This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy).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.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX, AY, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, BJ, BK, BL, BM, BN, BO · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191
( Wikipedia:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spiderman)
I have threatened to climb the Reichstag, dressed up as and did so, became bollocked from editing for violating Wikipedia policy against climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spiderman, and then had it become an official policy on Wikipedia (and to be an official decree by the Supreme Cabal Regime of the English Wikipedia ( SCREW)). Is Absolutley fantasitic!. This is so great!
"In extreme cases editors may be tempted to climb the Reichstag building dressed as Spiderman in order to promote their cause. This is absolutely forbidden and can result in an indefinite block from editing Wikipedia."
This single event is a great example of all the good qualities of our beloved Wikipedia! Horay!
Thats what I love about this Wonderful, wonderful website.
Next stop: The Kremlin!
WP:LEGAL contains the following sentence:
"But, if you really feel the need to take legal action, we cannot prevent you from doing so. However, we ask that if you do so, then you do not edit Wikipedia until the matter of law is settled - one way or the other - to ensure that all legal processes happen via proper legal channels."
As I wondered on the talk page: wouldn't someone who needs to take legal action also be obligated to edit Wikipedia because of mitigation of damages?
(We don't seem to have a Wikipedia article on the subject.) Ken Arromdee 15:55, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but the page is phrased as "we ask that you" and not "we don't let you", implying that Wikipedia doesn't prevent people from doing such editing, but rather considers such editing a violation of policy and punishes it after the fact. Moreover, that *is* the case. Someone who sues Wikipedia can still edit anonymously or through a sockpuppet. And it's quite possible for someone's lawyer to tell him that he's legally obliged to violate Wikipedia policy and mitigate damages that way. Granted, I don't think that anyone has done that yet, and the article would probably get edited via WP:OFFICE anyway, but something seems strange about a policy telling people not to do something that the law may demand that they do. Ken Arromdee 05:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Not everyone on Wikipedia is judgement proof starving college student. To many people a frivilous lawsuit is a terifying prospect even there is little risk of the attacking side winning. As such the use of legal threats creates a chilling effect. Furthermore, legal activities can and do happen without any help on Wikipedia, so legal threats don't even help the threatening person except to the extent that they chill acceptable behavior. Furthermore, the use of legal threats in argument will often drown out arguments which are actually reasonable and based on fact. There is no advantage to the project to permit legal threats or the people who insist on making them and substantial potential for harm, and as a result we do not tolerate them. As far as mitigation of damages goes, they are free to come make their legal threat, be blocked for it, and then tell the court that they attempted to mitigate but were blocked as a result. Honest attempts to mitigate, however, do not need to involve legal threats, for example: "Stop doing X because X is wrong and illegal" is not the same at all as "Stop doing X because I'll sue you!". The first example is worthy of our consideration and would not give us any cause to block, the second is just disruptive.-- Gmaxwell 21:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Thankyou!
Dfrg.msc 08:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I have seen the argument many times that a title, or even a word, be used over naming conventions because of the Google hits. What do Google hits have to do with Wikipedia and its policies? As far as I know Wikipedia is an independent entity from Google. It doesn't matter if the American spelling gets a billion hits while British spelling only gets a quarter billion. Wikipedia does not need to be shackled to Google searches. Google searches should get shackled to Wikipedia and other sources instead. And like other search engines, Google is biased, per their article here. Wikipedia tries not to be biased, so that means that Wikipedia articles and categories should not have to adhere or even take into account Google searches.
Using this argument in any name procedure or word choice seems to be a last stand move. Take it away so that the real issues over a name or word choice can be handled.
—
Lady Aleena
talk/
contribs 14:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
As a post-script to my opening remarks, I have to say that I prefer the links provided by Wikipedia articles more than I do the search results from Google. If every article had an external links tab, like the talk page tab, and that was filled with all of the external links imaginable relevant to the article, I would never have to use Google again. - LA @ 20:40, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I think the stats on this pie-chart are remarkable. It says that only about 1 in 20 people outside Australia, Canada, the US and the UK speak English. I work outside these four countries. English is the official language at work. We usually work with our partners in India, China, Philippines, Singapore and KL. The official language is still English. I would also be suprised if 94.5 pecent of contributors to English Wikipedia are from these four countries too. Wallie 12:26, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
As a post-post-script to my opening remarks, I say that Wikipedia naming conventions should trump Google searches every time. The naming conventions are there for a reason and should be adhered to. Also, I was not only referring to the Americanization of Google search results. I was also referring to the fact that Google will censor out searches depending on the locality. According to the article here, Google censors out all sites that show any political unrest in China from the Chinese people using the local version. If they do that there, what are they censoring elsewhere?
—
Lady Aleena
talk/
contribs 16:33, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
This is probably all based on the User:Lady_Aleena's failure to get her way on category:Disaster movies. She's American and she wants it to be films because that's Wikipedia standard for film categories. But Wikipedia should be flexible and a good number of users, some of them British like me, think that writing in normal English is more important, and disaster movie is normal English in the UK. Piccadilly 00:03, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Google is frequently used because it provides THE best ratio of effort to usefulness out there. It is very quick (far faster than saying "polling your friends") while also being extremely useful (way more useful than any "polling your friends" could possibly be). It is not perfect, so stop trying to attack for not being perfect. Perfection would take forever to reach. Rather recognise it for what it is, something anybody can easily use and very quickly use while at the same time provide information that is of some use (unlike "polling" your friends, which would provide inoformation of very little benifit. As would most other methods that you could try to come up with, I'd expect none would quite reach the powerful ratio google provides.). Mathmo 17:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't see any source for the pie chart used above, but I ran my own slap-dash search and came up with these data (which are virtually identical with the values given in the pie chart, but referenced):
United Kingdom (2004) 59,834,300 (Wik) (about 26% of Wales speaks Welsh – CIA) (Wales: 2,900,000 in 2001 –Wik) United States (2006) 299,058,932 (Wik) (82% English speakers – CIA) English Canada 33,000,000 (59% English speakers - CIA)
Australia 20,000,000 (79%! - CIA) New Zealand 4,000,000 (CIA. No data on how many, but 70% Europ; 8% mixed, so that could be a fair guess for English)
Ireland 4,000,000 (CIA. No lang. data, but non-native English speakers are very few in number)
Caribbean islands Jamaica 2,7 million (CIA) T&T 1,000,000 (CIA – langs not ranked) Bahamas 3000,000 (CIA –almost all English) Barbados 300,000 (CIA – English)
Belize 300,000 (CIA - ?)
South Africa 44,000,000 8% - CIA)
Uk 18.8%, US 69.9%, Canada 5.5%, Aus 4.5%, ... (ca. 350,000,000 total. As already mentioned above, this excludes English-speaking people in Nigeria, Ethiopia, India, etc., for whom the language is either first-language level (or even first-language) or nearly so. Kdammers 12:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I own a company that makes medical devices. In an article about a medical disorder I wrote a short summary of a scientific study that used my company's devices. The study was done independently by a university hospital and published in a peer-reviewed journal. I didn't specify the name of the device or the name of my company. Someone told me that I should have put in a "conflict of interest" disclosure. I'd be happy to do that, but a complete disclosure would specify the name of the device and the name of the company, which someone else might think was advertising. A vague disclosure, such as "a person who edited this article works in a field related to the subject of this article" would be so broad that half the articles on Wikipedia would have such a disclosure. People who work in a field tend to be experts in that field.
Is there a policy about disclosing a conflict of interest?-- Tdkehoe 18:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Here's the article in question, and the "disclosure" someone named "Bardi" added: Stuttering.-- Tdkehoe 03:35, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for removing the "disclosure." I agree with you: if something is biased (wrong, out of date, whatever) then fix it. Don't disparage the author. E.g., if I saw something that was out of date, I wouldn't post a warning: "The author of this material hasn't kept up with the latest developments." If I saw wrong material, I wouldn't post a warning: "This author doesn't know what he's talking about."-- Tdkehoe 18:10, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
This is all about making good articles. IMHO, it's best to simply leave a regular message in prose on the talk page, something along the lines of "I wrote this article, but I'm tangentially involved with the subject matter, could other editors please take a look?". If the message gets archived, it will be archived because a lot of new discussion was held after that, which probably means that the article was looked over and the message is no longer necessary. Zocky | picture popups 14:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
The legal position in some countries (I am thinking of Ireland, where the libel laws are ferocious) is such that it probably does represent a threat to Wikipedia. Never mind the editing environment, that is far from the main worry - you have to be able to let people remove or amend offensive articles, or you are contributing to the damage by continuing to publish the libel. However, I suggest a variety of ways around this;
Make it a condition of use (including reading) that any disputes are settled under the law of a free speech jurisdiction like the US
Make it a condition of use that disputes are the subject of arbitration rather than law - Wikipedia providing the arbitrator
Permitting a "Two sides of the story" article until the dispute is resolved. --Jpmills 11:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that a large number of articles with hyphens in the article title were recently moved to titles using em or en dashes. The relevant MoS entry about dashes in article titles indicates that em and en dashes in aritcle titles are to be avoided (unless it's absolutely necessary to use them for some reason).
Policy issues aside, is a move request for the affected pages necessary, or is moving the pages something that can be done by an administrator without going through requested moves? – Swid ( talk | edits) 19:46, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
In general, it's not a good idea to have non-ASCII characters in article titles, because it makes it difficult to type them. This applies also to letters with accents and diacriticals, like ĝ. If editors use such titles, there should always be redirects from an unaccented version. -- Runcorn 17:16, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
As a resident of the United States, I am used to seeing dates as month/day/year and they tend to be formatted on Wikipedia as such (which, I admit, is rather counter-intuitive.)
But I also know that many other countries (most?) use the day/month/year format. Is there any set Wikipedia policy on it? An example of an article with many dates formatted like this is A_Bigger_Bang_Tour. I think there should be a policy such that dates have to be formatted to avoid ambiguity, with perhaps even the use of a template so that users could have a personal setting or so that they could all be changed easily in case of a future policy change. -- Stellis 00:59, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Figuring out which bits of text are dates and should be converted is very hard - sometimes you need to cite date formats, there are people named April, etc. The long-standing solution has been to link all dates, and since the extra links do not present any kind of a practical problem, it's likely to stay that way. Zocky | picture popups 14:38, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
YYYY-MM-DD is the preferred format among astronomers. I think that there is an IAU resolution to that effect (a body with plenty of American members). -- Runcorn 17:22, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
On the page which explains policies and guidelines it states that guidelines are "actionable." Does this mean that users must follow them or face blocking? Is it ever permissible to refuse to comply with an official guideline? Exploding Boy 00:57, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
....Anyone? Exploding Boy 02:28, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I'm aware of the blocking policy. I'm looking for something specific about guidelines. For example, what, specifically, does "actionable" mean if not "blockable"? Exploding Boy 02:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
That's not true either. Users can be blocked for things not covered by the blocking policy. Exploding Boy 02:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Of which? Blocks for things not mentioned in blocking policy? No. People refusing to comply with guidelines? Yes, but I'd rather not identify them at this time. Exploding Boy 15:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
AFAIK, "actionable" means "unlike essays, or random notes people put in their user pages, it is generally considered a Good and Sensible Thing to take action to follow guidelines", i.e. if take action in accordance with a guideline, you are more likely to have more support from the comunity at large than if you act without one. It has nothing to do with blocking at all. Make sense? JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:36, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Presumably WP:IAR also covers guidelines. -- Runcorn 17:24, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I was wondering if there is any sort or deletion policy for users who have abandoned Wikipedia, but whose userpages are still taking up space. For example, User:Billcica was here for a total of three days back in early April, broke just about every rule in the book, was subsequently blocked for 48 hours, and never came back. Is his usepage just going to stay for an indefinite amount of time, being modified now and then by bots and other automatically generated changes, or is there something that is usually done in such cases? Thanks, rom a rin talk ] 01:17, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the responses, this information helps clarify things. As for the "taking up space" thing, you have a good point, but I was only bringing this up because there seems to be a lot of argument lately about using space, bandwidth, etc. (such as the policy against unnecessary images, the importance of subst'ing templates, those who want to delete userboxes based on their taking up template space, just to name a few). I just wasn't sure if unused userpages were important enough to become a part of this dialog as well.
Regarding the list of missing Wikipedians, as i mentioned, this particular user broke just about every rule in the book (vandalism, personal attacks, page blanking, using wikipedia for advertising, uploading unsourced images, among others) in a matter of three days before disappearing, so I don't think he really warrants a place on that list! Thanks again for the comments, rom a rin talk ] 02:25, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Around 6,000 accounts are created each day now, and that will probably continue to rise. Deleting a few to save a miniscule amount of space would be a total waste of time and effort. CalJW 06:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I am having difficulty in an argument over differing points of view regarding some definitions.
I have provided two citations from textbooks directly supporting my definition. My opponents are primarily reasoning from indirect sources to support their definition.
The problem is compounded by the fact that they all know more and are smarter than me. One participant in particular has repeatedly stated his disrespect for me.
My point is that their reasoning, while perfectly valid, is not as important as providing citations, since citations can be used to improve the quality of the article. So far all my opponents have been unable or unwilling to provide citations that directly support their definition.
