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--> Wikipedia talk:Requests for bureaucratship/172
(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 09:57, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC))'
--> Wikipedia talk:Requests for bureaucratship/172
--> Wikipedia talk:Requests for bureaucratship/172
--> Wikipedia talk:Requests for bureaucratship/172
Moved to Wikipedia talk: Protection policy
Currently the MOS says: 'For the English Wikipedia, there is no preference among the major national varieties of English.'
But there are two exceptions to this rule in the manual. There is a poll on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style on whether these exceptions should be removed. The poll will end on 20:00 UTC on 8 November. jguk 19:02, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Twice I've been accused of "jumping over" the edits of another user: first at Prolixity, and again at List of heteronyms, both of which were articles that were relatively new when I made my edits. Surely editing relatively new articles is acceptable and tolerable. I assumed such was true with these two articles as well. Please discuss. (Accusers need not reply.) [[User:Poccil| Peter O. ( Talk)]] 17:17, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
I'm always wary of any effort to systematically exclude a type of information from Wikipedia. In fund-raising notices, Wikimedia advertises itself as developing a repository of "all human knowledge". Okay, so "encyclopedic" information goes into Wikipedia, dictionary-type information goes into Wiktionary, and similarly for Wikisource, Wikibooks and Wikiquote. The divisions here are relatively unambiguous.
So where does the rest of the information that Wikipedians are systematically excluding (or proposing for removal) from Wikipedia go (e.g., info on smaller schools, less well-known people, etc.)? Is this not human knowledge? Well, actually in most cases not only is it human knowledge, it's actually human knowledge that would, in fact, go into more specialized kinds of encyclopedias (e.g., Primary Schools in Missouri or Who's Who in Sri Lanka...).
Okay, then, should we create more Wikimedia wikis to deal with the overflow? Say...
Clearly this systemization is less clear-cut than what we currently have (i.e., less distinct from what would be in Wikipedia). In addition, it would simply become unmanageable, what with all the crosslinking that would be involved.
The alternatives, it would seem, are:
My two cents. - dcljr 16:57, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The problem is with that ALL, which is just a silly claim. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, and there has to be some standards around what fits and what doesn't. I got up at 7:00 AM today is both human and knowledge of sorts, but it is not encyclopaedic. Filiocht 13:32, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
In light of the very conflicting opinions on whether or not schools should be kept in Wikipedia, I've begun a new proposed policy. My hopes are that this policy can replace VfD where schools are concerned, and we can better approach school articles. Please see Wikipedia:School articles needing evaluation to read my proposal. — siro χ o 13:59, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
If I'm citing Wikipedia as a reference because I've used it for information, what should I list it as? Does it have a policy about this, or a specific name it goes by?
I'm wondering about the use of Greek characters one occasionally sees in article introductions. This is typical:
The codes required look like this:
πλε
, etc.
I wonder if the transliteration isn't sufficient. I note that the article for Pyjamas has Persian script: پايجامه.
Is this of widely believed to be of value, or just an affectation? -- NathanHawking 01:52, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)
&alpha;
(Which I just had to do recursively.)--
NathanHawking 02:11, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)Discussion moved to Category talk:Years. Thanks to those who commented. - dcljr 21:11, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Do I control the content of my talk page? Can I just clear it down, or is that considered vandalism? Should I correct spelling and grammar mistakes that annoy me? I'm not intending to do this, I'm just curious. PhilHibbs 17:03, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Is this list a copyright violation? As it now stands, there is no content other than a list compiled by a single organization, as their ratings. I *know* facts can't be copyrighted, but this is VH1's proprietary opinion. Rick K 05:31, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)
In short, the legal way to write this would be to write about the list and give an external link to where VH1 hosts the list themselves. -- 20:09, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)
Please reply at
Template talk:Wi#This is horrible.
Dori |
Talk 20:12, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)
I made a photograph of a US nickel with the Lewis & Clarck expedition for nl.wiki. Of couse the photo is mine but is there copyright on the coin artwork? Is this only OK for coins older than x years? nl: Jcwf
I've gone ahead and deleted Finlandia co-op and Watermyn. I don't see any reason whatsoever for supposing the vfd discussion wasn't sufficient reason to delete them -- as SimonP blandly notes on Wikipedia:VfD decisions not backed by current policies, Current policy: Nothing specific. Jimbo once got annoyed at such deletions. Wile E. Heresiarch 15:09, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This has been a unilateral project by User:SimonP, who has, after clear (often unanimous) VfD decisions to delete certain articles, has removed the VfD discussions, kept the articles, and listed the articles on this page. If someone has an objection to the reasons for which something is to be deleted, there are two outlets for it: 1) post your comment on the VfD discussion itself and try to persuade consensus the other way, or 2) list it for undeletion. Perhaps I have missed a policy discussion somewhere, but that one user would create an alternate method of overturning consensus and populate it himself seems very inappropriate to me, and flouting established procedures seems far more contrary to policy than users voting outside previously recorded justifications for deletion.
Thoughts? Postdlf 00:59, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Why do you believe that VfD discussions themselves and Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion are insufficient to address wrongful deletions? This is especially puzzling because in every article you have listed as having an improper VfD decision, you did not even post any comments. Why wouldn't making your concerns known there be the first step? Postdlf 01:37, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If you disagree with the votes, then you are not obligated to delete these items, but you are also not allowed to move them from the VfD page. This is a highjacking of the process which you do not have the right to do. How can you say that you have support because you post something on the mailing list and then go and do it without waiting to see what the mailing list had to say about it? As soon as I read your email comments, I went to where you said these things were so that I could delete them as per VfD policy, but I couldn't find them. Just leave them in the Vfd/Old page and don't muck with them. Rick K 04:18, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
SimonP not only moved them off the VfD page, he took the VfD header off in violation of policy. This the guy who's trying to claim that he's carrying out policy. I deleted those articles which had had consensus to be deleted which had not been redirected to other pages, and SOMEONE (I will not point fingers) UNdeleted them, in complete and UTTER violation of policy. If you think they should be undeleted, take them to Votes for Undeletion, but if you undelete without process, it's a severe violation of sysophood. Rick K 07:40, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
Can I give SimonP a 'Nub End' award? It's like a Barnstar, but it's for people that waste a few minutes of your life and leave a bad taste in your mouth. [[User:Noisy| Noisy | Talk]] 16:57, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
User:Maurreen has proposed a draft trim to the Wikipedia Manual of Style on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Draft Trim, which has subsequently been adjusted by User:Jallan and myself. The discussion on this proposal is scheduled to end at 23:59 (UTC) on 25 October. If you would like to comment on the proposals, please add them at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Draft trim. jguk 23:37, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I made a proposal on the WikiEn-l mailing list that seemed to get quite a bit of approval, so I went ahead and drafted a policy here. It's supposed to handle those dubious articles, those that aren't obvious speedies, but those that will clearly never be kept on VFD. I hope to get some comments/brickbats. Thanks. Johnleemk | Talk 13:38, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Attempting to mirror the VfD help page (mostly by copy and paste with search and replace). Anyhoo, discussions are open, suggestions please?
132.205.15.42 03:58, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
To help admins and editors to track repeated vandalism of specific articles, I've created Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages (thanks to Fuzheado for the original idea). By looking at Related Changes for that page, it's easy to see at a glance which of the vandals' targets have recently been changed. If you spot an article repeatedly being vandalised, please add it to that page. -- ChrisO 08:45, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've been taking a look recently at the deletion log and I'm shocked and appalled at some of the articles that pass for speedy deletion. Case in point, see Geno's Steaks (text is available at http://www.mcfly.org/en/Geno%27s_Steaks if it's still deleted). This is an accurate non-stub article about one of the most famous cheesesteak places in the world and was speedy deleted "because it lacks encyclopedic content". I've listed it on Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion, but I'm starting to think our admins need to reread the deletion policy. anthony (see warning) 14:08, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Way too much stuff is deleted without reference to deletion policy. It seems few people read it. Intrigue 23:57, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Yes, simply in order to realise how much stuff is deleted you would have to have an unhealthy obsession with VFD. Only folks with quite litterally hours to waste could even plough through all of the stuff that is listed. All it takes is the 5-6 rabid deletion-warrors to get the schools deleted. Most people aren't watching, and can't be bothered. They go on writing articles, instead of trying to delete them. Mark Richards 23:20, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Reminder, you are invited to give your opinion here : Wikipedia:Recipes proposal SweetLittleFluffyThing
Hi all - apologies if this is mentioned elsewhere... I'm new here, but I've looked through both the FAQ and the help guide and I can't find this mentioned.
I've been adding small amounts of information to several stub articles. In some cases, the amounts are so small that the article is clearly still a stub. In others... I can't tell. Is there a hard and fast rule of thumb as to when a stub stops being a stub?
Grutness 06:42, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In short, no. There is no hard and fast rule for what constitutes a stub. Use your intuition. I would say that when in doubt it is better to err on the side of leaving the stub notice. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:32, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)
And there are others who believe stub notices as currently implemented are no-purpose, useless annoyances added mindlessly any article that is short. One might as well have this done automatically by software for any article under some arbitrary minimal amount of bytes if there were any use to it. More information can almost always be added to an article. Many long articles are far more deficient in the amount of information that should be added to them in respect to the topic they cover than many supposed stubs. There is never any harm done by removing a stub marker. Jallan 16:47, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Apparently, unlike me, judging by that last sentence, Jallan considers his/her opinions to be facts.
There are very short articles that are not stubs. Two examples that leap to mind are
Hence, number of bytes would not be a suitable criterion.
And, yes, I do agree that there are long articles that are so uninformative that they might as well be stubs.
Still, I really disagree that "There is never any harm done by removing a stub marker." Clearly, there are people who find them useful, even if Jallan is not one of them, and the harm done by arbitrarily removing things that other people find useful is that it is damaging to the community. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:20, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)
I'm beginning to wish I hadn't asked! :) I shall use my discretion - and hopefully will learn what is and what isn't a stub given time. Grutness 11:22, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Request for comment requires that two users discuss an issue with a user before a dispute is announced. How does one get another user to review this issue without announcing it on Wikipedia:Request for comment? -- Itai 12:10, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Recently at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship, there has been a lot of talk about whether it's fair to decide Wikipedia policy and admin/bureaucrat promotions on the unofficial #wikipedia IRC channel. Many participants in the discussion agree that it's generally a Very Bad Thing when this occurs.
To remedy this, I've proposed a policy that sets out some ground rules about using IRC to formulate policy. (Namely, Don't Do It.) Please read it over at m:Talk:IRC channels (that's on the Meta-wiki), and add your thoughts. Thanks, • Benc • 23:02, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Avoid_self-references#Translation,_copyright,_and citation
Is there a policy/guideline for refactoring talk pages? I have noticed some people removing resolved issues from Talk pages without archiving them or even making a note that the discussion had ever existed. Surely we should have a guide for archiving and/or refactoring Talk pages. Johnleemk | Talk 18:03, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia talk: Image copyright tags.
What is the policy (if any) regarding how deaths are printed in articles? I see a lot of inconsistencies mainly in the use of 'Mr X died on' vs. 'Mr X passed away on'. Is it more accepted to deliver the hard facts, or offer a euphemism when explaining the death of an individual? Barneyboo 02:28, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
See also:
In the article on pleonasm, a contributor has inserted a number of non-English sentence examples:
plus commentary on them.
Compare this entry to vowel, which references differences in principle between English and other languages without using non-English examples.
We're discussing this here.
