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Is there a policy on having your email and mailing address on your userpage? Is it allowed? I could see where it might not be allowed because after all it might be someone else's address. I didn't see anything about that on the userpage page. Herostratus 05:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
If you wish a page in the history section only to be deleted(i.e. you are happy with current edit but not the old one) is this possible?
I, like many other WikiPedians, no longer upload images. The whole process is so bloody auto-matic, it's silly. I upload an image and within ten minutes bloody Orphanbot is shitting all over me telling me that my 'media' will be deleted in 7 days if I don't add so and so fukin' tag or link ETC. I'm kinda sick of it. Whilst I know that WikiPedia walks a fine line in the whole Fair use thing, it would be nice if I wasn't gangbaged by robots everry time I uploaded an image. Hol e in the wall 19:53, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Editing the current reliable source of any controlled ascertainment of knowledge is unduly the truth if all the edits collect the same facts which connect with an absolute truth about the article. For instance pump in a chemical analysis with a acidic perception could alter the sincerity of the outcome. So commerce may have a pump up volume where an encyclopedia could be more intricated like funk and wagondalls. -- Beyruling 21:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
You know what would be REALLY great is that if Orphanbot told me where I could see the policy. Hol e in the wall 19:24, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Comments on
Wikipedia:Choosing intentional red links would be greatly appreciated on the
talk page. Seahen
Neon
Merlin 06:16, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I am sure that this subject has probably been done to death in the past, but I ask for your forbearance to broach it one more time. Recently there was a vote at Talk:Syracuse to determine whether the name should link directly to the original city, or whether it should be an out and out disambig page, with the original Syracuse being retitled Syracuse, Italy with the other main ones remaining Syracuse, New York and Syracuse University. The vote went 15-8 in favour of Syracuse linking directly to the original city, but somehow, the New Yorkers had their way and the original Syracuse must go to the cumbersome Syracuse, Italy.
Now I am aware that Syracuse, New York is now much larger than the original Syracuse, and that there is world class uni there. It is also probably true that far more Americans would be searching for one or other than the orginal Syracuse, but on the other hand, I look at the fact that all other Syracuses are named after the original one that has existed continuously for 2,700 years, was once the largest Greek speaking city in antiquity, was the imperial capital of hte Byzantine Empire for a short period, has a UNESCO World Heritage listing - amongst many other notable facts of great significance. I look also at the fact that Syracuse, New York is an acceptable titling in all situations, whereas the same cannot be said for Syracuse, Italy, bearing in mind that Syracuse has only been part of Italy for 145 years, and has actually existed for 20 times that length.
Perhaps it is fair to conclude that Syracuse being a disambiguation page is the most equitable result possible. I would agree if that were a policy applied consistently throughout wikipedia, but there are 100s upon 100s of English village names that point directly to the orginal villages when their namesakes in the new world outgrew them many decades ago. There is a massive inconsistency here. At a minimum it is a clear cut case of Anglo-American focus, but at worst, there is something decidedly unsavoury about it all.
I welcome all views. ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 10:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
A discussion was started at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 July 2#Template:Age about whether a biographical article should contain a person's current age. While the template was kept there was no consensus about whether is should be used in articles. The discussion continued at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies)#age where there were no objections to forbidding printing someones current age in an article and finalized in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/(biographies)#Out-of-date material. Now there is a discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 July 18#Template:Bha about another template which inherits from age which has no use other than to state person's current age. I would appreciate community input on this matter in order to generate a wider consensus. Jon513 17:56, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
As a general point, I would agree with putting ages. Asking the reader to calculate the age is just laziness on the part of the editor. This mostly applies to people who have died though. If you know the exact birth and death dates, you can give their age when they died, and the age at key points in their lives. That is useful information. I do agree though, that there are issues of updating for the age of living people. If you really must put ages in, link them to a specific event. Eg. "J. R. R. Tolkien started writing The Lord of the Rings in 1937 when he was 45, finished it 12 years later in 1949, and the final volume was published in 1955 when he was 63 years old."
So for current ages, find the most recent event mentioned in the article that has a year attached to it, and put the age there. eg. from Steven Spielberg: "On June 14, 2006 it was confirmed that the 60-year-old Spielberg had already begun working on an space travel movie titled Interstellar." (my bits added in bold).
This is an example of a general point that thinking about how to write and organise information can avoid problems like this. Carcharoth 01:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
No! No! No!
Kaldari 17:44, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
It isn't necessary to give someone's current age at all. In nearly all cases it is marginal. This would just create a maintenance burden that probably wouldn't be met. Calsicol 00:02, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
The discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Maltese nobility has been re-opened. Uncle G 18:52, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
What to do with non-commercial images from before May 19 2005? They cannot be speedied if they were uploaded before that date. Should they be taken to Images for deletion, Possibly unfree images, or copyright problems? Its not that clear where these images should end up. I'm leaning heavily toward copyright problems at this point. Any advice on what to do would be most helpful, as I'd like to clean out the massive noncommercial-only collection of images sitting on wikipedia from pre-May 19 2005. Kevin_b_er 03:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Pardon the bonehead question, but what is the significance of May 19, 2005? 23skidoo 17:55, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Freakofnurture ( talk · contribs) just made an undiscussed, unilateral change to the Deletion policy discussion time for Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion, writing "seven days (in practice, more like two)". There have been numerous complaints and Deletion reviews over Freak's rapid and unwarranted closures at RfD.
Many of us, with other responsibilities in life, only check our XfD pages once or twice per week. For special cases, with clearly defined requirements, there is Speedy deletion.
I oppose turning all RfDs into speedy deletions. The official policy is seven days, and should remain seven days, to give editors time to participate. Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#RfD discussion time.
Ever since the removal of the scandalous WP:SOCK rewrite, the policy has gone back to its old inconsistent nomenclature. Sock puppet is taken to many any alternate account in the introduction and description of legitimate and forbidden uses. The identification parts then treat all sock puppets as being forbidden alternate accounts. The handling parts then go back to treating any alternate account as a sock puppet. Sock puppet, sock-puppet, and sockpuppet are all used interchangeably. Most tags on the page treat sock puppets as if they were forbidden, with things like "This user is a confirmed sock puppet ... and has been blocked indefinitely", implying that the block was due to being a sock puppet. "Sock puppetry" is nearly always used to refer to forbidden uses.
As I previously listed on the talk page for the policy, I would like to propose changing to the use of "sock puppet" to mean an alternate account used for forbidden purposes, "alternate account" to refer to alternate accounts in general, and "legitimate alternate account" to refer to legitimate alternate accounts. I present the following reasons for this:
I realize that this is not an issue that interests most people, but I would really like to resolve this issue, and am personally rather offended that policy sanctions what is essentially a personal attack against me and quite a few other users. -- Philosophus T 00:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
There is currently a TFD discussion on Template:Photo, which posts the following text: "Warning! This article contains pictures you might not want to see. If they offend you, you might be advised to leave the article." The significant potential impact of such a disclaimer needs to be addressed by more than just the few TFD voters who have thus far participated. Postdlf 02:22, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
What is the Wikipedia policy on this Pearl necklace (sexuality)? Bubba73 (talk), 04:33, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm involved in an editing dispute and would like to know if an editor posting to bulletin boards on websites outside Wikipedia in order to invite people to a Wikipedia AfD or DRV and have them post keep "votes" for his or her article violates any Wikipedia policy? 71.38.130.156 15:35, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the info and the template--that would have come in handy. It appears there is no WP:Foo I can cite about this then? 71.38.130.156 16:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for. Katr67 16:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion going on about amending point 8 of the fair use criteria. See for more information. Wikipedia:Fair use criteria/Amendment 2 Garion96 (talk) 15:39, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
There's a tag and entire guideline for when the subject of an article edits it, but what about when paid employees or volunteers of an organization or company edit their article(s)? This happens more frequently than we probably realize (I've directly dealt with it a handful of times, personally) and takes on many forms, from a publicist dumping a resume of their client to a paid copy writer totally revamping (and superficially, greatly improving) an article at the behest of their employer.