Nevertheless, since I am alone, I am prepared to yield the point and try to reach some compromise wording that accomodates both definitions. My problem now is that no one seems to want to discuss with me. The wording as it presently stands is in line with their definition and I am frankly afraid to edit it due to the history of conflict. But I also cannot see why my definition, with two directly supporting citations, should be completely ignored. Ideogram 05:39, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Html and the many languages encoded in xml are programming languages just like javascript and even VB. It's true that html is not a very good example of a programming language, as it doesn't have any looping constructs, but the fact that it needs a browser to interpret it doesn't mean anything. VB needs a dll to run, just like html and javascript need a browser, and as programs in C need libraries, daemons, and an operating system in general. Zocky | picture popups 14:47, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
There is currently a heated debate at Portal talk:Taiwan concerning the name of the portal. One editor believes the portal should remain Portal:Taiwan, though another believes it should be Portal:Republic of China. I filed a RFC, but I came here to ask is there any policy or naming conventions for portals that might assist in this matter? The argument is basically whether the portal should be the name of the geographic location or the government, and one editor proposed that two separate portals be created as well. If anything a wider consensus is all that's needed, so people are welcome to throw in their two cents as well. Cowman109 Talk 16:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Please contribute your thoughts to this discussion/survey. Thanks, David Kernow 13:13, 23 June 2006 (UTC), updated 11:43, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I have been told that no individual is in charge of an artcle's content but what about a select group of individuals who may share some religious or other common denominator in addition to the article in question? I have been told that the Wikipedia is not a social club. Does Wikimedia policy forbid such groups and associations from dominating the content of an article or is the idea that they do not just a false illusion being promoted for the sake of financial contribution and gain? ... IMHO ( Talk) 07:16, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Pce3@ij.net (signing as IMHO) has spilled a tremendous amount of virtual ink over his personal opinion that the article
half-life is being censored by a cabal
academic guild of scientist-technologists who are trying to obscure the topic so that we (I think I'm counted as part of the cabal by now) can maintain our power over the uneducated multitudes. He created
half-life computation as a fork of
half-life because the editors at the latter article weren't willing to incorporate his material. He's now been to the
Science Reference Desk (multiple times), the
Help Desk, and here at VPP.
Earlier I tried to help him, and laid out steps he might take to resolve his dispute: [2]. At this point, I'm afraid that he's not going to be satisfied, and he has a history of believing that he is being persecuted on Wikipedia (see also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rapid sort). TenOfAllTrades( talk) 17:27, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Recently several porn actors have written to Wikipedia to request that their real names be removed from their articles, citing various reasons, including safety. There is apparently a practice in the industry of holding in confience the legal names of actors who choose to use a screen name. There are also rumors of an active campaign by some right-wing groups to "out" porn actors. In many cases, the legal name of the actor is listed on IMDB. What should Wikipedia's policy on the use of real names of porn actors be? Kelly Martin ( talk) 15:10, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The concensus seems to be to not publish such personal info unless it has already been made public by a reliable source. In any event, I don't think the courts make their rulings based on WP policies. Doc Tropics 16:51, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I requested a citation. After some discussion, my the action of my request is being called "trolling". Talk:Thetan#Atack.2C_who_achieved_Operating_Thetan_level... My request for a citation is in regards to the statement inserted at this edit. Thank you. Terryeo 19:49, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Images with free licenense should be required to be uploaded or periodicaly moved to commons. On the upload page we nicely ask to this end but why not go a step further? Images will still be able to be accessed from commons.
I was wondering how I should go about gaining consensus or support for a proposed guideline ( WP:NNOT). I'm really in the dark as to how people are supposed to notice a new guideline proposal. Can anyone help? Fresheneesz 04:16, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there a policy page that lists what can only be done by registered users, and what can only be done by users that have been around a certain time? (I recall seeing 96 hours in some contexts, and I know that we restrict the abilty to move for newly-registered users, but I am not sure if these are the same thing.) I have tried to find this information, but have been unsuccessful. Robert A.West ( Talk) 05:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The NPOV tutorial discusses two competing forms that NPOV can take. One form, the "equitable" rule of NPOV, involves presenting all major viewpoints equally, favoring neither side. The competing ideal, the "proportionality" rule, involves conveying each side "in proportion to the credibility of the experts".
In many cases, the two rules are conflicting. Sometimes, the credibility of the experts is deeply debated, with the result being that the desired proportions of the article can sway wildly depending on who is assessing the credibility of the experts.
When should the equity rule apply, and when should the proportionality rule apply? Should the equity rule hold in all cases of moraly/political issues, or should experts who have studied these questions be afforded more weight? Should the equity rule apply if there is no consensus about the nature and quality of the experts.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should state that this question was inspired by an on-going dispute regarding the article Opus Dei, and the support and criticisms for that religious organization (e.g. it is sometimes accused of being a "cult"). One of the many, many issues involved is which rule is appropriate: Some feel the issue is fundamentally a social science one, and therefore the article should be in proportion to the views of theologians, social scientists, and historians. Others feel the issue is fundamentally a matter of personal moral/religious opinion, and that both support and criticism should be presented equally. That dispute has been accepted for mediation-- so mediation, not this discussion, will govern the outcome of that particular case.
But that still leaves me looking for guidance about how to balance the two rules in general, in the other future articles-- when should the different rules be used? Is there a burden of proof or a burden of consensus-- i.e. without a consensus about which rule should be used, the equity rule shoudl be used?
On the one hand, we don't want to have to present oddball theories like Flat Earthers equally with views that the earth is round. On the other hand, we don't want to have unbalanced articles in which one side of a political debate dominates.
Any advice?
-- Alecmconroy 09:32, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
(Note: this hasn't gotten much attention at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, but I figured I'd give it one more chance on the pump.)
There seems to be a rash of customized font-family settings cropping up, especially in some templates. In my opinion, this is a mistake that needs to be prevented. Anyone who uses a different stylesheet than the particular editor who set those fonts will find that the text so marked stands out like a sore thumb. For now, they probably match the default style pretty well, but anyone who has changed it via preferences or with a custom stylesheet sees awful-looking pages. And if Wikipedia as a whole should ever decide to change the default font family, suddenly they would stand out to nearly all visitors.
In summary, I think there should be a policy against overriding the font-family in templates. -- Yath 19:29, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Anyway, I agree that font-family should in general never be overridden by anything, except to cover up for IE's stupidity and similarly important purposes. We have a stylesheet for a reason. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 04:13, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
There are some users with specific political view that are mass generating articles about theire political party. Is there any policy or guideline related to this matter that limit users to write about materials related to theire own work? Hessam 19:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
When the wants of authors are placed above the needs of readers then other wiki's such as the Urban dictionary will begin to take the Wikipedia's place along with the potential of financial contributions. ... IMHO ( Talk) 01:26, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
You're using a legal charter provided by the state in an attempt to blackmail Wikipedia into being how you like. I'd call that a threat. In any case, those who granted the charter do not seem to mind Wikipedia's current state of operation, so what good do you expect to come of this attempt? Simply put, do what TenOfAllTrades told you to do in his comment and stop trying to use absurd situations to get what you want. – Someguy0830 ( Talk | contribs) 04:45, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I think you have no clue as to what I want and are afraid this conversation might, if continued, reveal your motive for making false idiotic accusations. ...
IMHO (
Talk) 05:03, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps now upon reflection you can see why so many people have come to believe the Wikipedia to be nothing more or less than a gentleman’s social club. ... IMHO ( Talk) 00:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there any official policy on which way items chronologically listed should be listed? I.e., are items to be listed from oldest to most recent or most recent to oldest. Personally, I prefer (and have seen more of) the former. If there isn't a policy on it, I'd like to see one voted on/made, as it's one consistency issue that would be (relatively) easy to solve and make things look better. 66.229.182.113 03:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I think it does. Look at User_talk:205.188.116.139, for example. This AOLuser (or set of AOLusers) has accumulated white hands on red, white crosses on red, a "Final Warning" with a white hand on red on a splendid navy background, and finally (for the moment) an actual block. I'm not a pea-brained vandal (honest!); but I suspect that if I were, I'd be thrilled to bits by all this, as by the Very Serious Messages in boldface, and that I'd love to show my disaster-area talk page to my drinking buddies. I might even consider aiming to become a genuine Wikipedia celebrity, like WoW, whose every exploit is carefully recorded and who was even given his own graphic until some spoilsport got rid of it. Consider User:Willy_on_wheels: he's no longer with us, but what a cool memorial Wikipedia has constructed for him: a pink notice with red edges, citing "massive" vandalism (almost as impressive as "extreme" vandalism!), a really big white "X" on red, and mention of being "notorious" (just like this dude). WoW indeed!
I don't suggest that WP should let up on vandals. Far from it. I do suggest that , when it occurs, vandalism should be noted as coolly, simply, and boringly as possible. I'd do away with all the boldface, graphics, etc., in warning templates to vandals; scrap most of Willy's page (certainly his lists of accomplishments), as discussed in " Completely useless page"; and simply blank the pages of banned users, possibly adding the single word "banned" (in regular, boring lettering).
Or maybe all this typographic exuberance somehow manages to dissuade peabrains from recidivism. I can't imagine how, and I haven't noticed any such effect -- but I may be missing something subtle.
Care to discuss this here? Here? Somewhere else? -- Hoary 07:27, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
If an article is nominated for deletion on the grounds that it is non-notable is it considered acceptable to carry on editing the article in question? I nominated a high-school article that hadn't been edited (until I naively put a speedy deletion tag on it) for over a month and suddenly this editor has showed up.-- Stroika 10:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
According to the archive of the featured article talk page Wikipedia_talk:Today's_featured_article/archive_2#Ratification_of_User:Raul654_as_Featured_Articles_Director, User:Raul654 was chosen to be the FA director with only 17 affirmative supports back in August of 2004. He has been director for two years. Millions of new Wikipedians later he is still FA director and, as there are no guidelines for the position or guidelines for succession, he is currently de facto FA director for life. This isn't kosher for a supposedly open and free website that claims "anyone can edit". Wikipedia is now the 15th largest website in the world. I feel the position should either be expanded into a committee of at least four Wikipedians with a chair position that is held for no more than a year and revolves among the committee members. Sans this, the FA director position should be term limited to allow other members of the committee to have a chance to participate and to keep the important position from becoming a personal fiefdom. As the position chooses willy-nilly what is allowed to be an FA and what is allowed to be placed on the main page of this website, it is one of the most important positions there are here and Wikipedia's credibility should not be left permenently in the hands of a single man chosen by 17 people (himself included) two years ago. Additionally, as it stands now, FAC instructions state that "Consensus must be reached for an article to be promoted to featured article status. If enough time passes without objections being resolved, nominations will be removed from the candidates list and archived." However, there have been cases when this unofficial guideline has been ignored by the current FA director who has sometimes allowed articles to be promoted with outstanding and unaddressed reasonable objections (See: Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Hurricane_Katrina for a recent example). This fluidity in promotion guidelines fosters anomosity and should be ended. There need to be concrete standards for FA promotion. The current process is unfair to those who work hard researching and writting articles only to have them fail over a couple of objections while seeing other articles also with objections pass. Thank you for listening to me. Regards, -- Jayzel 14:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I was one of the people who helped establish the position in the first place. It was better than having edit wars on the main page (which started the whole thing), but I honestly don't know if we still need it. Things have changed since then, we have more editors, and the main page wasn't protected back then and it is now.
The position is indeed extraordinary, compared with how things are normally done on Wikipedia. The questions that need to be answered before anything is changed are what problems do we expect if this reverts back to usual wiki process and, will dealing with them be more trouble than it's worth? Zocky | picture popups 00:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Ideally, any FA article should be suitable for the Main page, and therefore it is not a big deal? — Centrx→ talk • 07:18, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Please notify me if my suggestion is not right here. I am wondering why one needs a separate account for every language version of WP and every language version of every other WikiMedia project. Personally, I feel disturbed by the fact that I need multiple accounts to contribute to WikiMedia projects. On the other hand I see that with 1.6 Million members and a rapid growth of the number of users names would sometime became rare. I do also see the diffuculty to change the system since the same user names might be already used by different users on different language versions. Nevertheless, I think it is worth discussing whether new accounts should became valid for multiple WikiMedia projects or at least different language versions of Wikipedia. What is your opinion on this idea?
-- Falk Lieder 16:40, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I've been putting together an essay about lists of awards and the kind of lists that institutes, magazines etc. throw out and their presentation on WP. I'm not pushing this for guideline just yet, but past experience has shown that at least a few eds agree on most of it. The copyvio component is interesting and afaik hitherto largely unaddressed. So, wiki-deodorant at the ready, because here comes WP:BO. Deizio talk 01:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure uncreated is a word, but...
There are lists (some of them long and consisting of extremely obscure content) that have many red links. I use specifically the example of List of bands and musicians by country. If there is no article about a band, why should there be a link to it on the list page? If the band is notable enough to appear on the list, someone will create an article for it.
I propose that it become Wikipedia policy not to include things in lists that are not notable enough to warrant an article on Wikipedia. Otherwise you have people (again, I'm thinking of bands) adding themselves to lists to promote themselves.
The benefit of this is that people working on the articles themselves decide if the entry is worthy of appearing on a list: if the article is deleted because it is not notable, then someone will eventually remove the link from the list. -- Stellis 07:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
The possibility of including redlinks in lists is what distinguishes them from categories: surely List of municipalities in Zaragoza serves some purpose, even with the redlinks... Physchim62 (talk) 14:19, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I just have a general comment about policy pages, so this seemed like the best place to put this, even though it is not about a specific policy.
I think that the policies can be rather difficult to navigate because of the number of pages dedicated to them and the excess of information included on each. For example, if a user wants to find out about how to go about having an article deleted, he or she would find at least 6 articles on the topic: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, Wikipedia:Deletion process, Wikipedia:Deletion policy, Wikipedia:Guide to deletion, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, Wikipedia:Proposed deletion. Each links to the others and seems to contain redundant information. This makes it difficult to find a simple explanation of the policy and the process, and may be intimidating. The intimidating nature of these pages may prevent some users from contributing when they see something that does not belong, or it may make them do something wrong because it is hard to follow a policy that one does not fully understand.
I understand the need for specific policies and procedures, particularly on a site this large (without some guidelines, I'm sure all heck would break loose). However, it seems to me that there is room for improvement. I think it would be helpful to reduce the number of articles and provide simplified guidelines, or at least use some kind of "quick reference" to the procedure (such as a step by step guide for determining which procedure to follow, such as speedy deletion versus proposed deletion, and where to go from there, while avoiding the circular links to and description of every process on each page). I would try to improve those pages myself, but there is just too much information there, and I must admit that I feel intimidated when it comes to editing such "official" documents. -- Dan128 08:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I wrote an article on Ignaz Schuppanzigh. I found a photograph of him from the Beethoven-Haus museum in Bonn. I wrote the museum asking permission to include the photo in the article. Here is their reply:
Dear Mr. Epstein,
We grant the permission to use this picture in this size on wikipedia. No bigger size or other picture is granted and you have to set a link to our website below the picture. ( http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de)
Best regards,
Boris Goyke
Can I upload this picture, and include it in the article, according to Wikipedia policy?