The only explicit policy advice on this I've located so far is Use other languages sparingly. Know of any other Wikipedia policy guidelines on using non-English?-- NathanHawking 21:11, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)
I started a survey over at Talk:Project for the New American Century/Survey, and one editor (VeryVerily) who has been opposed to the survey from the start is now trying to disrupt it by inserting large numbers of disparaging non-vote comments into the voting section in direct contravention of the survey guidelines. Protecting the survey would be silly, so I've been reduced to edit-warring to try keeping it as tidy as possible. There's already a request for arbitration pending on this person and this subject so I suppose I could just consider it another piece of "evidence" should the case be accepted, but it annoys me that in the interim he's able to interfere this much with other attempts to work out the dispute short of that. I don't suppose this would be grounds for a temporary ban? That's all I can think of offhand, but since I'm party to the RfA now I don't want to do something like that myself. Bryan 17:27, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
The Search results page used to give a red link to allow creation of a page, but this was recently taken away. Maybe that is to avoid creation of easily-missed orphans and vanity pages, but it complicates the creation of necessary redirects. For instance, I just wrote 3 Maccabees and 4 Maccabees (mirroring the current 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees), but needed redirects from Third Book of Maccabees etc. to mirror Book of Ezra and Third Epistle of John. I had to do a psuedo-edit and preview to get red links to create them. Is this intentional? Is there a better way? Mpolo 10:53, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)
Do we have a policy for handling persistent POV warriors such as the anon who has been warned five (!) times for adding blatantly POVed material to Malaysia? It's so biased, everyone working on the article has reverted the anon's edits on sight. I asked if blocking is permissible on IRC, but everyone else suggested waiting. Despite all the warnings, the anon has persisted. If we don't have any policies for blocking persistent POV warriors such as this one, we should have. If the user is registered, we can go to arbitration, but for anons... Johnleemk | Talk 07:02, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If one finds a diagram that is useful but it is tricky to make in a paint program, what is the legal position if one takes the image into an image manipulation programme and traces it onto a new layer? It should be fairly simple, most times, to get an extremely good copy of the original image, but such action clearly goes against the spirit of image protection legislation. Do we have a policy? --[[User:Bodnotbod| bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 19:16, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)
It is ok for maps in most cases, and other things where there is no other way to represent the thing reasonably. Copying the artistic interpretation of the thing is what is at stake. Intrigue 23:37, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I found this text in the ESA General Terms and Conditions: ESA does not grant the right to resell or redistribute any information, documents, images or material from its web site or to compile or create derivative works from material on its website. Does this mean WP must not contain ESA images (in contrast to NASA images)? Awolf002 17:49, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy#Policy proposal concerning episode guides and episode lists. Ian Pugh 14:00, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
People with noncommercial images do not mind their inclusion on WikiMedia.Org (a not for profit family of websites). What is important is that we or people using WikiMedia.Org do not use noncommercial images in commercial works. Luckily, every picture -- indeed, every binary file -- has a page of metadata which includes license. It is easy to remove noncommercially licensed works from commercial works. I do not see why we must deillustrate our websites. When we burnWikiPedia.Org to a CD, we will have to leave out most images for fitting the Encyclopædia WikiPedia to a CD, so it is not like all of the images will ever make it to the commercial CD anyway.
Ŭalabio 04:04, 2004 Oct 6 (UTC)
Recently I added a couple images to articles without the permission of the copyright holder, namely Image:TheDraw ANSI.png and Image:Ceresco library.jpg, in both cases because I don't know who the original author is and have no way to find out. These pictures would be very difficult to replace — while any ANSI art image could be used for ANSI art, I consider the TheDraw image to have additional historical value. I don't think any of us would drive to Ceresco, Nebraska to take a picture of something there, but some anonymous resident has already done so. Neither of these uses is even remotely likely to be challenged. While this seems to contradict general image policy, are these sort of images acceptable? Should they be? Is there a tag for this sort of thing? And, finally, is there some more appropriate place I could ask this? Thanks. Derrick Coetzee 00:16, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
A new policy proposal has been created, titled "Administrator Activity Policy". It can be found here. Discussion is set to last two weeks followed by a two week vote. Feel free to direct your comments to the talk page thereof. -- Grun t 🇪🇺 23:23, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia would be better off without titles of class distinction (i.e. Administrator, Bureaucrat) and have all logged-in users obtain privileges of sysops, etc. Let all logged-in users become known as Wiki staff and have all these privileges. This idea was brought up by User:Sam Spade on his attitude towards adminship. Let the "social classes" system in Wikipedia break up or be eliminated, just like the internationally widespread elimination of titles of nobility. Marcus2 14:47, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Bodymodification, Editwars, and Legal Liability
I noticed an edit war between intactivists and circumcisiosexuals. This got me thinking about modymodification and legal liability:
If parents would follow the advice of an article just reverted by procircumcisionist and based on that advice, the parents circumcise a healthy baby with no medical problems and the baby dies, the parents might sue Wikimedia for wrongful death. Contrarily, an anticircumcisionist might revert an article just before parents with a child requiring a medically necessary circumcision looks at the article. The parents decide not to circumcise based on the article. Again, the child dies, and again, the parents sue Wikimedia.
I have an idea which will kill the editwars and save Wikimedia from legal accountability:
At the top of every article about bodymodification, have a disclaimer like this as a serversideinclude:
"It is the policy of the Foundation Wikimedia that bodymodification should be an informed decision of the modifyee beyond the age of majority."
Then we can remove all pro/con-sections from the articles, thus ending the editwars. Since occasionally circumcision is necessary, we can have an additional disclaimer there:
"It is the recommendation of the Foundation Wikimedia that with the exception of emergencies, before one gets a medically necessary circumcision, one receive a second opinion from either a pediatric urologist if the patient is a child or an urologist if the patient is an adult."
We can modify this and put this disclaimer on all articles about medicine:
"It is the recommendation of the Foundation Wikimedia that with the exception of emergencies, one should get a second opinion"
While me talk about legal accountability of Wikimedia and medicine, perhaps we should have a disclaimer like this on medical articles:
"Important disclaimer:
- The information on Wikipedia is for educational purposes only and should not be considered to be medical advice. It is not meant to replace the advice of the physician who cares for you or your family. All medical advice and information should be considered to be incomplete without a physical exam, which is not possible without a visit to your doctor."
These disclaimers would end the circumcisioneditwars and protect Wikimedia from lawsuites.
Anonymous Coward
Would someone well versed in copyright issues please come to Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags#Author gone and discuss how to tag images which were made by Wikipedians who have since left Wikipedia and cannot give explicit consent that the images are tagged as GFDL? An user has suggested that they should be tagges with CopyrightedFreeUse which, IMO, is violation of users' copyright. Nikola 23:26, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
One of which has been made before - the In the News and Current Events must be less Americocentric. US "presidential debates" and other crap are just not interesting enough, and they are rather irritating when a lot of other articles and news items deserve attention. All this and more has been covered extensively before in previous discussions, but no action has been taken yet (save your excuses, heard them before), I believe one excerpt exists here: Template_talk:In_the_news#Americocentrism.
Next, the map of India used in several articles is inaccurate and offensive - no mention is made of the "disputed" territories or that the boundary shown is neither an international boundary nor an Indian-accepted representation of territories under Indian control, except in the main article on India and perhaps the Kashmir article and one or two more; the CIA map is used by default in all other articles and is WRONG - it is a map that reveals CIA and perhaps American government policies, but is incorrect, irritating, and unacceptable. Several instant remedies are possible: use colour-coded/ shaded maps that indicate dispute ; mention dispute in image captions ; mention inaccuracy ; explain that current CIA map is just that ; explain current map shows boundaries definitely under Indian administration, not the international boundary (which, to be as NPOV as possible, does not exist.) Throw out the revert mongering meddlers and the ignorant and implement a quick and effective policy - above all CHANGE THE @#*&^%@! MAP. Damn it. -- Simonides 22:49, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've replaced the default States of India map on the India article - now if some editors could use it to replace maps on all India-related articles where the old format was in use, I'd appreciate it. I'll try to do my bit, but I'm on a dialup connection so uploading/ image loading etc is really really slow - thanks! -- Simonides 14:25, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Your first proposition seems nonsensical to me. You may personally not be interested in "crap" like the US Presidential debates, but clearly many people in the world, both in and out of the US, are interested. They were multiple times the top story on the BBC's website, for example, which to my knowledge is not a US news source. They were also on the front page of newspapers in Greece, and I'm sure were I to regularly read news sources from other countries besides those two, I would've found them prominently discussed elsewhere as well. The simple fact is that US actions affect the world disproportionately, so the world tends to be interested in them. You may not like this, but Wikipedia isn't here to change what people are interested in, just to document it. Therefore, things such as the US presidential debates that are covered prominently throughout the world must continue to be covered prominently in Wikipedia as well. -- Delirium 07:04, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)
I added this to Wikipedia:Deletion Policy#Decision Policy
I think everyone should be able to understand why this is generally good. Arguments have come up regarding this, including in the recent GNAA discussion. Of course there may be exceptions like if there are ever hundreds of sockpuppet votes, but I think that in general, people should adhere to this. Just wanted to let people know that I added this, since its not a trivial change. — siro χ o 20:55, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
The banner says it costs $10 an hour to run Wikimedia websites. Why don't we make it so that every person that donates $10 "sponsors" an hour? So instead of the box that constantly says to donate money, it would say "This hour of Wikipedia is brought to you by x user. To sponsor a Wikipedia hour, donate here" or something to that affect. That way people would get recognition for donating and more people would check out their talk pages and they could showcase their pet projects or their blog or whatever on their talk pages. Salasks 03:52, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)
I've seen SUP tags used for superscripts in Wikipedia articles a lot. I assume SUB is also used. Both are problematic. They are not portable. I have an article on my website discussing the problems and suggesting cures:
Using Superscripts and Subscripts in Web Pages
In short, I recommend against using the SUP and SUB tags. For the most common use of the SUP tag, exponentiation, I recommend using the Unicode up-arrow, ↑, written as ↑. At the very least, even if pages already having SUP are left as they are, I request that the use of the up-arrow should be granted status as an officially acceptable policy for any future articles. -- Shlomital 17:36, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)
I don't know what text editor you're using, but every ASCII text editor I know of is going to have problems copy-pasting 10↑9. Pasting that into
OpenOffice.org works, but then so does pasting normal superscripts and subscripts (though admittedly sup/sub is lost upon pasting into
Microsoft Word 97, while the up-arrow works). But that's beside the point. I agree with Derrick above; the preservation of formatting when copy-pasting into other applications seems like a weak reason to eliminate superscripts and subscripts, which to me are far more intuitive than the up-arrow (which suffers from the additional problem that it may be have other meanings and be
interpreted differently, or confused with some kind of vector notation). Not only that, but using sup
and sub
are apparently
required for some languages to render properly. They give at least a modicum of semantic meaning to the text; the use of up-arrow does not. --
Wapcaplet 22:19, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This is not a feasible solution. Conventional mathematical notation exists and changing it to something completely contrary to convention just so it can be copied and pasted properly is somewhat an absurd solution. Regardless, the up arrow means something different in mathematics, see Knuth's up arrow notation. Dysprosia 03:22, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Is it biased to describe an invention Foo as being "encumbered by patents" or "protected by patents"? To me, the word "encumbered" has negative connotations, and similarly "protected" has positive connotations. What would be a good alternative? — Matt 09:29, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Please have a look at Driveshaft (and Talk:Driveshaft) and explain to me the rationale for deleting the (apparent) stub. |l'KF'l| 20:16, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)
Do people ever post their own already published elsewhere material as wikipedia entries? How are these sort of issues of copyright and authorship dealt with?
