'll see every one of my eight photos there, when hardly anyone else among the hundreds of photographers in that exhibit has more than two photos there. But don't try to forget my son, Matthew, who serves in the US Army, whom I taught to use, when he was 3 years old, a computer keyboard and a camera, both of which he now handles magnificently. In fact, when he was 13, he typed the entire 100,000-word manuscript for the first volume of 'Spirit of America', which I directed and co-edited, and which won a national award. My son, by the way, is a superb young man, and I actually did have something positive to do with his upbringing. You can, I'd guess, forget the 11 years I taught adults writing and photography at a technical college, when we turned out about a dozen good anthologies, formed up, with notable additions, to the group I direct, the American Writers and Photographers Alliance, which has included the likes of Annie Leibovitz, John Loengard, Bert Hardy, Harry Benson, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dmitri Kessel, Vernon Biever, John Biever, Msgr. Bernard McGarty, and sponsors like the owners of Kwik Trip Stores (the Zietlows), and a whole lot of other good people, all of whom contribute to our books. Or the poems and plays I've written, including the sequel to O'Casey's 'Juno and the Paycock', mine being 'Song of Joy--Or the Old Reliables', which was critiqued positively by the National Theatre of Ireland, and successfully produced in 2008. What did I do in my life to warrant such unfair treatment from your administrators-editors? I assure you, though I'm not perfect, I didn't do anything as wrong as what you call “objective criticism” by Wikipedia administrators-editors.-djm. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.202.153.178 ( talk) 04:25, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
I had not finished writing the article at the time it was deleted. Why the rush? I stated it needed some editing and someone commented about better clarification on some points. Perhaps an article should be up for deletion when completed and under review in order to move to the main page. I have nothing against people being porn stars, but I associate pornography with drugs, degrading females, and possibly organized crime. I looked at the notability for porn stars and in my opinion it was drawn up by people who like porn or a group in the porn industry that also drew up the award guidelines. Sincerely, Dacorbandit ( talk) 04:36, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
"It also seems if you can not search for it online the information does not exist."
*facepalm*
There's a reason real academic works rarely cite online sources. A lot of really good info doesn't make it online.--
AerobicFox (
talk) 07:27, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Recently I have been working on cleaning up the usage of {{ cquote}}. That template drops fancy quote graphics around the quoted text - and is for use on pull quotes. WP:MOSQUOTE (and the template doc) say very clearly and unambiguously that it should be used sparsely and only for pull quotes - instead normal quotes should use {{ quote}} or {{ quotation}}. However; I suspect the vast majority of article misuse the template - I've been through about... 100 of the transclusions, and I would say only about 5 to 10 use it for pull quotes. Which is a bit mad. I think the reason it gets misused is because it "looks pretty" (at least, that is why I started using it, wrongly, before reading our guidelines).
The questions I have are:
Any help (particularly fixing the issue :D) is much appreciated! -- Errant ( chat!) 21:12, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
It's not a good idea to go through articles changing this. If people aren't using it the way the MoS says, then consider changing the MoS to bring it into line with actual practice. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 17:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Used to attract attention, especially in long articles, a pull-quote is a small selection of text "pulled out and quoted" in a larger typeface. A pull-quote may be framed by rules, placed within the article, span multiple columns, or be placed in an empty column near the article. Pull-quotes provide a teaser that entices the reader into the story.
— About.com
In the article 0 (year) is claimed that year 0 does not exist. However, look at my comment All counting, including time counting starts from 0, please. -- WPK ( talk) 10:33, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
How many times have we pressed "save page" only to realise that we have forgotten to include the edit summary, tick the "minor edit" box or have omitted useful information or made an obvious typo? Is there any way that edit summaries can be retrospectively amended? Should this ability be restricted to the original editor and, perhaps, admins. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 12:38, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(people)#Proposed_text_for_.22Perpetrators.22
More comments would be welcome. -- FormerIP ( talk) 04:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
A fairly simple question. What is notable about ethnicity? Everybody seems obliged to 'belong' to 'an ethnicity', at least by the norms of contemporary Western culture. If everyone has it, how is their ethnicity notable? It clearly isn't. Yet Wikipedia is plagued by endless disputes about lists of 'ethnicity X', category 'ethnicity Y', and even lists of 'citizens of A who are ethnically one (or more) of X, Y, Z or similar' (see List of Hispanic and Latino Americans). I fail to see how any of this merits inclusion in an encyclopaedia. This is not a database (or at least, it shouldn't be), so why create arbitrary lists and categories about non-notable facts about (supposedly) notable people? I suspect I'm going to told that I'm wrong, but can someone actually tell me why this particular arbitrary social construct is more significant than people's star signs or shoe size? Unless they can, I'd like to suggest we stop this ethnobureaucratic data-mining exercise, and delete all these lists and categories for good. AndyTheGrump ( talk) 21:27, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
{{
sofixit}}
ing it --
slakr\
talk / 22:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)"Notable" is a poor choice of words, seeing as we use it to mean "subject that merits its own article"; using it to further mean "fact that merits inclusion in an article" is just confusing. Or maybe it's intended to equivocate, to implicitly raise the bar for fact inclusion higher than merely verifiable and encyclopedic?
In any case, it's simply ridiculous to argue in the absolute that ethnicity is never relevant. Ethnic divisions often remain within regions after centuries regardless of political boundaries (former Yugoslavia, anyone?), retain community coherence within immigrant populations after many generations, have had distinct and identifiable impacts on certain professions, and have historically been the subject of persecution (to the extreme of ethnic cleansing), and are the basis for cultural pride organizations. So in many cases, it's not only appropriate to mention ethnicity in an encyclopedia article, but necessary for an understanding of the subject. And lists, which index subjects by shared facts (not merely those for which they are notable) are appropriately used to index common heritage, which often correlates with common experiences. So the claim that none of it merits inclusion in an encyclopedia is not even worth arguing with. "If everyone has it, how is it notable?" Everyone has a birthdate, too.
However...ethnicity doesn't always merit mention in a subject's article because not all bio subjects have significant, identifiable ethnicities apart from their nationalities. Those who claim that ethnicity is always relevant (or even meaningfully verifiable) are being no more reasonable than those who claim that it's never relevant. To that extent, I'd agree with the removal of it from infoboxes, if that field somehow compels people to try and fill it in regardless of whether it's meaningful. Infobox fields also can't really include any nuance or explanation, so while it may be worth mentioning in article text that someone had a Cossack grandfather or whatever, it would not be equally appropriate to apply an infobox label on that basis. postdlf ( talk) 16:21, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
What's notable about nationality? Nothing. Being Italian, French or British is hardly a notable feature per se. Yet we continue to indicate nationality in practically all our bios, as far as I know. What's different about ethnicity? I can agree there can be a few contentious cases, but in most cases just follow what reliable sources say and let's stick at that; what's the advantage of removing such information? -- Cyclopia talk 01:16, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
To the OP: Reliable sources, from birth certificate to obituary and most things in between, frequently note a person's ethnicity, and Wikipedia handles biographies from the point of view of presenting accurate and relevant data as found in reliable sources. From a personal, philosophical standpoint, I agree with you that ethnicity is merely a social construct, and carries no more weight than that which society gives it. But oh, what weight society has been giving it down through the ages and still today, wouldn't you agree? After all, who have we been and what have our experiences, opportunities and challenges been but for our social constructs? Before you answer that, I would point out that nationality, religion, democracy, capitalism, and sexuality are "merely" social constructs as well. Abrazame ( talk) 01:55, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Race and ethnicity exist as real concepts. They are also widely viewed as being social constructs, but Wikipedia would disintegrate in an instant if we were to delete all material relating to social constructs. On the other hand, there may be a good case for saying that the ethnic identity (as well as identity in terms of religion, sexuality etc) is often included in WP articles in a way that is WP:UNDUE when it is given prominence in an infobox or in the first line of a lead. IMO it would be a good thing if Wikipedia operated an explicit presumption against this. I think the debate gets confused because there is another (IMO less clear-cut) view out there that identifying a person's race, religion etc (although I concede that sexuality may be a different case here) should be judged according to a higher than normal standard of verifiability. I think care in keeping the two (legitimate in their own ways, but different) debates separate would help to avoid confusion. Just an opinion. -- FormerIP ( talk) 02:58, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
My impression is that "ethnicity" was a fairly uncommon and largely technical word until WWII and its immediate aftermath. What happened then was that the concept of "race" got called into question because
Thus the word "ethnicity" - understood to be some necessarily fuzzy sort of way to refer to, say, a group of people currently sharing a language, place, ties of kinship, etc.- came to be preferred. See, e.g., The Race Question.