Your help greatly appreciated.
Ravpapa
Okay, we'll skip the picture. I will add a link to the web page, so that the curious can see what the guy looked like. Thanks for your advice.
BTW, is this the right place to ask questions like this? Or is there some sort of help desk specifically for people like me who are new to W and don't know the ropes yet?
Tnx,
-- Ravpapa 05:27, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
On the left side of your screen there is a "navigaton box" with a button for Help. Or click here for a useful menu. -- Doc Tropics 05:45, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Just an idea, but could a policy be devised wherby users/IPs who are blocked 10 times or more for vandalism (not including 3RR, NPOV, etc), automatically incurr an indefinate ban next time they are blocked. --GW_Simulations |User Page | Talk | Contribs | E-mail 18:12, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
At Chi-square distribution there is a discussion of if it's OK for a user to link to his own page. User:DanSoper added maybe 5 links to his webpage (including 3 on one wikipedia entry) with text like, "Free Chi-Square Calculator from Daniel Soper's Free Statistics Calculators website. Computes chi-square values given a probability value and the degrees of freedom."
There are two questions. The first is if this is an appropriate (encyclopedic) link. The second is if it is okay to link to your own page that has little use other than it's google ads. Blog spam mentions that it is possible to make ref="nofollow." but that does not appear to be possible. Any thoughts? 128.135.226.222 00:31, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
There's a new proposal at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics). Zocky | picture popups 12:39, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Exactly how many articles are there on orthodox specific topic, espeicially such topics only notable within orthodox circles, wikipedins that work in this area may be aware that another encyclopedia wiki Orthodox wiki exists for this area. On a related notem why does wikipedia (officially) render its aim over human knowledge as if it is going to be *complete* someday, and even claim that becuase it is "not paper" that there is "no practical limit" in terms of information, the printed Encyclopædia Brittanica already takes up enough volumes to fill a bookcase, though I must admit that I was surprised to discover how much info can be found on wikipedia, nevertheless wikipedia does have to complete with, and not defeat, other encyclopedias, such as Encarta, it's aim of being the "most complete encyclopedia in the world" and the aim of all the human knowledge being accessable for *free* seems like another example of America world domination (my father *likes* America and does not beleive in copyright, for example). Myrtone
Please don't America bash in mid-paragraph. Having a lot of information for free is world domination? Also, this is the English Wikipeida, not the American Wikipedia. Wikibout- Talk to me! 15:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Let me explain, if wikipedia gathers only so much informatin it could practialcally take over the web (well, not the entire web, but if not the world, by defeating only so many information sources). The states is the world's most powerful nation and besdes, here in Australia there really is a conception that in the US "nothing happens outside your borders." The belief in "free stuff" has been associated with "cowboys" and US liberterianism, and the very fact that this is avalible to the entire world seems (to me) like an example. Myrtone
Yes I have actually heard of an article getting deleted along these lines but before getting back to the startting point, no one has answered as to why wikipedia reders it's mission as if it is going to be *complete* someday? Now getting back to the starting point, wikipedians that work on Orthodox specific topics maybe aware of the existance of Orthodox wiki. Myrtone
posting this it occurred to me that it would be no problem, technically, to implement "local blocks", i.e. blocking certain IP ranges (or user accounts) from editing specific articles only: In cases of persistent trolling of particular articles, this might be useful for reducing collateral damage. As a possible objection, I can see that "locally blocked" users will be likely to indulge in indiscriminate vandalism out of spite, so that their range would have to be blocked "globally" after all, but how frequently such behaviour would occur would be a matter of experiment. Thoughts? dab (ᛏ) 14:16, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Actually, "local" blocks may be more useful on Uncyclopedia, where editors can get blocked for engaging in rv wars with admins. Myrtone
Please take a look at Wikipedia_talk:Three-revert_rule#Suggestion:_Mandatory_warnings_before_blocks. and offer your feedback. Al 16:22, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Over at Talk:Programming language we are having a dispute over including numerous fact tags. I tried to tag it to a level necessary for Featured Article status, but was met with howls of protest that this resulted in nearly every sentence being tagged. One editor in particular is refusing to discuss with me and has threatened to revert any such changes on sight. Please advise. Ideogram 22:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
-- Kilvia linda@yahoo.com 11:30, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
There has been some discussion at WP:PUI on pictures of statues that are still under copyright. Photographs would be derivative works but using them for critical comment would easily fall under fair use. A tag for copyrighted paintings exists already, it's called {{ Art}}. My proposal for a new tag is at User:Dr Zak/Statue, the discussion is at Wikipedia_talk:Image_copyright_tags#Pictures_of_sculptures.2C_statues_etc. Some eyeballs are needed. Dr Zak 19:26, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I have started a new guideline on quotations within Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Quotations. Nothing is really too new. Mostly common sense stuff with some stuff stolen from various other policy pages. I figured it would help centralize the information. I didn't include too much technical stuff, but wouldn't be too opposed to the idea. There is some room for expansion, and comments are welcome. Thanks. -- LV (Dark Mark) 19:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Now that all the preliminary steps are complete, need a competent administrator to make the move (the page is move protected). The steps are detailed at Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion#Ready to roll.
Handled by the wub ( talk · contribs). Thank you! Hopefully, there will be less confusion about process naming and more useful discussion.
I'm sure I read that somewhere... maybe in the archives of WP:NOT, but it could have been anywhere (possibly an essay). Anyone know where this can be found? SB Johnny 11:23, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
I also noticed Wikipedia:The World Will Not End Tomorrow Ashibaka tock 23:12, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Came across this article the other day: Organic_lawn_management. It's definitely a how-to article. I'd like to transwiki it to WB where it can grow into a chapter or book (it has good information in it, but rather stubby), but not sure how to go about this. So a few questions... after some feedback here I'll bring up the appropriate parts on technical:
SB Johnny 11:32, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Comments are invited on the nature and purpose of the page Wikipedia:Spoiler warning at the talk page. Thank you, Steve block Talk 11:46, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't the discussion at Reference_desk/Humanities#Communism be moved to Talk:Communism? ... IMHO ( Talk) 14:22, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
{ { NewUserUnverified } }
Wikipedia:Historical information ( WP:HIST) is a proposed guideline which is still very much a work in progress. I ask people to contribute to it and/or its talk page.— msh210℠ 20:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject professional wrestling has no clear cut consensus of this issue, so I throw this out to the world at large: should professional wrestlers be organized under their real names or the names that they adopt in the ring (this, of course, is moot for those that wrestle under their real names)? There are arguments to both sides of the equation. Consider the following arguments:
Your comments are welcome. kelvSYC 06:16, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I think it should be on a case by case basis rather than one policy to cover everyone. Like people who are widely known under one name should be listed under that(like Shawn Michaels or The Undertaker) while others listed under their real names. TJ Spyke 22:51, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Here's my proposal:
Apologies for being long-winded. Comments (or flames) appreciated. Tuckdogg 04:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
While reverting some vandalism, I noticed that on a few users' talk pages were multiple vandalism warnings that say, "final warning." Many of these accounts have never been banned, and not even for a short time. Having dozens of "final warnings" makes the control system of Wikipedia look rather useless, and, in my opinion, encourages people to vandalize more. The change I'd like to see is either an elimination of these "final warning" templates, or something that notifies the admins when a final warning is given. I know that this seems like a cosmetic solution to vandalism, but I believe putting up a strong front is a start down the right path. I apologize if this doesn't seem very well written. - Mirage5000 09:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
The issue concerns the citation of sources. If the only reference source given in a particular case requires the reader to first pay for a subscription to the site, is this fair in a free encyclopedia? As far as I can see, the present policy regarding the citation of sources does not cover this. I believe, in a free encyclopedia such as this, a reader should not have to pay for the information; most especially if the source is the only one given.
Michael David 12:31, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I notice some articles I've run across use.. I'm not sure the literary term for it, but use the words we and you in reference to the reader, or presumably humanity as a whole. A generic example might be something like:
"We can determine, due to recent research in the field that X is true" "Though it is theoretically possible to do X, you will find it realistically unfeasable"
Or similar such constructions. Is there an official policy on such things? I would think that constructions in that sort of tone should be rewritten, I just want to be sure before I reword those phrases I come across that fit that old. Errick 16:17, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Fair use/Fair use images in lists for a request for comment about the use of fair use images in lists. This RFC arose out of a dispute about the use of images on list of Lost episodes and has grown beyond that article to have broader significance for lists generally. Please join the discussion if you are interested in this issue. -- bainer ( talk) 05:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering if it would be a good idea to limit the moving of major Wikipedia namespace pages to admins. My apologies if this is a perennial proposal that I've just never seen before. Also, this proposal is assuming that it is difficult to move the pages back, that moving and/or fixing them is a strain on the servers or that the pages are frequent targets of page move vandalism. If it's no big deal, then forget it. I'm referring to perhaps a dozen or fewer high-profile pages like Articles for Deletion, Criteria for Speedy Deletion, Deletion Review, Administrator's Noticeboard and Administrator's Noticeboard Incidents. The pages are few in number, and their names change very infrequently. Therefore, I think that there is not much of a drawback to protecting them and that it should be considered if page move vandalism is a significant problem. -- Kjkolb 10:38, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
At the top of Strategic Air Command Aircraft it currently has the phrase: Joseph F. Bauer, Norman Polmar and Timothy Laur have granted me permission to use their copywritten material as long as they are give credit for that use.
1. Phrases like 'me' and 'I' appear to make no sense on Wikipedia. Do others agree?
2. With thousands of contributions to an article, do we permit them all to have prominent credits at the top? What is the policy on this?
bobblewik 13:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
There is currently disagreement over the use of the WP:NOR policy to exclude people from lists of Americans by ethnicity. A user has claimed that they think that if an American is described as having an Irish parent/grandparent etc., unless they are described somewhere as an Irish American they absolutely cannot be included in a list of Irish Americans, even though Encarta and many other reputable and reliable sources describe Irish Americans as Americans who trace their ancestry to Ireland. Is this a correct interpretation of policy? Arniep 15:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Am I right in thinking that the short answer here is that previously unpublished deductive reasoning, like any other reasoning, is indeed original research? There seem to be a lot of editors who feel that very pure, logical deductive reasoning doesn't fall within the novel synthesis section of WP:NOR. Right now, WP:NOR doesn't contain the word "deductive". Perhaps we should add a few words to the synthesis section to make it clear that even the purest logic counts as OR if unpublished? The Irish-American example is not a case of pure deductive logic -- there are all sorts of implicit assumptions -- but perhaps a clarification of the principle would still help? -- Allen 16:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I will say it again. What we need is the view of a reputable source on the person you wish to add to the list. We can not and will not connect A, the definition of Irish American (which is vague, regardless) and B, information about a person you wish to add to form C - that the person is Irish-American. I thank the Wikipedia Gods for inserting specifically that into the policy precisely because of this, to stop people from inserting their own thoughts and foistering their own labels on people who have not been so labelled before. Wikipedia editors and Wikipedia do not make judgments. We report exactly what was said about every person. No tweaks of it to fit what we want to say. Please do not answer this post without reference to the bit of the original research policy that I keep quoting to you over and over again, which explicitly states that we can not "Connect the dots", so to speak, to promote a point - in this case the point being that "Person X" or whoever is an Irish-American. As for your idea on a complete reform of the lists (i.e. delete most of them), sure, that could work, but that needs to be discussed in a separate post. Mad Jack 17:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
The idea that people of proven Irish descent do not belong in the Irish-American category is bizarre. I don't believe that simple obvious deductions were meant to be excluded by the No Original Research policy and even if application of wiki-lawyering can lead to that conclusion, my understanding is that it is long-standing wikipedia practice that if a policy or guideline leads to an undesirable outcome that the policy or guideline should be ignored. -- JeffW 17:48, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Jack O'Lantern/Mad Jack, you are clearly missing the point. NOR does not mean "turn off your brain completely". If someone is of Irish ancestry, and is of American nationality, they are an American of Irish descent, an Irish American, however it is phrased. I cannot believe you argued for however many thousands of words with Arniep about this. for future reference, Arniep is so strict on sources that when we've disagreed on that topic, it has always been his very disdainful dismissal of a source I consider acceptable for what is being cited. This is not a sourcing issue. This is a logic issue. KillerChihuahua ?!? 18:27, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm just going to pipe up my opinion here. I'm fully in agreement with Mad Jack, and was in agreement before I read his arguments here. Arniep's note that a person who has provably one ancestor of a certain nationality is a good one and in this case, I would not remove the nationality category but would never add it myself. I am, I believe, one-thirty-second Irish (possibly 1/32 Scottish instead) but as I have never been to Ireland and as Irish culture does not make up a significant part of my identity, I believe it would be inaccurate to describe myself as Irish-Canadian (or Irish-English, or however you want to describe me). Once again, though, I would not remove such a category from a Wikipedia article. Apart from that, I think we should only add the category if the person identifies themselves this way or if a reliable source identifies them as such. -- Yamla 19:30, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Who the heck in their right mind is going to label someone who is 1/50th or 1/125th Irish an Irish American? No one is arguing that, Mad Jack, except for you using an extreme to prove your point. Most people using logic or deductive reasoning would consider an American with an Irish mother or Irish father, and who is described as being of Irish descent by a reputable source, as an Irish American. I think that the interpretation of the policy and perhaps, the policy itself is just flawed and needs to be re-evaluated. I also believe a section for those of mixed heritage would be helpful since Americans have such diverse roots.
This is just an daily exercise in semantics for you folks, isn't it? --
IsisTheQueen 19:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
You seem to continually misunderstand this. If we wish to define the term Irish American on Wikipedia as whatever you just said, that is fine. Find a source that defines an Irish-American that way and add that definition. However, there's quite a difference between defining the term Irish-American and defining people as Irish Americans. AGAIN, we do not connect A (the definition) and B (the person in question). They are separate points and they are sourced separately. Reliable sources tell us what an Irish American is. They also tell us specifically which people are Irish-Americans when they label them as that. Wikipedia editors do not get the authority to make that labeling themselves. We do not form C by ourselves, just quote it. Mad Jack 22:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Hum.. People might want to check out the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_French-Americans where we can see all sorts of frankly wonky original research going on in regards to this very subject. There is a reason we don't allow original research. If we are going to list someone as a X-American - got to have sources.