I would add to that: you retain copyright on all original content you add to Wikipedia. By placing it in here, you are releasing it under GFDL, but you are not giving up any other intellectual property rights. -- Jmabel 01:46, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
At present when a reader clicks on a thumbnail image to see the larger version of the image, they see it accompanied by a lot of irrelevant and unattractive material - the name of the image file, the image's edit history and technical details of its licensing etc. What readers should see is the image, with a caption and possibly a heading. There should then be a link to the edit history and licensing details, just as there is a link from an article to the article's edit history. This seems to me to be another example of how Wikipedia is currently structured in the interests of its writers and editors rather than in the interests of readers. How much difficulty would there be in restructing the image pages in this way? Adam 02:50, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Actually they can't see the caption. The caption is visible under the photo on the article page, but not on the page where the image stands alone. What the reader sees is a bunch of stuff they don't want or need to see. Why would it be a cumbersome change for editors? Adam 11:53, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Incorrect_date_formats states that, for example, 2000 is preferable to 2000 in film. I've lost count of the number of articles I've seen when someone has come along and changed it to the latter, breaking the agreed convention. This may be just a case of those people not knowing the rule but it is now so widespread that people just ignore it. Should the policy be reviewed or should we go through all the Year in X links and fix them? violet/riga (t) 14:34, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Voting has begun on the Managed Deletion policy. Note that it will actually be called "Early Deletion." The policy has been finalized, so, even if you have looked at it before, please look again and give it your vote. Voting will end on October 8, 2004. Geogre 00:46, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Based on a previous village pump discussion, a new page is being developed to handle the removal of images used under nonfree licenses or lacking source information. A poll on whether to implement this process is at Wikipedia talk:Possibly unfree images. -- Michael Snow 03:26, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I've just been reverting a few edits by an anonymous user, where that user had taken away piped links and fed them through redirects. As it happens, some of the links he changed were wrong in the first place, but that's by-the-by. Anyway, he questioned my changes, and I stated that it was policy. (Refer to my talk page.) However, now I find myself in the position where I can't find where the policy of eliding redirects is written down. There's nothing explicit at Wikipedia:Redirect, or Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Links and URLs. The explanation I've given is "... I presume that this is to reduce server load (by reducing the additional code executed each time you click on a link that gets redirected)." Any pointers? Is this the reason? Shall I make policy more explicit? [[User:Noisy| Noisy | Talk]] 09:12, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I'm just curious why the GFDL was chosen, the pros and cons of it, why other possibilities weren't used, etc. Is there an archived debate on this subject? -- Golbez 16:55, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)
Well, it is an issue for some, and I am pretty sure that the discussion has been had many times, although I don't know where. It would be a major pain to switch over, but would be (at least partly) possible to change if there was enough interest. Probably the drawbacks of the GFDL do not warent the teethpullingly traumatic process of changing. Mark Richards 02:05, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Many of the problems with Wikipedia's use of the GFDL can be seen at Why Wikitravel isn't GFDL. I remember there being some talk of working with the FSF to fix some of the brokenness of the license, but it's been a long time. -- Cyrius| ✎ 03:37, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I was one of the people who have proposed that the Wikipedia migrate to Creative Commons. One of the critics mentioned that the CVS that Wikipedia uses isn't fine-tuned enough to nail down exactly who contributed what. So there would be some difficulty in writing a script that decides at what point an article would be free of GFDL-only material. Of course, in theory, a flesh-and-bone person could manually go through the page histories and make the decision themselves. This might work if someone wants to reuse an article in some manner, such as in a CC-based wiki. However, this would too time consuming and the possibilites for mistake are too great for migrating the entire Wikipedia to CC. So, basically, yeah, migrating to CC is possible but very difficult.
I'm a moderator at the LQwiki, which is a Creative Commons based (by-sa variant to be exact) Linux documentation wiki. We'd like to use Wikipedia material, not to mention the gobs of Linux documentation available under the GFDL, but our licensing scheme prevents this. So far, we've been asking the original authors of GFDL material for permission to use it under the CC-by-sa, but this is simply not possible to do with Wikipedia articles - too many editors, too many of them are anons. So I've been following the situation pretty closely. We're thinking of lobbying the FSF ourselves on the issue. Does anybody have any suggestions on the best way to contact them or to argue our point?
In a way, this restriction is good thing. I've been incorporating the public domain Jargon File, and our wiki is small enough that I've been single-handedly causing a Rambot Effect. I'd hate to think what a flood of GFDL material might do. crazyeddie 07:18, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
A new policy proposal is in the tweaking stages. Please take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Managed_Deletion for the details. Note that this is a modification of the Speedy Delete process only. If you disagree with the policy entirely, please wait for voting to cast your vote. If you can think of ways to improve the policy, please contribute constructive criticism on the Discussion page. The proposal is aimed primarily at administrators who perform speedy deletes, but all will no doubt have some interest in it. I anticipate voting beginning one week from today. Geogre 18:49, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Voting on the Managed Delete policy proposal will commence on Friday, September 24, 2004 and will be open for 2 weeks. Geogre 01:11, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It is very annoying to have the MediaWiki:Sitenotice displayed as if it were the opening line of each page. Whoever did this, please undo it ASAP. It will only tend to turn people off instead of donate. -- mav 16:58, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Would it be possible to have an edit flag for large changes (i.e. more than 10% of article size changed, or more than 10% of text altered) for Recent Changes and the Watchlist? Perhaps just a ! which would let us easily know that vandalism has most likely taken place? And perhaps a filter mode for Recent Changes to only show articles that have been massively changed? -- Golbez 17:23, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)
I blocked an annoying vandal, last night, for the duration of 24h. ( User:24.71.223.141). I shouldn't have done so, as it's a proxy, and a few minutes later, a legitimate user complained about the block. Technically, wouldn't it be easy to allow unblocked, logged-in users (with an account creation predating the block) to edit even when on a blocked IP? This would solve the annoying problem of 'unblockable' proxy IPs (we would just have to kindly ask editors on vandal-prone IPs to get an account).
A more general thought I had recently was that, the larger WP will grow, the greater the percentage of time spent reverting worthless edits will become. The singularly low threshold to contributing is a major feature of WP, and clearly a big advantage on an encyclopedia that consists mainly of stubs. The more accomplished an article, however, the less likely an anonymous edit is to be useful. I would therefore propose:
such a course would provide the more vulnerable articles some protection from the main brunt of casual vandals (while of course the determined ones will not be deterred), while it would not raise the threshold for quick creation of new articles, and edits to stubs. dab 12:58, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This has probably been proposed before, but since I've been spending some time on Recent Changes lately, it's become overwhelmingly apparent to me that the vast majority of vandalism is done by unregistered users. I suggest that we allow a maximum of 5 article edits (but unlimited talk page edits would be ok) for unregistered accounts, after which users must register for a user name before they can edit further. It's far easier to track changes and vandalism by accounts with unique user names than for accounts that are strings of numbers.
Exploding Boy 21:52, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
I have been advised to post here to draw peoples attention to a discussion about WP:MOS and the TOC. I am suggesting that it is more aesthetically appealing to have the TOC floating on the right. My suggestion can be found at Wikipedia talk:TOC#Right floating TOC Please comment -- Martin TB 19:39, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think the evaluation of stub sorting needs some kind of restriction or review... There are some creation of categories and stub templates which are completely useless... --[[User:AllyUnion| AllyUnion (talk)]] 09:29, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There is a vote and discussion on whether and how to enforce the Wikipedia:Three revert rule on Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement and Wikipedia talk:Three revert rule enforcement. Please come and contribute your comments/votes. jguk 14:16, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is there a policy on when it's ok to have two articles on the same man (but under different names)? Some people seem to say are ok to be merged, others stay for ages. jguk 20:47, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I've just seen Jesus and Isa. Should these be merged then? jguk 21:09, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Well that's a different point Mpolo. The Jesus article needs shortening, but that doesn't mean the others shouldn't be merged with it. I'm still puzzled as to why we want 3 biographies of the same man. Wouldn't one merged one be better? jguk 15:20, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have just found out that today is Eid ul-Fitr and have added it to today's current events. Like Easter and many other days - some non-religious - it's a moveable feast. What is the policy about puting these moveable feasts on the main page?
I know they don't really fit into the In the news or Today's Featured article boxes, but I am of the opinion that the main page should relect that we are aware that certain days are observed. I'm suggesting a box that would say (for example) Today is Diwali/Easter/Martin Luther King Day/Eid ul-Fitr/Mardi Gras etc. -- Martin TB 20:26, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
On a sidenote, I have no idea that the word "movable" contained two Es. ;-) Agree that they should be mentioned somewhere on the day. Chris 07:32, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think the current solution of having these days under "Selected Anniversaries" is ideal, even though it's technically not an anniversary in some sense (well, it's an anniversary according to a different calendar...) Mpolo 08:50, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)
I've proposed a new criterion for the Template:In the news guidelines with the aim of keeping ITN focused on widely reported stories covered by multiple major news outlets, and ensuring that NPOV is maintained. Please take a look at the proposal and add feedback at Wikipedia talk:In the news section on the Main Page. -- ChrisO 18:59, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There is currently a week-long backlog of VfD processing (IE there's been no action at all on most of the nominations whose 5-day voting period expired in the past 7 days), because not enough people are spending enough time doing it. Splitting the VfD page does nothing to help with this. The problem also seems to be increasing, I checked a random recent 5-day period, and 132 nominations were added to VfD, and a bit less than half (59) were processed and removed from the VfD "old" page (where the processing happens). VfDs "old" page is huge and growing, and usually takes a minute or two (literally) to save, further slowing down VfD processing. I just discovered this; it makes me all the more convinced we need alternatives to VfD.
I don't know if most people are aware of this, but you do NOT have to be an admin to help with VfD processing--I did about 80 this morning, and didn't have to delete a single article (I did cheat a bit by focusing on the easiest ones, but that was to shrink the page as fast as possible--I got the number of listings down by about 20%, although the handful of VERY long debates means that doesn't truly reflect page size reduction). (re-posted from prelim. del. vote page)
Niteowlneils 00:43, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Vfd processing backlog is back down to 2 days--great work people (mostly Francs2000)! Niteowlneils 02:56, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Can we get a similar catch-up effort on the trans-wiki backlog on 'old', dating back to April! Niteowlneils 20:13, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have always assumed that there was some process to ensure articles that have spent 5 days on VfD are acted upon based on the voting. I had also assumed that the specific process is that they only get removed from VfD if they have been acted upon. Apparently that may not the case, as the 10/26 entries were removed en masse 11/1, and put on /old, even tho' Black Templars, at least, hadn't been acted on, and still hasn't weeks later. Was I correct and this article just unintentionally slipped thru the cracks? Or are they just moved to old and it is just hoped that someone will do something with them some day? If so, how can one tell if there are articles that still need to be acted on on /old--Black Templars' 'What links here'doesn't reveal any sort of tracking page. Niteowlneils 03:53, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Quite a number of pages created recently have been copied directly from web page of Johns Hopkins University. While this may not be so serious as copyvio, I think the simple copying of CV-type material about faculty members and courses into WP is not a great precedent. See for example User:128.220.30.161. Charles Matthews 10:53, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I doubt we'd want the material, though, as one of the things "Wikipedia is not" is a place for resumes or CV's. N.b. someone just put up a silly joke article on a member of the comedy improv troupe at Hopkins, as well. Hopkins students are supposed to be clever, but apparently someone there isn't reading our policies. Geogre 18:41, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It seems, from Talk:September 11, 2001 attacks, that people are in favour of trying to develop a sitewide set of guidelines for the use of the word terrorist. In view of its likely length, the discussion has been moved to a separate page: Wikipedia:Use of the word terrorism (policy development). Please go to that page if you wish to be involved in developing this policy, and publicise this page as appropriate to fellow Wikipedians who may be interested. jguk 22:35, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I'm a complete newbie when it comes to policies, so any help (in suggestions as well as merciless editing) is appreciated. I think Preliminary Deletion isn't going to work. I've blathered up a suggestion of my own (after all, we can never have too much deletion policies :-) tentatively called " countdown deletion". It's on a personal subpage; check it out, mull it over and tear it to pieces if necessary. Thanks in advance for giving a damn. JRM 00:55, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)
See Talk:As of CURRENTYEAR. -- Sgeo | Talk 23:40, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)
Discussion archived to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)/diacritics.