This naturally raises WP:NPOV issues, and can potentially be embarassing for companies that do, and sometimes for Wikipedia as well. I was thinking that it would be useful to have a guideline that would inform companies and organizations of the best ways to correct errors and biases in articles related to them, and also to help Wikipedians develope better ways of dealing with "corporate editing" when it is detected.
There does seem to be a lot of confusion when this happens, even at the highest levels of the project, it's been unclear if we should just axe anything written by paid employees, try to integrate it into the articles if it's unbiased, or what. The more I think about it, we really do need a guideline on this topic, and I don't think it would be instruction creep, since it is a specific solution to a speficic problem.
Thoughts? -- W.marsh 18:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Why don't we ban all identified shared IPs? Whenever somebody loads a page from such an IP, they can get a special template inserted at the top of the page (maybe a box similar in color to the "You have new messages" box) asking them to register an account before allowing them to edit (or rather, just put that notice up if they ever click on "Edit this page"). It's not hard to make an account (username, password, confirm password, enter), or to login every session (since they're sharing the computer and probably won't keep cookies). Just to make sure it's as easy as possible, if somebody starts making an edit, but forgot about logging in, after hitting the preview or save button, they should be prompted to login, and they shouldn't lose their edits, or have to hit the back button to reload them: "Continue to preview page".
Should I cross-post this idea somewhere else? Xaxafrad 06:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Certainly policy-related, so thought I'd announce it here. I noticed while responding to an RfC that this conversation is alive and heated, but taking place in many different places (with the same users going from page to page in some cases), and of course causes an edit-war or two. SB Johnny 11:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I would like to discuss an issue that I have been struggling with for a while now. It involves including the same Article in both a Main Category and a Subcategory.
Example: Jane Doe dies from breast cancer. ‘ Category: Deaths from breast cancer’ is added to her Category box, but not the ‘Category: Cancer deaths’. Then, when I click on the ‘Category: Deaths from breast cancer’, her name is included in the list. But, if I click on the ‘Category: Cancer deaths’ she is not included.
What I am wanting by adding her name to both Categories is a separate list of ALL persons who died from breast cancer, and a separate list of ALL persons who died from cancer. What is the problem with including the same Article in both a Main Category and a Subcategory? Help!
Michael David 13:39, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
The policy of allowing anon-IP users to edit comes up on this page quite often, usually by those frustrated by acts of vandalism infliced on our beloved wikipedia by editors who take advantage of this policy.
Soooo, I'm wondering if there might be interest in a wikiproject and/or cabal devoted to following up on IP edits. Examples:
Anyway, this is sort of tongue-in-cheek, but maybe not so much. Every time the "IP issue" comes up, it eventually ends up with someone saying "well, that's the way it is, because Jimbo says so". Personally, I agree with Jimbo for the most part (with the exception that I do think that frequent-vandal IPs should simply be permanently blocked), the reality is that (god forbid) Jimbo could get run over by a bus tomorrow (or perhaps die of old age in a few decades), and it might not be a bad thing for the "anti-IP crowd" to be able to build their community up for the inevitable debate. IOW, yes, I'm makin trouble, but I'm makin trouble because I think it's better to have the trouble out in the open, rather than simmering slowly towards a rather unpleasant eruption in the future. SB Johnny 17:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I have created a proposal at Wikipedia:Copyright review, based off Wikipedia:Copyright problems, to merge the copyright verification processes together. Please discuss the proposal on its talk page, not here. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 19:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I added the Image:Joe Bastardi.jpg, but am now not sure if it qualifies as fair use? Could someone review. Hello32020 22:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I am now addicted to this stuff, Wikipedia as it's called. I lost my house, my family, my job, my clothes, even my computer! What can I do? I keep reading books and I get confused because I can't find the little edit button on the page. Can you recomend a doctor?
Help me.
User:Dfrg.msc User talk:Dfrg.msc 07:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Look mate, I dont even know. User:Dfrg.msc User talk:Dfrg.msc
I'm having a discussion at Talk:Narbonic over whether Wikipedia:External links says we shouldn't use external links in article texts. The user I'm discussing with says there's nothing there that says an external link can't be used, only that it's preferred to use an internal link than an external one.
Does this mean that where an article doesn't exist, people should feel free to use external links to websites? Or should WP:EL be changed to make this clearer? (I left a message at Wikipedia talk:External links but nobody responded). Fagstein 07:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone help in pointing me to a policy that describes how wikipedia constructs URL's? I need to be able to test URL blocking software for a particular set of directories within a domain whilst allowing generic access elsewhere. Does a document exist?
I solemely requested for a comprehensive project writing. Thanks for your usual coorperation. Bye for now.
Do it yourself, that's what Wikipedia is all about.-- Zaorish 21:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
How about writing it into the wikipedia codebase that all talk pages (once created) are forced to have the templates {{talkheader}} and {{todo}} imbedded at the top? I believe this will reduce lengthly discussions, alowing them to get to the point, as well as reducing flame wars, and showing that it is useful to sign posts. A lot of problems could hereon be (at least partially) solved in one. Idealy, if there is a way to only force the templates to be displayed at talk pages that have already been started by a human editor, that should absolutly be done (so as to not give false indication that a discussion has started). Is this possible? - Jack (talk) 20:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I would like to solicit wider comment on This conversation on AN/I where a third party was adding links to their site, containing last will/testaments of famous people. We need to come to a consensus on if this appropriate or not, and so I asked the CEO of the company to hold off on adding more such links until we can discuss it. -- Improv 21:35, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
After a couple of recent AfDs on fiction related articles, a few editors are complaining about how WP:FICTION is affecting these articles. The most recent of these is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kiddy Grade characters. Some editors think the guidelines could be tweaked a little in regards to minor characters, others are complaining that the guideline interferes with the create of subarticle stubs and should be eliminated or completely revised. So I'm asking for additional input Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction) about the issues. -- TheFarix ( Talk) 13:15, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
This is probably a stupid question, so thanks for your patience in answering. ^_^ -- Zaorish 18:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Golbez. That's what I'd assumed, but I feel we should commit to one eventually...I'll think more on this. Anyway, thanks for the clarification.-- Zaorish 21:24, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Methinks this is one of those debates for which there will be no solution so long as the Internet remains an international forum. 23skidoo 01:45, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose we table this idea ;-) -- Carnildo 03:44, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Free-for-all on who makes the article first. Which is why gasoline is the aritlce title, instead of petrol, and why us Americans still haven't been able to get Orange (colour) changed to Color, because the WP:MOS states that whoever makes the first significant changes gets to decide the style. Hbdragon88 08:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
To clarify first: I'm fully behind the concept of What Wikipedia is not. Contrary to the opinion of one writer, I suspect that What Wikipedia is not is a shorter and ultimately less censoring list than trying to define everything that Wikipedia is.
Yet I'm wondering whether thought has been given to what an encyclopedia, and a wiki encyclopaedia, is. It seems to be assumed that we all know that what an encyclopaedia is, yet some articles deviate considerably from what I believe I read in The Guidelines, yet not from the more specific guideline required.
Let me give it a shot:
An encyclopaedia article provides a layperson with a working understanding, a clarification, of a defined term.
This definition captures a sense implied widely in the Style Guidelines by reminders that the audience of an encyclopaedia is diverse. However it makes a more distinct stand than the current guideline against the several articles that offer almost strictly academic or scientific treatises on a topic; these are clearly not aimed at a general audience (or designed only to impress them but not necessarily to further their knowledge).