-- Charlesknight 22:33, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Here is another nugget from the NOR policy: "But in an article about Jones, the paragraph is putting forward the editor's opinion that, given a certain definition of plagiarism, Jones did not commit it. Regardless of the fact that his opinion appears to be supported, other things being equal, by the Chicago Manual of Style, it remains the editor's opinion." So, to paraphrase: In an article about whether or not Person X is an Irish-American, Arniep is saying that, given a certain definition of Irish-Americans, that person is Irish-American. Regardless of the fact that Arniep's opinion appears to be supposed by certain definitions of Irish-American, it remains Arniep's opinion. It must be supported by sources that express this opinion on the person themselves. Mad Jack 23:02, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I just gave you a passage from the NO policy that explicitly forbids this kind of thing. I do not understand why we are still discussing this topic. We do not represent Arniep's opinion, nor mine, nor anyone else's. Only the reliable sources' opinion on what an Irish American is and their opinion on specifically which people are described as such. Mad Jack 23:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Arniep, the policy is there precisely to stop editors from using definitions on particular subjects that they have not been used on. I do not really care if you or anyone else thinks that an Irish-American is a "logic issue", while Plaigarism is such a heated and debated topic in comparison. They are both concepts that have definitions attached to them, and we are explicitly forbidden from using these defitions according to the policy, regardless of what might seem "logical" to you or anyone else. The policy states no exceptions to this rule. That's all I can really say to you, and all I will keep saying to you. The policy is clear, and I am sure you understand it. If you think you can make edits that are somehow exceptions to it - that's your business. But I will continue enforcing it. Mad Jack 00:14, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
We've been through this countless times with Arnie. The short version is that the policies of Wikipedia are clear enough. Unless you have a source saying X is a foo, you may not say X is a foo. How difficult is that to grasp? And KillerChihuahua, you are simply wrong. You may not employ your brain. That is precisely what WP:NOR forbids. You may not take item A and item B and create item C from them, no matter how "obvious" or "logical" item C seems to you. How much clearer could the policy be? It specifically forbids synthesising new theses from the sources. If you don't recognise that deducing a thing from two other things is precisely synthesising that new thing, you need to give it more thought. Neither can you employ the "everyone knows" line of argument. You cannot say, for example, "everyone knows that the population of Paris mostly speaks French". If you want to write that in an article, you must be able to present a source that says so. (Which would not be difficult, of course, but the careful reader will grasp the point here.) So Arnie may not say "everyone knows x is a foo" (as he and his cohorts are prone to do). We should not care that everyone on this planet knows them to be a foo: if no one has seen fit to publish it in a reputable source, we do not say it. It really is as simple as that.
How easy disputes of this nature should be to resolve! You either have a source or you don't. It's no more complicated than that. Find something that says x is a foo or you cannot say it. That's the whole of it. You cannot deduce from their love of smoked salmon that they're Jewish, or from their enjoying the polka that they're Polish, or from their having been spotted at a Mass that they're Catholic. -- Grace Note.
No, it does not, and I am not spending any more time discussing this. People who are familiar with Wikipdia's policies, including me, have already explained exactly what we do here. If we have a source that something is X, then we may call it that. Not anything else. I've quoted two bits from the NOR policy that directly apply here, and I refuse to quote them anymore because certain people seem to want to simply ignore them. Well, you can't and I won't let you. If you say "I am Polish, Irish, French, Welsh and Dutch" or whatever you are not saying you are "Polish", you are saying you are "Polish, Irish, French, Welsh and Dutch", which is a strange sort of thing that has nothing to do with a page called "List of Polish-Americans". As Grace Note said, you either have a source that says exactly what you need it to say, or you don't. We do not make our own synthesis on anything. Mad Jack 06:13, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Did you really the policy? Wikipedia:No original research says "But in an article about Jones, the paragraph is putting forward the editor's opinion that, given a certain definition of plagiarism, Jones did not commit it. Regardless of the fact that his opinion appears to be supported, other things being equal, by the Chicago Manual of Style, it remains the editor's opinion." So, to paraphrase: In an article about whether or not Person X is an Irish-American, Arniep is saying that, given a certain definition of Irish-Americans, that person is Irish-American. Regardless of the fact that Arniep's opinion appears to be supported by certain definitions of Irish-American, it remains Arniep's opinion. It must be supported by sources that express this opinion on the person themselves. Do you understand? Mad Jack 06:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Of course not every sentence has a citation on it. But when an editor challenges the factual accuracy of something, it must be sourced or it can (and will) be removed immediately. So, I challenge the fact that the people listed on all those lists are X-Americans. Therefore I set out to source these lists under Wikipedia's policies. You are free to query any bit in any article we have, and remove it immediately if it is not sourced, and keep it removed until it is sourced. That is every editor's right. Mad Jack 06:45, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Are you reading what I'm writing here? We can have a definition of X-American from a proper source, just as we can have a definition of plaigarism. What we as Wikipedia editors can not do is pick who does or does not fit the definition for plaigraism, X-American, homosexual, gardener, career criminal, etc. I just gave you this example from the policy page. We quote the description of the term from a good source, and then we quote which people good sources have decided are fit to be included under this term. We do not make our own decisions on who is or is not included based on the definition. This is so clearly outlined in the plaigarism example that I don't see what's left to discuss. Mad Jack 06:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh for goodness sake, let's not. I just know Arniep will show up tomorrow and continue this, using the absolutely brilliant argument that Wikipedia policy somehow does not apply to this and that his "deductive reasoning" on this must be bought as undisputed fact. Well, he's wrong. Wiki policy applies to everything. This is why, when he returns with more of the same tomorrow, I will simply copy and paste the parts of the policy that apply to this as my reply. Maybe I'll even set a bot to automatically paste these policy parts every hour or so, as a reply, because I am sick and tired of this argument. I have honestly nothing left to give to this discussion - the policy specifically says what it says, and you either want to follow it, in which case I thank you, or you don't, which means I'll have to go running around Wiki cleaning up after Arniep or anyone else who wishes to enforce their opinions on which person is X-American according to what they think, as opposed to what sources have said specifically on that person. Sigh. Mad Jack 07:28, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Mad Jack. If the fact that someone is an X-American is relevant, some outside source will have mentioned it. That source should be cited. If no reliable source has found their nationality important enough to mention, we needn't mention it. In regards to Michael's comment about stating someone is a female lawyer, because we know that she is female, and we know she is a lawyer, that is a completely different situation. In that situation, you know darn well she's female. With the example Arniep is using, the conclusion is being drawn that someone with one Irish grandparent is perceived as "Irish-American," even though they may only be 25% Irish. If the other 75% was, say, Kenyan, most people (and most sources) would probably perceive them as being African-American. In the case of your female lawyer, it's unlikely she's only 25% (or an even smaller percentage) female. You have to bear in mind, most Americans are mutts. If I'm ever famous enough to rate a Wikipedia article, you'd have to list me as an Irish-American, Native-American, British-American, German-American, and probably some other random stuff as well. I have an Irish grandfather, but I'd never call myself "Irish-American," and I'm willing to bet no reputable news agency would either, even though I have a fairly common Irish surname. I'm only really Irish on St. Patrick's Day (like a lot of my fellow countrymen, even though some of them don't have a drop of Irish blood). DejahThoris 07:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Example: Grace Note made this edit [9] to change east to south-east. Grace Note could have seen this on a map - That is not OR. A source is not needed which specifically states "approximately 9 miles south-east of the town of St Ives by road" (and if one is used, its probably a case of copyvio). A map would work. Or a source which states that St Ives is approximately 9 miles north-west of Hayle. Or a source which gives the difference as 9.17203 miles as measured by road surveyers - we would not jump on Grace Note and state: Oh, that's OR, that's not what the source said! Because Grace Note does not need to turn off all brain function. Rephrasing is a good deal of what we do here. KillerChihuahua ?!? 12:00, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
From NikoSilver: "If we have a reliable source connecting person Y to X,Y,Z ethnicity/ancestry, then the person is X,Y,Z-American, no matter how thin the connection is. Anything else is an WP:OR interpretation of... WP:OR! "!!!! Yes! No, Nikko. We don't use "THEN" here. That is your opinion and it needs to be kept away from articles. As I keep quoting, the policy explicitly notes that you can not make this "then" or "in that case" connection based on your opinion, even if the defintion for X-American agrees with you. You need to quote the definition of X-American from a good soure, and then you need to put in the article those people that the sources explicitly labelled as being X-Americans, not anyone who in your opinion feets the definition. From WP:NOR (and this will be pasted instead of subsequent replies, since people enjoy ignoring it and making up their own rules): "But in an article about Jones, the paragraph is putting forward the editor's opinion that, given a certain definition of plagiarism, Jones did not commit it. Regardless of the fact that his opinion appears to be supported, other things being equal, by the Chicago Manual of Style, it remains the editor's opinion." So, to paraphrase: In an article about whether or not Person X is an Greek-American, NikkoSilver is saying that, given a certain definition of Greek-Americans, that person is Greek-American. Regardless of the fact that NikkoSilver's opinion appears to be supported by certain definitions of Greek-American, it remains NikkoSilver's opinion. It must be supported by sources that express this opinion on the person themselves. And as for Arnie's quote, the person explicitly says they're not Irish-American! Who gives you the right to list them as that? Why is that important to you? If you think some of the sources are dubious, feel free to replace them or remove the name. A lot of these were sources a long, long time ago, and some not by me. The page definitely needs a clean-up to be brought fully under Wiki policy, which I would do, and will do soon, if I wasn't stuck here "debating" this. However, Mr. P, if you think a person's own words are a dubious source, which you seem to, well - that might be your problem. Mad Jack 16:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I think it definitely will. We will get people who unquestionably identify as Irish-Americans, or have been identified as such, not just anyone with any random Irish ancestry. There are so many people with Irish roots of some kind - who really cares that Vince Vaugn or Frankie Muniz have Irish ancestry? They've never been called Irish-Americans, it clearly isn't a big part of their heritage, and putting them on a list because of their grandparent (who was no doubt American, not even Irish-born) it pretty silly and of little to no encyclopedic value. That said - this whole paragraph is just my opinion - it has nothing to do with the policies. But I believe the policies were designed specifically for this purpose - to blurt out random nonsense or editor's assumptions that would lead to a generally unproductive or misleading list or article. Sure, we may "miss" a few people who consider themselves Irish-Americans but haven't explicitly said so, but that's part of the difficulty of editing a major encyclopedia. Mad Jack 18:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
There appear to be two positions here:
1) You should not classify someone as Irish-American unless they have been described as such, because the definition is fuzzy and could be disputed, so someone making the connection between Irish descent and "Irish-American' could be expressing a POV or just be completely wrong.
2) You should not classify someone as Irish-American unless they have been described as such, period. It doesn't really matter whether or not anyone disagrees with the definition or whether you might be making a connection that other people disagree with--you're just prohibited from doing it, regardless of such considerations.
These are *very* different. And the whole long thread above seems to be full of type 1 arguments disguised as type 2. If all that matters is that a logical deduction is being made, then the female lawyer example is perfectly valid. If you know that someone is female and a lawyer, you're not allowed to deduce that they are a female lawyer. On the other hand, if you say that the female lawyer example is different because "you know darn well she's female", then you're really not making argument 2 at all. If you were really making argument 2, how certain you could be of an unsourced deduction is of no relevance.
I find it absurd that we need sources to say that someone who is female and a lawyer is a female lawyer, or that if one town is northwest of another, the other is southeast. The George Bush article says that he is a businessman and politician. If you have separate sources for him being a businessman and being a politician, do you need a third source for the claim that he's a businessman *and* a politician, since going from "he's A" and "he's B" to "he's A and B" is making a logical deduction? That's Wikilawyering. Ken Arromdee 06:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm afraid I don't understand. 1 and 2 seem the same to me - it's not the reasoning, it's the result. The reason it isn't logical deduction here is that no one would disagree that a woman is a female, and you can likely find plenty of sources to support both descriptions. And as you said under 1, whether a person is or is not an Irish-American can not be a logical deduction, because, like plaigarism, it isn't a 100% clear cut issue, and definitely fits under OR. Mad Jack 06:59, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Mad Jack, you've given up common sense for Wikilawyering, in your attempt to get people to mention facts of significance with regards to ethnicity. I'm sure a majority of people are behind you with regards to the mention of X-ancestry when it is significant, but I don't see how following a simple if/then statement in concert with a commonly understood definition is conducting original reasearch. - Freekee 17:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, NikkoSilver, those people would be Allen, Yamla, JennyRad, Grace Note, DejahThoris and Jayjg (sorry if I missed anybody...). Even if no people agreed on it, the NOR policy has a very clear and unambigious example of matching definitions with people's names when no such matching has been done by anyone else. Mad Jack 02:15, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Editors often make the mistake of thinking that if A is published by a reliable source, and B is published by a reliable source, then A and B can be joined together in an article in order to advance position C. However, this would be an example of a new synthesis of published material serving to advance a position, and as such it would constitute original research. "A and B, therefore C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published this argument in relation to the topic of the article.
That principle can't be absolute. If I have a verifiable source that says that Alan Smithee was born June 1, 1968, and a verifiable source that says he was married June 1, 1990, isn't that enough to say that he was married on his twenty second birthday? TheronJ 19:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Not at all. A definition would be "a female human who practices law", and we aren't using that. If a source says someone is a woman and that someone is a lawyer, that is perfectly fine. We need not consult any definitions. We simply are repeating what the source said. Mad Jack 17:24, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
As for hyphen or not, apparently there is a move to remove the hyphen from page titles, though I can't tell the difference. There's no encyclopedic value in "Americans of X descent". Listing people who are, say, 1/16th X or even 1/4 is a random collection of information, which is not allowed by Wiki policy. Mad Jack 17:24, 6 July 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.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX, AY, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, BJ, BK, BL, BM, BN, BO · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191
( Wikipedia:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spiderman)
I have threatened to climb the Reichstag, dressed up as and did so, became bollocked from editing for violating Wikipedia policy against climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spiderman, and then had it become an official policy on Wikipedia (and to be an official decree by the Supreme Cabal Regime of the English Wikipedia ( SCREW)). Is Absolutley fantasitic!. This is so great!
