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Are there any details of what this permission specifically does, and how it will be assigned? User access levels states "Allows user to delete previous revisions of pages" and that it will be individually assigned. meta:Help:User rights does not mention it at all, but it appears to be a valid (though unassinged) group on meta as well. — xaosflux Talk 05:28, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps we should think about having these go here, or should it go on meta, since thats were the stewards do promotions? Voice-of-All Talk 14:00, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
It would be worthwhile to point out that about a dozen users have been given the oversight permission, and it was done by the Arbitration Committee. As there is of yet no proceedure for how it should be granted (at least, none that I've seen, and Jimbo was unable to give any answer when I asked a few days ago on IRC), my understanding is that it is being handled just as checkuser is handled: The Arbitration Committee decides who should be granted it, and then requests it on Meta. Essjay ( Talk • Connect) 14:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
There may be a better place for this discussion, but since this is the first thread about this new power that I have seen, I am going to comment here. First off, I don't see why this is better than simply granting all admins the ability to selectively delete and restore certain versions. Having an action that it takes a developer to undo is fairly awkward, but perhaps that is just a temporary hack. I agree that if something is hard to undo / check, then it is reasonable to limit who has access to it, but I don't see why selective version deletion should be one of those things, unless we've stopped trusting admins recently? PS. I've also done personal info removal in the past, though no where near as often as Prodego and Voice of All apparently. Dragons flight 18:07, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales, NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable.", but there are still discussions about the interpretation of this policy.
In particular, some editors believe that anything is neutral if it is widely used in "mainstream" sources. I disagree with this statement. The neutral point of view should be "neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject", whyle any of these two attitudes may prevail in the society and this influences the POVs found in "mainstream" sources.
On the other hand, the very definition of the "mainstream" is unclear to me. How can one decide whether a certain POV belongs to the "mainstream" or not? Another problem: if something is a "mainstream", for instance, in Iran, it is not necessarily a "mainstream" in US or Western Europe.
More specifically, this question appeared in the discussion about using the word "liberate" for the restoring of the Soviet control over the territories of the present-day Ukraine, Belarus and Baltic States during the WWII. Using this term was clearly the "mainstream" of Soviet historical science. The modern Russia continues this tradition. Although some western scholars use this term as well, I am not, quite sure whether it belongs to "mainstream" in Western science. Two articles in Britannica that describe the subject "Ukrain in WWII" in details (History of Ukraine, History of WWII) avoid the word "liberate" and use neutral terms, but one still can find this word in othe articles where the WWII is mentioned in passing by.
Wheter it is "mainstream" or not, it is not clear whether the "mainstreamness" has any relevancy in this case, because using the word "liberate" assumes sympathy to Soviets. Many people have the opposite view, because the "liberation" resulted in new repressions, one more artificial famine etc.
I (and a few other editors) propose to use more neutral terms instead of "liberate", like "take control", "advance", "reclaime" etc. But there is a strong group of users who disagree and insist on using the word liberate.
I would be very thankfull if experiencied WP editors could answer my question and help us to apply the NPOV policy properly. Thanks in advance.-- AndriyK 10:10, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
First of all, NPOV does not mean that Wikipedia endorses whatever is the mainstream view of an event! NPOV means that Wikipedia reports that a view is the mainstream, and will usually focus primarily on that view if there are too many competing views to report on all of them (no undue weight to fringe views). That said, I think the word "liberate" is not neutral. I'd imagine that not everyone who lived in those territories viewed the Soviet occupation as "liberating." -- Ryan Delaney talk 22:53, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Ryan, your imagination is beside the point. Whether you would like it or not, the majority of the population in the occupied USSR territories, based on how they reacted at the time, were glad to see the Soviet army. This was not Soviet propaganda, this was the large-scale response by the population. See the recently published book "A writer at war" by Antony Beevor. Just because a 21st century occidental thinks otherwise does not make it false. And the other problem is AndriyK applies a double standard to Ukraine and other places (but that's another subject). -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 09:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Whether you would like it or not, the majority of the population in the occupied USSR territories, based on how they reacted at the time, were glad to see the Soviet army That is untrue. Were Lithuanians happy to see their former occupiers return along with NKVD executions squads ? Poles certainly viewed Soviets as just another occupation, especially as hundreds of thousands were mass murdered by Soviet policies. The term liberate can't be used in regards to Soviet actions. From wiki definition: Liberation is based on the word liberty, related to the word liberal, and it is often understood as "to be freed (or change) from not having freedom to having freedom" Soviet regime neither can be described as associated with liberty, nor did it give freedom. Using the term "liberation" in regards to situation where people were one occupation was replaced by another is very POV. -- Molobo 12:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I said the majority, and when you see the number of people fighting as partizans, And who were guys from Armia Ludowa? Armia Ludowa had 6.000 partisans compared to 400.000 of Home Army and 175.000 from Peasants' Battalions. -- Molobo 13:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose to continue the discussion about using the word "liberate" at the talk and reserve the present page for a more general discussion:
NPOV vs "mainstream": is anything what is taken from "mainstream" sources automatically neutral? and, in the case of the positive answer to the first question, What is "mainstream"?-- AndriyK 14:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Sources please. Do governments of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia view Soviet presence as liberation ? I can certainly give sources of Polish government that clearly speak Soviet's represented just another opressive occupation. -- Molobo 17:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
"How can we decide whether a certain source is POVed?" This is an important issue and I recently proposed to start a list of sources judged by their reliability. See this discussion if you are interested in the project. Just an an example: EB has different reliability even in a single edition: if articles are not signed they were probably written not by scholars but by EB staff, whom I don't think are more qualified then we are. Regarding ths issue of liberate in that context, the problem is that with very few exceptions, where Red Army went, it stayed, quickly overcoming the welcome of the local population. Thus soon after liberation, RA become the occupiers themselves. My solution is to use the construction 'liberate from Germans' which is more precise and correct instead of just 'liberate', but I certainly prefer 'take control' and other neutrals terms, unless we are talking about ethnically Russian territory.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:09, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
This whole thing has started off the wrong foot. The issue here is not whether Ukrainians felt occupied or liberated, which is a related but a separate question (and I have an opinion on that but I will withold it for now since, I think, it is less relevant). The issue is whether we are allowed to use strong words in Wikipedia or we are not allowed to use them at all. Strong words are not only "liberated" but "occupied", "massacred", "murdered" as well as nouns, like "Genocide" (as opposed to "numerous deaths"), "massacre" (as opposed to an "incident"), "uprising" (as opposed to "mutiny"), revolution (as opposed to coup d'etat), etc. If all these words are banned, we should only use "killed", "died", "taken", etc. This, however, is not the case. No encyclopedia, book, writer, no matter how NPOV can be required to stick to PC language and no one does that, including the very respectable Britannica and Columbia which also have NPOV policy.
The issue is different. If the majority of scholars see something as NPOV and acceptable usage, we can use this here as well. That the Holocaust was Genocide, that creationism is unscientific (still doesn't make it wrong), October was revolution, Pinochet was coup, Bounty was "mutiny", 1939 was Soviet-German Occupation of Poland, and 1943-45 was liberation of Europe are the terms the scholars agree on to use.
NPOV doesn't mean to give equal weight to the flat earth theory supporters, holocaust deniers and fringe nationalists with a russophobic tilt. Such views may be presented in the appropriate article as attributed and, generally, rejected POVs. That would settle it. -- Irpen 00:12, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Personally I'm not really concerned in the question because I'm not a Russian nor Ukrainian,Pole etc. The problem was requested for comment so I tried to give an outsider point-of-view. I don't think this an obvious case like Holocaust or evolution. Ukrainian genocide in the 1930s is a fact, Stalinism as a brutal form of dictature is an accepted fact so the word "liberation" with its absolutely positive connotations are really strange related to these facts, especially that we are not speaking about the feelings of Russians now but of Ukrainians. Zello 01:42, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
In Hungary there is a very similar debate about 4 April, the day when German occupation ended. It was called felszabadulás (liberation) until 1990 but when Hungary became independent, and the Red Army left the country, it turned out that a lot of people have horrible memories about the Soviet troops and they see this therm highly insulting. Nowadays it is not used too often although it was commonly accepted before the change. I think the sitatuation is probably similar in Ukraine and Poland. Zello 07:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Today's independent Ukraine officially celebrates the anniversaries of liberation Do Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Lithuania celebrate in their countries presence of Soviet soldiers as liberation ? and to what a lone wikipedian (or a couple) see as a "better" terminology. Well how about the president of my country ?: Lech Walesa [3]] Only now, in a free and sovereign Republic, can we speak of this in a distinct voice. To show the complex and ambiguous meaning of this anniversary. To bare its full truth. In the times of the Polish People's Republic, in enslaved Poland, a different version of history was compulsory. The official and "only correct" version. So we celebrated 9th May as Victory Day. -- Molobo 03:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC) As you see Irpen the view of Polish government officials is rather critical of your "liberation" claim -- Molobo 03:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
fringe nationalists with a russophobic tilt Irpen the discussion is about Soviet Union not about Russian people. The view that Soviet presence meant occupation and terror is certainly the mainstream view in countries to which you try to apply the term liberation. Frankly as you see most editors that are Poles or Ukrainians oppose the term, so why not use a neutral one like "retook", "regained control". -- Molobo 00:21, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Since when four or five Ukrainian editors were allowed to represent the whole Ukrainian nation? Since Wiki is an international project they do in some way represent Ukrainians, or at least they are the best that we got. :As for Poland, I'm the first advocate of using the word "liberation" only for territories that were in URSS possession on 22 June 1941. Poland does not belong there. What ? Are you unaware that Soviets occupied Poland in 1939 and were in possesion of Polish territory in June 1941(for example Bialystok) ? What about Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia which were annexed by the threat of force ? -- Molobo 00:41, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Molobo, this is again, deflecting the discussion. The issue is not who considered what. The issue is whether the agreement of an entire mainstream scholarship that 43-45 was liberation, Flat Earth Theory is nosnense, the Holocaust was Genocide, Judaism is not Christianity, etc. is enough reason to say so at Wikipedia. What's yours, mine or even Jimbo's take on this things, doesn't matter. -- Irpen 01:10, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Agree with Irpen. - FrancisTyers 01:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Disagree. Soviet "mainstream" was constructed for the propaganda purposes of the times and definitely cannot be considered NPOV especially that Ukrainians and Lithuanians continued to fight for their independence under Soviet occupation for years after WW2 ended. -- Lysy talk 10:05, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
The issue is whether we are allowed to use strong words in Wikipedia or we are not allowed to use them at all. I think there is no problem with using any "strong" or "weak" word if one uses the word according to its definition. If we look at the definition of Genocide: "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group ...", we see that the Holocaust conforms to this definition. STherefore, there is no problem concerning using the term Genocide when reffering to the Holocaust.
Now let's look at the definition of the word liberation: Liberation is based on the word liberty, related to the word liberal, and it is often understood as "to be freed (or change) from not having freedom to having freedom". There is a big doubt whether the post-war regime in the USSR can be characterised as "having freedom". Such a view can hardly be accepted universally. As well as considering Soviet republics to be occupied by Russia is very far from being a generally accepted view.
I would suggest the both sides of the dispute to find a compromise formulation.-- Mbuk 22:09, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
The problem with using the word liberate here is that it's ambiguous. What does it mean, exactly? The USSR wasn't much less oppressive than the Nazis, in general, unless you were a Jew/gypsy/black/homosexual/etc. Certainly the residents of the newly-reconquered territories didn't have political freedom after they were conquered, which is one thing the term conjures up.
If you want to say that the majority of people in the reconquered areas were happy with the reconquering, say so. Don't use ambiguous terms to describe the reconquest and assume they're thus valid, because not everyone is going to interpret them the same way you do. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 01:47, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Just stumbled upon this page here. I think a lot more analysis needs to be done by the Wikipedia community on what NPOV means and what's considered mainstream. Unfortunately the debate here seems to have only focused on issues related to Russia, the Ukraine, and WWII. I also followed the link to the Holodomor article and found it to be very POV, for what that's worth...
Maybe we should write a new article, possible called the Liberation of Europe discussing among others the post-Soviet controversy. It would then be possible to write something like "The Soviets liberated Berlin in 1945", without these edit wars. -- Petri Krohn 08:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that is not a neutral title. -- Ryan Delaney talk 00:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Indeed it is not. To liberate means to set free from oppression, confinement or foreign control 1. Hence, what you would like to call a liberation was actually - per definition - the complete opposite, seeing as though Berlin (to use that as an example) was divided between no less than four foreign powers. Whether or not the nazi regime was oppressive or not is clearly a matter of discussion, but most would agree that to its own people, at least, it was not. To use the term "liberation" about the rest of Europe could be fitting, but for Germany itself, it would be outright wrong. Also, to point at how POV the term is, who would say the east bloc was "liberated" when the Soviet Union took over? Most likely, only Soviets themselves. See, this is basically all revolving around cultural bias. Smacking up "liberation of Europe" would only make some editors claim Germany was everything but liberated, other editors accuse these of nazi sympathies, while others still would yell that the east bloc first became oppressed after the soviets took over, while yet some others would say that no, they were indeed liberated. Insofar as the victor defines history, you could always say that the west became liberated, however, the myriads of nazi sympathisers at the time - and there were many more than these countries today like to admit - would clearly think otherwise. This particularly with regards to the witch-hunt like seek&destroy tactics in the civil communities to "punish" anyone clearly siding with the Germans during the war itself. In short, just let it be. It would do nothing good, and only cause controversy. -- TVPR 07:13, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Recently there have been a few proposed changes to this guideline but little discussion. Basically some users feel that the guideline doesn't cover characters from movies and video games in specific detail, which has led to confusion and lack of consensus on numerous AfD discussions. Please feel free to discuss the proposed changes on the guideline's talk page. Thanks. Reyk YO! 00:13, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I've proposed to suspend RfA and initiate a discussion of the merits of the existing process over on the Bureaucrat's noticeboard. Please feel free to participate in this discussion. Kelly Martin ( talk) 21:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I've written a semi-proposal/semi-essay on the treatment of creation of articles for current events. It's based on a combination of existing policies/guidelines, but as an interpretation of how they applies to current events. Comments welcome at WP:DUST. Regards, MartinRe 13:51, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Are we allowed subpages in the article space, I thought per Wikipedia:Subpages this was discouraged. Is this page out of date or does it still have consensus? Steve block Talk 11:14, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
(Originally on WP:VPM, though this is probably more appropriate) Is there an policy/guideline/essay which explains this principle as it applies on WP? I'm looking for an appropriate place to link to, but in the absence of WP:TINW I'm not sure which this might be. 81.104.165.184 20:31, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
This subject may have been (and probably has been) raised, but howcome wikipedia does not allow flash files to be uploaded? This format is very, very useful and versatile, I believe it could increase the quality of wiki greatly. Comments? Skaterblo 19:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
This open source player kind of works, but iirc it isn't packaged for any major distros, and it doesn't support sound yet. Also its very slow. I would not encourage allowing Flash to be uploaded. Is there an open format that could be supported instead? - FrancisTyers 01:30, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
(moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Indefinite IP blocking by User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 02:56, 11 June 2006 (UTC))
A few people in the Film Project have decided that "movie" is an Americanism and therefore only the word "film" should be used in Wikipedia. They have changed many of the categories titles to reflect that but got rebuffed on "Road Movies" and "Disaster Movies". (The above discussion about google was started because someone used google to show that "Disaster Movies" had more hits than "Disaster Films").