I can imagine that this position may, erm, create debate. Especially since I believe I have seen a guideline that acknowledged that an encyclopaedia was a resource for research.
I agree with that position, but surely we don't understand the term 'research' to be unrestricted. 'Research'--in terms related to an encyclopaedia--might mean high-school or even early university students. We surely don't mean academic research in the more advanced sense because that population has its own considerable private resources expressly for that purposes.
In my view, too many of the articles here have used this forum to offer rambling, pedantic academic surveys of their field, rather than focusing on clarification and enlightenment of a general reader.
I'm being too harsh on some authors: what is likely happening is that these authors are having trouble marshalling the diverse ideas into some coherent whole. In either case, I believe the central idea of 'clarification' may be a helpful reminder that a survey may not accomplish the desired goal. "Write to Clarify a General Audience" should be a guideline. "Not an academic or specialised reference" should be a "NOT".
Apologies. Forgot to sign my initial post. -- 207.81.127.107 22:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Would it be possible to create a simpler version of Wiki for (and maintained by) kids?
I can think of a lot of answers to that question.
1. Yes. The Wiki software is free, just download it from SourceForge, put it on your server and go.
2. Maybe. Apply for a wiki at WikiCities.
3. Probably not. Consider the amount of childish behavior on display right here at Wikipedia, among adults.
-- Zaorish 19:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
What do you do when there are conflicting sources, and they are all reliable? For instance, at Savielly Tartakower#Quotations, I found three references that said Tarakower made the comment about all rook endings being drawn, but I also found three equally good references saying that Tarrash said it. Bubba73 (talk), 21:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
On AfD I have nominated a group of articles on the grounds that they violate WP:OR, specifically synthesis of published material serving to advance a position. I was hoping to obtain a better understanding of how this policy should be interpreted.
According to a short discussion on one particular talk page, the creation of the aforementioned articles was encouraged by a college professor in his class to address why universal health care proposals have been defeated despite overwhelming public support for universal coverage. He admits that he devised a common article template for his students to use in order to answer this question or "puzzle", and the edit histories reveal a flurry of referenced assertions in the various sections of each article. Given that the templates conclude with a section entitled "Why the window of opportunity for health reform closed", I inferred that his belief that "health reform is/was an opportunity" was the position being advanced. I understand that research may be needed to make an article factual, but is this stringing together of facts original research even if not done be a single editor? Medtopic 05:47, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
I have been entering BOTH Categories, ‘Deaths by firearm’ & ‘Suicides by firearm’ in the same Article. As a result I have been getting some grief from some editors saying they don’t belong in the same Article; that ‘Suicides by firearm’ is a subcategory of ‘Deaths by firearm’. If this is so, I believe it should be changed. ‘Suicides by firearm’ (like ‘Suicides by hanging’) is a METHOD of suicide and, therefore, should be a Subcategory of ‘Suicides’. Thoughts?
With a couple of high-visibility examples fresh in my mind ( an old version of Medal of Honor: Flag and the current Irish bog Psalter), I'd like to start using a template like the following:
I haven't made or proposed a cleanup template before, and I'm not sure what principles I ought to have in mind. Thoughts? Melchoir 09:05, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, since no one has yelled at me yet, behold {{ newspaper}}. Melchoir 05:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, the driving idea behind the template is to warn against imitating news style. Whatever people read, they will always try to insert that style into Wikipedia. Essays, advertisements, biographies, video game guides, textbooks -- and newspapers. If we frankly alert editors to the unconscious root of their mistakes, they have an opportunity to think about how an encyclopedia is different. Melchoir 21:33, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Please discuss this new proposal here!-- Steven Fruitsmaak | Talk 12:13, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Some of these are just pure spam, some apparently aren't, but there seems to be an awful lot of links to blogs floating around (google result).
There are also articles on blogs, such as types of blogs, blogs by country, etc., that have little content other than very long lists of external links (see, e.g., gardening blog, and Romanian blogosphere). What's the policy on this sort of thing? Do these all need cleaning up or VfDs? -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd like a second opinion on this web site ( http://www.healthfreedomlaw.com). Does it fulfill the criteria to be a reliable source? David D. (Talk) 16:21, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I know that I have read somewhere, policy, guideline or discussion, that having a section headed trivia in an article, with a list, was unencyclopaedic. That instead if the item was important enough it should be worked into the body of the article. Someone is challenging this and I cannot find where I originally read this. Help please. Doc 23:56, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I decided to check an article on cyanide and happiness only to learn that it has been deleted. If Wikipedia has any article deleted due to google hits and alexia rating, how will it ever be a good source of knowledge. It won't.
Mostly already implemented. -- Qu e ntin Smith 10:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
To avaid a revert war on the bittorrent page I'm bringing the question of trademark notices here. Background: "BitTorrent" is a trademark and I work for the owner of that mark. Trademarks that are not activly defended are subject to possible dilution and eventual loss so I added a trademark notice to the BitTorrent" page. It's been reverted twice. The third time I put a small ™ and a footnote but that too was reverted by a user who seems uninterested in meaningful discussion. So 1) what is wikipedia policy on trademark notices 2) faced with a letter from a trademark owners corporate legal what would wikipedia do? Sorry if there is help on this already - I couldn't find it. Trapper 19:20, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
It is my considered opinion that the inclusion of "current" team rosters in sports articles serves no encyclopedic purpose. Wikipedia articles are intended to be "timeless". Frequently the rosters in the articles are out of date, and will become increasingly so if the individual fan who is maintaining the roster happens to stop. We should abolish "current rosters" from sports team articles on the grounds that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia rather than a sports gazetteer. Kelly Martin ( talk) 16:47, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
If the current team roster is going to included, how about doing it as a separate article, such as St. Louis Cardinals current team roster or St. Louis Cardinals (2006)? Maurreen 15:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
It would appear that lists of words violate the provision that Wikipedia should not have articles which define individual words, nor should it include Lists of such definitions. However, we have Category:Lists of words, Category:Lists_of_slang and Category:Lists of phrases, among others. Policy is descriptive, not prescriptive. Is this policy still being applied (in which case, all of these articles must be deleted), or not (in which case the wording of the policy needs to be changed). I have raised the issue at Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Lists_of_Words. Guettarda 21:49, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi...Can anyone tell me which of the world's timezones wikipedia uses when an article mentions a specific time? Are they standardized to one timezone?
thanks!
We have a controversy brewing over at China and People's Republic of China. I would like China to cover people, history, culture, and geography, and People's Republic of China to cover politics, government, and economy. This split is motivated by the current political situation where the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China both claim to be the rightful rulers of all of China. In particular my moving of the Culture section from People's Republic of China to China has prompted a strong reaction from one editor who called it vandalism. Cooler and wiser heads are requested. -- Ideogram 21:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
There is a currently an ongoing dispute at Talk:Democracy (disambiguation) about what properly goes into a disambiguation page. The article is currently under RFC, and comments are requested. Thanks! — Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 22:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Categories that are members of Category:Sports in the United States by city tend to contain a bunch of articles all sorted under the first letter of the city name. For example, the Category:Sports in Baltimore contains a ton of articles under "B" for "Baltimore", which seems redundant. It would make more sense to me to sort the articles under the team name instead, so "Baltimore Americans" would be under "A" and "Baltimore S.C." would be under "S". This was brought to my attention when all of the teams in Category:Sports in Rochester, New York were actually re-alphabetized under "R" instead of under the team name where they were previously. Any thoughts? Powers 14:54, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
There is a disagreement on Go about what categories Go should be in. I'll let the protagonists speak for themselves if they want to, as they have rehearsed the arguments. Stephen B Streater 07:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Postdlf wrote: I get really annoyed by how unfocused these discussions become; whether we should on our own initiative decide that certain content should not be provided to children, whether and why certain schools may have blocked Wikipedia and what we can and should do about it, and what we are legally permitted to do overlaps only superficially. The analysis is completely different for each issue and they can't be discussed all in one cacophony.