"In extreme cases editors may be tempted to climb the Reichstag building dressed as Spiderman in order to promote their cause. This is absolutely forbidden and can result in an indefinite block from editing Wikipedia."
This single event is a great example of all the good qualities of our beloved Wikipedia! Horay!
Thats what I love about this Wonderful, wonderful website.
Next stop: The Kremlin!
WP:LEGAL contains the following sentence:
"But, if you really feel the need to take legal action, we cannot prevent you from doing so. However, we ask that if you do so, then you do not edit Wikipedia until the matter of law is settled - one way or the other - to ensure that all legal processes happen via proper legal channels."
As I wondered on the talk page: wouldn't someone who needs to take legal action also be obligated to edit Wikipedia because of mitigation of damages?
(We don't seem to have a Wikipedia article on the subject.) Ken Arromdee 15:55, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but the page is phrased as "we ask that you" and not "we don't let you", implying that Wikipedia doesn't prevent people from doing such editing, but rather considers such editing a violation of policy and punishes it after the fact. Moreover, that *is* the case. Someone who sues Wikipedia can still edit anonymously or through a sockpuppet. And it's quite possible for someone's lawyer to tell him that he's legally obliged to violate Wikipedia policy and mitigate damages that way. Granted, I don't think that anyone has done that yet, and the article would probably get edited via WP:OFFICE anyway, but something seems strange about a policy telling people not to do something that the law may demand that they do. Ken Arromdee 05:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Not everyone on Wikipedia is judgement proof starving college student. To many people a frivilous lawsuit is a terifying prospect even there is little risk of the attacking side winning. As such the use of legal threats creates a chilling effect. Furthermore, legal activities can and do happen without any help on Wikipedia, so legal threats don't even help the threatening person except to the extent that they chill acceptable behavior. Furthermore, the use of legal threats in argument will often drown out arguments which are actually reasonable and based on fact. There is no advantage to the project to permit legal threats or the people who insist on making them and substantial potential for harm, and as a result we do not tolerate them. As far as mitigation of damages goes, they are free to come make their legal threat, be blocked for it, and then tell the court that they attempted to mitigate but were blocked as a result. Honest attempts to mitigate, however, do not need to involve legal threats, for example: "Stop doing X because X is wrong and illegal" is not the same at all as "Stop doing X because I'll sue you!". The first example is worthy of our consideration and would not give us any cause to block, the second is just disruptive.-- Gmaxwell 21:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Thankyou!
Dfrg.msc 08:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I have seen the argument many times that a title, or even a word, be used over naming conventions because of the Google hits. What do Google hits have to do with Wikipedia and its policies? As far as I know Wikipedia is an independent entity from Google. It doesn't matter if the American spelling gets a billion hits while British spelling only gets a quarter billion. Wikipedia does not need to be shackled to Google searches. Google searches should get shackled to Wikipedia and other sources instead. And like other search engines, Google is biased, per their article here. Wikipedia tries not to be biased, so that means that Wikipedia articles and categories should not have to adhere or even take into account Google searches.
Using this argument in any name procedure or word choice seems to be a last stand move. Take it away so that the real issues over a name or word choice can be handled.
—
Lady Aleena
talk/
contribs 14:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
As a post-script to my opening remarks, I have to say that I prefer the links provided by Wikipedia articles more than I do the search results from Google. If every article had an external links tab, like the talk page tab, and that was filled with all of the external links imaginable relevant to the article, I would never have to use Google again. - LA @ 20:40, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I think the stats on this pie-chart are remarkable. It says that only about 1 in 20 people outside Australia, Canada, the US and the UK speak English. I work outside these four countries. English is the official language at work. We usually work with our partners in India, China, Philippines, Singapore and KL. The official language is still English. I would also be suprised if 94.5 pecent of contributors to English Wikipedia are from these four countries too. Wallie 12:26, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
As a post-post-script to my opening remarks, I say that Wikipedia naming conventions should trump Google searches every time. The naming conventions are there for a reason and should be adhered to. Also, I was not only referring to the Americanization of Google search results. I was also referring to the fact that Google will censor out searches depending on the locality. According to the article here, Google censors out all sites that show any political unrest in China from the Chinese people using the local version. If they do that there, what are they censoring elsewhere?
—
Lady Aleena
talk/
contribs 16:33, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
This is probably all based on the User:Lady_Aleena's failure to get her way on category:Disaster movies. She's American and she wants it to be films because that's Wikipedia standard for film categories. But Wikipedia should be flexible and a good number of users, some of them British like me, think that writing in normal English is more important, and disaster movie is normal English in the UK. Piccadilly 00:03, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Google is frequently used because it provides THE best ratio of effort to usefulness out there. It is very quick (far faster than saying "polling your friends") while also being extremely useful (way more useful than any "polling your friends" could possibly be). It is not perfect, so stop trying to attack for not being perfect. Perfection would take forever to reach. Rather recognise it for what it is, something anybody can easily use and very quickly use while at the same time provide information that is of some use (unlike "polling" your friends, which would provide inoformation of very little benifit. As would most other methods that you could try to come up with, I'd expect none would quite reach the powerful ratio google provides.). Mathmo 17:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't see any source for the pie chart used above, but I ran my own slap-dash search and came up with these data (which are virtually identical with the values given in the pie chart, but referenced):
United Kingdom (2004) 59,834,300 (Wik) (about 26% of Wales speaks Welsh – CIA) (Wales: 2,900,000 in 2001 –Wik) United States (2006) 299,058,932 (Wik) (82% English speakers – CIA) English Canada 33,000,000 (59% English speakers - CIA)
Australia 20,000,000 (79%! - CIA) New Zealand 4,000,000 (CIA. No data on how many, but 70% Europ; 8% mixed, so that could be a fair guess for English)
Ireland 4,000,000 (CIA. No lang. data, but non-native English speakers are very few in number)
Caribbean islands Jamaica 2,7 million (CIA) T&T 1,000,000 (CIA – langs not ranked) Bahamas 3000,000 (CIA –almost all English) Barbados 300,000 (CIA – English)
Belize 300,000 (CIA - ?)
South Africa 44,000,000 8% - CIA)
Uk 18.8%, US 69.9%, Canada 5.5%, Aus 4.5%, ... (ca. 350,000,000 total. As already mentioned above, this excludes English-speaking people in Nigeria, Ethiopia, India, etc., for whom the language is either first-language level (or even first-language) or nearly so. Kdammers 12:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I own a company that makes medical devices. In an article about a medical disorder I wrote a short summary of a scientific study that used my company's devices. The study was done independently by a university hospital and published in a peer-reviewed journal. I didn't specify the name of the device or the name of my company. Someone told me that I should have put in a "conflict of interest" disclosure. I'd be happy to do that, but a complete disclosure would specify the name of the device and the name of the company, which someone else might think was advertising. A vague disclosure, such as "a person who edited this article works in a field related to the subject of this article" would be so broad that half the articles on Wikipedia would have such a disclosure. People who work in a field tend to be experts in that field.
Is there a policy about disclosing a conflict of interest?-- Tdkehoe 18:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Here's the article in question, and the "disclosure" someone named "Bardi" added: Stuttering.-- Tdkehoe 03:35, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for removing the "disclosure." I agree with you: if something is biased (wrong, out of date, whatever) then fix it. Don't disparage the author. E.g., if I saw something that was out of date, I wouldn't post a warning: "The author of this material hasn't kept up with the latest developments." If I saw wrong material, I wouldn't post a warning: "This author doesn't know what he's talking about."-- Tdkehoe 18:10, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
This is all about making good articles. IMHO, it's best to simply leave a regular message in prose on the talk page, something along the lines of "I wrote this article, but I'm tangentially involved with the subject matter, could other editors please take a look?". If the message gets archived, it will be archived because a lot of new discussion was held after that, which probably means that the article was looked over and the message is no longer necessary. Zocky | picture popups 14:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
The legal position in some countries (I am thinking of Ireland, where the libel laws are ferocious) is such that it probably does represent a threat to Wikipedia. Never mind the editing environment, that is far from the main worry - you have to be able to let people remove or amend offensive articles, or you are contributing to the damage by continuing to publish the libel. However, I suggest a variety of ways around this;
Make it a condition of use (including reading) that any disputes are settled under the law of a free speech jurisdiction like the US
Make it a condition of use that disputes are the subject of arbitration rather than law - Wikipedia providing the arbitrator
Permitting a "Two sides of the story" article until the dispute is resolved. --Jpmills 11:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that a large number of articles with hyphens in the article title were recently moved to titles using em or en dashes. The relevant MoS entry about dashes in article titles indicates that em and en dashes in aritcle titles are to be avoided (unless it's absolutely necessary to use them for some reason).
Policy issues aside, is a move request for the affected pages necessary, or is moving the pages something that can be done by an administrator without going through requested moves? – Swid ( talk | edits) 19:46, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
In general, it's not a good idea to have non-ASCII characters in article titles, because it makes it difficult to type them. This applies also to letters with accents and diacriticals, like ĝ. If editors use such titles, there should always be redirects from an unaccented version. -- Runcorn 17:16, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
As a resident of the United States, I am used to seeing dates as month/day/year and they tend to be formatted on Wikipedia as such (which, I admit, is rather counter-intuitive.)
But I also know that many other countries (most?) use the day/month/year format. Is there any set Wikipedia policy on it? An example of an article with many dates formatted like this is A_Bigger_Bang_Tour. I think there should be a policy such that dates have to be formatted to avoid ambiguity, with perhaps even the use of a template so that users could have a personal setting or so that they could all be changed easily in case of a future policy change. -- Stellis 00:59, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Figuring out which bits of text are dates and should be converted is very hard - sometimes you need to cite date formats, there are people named April, etc. The long-standing solution has been to link all dates, and since the extra links do not present any kind of a practical problem, it's likely to stay that way. Zocky | picture popups 14:38, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
YYYY-MM-DD is the preferred format among astronomers. I think that there is an IAU resolution to that effect (a body with plenty of American members). -- Runcorn 17:22, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
On the page which explains policies and guidelines it states that guidelines are "actionable." Does this mean that users must follow them or face blocking? Is it ever permissible to refuse to comply with an official guideline? Exploding Boy 00:57, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
....Anyone? Exploding Boy 02:28, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I'm aware of the blocking policy. I'm looking for something specific about guidelines. For example, what, specifically, does "actionable" mean if not "blockable"? Exploding Boy 02:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
That's not true either. Users can be blocked for things not covered by the blocking policy. Exploding Boy 02:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Of which? Blocks for things not mentioned in blocking policy? No. People refusing to comply with guidelines? Yes, but I'd rather not identify them at this time. Exploding Boy 15:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
AFAIK, "actionable" means "unlike essays, or random notes people put in their user pages, it is generally considered a Good and Sensible Thing to take action to follow guidelines", i.e. if take action in accordance with a guideline, you are more likely to have more support from the comunity at large than if you act without one. It has nothing to do with blocking at all. Make sense? JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:36, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Presumably WP:IAR also covers guidelines. -- Runcorn 17:24, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I was wondering if there is any sort or deletion policy for users who have abandoned Wikipedia, but whose userpages are still taking up space. For example, User:Billcica was here for a total of three days back in early April, broke just about every rule in the book, was subsequently blocked for 48 hours, and never came back. Is his usepage just going to stay for an indefinite amount of time, being modified now and then by bots and other automatically generated changes, or is there something that is usually done in such cases? Thanks, rom a rin talk ] 01:17, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the responses, this information helps clarify things. As for the "taking up space" thing, you have a good point, but I was only bringing this up because there seems to be a lot of argument lately about using space, bandwidth, etc. (such as the policy against unnecessary images, the importance of subst'ing templates, those who want to delete userboxes based on their taking up template space, just to name a few). I just wasn't sure if unused userpages were important enough to become a part of this dialog as well.
Regarding the list of missing Wikipedians, as i mentioned, this particular user broke just about every rule in the book (vandalism, personal attacks, page blanking, using wikipedia for advertising, uploading unsourced images, among others) in a matter of three days before disappearing, so I don't think he really warrants a place on that list! Thanks again for the comments, rom a rin talk ] 02:25, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Around 6,000 accounts are created each day now, and that will probably continue to rise. Deleting a few to save a miniscule amount of space would be a total waste of time and effort. CalJW 06:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I am having difficulty in an argument over differing points of view regarding some definitions.
I have provided two citations from textbooks directly supporting my definition. My opponents are primarily reasoning from indirect sources to support their definition.
The problem is compounded by the fact that they all know more and are smarter than me. One participant in particular has repeatedly stated his disrespect for me.
My point is that their reasoning, while perfectly valid, is not as important as providing citations, since citations can be used to improve the quality of the article. So far all my opponents have been unable or unwilling to provide citations that directly support their definition.