Isn't this like the "Color" vs. "Colour" argument? And isn't it Wiki policy that neither the Americanism or the Britishism is to be favored? That editors are allowed to use whatever form they are comfortable with? -- JeffW 17:54, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I'd have said that whereas "film" is preferred to "movie" in Britain, few would talk about "disaster films". -- Runcorn 21:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe there is a policy I read somewhere that states that editors should try to not edit articles they may be personally involved with in one way or another. I can't seem to find it, however. Could someone point me to it if possible, please? Thanks. Cowman109 Talk 01:21, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
It is surely valuable for people to contribute to articles about which they know something, perhaps about people they know, as long as they don't breach WP:NOR and WP:NPOV.-- Runcorn 21:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there anything wrong with creating an account for the sole purpose of its watchlist? In order to monitor the changes of FAs after they become FAs, I want to make an account with all the FAs on the watchlist so that I can just link to it's Special:Watchlist page to monitor all the changes. Is there some other way that this can be accomplished/does the same thing already exist? freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 01:07, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I am astounded that the article on traumatic brain injury includes not one mention of neuropsychology. I can't imagine that it has not been added and this causes me to wonder if entries about neuropsychological assessment and interventions for people with traumatic brain injury have been edited OUT. Can you please let me know? This is a glaring omission and not in keeping at all with current standards of practice in neurological rehabilitation. Thanks - Nancy Hansen Merbitz, Ph.D. Email and phone removed to protect from spam TenOfAllTrades( talk)
I have made some edits to WP:OWN so that it would apply across all content namespaces (i.e. image:, portal:, template: and category:). I have also edited the pertinent Mediawiki message in accordance. Any comments? Circeus 18:13, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)#Natives to People
Recently, "Greek exceptionalism" advocates (mainly 2-3 folks) were using the categories named "Native of Foo" to mean non-immigrant, excluding folks actually born in a place whose great grandparents had been immigrants or refugees. Nativism rearing its ugly head.
During the debate, it was mentioned that several other places use the "Native of Foo" in the same way:
While it's hard to tell, I don't doubt that there is some confusion, and that some folks are using those categories in that nativist fashion. The rest of the 'pedia seems to use the "People from Foo" form instead.
I'd like to standardize on "People from Foo" to avoid further confusion.
Since none of these categories are related to any American, that understanding of the meaning of "Native" is inapplicable. The problem is certain editors excluding persons born in England, France, Greece, etc., because one or more parents or grandparents or great grandparents were immigrants or refugees. We should not practice ethnic cleansing in Wikipedia.
This problem can be ameliorated by renaming the categories that are "Native" to "People". Then, we don't worry about the various interpretations of native. Hopefully, we can agree they are people! The rest of the 'pedia seems to use the "People from Foo" form instead.
I'd like to standardize on "People from Foo" to avoid further confusion. Is there any objection?
I don't think moving them to "X people" will help. Make it "Citizens of X" or "People born in X", something completely unambiguous. Is someone who was born in Ireland, moved to New York and lived there for twenty years, acquired dual US/Israeli citizenship, and finally moved to Argentina and spent the rest of their life there an Irish person, an American person, an Israeli person, an Argentinian person, or some combination thereof? Try to be unambiguous. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 09:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
In your example, the categories added should be all appropriate subcategories of Category:Irish people (assuming they did something notable there other than accident of birth), Category:People from New York (again notability), Category:Israeli people (again, doing something notable there), and Category:Argentine people (again, assuming they did more than retire there). There's no reason to limit the categories.
And there's no reason to decide that they cannot be "of" Ireland, New York, Israel, or Argentina, just because their great grandparents were immigrants or refugees from elsewhere. We should not practice ethnic cleansing in Wikipedia.
As for the issue, all I'm saying is no person should in a category like Category:Irish people, because it's ambiguous. If you want to organize different Irish-person categories under that category, go ahead, but don't add articles to it, because you'll have all the same pointless disputes you have now. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 01:55, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, Ravi Shankar never lived in Ireland, and was never categorized as a native of Ireland, so your rhetoric is a complete non-sequitor.
Based on your comments, it is clear that you agree with declaring some people to be "native" and others "outsiders" no matter the number of generations they have lived there. I'm beginning to think a fork of the project is the only way to save the useful information in the face of such incredible biases.
Second, I made no attack on your motivations, anywhere. In fact, I never brought up anything pertaining to your motivations. I suggested that your criteria may be highly subjective, nothing more, although I will concede that there was some small degree of incivility there.
Third, my point was precisely that if your definition of ethnic cleansing includes removal of people from a category based on ethnicity, it should equally apply to removing someone from a category who clearly doesn't belong in the category in the first place. If your definition of ethnic cleansing applies solely to removing people from a category based on ethnicity when they don't belong to the group's ethnicity, that brings up the question of what qualifies someone to belong in a group, and you have not satisfactorily answered why your answer to that question is so correct as to justify terming all others' answers as ethnic cleansing. This was not rhetoric, but an attempt at logic, although I explained it rather poorly, the argument itself is rather obtuse, and you can debate my premises.
Finally, I am declaring nothing but the existence of ambiguity. Please clarify where I said, implicitly or explicitly, that I accept "declaring some people to be 'native' and others 'outsiders' no matter the number of generations they have lived there" (emphasis added). Such a proposition is plainly ridiculous, and I have said nothing of the sort. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 07:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I just wrote Wikipedia:On assuming good faith (terrible title, I know, please feel free to move it). It's a wiki-essay I've been mulling over for a little while about the relation between WP:AGF and WP:VAND. Feedback and constructive edits are quite welcome. Thanks! - GTBacchus( talk) 20:07, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Do we have a policy on using Google Earth or Google Maps screenshots to illustrate place articles? -- Ludraman 13:52, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Does the adherence to the Left-Right dichotomy constitute any POV on part of wikipedia editors? Clearly there have been alternatives posed, such as a 2D political compass or other variants. Since wikipedia editors cannot ascertain truth to any of these variants, but only verify that they indeed exist, the use of the left-right dichotomy is simply biased. Intangible 05:42, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
If it's relevant to note correlations with political affiliation in an article, that would be fine too; "proponents of measures designed to counteract global warming are disproportionately liberal" would be a succinct way of saying "those who support measures designed to counteract global warming disproportionately support such goals as reduced military spending, international aid, strong government regulation of the economy, and the securement of civil liberties". The terms are pretty well understood and not at all POV, although they may not always be useful. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 08:05, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Certainly in British politics, left and right wing are getting increasingly muddled. Some people feel that the Labout (or New Labour) Party is beginning to be to the right of the Conservative Party in some respects. Also, many policies are completely outside the simple left-right continuum; some right-wingers oppose immigration on "Keep British values" grounds, while others support it on free market grounds. -- Runcorn 21:25, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Some users are so young they have not been around long enough to be able to accurately perceive the short or long term consequences of their actions. Therefore I think a minimum age limit needs to be set for users and sysops and bureaucrats, etc. so we do not have to waste so much time having to educate them on our positions that have years and years of experience behind them like the portion of an iceberg below the surface. ... IMHO ( Talk) 05:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I can think of one user who frankly we would be better off without. He's in elementary school and pretty much incapable of any real contributions (his grammar, spelling, et al are on an elementary level, understandably). He does a lot of goofing off and needs a bit of babysitting ... literally, babysitting. He's not violating any particular policies but an age limit would help to remove kids like him. -- Cyde↔Weys 06:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
How would you verify a person's age? Blaise Joshua 07:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
We've had respected members of the community at least as young as 13, so any bar would seem to need to be lower than that, at which point there is almost no one left to exclude. Which is not to say that I would want to anyway. I welcome any child who can make productive contributions. Dragons flight 07:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I would go so far as to say that it is one of the wonders of the modern Internet that people so young that you'd never trust them face-to-face can be judged on their merits and actions alone. We are enabling these people to take responsibility for something that matters. If a minimum age limit were set for Wikipedia, I would quit the project in protest. Besides, it's technically infeasible. Deco 08:02, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Dear people from Wikipedia,
I wrote an e-book about the War in Yogoslavia and some of the historical facts exposed in the book ( may be visited at www.peev.org ) I wanted to share with you. I started the edition on the Bosnian page, and I gave the historical facts about the Vatican implications at the Balkans (also to see im my e-book), but there is a 16-years old boy who accused me for vandalization ?! Please, I want that my message be re-examend by the people who knows and loves history and not by those who have a hobbis like this 16-years old boy. And I want to hear excuse, because I wrote you with all my respect and love. I just wanted to share the knowledge with you...nothing else..
Dr. med. Jasmina Peev —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Peev ( talk • contribs) .
This question has me wondering... for US users, doesn't COPPA prevent anyone under the age of 13 from posting on a wiki? It provides the same sort of communication capabilities that any message board would, and PhpBB "requires" US users to be over 13 to register in compliance with COPPA. Of course, that legislation is a terrible piece of crap, and I wouldn't consider advocating that WikiMedia follow it, but... just wondering. ~ Booya Bazooka 00:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
As much as I'd like some of the more childish users to be kept from editing, it's an unfeasable proposal that would only hurt the project by removing decent contributors, such as Falcon here. It's about as stupid as any webpage that asks if someone is above above a certain age, as if that person would somehow be prevented from lying to the page. There's no way to verify someone's age over the internet unless you're charging them for access, and Wikipedia certainly isn't going to be doing that any time soon. – Someguy0830 ( Talk | contribs) 20:39, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
If a user has made many contributions to an atricle or project in particular in a very good way and also helped it get improved should the user get a barnstar for good work or do they have to do something major that has improved the article such as adding new tasks for the project or coming up with a great idea for the project. I am not being greedy or anything but I feel I can get something like this. Anyone can look at my contributions and see I have made MAJOR contributions particularly for the Wikipedia EastEnders and Indian Cinema projects and feel sometimes I am not being appreciated for it. ( Shakirfan 20:15, 16 June 2006 (UTC))
I propose a moratorium on deletions of current event articles. Case in point How NOT to steal a SideKick 2. While this article may eventually be deleted (and or relegated to WikiNews); whether or not it is currently notable isn't the point (as the event and coverage is ongoing that is difficult to assess). What I believe the focus should be, is on Wikipedia's strengths. The long tail, not being paper, being up to date and relevant to what people want to research; and such articles serve as an ideal introduction to new users. To delete it quickly is unnecessary and contrary to those strengths, it also ignores that the article will be recreated, poorly, but other good faith new (potential) contributors. As such, they (new current event articles) shouldn't even be put up for AfD consideration, until such time as their ultimate notability – and their impact can be determined. - Roy Boy 800 16:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Even wikinews has standards. "People come here looking for this" does not mean "we should have this". Is there a demand for a wiki where you can post whatever you want? sure. Is wikipedia the place for that? no. Also, generally things can not be moved to wikinews because of licensing conflicts. Kotepho 13:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
In the case of cc-by-sa, the relevant passage is "You may not offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter or restrict the terms of this License or the recipients' exercise of the rights granted hereunder." No exemption is granted for GFDL. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 05:05, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm helping keep things calm on a controversial topic that was listed on the front page. Someone just put an obviously inflammatory anonymous comment on the Discussion page. Is there any policy on reverting to remove flames, or do we just let it all hang out? I have no problem either way, I was just curious if this is ever done. I can imagine a controversial article drowning in flames otherwise... :) Anon Y. Mouse 19:39, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I was part of a debate over that rule about wether constant vandalism qualifies as instability or not. Thoughts? False Prophet 02:26, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
See: Category:Wikipedia administrators... Is it a good idea to have subcategories of administrators by nationality? What is that saying, exactly? Has this been discussed before, and if so where? Pointers gratefully accepted. Something just seems a bit "off" by doing this, even if it's been round a while... or maybe it's me. + + Lar: t/ c 17:36, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I wanted to know if it had been explicitly discussed before or not because I was curious. Just like with other things that let you find people quickly, there might be concerns if people were using a category as a way to unduly influence things... not sure that's really very likely? + + Lar: t/ c 22:36, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
The only issue I see with the categories is that unless some sort of 'bot is used to add people to them, being listed in under a category has to be seen as a voluntary thing, so the category can never really be considered complete. I'm an admin and I'm not listed under any categories (and wasn't even aware the categories existed until just now). One possible risk is that a vandal or someone with an axe to grind could decide to be juvenile and add someone to, say "Gay administrators" who isn't, etc. But that said the first page any Wikipedia editor should add to their watchlist is their userpage. 23skidoo 23:14, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I recently tagged Everson Mono Unicode for deletion per WP:NOT, writing "Wikipedia is not a font catalog". Should it be? Realistically, the trouble with putting fonts into Wikipedia is that you probably can't show font samples without having copyright problems, and a font catalog without font samples is worthless. -- John Nagle 05:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
People with knowledge and opinions on fonts can come to a consensus on whether a particular font merits an article. What's the problem? patsw 01:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I have proposed a change/clarification in the handling of royal honorifics at the MOS (biographies) page to state that honorifics should not be used inline (but should be mentioned) for royalty. Please comment at the link above. Thanks. -- Improv 14:48, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Hello everyone. I made a guideline proposal about music samples used in music related articles in Wikipedia:Music samples, to regulate there use and prevent copyvios. But we need users who know enough about copyrights and fair use in one hand. and audio formats in other hand. Thank you. CG 07:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure if there is already a policy on this, but I propose that the first instance of a each year and decade in an article should be linkified, and that the instances after should not be linkified. -- Shanedidona 03:14, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Utility is a new guideline/proposal, and an alternative to the Not Notable essay. Please take the time to review or edit it.— Pengo 01:29, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Offline I am currently typing up a proposal for a new policy which includes a naming convention, directory structure, and more. The proposal is getting long, so I don't want to post it here, as it would get cluttered with the more specific issues. Would it be acceptable to put it on its own page for discussion, expansion, contraction, etcetera? I would like to have comments and additions from various users interested in related topics and from users who are not that interested. It needs to be discussed at length before implimentation just to make sure that once done, all parties will be happy with the result.
Another reason I need to know where to put this is so that I can inform users through various articles talk pages. With a central discussion arena, a lot can be accomplished.