How about all the folks objecting to:
on Wikipedia--setting up your own mirrors, imposing the editorial policies, POV, and agendas of your choice, and documenting human knowledge as you see fit (excluding those bits which you find heretical, offensive, or otherwise inconvenient)? Think of all the wikis we could sprout! That way, those of us who want to write a serious, comprehensive encyclopedia can do so, without all the tiresome arguments of how Wikipedia needs to get rid of X? GFDL means you can fork off whenever you like, taking the whole 200Gb or so, and start your stuff there. If Wikipedia were to remove everything which some demagogue thinks objectionable to children (or to adults--"protect the kids" is mainly a phenomenon in Western democracies where it is used as a rationale to justify circumvention of the free speech laws), we'd have nothing left.
An encyclopedia for children is a great idea. But Wikipedia should, first and foremost, be an encyclopedia for mature adults (though not an adults-only encyclopedia; there is a difference)--just because some net-nanny doesn't like our editorial policies and decisions, doesn't mean we should bend over to please every censor in the world. Those with legal authority over Wikipedia's servers in Florida, we ought to watch; however, I'm not aware of any attempt to bust Wikipedia as a porn site. As a general reference work; Wikipedia easily passes the lemon test, and likely has little to worry about. (Any material which doesn't pass the lemon test, such as the occasional groatse post, ought to be removed; but about this there is little controversy).
My apologies if the above rant skirts regulations a bit. But I'm in a grumpy mood today. :) -- EngineerScotty 21:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
In all the above debate (now removed) most people were not arguing that wikipedia was equivalent to a porn site. That was the strawman set up as people were not willing to address the actual argument. i.e. wikipedia could be more kid friendly. David D. (Talk) 21:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Just a small straw poll, as I was thinking the other day. I will take no position on this, I just want to see what Wikipedians in general think. This isn't a question of policy really, just of personal preference.
The question is, which would you rather have as an article (as a general question):
1. Reasonably well written, useful, and expansive article that is nearly completely lacking in sources.
or
2. Short, less useful article that is fully sourced and highly accurate.
Dark Shikari 13:37, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi folks. I am fairly new to WP though I 've tried to add whatever I know to whatever I could think of. I noticed how pages with content for a very mature audience might be accessible to young people. Shouldn't there be safeguards against this. Perhaps there should be a warning about age requirements before entering such pages. I must clarify that I am not talking about sexuality here but offensive language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bunty.Gill ( talk • contribs)
We already have a site disclaimer. I don't see why we should sink to grundyism. -- Tony Sidaway 17:27, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Maybe we should just put the answer to this question in a template (like user:Raul654/protection)- I'm getting really tired of having to retype the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again. Raul654 17:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Assuming that Wikipedia hasn't violated any laws, and so is in no danger of prosecution, what exactly is the "danger"? Postdlf 17:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I have proposed these two images be made into templates by anyone that knows how to do it. These images should flag pages that may not be appropriate for children. File:Wikipedia-Children12.png Ashwin Narasimhan 18:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
That is exactly what I meant Postdtf. If a children's Wikipedia is created, we are not going to need these, because, that propably will not be blocked by parental control programs. If we don't flag pages, eliminate offensive content all together, or create a children's wikipedia, Wikipedia will be of no use to children any more. Ashwin Narasimhan 18:30, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
There is no subject matter that I wouldn't want to see. I would be benefited by having Wikipedia unblocked, because my school blocks Wikipedia, which is still my primary source of information. Ashwin Narasimhan 18:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
We should encourage editors to make use of the linkimage tool for pornographic images. Johntex\ talk 19:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
This has nothing to do with what any particular person finds offensive. It is a discussion about the fact that wikipedia is blocked by insitutions or parents and thus many children have no access to the resource. I agree, a children's wikipedia that is tame enough not to be blocked would be a useful addition to the wikipedia family. Above Postdlf asked "Why do they block it? What exactly, in your opinion, would have to change for them to unblock it? " One very good reason that wikipedia gets blocked is the weird things people put on their user page (see an example of this on Cyde Weys page in the Explore section top right). Whether one finds this kind of stuff offensive or not, it is hard to argue that this will not cause school to block wikipedia on their computers. David D. (Talk) 19:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps we should cut to the core of the issue. I suspect that some of the folks participating in this discussion feel that there are some things that simply should not be in the encyclopedia because they find them offensive. If that's the situation, can we get to that now rather than later? It'll save a lot of time. If not, then we might as well get that question out of the way now. - CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 20:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
There is no easy resolve for this issue. It's a cultural thing. A naked breast might not upset a German parent, might anger an American parent, and might outrage someone from an even more conservative country (pardon the stereotypes). I remember the one semester I spent in Germany in sixth grade. Our biology book had real photos of naked 5, 15, and 25 year-olds of both sexes to demonstrate human development. - newkai | talk | contribs 20:28, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I get really annoyed by how unfocused these discussions become; whether we should on our own initiative decide that certain content should not be provided to children, whether and why certain schools may have blocked Wikipedia and what we can and should do about it, and what we are legally permitted to do overlaps only superficially. The analysis is completely different for each issue and they can't be discussed all in one cacophony. Postdlf 21:00, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Rather than try to find a good place to post this, I'll drop it down here. I'm opposed to censoring any thing short of pornography on Wikipedia. When I was in high school (back in the day), Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World were removed from the school library because of the sexual content (I will leave finding the sexual content in Nineteen Eighty-Four as an execise for the reader). -- Donald Albury( Talk) 03:09, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates. I believe this is the correct and proper answer. I've created WP:CAUTION as a redirect to this. Whenever it comes up, we can just say "see WP:CAUTION". We could perhaps create more rudely worded redirects (several come to mind), but WP:BITE also comes to mind. -- Rick Block ( talk) 03:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
A stable version test is currently underway regarding the article Elephant. The discussion of stable versions is being held at Wikipedia talk:Stable versions now. — xaosflux Talk 03:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Is this right? A fairuse New York City coat of arms image was removed from this navigational template for specialized NYC public schools. All transcluded instances of this template are of course in articlespace - articles on the eight schools and the test you take to get into them. Image remover Durin argues in his explanatory essay as follows:
Well, perhaps the remedy should be to remove such inclusion if/when detected, not to remove images from the template altogether? I understand and respect copyright law, but this really is copyright paranoia IMO. - CrazyRussian talk/ email 14:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
{{
mainspaceonly|[[Image:Foo]]}}
, the image will only be shown in the main article namespace and not on the template page or in any other namespace. Again, this should never be used for purely decorative images, since that would not be fair use, but I think a reasonable person can respect the New York infobox.