See my proposal here: Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(use_English)#Proposal (should maybe be copied here?)
dab 15:17, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
See User:AaronSw/Song lyrics. What is the policy of having copyright violations in User pages? Rick K 08:41, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)
This is a question on the existing NPOV policy, regarding the detail how to handle articles which are listed as NPOV dispute but no activity is seen. The typical NPOV dispute article sees rather hectic activity, hopefully in the discussion, but sometimes escalating to edit wars in the article.
But there are some articles which are NPOV dispute listed, but no activity is seen. Except when trying to remove the NPOV dispute warning. So I wonder whether it is OK to use the dispute tag to stigmatize an article forever.
I've also asked at Wikipedia talk:NPOV dispute, but that page seems to have few watchers.
Pjacobi 21:29, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Cited definitions from dictionaries such as the American Heritage Dictionary have been cut repeatedly from several Wikipedia pages. The reason given is that the "dictionary definition is POV." I cite you to the recent history of a disambiguation page and its TalkPage.
I suggest part of the solution to this problem is to insert a new paragraph into the NPOV page to state explicitly, "Dictionary definitions are always NPOV if the contrasting definitions of experts are also quoted and cited." The most appropriate position would be following the "Religion" paragraph of the NPOV page. ;)
Any suggestions? --- Rednblu | Talk 08:59, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
When I was web searching for information about the APS Underwater Assault Rifle 5.56 mm, using Altavista's web searcher, I found a realistic-looking page about this rifle, which described this rifle in detail, and also mentioned a USA copy of this rifle and a recent undercover war called the Twilight War. The Russian APS is real and as described, but the USA copy and the Twilight War are fiction and occur in a videogame scenario. The page did not mention anything obviously fictional such as ray guns or spaceships. I do not play videogames and I had not heard of that videogame or its scenario. The web page did not mention any videogame and did not warn that any of its content was fictional.
That sort of mixture of fact and fiction (sometimes nicknamed "faction") can be a major pitfall and landmine for people looking for information. As a result, when I wrote the Wikipedia page APS Underwater Assault Rifle 5.56 mm (having checked the information by looking in reliable information at the APS's maker's web site), I included a pointer to a web page A warning about websites that describe guns which I wrote describing this risk of being misled. But someone deleted the page and the pointer to it.
However, the Wikipedia page Gestapo's section "Books" includes this warning:-
Suspected hoax works about the Gestapo include:
Gestapo Chief: The 1948 Interrogation of Heinrich Müller - Gregory Douglas. San Jose, CA 1995
which has been allowed to stand. Please, what is policy about warning the readers about inaccurate information on the WWW or in books or in films etc?
Thanks Anthony Appleyard 08:03, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think A warning about websites that describe guns was correctly deleted. Charles Matthews 09:46, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
See also this talk area. Anthony Appleyard 17:03, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have just posted another proposal to try and deal with VfD overload. Since it a) is primarily a formalization of current practice, and b) requires unanimous consent of the entire community (admins and non-admins alike), I am hoping that it will be less controversial than some of the other proposed ways to deal with Wikipedia's seriously broken housekeeping processes. It currently is here. If someone wants to make it into a formal, separate voting page, fine. If people want to comment or suggest tweaking the numbers there, that's fine, too. Niteowlneils 19:09, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
As some may know, there is continuing contention over the disposition of very short articles about non-notable high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. I am experimenting with the idea that such material should be merged into articles about the towns, on the premise that people interested in the town are better able to judge the appropriateness of this material than the general VfD population.
Here's the question. In the case of a short article that is exclusively, or almost exclusively the contribution of a single author, it seems to me that it ought to be possible to perform a "GDFL-friendly merge-and-delete" by placing a manually-written notice in the article's talk page, similar to the one below. (I've deliberately chosen one in which the article was created primarily, but not exclusively, by a single author). I'd like thoughtful comments on whether this is good enough. (I realize this isn't what you might call algorithmically perfect but GFDL is a human-interpreted license, not an algorithm).
This example concerns inserting the entire text of High Tech High into a section of San Diego, California.
The text is copied exactly from High Tech High to preserve GFDL traceability. Will clean up shortly. The text is that as of 17:25, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12. The text is entirely the product of a single author, Bboarder12, with the exception of the insertion and removal of various Wikipedia administrative notices by others. The history is: [[User:Dpbsmith| Dpbsmith (talk)]] 01:14, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
(cur) (last) 17:25, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 17:20, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 17:05, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 17:04, 1 Nov 2004 CBDroege m (reason)
(cur) (last) 17:04, 1 Nov 2004 CBDroege m (original author of page is not allowed to remove speedy deletion candidacy.)
(cur) (last) 17:02, 1 Nov 2004 RickK (vfd)
(cur) (last) 17:00, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 16:56, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 16:52, 1 Nov 2004 CBDroege m (candidate for speedy delete)
(cur) (last) 16:49, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 16:47, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
Placing a notice on the talk page does not satisfy the terms of the GFDL, which requires the list of authors to be in the section entitled history. If history information is lost accidently this isn't such a big deal, and we can wait until someone actually complains to remove the material, but we shouldn't be making this a regular practice. anthony 警告 21:18, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Inclusionists and Deletionists share what often seems like very little common ground (at least when discussing what to do with unsatisfactory articles), but both hope to make Wikipedia as good as it can be. I have a suggestion that I think would render most inclusionist/deletionist disputes moot; and be a positive wikipedia change as far as both camps are concerned. In the policy proposal I may speak extensively of school articles, though articles on schools are certainly not the only thing that would be impacted by this proposal.
Sometimes (at least when tempers are a bit hot due to a vehement dispute), there is the suggestion from one camp that proponants of the opposition view ought to start their own wiki. Suggestions of this sort are problematic not only in so far as they produce factionalism, but also because, if we were to take them up on that, we would essentially be forking wikipedia. And splitting the editor base into two different projects with large degrees of overlapping intent/content seems to be a bad plan.
So, is there a way to 1) allow people of these diametrically opposed opinions to coexist and 2) not require anyone to give up the fundamentals of their views on what wikipedia is/should be?
I think the answer is yes to both, and the way I would implement it is to have a deletionist wikipedia and an inclusionist wikipedia coexist.
To spell this out: Though there are varying views within either camp with respect to the scope of what wikipedia ought to cover, let us call the inclusionist position the following: All informative factual, verifiable NPOV information belongs in the wikipedia. Let us call the deletionist position the following: Only a certain subclass of informative, factual, verifiable NPOV information belongs in the wikipedia, and that subclass is determined by some factor like Notability or "encyclopedic" subject matter. I put encyclopedic in quotes because it seems as though something very particular is meant by that, and so it is being used in a particularized way.
The solution: Wikipedia ought to have two tiers of articles. Call the broader tier the wide tier, and call the narrower tier the slim tier. All articles start in the wide tier. People can nominate articles to be elevated from the wide tier to the slim tier. Then, there is a votes for promotion process (for those of you concerned that we need fewer voting processes rather than more voting processes, I think that a consequence of adopting this policy would be a drastic, drastic decrease in the number of candidates on VfD). If, by rough consensus, an article is deemed promotion worthy, then the article becomes part of the slim tier. The slim tier would reflect the deletionist ideal of wikipedia, not just the cream of the crop articles (like the one's featured on the front page), but basically all and only those articles that we, by consensus, think are on a suitable topic and well written. The union of the wide tier and the narrow tier would be the inclusionist ideal. Now, when a reader comes to wikipedia, they are presented with (by default) the narrow tier, but also with a clear announcement of the existence of the wider tier (and a notice reflecting the nature of the difference). People can set, via a cookie, whether they would like to use wikipedia slim/professional or the more robust (but also less refined) wikipedia. The result would be that 1) there is still only one wikipedia, and all wikipedians are working on the same articles (in the sense that no article has been forked to a different project, and thus, there is only one instance of each article for people to work on) and the wider tier would contain school articles, articles on hospitals, fire departments, obscure actors, so-called "fan-cruft." etc. Rather than fighting to remove information from the database, people would be proponants of the promotion of certain articles (and I'm sure we could include a process by which articles could be demoted, if that was favored).
In short, we would eliminate all of the notability arguments that occur on VfD, and VfD would basically be used to deal with issues like substubs with no potential for expansion, dictionary definitions, original research, etc. The school issue would be dealt with through 1) policy and 2) debates on votes for promotion. But, the inclusionists would be able to relax because failure to get an article promoted wouldn't mean the information is lost (in the same way an article's deletion results in a loss of information) and deletionists would be happy because there is a professional/"encyclopedic" face to wikipedia.
This compromise seems to be the best solution to accomodate everyone's preferences, alleviate the sheer number of articles on VfD, and allow us to focus on improving the articles themselves.
So, what does anyone think of this suggestion? posiduck 17:20, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I would be satisfied with just about any compromise that allows people who want to continue to work on the articles that would otherwise be deleted, without splitting ourselves into two different projects. That's my primary concern. Posiduck 16:21, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I doubt that there is anyway to render this dispute moot as Posiduck claims at the beginning of his proposal. However, the proposal moves in the right direction towards compromise. The two tier system has promise, but I think if we are going to have two tiers of articles, then some guidelines need to be established other than popular vote for the top tier. These guidelines need not be overly stringent and should reflect the sensibilities of both sides of the arguement, but I think they are necessary. Establishing these guidelines would probably be a protracted and frustrating process, but the end result would probably make wikipedia all the better for it. Indrian 20:47, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
Here is my proposal, in rough brief form, based on Posiduck's ideas:
There will be a new namespace called the Graveyard. Whenever a page Blah which does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion is voted to be deleted, it is not immediately deleted but is instead moved to Graveyard: Blah, and the redirect at Blah removed (effectively orphaning it). The default Wikipedia search does not search this namespace. A template, {{graveyard}}, is added to the top of the article, explaining to anyone who stumbles across it its status and asking for help in "reviving" it. All articles which are not significantly edited within a specific amount of time, say 6 months, are permanently deleted.
There will be a symmetric process, similar to Votes for undeletion, which can vote to "revive" a significantly improved article from the Graveyard.
What are the advantages of this approach?
What are your thoughts? Deco 23:30, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I certainly like this idea. In fact, it's part of the intention of my Wikipedia fork, McFly. Call Wikipedia the narrow version, and call McFly the wide version, and we've already got this essentially in place. I'd much rather have Wikimedia adopt this solution itself, but until then there's always McFly (I've just added the ability to edit, and am working on parsing Wikipedia:Deletion log regularly, only allowing users to edit deleted articles, and sending the edit button to Wikipedia for everything else). anthony 警告 19:58, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think the two-tier idea has a lot merit. It could be especially good for schools. I copied the discussion to Wikipedia:Two-tier system. Maurreen 18:33, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is there a place where we collect redirects that should be removed? Redirecting misspelled variants can be outright harmful: it leads to wrongly spelled links on WP going undiscovered (because they will be blue, even though misspelled, this has happened to me several times), and also readers may be led to believe that the spelling is correct when it is not. Two examples off the top of my head:
dab 16:42, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I still believe that there is a strong argument for keeping common misspellings as redirects. It enables searching for the common misspelling. Ideally, we should develop a way to have these handled by some special approach that prevents them from creating blue links. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:39, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
If one adds Template:R_from_misspelling, "What links here" can be used to makes sure nothing links there. This makes spell checking easy.
The source is much easier to read if with [[Mayor of Chicago]] instead of [[List of mayors of Chicago|Mayor of Chicago]] (to link to the same page). Such redirects shouldn't be replaced with a direct link. -- User:Docu
Links to redirects can always be replaced automatically, if desireable, so there is no need to deprecate them. The "Misspellings" Category however is an excellent idea (as long as it doesn't spawn enthusiasm for the inclusion of as many misspellings as possible...), and it may also be used to automatically check for mispellings present in article texts. In fact, it would be great to have Categories for all redirects, allowing a classification of why the redirect is there (abbreviation, a.k.a/alias, misspelling, wrongtitle,...) dab 16:51, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC) I just found Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages. nice. dab 18:12, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
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--> Wikipedia talk:Requests for bureaucratship/172
(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 09:57, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC))'
--> Wikipedia talk:Requests for bureaucratship/172
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--> Wikipedia talk:Requests for bureaucratship/172
Moved to Wikipedia talk: Protection policy
Currently the MOS says: 'For the English Wikipedia, there is no preference among the major national varieties of English.'