And in case anyone is interested, the subject of my propsal is Locations in fiction and Fictional locations. If you are not interested in the topic, but interested in the proposal, I will try to post the wikilink here too, once I know where to put it.
Its current length is 7838 bytes.
—
Lady Aleena
talk/
contribs 22:37, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
The proposal is at
Wikipedia:Locations in fiction, fictional locations, and settings (
talk).
—
Lady Aleena
talk/
contribs 20:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there a table that lists the various copyright types according to the rules or sets of conditions that apply to and define each type? ... IMHO ( Talk) 15:22, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Currently, there is a serious discussion going on about the use of qualifiers in titles, especially (epithet) after various political loaden terms, such as:
I do not yet have an opinion about it myself, but I would like neutral input from editors and admins not involved in those pages on whether these qualifiers violate WP:NPOV. Thanks. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 03:18, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I'd have said that all these violate NPOV. -- Runcorn 21:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
See the page Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(slogans). This page is inactive and kept for historical reasons, but there was discussion about the idea (and I can't even figure out from it what the final decision on the subject was, if there was any). I think there's some support for using qualifiers in such cases. Ken Arromdee 16:18, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know of any previous discussion which lead to a consensus of how to state measurements. I've seen it done many ways. It seems that the majority of articles use the metric system first (either meters or metres) and then have English units in parenthesis. I am also aware of articles having the cited measurement first and a mathematically converted measurement second in parenthesis. I'm sorry R'son-W did not like the comment on his talk page. I was truly trying to find out if there has been previous discussion on this topic. -- Samuel Wantman 09:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
There are a few articles (most likely translated) that include an inline 'see also' or 'references' link to other language Wikipedias, for example François Cavanna, Wolfgang Schäuble, and Peter Harry Carstensen. Normally I'd just remove them per WP:ASR, but discussion on the talk page of one of those articles suggests that they serve a useful function. I can't find any specific policy information on the appropriateness of these links (specifically as it relates to ethics of citation and translation procedure), but hopefully someone here can clarify this point. Ziggurat 21:32, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I think interwiki links should still be kept in their place. Crediting the original language version is better done in an edit summary. Wikipedia shouldn't be its own source, and any mere translation from another Wikipedia article should be seen as temporary. It needs, sooner or later, to be checked with reliable sources. I have seen articles translated into English which were uncited and not that great in their original version (heck, I've probably done it myself a couple of times), but this should not be seen as a permanent solution. At some point every language version of an article has to become directly reliant on external sources; at least for the English Wikipedia, where we have people reading a large variety of languages, that shouldn't really be a problem. Otherwise we risk ending up with circularity, where different language versions are "improved" based on the assumption that another version is better. People should not assume that the "native" version of an article is correct just because the authors presumably have access to good sources – far too often the good, native sources haven't actually been used. Tupsharru 01:31, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
This is the 2nd time I run into a case of this. Can't remember the first user. But I would likt to mention User talk:Wootking. It seems this person is adding himself to any type of WikiProject he can find, and collecting userboxes of projects and other UBX. However he has not made ONE single edit to an article. His account was created only 2 weeks ago. Now the fact that he collects userboxes i can care less about, but the fact that he is adding himself to all those WikiProjects is annoying, in that it clutters up the Project. It's not a real problem, but I was wondering if other people have seen similar problems lately. It almost seems like a bot (considering the bad formatting of the page). - The DJ 14:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Is it okay on wikipedia and also is it legal to link to from a wikipedia article to a TV show for download (or sections of the show? The show is very much a reference for part of the article and notable and needed and all that. I'm asking about copyright rules and such. Basically the article has a show as a reference source and then there's places online that for one give clips of the show that relate to the subject of the article. Another since the whole episode relates to the article, there's a whole show to download. DyslexicEditor 15:07, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia policies, which abbreviation of United States should we use? US, U.S., USA, or U.S.A.? CG 13:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Who has the right to create bots? And are bots subject to the 3RR ruling? Wallie 18:43, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
What is the appropriate action when several editors insist on a wrong action ? User:Futurix, in an edit summary, states: "rv ... for the very same reasons as Wikipediatrix, Stollery, and other editors." [4] That is accurate, User:Wikipediatrix has similar reversions: "rv ... - for the same reasons as all the other editors." [5] and "rv to previous edit, for reasons already discussed ad infinitum!" [6]. All of "the other editors" are citing a personal essay on a personal website as a secondary source of information. The editor who is following WP:RS is moving that information to "Exterior Links". The several editors are no longer discussing. They are simply reverting, quoting and citing a personal essay on a personal website into the article Suppressive Person. The link they are insisting on (without discussion) is titled, "Operation Clambake present: Fair Game". Obviously it is a personal essay on a personal website. When that information is moved to be an exterior link then the editors go wild, they refuse to discuss and revert again and again. What is the procedure to deal with this kind of editor behaviour? Terryeo 08:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
The solution here is in WP:Consensus: get more users to look at the problem; most of the existing system of dispute resolution is intended to do this. At that point, a little group of willful editors will be unable to impose a false consensus. On the other hand, if Terryeo finds his facts and PoV excluded by a large group of editors, he "should at least consider that he may be mistaken". Septentrionalis 17:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
This does not seem correct: The Revolt, 1915 as a section heading. How can I convince the page writers of this? They see nothing wrong with it and changed their headings to include commas. KarenAnn 15:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that the current wording of the template underemphasises the importance of guidelines and encourages wikilawyering, and so I have proposed an alternative wording based on the definition of a guideline at WP:POL. See Template talk:Guideline for discussion. -- bainer ( talk) 01:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Can't we have some way of displaying a page view counter, I have no idea whether certain pages are being seen by one person a week, or a thousand day. A simple page counter would do the trick, though being able to link to a more sophisticated statistics package would let us see from which pages people come from, and go to, and provide averages, referrals etc. -- Iantresman 19:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Some smaller Wikis show page view counts.-- Runcorn 19:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, I thought this was obvious enough, but aparently, the Administrator Samuel Wantman didn't think it was. My proposal (which is largely in place anyways) is that if an article pertains to a certain part of the english-speaking world, that country's spellings and measurements be given preference. e.g. An article about a Canadian painter would talk about the "colour" of the paintings and the size in "centimetres" (and inches in parentheses). An article about the an American paiter would talk about the "color" of the paintings and the size in inches (and "centimeters" in parentheses). As I said, I thought this would have been pretty clear already, but I got a message from a certain admin on my talk page like I were five, so I guess I have to submit this. I apologize for the waste of time this may seem to be. R'son-W 09:55, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Wp:mos#National_varieties_of_English - but I should add that in general, editing articles solely to change units, national spellings and so on is really frowned upon, unless it's as a result of discussion and community consensus. There are more important things for people to be doing than worrying about whether imperial or metric units come first, and given the multinational nature of Wikipedia people are just going to have to get used to the fact that sometimes it says "metre" and sometimes "meter". -- ajn ( talk) 11:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Where? Exploding Boy 15:35, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
And -- obviously -- Hanzi characters and the Lunar calendar should be given preference in all articles pertaining to China. John Reid 06:49, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I know about Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Problem_articles_with_alternatives_to_deletion. But what if a cleanup tag is still present after more than half a year and the article is still not in a usable shape? In AfDs people vote keep and expand even in such cases. Is it really the goal of Wikipedia to keep really bad articles about notable subjects? I'm talking e.g. about The Seven Worlds in it's current state (the state of the article might be better when you read this). It really annoys me that people say in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Seven Worlds Keep, but needs cleanup as noted on the page. (the article hasn't improved although it is tagged cleanup since half a year). And someone said in the AfD Keep until someone can tell me if this is true or not (the article doesn't cite it's sources). Is there really no lower limit on the quality of Wikipedia articles? And is this really intended? Adrian Bunk 00:38, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Please oh please wipe them all from the slate! I've argued many times on AfD debates that Keep and rewrite votes should be counted as Delete unless rewritten. IMHO FAR TOO MANY articles survive AfD on "Keep and rewrite" without the rewrite susequently taking place. If an article is extremely poor/almost unsalvageable to begin with, it is better to delete it and start over. Zunaid 15:00, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Vandalism as a natural sub section of Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish anonymous users. Steve block Talk 22:38, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Use of American v. British/Commonwealth English, since it has come up numerous times since I have been here. Steve block Talk 22:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Since this language's version of Wikipedia is the only to cover a country which does not use SI measurements (and in fact, a supermajority of native english speakers do not), it should be the policy of Wikipedia for all articles to include both metric and American units in all pages where measurements are used. If there is a page lacking in this, it should be noted by a template. R'son-W 07:14, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Since when did the US not use metric units? What is habitual and what is actual policy are two different things entirely, and the US government deisgnated the SI system as the preferred one 18 full years ago. Further, go right ahead and tell me the speed of light in feet per second. We all know it moves at 300.000km/s, meaning 300.000.000m/s, meaning 300.000.000.000mm/s. Now, equally swiftly, without a calculator, tell me what this is in miles/sec, yards/sec, feet/sec and finally, let's not forget the smallest (and my, how accurate it is too) unit available; inches/sec. To put some more emphasis on the great accuracy of the CUs, how many inches is an average sinarapan? Over a span of 3 unit denominators, it's 12,5mm, 1,25 cm, and 0,125m. How many inches, feet and yards is this? My points are; 1: If you want to trawl all Wikipedia articles for occurances of units not provided in customary units, go right ahead. However, the sheer volume of Wikipedia, and the complete lack of logic in finding the lesser unit of what you currently have, means you've got a nice life's work cut out for you. Enjoy. 2: In an encyclopedia, accuracy - not the habits and quirks of one user group (which by the way happens to claim majority (which is equally false, as you clearly know, and that cleverly adjusting your statistics to show native English-speakers won't change the fact that most of the world still uses BrE, having been, as it were, under British rule or influence for longer than the US has been a country.)) - should be priority. -- TVPR 08:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
The term "American units" is a misnomer. Most British people still use them in everyday usage as well, despite Britain being "officially" (and generally reluctantly) metric. And many things in the UK, including our roadsigns, are still officially in imperial units (it's actually illegal to use only metric units on roadsigns), so let's not have any false claims that it's only the United States that uses these units. -- Necrothesp 09:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Units should be dealt with on the WikiProject level. A universal policy could never account for all the idiosyncracies you get in specialized fields. Melchoir 10:08, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I think all articles should use metric. The English WP is available to billions of English speakers around the world, often speaking English as a second language. SI is international - that is its point. If people would like to add their own local units too (particularly when referring to local issues), I won't mind that. Stephen B Streater 12:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
As for specialized fields, Wikipedia serves a general audience, not just specialists. Even if American physicists always use the metric system for physics, other Americans/Brits/Canadians/etc. (almost no former British colonies are fully converted to SI) will also want to read and understand the article.
The only exception to this rule is when the units involved are so ridiculously beyond what we use in everyday life that normal units are insufficient or the differences are negligible; our readers don't need to be told that 1.41679 × 1032 K equals 2.55022 × 1032 °F, or that 130 light years equals 7.6427 × 1014 miles—nothing is gained in comprehensibility from that. But the density of mercury, that's something that should be in both metric and American/imperial units. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 03:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Two points. I reinforce the plea that if a unit like the pint (which differs between the US and other countries) is used, it should be explained which is meant, ideally with a conversion into the other sort. And there is often more than one metric unit. The density of mercury is about 13.6 grammes (grams?) per cubic centimetre in cgs units and 13,600 kilogrammes per cubic metre in SI units; probably, most people would prefer the former, although scientists usually use SI. The official unit astronomers use to measure distances to stars is the parsec, although common usage prefers the light year; neither is strictly an SI unit. Runcorn 19:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd love to use American or Imperial units but they get so complex once you get beyond basic stuff - working with measurements trying to work out if they are eights or twelths, long or short tons, and how many pints to the quart anyway? Not to mention fathams and furlongs, bushels and chains. But I'm an adult, and most of the time I've got a fair idea what people are talking about. If I want to know what the exact converion is, I'll pull out the calculator. I can cope with whatever anyone writes. One point though. English is the international language with probably more ESL speakers than native speakers. And SI is the international system of measurement. -- Michael Johnson 14:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I think the preceding discussion is well meaning, but short on facts. When people say things like "most of our readers" I wonder where the numbers are to back up these claims. Note that we have guidelines on this topic at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Scientific style and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Units of measurement which say sometimes SI units are mandatory and that conversions should not be removed. If you want to add conversions to articles, I suggest adding them as you find them or organizing a wikiproject to do so. -- cmh 15:39, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Just two points to add: all packaged goods in Britain are labelled in metric, although loose goods can be ordered in Imperial. I drink pints of beer but buy milk in litres, I think in Fahrenheit, but everybody else I know thinks in Celsius. Secondly, as Michal Johnson implies, Wiki En probably has a large ESL readership. In fact judging by many of the contributions, Wiki En is frequently written by non-native speakers (look at any article concerning a non-English speaking country). Recipe books can manage multiple measurements, why limit Wiki En to one continent?
The presumption that SI units are not widely used in the USA really applies to the household. Many industries have converted to SI, especially industries engaged in international trade. On the other hand, there is one area of high technology where inches are in common use, computer printers, with terms such as dots per inch and pixels per inch. Gerry Ashton 21:28, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
I think that in every place it is relevant that we should use both metric and American measurements. Metric may be used in the majority of the world, but a large percentage of people on the English Wikipedia are from the United States and have no sense of scale in the metric system, no matter how much they see it in their life. Foreign articles as well as American articles should use it. Finding conversion calculators online is ridiculously easy, so look one up, convert the two measurements, and put it into the article. And the wide availability of these things shouldn't be an excuse not to put them on here, as this is an encyclopedia and should be as NPOV as possible, and should accomodate as many people as possible. I don't want to look up a conversion calculator every time I see "163 kilometers" or "26 degrees Celsius" or whatever. I want to be able to know what the American measurement right there, and if I used metric measurements and it only had Imperial on the page, I would want to see the Metric conversion. bob rulz 23:54, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Don't forget that vast numbers of British people still prefer traditional units, and in many cases traditional units are generally used even by young British people, eg human heights in feet and inches and speeds in miles per hour. To a great degree SI has been imposed against the will of the British public, but Wikipedia is a public resource and does not have to defer to official dictat. "English as she is spoke" is just as valid as "English as Big Brother would have it spoke". Piccadilly 18:20, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I strongly agree that SI and imperial units should be used alongside one another. This is simply for the benefit of those people who are not able to understand both systems easily, and there are a great deal of these. Many Canadians, for example, particularly the younger generation, associate no particular meaning with Faernheit temperatures. However, many Americans I have communicated with are extremely confused when I report thirty-five degrees Celcius as boiling hot, thinking it quite near the freezing point of water. Neither system is at all universal and therefore both should be used. Falcon 22:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me a similar issue occured with users preferred date format. In this case Wikipedia automatically displays the date in the users preferred format (assuming the date is wikified). Could we do something similar here. Set everything up in metric but use templates (or something) to either do the coversion on the fly or to provide a link to a page that gave the conversions.-- Mark S ( talk) 17:39, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Given that Wikipedia prohibits original research, most "measurements", I would think, would be taken out of other published sources. In which case, the appropriate thing to do is to provide them in the units in which they were originally presented--if the source includes SI units, so should the Wikipedia article, and likewise for the "traditional" units. Go ahead and provide conversions, but the conversion should be listed second and it should be clearly indicated that it is a conversion performed by Wikipedia editors. (If a source includes a measurement in multiple systems, then Wikipedia should take both measurements from the source).