Dragons flight 22:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)I really am fed up reading this garbage about how the inclusion of a visual image in a template is decorative. It usually isn't. Because people have different settings on computers and browsers they often find that some templates' headlines are not clearly readable; one browser I used to use reduced most templates to unreadable spider-writing. In some cases, the use of a visual image is definitionary, i.e., it in visual form communicates the topic of the template for those who cannot read the headline, or who may be young and not fully understand the a complex headline. The use of images purely as definitionary visual aids is lawful under fair use when the image in question communicates. However if the image is obscure and so possesses no recognitionary value then in law it would be deemed decorative and then would be a breach of fair use. Using a visual image that, for example, showed that a template is about royalty, if that image is universally and unambiguously communicative through worldwide recognition, is perfectly allowed under fair use and would not be deemed in law decorative. Using a visual image that is unknown, not instantly recognisable and does not contextualise and communicate, would be deemed decorative and so an abuse of the law. That is the opinion of numerous legal experts I know, who think WP's interpretation of the law on this issue as meaning fair use images cannot be used in templates, is patent and utter nonsense. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 22:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Is fan art based on copywritten works GFDLable? This is an example in question... Image:6teen-tricia.png. -- Zanimum 17:31, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Fanart and fanfiction are all derivative works, and, strictly speaking, are copyright violations unless the copyright holder has explicitly given permission for the creation of the derivative works. That means that in almost all cases fanart and fanfiction can never be licenced under the GFDL. Blank Verse 03:40, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
A major change was made to Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories and subcategories by a user who, to say the least, does not like the guideline or its emphasis. I reverted it, but I wanted to mention it here. The user seems to want to policy to fit a handful of articles he is interested in, rather than understanding it is a policy for the whole encyclopedia. (There are a couple typos on the page that could be fixed). 2005 20:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
A proposal has been written to create stable, linked-to versions of good and featured articles using links to the versions that were certified as good or featured. This policy would avoid forking of articles, cleanly preserve article history, and keep articles as dynamic as ever, while at the same time giving the benefits to article credibility that stabilization is intended to give. Feedback is appreciated. JDoorj a m Talk 20:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
In the article July 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting, an editor has objected to the use of the phrase "unborn child" as POV and replaced it with the word "fetus." The context is that a pregnant woman was shot in the arm when she covered her belly with her arms to protect her progeny. The question here is: is the phrase "unborn child" inherently POV and should it be listed at Wikipedia:Words to avoid? My own sense is that "unborn child" carries no POV in an article that is entirely unrelated to abortion, contraception, etc. Aesthetically speaking, unborn child seems much better than fetus and using medical terminology is unnecessary. However, I'm curious to hear other editor's opinions. GabrielF 21:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Keep in mind that pregnant mothers and their family and friends think of the fetus as a child. "Fetus" is a biological or medical term used to refer to the young of any animal, not just humans. The shot mother wasn't trying to protect some fetus, she was trying to protect her baby. This can be avoided in general use by referring to it in the more usual way, not affected by abortion debates. For this example, the best sort of sentence would be like "this pregnant mother was trying to protect the child she was carrying". When a mother intends to have the child, there is no reason to suggest that it is not a child and there is no reason to muddle the matter. — Centrx→ talk • 22:29, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm partial to Centrix and FearEireann's sentiments. The power and POV in both phrases is inherently tied into the abortion debate. Apart from that debate, context is the key--otherwise you are needlessly interjecting the abortion debate into foreign subjects. In an article about fetal development, it would be inappropriate to try and interject "unborn child" into a medical/scientific article. In the context of the Seattle Shootings, the mother was acting in a maternal matter of protecting what she perceived as her unborn child. That was an emotive action and describing the baby as an unborn child in contrast to a fetus is appropriate. Agne 23:03, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I was just wondering how it is that Wikipedia can have a policy like this: Wikipedia is not an advertising service. Promotional articles about yourself, your friends, your company or products; or articles written as part of a marketing or promotional campaign, may be deleted in accordance with our deletion policies. For more information, see Wikipedia:Spam. and at the same time allow external links on article pages as well as individual users who post external links to sites from their user pages? How can Wikipedia control whether or not a user is really just a PR person for a company or an employee trying to get more links to their comapny's website? After all, even if they aren't, does Wikipedia want to continue to promote some companies to the detriment of other companies that aren't being linked to? A Wikipedia external link must carry more value than any equal link just about anywhere else on the web. Since when is Wikipedia a personal blogging service and link farm for the already elite?
New policy suggestion: No external linking from User pages. (Why can't users just mention there favorite sites instead of hyperlink to them, anyway?)
Also, why should companies that meet only one of the three criteria get external links and Wikipedia articles about them and others don't. Anybody can pay to have an "independent" article or two written about them if that is all that it takes. It would be nearly impossible to verify that the article was written without compensation of some sort. Hardware review sites are a prime example. A company sends a free product to a hardware review site to review and Bam! a free link to the retailer's website and an independent article about them and their product. External linking to Fortune 500 or these types of websites and companies seems completely unfair to the thousands and thousands of other businesses out there trying to compete with them. Since when is Wikipedia a directory like DMOZ anyway? Wouldn't the mention of the business be enough? Why the external link also?
New policy suggestion #2: Get rid of all the external links to commerce websites altogether. It is the only solution that is fair to everyone.
I have personally seen Wikipedia articles that at the end have an External Links section and the article creator links to just one commerce website that relates to the article. How fair is that? (Just another reason for New policy suggestion #2.) This particular situation prompted me to create this post. I understand that Wikipedia's policies on these subjects are clearly stated but I believe that the underlying facts detailed above dictate that fairness to all should prevail and Wikipedia can then truly become "only" a source for information as it should be, instead of a vaguely disguised advertiser for Fortune 500 companies and the like. (unsigned, from user:162.40.22.161)
Regarding use of the "nofollow" tag on pages: "For what it's worth, external links on userpages all contain – automatically – the attribute" I cannot find a "nofollow" tag on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon There are embedded links to two commercial web sites. One sells products, the other sells advertizing. I am concerned that Wikipedia will become a resource for those who want to promote their own web sites.
Just to weigh in on the no external links on userpages issue, there can sometimes be valid reasons for having external links on a user page (see for example Interiot's toolserver apps). Sometimes users may also choose to have commonly used resources (journal search engine, other online reference works and so on) linked from their user page for convenience. I don't think, therefore, a blanket ban would be a good idea, a limit to only links that could not be useful for editing purposes, but that would no doubt be a problematic rule to enforce. -- Daduzi talk 05:03, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Would I be correct in assuming fair use images can't be used in userboxes? I've been removing them from userboxes as I see them, but something I saw made me start wondering. — JD don't talk| email] 10:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
The current blocking policy of Wikipedia is that if anyone, whether registered or unregistered user, performs an action deserving of a block from a certain IP, the IP is completely blocked. That is, even veteran registered users in good standing with Wikipedia logging in from that IP will be unable to perform any edits. I strongly recommend that this policy be modified simply to have two types of block: a standard (partial) block, and a full block.
This is because while the current blocking policy works well for American and European users, who have the large majority of IPv4 addresses, most Asian users are confined to having to share IPs with most other users. This should be all and well, considering there is a fair assumption that Asians are largely not as well-connected as Westerners, and even if they used Wikipedia, they wouldn't mostly be using the English Wikipedia.
However, there is a grey area between both worlds. Singapore is highly connected to the internet, with the largely English-educated population frequent users of Wikipedia, as it is being seen more or less as a one-stop resource, or at the least a gathering of knowledge. As a result, their frequent visits to Wikipedia have led to many of them becoming extremely commited users regularly contributing information to Wikipedia. However, there is also a problem. The largest ISP in Singapore, Starhub, uses one IP address for all its users ( 202.156.6.54), due to the constraints in obtaining new IP addresses.
As with everywhere, small minority of users also like to continually vandalise Wikipedia, thus drawing a disproportionate amount of attention to this IP address. Although the talk page has a notice indicating that administrators should refrain from blocking this IP, there are also autoblock features in MediaWiki, causing us to be automatically and fully blocked everytime an explicit act of vandalism is conducted. This causes great reprecussions, especially as repealing such a block is inconvenient given our timezone. Thus, to better filter out antisocial activity such as trolls and vandals without affecting those veteran users with good intentions, I strongly recommend this change of policy.
The standard block will block any newly registered users or unregistered users editing from that IP, while veteran users will still be able to perform edits as normal. This will benefit users of shared IPs greatly, such that the more well-meaning users will not be affected greatly by blocks.