The issue is, of course, that some have simply switched to using the word "ethnicity" while keeping - consciously or unconsciously - the mental habits that went with the use of the word "race". If an "ethnicity", however defined, is not used to talk about a set of people, but rather to label, list and classify individuals on the basis of descent - with the inevitable implication that this somehow determines who they truly are - then "ethnicity" is simply being used as a Trojan horse for some sort of nationalism or the same old ideological habits that go with the use of the term "race".
What to do in practice?
Note, moreover, an added advantage of removing category labels and the like consistently. In the current situation, removing or not including a label stating that X was a Foo is taken by some, rightly or wrongly, as an implication that X was not a Foo, or that X was some sort of entity called a Non-Foo. If such labels were not used to begin with, there would be no such implication.
For example: the facts that
Evo Morales grew up bilingual in Spanish and Aymara, that he was born to peasant parents, etc., are interesting and relevant. At the same time, putting "Ethnicity: Aymara" in the infobox seems (to me) to be unnecessary and redundant (in spite of his self-identification as the first indigenous president of his country). If I went and argued for it to be removed now, I could be mistaken to support the position (which I personally find perfectly obnoxious) that Morales is not Aymara, or not Amerindian, for this or that reason (Spanish last name, being educated (see Vargas Llosa's infamous position piece on this), etc.). If the infobox entry were consistently removed, there would be no such implication in its absence - and the article wouldn't lose anything by its absence either.
Feketekave (
talk) 20:10, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
I think one issue with ethnicity on the English-speaking WP is that it is mainly an American construct; the vast majority of Americans are not far generationally removed from another country. However, most other countries (as far as my experience goes) are fairly homogeneous. I apologize to the non-American editors here on the English WP for having to try and understand America's identity crisis.
Angryapathy (
talk) 21:03, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
While I no longer edit Wikipedia, it was always a pet-peeve of mine the bullying that went around, especially at places like AN/I where if you made a complaint about bullying some would come right out and admit, "I dont have to defend my actions, I just have to bloody the witness so you look worse" (exact quote). And I always thought that was a reprehensible action in a court of law, it was just as bad in a place like Wikipedia. I tried numerous times to bring up bullying and have a discussion, and in light of the laws passed in the state of Missouri, USA and the national focus on Albany County, NY, USA bringing to court the first enforcement of an anti-bullying law (there's being one of the broadest- "including the act of communicating through electronic means by posting or disseminating embarrassing, false, or sexual information with no legitimate purpose in order to humiliate, torment or harm another person" and it can be a single time as opposed to ongoing). I think a discussion regarding how bullying is tolerated and implementation of zero-tolerance regardless of a user's contribution history. Have fun discussing. I came only to foster discussion, I have other things to do now. 148.78.249.32 ( talk) 21:19, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Hello, I know Wales has made Wikipedia a charitable organization. Now that Wikipedia has the fifth highest hit count on the Internet it is worth potentially billions of dollars. What internal controls are in place to ensure that it is never privatized by the current management team or others in the future? Remember, money corrupts even the most virtuous!! Perhaps, somebody should create a webpage on this topic. Thank you Zabanio ( talk) 15:44, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
In a recent interview Sue Gardner emphasized that the Foundation would remain a non-profit: "We don't move in the world of IPOs and valuation and investment. We never talk about it, we never think about it."
And this new interview with the main proponent of the 2002 Spanish Wikipedia fork Enciclopedia Libre, where concerns about possible advertising were a main reason, is quite illuminating (look for a summary in next week's Signpost). He claims that it shaped much of the direction that Wikipedia has taken since, and recounts interesting hurdles to the right to fork - they had to copy over articles one by one because Jimmy Wales wouldn't give them access to download the full database. While I am sure that the interview shows only one side of the story, it is nevertheless a really interesting read.
Regards, HaeB ( talk) 02:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
I started a discussion at WT:External links#Spam links becoming standard practice. Seems like something others may be interested in. — Timneu22 · talk 17:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Today's featured article demonstrates many of the practical problems with Wikipedia editing and with its administration. I invite contributions to the ongoing discussion here: [3]. The article, of course, by policy, cannot itself be modified by anon users. The given and most important reason for this is protection against vandals. However the policy also protects against criticism of the process of creating a Featured Article. And that? Is dishonest and utterly contrary to Wikipedia goals. 98.210.208.107 ( talk) 23:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Policy question regarding image use and content. I looked in the Manual of Style and Image Use Policy but didn't find anything directly referencing this – so I'm soliciting an opinion / starting a discussion here. While we are all encouraged to upload our own photographs of places, particularly of the articles are lacking pictures and if our work is of decent quality, what about this: a single photographer has uploaded dozens of photographs of places along the California coast, and each one contains a person. It appears to be the same person in each picture. What do you think of this? The person usually has his back to the camera, and sometimes is centered (for example here -- File:17milecypruspoint.jpg) and sometimes is off to the side (as here – File:Guadalupedunes.JPG or here File:Santabarbaraview2.jpg ). Occasionally the pictures fail to illustrate their subject – in File:Gaviotaview.JPG , the pier is within the state park, as is the road shoulder in the foreground, but the picture is really a shot of the coastline and ocean outside of the park. Many of these are lovely pictures but for the figure -- is this a new type of vanity entry? Am I being too sensitive? What does anyone else think? Antandrus (talk) 17:18, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
It isn't necessarily in bad faith; it could just be that these were snapshots that the taker later decided had some information in them, regardless of the friend. I've uploaded several to Commons that happened to have my wife in them because they were taken on vacations. Though she is rather less conspicuous in my photos than these, most of which are street scenes... Still, WP:AGF and all that. It should be purely a matter of whether the photo is informative or if the figure detracts from it, and if you can't tell from a single photo whether it's incidental or vanity, then unless you're going to put more than one in the same article it probably doesn't matter. postdlf ( talk) 03:26, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Thread watchers, please take note that there is now a related discussion on ANI. The thread is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Something fishy on Pelican State beach — Gavia immer ( talk) 02:45, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
There is currently an RFC for WP:ACTIVIST for those who are interested. - Hydroxonium ( H3O+) 07:13, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
I noticed that Methamphetamine has a detailed Synthesis section and links to a synthesis FAQ with more details in its External links. WP:NOTHOWTO aside, isn't a drug synthesis recipe a very detailed and toxicologically dangerous form of medical advice, and as such isn't it prohibited? 71.198.176.22 ( talk) 06:49, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I have some concerns lately about tactics I see taken on random discussion boards. Basically, it goes like this. An anon or a new editor gets involved in a content dispute or disagreement. After some discussion, the more experienced editor(s) point out that the anon/new user "sure have a lot of knowledge about WP for an inexperienced editor" (or something along those lines), basically accusing them of being a sock in a round about way. My concern is that I (and others like me) can be perceived as a new editor, but I have read and followed Wikipedia for years, and could probably cite WP policies with the best of them. In short, I really don't think this is a very good argument and assumes bad faith. I will admit that sure, sometimes a duck is a duck (maybe more often than not), but I think editors (and especially admins) should be VERY careful to label a "new" user as a sock or meat puppet...and I have really seen this happen a lot lately. Most people who "use" Wikipedia don't necesarrily "edit" it until something comes along they feel strongly about (as I did a while back). Thanks,
In Wikipedia talk:Non-free content, there is currently an RfC asking, How should the potential replaceability of non-free by free material be assessed when media of both types is available for an article? The issue affects many articles covering artistic genres as well as those covering other broad topics where much of the applicable media content with significant encyclopedic value is under copyright.— DCGeist ( talk) 12:19, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm posting this over here from Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion discussion here. A discussion about how to encourage more New page patrollers turned to considering why we have so many articles going through NPP that are not by newbies. Currently, to receive Autopatrolled status a user has to either
75 seems a huge number, and the fact that editors have to make a specific request for autopatrolled status means that many probably won't even know there is such a thing. Given that reviewer rights were handed out to every editor in good standing, the query has arisen as to why autopatrolled is so difficult to obtain. Has this been discussed before - no-one in the original discussion was sure why it was set so high. What would the objections be to say giving it automatically to editors with 5 articles or 1000 edits (or some similar arbitrary figure), with the proviso that it will be removed if the editor creates problematic articles? -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 17:14, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
( ←) Here's a concrete proposal:
BTW, some of this work has already been done. See this database query, which produced this list (last spring?). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
75 was picked as the arbitrary starting point with my initial proposal because that is what it had been with the previous system (bot patrols anyone on a whitelist). 20 articles would probably be fine, but administrators should still ensure that past history with BLPs has been OK. NW ( Talk) 19:11, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Have we made any progress on inviting people to apply? Has anyone figured out how to get a useful list out of the toolserver links above? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 01:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I went ahead and boldly created a new page at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Autopatrolled candidates 1 and added users ready to be reviewed for Autopatrol status. It's ready to go if anybody wants to start reviewing. - Hydroxonium ( talk) 03:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Update - In the last couple days, over 400 users have been reviewed and granted Autopatrol rights thanks to two awesome Admins, HJ Mitchell and Acalamari (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). They should be thanked for undertaking such a monumental effort. Thanks guys. - Hydroxonium ( H3O+) 18:46, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