Given that any measurement will have an uncertainty, and that unit conversions will often add to that uncertainty (the alternative is reporting the conversion with more significant digits than is warranted), publication of the unconverted values is key.
One place which might warrant presenting converted units ahead of unconverted units is the case where measurements from different sources (in different systems, and/or with different uncertainties) are compiled and aggregated into a single Wikipedia article. Displaying them with the same units, for presentation purposes, is appropriate. However, it should be obvious when conversions occur.
-- EngineerScotty 17:50, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Just have to throw in my 2 cents: I learned the speed of light on the Imperial system, and it's easier to remember it in six digits rather than nine. I have to start doing lots of multiplication when I convert it to km/h, since all I remember 186,282 miles per second. I'd say, don't use a template, but convert when you see it so that both systems are in evidence.
Sacxpert 08:23, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I've been dealing with an editor who has forsworn use of the preview button - he sometimes makes talk/AfD/etc. edits in 5-minute-instalments, changing what he's written before. Also, he has no problem with heavily editing his own previous comments, e.g. just deleting incivil comments after they've been pointed out to him. Do we have a standard prohibiting this around somewhere?
And if it turns out we do not, you are all invited to comment on my proposal to add something to that effect to Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. Sandstein 19:41, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed a decent amound of deletions happening because a subject is "not notable". There is no official policy about notability, but people seem to think there is. I have asked a few people about what is wrong with keeping non-notable pages, but noone seems to have any answer for me. One reason I read on the Wikipedia:Notability page, is that non-notable pages are hard to keep up to quality. But I can't imagine why that would matter, a simple tag or two would label the page as needing improvement, or mark it as generally a junky stub page.
Theres plenty of other tags to say what wrong with a page - but deletion isn't a tag. It removes history, removes information and work done on an article. How does it help the *readers* (thats who wikipedia is for) if we delete valid but "non-notable" information - a classification that is quite subjective.
Does anyone have a real answer for what is wrong with keeping non notable pages? I would like to propose that we actually make *policy* concerning non-notable articles - hopefully one that discourages censorship and allows wikipedia to become an encyclopedia that doesn't just contain a popularity-contest's worth of content. Fresheneesz 01:09, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
On the other hand, there are certainly benefits to having a very loose notability policy. (As loose as Zoe's mailbox, perhaps the benefits wane, but it's simpler to just not draw the line at all.) You need only compare Eric Burns' opinions about Wikipedia as of November 1, 2004 and as of November 20, 2005 to see how deletionism drives away contributors. No costs, nontrivial benefits: let's set the notability bar low, if we keep it at all. There's no point arguing over what's notable when there's no advantage to deleting things that aren't notable; it's a waste of time and effort. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 05:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
IMHO it is extremely important that there are some sort of notability guidelines and that these are adhered to. Without these Wikipedia becomes simply an indiscriminate collection of information. Above all else, if Wikipedia wants to be taken seriously in the academic world (and thus far I don't think it has been) as a reference tool, it must avoid becoming a collection of facts and trivia. (This is a multi-pronged problem, we need good articles on noteworthy topics.) As an example I could write a verifiable article about myself, as my university website has a page containing info on me. Would this add any value to Wikipedia? Or would it detract from its worth? WP:NOT is the only policy we have in this respect, but there are well-established guidelines ( WP:WEB, WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, etc) which are often used in deletion debates, and rightly so. Zunaid 09:29, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that the international versions of Wikipedia articles are not just translations, but often completely different articles with different information. Is NPOV defendable when local Wikipedia version are significantly different? Obviously the FDL allows different versions, but I think it would be good if everything under the Wikipedia flag represented a single collection of facts, and not local interpretations. (I'm not sure if this belong to policy, so please redirect me to the appropriate discussion page if not) Robert John Kaper 16:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Action | New | Updated | Renamed | Deleted |
---|---|---|---|---|
Synchronize | copy both ways | copy both ways | repeat both ways | repeat both ways |
Echo | copy left to right | copy left to right | repeat left on right | repeat left on right |
Subscribe | - | copy right to left if already there | - | - |
Contribute | copy left to right | copy left to right | repeat left to right | - |
Combine | copy both ways | copy both ways | - | - |
... IMHO ( Talk) 06:08, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
On a less negative note, its worth mentioning the existence of Wikipedia:Translation into English. If you notice an article where it looks like an international version has more information than the English one, then placing a translation request can help in getting the English article improved. And as you'll see from the interwiki links, many of the other language projects have a similar translation request pages for translations in the other direction.
In the past I've had good success with translation requests, encouraging Marginated tortoise to be translated from the German article and Artemisia Gentileschi to be translated from the Italian. -- Solipsist 21:28, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I read the page about ext. links, and my question was not answered there. My question: I originally placed a ton of ext. links to videos on the internet in the Brokeback Mountain parodies article. They have been removed, the remover arguing that my links violate the rule that says 'Wikipedia is not an Internet directory.' I understand that, and I've read all the rules on it- I understand that, whenever possible, Wikipedia should only link internally. However, in the case of these videos, that is impossible; and furthermore, I absolutely believe that this data- a brief descrip. of each vid, with a link to each one- is absolutely relevant to the article and worthy of Wikipedia. Here's a link to the page as it looked previously when my links were still in it: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Brokeback_Mountain_parodies&oldid=55259986 . Let me know what your consensus is.
And, if indeed you do decide that such linkage is improper, my other article, re-cut trailers, will have to be changed as well. Andrewdt85 18:23, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Without bothering to take tpo much time and look at each of these links, I'll just quickly ask instead if there is a webpage out there (other than wikipedia) that gives a listing of these parodies? If so then you can exclude all of those ones listed and just link to that page instead. Alternatively, another alternative is to create yet another seperate page in wikipedia that is a listing of these links. And then link to that in the main article. Which makes the main article appear cleaner. Also you could try breaking up the links into sections acording to type if that is at all possible. Again it will appear neater if it has some organiisation like that, rather than one big jumbled up heap of links. So think about these ideas and try applying whatever mix of them you feel will work best in your case.
Mathmo 18:29, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
"I'll just quickly ask instead if there is a webpage out there (other than wikipedia) that gives a listing of these parodies?" - yes, there is a page that lists all the Brokeback ones- well, all but a few. Still though, I haven't heard any good reasons yet why my data can't stay on the page. Andrewdt85 20:30, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Currently there is no policy on capitalising of "massacre" in article names (see google). I think there should be one. I don't see how one article can have capital M, and the other lower-letter m. Now, my question is, is there a right solution and a wrong solution, or are both solutions correct, and we should conduct a vote? -- Dijxtra 13:35, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Do we have any policy on underage users? I mean, I know we allow them but it concerns me to see users who are 11 or 12 and list their age, gender, and full name on the Wikipedia. Do we have a page we could direct these users to in order to point out why it may not be a good idea? I'm also concerned that some categories make it perhaps easier than it should be to track down underage users. Please note that I'm not saying we should ban these users; many of them contribute quite productively to the Wikipedia. -- Yamla 23:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I am forever seeing articles with more than one stub tag affixed to them (usually two). I am wondering if perhaps this practice should stop, because they look terribly awkward and disorganised stacked one atop the other. My question, then, is twofold:
I am planning on filing an RfC against a user and was thinking about going back through their edit history and contacting users (most likely through email) whose talk pages he has edited to ask them to contribute to the RfC. Would this be considered canvassing against Wikipedia policy? I'm perfectly willing to contact ALL such users without regard for the details of their interaction if that makes any difference. Ideogram 21:33, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there any sort of notability policy on direct-to-video films? Should they have a different notability from those that actually show in theaters, or does it matter? I'm specifically referring to Chubby Killer, which, according to imdb, is direct-to-video. User:Zoe| (talk) 23:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Are there any rules regarding the bartering [or selling] of votes on AfDs, RfAs, etc? How about guidelines? -- Folajimi 03:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Rules have long since been established in the real world to deal with such activities as conducting a meeting or voting on an issue. Yet the Wikipedia does not seem to want to embrace these solutions for one reason or another as if these problems might somehow be new. Ask yourself how the bartering of votes would be handled in the real world. The answer should be not different when asked about the Wikipedia. Yet it seems that as with many, many other issues the policies that are followed on the Wikipedia and the policies that are followed in the real world do not always jive. Perhaps the Wikipedia needs to look seriously at its system of governance and consider ideas that exist in the real world like parliamentary procedure and the like. Otherwise I fear the Wikipedia may be in for some very serious trouble ahead. ... IMHO ( Talk) 05:12, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
After extensive discussion on a topic and pursuing reasonable alternative solutions without success and having looked at the self posted credentials of some of those in opposition I am now left with the impression the Wikipedia is nothing more than a glorified grade, middle and high school teacher/student endeavor which has been exposed to the public without regard that the rules which the public are obligated to follow and the rules which students and teachers are obligated to follow are vastly different. For example: in the real world or public world it is perfectly legal to accuse anyone of anything without being in danger of committing an act of slander or libel so long as the accusation is true whereas in the Wikipedia any accusation is regarded in the same manner as would be talking back to the teacher in the school environment. What is truly disturbing about this is the effect on the content of some articles. It appears that some articles are being guarded by teachers from editing so that they might use them as a special online resource for their own students rather than permitting any edit that is not in line with their particular usage of the article. For instance: if a teacher wants to refer his students to a certain topic so that he can assign a task of say writing a basic computer program to perform the computation of the mathematical formula the article relates then he will naturally be opposed to anyone including such code in the article or on any other page or in an article of its own. The absence of a speller function tends to uphold this idea. I certainly hope that this is not the true nature of the Wikipedia and that conveyance of knowledge and truth is its ultimate goal rather than it’s serving as merely an online classroom aid for teachers and students in difference to the rules we must abide by in the real world. ... IMHO ( Talk) 04:47, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
I was just wondering, suppose I go to someone's page with a barnstar, and I copy the code,and put in on my page. I do change the name into evilbu of course.
Who will stop me?
And will the person who supposedly gave it to me ever find out?
Thanks,
Evilbu 20:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Bunchofgrapes, did you know you just gave me a barnstar?
Just kidding you, but seriously one could really exploit this. Okay, so maybe giving yourself a barnstar attracts attention. But what about double account people??
I did not do it, I admit I tried it and made a preview, but I didn't submit.
Evilbu 21:08, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
There is no policy or guideline that dictates anything about non-notaility - although there is that essay. Me and another person have co-written a proposed guideline Wikipedia:Non-notability, and I was hoping people could give us input, or help embellish the page. Thanks! Fresheneesz 07:41, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
While the specifics of Wikipedia:Notability are not policy, that essay and citations to it on AfD and elsewhere stem from Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which is fundamental, and Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, which is policy. — Centrx→ talk • 07:49, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
The guidelines on copyright don't mention poetry -- and certainly don't make it clear to me how much if any of a poem that is under current copyright I may include in an article. I would like to include some of a poem by Ko Chung Soo to illustrate his style, etc., but I don't know what is allowed. I have seen entire short poems cited in journals and reviews presumably with-out getting permission (certainly with-out indicating it), so? Kdammers 09:10, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Wikipedia:Manual of Style. bobblewik 14:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedians in WikiProject Stargate and its associated Stargate Portal have recently been discussing the applicability of Point 9 of Wikipedia's Fair Use policy as it pertains to portals. To those unfamiliar with it, it states:
As anyone can see, this poses a problem with regard to portals. It makes sense for templates, userpages, and even talk pages, but Portals are something different. User:Tango made this excellent argument about fair use on portals on the Stargate portal talk page:
I think that, considering the purpose of portals, fair use images should be permissible in portals under rules similar to those governing pages in the article namespace. If the response is favorable, I'll draft it as an amendment to Point 9. Lockesdonkey 21:11, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I suggest the policy be made more vague. Eg. "Note that the use of copyrighted images for decoration is not generally considered fair, which includes a lot of images outside the article namespace." -- Tango 00:39, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Lockesdonkey,
Could you please give us a sample of what type of images to which you are referring, and why you feel that they should be allowed in Portals? What is needed to be known is what the context of the image use would be. I am an astriaportaphile myself, so would love to see the Stargate Portal look better with a good image or two, but let's not go to crazy, okay?
—
Lady Aleena
talk/
contribs 03:08, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
It should be noticed that the above claim that the policy on fair use being only in articles is factually inaccurate. I'm tired of chasing the people who claim this all over the Wiki, as it's simply not true. -- Gmaxwell 14:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
After quite a few months, I have kicked off Wikipedia:Fair use criteria/Amendment/Consensus. It is not a vote, but will give each editor the chance to support or oppose the amendment very clearly. I've got it going for a fortnight as obviously it needs to end some time, and there is a lack of guidance on how to amend policy. - Ta bu shi da yu 22:38, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking about attempting to create one or two Wikipedia articles -- on my grandfather and grandmother, respectively. I believe they're notable because they were medical missionaries in China and India in the '40s and '50s, my grandfather being a doctor who was in China when the Communists took over (the whole family was, for a period, under house arrest), and my grandmother being not only there also offering medical care, but also a published author of books about their missionary experience and also several children's books. [Family scuttlebutt is that one of her books almost became a movie featuring Cary Grant as my grandpa. But as that's scuttlebutt, it wouldn't be making it into the article. ;-)]
I'm writing here to request some policy advice/clarification on three issues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_Virtual_Majority
Some people gathering around articles share the same POV. They are then able to create a "virtual" majority on wikipedia, disrespecting the viewpoint that is mainstream in the real world. ackoz 14:03, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I just edited (rewrote, mostly) the article on the children's record Gossamer Wump. The spokesperson for EMI records (which bought out Capitol Records, the original issuer of the record) wrote me that the record has been reissued by EMI New Zealand, and sent me to a website where the record could be purchased. The website is NOT EMI New Zealand, but a private dealer (?) or perhaps an EMI affiliate who markets the record on the web.
I included the link in the article, because it came from an official source, and because I know that people who land on this article are most probably looking to obtain the record (just as, in fact, I had). On second thought, though, it seemed inappropriate to include what is essentially a plug for a commercial website in the pedia.
What say you all?