Aware that there might be some even more dedicated elements who will attempt to hack into veteran users' accounts and use them to perform vandalism, the full block will still be available. However, I do hope there will be few situations where the full block will ever be called into play.
Benefactors from this change of policy also include school campuses, where with this new policy, veteran users can continue to contribute regularly while the vandals will be unable to tamper with the massive and awesome databank that Wikipedia is today. Thank you for reading this. Ariedartin JECJY 13:21, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
What's the policy for commercial spam in user spaces? I assumed it was that it's bad, and warned User:Supplements ((talk)) as such, and I'm pretty sure I was right. However, what about spam in user talk pages or archives, such as this? Should it be blanked, completely deleted, or left alone? I'm thinking blanked, but I have no idea.
Please note:
Now that an increasing number of articles are being referenced, I am more frequently questioning exactly what claims a given reference is supposed to be documenting. If a reference footnote is at the end of a paragraph, does it support the entire paragraph, or the last sentence? Should we adopt some sort of markup (perhaps HTML comments?) to disambiguate this? -- Beland 18:01, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I have no hesitation about removing external links as spam, since for the most part they are off-topic, clearly commercial or affilliate linking. However, I just found someone who seems on a compaign to add his site to a number of articles. I removed one, since he was trying to hide/embed the links into the middle of a paragraph. The rest however are under External Links, and there are possibly of value, neverthless it seems a somwhat spammy activity. How do I get another opinion? -- Brat32 02:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I hate the new strikeouts on red links. They look like deleted or contested information, rather than just a link that hasn't yet been created. This is a serious detriment to any article with any red link. Tempshill 15:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Within the last twelve months, Wikipedia articles on US politicians currently in office, and those running for office, have increasingly become mouthpieces for the politicians' campaigns. It's obvious that campaign staffers and volunteers are editing these articles all the time - look for the barely-notable or non-notable lists of beneficial laws introduced; early political history with a brave challenge to difficult odds; lists of faith and community links; streets and days named after the politician; service on committees and task forces.
This is all pretty depressing. The volunteers who make up the bulk of Wikipedia editors have not, in the last year, had the energy or focus to push back the tide of self-promotion that is ruining the current-politician articles, with the probable exception of the very top group of US politicians. I myself have not. A grass roots effort to energetically filter out the propaganda, and keep it out, seems unlikely to beat the continuous pressure from the campaigns. I do not know of a great solution to this other than to force a tag on all articles about "current politicians" (and I realize the definition of this could be broad or narrow) saying Warning: Wikipedia articles about politicians are usually edited pervasively by the politicians' campaign staff and volunteers. This violates Wikipedia policy and is discouraged. Take this article with a larger grain of salt than usual.
The above disclaimer could of course usefully apply to our medical articles or various other categories, but I single out the politician articles because the actors behind these edits have an agenda and so are more persistent than the worst vandals here, and harder to combat because the edits are not obvious vandalism. Tempshill 16:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Please visit Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep to comment, alter and improve this proposal. The original is from m:instruction creep and ported over here in hopes that this will be customized to better fit WP. (Sister project Wikinews has - n:Wikinews:Instruction creep) - Davodd 17:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm just curious is this is against the policy or not. I know you may write and edit biographies of celebrities here on Wikipedia, but, I am curious if one may write and edit biographies of everyday people as well. -- Nekrogami 21:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
A user placed a reference to the launch of Gears of War on the November 12 page, and I removed it with the edit comment "Release of a video game doesn't qualify". They then asked on my talk page:
My feeling is that the launch of video games is too trivial to be added to the events in date articles. There are probably thousands, certainly hundreds, of video games released each year. This particular one does state "It is already considered the most important Xbox 360 game of 2006." but it might be difficult to draw a line for only the most important games. Usually, whether a game is important in the overall history of the platform is only apparent after some years have passed. This one hasn't yet been released.
I've taken this to the Village pump because it potentially affects all the date articles. Anyone got pointers to policy on this matter?- gadfium 00:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I realize that the release of a game isn't quite as influential as say, any of the other events on said page, but they still are pretty big. Halo and Halo 2 were beyond big, and Gears of War is looking to follow suit. There is an extreme amount of excitement in the industry about this game, which is why the games launch is being called "Emergence Day". I really don't want to argue about this anymore, as it's really trivial, but in my opinion, a user-created Encycopledia should let any user post whatever they want, as long as it is accurate. What I posted was accurate. The game is "highly anticipated", and it is being release for the Xbox 360. I didn't say anything about the game itself, and there was no opinion in my edit. But whatever, I'm kind of new to this, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Magus05 - 02:30, 4 August UTC
I propose that we finally begin to employ the Holocene calendar for all of our articles and dates. It may not be standard elsewhere, but we must start somewhere! We will establish the trend and others will follow. Not only should Wikipedia use it, but it should replace the current system in common use everywhere. It is similar to shifting to the metric system. HE clearly is superior to the BC/AD system. Thank you. 129.15.127.254 14:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I've discovered someone who apparently has multiple accounts, he's not doing anything malicious, He's just using the accounts to post his random thoughts and fill the pagees with UserBoxes and pictures. I don't think he has actually yet posted to any article, all that's happening is that each account spends it's time updating it's own or other user's page, or posting to the talk page of his other accounts. Should it be ignored? -- Brat32 16:40, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Template:Db-advert seems a good addition to the ((db)) tag family. -- SB_Johnny | talk 17:46, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I've hobbled the tag now (still there if you want to take a look, but it doesn't add articles to the deletion category any more). Here's an article that's a perfect example of what this tag would be useful for (just found on NPP):
It's not even creative. SB_Johnny | talk 23:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
If any one is intrested Wikipedia:Notability (royalty) is currently working towards creating a notability policy for royalty. Matthew Fenton ( contribs) 20:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I've written a rough draft of this policy to stem the rising flood of bad new articles. Discuss and edit it freely. C. M. Harris 22:17, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
As you are probably aware, there are many slang glossaries on Wikipedia with widespread acceptance, yet virutally all of them violate the following policy:
Wikipedia is not a dictionary
Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a usage or jargon guide. Wikipedia articles are not:
This has created a situation where editors trying to enforce policy frequently nominate such glossaries for deletion, with most of the glossaries surviving the process with a consensus of Keep or No concensus. This ongoing battle has been raging on with respect to slang glossaries for at least the past two years. Yet the glossaries have survived, and more continue to be created. Based on the results of the majority of the Article for Deletion (AfD) discussions, the general concensus seems to be that slang glossaries should have a place on Wikipedia. The relevant policy is no longer consistent with general consensus, and this schism has resulted in a large number of pointless AfD discussions which serve only to waste the time and effort of those involved. When the majority of Wikipedians defy a policy, it is time to reevaluate the policy.
There are quite a few slang glossaries on Wikipedia at this time, some being years old. Here is a partial list:
and of course, my favorite...
Therefore, I propose that the policy be ammended to reflect the defacto acceptance of slang glossaries on Wikipedia. They are here, and based on the results of AfD discussions, they seem to be here to stay. So shouldn't the policy be updated? If the policy was changed to allow slang glossaries or changed to provide for their speedy deletion, either of these solutions would save a lot of time and effort wasted on fruitless AfDs. You are welcome to join this discussion. -- List Expert 23:00, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I've continued this discussion on the talk page of the policy at issue. Please respond at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Slang glossaries. -- List Expert 23:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
do translations by Wikipedians, such as Catullus 1, constitute a violation of WP:NOR and/or WP:NPS? Read the debate at User talk:Sophysduckling#More About Catullus. Also, are the poems of Catullus notable enough to have an article about each one? -- Samael775 19:15, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
An issue arose at Talk: Jim Hawkins that I think to be better addressed here (or perhaps on the mailing list) than in an RfC. A user claiming to be the subject edited his article and the attendant talk page from several IP addresses, each of which, save one, is registered to the BBC, the corporation at which the subject works. An AfD on the article was closed as no consensus, after which the IP editorostensibly the subject—expressed that he no longer desired to edit and, threatening legal action (under some novel legal theory, surely), requested that the {{ notable Wikipedian}} template, referencing that the subject has edited Wikipedia and the user names or IPs with which such editing has been undertaken, be removed.