┌─────────────────────────────┘
Update - We are working our way through about 3,000 users total from the old list and new list. Several hundred new users have been added, so hopefully the users at
WP:NPP have been seeing the work go down a little. This has been a very laborious task, so I am going to look in to automating as much as possible for the future. I'll start a thread about that somewhere. -
Hydroxonium (
H3O+) 05:06, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
It's just depressing that today's main page is just soaked with blood. Nearly every item, including the featured article, In the news, and On this day has the word killing, death or war in it. Hurricane Kyle... one indirect death. In the news, bomb attacks... kill... 35 killed... bombing... killing eight Somali pirates... 140 people killed. Then, in On this day, we have armed takeover... Puget Sound War... all day battle... Finnish Civil War... warlord... rebel group. I realize that all these things are topical and relevant, but didn't anything HAPPY ever happen on January 26? I propose that editors choosing these stories include at least one piece of "good news" about science or a discovery or medical breakthrough or something cool about our magically incredible universe. Thank you. Wikipedia rules. -- Torchpratt ( talk) 02:22, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
What is the current community position on citation of the form "XYZ Broadcast News. 16:42 UTC, January 29, 2011."? While I would consider the news to be a reliable source in general, it certainly doesn't make verification very easy in most cases. Personally, they seem better than having no citation, but not great. In particular, what do you do if the television citation seems to be the only source available (e.g. "breaking news") for a surprising or potentially controversial fact? Dragons flight ( talk) 05:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I have no idea where to post this, so I'll try it here. I noticed that User:Tcshasaposse was blocked due to conflict with the WP:NOSHARE policy. On the other hand, these user(s)' additions were quite helpful in the coverage of complexity-theoretic topics, so I wonder whether this issue could be solved in the positive. It would have been a serious loss in qualified input if we'd just told them to go away. Unfortunately, the block entry points to the user talk page, which has been deleted. Comments? Nageh ( talk) 12:49, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee has conducted an internal review of the Audit Subcommittee and is now seeking comment from the community, in particular about the subcommittee's effectiveness to date and ongoing representation from community delegates (" at-large members").
As the October 2009 election yielded few candidates relative to the number of seats available, it has been suggested that filling the non-arbitrator positions by appointment after community consultation (similar to the previous round of CU/OS appointments) would attract a greater number of suitably qualified candidates.
It has also been suggested that greater numbers of community delegates be appointed to ensure adequate ongoing community representation. Should a sufficient number of suitable candidates apply, the committee will appoint three "primary members" along with a number of "standby members" (who will also receive the CheckUser and Oversight privileges) and would stand in should a primary member become inactive or be unable to hear a particular case.
Comments are invited about the above, as well as any other general comments about the Audit Subcommittee. The Arbitration Committee would like to thank outgoing community members Dominic, Jredmond, and MBisanz for their patience and continued participation on the subcommittee while this review process is ongoing.
The next call for applications is provisionally scheduled for 20 February 2011.
For the Arbitration Committee, – xeno talk 18:00, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
When I clicked on the "page view statistics" from an article's edit history, I was shown a button for "Flattr," which is a payment system. See [4]. How is this consistent with Wikipedia policies against advertising? Edison ( talk) 17:17, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
The premise of this post is incorrect, anyway - we just came off several weeks of Wikipedia hounding us with large banner ads to give money. A tiny Flattr button is comparatively benign. -- Golbez ( talk) 20:28, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
What is the policy for the order of links on a disambiguation page? Should they be sorted alphabetically, or semi-alphabetically based on page views. I'm asking as I'd like to know how to order the links on Bing. Smallman12q ( talk) 14:13, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Dispute resolution/Draft ( | 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, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Should we think of WP:COPYVIO as:-
— S Marshall T/ C 00:11, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, along with No original research and Neutral point of view. These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with all three.
I think that it should say:
Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, along with No original research, Neutral point of view, and Do not violate copyright. These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with all of them.
This has met with opposition on the grounds that WP:COPYVIO is not a core content policy. I think it is a core content policy, in that it's a core policy which is about content.— S Marshall T/ C 12:03, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia:Copyright is more appropriate than WP:COPYVIO. In a section called " Copyright in the lead" on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability where there has been a discussion about this issue I made the suggestion that we take a lead from WP:AT and formulate something for the lead of WP:V along the lines of:
These [content] policies, in conjunction with the copyright policy, jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles.
This does away with the need in the body of the content policies to mention copyright, and the inclusion in the lead makes copyright policy a semi-detached member of the three content policies (much as the content policies are for WP:AT). This will hide the complications of copyright (such as copyleft, how much is fair usage, what is plagiarism etc) in the copyright policy, and stop copyright issues from endlessly complicating the three content policies (just as leaving the definition of what is a reliable source in WP:V stops duplication and complication of that term in WP:AT) . -- PBS ( talk) 09:29, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I would like to request that you please look into combining all the various languages in wikipedia.org to make a worldwide database of knowledge. Currently there is no such function available in wikipedia.org and since the people can not learn every language covered by wikipedia.org this would be a valuable resource. While conducting research, information from the European wikipedia.org sites have different information that was graciously translated by people for English-speakers. My resources are limited with information that is not widely dispersed in foreign countries and the inability to translate that information into my own language. Thank you for reviewing my suggestions to further wikipedia and worldwide information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.124.201 ( talk) 20:28, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Contested mergers are often not argued through clearly. That's probably generally agreed (for example see this previous VP discussion). I've been looking for guidance and found this:
Reasons to merge a page include the following: unnecessary duplication of content, significant overlap with the topic of another page, and minimal content that could be covered in or requires the context of a page on a broader topic.
There's a 'rationale' on the same page, but it doesn't go much further. I wonder if there is an essay or something somewhere else which develops this into some kind of guide? Or perhaps experienced editors here can offer advice?
What prompted this enquiry: an editor recently proposed and merged Burlesque (genre) to Burlesque, then another editor recreated Burlesque (genre). There is a duplication issue because the Burlesque (genre) material is currently in both articles. (There is also a closely-related article on Burlesque (literature)). The discussions are here: Talk:Burlesque.
Thank you. -- Klein zach 04:08, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your replies. IMO the difficulty lies with merging (or not) articles of approximately equal importance. (Splitting sub-pages off overlong articles has rarely, if ever, been controversial.) Here are some common scenarios:
In my experience these situations result in poorly-argued discussions that often result in a 'half merge/half split', with a lot of duplicated text (as currently with Burlesque etc.).
How should these situations be handled/resolved? -- Klein zach 01:58, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
The other big problem I find is that in general, discussions on merging or moving articles are underpopulated. There are too many places for editors to review things. I really hoped that merge discussions would be merged into Articles for deletion, as merging is a common outcome there. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 05:04, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Smallbones and I have different opinions about whether Predictions for a second wave of the financial crisis should be kept in Financial crisis (2007–present). By refering to WP:CRYSTAL, Smallbones argues that the predictions are not allowed. However, I think that the policy implies that Wikipedia does not collect unverifiable prediction or editor's own analysis. The predictions in question are verifiable as it referenced to a paper from a peer-reviewed journal. Also, it is common to see predictions in articles, e.g. 2012 contains predictions about Solar eclipse. Another example is 2011 Atlantic hurricane season, which provide predictions of tropical activity. Even if one can argue against a given prediction, we should present the ideas from both sides instead of removing it, like Vulcan (hypothetical planet). I do not want to have an edit war. Please give comments.-- Quest for Truth ( talk) 03:51, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
What is our policy on external links in the body of the article? I'm sure it has been discussed before, but as there is no info on WP:EL there must not be a consensus? I see some discussion currently at WT:EL, and there are tons of topics in the archives. Surely there should at least be some mention in the text of EL so at least people can stop asking what the policy is. I know some of these links are helpful, and some are attempts at refs. Most, however, are either linkspam or links to items that aren't notable enough for articles (check out any List of bands from...' article for examples). Personally, I've always liked the idea of a bot-tagged hidden category, so that we can keep tabs on the good links and get rid of the bad. At the very least, we should make some comment on the practice. Thoughts? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 06:29, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
See this edit. Is that really necessary? It already mentions the order in the text. To have the CBE at the top of the infobox seems overkill. I thought I saw a discussion about this one time but can't remember where I saw it. Garion96 (talk) 21:20, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
When I follow a link (from anywhere) to a Wikimedia project I haven't visited yet, I sometimes get an email in a language I don't speak. The explanation for this is the following.