-- Ravpapa 05:30, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
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Are there any details of what this permission specifically does, and how it will be assigned? User access levels states "Allows user to delete previous revisions of pages" and that it will be individually assigned. meta:Help:User rights does not mention it at all, but it appears to be a valid (though unassinged) group on meta as well. — xaosflux Talk 05:28, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps we should think about having these go here, or should it go on meta, since thats were the stewards do promotions? Voice-of-All Talk 14:00, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
It would be worthwhile to point out that about a dozen users have been given the oversight permission, and it was done by the Arbitration Committee. As there is of yet no proceedure for how it should be granted (at least, none that I've seen, and Jimbo was unable to give any answer when I asked a few days ago on IRC), my understanding is that it is being handled just as checkuser is handled: The Arbitration Committee decides who should be granted it, and then requests it on Meta. Essjay ( Talk • Connect) 14:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
There may be a better place for this discussion, but since this is the first thread about this new power that I have seen, I am going to comment here. First off, I don't see why this is better than simply granting all admins the ability to selectively delete and restore certain versions. Having an action that it takes a developer to undo is fairly awkward, but perhaps that is just a temporary hack. I agree that if something is hard to undo / check, then it is reasonable to limit who has access to it, but I don't see why selective version deletion should be one of those things, unless we've stopped trusting admins recently? PS. I've also done personal info removal in the past, though no where near as often as Prodego and Voice of All apparently. Dragons flight 18:07, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales, NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable.", but there are still discussions about the interpretation of this policy.
In particular, some editors believe that anything is neutral if it is widely used in "mainstream" sources. I disagree with this statement. The neutral point of view should be "neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject", whyle any of these two attitudes may prevail in the society and this influences the POVs found in "mainstream" sources.
On the other hand, the very definition of the "mainstream" is unclear to me. How can one decide whether a certain POV belongs to the "mainstream" or not? Another problem: if something is a "mainstream", for instance, in Iran, it is not necessarily a "mainstream" in US or Western Europe.
More specifically, this question appeared in the discussion about using the word "liberate" for the restoring of the Soviet control over the territories of the present-day Ukraine, Belarus and Baltic States during the WWII. Using this term was clearly the "mainstream" of Soviet historical science. The modern Russia continues this tradition. Although some western scholars use this term as well, I am not, quite sure whether it belongs to "mainstream" in Western science. Two articles in Britannica that describe the subject "Ukrain in WWII" in details (History of Ukraine, History of WWII) avoid the word "liberate" and use neutral terms, but one still can find this word in othe articles where the WWII is mentioned in passing by.
Wheter it is "mainstream" or not, it is not clear whether the "mainstreamness" has any relevancy in this case, because using the word "liberate" assumes sympathy to Soviets. Many people have the opposite view, because the "liberation" resulted in new repressions, one more artificial famine etc.
I (and a few other editors) propose to use more neutral terms instead of "liberate", like "take control", "advance", "reclaime" etc. But there is a strong group of users who disagree and insist on using the word liberate.
I would be very thankfull if experiencied WP editors could answer my question and help us to apply the NPOV policy properly. Thanks in advance.-- AndriyK 10:10, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
First of all, NPOV does not mean that Wikipedia endorses whatever is the mainstream view of an event! NPOV means that Wikipedia reports that a view is the mainstream, and will usually focus primarily on that view if there are too many competing views to report on all of them (no undue weight to fringe views). That said, I think the word "liberate" is not neutral. I'd imagine that not everyone who lived in those territories viewed the Soviet occupation as "liberating." -- Ryan Delaney talk 22:53, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Ryan, your imagination is beside the point. Whether you would like it or not, the majority of the population in the occupied USSR territories, based on how they reacted at the time, were glad to see the Soviet army. This was not Soviet propaganda, this was the large-scale response by the population. See the recently published book "A writer at war" by Antony Beevor. Just because a 21st century occidental thinks otherwise does not make it false. And the other problem is AndriyK applies a double standard to Ukraine and other places (but that's another subject). -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 09:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Whether you would like it or not, the majority of the population in the occupied USSR territories, based on how they reacted at the time, were glad to see the Soviet army That is untrue. Were Lithuanians happy to see their former occupiers return along with NKVD executions squads ? Poles certainly viewed Soviets as just another occupation, especially as hundreds of thousands were mass murdered by Soviet policies. The term liberate can't be used in regards to Soviet actions. From wiki definition: Liberation is based on the word liberty, related to the word liberal, and it is often understood as "to be freed (or change) from not having freedom to having freedom" Soviet regime neither can be described as associated with liberty, nor did it give freedom. Using the term "liberation" in regards to situation where people were one occupation was replaced by another is very POV. -- Molobo 12:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I said the majority, and when you see the number of people fighting as partizans, And who were guys from Armia Ludowa? Armia Ludowa had 6.000 partisans compared to 400.000 of Home Army and 175.000 from Peasants' Battalions. -- Molobo 13:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose to continue the discussion about using the word "liberate" at the talk and reserve the present page for a more general discussion:
NPOV vs "mainstream": is anything what is taken from "mainstream" sources automatically neutral? and, in the case of the positive answer to the first question, What is "mainstream"?-- AndriyK 14:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Sources please. Do governments of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia view Soviet presence as liberation ? I can certainly give sources of Polish government that clearly speak Soviet's represented just another opressive occupation. -- Molobo 17:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
"How can we decide whether a certain source is POVed?" This is an important issue and I recently proposed to start a list of sources judged by their reliability. See this discussion if you are interested in the project. Just an an example: EB has different reliability even in a single edition: if articles are not signed they were probably written not by scholars but by EB staff, whom I don't think are more qualified then we are. Regarding ths issue of liberate in that context, the problem is that with very few exceptions, where Red Army went, it stayed, quickly overcoming the welcome of the local population. Thus soon after liberation, RA become the occupiers themselves. My solution is to use the construction 'liberate from Germans' which is more precise and correct instead of just 'liberate', but I certainly prefer 'take control' and other neutrals terms, unless we are talking about ethnically Russian territory.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:09, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
This whole thing has started off the wrong foot. The issue here is not whether Ukrainians felt occupied or liberated, which is a related but a separate question (and I have an opinion on that but I will withold it for now since, I think, it is less relevant). The issue is whether we are allowed to use strong words in Wikipedia or we are not allowed to use them at all. Strong words are not only "liberated" but "occupied", "massacred", "murdered" as well as nouns, like "Genocide" (as opposed to "numerous deaths"), "massacre" (as opposed to an "incident"), "uprising" (as opposed to "mutiny"), revolution (as opposed to coup d'etat), etc. If all these words are banned, we should only use "killed", "died", "taken", etc. This, however, is not the case. No encyclopedia, book, writer, no matter how NPOV can be required to stick to PC language and no one does that, including the very respectable Britannica and Columbia which also have NPOV policy.
The issue is different. If the majority of scholars see something as NPOV and acceptable usage, we can use this here as well. That the Holocaust was Genocide, that creationism is unscientific (still doesn't make it wrong), October was revolution, Pinochet was coup, Bounty was "mutiny", 1939 was Soviet-German Occupation of Poland, and 1943-45 was liberation of Europe are the terms the scholars agree on to use.
NPOV doesn't mean to give equal weight to the flat earth theory supporters, holocaust deniers and fringe nationalists with a russophobic tilt. Such views may be presented in the appropriate article as attributed and, generally, rejected POVs. That would settle it. -- Irpen 00:12, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Personally I'm not really concerned in the question because I'm not a Russian nor Ukrainian,Pole etc. The problem was requested for comment so I tried to give an outsider point-of-view. I don't think this an obvious case like Holocaust or evolution. Ukrainian genocide in the 1930s is a fact, Stalinism as a brutal form of dictature is an accepted fact so the word "liberation" with its absolutely positive connotations are really strange related to these facts, especially that we are not speaking about the feelings of Russians now but of Ukrainians. Zello 01:42, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
In Hungary there is a very similar debate about 4 April, the day when German occupation ended. It was called felszabadulás (liberation) until 1990 but when Hungary became independent, and the Red Army left the country, it turned out that a lot of people have horrible memories about the Soviet troops and they see this therm highly insulting. Nowadays it is not used too often although it was commonly accepted before the change. I think the sitatuation is probably similar in Ukraine and Poland. Zello 07:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Today's independent Ukraine officially celebrates the anniversaries of liberation Do Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Lithuania celebrate in their countries presence of Soviet soldiers as liberation ? and to what a lone wikipedian (or a couple) see as a "better" terminology. Well how about the president of my country ?: Lech Walesa [3]] Only now, in a free and sovereign Republic, can we speak of this in a distinct voice. To show the complex and ambiguous meaning of this anniversary. To bare its full truth. In the times of the Polish People's Republic, in enslaved Poland, a different version of history was compulsory. The official and "only correct" version. So we celebrated 9th May as Victory Day. -- Molobo 03:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC) As you see Irpen the view of Polish government officials is rather critical of your "liberation" claim -- Molobo 03:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
fringe nationalists with a russophobic tilt Irpen the discussion is about Soviet Union not about Russian people. The view that Soviet presence meant occupation and terror is certainly the mainstream view in countries to which you try to apply the term liberation. Frankly as you see most editors that are Poles or Ukrainians oppose the term, so why not use a neutral one like "retook", "regained control". -- Molobo 00:21, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Since when four or five Ukrainian editors were allowed to represent the whole Ukrainian nation? Since Wiki is an international project they do in some way represent Ukrainians, or at least they are the best that we got. :As for Poland, I'm the first advocate of using the word "liberation" only for territories that were in URSS possession on 22 June 1941. Poland does not belong there. What ? Are you unaware that Soviets occupied Poland in 1939 and were in possesion of Polish territory in June 1941(for example Bialystok) ? What about Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia which were annexed by the threat of force ? -- Molobo 00:41, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Molobo, this is again, deflecting the discussion. The issue is not who considered what. The issue is whether the agreement of an entire mainstream scholarship that 43-45 was liberation, Flat Earth Theory is nosnense, the Holocaust was Genocide, Judaism is not Christianity, etc. is enough reason to say so at Wikipedia. What's yours, mine or even Jimbo's take on this things, doesn't matter. -- Irpen 01:10, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Agree with Irpen. - FrancisTyers 01:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Disagree. Soviet "mainstream" was constructed for the propaganda purposes of the times and definitely cannot be considered NPOV especially that Ukrainians and Lithuanians continued to fight for their independence under Soviet occupation for years after WW2 ended. -- Lysy talk 10:05, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
The issue is whether we are allowed to use strong words in Wikipedia or we are not allowed to use them at all. I think there is no problem with using any "strong" or "weak" word if one uses the word according to its definition. If we look at the definition of Genocide: "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group ...", we see that the Holocaust conforms to this definition. STherefore, there is no problem concerning using the term Genocide when reffering to the Holocaust.
Now let's look at the definition of the word liberation: Liberation is based on the word liberty, related to the word liberal, and it is often understood as "to be freed (or change) from not having freedom to having freedom". There is a big doubt whether the post-war regime in the USSR can be characterised as "having freedom". Such a view can hardly be accepted universally. As well as considering Soviet republics to be occupied by Russia is very far from being a generally accepted view.
I would suggest the both sides of the dispute to find a compromise formulation.-- Mbuk 22:09, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
The problem with using the word liberate here is that it's ambiguous. What does it mean, exactly? The USSR wasn't much less oppressive than the Nazis, in general, unless you were a Jew/gypsy/black/homosexual/etc. Certainly the residents of the newly-reconquered territories didn't have political freedom after they were conquered, which is one thing the term conjures up.
If you want to say that the majority of people in the reconquered areas were happy with the reconquering, say so. Don't use ambiguous terms to describe the reconquest and assume they're thus valid, because not everyone is going to interpret them the same way you do. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 01:47, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Just stumbled upon this page here. I think a lot more analysis needs to be done by the Wikipedia community on what NPOV means and what's considered mainstream. Unfortunately the debate here seems to have only focused on issues related to Russia, the Ukraine, and WWII. I also followed the link to the Holodomor article and found it to be very POV, for what that's worth...
Maybe we should write a new article, possible called the Liberation of Europe discussing among others the post-Soviet controversy. It would then be possible to write something like "The Soviets liberated Berlin in 1945", without these edit wars. -- Petri Krohn 08:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that is not a neutral title. -- Ryan Delaney talk 00:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Indeed it is not. To liberate means to set free from oppression, confinement or foreign control 1. Hence, what you would like to call a liberation was actually - per definition - the complete opposite, seeing as though Berlin (to use that as an example) was divided between no less than four foreign powers. Whether or not the nazi regime was oppressive or not is clearly a matter of discussion, but most would agree that to its own people, at least, it was not. To use the term "liberation" about the rest of Europe could be fitting, but for Germany itself, it would be outright wrong. Also, to point at how POV the term is, who would say the east bloc was "liberated" when the Soviet Union took over? Most likely, only Soviets themselves. See, this is basically all revolving around cultural bias. Smacking up "liberation of Europe" would only make some editors claim Germany was everything but liberated, other editors accuse these of nazi sympathies, while others still would yell that the east bloc first became oppressed after the soviets took over, while yet some others would say that no, they were indeed liberated. Insofar as the victor defines history, you could always say that the west became liberated, however, the myriads of nazi sympathisers at the time - and there were many more than these countries today like to admit - would clearly think otherwise. This particularly with regards to the witch-hunt like seek&destroy tactics in the civil communities to "punish" anyone clearly siding with the Germans during the war itself. In short, just let it be. It would do nothing good, and only cause controversy. -- TVPR 07:13, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Recently there have been a few proposed changes to this guideline but little discussion. Basically some users feel that the guideline doesn't cover characters from movies and video games in specific detail, which has led to confusion and lack of consensus on numerous AfD discussions. Please feel free to discuss the proposed changes on the guideline's talk page. Thanks. Reyk YO! 00:13, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I've proposed to suspend RfA and initiate a discussion of the merits of the existing process over on the Bureaucrat's noticeboard. Please feel free to participate in this discussion. Kelly Martin ( talk) 21:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I've written a semi-proposal/semi-essay on the treatment of creation of articles for current events. It's based on a combination of existing policies/guidelines, but as an interpretation of how they applies to current events. Comments welcome at WP:DUST. Regards, MartinRe 13:51, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Are we allowed subpages in the article space, I thought per Wikipedia:Subpages this was discouraged. Is this page out of date or does it still have consensus? Steve block Talk 11:14, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
(Originally on WP:VPM, though this is probably more appropriate) Is there an policy/guideline/essay which explains this principle as it applies on WP? I'm looking for an appropriate place to link to, but in the absence of WP:TINW I'm not sure which this might be. 81.104.165.184 20:31, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
This subject may have been (and probably has been) raised, but howcome wikipedia does not allow flash files to be uploaded? This format is very, very useful and versatile, I believe it could increase the quality of wiki greatly. Comments? Skaterblo 19:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
This open source player kind of works, but iirc it isn't packaged for any major distros, and it doesn't support sound yet. Also its very slow. I would not encourage allowing Flash to be uploaded. Is there an open format that could be supported instead? - FrancisTyers 01:30, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
(moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Indefinite IP blocking by User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 02:56, 11 June 2006 (UTC))
A few people in the Film Project have decided that "movie" is an Americanism and therefore only the word "film" should be used in Wikipedia. They have changed many of the categories titles to reflect that but got rebuffed on "Road Movies" and "Disaster Movies". (The above discussion about google was started because someone used google to show that "Disaster Movies" had more hits than "Disaster Films").