But there are two exceptions to this rule in the manual. There is a poll on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style on whether these exceptions should be removed. The poll will end on 20:00 UTC on 8 November. jguk 19:02, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Twice I've been accused of "jumping over" the edits of another user: first at Prolixity, and again at List of heteronyms, both of which were articles that were relatively new when I made my edits. Surely editing relatively new articles is acceptable and tolerable. I assumed such was true with these two articles as well. Please discuss. (Accusers need not reply.) [[User:Poccil| Peter O. ( Talk)]] 17:17, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
I'm always wary of any effort to systematically exclude a type of information from Wikipedia. In fund-raising notices, Wikimedia advertises itself as developing a repository of "all human knowledge". Okay, so "encyclopedic" information goes into Wikipedia, dictionary-type information goes into Wiktionary, and similarly for Wikisource, Wikibooks and Wikiquote. The divisions here are relatively unambiguous.
So where does the rest of the information that Wikipedians are systematically excluding (or proposing for removal) from Wikipedia go (e.g., info on smaller schools, less well-known people, etc.)? Is this not human knowledge? Well, actually in most cases not only is it human knowledge, it's actually human knowledge that would, in fact, go into more specialized kinds of encyclopedias (e.g., Primary Schools in Missouri or Who's Who in Sri Lanka...).
Okay, then, should we create more Wikimedia wikis to deal with the overflow? Say...
Clearly this systemization is less clear-cut than what we currently have (i.e., less distinct from what would be in Wikipedia). In addition, it would simply become unmanageable, what with all the crosslinking that would be involved.
The alternatives, it would seem, are:
My two cents. - dcljr 16:57, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The problem is with that ALL, which is just a silly claim. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, and there has to be some standards around what fits and what doesn't. I got up at 7:00 AM today is both human and knowledge of sorts, but it is not encyclopaedic. Filiocht 13:32, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
In light of the very conflicting opinions on whether or not schools should be kept in Wikipedia, I've begun a new proposed policy. My hopes are that this policy can replace VfD where schools are concerned, and we can better approach school articles. Please see Wikipedia:School articles needing evaluation to read my proposal. — siro χ o 13:59, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
If I'm citing Wikipedia as a reference because I've used it for information, what should I list it as? Does it have a policy about this, or a specific name it goes by?
I'm wondering about the use of Greek characters one occasionally sees in article introductions. This is typical:
The codes required look like this:
πλε
, etc.
I wonder if the transliteration isn't sufficient. I note that the article for Pyjamas has Persian script: پايجامه.
Is this of widely believed to be of value, or just an affectation? -- NathanHawking 01:52, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)
&alpha;
(Which I just had to do recursively.)--
NathanHawking 02:11, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)Discussion moved to Category talk:Years. Thanks to those who commented. - dcljr 21:11, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Do I control the content of my talk page? Can I just clear it down, or is that considered vandalism? Should I correct spelling and grammar mistakes that annoy me? I'm not intending to do this, I'm just curious. PhilHibbs 17:03, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Is this list a copyright violation? As it now stands, there is no content other than a list compiled by a single organization, as their ratings. I *know* facts can't be copyrighted, but this is VH1's proprietary opinion. Rick K 05:31, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)
In short, the legal way to write this would be to write about the list and give an external link to where VH1 hosts the list themselves. -- 20:09, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)
Please reply at
Template talk:Wi#This is horrible.
Dori |
Talk 20:12, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)
I made a photograph of a US nickel with the Lewis & Clarck expedition for nl.wiki. Of couse the photo is mine but is there copyright on the coin artwork? Is this only OK for coins older than x years? nl: Jcwf
I've gone ahead and deleted Finlandia co-op and Watermyn. I don't see any reason whatsoever for supposing the vfd discussion wasn't sufficient reason to delete them -- as SimonP blandly notes on Wikipedia:VfD decisions not backed by current policies, Current policy: Nothing specific. Jimbo once got annoyed at such deletions. Wile E. Heresiarch 15:09, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This has been a unilateral project by User:SimonP, who has, after clear (often unanimous) VfD decisions to delete certain articles, has removed the VfD discussions, kept the articles, and listed the articles on this page. If someone has an objection to the reasons for which something is to be deleted, there are two outlets for it: 1) post your comment on the VfD discussion itself and try to persuade consensus the other way, or 2) list it for undeletion. Perhaps I have missed a policy discussion somewhere, but that one user would create an alternate method of overturning consensus and populate it himself seems very inappropriate to me, and flouting established procedures seems far more contrary to policy than users voting outside previously recorded justifications for deletion.
Thoughts? Postdlf 00:59, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Why do you believe that VfD discussions themselves and Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion are insufficient to address wrongful deletions? This is especially puzzling because in every article you have listed as having an improper VfD decision, you did not even post any comments. Why wouldn't making your concerns known there be the first step? Postdlf 01:37, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If you disagree with the votes, then you are not obligated to delete these items, but you are also not allowed to move them from the VfD page. This is a highjacking of the process which you do not have the right to do. How can you say that you have support because you post something on the mailing list and then go and do it without waiting to see what the mailing list had to say about it? As soon as I read your email comments, I went to where you said these things were so that I could delete them as per VfD policy, but I couldn't find them. Just leave them in the Vfd/Old page and don't muck with them. Rick K 04:18, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
SimonP not only moved them off the VfD page, he took the VfD header off in violation of policy. This the guy who's trying to claim that he's carrying out policy. I deleted those articles which had had consensus to be deleted which had not been redirected to other pages, and SOMEONE (I will not point fingers) UNdeleted them, in complete and UTTER violation of policy. If you think they should be undeleted, take them to Votes for Undeletion, but if you undelete without process, it's a severe violation of sysophood. Rick K 07:40, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
Can I give SimonP a 'Nub End' award? It's like a Barnstar, but it's for people that waste a few minutes of your life and leave a bad taste in your mouth. [[User:Noisy| Noisy | Talk]] 16:57, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
User:Maurreen has proposed a draft trim to the Wikipedia Manual of Style on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Draft Trim, which has subsequently been adjusted by User:Jallan and myself. The discussion on this proposal is scheduled to end at 23:59 (UTC) on 25 October. If you would like to comment on the proposals, please add them at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Draft trim. jguk 23:37, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I made a proposal on the WikiEn-l mailing list that seemed to get quite a bit of approval, so I went ahead and drafted a policy here. It's supposed to handle those dubious articles, those that aren't obvious speedies, but those that will clearly never be kept on VFD. I hope to get some comments/brickbats. Thanks. Johnleemk | Talk 13:38, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Attempting to mirror the VfD help page (mostly by copy and paste with search and replace). Anyhoo, discussions are open, suggestions please?
132.205.15.42 03:58, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
To help admins and editors to track repeated vandalism of specific articles, I've created Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages (thanks to Fuzheado for the original idea). By looking at Related Changes for that page, it's easy to see at a glance which of the vandals' targets have recently been changed. If you spot an article repeatedly being vandalised, please add it to that page. -- ChrisO 08:45, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've been taking a look recently at the deletion log and I'm shocked and appalled at some of the articles that pass for speedy deletion. Case in point, see Geno's Steaks (text is available at http://www.mcfly.org/en/Geno%27s_Steaks if it's still deleted). This is an accurate non-stub article about one of the most famous cheesesteak places in the world and was speedy deleted "because it lacks encyclopedic content". I've listed it on Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion, but I'm starting to think our admins need to reread the deletion policy. anthony (see warning) 14:08, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Way too much stuff is deleted without reference to deletion policy. It seems few people read it. Intrigue 23:57, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Yes, simply in order to realise how much stuff is deleted you would have to have an unhealthy obsession with VFD. Only folks with quite litterally hours to waste could even plough through all of the stuff that is listed. All it takes is the 5-6 rabid deletion-warrors to get the schools deleted. Most people aren't watching, and can't be bothered. They go on writing articles, instead of trying to delete them. Mark Richards 23:20, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Reminder, you are invited to give your opinion here : Wikipedia:Recipes proposal SweetLittleFluffyThing
Hi all - apologies if this is mentioned elsewhere... I'm new here, but I've looked through both the FAQ and the help guide and I can't find this mentioned.
I've been adding small amounts of information to several stub articles. In some cases, the amounts are so small that the article is clearly still a stub. In others... I can't tell. Is there a hard and fast rule of thumb as to when a stub stops being a stub?
Grutness 06:42, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In short, no. There is no hard and fast rule for what constitutes a stub. Use your intuition. I would say that when in doubt it is better to err on the side of leaving the stub notice. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:32, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)
And there are others who believe stub notices as currently implemented are no-purpose, useless annoyances added mindlessly any article that is short. One might as well have this done automatically by software for any article under some arbitrary minimal amount of bytes if there were any use to it. More information can almost always be added to an article. Many long articles are far more deficient in the amount of information that should be added to them in respect to the topic they cover than many supposed stubs. There is never any harm done by removing a stub marker. Jallan 16:47, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Apparently, unlike me, judging by that last sentence, Jallan considers his/her opinions to be facts.
There are very short articles that are not stubs. Two examples that leap to mind are
Hence, number of bytes would not be a suitable criterion.
And, yes, I do agree that there are long articles that are so uninformative that they might as well be stubs.
Still, I really disagree that "There is never any harm done by removing a stub marker." Clearly, there are people who find them useful, even if Jallan is not one of them, and the harm done by arbitrarily removing things that other people find useful is that it is damaging to the community. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:20, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)
I'm beginning to wish I hadn't asked! :) I shall use my discretion - and hopefully will learn what is and what isn't a stub given time. Grutness 11:22, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Request for comment requires that two users discuss an issue with a user before a dispute is announced. How does one get another user to review this issue without announcing it on Wikipedia:Request for comment? -- Itai 12:10, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Recently at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship, there has been a lot of talk about whether it's fair to decide Wikipedia policy and admin/bureaucrat promotions on the unofficial #wikipedia IRC channel. Many participants in the discussion agree that it's generally a Very Bad Thing when this occurs.
To remedy this, I've proposed a policy that sets out some ground rules about using IRC to formulate policy. (Namely, Don't Do It.) Please read it over at m:Talk:IRC channels (that's on the Meta-wiki), and add your thoughts. Thanks, • Benc • 23:02, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Avoid_self-references#Translation,_copyright,_and citation
Is there a policy/guideline for refactoring talk pages? I have noticed some people removing resolved issues from Talk pages without archiving them or even making a note that the discussion had ever existed. Surely we should have a guide for archiving and/or refactoring Talk pages. Johnleemk | Talk 18:03, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia talk: Image copyright tags.
What is the policy (if any) regarding how deaths are printed in articles? I see a lot of inconsistencies mainly in the use of 'Mr X died on' vs. 'Mr X passed away on'. Is it more accepted to deliver the hard facts, or offer a euphemism when explaining the death of an individual? Barneyboo 02:28, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
See also:
In the article on pleonasm, a contributor has inserted a number of non-English sentence examples:
plus commentary on them.
Compare this entry to vowel, which references differences in principle between English and other languages without using non-English examples.
We're discussing this here.