Getting emails I don't understand just for following a link seems wrong to me, especially because this link can an unidentified link anywhere on the web. But which of the above components is the wrong policy? Or is the fault in something I've done? – b_jonas 17:52, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to tag Jules Verne with {{ reimprove}}? The article, which makes the assertion that Vernes is the father of science fiction has but 4 references, with many sections lacking a reference of any sort. User:Headbomb removed the tag stating "Remove gratuitous templating. There's no set number of references that someone "deserves". Use citation needed tags as needed if you feel some things are not supported by the references and external links)" I don't believe the external links section is designed to serve as a substitute for a references section. Smallman12q ( talk) 23:40, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
I was just wondering about a few technical aspects of blocking that would be inappropriate to test on real users. Is there a practice account that I'm allowed to block and unblock at will? And if not, is it okay to practice on my alternate account? I can't find anything relevant at Wikipedia:Blocking policy. Nyttend ( talk) 03:31, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
The above is my idea for a policy/suggested practice ( Wikipedia:Thanked once, thank twice) to promote civility. This policy (or simply the practice) would also help with the creation of a Wikipedia:Criticizing articles guideline or policy. Hyacinth ( talk) 01:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Actually i was just wondering why moves are marked as minor edits. Simply south.... .. 10:39, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
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I am interested in copying some text licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 material from Knol to a Wikipedia article. The licenses match so I assume this is permissible, but haven't found any suitable template for giving the required attribution. There are templates such as Template:Citizendium but no Knol template. Should such a template be created? Anyone familiar with the policy and requirements regarding such templates? Marokwitz ( talk) 07:23, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
I've recently had several edits reverted by recent change (RC) patrollers. My edits may have been good or bad, but they were not vandalism. They should not have been reverted by editors who didn't take the time to read the article or the Talk page or the article history; the editors shouldn't have labelled me a vandal. So, what concerns me about it is that it happened three times. It appears to be a systemic problem.
The summary of the sequence is: 1) I took out ("blanked") some newly added material and gave a reason in the summary, 2) I did it again (since my revert was reverted by an opposing editor), and didn't repeat my summary, 3) I was reverted for vandalism via GLOO, 4) I undid that without summary, and was reverted again for vandalism via HG, 5) Again, I restored the edit this time with a new and longer edit summary, and 6) Again, I was reverted for vandalism via GLOO. In the last case, my edit--with a summary--was reverted within 3 minutes. I hadn't even finished typing my comment on the Talk page before it was reverted.
None of the patrollers who reverted me had any opinion about the content; they weren't regular editors of the article. They were acting on false positives for vandalism. Uncorrected false positives add fuel to budding edit wars and are generally disruptive. A bot can robotically revert according to some algorithm. Human editors should be accountable for their edits, and for doing things like checking article histories and Talk pages to make sure their accusations of vandalism are accurate. In the ensuing discussion, the patrollers have asserted that the first two false positives were my fault because I didn't use an edit summary. They have argued that they don't have time to check the Talk page. I disagree.
If RC patrollers refuse to take care in reverting, they should not be allowed to patrol. Maybe some sort of limit on the number of false positives, and removal of rollback rights when a limit is breached, would help fine tune patrolling.
The article in question's history is here: [ [5]]. There is a discussion of the issue on my Talk page [ [6]] (you have to scroll down to the paragraph beginning "I have to jump in here. I'm another one of the RC patrollers..." Note: there has been a fair amount of heat in this issue. I'm not trying to defend or apologize for my behavior (except to note that undoing the false positives was considered edit warring by me). I want a discussion of RC patrolling and policy. Should the de facto definition of vandalism be: "any content removal without an edit summary." That's what it has become, among some RC patrollers. Mindbunny ( talk) 07:38, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Reminder: ...there has been a fair amount of heat in this issue. I'm not trying to defend or apologize for my behavior (except to note that undoing the false positives was considered edit warring by me). I want a discussion of RC patrolling and policy. Should the de facto definition of vandalism be: "any content removal without an edit summary." Mindbunny ( talk) 00:22, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
First, I would like to apologize again for instigating this entire tradgedy of errors. Second, let me at least share my rules of thumb for reverting section blanking and submit them for scrutiny and comment.
So in this case it was a sourced section removed with no edit summary. I think I looked at one of Mindbunny's previous reversions in the article and hit the other one with no edit summary. FYI, GLOO allows one to look at the history of the page, but not the talk page or a full view the page itself (which I consider major drawbacks of the tool). What I suspect happened next is that since Mindbunny was warned by myself, s/he showed up red in Huggle for Discospinster after reverting, who then reverted again (and gave a better revert reason, as GLOO unfortunately offers only one message). The next day when reverting, Mindbunny probably showed up red in GLOO for Bped1985, even though s/he used an edit summary and discussed the issue on the talk page due to the previous warnings from myself and Discospinster. Mindbunny, justifiably feeling bitten, then lashed out at all of the aforementioned editors. And Drama Ensued. With regards to the issue of the time-criticalness of RCP, I'm going to disagree a bit with my esteemed colleagues above. RCP is the primary defense mechanism against vandalism in obscure articles. Not every article has an active wikipedian watching it. In an ideal world, there would be enough RCP'ers that every edit on the 'pedia could be closely scrutinized. In the real world, there aren't enough people monitoring the edits to do that. (I can show plenty of edits to my watchlisted articles that were missed by RC patrol for hours). So there is some time pressure to check as many edits as possible, as there is not necessarily someone else to check those edits you can't get to on RCP. There's a balance between speed and accuracy, but with experience the former goes up and the latter approaches zero, as vandalism tends to follow certain patterns like I outlined above regarding section blanking. Sailsbystars ( talk) 01:10, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
From my Talk page history:
The issue is a red herring anyway. The reverts were made by editors making multiple revert per hour, obviously not because they had carefully read the article; they have admitted they never looked at the Talk page. You do that when you think there's vandalism. Berean Hunter has misunderstood the situation in other ways, but that's beside the point. This forum is for discussing policy.
Policies to consider:
I need help in re-wording WP:MOSTM to avoid the exceptions for " iPod" and " eBay" and allow a more consistent rule to only use lower-case names when the term becomes popularized as such; otherwise, use the exact spelling for variety (or spin-off) product names as they are spelled. See: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(trademarks) about:
The policy has been inconsistent, advising to not "invent" names, but people have respelled the museum name "SPAM Museum" (as "Spam Museum") because they saw the word " SPAM" rather than a formal museum name, which should retain the original spelling, as would " iPhone 4" rather than becoming "Iphone Four". Join the discussion on that talk-page. This is a simple rule to define. - Wikid77 10:44, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
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Thinking to hard about the license gives me a headache, but if I understand it correctly it is required that attribution follow an edit. So, if for some reason a user moved their talk page to a new name, blanked that page, and restored the content back to their current talk page without the history, that would break the chain of attribution, right? (We'll get to why anyone would do this later, right now I'm just after the answer to if this is a violation of the licensing) Beeblebrox ( talk) 08:53, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
involved pages are User talk:Porchcrop and User talk:Porchcrop/Older version, discussion already started at User talk:Porchcrop#page move confusion. It's late here, I'm going to bed, hopefully somebody who knows this licensing stuff can take a look here. Beeblebrox ( talk) 09:00, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
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Hello
My first attempt to put my Big Bang Hypothesis on Wikipedia was removed in 2007. I have now further developed my hypothesis and it is perfectly logical, fits many observations by others and I believe it is at the very least worthy of discussion. I would also like to receive a wide audience for it and critical comment to help me develop it further. I make it clear that it is a hypothesis, that is how all theories start out and I would like it published on Wikipedia please.