Isn't this like the "Color" vs. "Colour" argument? And isn't it Wiki policy that neither the Americanism or the Britishism is to be favored? That editors are allowed to use whatever form they are comfortable with? -- JeffW 17:54, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I'd have said that whereas "film" is preferred to "movie" in Britain, few would talk about "disaster films". -- Runcorn 21:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe there is a policy I read somewhere that states that editors should try to not edit articles they may be personally involved with in one way or another. I can't seem to find it, however. Could someone point me to it if possible, please? Thanks. Cowman109 Talk 01:21, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
It is surely valuable for people to contribute to articles about which they know something, perhaps about people they know, as long as they don't breach WP:NOR and WP:NPOV.-- Runcorn 21:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there anything wrong with creating an account for the sole purpose of its watchlist? In order to monitor the changes of FAs after they become FAs, I want to make an account with all the FAs on the watchlist so that I can just link to it's Special:Watchlist page to monitor all the changes. Is there some other way that this can be accomplished/does the same thing already exist? freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 01:07, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I am astounded that the article on traumatic brain injury includes not one mention of neuropsychology. I can't imagine that it has not been added and this causes me to wonder if entries about neuropsychological assessment and interventions for people with traumatic brain injury have been edited OUT. Can you please let me know? This is a glaring omission and not in keeping at all with current standards of practice in neurological rehabilitation. Thanks - Nancy Hansen Merbitz, Ph.D. Email and phone removed to protect from spam TenOfAllTrades( talk)
I have made some edits to WP:OWN so that it would apply across all content namespaces (i.e. image:, portal:, template: and category:). I have also edited the pertinent Mediawiki message in accordance. Any comments? Circeus 18:13, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)#Natives to People
Recently, "Greek exceptionalism" advocates (mainly 2-3 folks) were using the categories named "Native of Foo" to mean non-immigrant, excluding folks actually born in a place whose great grandparents had been immigrants or refugees. Nativism rearing its ugly head.
During the debate, it was mentioned that several other places use the "Native of Foo" in the same way:
While it's hard to tell, I don't doubt that there is some confusion, and that some folks are using those categories in that nativist fashion. The rest of the 'pedia seems to use the "People from Foo" form instead.
I'd like to standardize on "People from Foo" to avoid further confusion.
Since none of these categories are related to any American, that understanding of the meaning of "Native" is inapplicable. The problem is certain editors excluding persons born in England, France, Greece, etc., because one or more parents or grandparents or great grandparents were immigrants or refugees. We should not practice ethnic cleansing in Wikipedia.
This problem can be ameliorated by renaming the categories that are "Native" to "People". Then, we don't worry about the various interpretations of native. Hopefully, we can agree they are people! The rest of the 'pedia seems to use the "People from Foo" form instead.
I'd like to standardize on "People from Foo" to avoid further confusion. Is there any objection?
I don't think moving them to "X people" will help. Make it "Citizens of X" or "People born in X", something completely unambiguous. Is someone who was born in Ireland, moved to New York and lived there for twenty years, acquired dual US/Israeli citizenship, and finally moved to Argentina and spent the rest of their life there an Irish person, an American person, an Israeli person, an Argentinian person, or some combination thereof? Try to be unambiguous. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 09:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
In your example, the categories added should be all appropriate subcategories of Category:Irish people (assuming they did something notable there other than accident of birth), Category:People from New York (again notability), Category:Israeli people (again, doing something notable there), and Category:Argentine people (again, assuming they did more than retire there). There's no reason to limit the categories.
And there's no reason to decide that they cannot be "of" Ireland, New York, Israel, or Argentina, just because their great grandparents were immigrants or refugees from elsewhere. We should not practice ethnic cleansing in Wikipedia.
As for the issue, all I'm saying is no person should in a category like Category:Irish people, because it's ambiguous. If you want to organize different Irish-person categories under that category, go ahead, but don't add articles to it, because you'll have all the same pointless disputes you have now. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 01:55, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, Ravi Shankar never lived in Ireland, and was never categorized as a native of Ireland, so your rhetoric is a complete non-sequitor.
Based on your comments, it is clear that you agree with declaring some people to be "native" and others "outsiders" no matter the number of generations they have lived there. I'm beginning to think a fork of the project is the only way to save the useful information in the face of such incredible biases.
Second, I made no attack on your motivations, anywhere. In fact, I never brought up anything pertaining to your motivations. I suggested that your criteria may be highly subjective, nothing more, although I will concede that there was some small degree of incivility there.
Third, my point was precisely that if your definition of ethnic cleansing includes removal of people from a category based on ethnicity, it should equally apply to removing someone from a category who clearly doesn't belong in the category in the first place. If your definition of ethnic cleansing applies solely to removing people from a category based on ethnicity when they don't belong to the group's ethnicity, that brings up the question of what qualifies someone to belong in a group, and you have not satisfactorily answered why your answer to that question is so correct as to justify terming all others' answers as ethnic cleansing. This was not rhetoric, but an attempt at logic, although I explained it rather poorly, the argument itself is rather obtuse, and you can debate my premises.
Finally, I am declaring nothing but the existence of ambiguity. Please clarify where I said, implicitly or explicitly, that I accept "declaring some people to be 'native' and others 'outsiders' no matter the number of generations they have lived there" (emphasis added). Such a proposition is plainly ridiculous, and I have said nothing of the sort. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 07:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I just wrote Wikipedia:On assuming good faith (terrible title, I know, please feel free to move it). It's a wiki-essay I've been mulling over for a little while about the relation between WP:AGF and WP:VAND. Feedback and constructive edits are quite welcome. Thanks! - GTBacchus( talk) 20:07, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Do we have a policy on using Google Earth or Google Maps screenshots to illustrate place articles? -- Ludraman 13:52, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Does the adherence to the Left-Right dichotomy constitute any POV on part of wikipedia editors? Clearly there have been alternatives posed, such as a 2D political compass or other variants. Since wikipedia editors cannot ascertain truth to any of these variants, but only verify that they indeed exist, the use of the left-right dichotomy is simply biased. Intangible 05:42, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
If it's relevant to note correlations with political affiliation in an article, that would be fine too; "proponents of measures designed to counteract global warming are disproportionately liberal" would be a succinct way of saying "those who support measures designed to counteract global warming disproportionately support such goals as reduced military spending, international aid, strong government regulation of the economy, and the securement of civil liberties". The terms are pretty well understood and not at all POV, although they may not always be useful. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 08:05, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Certainly in British politics, left and right wing are getting increasingly muddled. Some people feel that the Labout (or New Labour) Party is beginning to be to the right of the Conservative Party in some respects. Also, many policies are completely outside the simple left-right continuum; some right-wingers oppose immigration on "Keep British values" grounds, while others support it on free market grounds. -- Runcorn 21:25, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Some users are so young they have not been around long enough to be able to accurately perceive the short or long term consequences of their actions. Therefore I think a minimum age limit needs to be set for users and sysops and bureaucrats, etc. so we do not have to waste so much time having to educate them on our positions that have years and years of experience behind them like the portion of an iceberg below the surface. ... IMHO ( Talk) 05:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I can think of one user who frankly we would be better off without. He's in elementary school and pretty much incapable of any real contributions (his grammar, spelling, et al are on an elementary level, understandably). He does a lot of goofing off and needs a bit of babysitting ... literally, babysitting. He's not violating any particular policies but an age limit would help to remove kids like him. -- Cyde↔Weys 06:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
How would you verify a person's age? Blaise Joshua 07:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
We've had respected members of the community at least as young as 13, so any bar would seem to need to be lower than that, at which point there is almost no one left to exclude. Which is not to say that I would want to anyway. I welcome any child who can make productive contributions. Dragons flight 07:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I would go so far as to say that it is one of the wonders of the modern Internet that people so young that you'd never trust them face-to-face can be judged on their merits and actions alone. We are enabling these people to take responsibility for something that matters. If a minimum age limit were set for Wikipedia, I would quit the project in protest. Besides, it's technically infeasible. Deco 08:02, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Dear people from Wikipedia,
I wrote an e-book about the War in Yogoslavia and some of the historical facts exposed in the book ( may be visited at www.peev.org ) I wanted to share with you. I started the edition on the Bosnian page, and I gave the historical facts about the Vatican implications at the Balkans (also to see im my e-book), but there is a 16-years old boy who accused me for vandalization ?! Please, I want that my message be re-examend by the people who knows and loves history and not by those who have a hobbis like this 16-years old boy. And I want to hear excuse, because I wrote you with all my respect and love. I just wanted to share the knowledge with you...nothing else..
Dr. med. Jasmina Peev —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Peev ( talk • contribs) .
This question has me wondering... for US users, doesn't COPPA prevent anyone under the age of 13 from posting on a wiki? It provides the same sort of communication capabilities that any message board would, and PhpBB "requires" US users to be over 13 to register in compliance with COPPA. Of course, that legislation is a terrible piece of crap, and I wouldn't consider advocating that WikiMedia follow it, but... just wondering. ~ Booya Bazooka 00:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
As much as I'd like some of the more childish users to be kept from editing, it's an unfeasable proposal that would only hurt the project by removing decent contributors, such as Falcon here. It's about as stupid as any webpage that asks if someone is above above a certain age, as if that person would somehow be prevented from lying to the page. There's no way to verify someone's age over the internet unless you're charging them for access, and Wikipedia certainly isn't going to be doing that any time soon. – Someguy0830 ( Talk | contribs) 20:39, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
If a user has made many contributions to an atricle or project in particular in a very good way and also helped it get improved should the user get a barnstar for good work or do they have to do something major that has improved the article such as adding new tasks for the project or coming up with a great idea for the project. I am not being greedy or anything but I feel I can get something like this. Anyone can look at my contributions and see I have made MAJOR contributions particularly for the Wikipedia EastEnders and Indian Cinema projects and feel sometimes I am not being appreciated for it. ( Shakirfan 20:15, 16 June 2006 (UTC))
I propose a moratorium on deletions of current event articles. Case in point How NOT to steal a SideKick 2. While this article may eventually be deleted (and or relegated to WikiNews); whether or not it is currently notable isn't the point (as the event and coverage is ongoing that is difficult to assess). What I believe the focus should be, is on Wikipedia's strengths. The long tail, not being paper, being up to date and relevant to what people want to research; and such articles serve as an ideal introduction to new users. To delete it quickly is unnecessary and contrary to those strengths, it also ignores that the article will be recreated, poorly, but other good faith new (potential) contributors. As such, they (new current event articles) shouldn't even be put up for AfD consideration, until such time as their ultimate notability – and their impact can be determined. - Roy Boy 800 16:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Even wikinews has standards. "People come here looking for this" does not mean "we should have this". Is there a demand for a wiki where you can post whatever you want? sure. Is wikipedia the place for that? no. Also, generally things can not be moved to wikinews because of licensing conflicts. Kotepho 13:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
In the case of cc-by-sa, the relevant passage is "You may not offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter or restrict the terms of this License or the recipients' exercise of the rights granted hereunder." No exemption is granted for GFDL. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 05:05, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm helping keep things calm on a controversial topic that was listed on the front page. Someone just put an obviously inflammatory anonymous comment on the Discussion page. Is there any policy on reverting to remove flames, or do we just let it all hang out? I have no problem either way, I was just curious if this is ever done. I can imagine a controversial article drowning in flames otherwise... :) Anon Y. Mouse 19:39, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I was part of a debate over that rule about wether constant vandalism qualifies as instability or not. Thoughts? False Prophet 02:26, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
See: Category:Wikipedia administrators... Is it a good idea to have subcategories of administrators by nationality? What is that saying, exactly? Has this been discussed before, and if so where? Pointers gratefully accepted. Something just seems a bit "off" by doing this, even if it's been round a while... or maybe it's me. + + Lar: t/ c 17:36, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I wanted to know if it had been explicitly discussed before or not because I was curious. Just like with other things that let you find people quickly, there might be concerns if people were using a category as a way to unduly influence things... not sure that's really very likely? + + Lar: t/ c 22:36, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
The only issue I see with the categories is that unless some sort of 'bot is used to add people to them, being listed in under a category has to be seen as a voluntary thing, so the category can never really be considered complete. I'm an admin and I'm not listed under any categories (and wasn't even aware the categories existed until just now). One possible risk is that a vandal or someone with an axe to grind could decide to be juvenile and add someone to, say "Gay administrators" who isn't, etc. But that said the first page any Wikipedia editor should add to their watchlist is their userpage. 23skidoo 23:14, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I recently tagged Everson Mono Unicode for deletion per WP:NOT, writing "Wikipedia is not a font catalog". Should it be? Realistically, the trouble with putting fonts into Wikipedia is that you probably can't show font samples without having copyright problems, and a font catalog without font samples is worthless. -- John Nagle 05:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
People with knowledge and opinions on fonts can come to a consensus on whether a particular font merits an article. What's the problem? patsw 01:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I have proposed a change/clarification in the handling of royal honorifics at the MOS (biographies) page to state that honorifics should not be used inline (but should be mentioned) for royalty. Please comment at the link above. Thanks. -- Improv 14:48, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Hello everyone. I made a guideline proposal about music samples used in music related articles in Wikipedia:Music samples, to regulate there use and prevent copyvios. But we need users who know enough about copyrights and fair use in one hand. and audio formats in other hand. Thank you. CG 07:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure if there is already a policy on this, but I propose that the first instance of a each year and decade in an article should be linkified, and that the instances after should not be linkified. -- Shanedidona 03:14, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Utility is a new guideline/proposal, and an alternative to the Not Notable essay. Please take the time to review or edit it.— Pengo 01:29, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Offline I am currently typing up a proposal for a new policy which includes a naming convention, directory structure, and more. The proposal is getting long, so I don't want to post it here, as it would get cluttered with the more specific issues. Would it be acceptable to put it on its own page for discussion, expansion, contraction, etcetera? I would like to have comments and additions from various users interested in related topics and from users who are not that interested. It needs to be discussed at length before implimentation just to make sure that once done, all parties will be happy with the result.
Another reason I need to know where to put this is so that I can inform users through various articles talk pages. With a central discussion arena, a lot can be accomplished.