The only explicit policy advice on this I've located so far is Use other languages sparingly. Know of any other Wikipedia policy guidelines on using non-English?-- NathanHawking 21:11, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)
I started a survey over at Talk:Project for the New American Century/Survey, and one editor (VeryVerily) who has been opposed to the survey from the start is now trying to disrupt it by inserting large numbers of disparaging non-vote comments into the voting section in direct contravention of the survey guidelines. Protecting the survey would be silly, so I've been reduced to edit-warring to try keeping it as tidy as possible. There's already a request for arbitration pending on this person and this subject so I suppose I could just consider it another piece of "evidence" should the case be accepted, but it annoys me that in the interim he's able to interfere this much with other attempts to work out the dispute short of that. I don't suppose this would be grounds for a temporary ban? That's all I can think of offhand, but since I'm party to the RfA now I don't want to do something like that myself. Bryan 17:27, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
The Search results page used to give a red link to allow creation of a page, but this was recently taken away. Maybe that is to avoid creation of easily-missed orphans and vanity pages, but it complicates the creation of necessary redirects. For instance, I just wrote 3 Maccabees and 4 Maccabees (mirroring the current 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees), but needed redirects from Third Book of Maccabees etc. to mirror Book of Ezra and Third Epistle of John. I had to do a psuedo-edit and preview to get red links to create them. Is this intentional? Is there a better way? Mpolo 10:53, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)
Do we have a policy for handling persistent POV warriors such as the anon who has been warned five (!) times for adding blatantly POVed material to Malaysia? It's so biased, everyone working on the article has reverted the anon's edits on sight. I asked if blocking is permissible on IRC, but everyone else suggested waiting. Despite all the warnings, the anon has persisted. If we don't have any policies for blocking persistent POV warriors such as this one, we should have. If the user is registered, we can go to arbitration, but for anons... Johnleemk | Talk 07:02, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If one finds a diagram that is useful but it is tricky to make in a paint program, what is the legal position if one takes the image into an image manipulation programme and traces it onto a new layer? It should be fairly simple, most times, to get an extremely good copy of the original image, but such action clearly goes against the spirit of image protection legislation. Do we have a policy? --[[User:Bodnotbod| bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 19:16, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)
It is ok for maps in most cases, and other things where there is no other way to represent the thing reasonably. Copying the artistic interpretation of the thing is what is at stake. Intrigue 23:37, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I found this text in the ESA General Terms and Conditions: ESA does not grant the right to resell or redistribute any information, documents, images or material from its web site or to compile or create derivative works from material on its website. Does this mean WP must not contain ESA images (in contrast to NASA images)? Awolf002 17:49, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy#Policy proposal concerning episode guides and episode lists. Ian Pugh 14:00, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
People with noncommercial images do not mind their inclusion on WikiMedia.Org (a not for profit family of websites). What is important is that we or people using WikiMedia.Org do not use noncommercial images in commercial works. Luckily, every picture -- indeed, every binary file -- has a page of metadata which includes license. It is easy to remove noncommercially licensed works from commercial works. I do not see why we must deillustrate our websites. When we burnWikiPedia.Org to a CD, we will have to leave out most images for fitting the Encyclopædia WikiPedia to a CD, so it is not like all of the images will ever make it to the commercial CD anyway.
Ŭalabio 04:04, 2004 Oct 6 (UTC)
Recently I added a couple images to articles without the permission of the copyright holder, namely Image:TheDraw ANSI.png and Image:Ceresco library.jpg, in both cases because I don't know who the original author is and have no way to find out. These pictures would be very difficult to replace — while any ANSI art image could be used for ANSI art, I consider the TheDraw image to have additional historical value. I don't think any of us would drive to Ceresco, Nebraska to take a picture of something there, but some anonymous resident has already done so. Neither of these uses is even remotely likely to be challenged. While this seems to contradict general image policy, are these sort of images acceptable? Should they be? Is there a tag for this sort of thing? And, finally, is there some more appropriate place I could ask this? Thanks. Derrick Coetzee 00:16, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
A new policy proposal has been created, titled "Administrator Activity Policy". It can be found here. Discussion is set to last two weeks followed by a two week vote. Feel free to direct your comments to the talk page thereof. -- Grun t 🇪🇺 23:23, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia would be better off without titles of class distinction (i.e. Administrator, Bureaucrat) and have all logged-in users obtain privileges of sysops, etc. Let all logged-in users become known as Wiki staff and have all these privileges. This idea was brought up by User:Sam Spade on his attitude towards adminship. Let the "social classes" system in Wikipedia break up or be eliminated, just like the internationally widespread elimination of titles of nobility. Marcus2 14:47, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Bodymodification, Editwars, and Legal Liability
I noticed an edit war between intactivists and circumcisiosexuals. This got me thinking about modymodification and legal liability:
If parents would follow the advice of an article just reverted by procircumcisionist and based on that advice, the parents circumcise a healthy baby with no medical problems and the baby dies, the parents might sue Wikimedia for wrongful death. Contrarily, an anticircumcisionist might revert an article just before parents with a child requiring a medically necessary circumcision looks at the article. The parents decide not to circumcise based on the article. Again, the child dies, and again, the parents sue Wikimedia.
I have an idea which will kill the editwars and save Wikimedia from legal accountability:
At the top of every article about bodymodification, have a disclaimer like this as a serversideinclude:
"It is the policy of the Foundation Wikimedia that bodymodification should be an informed decision of the modifyee beyond the age of majority."
Then we can remove all pro/con-sections from the articles, thus ending the editwars. Since occasionally circumcision is necessary, we can have an additional disclaimer there:
"It is the recommendation of the Foundation Wikimedia that with the exception of emergencies, before one gets a medically necessary circumcision, one receive a second opinion from either a pediatric urologist if the patient is a child or an urologist if the patient is an adult."
We can modify this and put this disclaimer on all articles about medicine:
"It is the recommendation of the Foundation Wikimedia that with the exception of emergencies, one should get a second opinion"
While me talk about legal accountability of Wikimedia and medicine, perhaps we should have a disclaimer like this on medical articles:
"Important disclaimer:
- The information on Wikipedia is for educational purposes only and should not be considered to be medical advice. It is not meant to replace the advice of the physician who cares for you or your family. All medical advice and information should be considered to be incomplete without a physical exam, which is not possible without a visit to your doctor."
These disclaimers would end the circumcisioneditwars and protect Wikimedia from lawsuites.
Anonymous Coward
Would someone well versed in copyright issues please come to Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags#Author gone and discuss how to tag images which were made by Wikipedians who have since left Wikipedia and cannot give explicit consent that the images are tagged as GFDL? An user has suggested that they should be tagges with CopyrightedFreeUse which, IMO, is violation of users' copyright. Nikola 23:26, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
One of which has been made before - the In the News and Current Events must be less Americocentric. US "presidential debates" and other crap are just not interesting enough, and they are rather irritating when a lot of other articles and news items deserve attention. All this and more has been covered extensively before in previous discussions, but no action has been taken yet (save your excuses, heard them before), I believe one excerpt exists here: Template_talk:In_the_news#Americocentrism.
Next, the map of India used in several articles is inaccurate and offensive - no mention is made of the "disputed" territories or that the boundary shown is neither an international boundary nor an Indian-accepted representation of territories under Indian control, except in the main article on India and perhaps the Kashmir article and one or two more; the CIA map is used by default in all other articles and is WRONG - it is a map that reveals CIA and perhaps American government policies, but is incorrect, irritating, and unacceptable. Several instant remedies are possible: use colour-coded/ shaded maps that indicate dispute ; mention dispute in image captions ; mention inaccuracy ; explain that current CIA map is just that ; explain current map shows boundaries definitely under Indian administration, not the international boundary (which, to be as NPOV as possible, does not exist.) Throw out the revert mongering meddlers and the ignorant and implement a quick and effective policy - above all CHANGE THE @#*&^%@! MAP. Damn it. -- Simonides 22:49, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've replaced the default States of India map on the India article - now if some editors could use it to replace maps on all India-related articles where the old format was in use, I'd appreciate it. I'll try to do my bit, but I'm on a dialup connection so uploading/ image loading etc is really really slow - thanks! -- Simonides 14:25, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Your first proposition seems nonsensical to me. You may personally not be interested in "crap" like the US Presidential debates, but clearly many people in the world, both in and out of the US, are interested. They were multiple times the top story on the BBC's website, for example, which to my knowledge is not a US news source. They were also on the front page of newspapers in Greece, and I'm sure were I to regularly read news sources from other countries besides those two, I would've found them prominently discussed elsewhere as well. The simple fact is that US actions affect the world disproportionately, so the world tends to be interested in them. You may not like this, but Wikipedia isn't here to change what people are interested in, just to document it. Therefore, things such as the US presidential debates that are covered prominently throughout the world must continue to be covered prominently in Wikipedia as well. -- Delirium 07:04, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)
I added this to Wikipedia:Deletion Policy#Decision Policy
I think everyone should be able to understand why this is generally good. Arguments have come up regarding this, including in the recent GNAA discussion. Of course there may be exceptions like if there are ever hundreds of sockpuppet votes, but I think that in general, people should adhere to this. Just wanted to let people know that I added this, since its not a trivial change. — siro χ o 20:55, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
The banner says it costs $10 an hour to run Wikimedia websites. Why don't we make it so that every person that donates $10 "sponsors" an hour? So instead of the box that constantly says to donate money, it would say "This hour of Wikipedia is brought to you by x user. To sponsor a Wikipedia hour, donate here" or something to that affect. That way people would get recognition for donating and more people would check out their talk pages and they could showcase their pet projects or their blog or whatever on their talk pages. Salasks 03:52, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)
I've seen SUP tags used for superscripts in Wikipedia articles a lot. I assume SUB is also used. Both are problematic. They are not portable. I have an article on my website discussing the problems and suggesting cures:
Using Superscripts and Subscripts in Web Pages
In short, I recommend against using the SUP and SUB tags. For the most common use of the SUP tag, exponentiation, I recommend using the Unicode up-arrow, ↑, written as ↑. At the very least, even if pages already having SUP are left as they are, I request that the use of the up-arrow should be granted status as an officially acceptable policy for any future articles. -- Shlomital 17:36, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)
I don't know what text editor you're using, but every ASCII text editor I know of is going to have problems copy-pasting 10↑9. Pasting that into
OpenOffice.org works, but then so does pasting normal superscripts and subscripts (though admittedly sup/sub is lost upon pasting into
Microsoft Word 97, while the up-arrow works). But that's beside the point. I agree with Derrick above; the preservation of formatting when copy-pasting into other applications seems like a weak reason to eliminate superscripts and subscripts, which to me are far more intuitive than the up-arrow (which suffers from the additional problem that it may be have other meanings and be
interpreted differently, or confused with some kind of vector notation). Not only that, but using sup
and sub
are apparently
required for some languages to render properly. They give at least a modicum of semantic meaning to the text; the use of up-arrow does not. --
Wapcaplet 22:19, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This is not a feasible solution. Conventional mathematical notation exists and changing it to something completely contrary to convention just so it can be copied and pasted properly is somewhat an absurd solution. Regardless, the up arrow means something different in mathematics, see Knuth's up arrow notation. Dysprosia 03:22, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Is it biased to describe an invention Foo as being "encumbered by patents" or "protected by patents"? To me, the word "encumbered" has negative connotations, and similarly "protected" has positive connotations. What would be a good alternative? — Matt 09:29, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Please have a look at Driveshaft (and Talk:Driveshaft) and explain to me the rationale for deleting the (apparent) stub. |l'KF'l| 20:16, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)
Do people ever post their own already published elsewhere material as wikipedia entries? How are these sort of issues of copyright and authorship dealt with?