I have been in touch with the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. They say I have to disprove existing theory first, which amounts to proving a negative as they agree. I believe my hypothesis enhances current theory and fits current observations. Surely there must be some room on Wikipedia for a perfectly logical hypothesis. If my hypothesis is correct it would be ground breaking and lead to a far better understanding of the Universe. On a practical note it could also lead to a machine that could build objects from any energy source, including that we currently term as matter. It would enable a kind of 3 dimensional fax machine, which would greatly assist our exploration of the Universe.
Your help would be appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bwallum ( talk • contribs) 11:16, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Below is the current template for tagging files after a non-free image or sound clip is reduced in size to meet fair use guidelines.
The previous version(s) of this file are non-free and are no longer being used in articles. Therefore, they fail the Wikipedia
non-free content criteria and will be deleted on February 11, 2011. The current version will not be deleted, only previous revision(s). Administrators: If there are no problems with the current version, and it meets the non-free content criteria, please delete the previous version(s) under F5 on February 11, 2011 (seven days after February 4, 2011, when this template was added). Otherwise, please revert the file back to the last acceptable version. Once you're done, remove this tag. Use "change visibility", checking only the "Delete file content" option, in order to preserve the upload history in the "File history" section. |
As you can see, it stipulates that after seven days an administrator can come by and delete the previous, larger version from the page history.
My proposal is simple, eliminate the seven day waiting period.
I have asked multiple people and have yet to find an answer as to how it is useful. In 99.9% of cases, this is a straight resize (or a resize with a minor crop to remove excess white space or a border.) Now, many resizes use a script, and Dashbot automatically resizes any images with the resize tag once a day. For the .1 percent of the time where the resize tag is used maliciously, to remove competing images in an edit war over images, or other such nonsense, removing the seven day waiting period would really have no effect, because it is the deleting administrator's job, whether it's seven days or seven seconds after the changes are made, to make sure that before he deletes the previous versions, that the change is a correct one. It says that in the template already.
With that, I rest my case and open this proposal up for consideration. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:52, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Why the rush? The old versions are not visible in any articles. In the unlikely event that a legal complaint is made in the 7-day period, then the foundation can delete the old version immediately. I don't believe this has ever happened yet. OrangeDog ( τ • ε) 12:18, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Table this? Honestly I think this was the wrong forum for this. Most people seem to have an inaccurate view of the process, it's scope, and it's participants. This is very much a behind the scenes service performed by experienced users. DashBOT itself does not go out hunting for things to resize, it is given its workload by around dozen people with knowledge of the resizing process and knowledge of fair use guidelines. It's so obscure and low impact that I can't think of any cases where it's been used abusively, and if there were any, they would have to be so blatant that any admin would notice them. In the end it boils down to efficiency (the clean up after yourself as you go principal) versus mitigating abuse. Contrary to the comments by Wnt and Nagle, there really is no capacity nor history of abuse in this process. I would have thought therefore that we should lean heavily towards clean as you go. OrangeDog's view, however, is reflective of the community's wait before you delete attitude. At this point, others should feel free to chip in, but barring a dramatic reversal of consensus, I'm ready to table this indefinitely. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:54, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm not amuZed AT-ALL to see one of my former contributions being arrogated by another person and, later, being deleted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Ten_Bulls&action=historysubmit&diff=381564932&oldid=352411446
Being interested in Zen, I gathered, a while ago, the complete 'ox herding' series, downloaded the files, arranged them, created the necessary "fair use rationale" (which is less easy for a non-native speaker) &c. and uploaded the file in WP-allowed format GIF. Took some 3+hours.
I recently noticed that user:Hugahoody downloaded same file, saved it as PNG, re-uploaded it, using same description+rationale, under his own name. Any idiot could have done such within <10min (~1-2min for download, ~3-4min for opening the file and saving it in another format, and another ~1-2min for re-upload the file under his own name). The GIF I originally created and uploaded was afterwards deleted, some day.
Question:
Is this the way contributions to WP shall be handled in the future?
NB: The 2 files on the right edge of this article are no "PD", either. Maybe, Mr. or kid 'Hug~~' takes the time to copy my rationale+file_description over thoseones.
FY ("For Your" information)
[w.] 10:47, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't understand your a). Your b) is wrong: the explanation given was that png supports Lossless data compression and Alpha compositing, neither of which rely on data in the original gif. I slightly sympathise with you in that the person who converted it was incredibly rude not to acknowledge your upload. But I'm not really down with the hissy fit thing. People are sometimes thoughtless. Quite how that translates into "Is this the way contributions to WP shall be handled in the future?" is beyond me. --
Tagishsimon
(talk) 19:53, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
[w.] 08:29, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
I haven't heard much about Pending Changes, so I looked back at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Closure, which so far as I know, was the last thing that happened with this. This discussion/poll, closed as of last September, says "The scheduled two-month trial has ended. The community should now decide if the implementation is to be continued, and it should discuss possible adaptations, in terms of policy. Developers have indicated it would be too complex to turn off the feature, then turn it back on in case the decision is in favor of continuing the implementation, so they will wait for the community decision — unless it takes more than a month, in which case they will turn off the feature."
I don't see anything there or in Help:Pending changes about any subsequent resolution, and there are still between 500 and 1000 pages in Special:StablePages.
Did the decision about what to do with PC ever happen? Did the promised technical upgrades ever occur? Are we still in the same "two months" and the same "month" as we were last September? Wnt ( talk) 21:48, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
Oh, there's also a Wikipedia:Pending changes/Straw poll on interim usage, which occurred somewhat after the previous, with a "hard close date of December 31, 2010". Wnt ( talk) 08:33, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
This is a matter of importance to Wikipedia editors of every language.
According to the policy currently in force, photographs of these exceptional buildings must be deleted from Commons.
Some editors take the view that, as it stands, this policy damages our fundamental mission as an educational resource. Others are happy for things to stay as they are.
You are invited to contribute to the debate at:
and on the talk page of
If you find you are not logged in when you look at these pages then see m:Help:Unified login or you can go directly to Special:MergeAccount to globalise your login. 9carney ( talk) 17:56, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team ( | 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, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Volunteer response team ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 02:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Stub templates are meaningless content. Any one can see quickly whether or not an article is a stub. More important is the fact that they do not influence the rate of editing. Every incomplete article is, by definition, a target for expanding. It will happen spontaneously and naturally. If the article is important, it will grow fast. If there is needed an expert, it will grow slowly. No one will see a stub template and think "Hey, this is a stub, I have to expand it immediately".
If there is a need for improving the article, the discussion page is the appropiate and perfect place to dump a stub template. Even more effective. In the article, it is meaningless and redundant.
See also the absurd discussion at the WikiProject Chemicals (scroll to the second part of the discussion).-- Wickey-nl ( talk) 15:34, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
I do see some value in having the stub-templates. It categorises the articles as having 'a problem' (however obvious), and putting them in groups like the category system makes sense as it would allow to group the small articles at least per WikiProject/Subject. I think that further sub-sub-categorising of the stubs is something that should be handled by the projects. There my personal thought would be to keep the stub-categories rather broad, and to keep the number of stub categories to a minimum. The real catagorisation can be done in the conventional way, it is not the task of the stub-templates to do that. However, it may depend on how big a Project-wide stub-category becomes to decide that some sub-sub-categorisation is necessary - but if an article is in categories A, B, C, D, and E, which are all a subset of category F, then stubbing generally is fine in 'stub category F' - if there are one or two categories, it may make sense to put it in the appropriate stub sub-category (note that while there may be only few categories necessary for a page, it may fall under a larger number of WikiProjects - each with their own stub-categorisation, which may massively increase the number of stub-categories, and may result in the list of stub-marks being larger than the article itself - that would be silly.
I don't have a specific preference for the place - mainspace or talkpage - both make sense, it has been a long-standing custom to have them in mainspace, moving them to talkspace would probably need a broad discussion, and a massive cleanup (for a long time, as editors may be unaware of the change in policy and still place them in mainspace). -- Dirk Beetstra T C 09:24, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Someone asked me to help recruit recruit students to edit Wikipedia. That led to my going on my usual soap box to say that Wikipedia needs more experts. As is, articles such as search engine technology and statistical physics have zero references, although the personal life of Charlie Sheen is pretty up to date and the "marketing table" at Britney Spears products looks really impressive.
To be a credible encyclopedia, Wikipedia needs to recruit and "maintain" more experts. I would like to fix both search engine technology and statistical physics, but that would have to wait until 2013, given that in 2011 I am planning to fix all the articles related to computer generated imagery and in 2012 deal with the many scattered articles of robotics, both categories being in need of serious help. And I have not seen anyone work on these articles in a serious way. I can not single-handedly fix them all this decade. So we do need to recruit and maintain experts.