Nevertheless, since I am alone, I am prepared to yield the point and try to reach some compromise wording that accomodates both definitions. My problem now is that no one seems to want to discuss with me. The wording as it presently stands is in line with their definition and I am frankly afraid to edit it due to the history of conflict. But I also cannot see why my definition, with two directly supporting citations, should be completely ignored. Ideogram 05:39, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Html and the many languages encoded in xml are programming languages just like javascript and even VB. It's true that html is not a very good example of a programming language, as it doesn't have any looping constructs, but the fact that it needs a browser to interpret it doesn't mean anything. VB needs a dll to run, just like html and javascript need a browser, and as programs in C need libraries, daemons, and an operating system in general. Zocky | picture popups 14:47, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
There is currently a heated debate at Portal talk:Taiwan concerning the name of the portal. One editor believes the portal should remain Portal:Taiwan, though another believes it should be Portal:Republic of China. I filed a RFC, but I came here to ask is there any policy or naming conventions for portals that might assist in this matter? The argument is basically whether the portal should be the name of the geographic location or the government, and one editor proposed that two separate portals be created as well. If anything a wider consensus is all that's needed, so people are welcome to throw in their two cents as well. Cowman109 Talk 16:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Please contribute your thoughts to this discussion/survey. Thanks, David Kernow 13:13, 23 June 2006 (UTC), updated 11:43, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I have been told that no individual is in charge of an artcle's content but what about a select group of individuals who may share some religious or other common denominator in addition to the article in question? I have been told that the Wikipedia is not a social club. Does Wikimedia policy forbid such groups and associations from dominating the content of an article or is the idea that they do not just a false illusion being promoted for the sake of financial contribution and gain? ... IMHO ( Talk) 07:16, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Pce3@ij.net (signing as IMHO) has spilled a tremendous amount of virtual ink over his personal opinion that the article
half-life is being censored by a cabal
academic guild of scientist-technologists who are trying to obscure the topic so that we (I think I'm counted as part of the cabal by now) can maintain our power over the uneducated multitudes. He created
half-life computation as a fork of
half-life because the editors at the latter article weren't willing to incorporate his material. He's now been to the
Science Reference Desk (multiple times), the
Help Desk, and here at VPP.
Earlier I tried to help him, and laid out steps he might take to resolve his dispute: [2]. At this point, I'm afraid that he's not going to be satisfied, and he has a history of believing that he is being persecuted on Wikipedia (see also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rapid sort). TenOfAllTrades( talk) 17:27, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Recently several porn actors have written to Wikipedia to request that their real names be removed from their articles, citing various reasons, including safety. There is apparently a practice in the industry of holding in confience the legal names of actors who choose to use a screen name. There are also rumors of an active campaign by some right-wing groups to "out" porn actors. In many cases, the legal name of the actor is listed on IMDB. What should Wikipedia's policy on the use of real names of porn actors be? Kelly Martin ( talk) 15:10, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The concensus seems to be to not publish such personal info unless it has already been made public by a reliable source. In any event, I don't think the courts make their rulings based on WP policies. Doc Tropics 16:51, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I requested a citation. After some discussion, my the action of my request is being called "trolling". Talk:Thetan#Atack.2C_who_achieved_Operating_Thetan_level... My request for a citation is in regards to the statement inserted at this edit. Thank you. Terryeo 19:49, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Images with free licenense should be required to be uploaded or periodicaly moved to commons. On the upload page we nicely ask to this end but why not go a step further? Images will still be able to be accessed from commons.
I was wondering how I should go about gaining consensus or support for a proposed guideline ( WP:NNOT). I'm really in the dark as to how people are supposed to notice a new guideline proposal. Can anyone help? Fresheneesz 04:16, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there a policy page that lists what can only be done by registered users, and what can only be done by users that have been around a certain time? (I recall seeing 96 hours in some contexts, and I know that we restrict the abilty to move for newly-registered users, but I am not sure if these are the same thing.) I have tried to find this information, but have been unsuccessful. Robert A.West ( Talk) 05:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The NPOV tutorial discusses two competing forms that NPOV can take. One form, the "equitable" rule of NPOV, involves presenting all major viewpoints equally, favoring neither side. The competing ideal, the "proportionality" rule, involves conveying each side "in proportion to the credibility of the experts".
In many cases, the two rules are conflicting. Sometimes, the credibility of the experts is deeply debated, with the result being that the desired proportions of the article can sway wildly depending on who is assessing the credibility of the experts.
When should the equity rule apply, and when should the proportionality rule apply? Should the equity rule hold in all cases of moraly/political issues, or should experts who have studied these questions be afforded more weight? Should the equity rule apply if there is no consensus about the nature and quality of the experts.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should state that this question was inspired by an on-going dispute regarding the article Opus Dei, and the support and criticisms for that religious organization (e.g. it is sometimes accused of being a "cult"). One of the many, many issues involved is which rule is appropriate: Some feel the issue is fundamentally a social science one, and therefore the article should be in proportion to the views of theologians, social scientists, and historians. Others feel the issue is fundamentally a matter of personal moral/religious opinion, and that both support and criticism should be presented equally. That dispute has been accepted for mediation-- so mediation, not this discussion, will govern the outcome of that particular case.
But that still leaves me looking for guidance about how to balance the two rules in general, in the other future articles-- when should the different rules be used? Is there a burden of proof or a burden of consensus-- i.e. without a consensus about which rule should be used, the equity rule shoudl be used?
On the one hand, we don't want to have to present oddball theories like Flat Earthers equally with views that the earth is round. On the other hand, we don't want to have unbalanced articles in which one side of a political debate dominates.
Any advice?
-- Alecmconroy 09:32, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
(Note: this hasn't gotten much attention at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, but I figured I'd give it one more chance on the pump.)
There seems to be a rash of customized font-family settings cropping up, especially in some templates. In my opinion, this is a mistake that needs to be prevented. Anyone who uses a different stylesheet than the particular editor who set those fonts will find that the text so marked stands out like a sore thumb. For now, they probably match the default style pretty well, but anyone who has changed it via preferences or with a custom stylesheet sees awful-looking pages. And if Wikipedia as a whole should ever decide to change the default font family, suddenly they would stand out to nearly all visitors.
In summary, I think there should be a policy against overriding the font-family in templates. -- Yath 19:29, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Anyway, I agree that font-family should in general never be overridden by anything, except to cover up for IE's stupidity and similarly important purposes. We have a stylesheet for a reason. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 04:13, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
There are some users with specific political view that are mass generating articles about theire political party. Is there any policy or guideline related to this matter that limit users to write about materials related to theire own work? Hessam 19:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
When the wants of authors are placed above the needs of readers then other wiki's such as the Urban dictionary will begin to take the Wikipedia's place along with the potential of financial contributions. ... IMHO ( Talk) 01:26, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
You're using a legal charter provided by the state in an attempt to blackmail Wikipedia into being how you like. I'd call that a threat. In any case, those who granted the charter do not seem to mind Wikipedia's current state of operation, so what good do you expect to come of this attempt? Simply put, do what TenOfAllTrades told you to do in his comment and stop trying to use absurd situations to get what you want. – Someguy0830 ( Talk | contribs) 04:45, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I think you have no clue as to what I want and are afraid this conversation might, if continued, reveal your motive for making false idiotic accusations. ...
IMHO (
Talk) 05:03, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps now upon reflection you can see why so many people have come to believe the Wikipedia to be nothing more or less than a gentleman’s social club. ... IMHO ( Talk) 00:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there any official policy on which way items chronologically listed should be listed? I.e., are items to be listed from oldest to most recent or most recent to oldest. Personally, I prefer (and have seen more of) the former. If there isn't a policy on it, I'd like to see one voted on/made, as it's one consistency issue that would be (relatively) easy to solve and make things look better. 66.229.182.113 03:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I think it does. Look at User_talk:205.188.116.139, for example. This AOLuser (or set of AOLusers) has accumulated white hands on red, white crosses on red, a "Final Warning" with a white hand on red on a splendid navy background, and finally (for the moment) an actual block. I'm not a pea-brained vandal (honest!); but I suspect that if I were, I'd be thrilled to bits by all this, as by the Very Serious Messages in boldface, and that I'd love to show my disaster-area talk page to my drinking buddies. I might even consider aiming to become a genuine Wikipedia celebrity, like WoW, whose every exploit is carefully recorded and who was even given his own graphic until some spoilsport got rid of it. Consider User:Willy_on_wheels: he's no longer with us, but what a cool memorial Wikipedia has constructed for him: a pink notice with red edges, citing "massive" vandalism (almost as impressive as "extreme" vandalism!), a really big white "X" on red, and mention of being "notorious" (just like this dude). WoW indeed!
I don't suggest that WP should let up on vandals. Far from it. I do suggest that , when it occurs, vandalism should be noted as coolly, simply, and boringly as possible. I'd do away with all the boldface, graphics, etc., in warning templates to vandals; scrap most of Willy's page (certainly his lists of accomplishments), as discussed in " Completely useless page"; and simply blank the pages of banned users, possibly adding the single word "banned" (in regular, boring lettering).
Or maybe all this typographic exuberance somehow manages to dissuade peabrains from recidivism. I can't imagine how, and I haven't noticed any such effect -- but I may be missing something subtle.
Care to discuss this here? Here? Somewhere else? -- Hoary 07:27, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
If an article is nominated for deletion on the grounds that it is non-notable is it considered acceptable to carry on editing the article in question? I nominated a high-school article that hadn't been edited (until I naively put a speedy deletion tag on it) for over a month and suddenly this editor has showed up.-- Stroika 10:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
According to the archive of the featured article talk page Wikipedia_talk:Today's_featured_article/archive_2#Ratification_of_User:Raul654_as_Featured_Articles_Director, User:Raul654 was chosen to be the FA director with only 17 affirmative supports back in August of 2004. He has been director for two years. Millions of new Wikipedians later he is still FA director and, as there are no guidelines for the position or guidelines for succession, he is currently de facto FA director for life. This isn't kosher for a supposedly open and free website that claims "anyone can edit". Wikipedia is now the 15th largest website in the world. I feel the position should either be expanded into a committee of at least four Wikipedians with a chair position that is held for no more than a year and revolves among the committee members. Sans this, the FA director position should be term limited to allow other members of the committee to have a chance to participate and to keep the important position from becoming a personal fiefdom. As the position chooses willy-nilly what is allowed to be an FA and what is allowed to be placed on the main page of this website, it is one of the most important positions there are here and Wikipedia's credibility should not be left permenently in the hands of a single man chosen by 17 people (himself included) two years ago. Additionally, as it stands now, FAC instructions state that "Consensus must be reached for an article to be promoted to featured article status. If enough time passes without objections being resolved, nominations will be removed from the candidates list and archived." However, there have been cases when this unofficial guideline has been ignored by the current FA director who has sometimes allowed articles to be promoted with outstanding and unaddressed reasonable objections (See: Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Hurricane_Katrina for a recent example). This fluidity in promotion guidelines fosters anomosity and should be ended. There need to be concrete standards for FA promotion. The current process is unfair to those who work hard researching and writting articles only to have them fail over a couple of objections while seeing other articles also with objections pass. Thank you for listening to me. Regards, -- Jayzel 14:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I was one of the people who helped establish the position in the first place. It was better than having edit wars on the main page (which started the whole thing), but I honestly don't know if we still need it. Things have changed since then, we have more editors, and the main page wasn't protected back then and it is now.
The position is indeed extraordinary, compared with how things are normally done on Wikipedia. The questions that need to be answered before anything is changed are what problems do we expect if this reverts back to usual wiki process and, will dealing with them be more trouble than it's worth? Zocky | picture popups 00:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Ideally, any FA article should be suitable for the Main page, and therefore it is not a big deal? — Centrx→ talk • 07:18, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Please notify me if my suggestion is not right here. I am wondering why one needs a separate account for every language version of WP and every language version of every other WikiMedia project. Personally, I feel disturbed by the fact that I need multiple accounts to contribute to WikiMedia projects. On the other hand I see that with 1.6 Million members and a rapid growth of the number of users names would sometime became rare. I do also see the diffuculty to change the system since the same user names might be already used by different users on different language versions. Nevertheless, I think it is worth discussing whether new accounts should became valid for multiple WikiMedia projects or at least different language versions of Wikipedia. What is your opinion on this idea?
-- Falk Lieder 16:40, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I've been putting together an essay about lists of awards and the kind of lists that institutes, magazines etc. throw out and their presentation on WP. I'm not pushing this for guideline just yet, but past experience has shown that at least a few eds agree on most of it. The copyvio component is interesting and afaik hitherto largely unaddressed. So, wiki-deodorant at the ready, because here comes WP:BO. Deizio talk 01:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure uncreated is a word, but...
There are lists (some of them long and consisting of extremely obscure content) that have many red links. I use specifically the example of List of bands and musicians by country. If there is no article about a band, why should there be a link to it on the list page? If the band is notable enough to appear on the list, someone will create an article for it.
I propose that it become Wikipedia policy not to include things in lists that are not notable enough to warrant an article on Wikipedia. Otherwise you have people (again, I'm thinking of bands) adding themselves to lists to promote themselves.
The benefit of this is that people working on the articles themselves decide if the entry is worthy of appearing on a list: if the article is deleted because it is not notable, then someone will eventually remove the link from the list. -- Stellis 07:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
The possibility of including redlinks in lists is what distinguishes them from categories: surely List of municipalities in Zaragoza serves some purpose, even with the redlinks... Physchim62 (talk) 14:19, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I just have a general comment about policy pages, so this seemed like the best place to put this, even though it is not about a specific policy.
I think that the policies can be rather difficult to navigate because of the number of pages dedicated to them and the excess of information included on each. For example, if a user wants to find out about how to go about having an article deleted, he or she would find at least 6 articles on the topic: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, Wikipedia:Deletion process, Wikipedia:Deletion policy, Wikipedia:Guide to deletion, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, Wikipedia:Proposed deletion. Each links to the others and seems to contain redundant information. This makes it difficult to find a simple explanation of the policy and the process, and may be intimidating. The intimidating nature of these pages may prevent some users from contributing when they see something that does not belong, or it may make them do something wrong because it is hard to follow a policy that one does not fully understand.
I understand the need for specific policies and procedures, particularly on a site this large (without some guidelines, I'm sure all heck would break loose). However, it seems to me that there is room for improvement. I think it would be helpful to reduce the number of articles and provide simplified guidelines, or at least use some kind of "quick reference" to the procedure (such as a step by step guide for determining which procedure to follow, such as speedy deletion versus proposed deletion, and where to go from there, while avoiding the circular links to and description of every process on each page). I would try to improve those pages myself, but there is just too much information there, and I must admit that I feel intimidated when it comes to editing such "official" documents. -- Dan128 08:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I wrote an article on Ignaz Schuppanzigh. I found a photograph of him from the Beethoven-Haus museum in Bonn. I wrote the museum asking permission to include the photo in the article. Here is their reply:
Dear Mr. Epstein,
We grant the permission to use this picture in this size on wikipedia. No bigger size or other picture is granted and you have to set a link to our website below the picture. ( http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de)
Best regards,
Boris Goyke
Can I upload this picture, and include it in the article, according to Wikipedia policy?