And in case anyone is interested, the subject of my propsal is Locations in fiction and Fictional locations. If you are not interested in the topic, but interested in the proposal, I will try to post the wikilink here too, once I know where to put it.
Its current length is 7838 bytes.
—
Lady Aleena
talk/
contribs 22:37, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
The proposal is at
Wikipedia:Locations in fiction, fictional locations, and settings (
talk).
—
Lady Aleena
talk/
contribs 20:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there a table that lists the various copyright types according to the rules or sets of conditions that apply to and define each type? ... IMHO ( Talk) 15:22, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Currently, there is a serious discussion going on about the use of qualifiers in titles, especially (epithet) after various political loaden terms, such as:
I do not yet have an opinion about it myself, but I would like neutral input from editors and admins not involved in those pages on whether these qualifiers violate WP:NPOV. Thanks. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 03:18, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I'd have said that all these violate NPOV. -- Runcorn 21:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
See the page Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(slogans). This page is inactive and kept for historical reasons, but there was discussion about the idea (and I can't even figure out from it what the final decision on the subject was, if there was any). I think there's some support for using qualifiers in such cases. Ken Arromdee 16:18, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know of any previous discussion which lead to a consensus of how to state measurements. I've seen it done many ways. It seems that the majority of articles use the metric system first (either meters or metres) and then have English units in parenthesis. I am also aware of articles having the cited measurement first and a mathematically converted measurement second in parenthesis. I'm sorry R'son-W did not like the comment on his talk page. I was truly trying to find out if there has been previous discussion on this topic. -- Samuel Wantman 09:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
There are a few articles (most likely translated) that include an inline 'see also' or 'references' link to other language Wikipedias, for example François Cavanna, Wolfgang Schäuble, and Peter Harry Carstensen. Normally I'd just remove them per WP:ASR, but discussion on the talk page of one of those articles suggests that they serve a useful function. I can't find any specific policy information on the appropriateness of these links (specifically as it relates to ethics of citation and translation procedure), but hopefully someone here can clarify this point. Ziggurat 21:32, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I think interwiki links should still be kept in their place. Crediting the original language version is better done in an edit summary. Wikipedia shouldn't be its own source, and any mere translation from another Wikipedia article should be seen as temporary. It needs, sooner or later, to be checked with reliable sources. I have seen articles translated into English which were uncited and not that great in their original version (heck, I've probably done it myself a couple of times), but this should not be seen as a permanent solution. At some point every language version of an article has to become directly reliant on external sources; at least for the English Wikipedia, where we have people reading a large variety of languages, that shouldn't really be a problem. Otherwise we risk ending up with circularity, where different language versions are "improved" based on the assumption that another version is better. People should not assume that the "native" version of an article is correct just because the authors presumably have access to good sources – far too often the good, native sources haven't actually been used. Tupsharru 01:31, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
This is the 2nd time I run into a case of this. Can't remember the first user. But I would likt to mention User talk:Wootking. It seems this person is adding himself to any type of WikiProject he can find, and collecting userboxes of projects and other UBX. However he has not made ONE single edit to an article. His account was created only 2 weeks ago. Now the fact that he collects userboxes i can care less about, but the fact that he is adding himself to all those WikiProjects is annoying, in that it clutters up the Project. It's not a real problem, but I was wondering if other people have seen similar problems lately. It almost seems like a bot (considering the bad formatting of the page). - The DJ 14:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Is it okay on wikipedia and also is it legal to link to from a wikipedia article to a TV show for download (or sections of the show? The show is very much a reference for part of the article and notable and needed and all that. I'm asking about copyright rules and such. Basically the article has a show as a reference source and then there's places online that for one give clips of the show that relate to the subject of the article. Another since the whole episode relates to the article, there's a whole show to download. DyslexicEditor 15:07, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia policies, which abbreviation of United States should we use? US, U.S., USA, or U.S.A.? CG 13:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Who has the right to create bots? And are bots subject to the 3RR ruling? Wallie 18:43, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
What is the appropriate action when several editors insist on a wrong action ? User:Futurix, in an edit summary, states: "rv ... for the very same reasons as Wikipediatrix, Stollery, and other editors." [4] That is accurate, User:Wikipediatrix has similar reversions: "rv ... - for the same reasons as all the other editors." [5] and "rv to previous edit, for reasons already discussed ad infinitum!" [6]. All of "the other editors" are citing a personal essay on a personal website as a secondary source of information. The editor who is following WP:RS is moving that information to "Exterior Links". The several editors are no longer discussing. They are simply reverting, quoting and citing a personal essay on a personal website into the article Suppressive Person. The link they are insisting on (without discussion) is titled, "Operation Clambake present: Fair Game". Obviously it is a personal essay on a personal website. When that information is moved to be an exterior link then the editors go wild, they refuse to discuss and revert again and again. What is the procedure to deal with this kind of editor behaviour? Terryeo 08:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
The solution here is in WP:Consensus: get more users to look at the problem; most of the existing system of dispute resolution is intended to do this. At that point, a little group of willful editors will be unable to impose a false consensus. On the other hand, if Terryeo finds his facts and PoV excluded by a large group of editors, he "should at least consider that he may be mistaken". Septentrionalis 17:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
This does not seem correct: The Revolt, 1915 as a section heading. How can I convince the page writers of this? They see nothing wrong with it and changed their headings to include commas. KarenAnn 15:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that the current wording of the template underemphasises the importance of guidelines and encourages wikilawyering, and so I have proposed an alternative wording based on the definition of a guideline at WP:POL. See Template talk:Guideline for discussion. -- bainer ( talk) 01:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Can't we have some way of displaying a page view counter, I have no idea whether certain pages are being seen by one person a week, or a thousand day. A simple page counter would do the trick, though being able to link to a more sophisticated statistics package would let us see from which pages people come from, and go to, and provide averages, referrals etc. -- Iantresman 19:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Some smaller Wikis show page view counts.-- Runcorn 19:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, I thought this was obvious enough, but aparently, the Administrator Samuel Wantman didn't think it was. My proposal (which is largely in place anyways) is that if an article pertains to a certain part of the english-speaking world, that country's spellings and measurements be given preference. e.g. An article about a Canadian painter would talk about the "colour" of the paintings and the size in "centimetres" (and inches in parentheses). An article about the an American paiter would talk about the "color" of the paintings and the size in inches (and "centimeters" in parentheses). As I said, I thought this would have been pretty clear already, but I got a message from a certain admin on my talk page like I were five, so I guess I have to submit this. I apologize for the waste of time this may seem to be. R'son-W 09:55, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Wp:mos#National_varieties_of_English - but I should add that in general, editing articles solely to change units, national spellings and so on is really frowned upon, unless it's as a result of discussion and community consensus. There are more important things for people to be doing than worrying about whether imperial or metric units come first, and given the multinational nature of Wikipedia people are just going to have to get used to the fact that sometimes it says "metre" and sometimes "meter". -- ajn ( talk) 11:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Where? Exploding Boy 15:35, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
And -- obviously -- Hanzi characters and the Lunar calendar should be given preference in all articles pertaining to China. John Reid 06:49, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I know about Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Problem_articles_with_alternatives_to_deletion. But what if a cleanup tag is still present after more than half a year and the article is still not in a usable shape? In AfDs people vote keep and expand even in such cases. Is it really the goal of Wikipedia to keep really bad articles about notable subjects? I'm talking e.g. about The Seven Worlds in it's current state (the state of the article might be better when you read this). It really annoys me that people say in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Seven Worlds Keep, but needs cleanup as noted on the page. (the article hasn't improved although it is tagged cleanup since half a year). And someone said in the AfD Keep until someone can tell me if this is true or not (the article doesn't cite it's sources). Is there really no lower limit on the quality of Wikipedia articles? And is this really intended? Adrian Bunk 00:38, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Please oh please wipe them all from the slate! I've argued many times on AfD debates that Keep and rewrite votes should be counted as Delete unless rewritten. IMHO FAR TOO MANY articles survive AfD on "Keep and rewrite" without the rewrite susequently taking place. If an article is extremely poor/almost unsalvageable to begin with, it is better to delete it and start over. Zunaid 15:00, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Vandalism as a natural sub section of Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish anonymous users. Steve block Talk 22:38, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Use of American v. British/Commonwealth English, since it has come up numerous times since I have been here. Steve block Talk 22:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Since this language's version of Wikipedia is the only to cover a country which does not use SI measurements (and in fact, a supermajority of native english speakers do not), it should be the policy of Wikipedia for all articles to include both metric and American units in all pages where measurements are used. If there is a page lacking in this, it should be noted by a template. R'son-W 07:14, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Since when did the US not use metric units? What is habitual and what is actual policy are two different things entirely, and the US government deisgnated the SI system as the preferred one 18 full years ago. Further, go right ahead and tell me the speed of light in feet per second. We all know it moves at 300.000km/s, meaning 300.000.000m/s, meaning 300.000.000.000mm/s. Now, equally swiftly, without a calculator, tell me what this is in miles/sec, yards/sec, feet/sec and finally, let's not forget the smallest (and my, how accurate it is too) unit available; inches/sec. To put some more emphasis on the great accuracy of the CUs, how many inches is an average sinarapan? Over a span of 3 unit denominators, it's 12,5mm, 1,25 cm, and 0,125m. How many inches, feet and yards is this? My points are; 1: If you want to trawl all Wikipedia articles for occurances of units not provided in customary units, go right ahead. However, the sheer volume of Wikipedia, and the complete lack of logic in finding the lesser unit of what you currently have, means you've got a nice life's work cut out for you. Enjoy. 2: In an encyclopedia, accuracy - not the habits and quirks of one user group (which by the way happens to claim majority (which is equally false, as you clearly know, and that cleverly adjusting your statistics to show native English-speakers won't change the fact that most of the world still uses BrE, having been, as it were, under British rule or influence for longer than the US has been a country.)) - should be priority. -- TVPR 08:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
The term "American units" is a misnomer. Most British people still use them in everyday usage as well, despite Britain being "officially" (and generally reluctantly) metric. And many things in the UK, including our roadsigns, are still officially in imperial units (it's actually illegal to use only metric units on roadsigns), so let's not have any false claims that it's only the United States that uses these units. -- Necrothesp 09:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Units should be dealt with on the WikiProject level. A universal policy could never account for all the idiosyncracies you get in specialized fields. Melchoir 10:08, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I think all articles should use metric. The English WP is available to billions of English speakers around the world, often speaking English as a second language. SI is international - that is its point. If people would like to add their own local units too (particularly when referring to local issues), I won't mind that. Stephen B Streater 12:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
As for specialized fields, Wikipedia serves a general audience, not just specialists. Even if American physicists always use the metric system for physics, other Americans/Brits/Canadians/etc. (almost no former British colonies are fully converted to SI) will also want to read and understand the article.
The only exception to this rule is when the units involved are so ridiculously beyond what we use in everyday life that normal units are insufficient or the differences are negligible; our readers don't need to be told that 1.41679 × 1032 K equals 2.55022 × 1032 °F, or that 130 light years equals 7.6427 × 1014 miles—nothing is gained in comprehensibility from that. But the density of mercury, that's something that should be in both metric and American/imperial units. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 03:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Two points. I reinforce the plea that if a unit like the pint (which differs between the US and other countries) is used, it should be explained which is meant, ideally with a conversion into the other sort. And there is often more than one metric unit. The density of mercury is about 13.6 grammes (grams?) per cubic centimetre in cgs units and 13,600 kilogrammes per cubic metre in SI units; probably, most people would prefer the former, although scientists usually use SI. The official unit astronomers use to measure distances to stars is the parsec, although common usage prefers the light year; neither is strictly an SI unit. Runcorn 19:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd love to use American or Imperial units but they get so complex once you get beyond basic stuff - working with measurements trying to work out if they are eights or twelths, long or short tons, and how many pints to the quart anyway? Not to mention fathams and furlongs, bushels and chains. But I'm an adult, and most of the time I've got a fair idea what people are talking about. If I want to know what the exact converion is, I'll pull out the calculator. I can cope with whatever anyone writes. One point though. English is the international language with probably more ESL speakers than native speakers. And SI is the international system of measurement. -- Michael Johnson 14:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I think the preceding discussion is well meaning, but short on facts. When people say things like "most of our readers" I wonder where the numbers are to back up these claims. Note that we have guidelines on this topic at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Scientific style and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Units of measurement which say sometimes SI units are mandatory and that conversions should not be removed. If you want to add conversions to articles, I suggest adding them as you find them or organizing a wikiproject to do so. -- cmh 15:39, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Just two points to add: all packaged goods in Britain are labelled in metric, although loose goods can be ordered in Imperial. I drink pints of beer but buy milk in litres, I think in Fahrenheit, but everybody else I know thinks in Celsius. Secondly, as Michal Johnson implies, Wiki En probably has a large ESL readership. In fact judging by many of the contributions, Wiki En is frequently written by non-native speakers (look at any article concerning a non-English speaking country). Recipe books can manage multiple measurements, why limit Wiki En to one continent?
The presumption that SI units are not widely used in the USA really applies to the household. Many industries have converted to SI, especially industries engaged in international trade. On the other hand, there is one area of high technology where inches are in common use, computer printers, with terms such as dots per inch and pixels per inch. Gerry Ashton 21:28, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
I think that in every place it is relevant that we should use both metric and American measurements. Metric may be used in the majority of the world, but a large percentage of people on the English Wikipedia are from the United States and have no sense of scale in the metric system, no matter how much they see it in their life. Foreign articles as well as American articles should use it. Finding conversion calculators online is ridiculously easy, so look one up, convert the two measurements, and put it into the article. And the wide availability of these things shouldn't be an excuse not to put them on here, as this is an encyclopedia and should be as NPOV as possible, and should accomodate as many people as possible. I don't want to look up a conversion calculator every time I see "163 kilometers" or "26 degrees Celsius" or whatever. I want to be able to know what the American measurement right there, and if I used metric measurements and it only had Imperial on the page, I would want to see the Metric conversion. bob rulz 23:54, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Don't forget that vast numbers of British people still prefer traditional units, and in many cases traditional units are generally used even by young British people, eg human heights in feet and inches and speeds in miles per hour. To a great degree SI has been imposed against the will of the British public, but Wikipedia is a public resource and does not have to defer to official dictat. "English as she is spoke" is just as valid as "English as Big Brother would have it spoke". Piccadilly 18:20, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I strongly agree that SI and imperial units should be used alongside one another. This is simply for the benefit of those people who are not able to understand both systems easily, and there are a great deal of these. Many Canadians, for example, particularly the younger generation, associate no particular meaning with Faernheit temperatures. However, many Americans I have communicated with are extremely confused when I report thirty-five degrees Celcius as boiling hot, thinking it quite near the freezing point of water. Neither system is at all universal and therefore both should be used. Falcon 22:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me a similar issue occured with users preferred date format. In this case Wikipedia automatically displays the date in the users preferred format (assuming the date is wikified). Could we do something similar here. Set everything up in metric but use templates (or something) to either do the coversion on the fly or to provide a link to a page that gave the conversions.-- Mark S ( talk) 17:39, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Given that Wikipedia prohibits original research, most "measurements", I would think, would be taken out of other published sources. In which case, the appropriate thing to do is to provide them in the units in which they were originally presented--if the source includes SI units, so should the Wikipedia article, and likewise for the "traditional" units. Go ahead and provide conversions, but the conversion should be listed second and it should be clearly indicated that it is a conversion performed by Wikipedia editors. (If a source includes a measurement in multiple systems, then Wikipedia should take both measurements from the source).