I think the Online Ambassadors programs need to be extended to have a specific focus on the recruitment of "top experts", say 5 professors per field, e.g. 5 professors who know the internet to go and fix the search engine technology related articles. It is just embarrassing for Wikipedia not to have solid information on search engines.
The experts need to be given attention in an ongoing manner, so they will stay with Wikipedia. I am not into long policy discussions, apart from using soap boxes to suggest things. Who can start a program to find experts, give them some type of special treatment so they will work for free and fix these articles? Those of you who know policy should really do something. Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 10:12, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
So there is not always a chance we can find an expert in a field able to write a Wiki article. This problem is compounded by the fact we expect a "common man" reading/comprehension level in most articles.
I'm not sure what you mean by "red carpet" in this context. All I'm saying is that there's no single answer to the issue that Jarry1250 mentioned, and that trying to make a policy to answer it could actually have the effect of making things worse. Mr. Z-man 20:55, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
History, I just don't know what you want us to do. We can't force experts to edit and, those who did show up, often left in a huff because they don't like being questioned by non-experts. — The Hand That Feeds You: Bite 16:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Encouraging expert involvement is a great aim; and anything practical to do that should be encouraged. But there are issues:
Just food for thought; if the aim is to encourage expert involvement then those taking an active role should also be working on ways to mitigate the problems caused by expertise :) -- Errant ( chat!) 16:28, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
History, the Students program is because we already get students coming to Wikipedia to make edits. Often, it's because a teacher/professor had the bad idea to make an assignment out of editing Wikipedia, without knowing the site rules. Trying to correlate that to encouraging expert participation doesn't work. — The Hand That Feeds You: Bite 15:01, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Just wondering, and checking my impressions. Can anyone point me to the latest serious WP: policy or guidance change? IMO, those who wrote them some years ago, now are the admins+ blocking change. What happened with "If needed, break every rule" I grew up with? - DePiep ( talk) 19:24, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
( edit conflict)re Tagishsimon: Your final turn "What makes you think they might not. Where, indeed, are you coming from?" says that you want to make it personal. Not me. Is not what I asked (twice not, actually). Now you do not explain what triggered your tone of reaction, (I have no fixed idea, my Q's are open as you can read). And, reading what you wrote, you did not answer my Q. No one link available? - DePiep ( talk) 19:54, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
(All reactions are appreciated possibly without response. Worth investigating and more. - DePiep ( talk) 21:13, 10 February 2011 (UTC))
I came across the article November 14 2005 Brisbane bomb hoax which raised several ethical questions. This particular article probably fails notability under WP:EFFECT and I may prod it later but I was curious in general if there are policies or essays regarding articles about when and when not to have articles on events caused by criminal hoaxers. In some sense, the article itself is a monument to their hoax and could be seen as a reward by those mentalities that are attracted to such activities as bomb scares or arson. Jason Quinn ( talk) 22:35, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
I have a question guys..recently at Template talk:Infobox Historic Site#Red links i have made mention of the using of red font for link colours. I am pointing to Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates#Navigation templates as our rule of thumd to not use red links for articles that have a name space. However it has been pointed out that at Wikipedia:Link color we actually show editors how to use red front. Is this not s bit confusing. Are red links ok or not? And if not should we not make a note at Wikipedia:Link color that red and for that matter a certain blue is reserved. As mentioned before in the past user-functionality should outweigh aesthetics in all cases. There is no edit wars- just has come to my attention that this is not clear. Moxy ( talk) 17:31, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
The time for vagueness is over, I strongly feel we need some clear guides as to how this is to be used. See Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment February 2011. Beeblebrox ( talk) 23:54, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Proposal_to_merge_two_subsections where I am proposing the merger of WP:NOTDIR and WP:IINFO. The overlap is large, so why not have a shorter stronger section and easier navigability? Casliber ( talk · contribs) 00:14, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
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Through wikisignpost's twitter feed, i read this blogpost:
my daughter (a sophomore in high school) was given an assignment to introduce errors into Wikipedia. Presumably, the intention was to demonstrate that entries could be 'unreliable'. Now, she chose a popular page, and had her changes corrected almost straightaway, to the extent that it was not possible to complete the assignment as given. In fact, she ended up being barred from editing pages as her behavior was seen as unacceptable.
My doubt is do we have a policy to deal with otherwise respectable institutions like schools disrupting wikipedia?. (stern warning, blanket block etc?)-- Sodabottle ( talk) 09:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
I ran into a similar problem at Digital divide-4 editors suddenly appeared adding large, sourced sections to the article. Now, that's generally a good thing, except for the fact that a lot of what they added also contained original research, or was misorganized, or duplicated the same concept as elsewhere in the article, or...So, hey, these are all teachable moments. The odd thing, of course, was that this happened all at once. After asking for a while, I got one of the students to admit that this was a class assignment. I asked for the Wikipedia username of the students teacher so that I could talk to her, or for her to talk to me, and the student said that the teacher doesn't have a username, and doesn't really edit Wikipedia. That was really disappointing, especially since we're putting a lot of effort into the Class/Online Ambassador program specifically to make this happen well. There's nothing wrong with a teacher encouraging students to edit Wikipedia, but it was disturbing that she had done so without even knowing anything about how we work, what our policies are, and good editing behavior. I kind-of wonder what happened, since one of the students had about 90% of xyr work stripped out by me (pulling out the OR and NPOV points), while other editors points remained (because they were closer to sources, thus more compatible with our ethos). Not sure where I'm going with this, but its a weird place to have teachers asking students to get more involved but not giving the tools to do so...or, as in the OP's situation, to deliberately disrupt what we do. Qwyrxian ( talk) 11:18, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
FWIW, see also this 20 April 2007 AN/I I raised about a professor's "demonstration" vandalism for class. -- JHunterJ ( talk) 17:09, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
I looked up Wikipedia:Attribution but it's about attributing other content within Wikipedia. Is there a guide to the citation required?
CC-by-sa (human readable version) says "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work)." Where is this specified? Someone I spoke with from another wiki said that the Wikipedia requirement was to be attributed with a link, therefore a link in the "External links" section on their page is adequate. I suspect that's wrong, but where can I point them for correct info? Thanks. -- Chriswaterguy talk 02:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
WP:DEADLINK and WP:DEADREF give conflicting advice about dealing with dead links used to support article content. Please join the conversation at WT:CITE to help us decide how to resolve the conflicting advice in our guidelines. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 22:17, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Input is needed for WP:Notability (video games) as the WikiProject Video games is trying to streamline their guideline and items off of it that really wouldn't be appropriate for a MOS-style guideline (its not one atm, but its been proposed to be moved to one by others). The notability of video games has been contentious and the GNG doesn't really give enough advice when dealing with some specific circumstances surrounding video games. 陣 内 Jinnai 20:33, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't think the community has consented to advertising through different gadgets, like the mwembed by Kaltura (see bugzilla:23965) or the link to the Georgia Tech school provided in the ProveIt referencing tool (see Special:Preferences and the link: [17]). This seems like contrary to WP:SPAM to me: "Adding external links to an article or user page for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed, and is considered to be spam." What do you think? -- Eleassar my talk 17:15, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Hello I just stumbled upon a reference in microsoft word. I clicked on it just like anything else and was expecting a webpage to come up. Imagine my horror and confusion when a Word document opened. I removed it in this diff. [18]
I searched but couldn't find anything - would it ever be acceptable to have a link/reference in Word? If not, can a bot remove all occurrences?
Thank you. -- CutOffTies ( talk) 14:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
In response to the icon question: see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 81#External link icons proposal and User:Gadget850/ExternalLinkIcons. -— Gadget850 (Ed) talk —Preceding undated comment added 18:22, 19 February 2011 (UTC).