Because the IP addresses are readily available in the page's history and because the IP editor chose to identify himself as the subject, I don't see anything compelling to militate against our continuing with our present practices vis-à-vis such templates (a cursory look at Category:Notable Wikipedians turns up many templates containing IP addresses, most notably at Talk:Daniel Brandt but also, for example, at Talk:Kenneth Montgomery Keillor and Talk:Siva Vaidhyanathan; another editor at the talk page has disagreed. It is plain, I think, that our current practice, for which a consensus apparently exists, is to include in the {{ notable Wikipedian}} template IP addresses, and, if that practice is to be changed, a discussion involving more than a few editors must be had. Joe 02:02, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I have written this as an essay. If anyone thinks it should be something more, then edit it freely and mazel tov. Ashibaka tock 23:14, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Please consider the following proposal. What is analysis and what is opionion is an important subject if you wish to claim that WP is open.
Wikipedia:New proposal for alternative analysis
I am already. The idea that the administrators will not even discuss an idea which might improve WP and eliviate a major source of critisism, and an anti-Internet philospophy is bewildering. Especially when I agree with them that original articles should be NPOV and sourced and that they should not allow WP to become a blog. But there is a middle ground and I am having a very hard time determining the emotional/philosophical pre-disposition for their unwillingness to face a challenge. It appears at first glance to be a coterie who wish to advertise that they are one thing but in reality are another. On the other hand they may be fearful that any original thought may bring pressure upon the whole endeavor in which case they just need to keep pushing, back off, push again, etc.etc. until the sapiens decide it is better to go after the author than the forum.
I am completly willing to pay the price for the analysis I perform. -- Jb2ndr 11:43, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I just wrote an opinion essay based on a thought that has been bouncing around my head in the last few months. I probably posted it in the wrong place, but for now you can find it on Jimbo Wales' talk page here:
Comments are appreciated. I figure, given the number of people at Wikipedia, that this suggestion been made previously but I haven't seen any discussion of it. -- Ben Houston 19:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
This is the one I am talking about
Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 June 23#British "ethnic" categories again
I will also give the full list of 11 here - at least 10 of them (I'm not fully certain of Monica Ali) are 100% of Bengali parentage on both sides of the family, so no dilution there as occurs frequently in the US: Konnie Huq - Rupa Huq - Iqbal Ahmed - Afshan Azad - Shefali Chowdhury - Muhammad Abdul Bari - Pola Uddin, Baroness Uddin - Akram Khan (dancer) - Eenasul Fateh - Shami Chakrabarti - Monica Ali
I've given further reasons, such as self-identification, strong community identity and homogeneity, etc etc as valid reasons for having this category. But these reasons were all ignored. I repeat, British Bengalis are on a different order of identification compared to something like Swedish Brits.
Finally there is Category:British Asians. If British-Bengalis have no valid reason to exist, I can hardly think of a valid reason for British Asians which is a specifically British construct, and even more artificial at that! -- Peripatetic 17:16, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
(UTC)
I completely agree that, if British Asians is a valid category, so should be British Bengalis as a subcategory of "British Asians". Already there are Category:British Parsis and Category:Pakistani British people. So, I don't see any reason not to have British Bengalis as a category. Thanks. -- Ragib 22:00, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
The policy of only including facts from new articles has lead DYK to be comprised of uninteresting, obscure and very locale-specific facts. I think it is important to keep in mind that the general knowledge of the average administrator is on completely different level to that of the average main page reader.
I would suggest that we change DYK to have the first bullet be on "middle school level", the next two on high school level and leave the fourth and fifth to come from new articles.
The following is an example of what the first three bullets could look like:
Yes, I know the purpose of "DYK isn't ro rehash widely-known facts". I am saying the purpose should be to provide information that will be interesting to the largest possible audience and this layered approach which include a portion of what Wikipedia veterans will call widely-known facts is one way of doing that. - sYndicate talk 23:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I am not saying the size should be increased. I'm saying the level of obscurity of the first three points should be toned down so that more people (especially younger people) will find them interesting. - sYndicate talk 12:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
No problem. I am not saying we should change the articles to a "less than adult level". I am saying we should include some facts in DYK that some people would actually be able to respond 'yes' to. The average main page reader will not know '..that there is a pattern to the names of the class of medications called "monoclonal antibodies"', but more importantly, (s)he will not care. By having different tiers in DYK, the section can appeal to both the average reader and people who will find the above mentioned example interesting. - sYndicate talk 13:58, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea very much. It could bring many new readers into wiki-addiction. Which I think is a good thing =) -- euyyn 02:16, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
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Is there a policy on having your email and mailing address on your userpage? Is it allowed? I could see where it might not be allowed because after all it might be someone else's address. I didn't see anything about that on the userpage page. Herostratus 05:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
If you wish a page in the history section only to be deleted(i.e. you are happy with current edit but not the old one) is this possible?
I, like many other WikiPedians, no longer upload images. The whole process is so bloody auto-matic, it's silly. I upload an image and within ten minutes bloody Orphanbot is shitting all over me telling me that my 'media' will be deleted in 7 days if I don't add so and so fukin' tag or link ETC. I'm kinda sick of it. Whilst I know that WikiPedia walks a fine line in the whole Fair use thing, it would be nice if I wasn't gangbaged by robots everry time I uploaded an image. Hol e in the wall 19:53, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Editing the current reliable source of any controlled ascertainment of knowledge is unduly the truth if all the edits collect the same facts which connect with an absolute truth about the article. For instance pump in a chemical analysis with a acidic perception could alter the sincerity of the outcome. So commerce may have a pump up volume where an encyclopedia could be more intricated like funk and wagondalls. -- Beyruling 21:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
You know what would be REALLY great is that if Orphanbot told me where I could see the policy. Hol e in the wall 19:24, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Comments on
Wikipedia:Choosing intentional red links would be greatly appreciated on the
talk page. Seahen
Neon
Merlin 06:16, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I am sure that this subject has probably been done to death in the past, but I ask for your forbearance to broach it one more time. Recently there was a vote at Talk:Syracuse to determine whether the name should link directly to the original city, or whether it should be an out and out disambig page, with the original Syracuse being retitled Syracuse, Italy with the other main ones remaining Syracuse, New York and Syracuse University. The vote went 15-8 in favour of Syracuse linking directly to the original city, but somehow, the New Yorkers had their way and the original Syracuse must go to the cumbersome Syracuse, Italy.
Now I am aware that Syracuse, New York is now much larger than the original Syracuse, and that there is world class uni there. It is also probably true that far more Americans would be searching for one or other than the orginal Syracuse, but on the other hand, I look at the fact that all other Syracuses are named after the original one that has existed continuously for 2,700 years, was once the largest Greek speaking city in antiquity, was the imperial capital of hte Byzantine Empire for a short period, has a UNESCO World Heritage listing - amongst many other notable facts of great significance. I look also at the fact that Syracuse, New York is an acceptable titling in all situations, whereas the same cannot be said for Syracuse, Italy, bearing in mind that Syracuse has only been part of Italy for 145 years, and has actually existed for 20 times that length.