Your help greatly appreciated.
Ravpapa
Okay, we'll skip the picture. I will add a link to the web page, so that the curious can see what the guy looked like. Thanks for your advice.
BTW, is this the right place to ask questions like this? Or is there some sort of help desk specifically for people like me who are new to W and don't know the ropes yet?
Tnx,
-- Ravpapa 05:27, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
On the left side of your screen there is a "navigaton box" with a button for Help. Or click here for a useful menu. -- Doc Tropics 05:45, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Just an idea, but could a policy be devised wherby users/IPs who are blocked 10 times or more for vandalism (not including 3RR, NPOV, etc), automatically incurr an indefinate ban next time they are blocked. --GW_Simulations |User Page | Talk | Contribs | E-mail 18:12, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
At Chi-square distribution there is a discussion of if it's OK for a user to link to his own page. User:DanSoper added maybe 5 links to his webpage (including 3 on one wikipedia entry) with text like, "Free Chi-Square Calculator from Daniel Soper's Free Statistics Calculators website. Computes chi-square values given a probability value and the degrees of freedom."
There are two questions. The first is if this is an appropriate (encyclopedic) link. The second is if it is okay to link to your own page that has little use other than it's google ads. Blog spam mentions that it is possible to make ref="nofollow." but that does not appear to be possible. Any thoughts? 128.135.226.222 00:31, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
There's a new proposal at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics). Zocky | picture popups 12:39, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Exactly how many articles are there on orthodox specific topic, espeicially such topics only notable within orthodox circles, wikipedins that work in this area may be aware that another encyclopedia wiki Orthodox wiki exists for this area. On a related notem why does wikipedia (officially) render its aim over human knowledge as if it is going to be *complete* someday, and even claim that becuase it is "not paper" that there is "no practical limit" in terms of information, the printed Encyclopædia Brittanica already takes up enough volumes to fill a bookcase, though I must admit that I was surprised to discover how much info can be found on wikipedia, nevertheless wikipedia does have to complete with, and not defeat, other encyclopedias, such as Encarta, it's aim of being the "most complete encyclopedia in the world" and the aim of all the human knowledge being accessable for *free* seems like another example of America world domination (my father *likes* America and does not beleive in copyright, for example). Myrtone
Please don't America bash in mid-paragraph. Having a lot of information for free is world domination? Also, this is the English Wikipeida, not the American Wikipedia. Wikibout- Talk to me! 15:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Let me explain, if wikipedia gathers only so much informatin it could practialcally take over the web (well, not the entire web, but if not the world, by defeating only so many information sources). The states is the world's most powerful nation and besdes, here in Australia there really is a conception that in the US "nothing happens outside your borders." The belief in "free stuff" has been associated with "cowboys" and US liberterianism, and the very fact that this is avalible to the entire world seems (to me) like an example. Myrtone
Yes I have actually heard of an article getting deleted along these lines but before getting back to the startting point, no one has answered as to why wikipedia reders it's mission as if it is going to be *complete* someday? Now getting back to the starting point, wikipedians that work on Orthodox specific topics maybe aware of the existance of Orthodox wiki. Myrtone
posting this it occurred to me that it would be no problem, technically, to implement "local blocks", i.e. blocking certain IP ranges (or user accounts) from editing specific articles only: In cases of persistent trolling of particular articles, this might be useful for reducing collateral damage. As a possible objection, I can see that "locally blocked" users will be likely to indulge in indiscriminate vandalism out of spite, so that their range would have to be blocked "globally" after all, but how frequently such behaviour would occur would be a matter of experiment. Thoughts? dab (ᛏ) 14:16, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Actually, "local" blocks may be more useful on Uncyclopedia, where editors can get blocked for engaging in rv wars with admins. Myrtone
Please take a look at Wikipedia_talk:Three-revert_rule#Suggestion:_Mandatory_warnings_before_blocks. and offer your feedback. Al 16:22, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Over at Talk:Programming language we are having a dispute over including numerous fact tags. I tried to tag it to a level necessary for Featured Article status, but was met with howls of protest that this resulted in nearly every sentence being tagged. One editor in particular is refusing to discuss with me and has threatened to revert any such changes on sight. Please advise. Ideogram 22:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
-- Kilvia linda@yahoo.com 11:30, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
There has been some discussion at WP:PUI on pictures of statues that are still under copyright. Photographs would be derivative works but using them for critical comment would easily fall under fair use. A tag for copyrighted paintings exists already, it's called {{ Art}}. My proposal for a new tag is at User:Dr Zak/Statue, the discussion is at Wikipedia_talk:Image_copyright_tags#Pictures_of_sculptures.2C_statues_etc. Some eyeballs are needed. Dr Zak 19:26, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I have started a new guideline on quotations within Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Quotations. Nothing is really too new. Mostly common sense stuff with some stuff stolen from various other policy pages. I figured it would help centralize the information. I didn't include too much technical stuff, but wouldn't be too opposed to the idea. There is some room for expansion, and comments are welcome. Thanks. -- LV (Dark Mark) 19:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Now that all the preliminary steps are complete, need a competent administrator to make the move (the page is move protected). The steps are detailed at Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion#Ready to roll.
Handled by the wub ( talk · contribs). Thank you! Hopefully, there will be less confusion about process naming and more useful discussion.
I'm sure I read that somewhere... maybe in the archives of WP:NOT, but it could have been anywhere (possibly an essay). Anyone know where this can be found? SB Johnny 11:23, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
I also noticed Wikipedia:The World Will Not End Tomorrow Ashibaka tock 23:12, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Came across this article the other day: Organic_lawn_management. It's definitely a how-to article. I'd like to transwiki it to WB where it can grow into a chapter or book (it has good information in it, but rather stubby), but not sure how to go about this. So a few questions... after some feedback here I'll bring up the appropriate parts on technical:
SB Johnny 11:32, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Comments are invited on the nature and purpose of the page Wikipedia:Spoiler warning at the talk page. Thank you, Steve block Talk 11:46, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't the discussion at Reference_desk/Humanities#Communism be moved to Talk:Communism? ... IMHO ( Talk) 14:22, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
{ { NewUserUnverified } }
Wikipedia:Historical information ( WP:HIST) is a proposed guideline which is still very much a work in progress. I ask people to contribute to it and/or its talk page.— msh210℠ 20:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject professional wrestling has no clear cut consensus of this issue, so I throw this out to the world at large: should professional wrestlers be organized under their real names or the names that they adopt in the ring (this, of course, is moot for those that wrestle under their real names)? There are arguments to both sides of the equation. Consider the following arguments:
Your comments are welcome. kelvSYC 06:16, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I think it should be on a case by case basis rather than one policy to cover everyone. Like people who are widely known under one name should be listed under that(like Shawn Michaels or The Undertaker) while others listed under their real names. TJ Spyke 22:51, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Here's my proposal:
Apologies for being long-winded. Comments (or flames) appreciated. Tuckdogg 04:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
While reverting some vandalism, I noticed that on a few users' talk pages were multiple vandalism warnings that say, "final warning." Many of these accounts have never been banned, and not even for a short time. Having dozens of "final warnings" makes the control system of Wikipedia look rather useless, and, in my opinion, encourages people to vandalize more. The change I'd like to see is either an elimination of these "final warning" templates, or something that notifies the admins when a final warning is given. I know that this seems like a cosmetic solution to vandalism, but I believe putting up a strong front is a start down the right path. I apologize if this doesn't seem very well written. - Mirage5000 09:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
The issue concerns the citation of sources. If the only reference source given in a particular case requires the reader to first pay for a subscription to the site, is this fair in a free encyclopedia? As far as I can see, the present policy regarding the citation of sources does not cover this. I believe, in a free encyclopedia such as this, a reader should not have to pay for the information; most especially if the source is the only one given.
Michael David 12:31, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I notice some articles I've run across use.. I'm not sure the literary term for it, but use the words we and you in reference to the reader, or presumably humanity as a whole. A generic example might be something like:
"We can determine, due to recent research in the field that X is true" "Though it is theoretically possible to do X, you will find it realistically unfeasable"
Or similar such constructions. Is there an official policy on such things? I would think that constructions in that sort of tone should be rewritten, I just want to be sure before I reword those phrases I come across that fit that old. Errick 16:17, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Fair use/Fair use images in lists for a request for comment about the use of fair use images in lists. This RFC arose out of a dispute about the use of images on list of Lost episodes and has grown beyond that article to have broader significance for lists generally. Please join the discussion if you are interested in this issue. -- bainer ( talk) 05:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering if it would be a good idea to limit the moving of major Wikipedia namespace pages to admins. My apologies if this is a perennial proposal that I've just never seen before. Also, this proposal is assuming that it is difficult to move the pages back, that moving and/or fixing them is a strain on the servers or that the pages are frequent targets of page move vandalism. If it's no big deal, then forget it. I'm referring to perhaps a dozen or fewer high-profile pages like Articles for Deletion, Criteria for Speedy Deletion, Deletion Review, Administrator's Noticeboard and Administrator's Noticeboard Incidents. The pages are few in number, and their names change very infrequently. Therefore, I think that there is not much of a drawback to protecting them and that it should be considered if page move vandalism is a significant problem. -- Kjkolb 10:38, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
At the top of Strategic Air Command Aircraft it currently has the phrase: Joseph F. Bauer, Norman Polmar and Timothy Laur have granted me permission to use their copywritten material as long as they are give credit for that use.
1. Phrases like 'me' and 'I' appear to make no sense on Wikipedia. Do others agree?
2. With thousands of contributions to an article, do we permit them all to have prominent credits at the top? What is the policy on this?
bobblewik 13:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
There is currently disagreement over the use of the WP:NOR policy to exclude people from lists of Americans by ethnicity. A user has claimed that they think that if an American is described as having an Irish parent/grandparent etc., unless they are described somewhere as an Irish American they absolutely cannot be included in a list of Irish Americans, even though Encarta and many other reputable and reliable sources describe Irish Americans as Americans who trace their ancestry to Ireland. Is this a correct interpretation of policy? Arniep 15:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Am I right in thinking that the short answer here is that previously unpublished deductive reasoning, like any other reasoning, is indeed original research? There seem to be a lot of editors who feel that very pure, logical deductive reasoning doesn't fall within the novel synthesis section of WP:NOR. Right now, WP:NOR doesn't contain the word "deductive". Perhaps we should add a few words to the synthesis section to make it clear that even the purest logic counts as OR if unpublished? The Irish-American example is not a case of pure deductive logic -- there are all sorts of implicit assumptions -- but perhaps a clarification of the principle would still help? -- Allen 16:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I will say it again. What we need is the view of a reputable source on the person you wish to add to the list. We can not and will not connect A, the definition of Irish American (which is vague, regardless) and B, information about a person you wish to add to form C - that the person is Irish-American. I thank the Wikipedia Gods for inserting specifically that into the policy precisely because of this, to stop people from inserting their own thoughts and foistering their own labels on people who have not been so labelled before. Wikipedia editors and Wikipedia do not make judgments. We report exactly what was said about every person. No tweaks of it to fit what we want to say. Please do not answer this post without reference to the bit of the original research policy that I keep quoting to you over and over again, which explicitly states that we can not "Connect the dots", so to speak, to promote a point - in this case the point being that "Person X" or whoever is an Irish-American. As for your idea on a complete reform of the lists (i.e. delete most of them), sure, that could work, but that needs to be discussed in a separate post. Mad Jack 17:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
The idea that people of proven Irish descent do not belong in the Irish-American category is bizarre. I don't believe that simple obvious deductions were meant to be excluded by the No Original Research policy and even if application of wiki-lawyering can lead to that conclusion, my understanding is that it is long-standing wikipedia practice that if a policy or guideline leads to an undesirable outcome that the policy or guideline should be ignored. -- JeffW 17:48, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Jack O'Lantern/Mad Jack, you are clearly missing the point. NOR does not mean "turn off your brain completely". If someone is of Irish ancestry, and is of American nationality, they are an American of Irish descent, an Irish American, however it is phrased. I cannot believe you argued for however many thousands of words with Arniep about this. for future reference, Arniep is so strict on sources that when we've disagreed on that topic, it has always been his very disdainful dismissal of a source I consider acceptable for what is being cited. This is not a sourcing issue. This is a logic issue. KillerChihuahua ?!? 18:27, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm just going to pipe up my opinion here. I'm fully in agreement with Mad Jack, and was in agreement before I read his arguments here. Arniep's note that a person who has provably one ancestor of a certain nationality is a good one and in this case, I would not remove the nationality category but would never add it myself. I am, I believe, one-thirty-second Irish (possibly 1/32 Scottish instead) but as I have never been to Ireland and as Irish culture does not make up a significant part of my identity, I believe it would be inaccurate to describe myself as Irish-Canadian (or Irish-English, or however you want to describe me). Once again, though, I would not remove such a category from a Wikipedia article. Apart from that, I think we should only add the category if the person identifies themselves this way or if a reliable source identifies them as such. -- Yamla 19:30, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Who the heck in their right mind is going to label someone who is 1/50th or 1/125th Irish an Irish American? No one is arguing that, Mad Jack, except for you using an extreme to prove your point. Most people using logic or deductive reasoning would consider an American with an Irish mother or Irish father, and who is described as being of Irish descent by a reputable source, as an Irish American. I think that the interpretation of the policy and perhaps, the policy itself is just flawed and needs to be re-evaluated. I also believe a section for those of mixed heritage would be helpful since Americans have such diverse roots.
This is just an daily exercise in semantics for you folks, isn't it? --
IsisTheQueen 19:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
You seem to continually misunderstand this. If we wish to define the term Irish American on Wikipedia as whatever you just said, that is fine. Find a source that defines an Irish-American that way and add that definition. However, there's quite a difference between defining the term Irish-American and defining people as Irish Americans. AGAIN, we do not connect A (the definition) and B (the person in question). They are separate points and they are sourced separately. Reliable sources tell us what an Irish American is. They also tell us specifically which people are Irish-Americans when they label them as that. Wikipedia editors do not get the authority to make that labeling themselves. We do not form C by ourselves, just quote it. Mad Jack 22:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Hum.. People might want to check out the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_French-Americans where we can see all sorts of frankly wonky original research going on in regards to this very subject. There is a reason we don't allow original research. If we are going to list someone as a X-American - got to have sources.