(
Microsoft Word document)
instead of a picture.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 19:20, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
I have started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Recommendation to reword some of the rules suggesting to clarify the rules of use for AWB. Any comments suggestions and input are requested. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:37, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
The recent closing of a move proposal has prompted a question in my mind and I'm interested to see others' views. Many users (incl. admins) have identification icons displayed on their user pages declaring religious, political,or national affiliations, and interests, hobbies, skills etc. What came up was a question over whether someone with a particular religious icon should be closing and making a determination on a particularly emotionally charged ethical subject. I took the view that anyone (and this particularly applies to admins) making a decision on behalf of the community (as opposed to simply editing) should be seen to be neutral as well as actually being neutral, and it was a question of natural justice that no one should be a 'judge in his own cause' (or, at least, a cause closely associated with one of his 'icons'). Many disagreed (some angrily [wrongly] believing it was a breach of WP:NPA) with this, the main contrary points being either it's effectively an 'ad hominem' attack or someone with a particular icon can't automatically be labeled as not neutral or these people have publicly declared their position which is better than concealing it. For me, though, I still think that it prejudices at least the appearance of neutrality. It also concerns me that it may indicate a particularly fervent belief in X which could be inconsistent with neutrality i.e it's one thing to believe/be affiliated with X, it's quite another to want to tell everyone about it. Just to be clear, I'm only talking about the most controversial and highly-charged issues where admin. decisions are being taken (not general editing). So, should these issues be allowed to be brought up/taken into account in determining who should make such decisions?. Oh, and I'm not talking about the case that prompted this - I'm raising it as a general issue for consideration DeCausa ( talk) 15:15, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm strongly opposing this. Even the suggestion that someone is acting in a bias manner because of their religious or other beliefs is against the spirit of WP:AGF. There is no reason a Christian editor(which makes up a huge percent of editors on Wikipedia) should have their motives questioned on Christianity-related pages simply for being Christian(or any other belief). If you disagree with someone's actions then challenge the action, cite policy against the action but do not challenge the user in place of that. AerobicFox ( talk) 19:31, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Administrators are not moderators. They must close discussions taking into account the consensus, not their own opinion of what should be done (which may be welcomed, but discussing it as editors like any other). If an admin closes a discussion with a result againt the consensus achieved (which may or may not be the result of his own bias), then that's something that would merit being reported. The fact itself of having a bias, not. MBelgrano ( talk) 20:11, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Most editors (admins are editors too) tend to work in subject areas in which they are already familiar. While it does require care, editing or making decisions in a subject area with which one is familiar does not mean the editor/admin has a conflict of interest or cannot maintain a neutral point of view. To quote part of something I wrote months back: "...nor would it be a conflict of interest for me to write about MediaWiki or Wikipedia because I've contributed here."
This is something I've become quite vocal about due to a past conflict with a now indef'd editor, and while this was probably an extreme case, it does show another area in which Wikipedia desperately needs improvement. To sum up an otherwise massive story, this particular editor took joy in actually following me from article to article (as well as categories, templates, etc) in order to make false accusations that I was violating NPOV, COI, [insert guideline/policy here], etc. (I later discovered that this individual had done the same sort of things to many other editors, in a serial-type fashion moving from editor to editor, most of whom eventually stopped editing and left Wikipedia completely.) In my case, this individual targeted me both on and off-wiki for roughly 18 months before they were indef'd on Wikipedia for making personal attacks towards me.
From what I've witnessed and experienced, I think a much larger issue which might be better to consider and address is a general lack of accountability. While everyone makes a mistake once in awhile (no one is perfect), by in large editors are not held accountable for their actions when it comes to things such as bad AfD nominations, questionable page moves, etc. I can't count the number of times I've seen computing and technology related articles which covered subjects which would have been familiar to readers who were familiar with larger computing/technology subtopics that were sent to AfD without the nom doing any research first. I've also seen this from AfD participants. Basically, "Delete: I've never heard of it, so it can't be notable, Wikipedia doesn't need an article on this".
I also can't help but wonder how much Wikipedia was set back in terms of growth and improvement by the individual I mentioned above who took joy in attacking other editors. Because nearly all the editors this individual targeted eventually just gave up (I refused to give up, which cost me in other ways), we lost contributors who would have otherwise improved existing articles or created new content. How much did we lose simply because this individual was not held accountable for their actions earlier on? I really feel that a lack of accountability might actually be more the core issue with some of what you are trying to address above. -- Tothwolf ( talk) 05:14, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
Does anyone remember the userbox wars? -- Donald Albury 10:39, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Here's the problem. It is reasonable to suggest that someone carrying a belief/position usebox has a view or an opinion in that area. It is less reasonable, but understandable, to suggest that this influences their decision making process in closing discussions. BUT what about the myriad of people without a userbox, they might have even stronger views in that area - and, so, their close is potentially even more strongly influenced! Bottom line is we cannot second guess anyone's motives. The only way we can judge someone here is on their actions; so you look at that close and see if it is in line with consensus (after all, an closers only aim is to judge consensus, not make an opinion). If it is not then questioning their motives and beliefs is not the right process; that they may or may not exist is irrelevant. We question their approach to the process of closing a discussion and perhaps stop them from interacting in those areas if it becomes habit to try to bypass consensus. But the thing is; people hold opinions about everything - mostly we are pretty good at avoiding influence from them, so it is good faith to assume we are doing so. FWIW I carry a userbox noting my personal "beliefs" with a link to a page explaining perhaps my strongest bias, and why I try to avoid interacting in those areas. -- Errant ( chat!) 12:06, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
I couldn't agree with DeCausa more that anyone flaunting their allegiance to a particular "side" of a debate would be unwise to close a debate abut that subject, or indeed to perform contentious reverts in that area. Unfortunately these are often the only experts or indeed interested editors we have in an area, and sometimes the expert knowledge is essential, interest also helps.
Rich
Farmbrough, 15:12, 20 February 2011 (UTC).
Being concerned about a possible COI of a closer makes sense, but I believe the proposal would be wholly ineffective. The determined COI closer could simply choose to remove the userbox(es). (By the same token, one can add userboxes that misrepresent one's own identity, which may have its advantages to a COI editor as well.) The way things are set up currently, probably the only way to effectively contest a COI closure would be to demonstrate the COI through diffs throughout the closer's editing history, which could admittedly be rather cumbersome (I'd like to see more Wikipedia advanced search options). One might argue that Wikipedia should require all editors to edit under their full legal names and city of residence, having provided legal evidence of the same to register, and COI would under those circumstances likely be considerably easier to demonstrate. However, I really don't see that ever happening.
Шизомби (Sz) (
talk) 15:59, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
I know this has been discussed to death, but I'm not aware of any relevant policy or consensus. From what I can tell, in articles: decades go from xxx0-xxx9. Centuries go from xx01-xx00. Millenniums from x001-x000. Is there an MoS guideline, consensus, policy or anything that covers this? I'm so sick of the arguing. I'm under the impression that although technically these groupings span from the year 1, not the year 0, society simply ignores this and recognizes '9's as endings, '0's as beginnings. Swarm X 07:39, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
What is Wikipedia? I am certain you will agree it is more than an attractive set of pixel-bound volumes resting upon the digital shelves of our second-living rooms. For myself, I have not yet decided exactly what Wikipedia is, but I am enjoying the process of discovery this question entails.
Perhaps for a moment we might consider our encyclopedia as a world in itself; a biosphere; a collection of living and nonliving things, interacting together within a framework of natural laws, subject to environmental pressures and natural selection, powered by solar energy, continuously changing and continuously seeking equilibrium.
This equilibrium is essential to the natural diversity of life, indeed ultimately to the survival of all life. Nature seems to love diversity; it seldom fills an ecological niche with one species when twenty can survive. This diversity in turn lends strength to nature through resilience and endless adaptations. So it is with our encyclopedia. Articles flourish and multiply. They divide. They wither, then spring up again in new forms. The environment changes and life evolves; new ideas, new technologies, new realities, new articles and new perspectives on old articles.
But not all our ecosystems are equally diverse and resilient. Some receive less rainfall, less sun. Some environments are harsh; they can only support slow, gradual steady growth. Some can only recover from trauma over a long period of time.
Please join me in taking just a moment to reflect upon what kind of encyclopedia, what kind of world, if you will, we wish to see when we peer in through these little LED displays. Shall it be one filled with diversity? Diversity of thought, diversity of ideas, diversity of culture. Can this diversity give us the strength and resilience to withstand change and grow? I say Yes.
The evolutionary process of our encyclopedia need not be solely a matter of mindless natural selection, and survival of the fittest. That's not how you make a good encyclopedia anyway. Science in medieval Islam and Mathematics in medieval Islam will take a long time to recover. First, there was the abuse and neglect. Overly enthusiastic editing, with no one around to stop the excesses. And in the end, it only took a couple of editors with a chainsaw to bring several hundred years of the shared history of our world crashing down. There is an issue we need to confront here in our little world. It's being discussed, it's being studied, but we don't really seem to have faced it straight on. Yet. It's about the effects of systemic bias on our encyclopedia.
Aquib ( talk) 01:51, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
To the extent that it is reasonable that articles about individuals require that the individual meet notability criteria, I would suggest that also in order for an article to exceed a certain length, say, 100 words, further criteria be met.