Given that any measurement will have an uncertainty, and that unit conversions will often add to that uncertainty (the alternative is reporting the conversion with more significant digits than is warranted), publication of the unconverted values is key.
One place which might warrant presenting converted units ahead of unconverted units is the case where measurements from different sources (in different systems, and/or with different uncertainties) are compiled and aggregated into a single Wikipedia article. Displaying them with the same units, for presentation purposes, is appropriate. However, it should be obvious when conversions occur.
-- EngineerScotty 17:50, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Just have to throw in my 2 cents: I learned the speed of light on the Imperial system, and it's easier to remember it in six digits rather than nine. I have to start doing lots of multiplication when I convert it to km/h, since all I remember 186,282 miles per second. I'd say, don't use a template, but convert when you see it so that both systems are in evidence.
Sacxpert 08:23, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I've been dealing with an editor who has forsworn use of the preview button - he sometimes makes talk/AfD/etc. edits in 5-minute-instalments, changing what he's written before. Also, he has no problem with heavily editing his own previous comments, e.g. just deleting incivil comments after they've been pointed out to him. Do we have a standard prohibiting this around somewhere?
And if it turns out we do not, you are all invited to comment on my proposal to add something to that effect to Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. Sandstein 19:41, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed a decent amound of deletions happening because a subject is "not notable". There is no official policy about notability, but people seem to think there is. I have asked a few people about what is wrong with keeping non-notable pages, but noone seems to have any answer for me. One reason I read on the Wikipedia:Notability page, is that non-notable pages are hard to keep up to quality. But I can't imagine why that would matter, a simple tag or two would label the page as needing improvement, or mark it as generally a junky stub page.
Theres plenty of other tags to say what wrong with a page - but deletion isn't a tag. It removes history, removes information and work done on an article. How does it help the *readers* (thats who wikipedia is for) if we delete valid but "non-notable" information - a classification that is quite subjective.
Does anyone have a real answer for what is wrong with keeping non notable pages? I would like to propose that we actually make *policy* concerning non-notable articles - hopefully one that discourages censorship and allows wikipedia to become an encyclopedia that doesn't just contain a popularity-contest's worth of content. Fresheneesz 01:09, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
On the other hand, there are certainly benefits to having a very loose notability policy. (As loose as Zoe's mailbox, perhaps the benefits wane, but it's simpler to just not draw the line at all.) You need only compare Eric Burns' opinions about Wikipedia as of November 1, 2004 and as of November 20, 2005 to see how deletionism drives away contributors. No costs, nontrivial benefits: let's set the notability bar low, if we keep it at all. There's no point arguing over what's notable when there's no advantage to deleting things that aren't notable; it's a waste of time and effort. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 05:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
IMHO it is extremely important that there are some sort of notability guidelines and that these are adhered to. Without these Wikipedia becomes simply an indiscriminate collection of information. Above all else, if Wikipedia wants to be taken seriously in the academic world (and thus far I don't think it has been) as a reference tool, it must avoid becoming a collection of facts and trivia. (This is a multi-pronged problem, we need good articles on noteworthy topics.) As an example I could write a verifiable article about myself, as my university website has a page containing info on me. Would this add any value to Wikipedia? Or would it detract from its worth? WP:NOT is the only policy we have in this respect, but there are well-established guidelines ( WP:WEB, WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, etc) which are often used in deletion debates, and rightly so. Zunaid 09:29, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that the international versions of Wikipedia articles are not just translations, but often completely different articles with different information. Is NPOV defendable when local Wikipedia version are significantly different? Obviously the FDL allows different versions, but I think it would be good if everything under the Wikipedia flag represented a single collection of facts, and not local interpretations. (I'm not sure if this belong to policy, so please redirect me to the appropriate discussion page if not) Robert John Kaper 16:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Action | New | Updated | Renamed | Deleted |
---|---|---|---|---|
Synchronize | copy both ways | copy both ways | repeat both ways | repeat both ways |
Echo | copy left to right | copy left to right | repeat left on right | repeat left on right |
Subscribe | - | copy right to left if already there | - | - |
Contribute | copy left to right | copy left to right | repeat left to right | - |
Combine | copy both ways | copy both ways | - | - |
... IMHO ( Talk) 06:08, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
On a less negative note, its worth mentioning the existence of Wikipedia:Translation into English. If you notice an article where it looks like an international version has more information than the English one, then placing a translation request can help in getting the English article improved. And as you'll see from the interwiki links, many of the other language projects have a similar translation request pages for translations in the other direction.
In the past I've had good success with translation requests, encouraging Marginated tortoise to be translated from the German article and Artemisia Gentileschi to be translated from the Italian. -- Solipsist 21:28, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I read the page about ext. links, and my question was not answered there. My question: I originally placed a ton of ext. links to videos on the internet in the Brokeback Mountain parodies article. They have been removed, the remover arguing that my links violate the rule that says 'Wikipedia is not an Internet directory.' I understand that, and I've read all the rules on it- I understand that, whenever possible, Wikipedia should only link internally. However, in the case of these videos, that is impossible; and furthermore, I absolutely believe that this data- a brief descrip. of each vid, with a link to each one- is absolutely relevant to the article and worthy of Wikipedia. Here's a link to the page as it looked previously when my links were still in it: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Brokeback_Mountain_parodies&oldid=55259986 . Let me know what your consensus is.
And, if indeed you do decide that such linkage is improper, my other article, re-cut trailers, will have to be changed as well. Andrewdt85 18:23, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Without bothering to take tpo much time and look at each of these links, I'll just quickly ask instead if there is a webpage out there (other than wikipedia) that gives a listing of these parodies? If so then you can exclude all of those ones listed and just link to that page instead. Alternatively, another alternative is to create yet another seperate page in wikipedia that is a listing of these links. And then link to that in the main article. Which makes the main article appear cleaner. Also you could try breaking up the links into sections acording to type if that is at all possible. Again it will appear neater if it has some organiisation like that, rather than one big jumbled up heap of links. So think about these ideas and try applying whatever mix of them you feel will work best in your case.
Mathmo 18:29, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
"I'll just quickly ask instead if there is a webpage out there (other than wikipedia) that gives a listing of these parodies?" - yes, there is a page that lists all the Brokeback ones- well, all but a few. Still though, I haven't heard any good reasons yet why my data can't stay on the page. Andrewdt85 20:30, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Currently there is no policy on capitalising of "massacre" in article names (see google). I think there should be one. I don't see how one article can have capital M, and the other lower-letter m. Now, my question is, is there a right solution and a wrong solution, or are both solutions correct, and we should conduct a vote? -- Dijxtra 13:35, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Do we have any policy on underage users? I mean, I know we allow them but it concerns me to see users who are 11 or 12 and list their age, gender, and full name on the Wikipedia. Do we have a page we could direct these users to in order to point out why it may not be a good idea? I'm also concerned that some categories make it perhaps easier than it should be to track down underage users. Please note that I'm not saying we should ban these users; many of them contribute quite productively to the Wikipedia. -- Yamla 23:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I am forever seeing articles with more than one stub tag affixed to them (usually two). I am wondering if perhaps this practice should stop, because they look terribly awkward and disorganised stacked one atop the other. My question, then, is twofold:
I am planning on filing an RfC against a user and was thinking about going back through their edit history and contacting users (most likely through email) whose talk pages he has edited to ask them to contribute to the RfC. Would this be considered canvassing against Wikipedia policy? I'm perfectly willing to contact ALL such users without regard for the details of their interaction if that makes any difference. Ideogram 21:33, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there any sort of notability policy on direct-to-video films? Should they have a different notability from those that actually show in theaters, or does it matter? I'm specifically referring to Chubby Killer, which, according to imdb, is direct-to-video. User:Zoe| (talk) 23:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Are there any rules regarding the bartering [or selling] of votes on AfDs, RfAs, etc? How about guidelines? -- Folajimi 03:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Rules have long since been established in the real world to deal with such activities as conducting a meeting or voting on an issue. Yet the Wikipedia does not seem to want to embrace these solutions for one reason or another as if these problems might somehow be new. Ask yourself how the bartering of votes would be handled in the real world. The answer should be not different when asked about the Wikipedia. Yet it seems that as with many, many other issues the policies that are followed on the Wikipedia and the policies that are followed in the real world do not always jive. Perhaps the Wikipedia needs to look seriously at its system of governance and consider ideas that exist in the real world like parliamentary procedure and the like. Otherwise I fear the Wikipedia may be in for some very serious trouble ahead. ... IMHO ( Talk) 05:12, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
After extensive discussion on a topic and pursuing reasonable alternative solutions without success and having looked at the self posted credentials of some of those in opposition I am now left with the impression the Wikipedia is nothing more than a glorified grade, middle and high school teacher/student endeavor which has been exposed to the public without regard that the rules which the public are obligated to follow and the rules which students and teachers are obligated to follow are vastly different. For example: in the real world or public world it is perfectly legal to accuse anyone of anything without being in danger of committing an act of slander or libel so long as the accusation is true whereas in the Wikipedia any accusation is regarded in the same manner as would be talking back to the teacher in the school environment. What is truly disturbing about this is the effect on the content of some articles. It appears that some articles are being guarded by teachers from editing so that they might use them as a special online resource for their own students rather than permitting any edit that is not in line with their particular usage of the article. For instance: if a teacher wants to refer his students to a certain topic so that he can assign a task of say writing a basic computer program to perform the computation of the mathematical formula the article relates then he will naturally be opposed to anyone including such code in the article or on any other page or in an article of its own. The absence of a speller function tends to uphold this idea. I certainly hope that this is not the true nature of the Wikipedia and that conveyance of knowledge and truth is its ultimate goal rather than it’s serving as merely an online classroom aid for teachers and students in difference to the rules we must abide by in the real world. ... IMHO ( Talk) 04:47, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
I was just wondering, suppose I go to someone's page with a barnstar, and I copy the code,and put in on my page. I do change the name into evilbu of course.
Who will stop me?
And will the person who supposedly gave it to me ever find out?
Thanks,
Evilbu 20:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Bunchofgrapes, did you know you just gave me a barnstar?
Just kidding you, but seriously one could really exploit this. Okay, so maybe giving yourself a barnstar attracts attention. But what about double account people??
I did not do it, I admit I tried it and made a preview, but I didn't submit.
Evilbu 21:08, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
There is no policy or guideline that dictates anything about non-notaility - although there is that essay. Me and another person have co-written a proposed guideline Wikipedia:Non-notability, and I was hoping people could give us input, or help embellish the page. Thanks! Fresheneesz 07:41, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
While the specifics of Wikipedia:Notability are not policy, that essay and citations to it on AfD and elsewhere stem from Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which is fundamental, and Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, which is policy. — Centrx→ talk • 07:49, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
The guidelines on copyright don't mention poetry -- and certainly don't make it clear to me how much if any of a poem that is under current copyright I may include in an article. I would like to include some of a poem by Ko Chung Soo to illustrate his style, etc., but I don't know what is allowed. I have seen entire short poems cited in journals and reviews presumably with-out getting permission (certainly with-out indicating it), so? Kdammers 09:10, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Wikipedia:Manual of Style. bobblewik 14:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedians in WikiProject Stargate and its associated Stargate Portal have recently been discussing the applicability of Point 9 of Wikipedia's Fair Use policy as it pertains to portals. To those unfamiliar with it, it states:
As anyone can see, this poses a problem with regard to portals. It makes sense for templates, userpages, and even talk pages, but Portals are something different. User:Tango made this excellent argument about fair use on portals on the Stargate portal talk page:
I think that, considering the purpose of portals, fair use images should be permissible in portals under rules similar to those governing pages in the article namespace. If the response is favorable, I'll draft it as an amendment to Point 9. Lockesdonkey 21:11, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I suggest the policy be made more vague. Eg. "Note that the use of copyrighted images for decoration is not generally considered fair, which includes a lot of images outside the article namespace." -- Tango 00:39, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Lockesdonkey,
Could you please give us a sample of what type of images to which you are referring, and why you feel that they should be allowed in Portals? What is needed to be known is what the context of the image use would be. I am an astriaportaphile myself, so would love to see the Stargate Portal look better with a good image or two, but let's not go to crazy, okay?
—
Lady Aleena
talk/
contribs 03:08, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
It should be noticed that the above claim that the policy on fair use being only in articles is factually inaccurate. I'm tired of chasing the people who claim this all over the Wiki, as it's simply not true. -- Gmaxwell 14:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
After quite a few months, I have kicked off Wikipedia:Fair use criteria/Amendment/Consensus. It is not a vote, but will give each editor the chance to support or oppose the amendment very clearly. I've got it going for a fortnight as obviously it needs to end some time, and there is a lack of guidance on how to amend policy. - Ta bu shi da yu 22:38, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking about attempting to create one or two Wikipedia articles -- on my grandfather and grandmother, respectively. I believe they're notable because they were medical missionaries in China and India in the '40s and '50s, my grandfather being a doctor who was in China when the Communists took over (the whole family was, for a period, under house arrest), and my grandmother being not only there also offering medical care, but also a published author of books about their missionary experience and also several children's books. [Family scuttlebutt is that one of her books almost became a movie featuring Cary Grant as my grandpa. But as that's scuttlebutt, it wouldn't be making it into the article. ;-)]
I'm writing here to request some policy advice/clarification on three issues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_Virtual_Majority
Some people gathering around articles share the same POV. They are then able to create a "virtual" majority on wikipedia, disrespecting the viewpoint that is mainstream in the real world. ackoz 14:03, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I just edited (rewrote, mostly) the article on the children's record Gossamer Wump. The spokesperson for EMI records (which bought out Capitol Records, the original issuer of the record) wrote me that the record has been reissued by EMI New Zealand, and sent me to a website where the record could be purchased. The website is NOT EMI New Zealand, but a private dealer (?) or perhaps an EMI affiliate who markets the record on the web.
I included the link in the article, because it came from an official source, and because I know that people who land on this article are most probably looking to obtain the record (just as, in fact, I had). On second thought, though, it seemed inappropriate to include what is essentially a plug for a commercial website in the pedia.
What say you all?
-- Ravpapa 05:30, 22 June 2006 (UTC)