-- Charlesknight 22:33, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Here is another nugget from the NOR policy: "But in an article about Jones, the paragraph is putting forward the editor's opinion that, given a certain definition of plagiarism, Jones did not commit it. Regardless of the fact that his opinion appears to be supported, other things being equal, by the Chicago Manual of Style, it remains the editor's opinion." So, to paraphrase: In an article about whether or not Person X is an Irish-American, Arniep is saying that, given a certain definition of Irish-Americans, that person is Irish-American. Regardless of the fact that Arniep's opinion appears to be supposed by certain definitions of Irish-American, it remains Arniep's opinion. It must be supported by sources that express this opinion on the person themselves. Mad Jack 23:02, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I just gave you a passage from the NO policy that explicitly forbids this kind of thing. I do not understand why we are still discussing this topic. We do not represent Arniep's opinion, nor mine, nor anyone else's. Only the reliable sources' opinion on what an Irish American is and their opinion on specifically which people are described as such. Mad Jack 23:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Arniep, the policy is there precisely to stop editors from using definitions on particular subjects that they have not been used on. I do not really care if you or anyone else thinks that an Irish-American is a "logic issue", while Plaigarism is such a heated and debated topic in comparison. They are both concepts that have definitions attached to them, and we are explicitly forbidden from using these defitions according to the policy, regardless of what might seem "logical" to you or anyone else. The policy states no exceptions to this rule. That's all I can really say to you, and all I will keep saying to you. The policy is clear, and I am sure you understand it. If you think you can make edits that are somehow exceptions to it - that's your business. But I will continue enforcing it. Mad Jack 00:14, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
We've been through this countless times with Arnie. The short version is that the policies of Wikipedia are clear enough. Unless you have a source saying X is a foo, you may not say X is a foo. How difficult is that to grasp? And KillerChihuahua, you are simply wrong. You may not employ your brain. That is precisely what WP:NOR forbids. You may not take item A and item B and create item C from them, no matter how "obvious" or "logical" item C seems to you. How much clearer could the policy be? It specifically forbids synthesising new theses from the sources. If you don't recognise that deducing a thing from two other things is precisely synthesising that new thing, you need to give it more thought. Neither can you employ the "everyone knows" line of argument. You cannot say, for example, "everyone knows that the population of Paris mostly speaks French". If you want to write that in an article, you must be able to present a source that says so. (Which would not be difficult, of course, but the careful reader will grasp the point here.) So Arnie may not say "everyone knows x is a foo" (as he and his cohorts are prone to do). We should not care that everyone on this planet knows them to be a foo: if no one has seen fit to publish it in a reputable source, we do not say it. It really is as simple as that.
How easy disputes of this nature should be to resolve! You either have a source or you don't. It's no more complicated than that. Find something that says x is a foo or you cannot say it. That's the whole of it. You cannot deduce from their love of smoked salmon that they're Jewish, or from their enjoying the polka that they're Polish, or from their having been spotted at a Mass that they're Catholic. -- Grace Note.
No, it does not, and I am not spending any more time discussing this. People who are familiar with Wikipdia's policies, including me, have already explained exactly what we do here. If we have a source that something is X, then we may call it that. Not anything else. I've quoted two bits from the NOR policy that directly apply here, and I refuse to quote them anymore because certain people seem to want to simply ignore them. Well, you can't and I won't let you. If you say "I am Polish, Irish, French, Welsh and Dutch" or whatever you are not saying you are "Polish", you are saying you are "Polish, Irish, French, Welsh and Dutch", which is a strange sort of thing that has nothing to do with a page called "List of Polish-Americans". As Grace Note said, you either have a source that says exactly what you need it to say, or you don't. We do not make our own synthesis on anything. Mad Jack 06:13, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Did you really the policy? Wikipedia:No original research says "But in an article about Jones, the paragraph is putting forward the editor's opinion that, given a certain definition of plagiarism, Jones did not commit it. Regardless of the fact that his opinion appears to be supported, other things being equal, by the Chicago Manual of Style, it remains the editor's opinion." So, to paraphrase: In an article about whether or not Person X is an Irish-American, Arniep is saying that, given a certain definition of Irish-Americans, that person is Irish-American. Regardless of the fact that Arniep's opinion appears to be supported by certain definitions of Irish-American, it remains Arniep's opinion. It must be supported by sources that express this opinion on the person themselves. Do you understand? Mad Jack 06:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Of course not every sentence has a citation on it. But when an editor challenges the factual accuracy of something, it must be sourced or it can (and will) be removed immediately. So, I challenge the fact that the people listed on all those lists are X-Americans. Therefore I set out to source these lists under Wikipedia's policies. You are free to query any bit in any article we have, and remove it immediately if it is not sourced, and keep it removed until it is sourced. That is every editor's right. Mad Jack 06:45, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Are you reading what I'm writing here? We can have a definition of X-American from a proper source, just as we can have a definition of plaigarism. What we as Wikipedia editors can not do is pick who does or does not fit the definition for plaigraism, X-American, homosexual, gardener, career criminal, etc. I just gave you this example from the policy page. We quote the description of the term from a good source, and then we quote which people good sources have decided are fit to be included under this term. We do not make our own decisions on who is or is not included based on the definition. This is so clearly outlined in the plaigarism example that I don't see what's left to discuss. Mad Jack 06:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh for goodness sake, let's not. I just know Arniep will show up tomorrow and continue this, using the absolutely brilliant argument that Wikipedia policy somehow does not apply to this and that his "deductive reasoning" on this must be bought as undisputed fact. Well, he's wrong. Wiki policy applies to everything. This is why, when he returns with more of the same tomorrow, I will simply copy and paste the parts of the policy that apply to this as my reply. Maybe I'll even set a bot to automatically paste these policy parts every hour or so, as a reply, because I am sick and tired of this argument. I have honestly nothing left to give to this discussion - the policy specifically says what it says, and you either want to follow it, in which case I thank you, or you don't, which means I'll have to go running around Wiki cleaning up after Arniep or anyone else who wishes to enforce their opinions on which person is X-American according to what they think, as opposed to what sources have said specifically on that person. Sigh. Mad Jack 07:28, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Mad Jack. If the fact that someone is an X-American is relevant, some outside source will have mentioned it. That source should be cited. If no reliable source has found their nationality important enough to mention, we needn't mention it. In regards to Michael's comment about stating someone is a female lawyer, because we know that she is female, and we know she is a lawyer, that is a completely different situation. In that situation, you know darn well she's female. With the example Arniep is using, the conclusion is being drawn that someone with one Irish grandparent is perceived as "Irish-American," even though they may only be 25% Irish. If the other 75% was, say, Kenyan, most people (and most sources) would probably perceive them as being African-American. In the case of your female lawyer, it's unlikely she's only 25% (or an even smaller percentage) female. You have to bear in mind, most Americans are mutts. If I'm ever famous enough to rate a Wikipedia article, you'd have to list me as an Irish-American, Native-American, British-American, German-American, and probably some other random stuff as well. I have an Irish grandfather, but I'd never call myself "Irish-American," and I'm willing to bet no reputable news agency would either, even though I have a fairly common Irish surname. I'm only really Irish on St. Patrick's Day (like a lot of my fellow countrymen, even though some of them don't have a drop of Irish blood). DejahThoris 07:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Example: Grace Note made this edit [9] to change east to south-east. Grace Note could have seen this on a map - That is not OR. A source is not needed which specifically states "approximately 9 miles south-east of the town of St Ives by road" (and if one is used, its probably a case of copyvio). A map would work. Or a source which states that St Ives is approximately 9 miles north-west of Hayle. Or a source which gives the difference as 9.17203 miles as measured by road surveyers - we would not jump on Grace Note and state: Oh, that's OR, that's not what the source said! Because Grace Note does not need to turn off all brain function. Rephrasing is a good deal of what we do here. KillerChihuahua ?!? 12:00, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
From NikoSilver: "If we have a reliable source connecting person Y to X,Y,Z ethnicity/ancestry, then the person is X,Y,Z-American, no matter how thin the connection is. Anything else is an WP:OR interpretation of... WP:OR! "!!!! Yes! No, Nikko. We don't use "THEN" here. That is your opinion and it needs to be kept away from articles. As I keep quoting, the policy explicitly notes that you can not make this "then" or "in that case" connection based on your opinion, even if the defintion for X-American agrees with you. You need to quote the definition of X-American from a good soure, and then you need to put in the article those people that the sources explicitly labelled as being X-Americans, not anyone who in your opinion feets the definition. From WP:NOR (and this will be pasted instead of subsequent replies, since people enjoy ignoring it and making up their own rules): "But in an article about Jones, the paragraph is putting forward the editor's opinion that, given a certain definition of plagiarism, Jones did not commit it. Regardless of the fact that his opinion appears to be supported, other things being equal, by the Chicago Manual of Style, it remains the editor's opinion." So, to paraphrase: In an article about whether or not Person X is an Greek-American, NikkoSilver is saying that, given a certain definition of Greek-Americans, that person is Greek-American. Regardless of the fact that NikkoSilver's opinion appears to be supported by certain definitions of Greek-American, it remains NikkoSilver's opinion. It must be supported by sources that express this opinion on the person themselves. And as for Arnie's quote, the person explicitly says they're not Irish-American! Who gives you the right to list them as that? Why is that important to you? If you think some of the sources are dubious, feel free to replace them or remove the name. A lot of these were sources a long, long time ago, and some not by me. The page definitely needs a clean-up to be brought fully under Wiki policy, which I would do, and will do soon, if I wasn't stuck here "debating" this. However, Mr. P, if you think a person's own words are a dubious source, which you seem to, well - that might be your problem. Mad Jack 16:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I think it definitely will. We will get people who unquestionably identify as Irish-Americans, or have been identified as such, not just anyone with any random Irish ancestry. There are so many people with Irish roots of some kind - who really cares that Vince Vaugn or Frankie Muniz have Irish ancestry? They've never been called Irish-Americans, it clearly isn't a big part of their heritage, and putting them on a list because of their grandparent (who was no doubt American, not even Irish-born) it pretty silly and of little to no encyclopedic value. That said - this whole paragraph is just my opinion - it has nothing to do with the policies. But I believe the policies were designed specifically for this purpose - to blurt out random nonsense or editor's assumptions that would lead to a generally unproductive or misleading list or article. Sure, we may "miss" a few people who consider themselves Irish-Americans but haven't explicitly said so, but that's part of the difficulty of editing a major encyclopedia. Mad Jack 18:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
There appear to be two positions here:
1) You should not classify someone as Irish-American unless they have been described as such, because the definition is fuzzy and could be disputed, so someone making the connection between Irish descent and "Irish-American' could be expressing a POV or just be completely wrong.
2) You should not classify someone as Irish-American unless they have been described as such, period. It doesn't really matter whether or not anyone disagrees with the definition or whether you might be making a connection that other people disagree with--you're just prohibited from doing it, regardless of such considerations.
These are *very* different. And the whole long thread above seems to be full of type 1 arguments disguised as type 2. If all that matters is that a logical deduction is being made, then the female lawyer example is perfectly valid. If you know that someone is female and a lawyer, you're not allowed to deduce that they are a female lawyer. On the other hand, if you say that the female lawyer example is different because "you know darn well she's female", then you're really not making argument 2 at all. If you were really making argument 2, how certain you could be of an unsourced deduction is of no relevance.
I find it absurd that we need sources to say that someone who is female and a lawyer is a female lawyer, or that if one town is northwest of another, the other is southeast. The George Bush article says that he is a businessman and politician. If you have separate sources for him being a businessman and being a politician, do you need a third source for the claim that he's a businessman *and* a politician, since going from "he's A" and "he's B" to "he's A and B" is making a logical deduction? That's Wikilawyering. Ken Arromdee 06:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm afraid I don't understand. 1 and 2 seem the same to me - it's not the reasoning, it's the result. The reason it isn't logical deduction here is that no one would disagree that a woman is a female, and you can likely find plenty of sources to support both descriptions. And as you said under 1, whether a person is or is not an Irish-American can not be a logical deduction, because, like plaigarism, it isn't a 100% clear cut issue, and definitely fits under OR. Mad Jack 06:59, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Mad Jack, you've given up common sense for Wikilawyering, in your attempt to get people to mention facts of significance with regards to ethnicity. I'm sure a majority of people are behind you with regards to the mention of X-ancestry when it is significant, but I don't see how following a simple if/then statement in concert with a commonly understood definition is conducting original reasearch. - Freekee 17:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, NikkoSilver, those people would be Allen, Yamla, JennyRad, Grace Note, DejahThoris and Jayjg (sorry if I missed anybody...). Even if no people agreed on it, the NOR policy has a very clear and unambigious example of matching definitions with people's names when no such matching has been done by anyone else. Mad Jack 02:15, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Editors often make the mistake of thinking that if A is published by a reliable source, and B is published by a reliable source, then A and B can be joined together in an article in order to advance position C. However, this would be an example of a new synthesis of published material serving to advance a position, and as such it would constitute original research. "A and B, therefore C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published this argument in relation to the topic of the article.
That principle can't be absolute. If I have a verifiable source that says that Alan Smithee was born June 1, 1968, and a verifiable source that says he was married June 1, 1990, isn't that enough to say that he was married on his twenty second birthday? TheronJ 19:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Not at all. A definition would be "a female human who practices law", and we aren't using that. If a source says someone is a woman and that someone is a lawyer, that is perfectly fine. We need not consult any definitions. We simply are repeating what the source said. Mad Jack 17:24, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
As for hyphen or not, apparently there is a move to remove the hyphen from page titles, though I can't tell the difference. There's no encyclopedic value in "Americans of X descent". Listing people who are, say, 1/16th X or even 1/4 is a random collection of information, which is not allowed by Wiki policy. Mad Jack 17:24, 6 July 2006 (UTC)