I would add to that: you retain copyright on all original content you add to Wikipedia. By placing it in here, you are releasing it under GFDL, but you are not giving up any other intellectual property rights. -- Jmabel 01:46, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
At present when a reader clicks on a thumbnail image to see the larger version of the image, they see it accompanied by a lot of irrelevant and unattractive material - the name of the image file, the image's edit history and technical details of its licensing etc. What readers should see is the image, with a caption and possibly a heading. There should then be a link to the edit history and licensing details, just as there is a link from an article to the article's edit history. This seems to me to be another example of how Wikipedia is currently structured in the interests of its writers and editors rather than in the interests of readers. How much difficulty would there be in restructing the image pages in this way? Adam 02:50, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Actually they can't see the caption. The caption is visible under the photo on the article page, but not on the page where the image stands alone. What the reader sees is a bunch of stuff they don't want or need to see. Why would it be a cumbersome change for editors? Adam 11:53, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Incorrect_date_formats states that, for example, 2000 is preferable to 2000 in film. I've lost count of the number of articles I've seen when someone has come along and changed it to the latter, breaking the agreed convention. This may be just a case of those people not knowing the rule but it is now so widespread that people just ignore it. Should the policy be reviewed or should we go through all the Year in X links and fix them? violet/riga (t) 14:34, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Voting has begun on the Managed Deletion policy. Note that it will actually be called "Early Deletion." The policy has been finalized, so, even if you have looked at it before, please look again and give it your vote. Voting will end on October 8, 2004. Geogre 00:46, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Based on a previous village pump discussion, a new page is being developed to handle the removal of images used under nonfree licenses or lacking source information. A poll on whether to implement this process is at Wikipedia talk:Possibly unfree images. -- Michael Snow 03:26, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I've just been reverting a few edits by an anonymous user, where that user had taken away piped links and fed them through redirects. As it happens, some of the links he changed were wrong in the first place, but that's by-the-by. Anyway, he questioned my changes, and I stated that it was policy. (Refer to my talk page.) However, now I find myself in the position where I can't find where the policy of eliding redirects is written down. There's nothing explicit at Wikipedia:Redirect, or Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Links and URLs. The explanation I've given is "... I presume that this is to reduce server load (by reducing the additional code executed each time you click on a link that gets redirected)." Any pointers? Is this the reason? Shall I make policy more explicit? [[User:Noisy| Noisy | Talk]] 09:12, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I'm just curious why the GFDL was chosen, the pros and cons of it, why other possibilities weren't used, etc. Is there an archived debate on this subject? -- Golbez 16:55, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)
Well, it is an issue for some, and I am pretty sure that the discussion has been had many times, although I don't know where. It would be a major pain to switch over, but would be (at least partly) possible to change if there was enough interest. Probably the drawbacks of the GFDL do not warent the teethpullingly traumatic process of changing. Mark Richards 02:05, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Many of the problems with Wikipedia's use of the GFDL can be seen at Why Wikitravel isn't GFDL. I remember there being some talk of working with the FSF to fix some of the brokenness of the license, but it's been a long time. -- Cyrius| ✎ 03:37, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I was one of the people who have proposed that the Wikipedia migrate to Creative Commons. One of the critics mentioned that the CVS that Wikipedia uses isn't fine-tuned enough to nail down exactly who contributed what. So there would be some difficulty in writing a script that decides at what point an article would be free of GFDL-only material. Of course, in theory, a flesh-and-bone person could manually go through the page histories and make the decision themselves. This might work if someone wants to reuse an article in some manner, such as in a CC-based wiki. However, this would too time consuming and the possibilites for mistake are too great for migrating the entire Wikipedia to CC. So, basically, yeah, migrating to CC is possible but very difficult.
I'm a moderator at the LQwiki, which is a Creative Commons based (by-sa variant to be exact) Linux documentation wiki. We'd like to use Wikipedia material, not to mention the gobs of Linux documentation available under the GFDL, but our licensing scheme prevents this. So far, we've been asking the original authors of GFDL material for permission to use it under the CC-by-sa, but this is simply not possible to do with Wikipedia articles - too many editors, too many of them are anons. So I've been following the situation pretty closely. We're thinking of lobbying the FSF ourselves on the issue. Does anybody have any suggestions on the best way to contact them or to argue our point?
In a way, this restriction is good thing. I've been incorporating the public domain Jargon File, and our wiki is small enough that I've been single-handedly causing a Rambot Effect. I'd hate to think what a flood of GFDL material might do. crazyeddie 07:18, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
A new policy proposal is in the tweaking stages. Please take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Managed_Deletion for the details. Note that this is a modification of the Speedy Delete process only. If you disagree with the policy entirely, please wait for voting to cast your vote. If you can think of ways to improve the policy, please contribute constructive criticism on the Discussion page. The proposal is aimed primarily at administrators who perform speedy deletes, but all will no doubt have some interest in it. I anticipate voting beginning one week from today. Geogre 18:49, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Voting on the Managed Delete policy proposal will commence on Friday, September 24, 2004 and will be open for 2 weeks. Geogre 01:11, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It is very annoying to have the MediaWiki:Sitenotice displayed as if it were the opening line of each page. Whoever did this, please undo it ASAP. It will only tend to turn people off instead of donate. -- mav 16:58, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Would it be possible to have an edit flag for large changes (i.e. more than 10% of article size changed, or more than 10% of text altered) for Recent Changes and the Watchlist? Perhaps just a ! which would let us easily know that vandalism has most likely taken place? And perhaps a filter mode for Recent Changes to only show articles that have been massively changed? -- Golbez 17:23, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)
I blocked an annoying vandal, last night, for the duration of 24h. ( User:24.71.223.141). I shouldn't have done so, as it's a proxy, and a few minutes later, a legitimate user complained about the block. Technically, wouldn't it be easy to allow unblocked, logged-in users (with an account creation predating the block) to edit even when on a blocked IP? This would solve the annoying problem of 'unblockable' proxy IPs (we would just have to kindly ask editors on vandal-prone IPs to get an account).
A more general thought I had recently was that, the larger WP will grow, the greater the percentage of time spent reverting worthless edits will become. The singularly low threshold to contributing is a major feature of WP, and clearly a big advantage on an encyclopedia that consists mainly of stubs. The more accomplished an article, however, the less likely an anonymous edit is to be useful. I would therefore propose:
such a course would provide the more vulnerable articles some protection from the main brunt of casual vandals (while of course the determined ones will not be deterred), while it would not raise the threshold for quick creation of new articles, and edits to stubs. dab 12:58, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This has probably been proposed before, but since I've been spending some time on Recent Changes lately, it's become overwhelmingly apparent to me that the vast majority of vandalism is done by unregistered users. I suggest that we allow a maximum of 5 article edits (but unlimited talk page edits would be ok) for unregistered accounts, after which users must register for a user name before they can edit further. It's far easier to track changes and vandalism by accounts with unique user names than for accounts that are strings of numbers.
Exploding Boy 21:52, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
I have been advised to post here to draw peoples attention to a discussion about WP:MOS and the TOC. I am suggesting that it is more aesthetically appealing to have the TOC floating on the right. My suggestion can be found at Wikipedia talk:TOC#Right floating TOC Please comment -- Martin TB 19:39, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think the evaluation of stub sorting needs some kind of restriction or review... There are some creation of categories and stub templates which are completely useless... --[[User:AllyUnion| AllyUnion (talk)]] 09:29, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There is a vote and discussion on whether and how to enforce the Wikipedia:Three revert rule on Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement and Wikipedia talk:Three revert rule enforcement. Please come and contribute your comments/votes. jguk 14:16, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is there a policy on when it's ok to have two articles on the same man (but under different names)? Some people seem to say are ok to be merged, others stay for ages. jguk 20:47, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I've just seen Jesus and Isa. Should these be merged then? jguk 21:09, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Well that's a different point Mpolo. The Jesus article needs shortening, but that doesn't mean the others shouldn't be merged with it. I'm still puzzled as to why we want 3 biographies of the same man. Wouldn't one merged one be better? jguk 15:20, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have just found out that today is Eid ul-Fitr and have added it to today's current events. Like Easter and many other days - some non-religious - it's a moveable feast. What is the policy about puting these moveable feasts on the main page?
I know they don't really fit into the In the news or Today's Featured article boxes, but I am of the opinion that the main page should relect that we are aware that certain days are observed. I'm suggesting a box that would say (for example) Today is Diwali/Easter/Martin Luther King Day/Eid ul-Fitr/Mardi Gras etc. -- Martin TB 20:26, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
On a sidenote, I have no idea that the word "movable" contained two Es. ;-) Agree that they should be mentioned somewhere on the day. Chris 07:32, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think the current solution of having these days under "Selected Anniversaries" is ideal, even though it's technically not an anniversary in some sense (well, it's an anniversary according to a different calendar...) Mpolo 08:50, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)
I've proposed a new criterion for the Template:In the news guidelines with the aim of keeping ITN focused on widely reported stories covered by multiple major news outlets, and ensuring that NPOV is maintained. Please take a look at the proposal and add feedback at Wikipedia talk:In the news section on the Main Page. -- ChrisO 18:59, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There is currently a week-long backlog of VfD processing (IE there's been no action at all on most of the nominations whose 5-day voting period expired in the past 7 days), because not enough people are spending enough time doing it. Splitting the VfD page does nothing to help with this. The problem also seems to be increasing, I checked a random recent 5-day period, and 132 nominations were added to VfD, and a bit less than half (59) were processed and removed from the VfD "old" page (where the processing happens). VfDs "old" page is huge and growing, and usually takes a minute or two (literally) to save, further slowing down VfD processing. I just discovered this; it makes me all the more convinced we need alternatives to VfD.
I don't know if most people are aware of this, but you do NOT have to be an admin to help with VfD processing--I did about 80 this morning, and didn't have to delete a single article (I did cheat a bit by focusing on the easiest ones, but that was to shrink the page as fast as possible--I got the number of listings down by about 20%, although the handful of VERY long debates means that doesn't truly reflect page size reduction). (re-posted from prelim. del. vote page)
Niteowlneils 00:43, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Vfd processing backlog is back down to 2 days--great work people (mostly Francs2000)! Niteowlneils 02:56, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Can we get a similar catch-up effort on the trans-wiki backlog on 'old', dating back to April! Niteowlneils 20:13, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have always assumed that there was some process to ensure articles that have spent 5 days on VfD are acted upon based on the voting. I had also assumed that the specific process is that they only get removed from VfD if they have been acted upon. Apparently that may not the case, as the 10/26 entries were removed en masse 11/1, and put on /old, even tho' Black Templars, at least, hadn't been acted on, and still hasn't weeks later. Was I correct and this article just unintentionally slipped thru the cracks? Or are they just moved to old and it is just hoped that someone will do something with them some day? If so, how can one tell if there are articles that still need to be acted on on /old--Black Templars' 'What links here'doesn't reveal any sort of tracking page. Niteowlneils 03:53, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Quite a number of pages created recently have been copied directly from web page of Johns Hopkins University. While this may not be so serious as copyvio, I think the simple copying of CV-type material about faculty members and courses into WP is not a great precedent. See for example User:128.220.30.161. Charles Matthews 10:53, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I doubt we'd want the material, though, as one of the things "Wikipedia is not" is a place for resumes or CV's. N.b. someone just put up a silly joke article on a member of the comedy improv troupe at Hopkins, as well. Hopkins students are supposed to be clever, but apparently someone there isn't reading our policies. Geogre 18:41, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It seems, from Talk:September 11, 2001 attacks, that people are in favour of trying to develop a sitewide set of guidelines for the use of the word terrorist. In view of its likely length, the discussion has been moved to a separate page: Wikipedia:Use of the word terrorism (policy development). Please go to that page if you wish to be involved in developing this policy, and publicise this page as appropriate to fellow Wikipedians who may be interested. jguk 22:35, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I'm a complete newbie when it comes to policies, so any help (in suggestions as well as merciless editing) is appreciated. I think Preliminary Deletion isn't going to work. I've blathered up a suggestion of my own (after all, we can never have too much deletion policies :-) tentatively called " countdown deletion". It's on a personal subpage; check it out, mull it over and tear it to pieces if necessary. Thanks in advance for giving a damn. JRM 00:55, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)
See Talk:As of CURRENTYEAR. -- Sgeo | Talk 23:40, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)
Discussion archived to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)/diacritics.