This was inspired by the lengthy David Icke article -- I am not sure, but I would guess that it is longer than the article on, say, Bertrand Russel. (Actually, it looks close.)
I don't know if storage space is an issue for Wikipedia and this is not why I am proposing this. Obviously, long articles can be edited after they are written, but I would argue that requiring special permission to create lengthy articles would encourage at least better writing and as mentioned is consistent with the sentiment that underlies the notability requirement.-- Jrm2007 ( talk) 13:10, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
One hundred words was meant as a for instance and is almost certainly too low; a generous default for even low-notability bios would be okay. And the primary motivation is not to encourage better writing -- it is to do whatever good things the notability requirement does. I am saying that in the same way including non-notable person's bio in Wikipedia is considered "bad", devoting too much space to an insuffiently notable person's bio must also be bad.
What is the purpose of the notability requirement? Is it valuable? If so, I suggest that article length should be governed then also by degree of notability. Frankly, whatever it takes to shorten articles like Icke's would be great. Jrm2007 ( talk) 16:19, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
Okay, here is how I think my idea would work in practice. In the same way an article can be a candidate for deletion on the basis of lack of notability, I am suggesting an analogous thing: an article is candidate for shortening on the basis of lack of sufficient notability. This is not saying, delete the article, it is saying justify the length or shorten it. I can object to the length and ask someone who is more familiar with topic to fix it -- my objection to length should not mean that I myself have to shorten it. Jrm2007 ( talk) 16:31, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
I think that, for the purposes of Jrm2007's proposal, a better choice of articles would be Pokemon and Rock blasting. I could see how an outsider, not familiar with how we build articles, could come along and see the disparity in length between the two subjects, and think that its perverse that the Pokemon article is longer than the Rock blasting article. I'm not saying I support this proposal, just that I can see where Jrm2007 is coming from. RadManCF ☢ open frequency 22:23, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't support any restriction on the length of articles. (except of course, that they have to be verifiable, sourced, and not copied or plagiarized) The notability process is already more trouble than it's worth, without adding extra steps. And a length limit would put editors at each other's throats even more than now, trying to delete good material just so they can add their own. Wikipedia has a much better answer with summary style and an ever expanding series of sub-articles for major topics (or at least topics of interest to contributors).
Wnt (
talk) 18:31, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
Another aspect of this is the subtle POV-push of expanding an article to bolster the reputation of the subject. An example: one of the longest articles (and possibly the longest) on a post-WW2 British politician is Enoch Powell. It's 133kb + spin-off articles (for reference, in comparison Margaret Thatcher is 113kb and Tony Blair is 107kb). (For those that don't know, Powell was a right-wing politician who became prominent in the early 70s and late 60s as a rsult of advocating allegedly racist policies, but ultimately having little impact on British politics. His main claim to fame is hived off into a 25k article.) There's some dubious parts of the text, but on the whole it reads reasonably NPOV. However, the length is, to my mind, a more subtle way of giving the subject greater importance than desreved, and quite a subtle way of pushing a POV, IMO. DeCausa ( talk) 18:33, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
Ideal as it would be to steer editors from long articles on subjects of limited notability or importance to short articles on subjects of great notability or importance, I don't know how that could practically be done. More advanced wiki software might be able to, when someone clicks an edit link on a long article, put suggestions of short articles in similar categories as the long one with wikilinks to them above the open edit window. But the software would have no way of knowing how notable or important those other articles are, so it could end up suggesting non-notable things grow, and that would defeat the purpose. I guess Watson (artificial intelligence software) might be able to recognize someday how impactful a subject has been, but he'd probably end up rewriting all the articles himself rather than make suggestions to mere people who won't do as good a job.
Anyway, it's not the size that matters, it's what you do with it. With regard to the Icke article, in a number of instances the references used are primary source documents by Icke himself. Apart from the issues of OR and UNDUE with the use of primary sources, per the WP:SPS and WP:ABOUTSELF sections of WP:Verifiability, in the case of Icke, the only time an Icke reference should ever appear is when it's in the form of: <ref>{{Reliable third-party source reference}} citing {{David Icke questionable self-published source reference}}</ref>. It's odd, but that doesn't seem to have been brought up on that article's talk page. Шизомби (Sz) ( talk) 04:44, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
There has been some argument that certain main space content does not require references. These arguments tend to be about lists or article stubs, but could be about any main space content. The rational being the per Wikipedia:Verifiability, only content "challenged or likely to be challenged" actually needs to be referenced. I am officially challenging any main space content (article, stub, list, disambiguation page) that is completely without references, currently on Wikipedia. You may also consider it likely that I will challenge any new content added without references. Anyone that would like assist in adding references is welcome to join me at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles where we have been working on this task since May 2007. Our back log is huge, over 250,000 article. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:56, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Challenging millions of articles simultaneously, most of which you cant have read - that sounds like a job for WP:SPIDERMAN (grin). Seriously, this has been debated at WP:V over and over, and the consensus that has formed is that references are only required for certain things. The idea that you could get around this consensus by formally "challenging" things you haven't read is a little too legalistic for our system. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 13:48, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Andrew Lancaster was right, I didn't mean to create a "good faith" condition and never should have put that in there. So it should say to amend it to say that the challenge is to include raising a question (any question) beyond just its lack of a citation. Sincerely, North8000 ( talk) 20:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
"There has been some argument that certain main space content does not require references. These arguments tend to be about lists or article stubs" Citations on lists was discussed recently at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 45#Verification of lists. A discussion about stubs is currently ongoing at Template talk:Unreferenced#Proposal.
JeepdaySock you challenge seems to be potentially very pointy. Errant makes some good points which I would sum up as a challenge to un-cited content has to be base on a test of reasonableness if it is not to be seen as disruptive. BTW I have just checked Main Page and today it has neither citations or an unreferenced template ( BEANS)-- PBS ( talk) 00:49, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
This keeps coming up, so I want to point this out again.
is not the same as
Deleting an unreferenced article just because nobody bothered to add references in some arbitrary timeframe is not helpful. We should be adding references not deleting. Only after a serious attempt to reference an article has been made — only then should we start thinking about deletion. Thank you. - Hydroxonium ( H3O+) 03:05, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
┌────────────────────────────┘
I, and many others, routinely add references to unreferenced articles. Many sit for years, but I have never come across one that had false information in it. As for "refimprove", I will add references for the things I can easily find but I usually leave the refimprove tag in place. I must admit that I loath having to add references to somebody else's article. It sucks and I wish people did it from that start — but — per policy, that is not a reason to delete in and of itself. -
Hydroxonium (
H3O+) 14:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
North8000's proposal to add "a challenge is to include raising a question about the material other than that it is uncited." is worth further consideration. It is unfortunately common for editors to state that they are "challenging" all uncited content in an article and remove it. I don't think this is what is intended by the policy (neither is Jeepday's "official challenge"). Fortunately, Jeepday is too reasonable to suggest deleting all uncited content. Not all editors are.-- SaskatchewanSenator ( talk) 20:16, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
I want to bring to your attention an actual case, which exemplifies the problem of "challenging" unsourced material. In particular, the editor systematically threw out sentence after sentence, even sourced ones, and then brought it to AfD. This is not a single case, this is happening again and again. Here is the AfD discussion: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Acupuncture_point (some editor restored the content previous to deletion). Input by regulars welcome. Nageh ( talk) 18:12, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
After all, this one was a false positive. Nageh ( talk) 22:36, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
And what about challenging the factual accuracy of well-referenced statements? I'll give two local examples:
What are we to do about well-sourced nonsense?-- Robert EA Harvey ( talk) 09:36, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
In example #1, if the fact of the Hall's construction is verifiable then clearly there is a factual, but sourced, inaccuracy and it can sensibly be removed. Probably the same in the second example, though I have not looked into the specifics for now. There is a general misconception that WP:V and WP:TRUTH can be boiled down to "Wikipedia reports what exists in reliable sources, even if it is inaccurate". It is the latter that is incorrect; so long as we can show the inaccuracy trivially there is no issue with removing it. WP:V simply defines the basis of inclusion of material, not defining the extent to which material may be included. WP:TRUTH is a humorous chastisement for those who are here to invoke their own opinions on what is accurate - bypassing the process of reliable publishing. It is not a general indictment against due diligence over material. To be 100% clear; in the first example, the trivially verifiable dates involved means that the sources can be considered unreliable for that specific claim, making it unverified. -- Errant ( chat!) 12:05, 25 February 2011 (UTC)