See my proposal here: Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(use_English)#Proposal (should maybe be copied here?)
dab 15:17, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
See User:AaronSw/Song lyrics. What is the policy of having copyright violations in User pages? Rick K 08:41, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)
This is a question on the existing NPOV policy, regarding the detail how to handle articles which are listed as NPOV dispute but no activity is seen. The typical NPOV dispute article sees rather hectic activity, hopefully in the discussion, but sometimes escalating to edit wars in the article.
But there are some articles which are NPOV dispute listed, but no activity is seen. Except when trying to remove the NPOV dispute warning. So I wonder whether it is OK to use the dispute tag to stigmatize an article forever.
I've also asked at Wikipedia talk:NPOV dispute, but that page seems to have few watchers.
Pjacobi 21:29, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Cited definitions from dictionaries such as the American Heritage Dictionary have been cut repeatedly from several Wikipedia pages. The reason given is that the "dictionary definition is POV." I cite you to the recent history of a disambiguation page and its TalkPage.
I suggest part of the solution to this problem is to insert a new paragraph into the NPOV page to state explicitly, "Dictionary definitions are always NPOV if the contrasting definitions of experts are also quoted and cited." The most appropriate position would be following the "Religion" paragraph of the NPOV page. ;)
Any suggestions? --- Rednblu | Talk 08:59, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
When I was web searching for information about the APS Underwater Assault Rifle 5.56 mm, using Altavista's web searcher, I found a realistic-looking page about this rifle, which described this rifle in detail, and also mentioned a USA copy of this rifle and a recent undercover war called the Twilight War. The Russian APS is real and as described, but the USA copy and the Twilight War are fiction and occur in a videogame scenario. The page did not mention anything obviously fictional such as ray guns or spaceships. I do not play videogames and I had not heard of that videogame or its scenario. The web page did not mention any videogame and did not warn that any of its content was fictional.
That sort of mixture of fact and fiction (sometimes nicknamed "faction") can be a major pitfall and landmine for people looking for information. As a result, when I wrote the Wikipedia page APS Underwater Assault Rifle 5.56 mm (having checked the information by looking in reliable information at the APS's maker's web site), I included a pointer to a web page A warning about websites that describe guns which I wrote describing this risk of being misled. But someone deleted the page and the pointer to it.
However, the Wikipedia page Gestapo's section "Books" includes this warning:-
Suspected hoax works about the Gestapo include:
Gestapo Chief: The 1948 Interrogation of Heinrich Müller - Gregory Douglas. San Jose, CA 1995
which has been allowed to stand. Please, what is policy about warning the readers about inaccurate information on the WWW or in books or in films etc?
Thanks Anthony Appleyard 08:03, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think A warning about websites that describe guns was correctly deleted. Charles Matthews 09:46, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
See also this talk area. Anthony Appleyard 17:03, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have just posted another proposal to try and deal with VfD overload. Since it a) is primarily a formalization of current practice, and b) requires unanimous consent of the entire community (admins and non-admins alike), I am hoping that it will be less controversial than some of the other proposed ways to deal with Wikipedia's seriously broken housekeeping processes. It currently is here. If someone wants to make it into a formal, separate voting page, fine. If people want to comment or suggest tweaking the numbers there, that's fine, too. Niteowlneils 19:09, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
As some may know, there is continuing contention over the disposition of very short articles about non-notable high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. I am experimenting with the idea that such material should be merged into articles about the towns, on the premise that people interested in the town are better able to judge the appropriateness of this material than the general VfD population.
Here's the question. In the case of a short article that is exclusively, or almost exclusively the contribution of a single author, it seems to me that it ought to be possible to perform a "GDFL-friendly merge-and-delete" by placing a manually-written notice in the article's talk page, similar to the one below. (I've deliberately chosen one in which the article was created primarily, but not exclusively, by a single author). I'd like thoughtful comments on whether this is good enough. (I realize this isn't what you might call algorithmically perfect but GFDL is a human-interpreted license, not an algorithm).
This example concerns inserting the entire text of High Tech High into a section of San Diego, California.
The text is copied exactly from High Tech High to preserve GFDL traceability. Will clean up shortly. The text is that as of 17:25, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12. The text is entirely the product of a single author, Bboarder12, with the exception of the insertion and removal of various Wikipedia administrative notices by others. The history is: [[User:Dpbsmith| Dpbsmith (talk)]] 01:14, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
(cur) (last) 17:25, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 17:20, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 17:05, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 17:04, 1 Nov 2004 CBDroege m (reason)
(cur) (last) 17:04, 1 Nov 2004 CBDroege m (original author of page is not allowed to remove speedy deletion candidacy.)
(cur) (last) 17:02, 1 Nov 2004 RickK (vfd)
(cur) (last) 17:00, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 16:56, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 16:52, 1 Nov 2004 CBDroege m (candidate for speedy delete)
(cur) (last) 16:49, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
(cur) (last) 16:47, 1 Nov 2004 Bboarder12
Placing a notice on the talk page does not satisfy the terms of the GFDL, which requires the list of authors to be in the section entitled history. If history information is lost accidently this isn't such a big deal, and we can wait until someone actually complains to remove the material, but we shouldn't be making this a regular practice. anthony 警告 21:18, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Inclusionists and Deletionists share what often seems like very little common ground (at least when discussing what to do with unsatisfactory articles), but both hope to make Wikipedia as good as it can be. I have a suggestion that I think would render most inclusionist/deletionist disputes moot; and be a positive wikipedia change as far as both camps are concerned. In the policy proposal I may speak extensively of school articles, though articles on schools are certainly not the only thing that would be impacted by this proposal.
Sometimes (at least when tempers are a bit hot due to a vehement dispute), there is the suggestion from one camp that proponants of the opposition view ought to start their own wiki. Suggestions of this sort are problematic not only in so far as they produce factionalism, but also because, if we were to take them up on that, we would essentially be forking wikipedia. And splitting the editor base into two different projects with large degrees of overlapping intent/content seems to be a bad plan.
So, is there a way to 1) allow people of these diametrically opposed opinions to coexist and 2) not require anyone to give up the fundamentals of their views on what wikipedia is/should be?
I think the answer is yes to both, and the way I would implement it is to have a deletionist wikipedia and an inclusionist wikipedia coexist.
To spell this out: Though there are varying views within either camp with respect to the scope of what wikipedia ought to cover, let us call the inclusionist position the following: All informative factual, verifiable NPOV information belongs in the wikipedia. Let us call the deletionist position the following: Only a certain subclass of informative, factual, verifiable NPOV information belongs in the wikipedia, and that subclass is determined by some factor like Notability or "encyclopedic" subject matter. I put encyclopedic in quotes because it seems as though something very particular is meant by that, and so it is being used in a particularized way.
The solution: Wikipedia ought to have two tiers of articles. Call the broader tier the wide tier, and call the narrower tier the slim tier. All articles start in the wide tier. People can nominate articles to be elevated from the wide tier to the slim tier. Then, there is a votes for promotion process (for those of you concerned that we need fewer voting processes rather than more voting processes, I think that a consequence of adopting this policy would be a drastic, drastic decrease in the number of candidates on VfD). If, by rough consensus, an article is deemed promotion worthy, then the article becomes part of the slim tier. The slim tier would reflect the deletionist ideal of wikipedia, not just the cream of the crop articles (like the one's featured on the front page), but basically all and only those articles that we, by consensus, think are on a suitable topic and well written. The union of the wide tier and the narrow tier would be the inclusionist ideal. Now, when a reader comes to wikipedia, they are presented with (by default) the narrow tier, but also with a clear announcement of the existence of the wider tier (and a notice reflecting the nature of the difference). People can set, via a cookie, whether they would like to use wikipedia slim/professional or the more robust (but also less refined) wikipedia. The result would be that 1) there is still only one wikipedia, and all wikipedians are working on the same articles (in the sense that no article has been forked to a different project, and thus, there is only one instance of each article for people to work on) and the wider tier would contain school articles, articles on hospitals, fire departments, obscure actors, so-called "fan-cruft." etc. Rather than fighting to remove information from the database, people would be proponants of the promotion of certain articles (and I'm sure we could include a process by which articles could be demoted, if that was favored).
In short, we would eliminate all of the notability arguments that occur on VfD, and VfD would basically be used to deal with issues like substubs with no potential for expansion, dictionary definitions, original research, etc. The school issue would be dealt with through 1) policy and 2) debates on votes for promotion. But, the inclusionists would be able to relax because failure to get an article promoted wouldn't mean the information is lost (in the same way an article's deletion results in a loss of information) and deletionists would be happy because there is a professional/"encyclopedic" face to wikipedia.
This compromise seems to be the best solution to accomodate everyone's preferences, alleviate the sheer number of articles on VfD, and allow us to focus on improving the articles themselves.
So, what does anyone think of this suggestion? posiduck 17:20, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I would be satisfied with just about any compromise that allows people who want to continue to work on the articles that would otherwise be deleted, without splitting ourselves into two different projects. That's my primary concern. Posiduck 16:21, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I doubt that there is anyway to render this dispute moot as Posiduck claims at the beginning of his proposal. However, the proposal moves in the right direction towards compromise. The two tier system has promise, but I think if we are going to have two tiers of articles, then some guidelines need to be established other than popular vote for the top tier. These guidelines need not be overly stringent and should reflect the sensibilities of both sides of the arguement, but I think they are necessary. Establishing these guidelines would probably be a protracted and frustrating process, but the end result would probably make wikipedia all the better for it. Indrian 20:47, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
Here is my proposal, in rough brief form, based on Posiduck's ideas:
There will be a new namespace called the Graveyard. Whenever a page Blah which does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion is voted to be deleted, it is not immediately deleted but is instead moved to Graveyard: Blah, and the redirect at Blah removed (effectively orphaning it). The default Wikipedia search does not search this namespace. A template, {{graveyard}}, is added to the top of the article, explaining to anyone who stumbles across it its status and asking for help in "reviving" it. All articles which are not significantly edited within a specific amount of time, say 6 months, are permanently deleted.
There will be a symmetric process, similar to Votes for undeletion, which can vote to "revive" a significantly improved article from the Graveyard.
What are the advantages of this approach?
What are your thoughts? Deco 23:30, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I certainly like this idea. In fact, it's part of the intention of my Wikipedia fork, McFly. Call Wikipedia the narrow version, and call McFly the wide version, and we've already got this essentially in place. I'd much rather have Wikimedia adopt this solution itself, but until then there's always McFly (I've just added the ability to edit, and am working on parsing Wikipedia:Deletion log regularly, only allowing users to edit deleted articles, and sending the edit button to Wikipedia for everything else). anthony 警告 19:58, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think the two-tier idea has a lot merit. It could be especially good for schools. I copied the discussion to Wikipedia:Two-tier system. Maurreen 18:33, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is there a place where we collect redirects that should be removed? Redirecting misspelled variants can be outright harmful: it leads to wrongly spelled links on WP going undiscovered (because they will be blue, even though misspelled, this has happened to me several times), and also readers may be led to believe that the spelling is correct when it is not. Two examples off the top of my head:
dab 16:42, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I still believe that there is a strong argument for keeping common misspellings as redirects. It enables searching for the common misspelling. Ideally, we should develop a way to have these handled by some special approach that prevents them from creating blue links. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:39, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
If one adds Template:R_from_misspelling, "What links here" can be used to makes sure nothing links there. This makes spell checking easy.
The source is much easier to read if with [[Mayor of Chicago]] instead of [[List of mayors of Chicago|Mayor of Chicago]] (to link to the same page). Such redirects shouldn't be replaced with a direct link. -- User:Docu
Links to redirects can always be replaced automatically, if desireable, so there is no need to deprecate them. The "Misspellings" Category however is an excellent idea (as long as it doesn't spawn enthusiasm for the inclusion of as many misspellings as possible...), and it may also be used to automatically check for mispellings present in article texts. In fact, it would be great to have Categories for all redirects, allowing a classification of why the redirect is there (abbreviation, a.k.a/alias, misspelling, wrongtitle,...) dab 16:51, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC) I just found Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages. nice. dab 18:12, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)