Perhaps it is fair to conclude that Syracuse being a disambiguation page is the most equitable result possible. I would agree if that were a policy applied consistently throughout wikipedia, but there are 100s upon 100s of English village names that point directly to the orginal villages when their namesakes in the new world outgrew them many decades ago. There is a massive inconsistency here. At a minimum it is a clear cut case of Anglo-American focus, but at worst, there is something decidedly unsavoury about it all.
I welcome all views. ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 10:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
A discussion was started at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 July 2#Template:Age about whether a biographical article should contain a person's current age. While the template was kept there was no consensus about whether is should be used in articles. The discussion continued at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies)#age where there were no objections to forbidding printing someones current age in an article and finalized in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/(biographies)#Out-of-date material. Now there is a discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 July 18#Template:Bha about another template which inherits from age which has no use other than to state person's current age. I would appreciate community input on this matter in order to generate a wider consensus. Jon513 17:56, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
As a general point, I would agree with putting ages. Asking the reader to calculate the age is just laziness on the part of the editor. This mostly applies to people who have died though. If you know the exact birth and death dates, you can give their age when they died, and the age at key points in their lives. That is useful information. I do agree though, that there are issues of updating for the age of living people. If you really must put ages in, link them to a specific event. Eg. "J. R. R. Tolkien started writing The Lord of the Rings in 1937 when he was 45, finished it 12 years later in 1949, and the final volume was published in 1955 when he was 63 years old."
So for current ages, find the most recent event mentioned in the article that has a year attached to it, and put the age there. eg. from Steven Spielberg: "On June 14, 2006 it was confirmed that the 60-year-old Spielberg had already begun working on an space travel movie titled Interstellar." (my bits added in bold).
This is an example of a general point that thinking about how to write and organise information can avoid problems like this. Carcharoth 01:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
No! No! No!
Kaldari 17:44, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
It isn't necessary to give someone's current age at all. In nearly all cases it is marginal. This would just create a maintenance burden that probably wouldn't be met. Calsicol 00:02, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
The discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Maltese nobility has been re-opened. Uncle G 18:52, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
What to do with non-commercial images from before May 19 2005? They cannot be speedied if they were uploaded before that date. Should they be taken to Images for deletion, Possibly unfree images, or copyright problems? Its not that clear where these images should end up. I'm leaning heavily toward copyright problems at this point. Any advice on what to do would be most helpful, as I'd like to clean out the massive noncommercial-only collection of images sitting on wikipedia from pre-May 19 2005. Kevin_b_er 03:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Pardon the bonehead question, but what is the significance of May 19, 2005? 23skidoo 17:55, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Freakofnurture ( talk · contribs) just made an undiscussed, unilateral change to the Deletion policy discussion time for Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion, writing "seven days (in practice, more like two)". There have been numerous complaints and Deletion reviews over Freak's rapid and unwarranted closures at RfD.
Many of us, with other responsibilities in life, only check our XfD pages once or twice per week. For special cases, with clearly defined requirements, there is Speedy deletion.
I oppose turning all RfDs into speedy deletions. The official policy is seven days, and should remain seven days, to give editors time to participate. Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#RfD discussion time.
Ever since the removal of the scandalous WP:SOCK rewrite, the policy has gone back to its old inconsistent nomenclature. Sock puppet is taken to many any alternate account in the introduction and description of legitimate and forbidden uses. The identification parts then treat all sock puppets as being forbidden alternate accounts. The handling parts then go back to treating any alternate account as a sock puppet. Sock puppet, sock-puppet, and sockpuppet are all used interchangeably. Most tags on the page treat sock puppets as if they were forbidden, with things like "This user is a confirmed sock puppet ... and has been blocked indefinitely", implying that the block was due to being a sock puppet. "Sock puppetry" is nearly always used to refer to forbidden uses.
As I previously listed on the talk page for the policy, I would like to propose changing to the use of "sock puppet" to mean an alternate account used for forbidden purposes, "alternate account" to refer to alternate accounts in general, and "legitimate alternate account" to refer to legitimate alternate accounts. I present the following reasons for this:
I realize that this is not an issue that interests most people, but I would really like to resolve this issue, and am personally rather offended that policy sanctions what is essentially a personal attack against me and quite a few other users. -- Philosophus T 00:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
There is currently a TFD discussion on Template:Photo, which posts the following text: "Warning! This article contains pictures you might not want to see. If they offend you, you might be advised to leave the article." The significant potential impact of such a disclaimer needs to be addressed by more than just the few TFD voters who have thus far participated. Postdlf 02:22, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
What is the Wikipedia policy on this Pearl necklace (sexuality)? Bubba73 (talk), 04:33, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm involved in an editing dispute and would like to know if an editor posting to bulletin boards on websites outside Wikipedia in order to invite people to a Wikipedia AfD or DRV and have them post keep "votes" for his or her article violates any Wikipedia policy? 71.38.130.156 15:35, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the info and the template--that would have come in handy. It appears there is no WP:Foo I can cite about this then? 71.38.130.156 16:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for. Katr67 16:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion going on about amending point 8 of the fair use criteria. See for more information. Wikipedia:Fair use criteria/Amendment 2 Garion96 (talk) 15:39, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
There's a tag and entire guideline for when the subject of an article edits it, but what about when paid employees or volunteers of an organization or company edit their article(s)? This happens more frequently than we probably realize (I've directly dealt with it a handful of times, personally) and takes on many forms, from a publicist dumping a resume of their client to a paid copy writer totally revamping (and superficially, greatly improving) an article at the behest of their employer.
This naturally raises WP:NPOV issues, and can potentially be embarassing for companies that do, and sometimes for Wikipedia as well. I was thinking that it would be useful to have a guideline that would inform companies and organizations of the best ways to correct errors and biases in articles related to them, and also to help Wikipedians develope better ways of dealing with "corporate editing" when it is detected.
There does seem to be a lot of confusion when this happens, even at the highest levels of the project, it's been unclear if we should just axe anything written by paid employees, try to integrate it into the articles if it's unbiased, or what. The more I think about it, we really do need a guideline on this topic, and I don't think it would be instruction creep, since it is a specific solution to a speficic problem.
Thoughts? -- W.marsh 18:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Why don't we ban all identified shared IPs? Whenever somebody loads a page from such an IP, they can get a special template inserted at the top of the page (maybe a box similar in color to the "You have new messages" box) asking them to register an account before allowing them to edit (or rather, just put that notice up if they ever click on "Edit this page"). It's not hard to make an account (username, password, confirm password, enter), or to login every session (since they're sharing the computer and probably won't keep cookies). Just to make sure it's as easy as possible, if somebody starts making an edit, but forgot about logging in, after hitting the preview or save button, they should be prompted to login, and they shouldn't lose their edits, or have to hit the back button to reload them: "Continue to preview page".
Should I cross-post this idea somewhere else? Xaxafrad 06:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Certainly policy-related, so thought I'd announce it here. I noticed while responding to an RfC that this conversation is alive and heated, but taking place in many different places (with the same users going from page to page in some cases), and of course causes an edit-war or two. SB Johnny 11:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I would like to discuss an issue that I have been struggling with for a while now. It involves including the same Article in both a Main Category and a Subcategory.
Example: Jane Doe dies from breast cancer. ‘ Category: Deaths from breast cancer’ is added to her Category box, but not the ‘Category: Cancer deaths’. Then, when I click on the ‘Category: Deaths from breast cancer’, her name is included in the list. But, if I click on the ‘Category: Cancer deaths’ she is not included.
What I am wanting by adding her name to both Categories is a separate list of ALL persons who died from breast cancer, and a separate list of ALL persons who died from cancer. What is the problem with including the same Article in both a Main Category and a Subcategory? Help!
Michael David 13:39, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
The policy of allowing anon-IP users to edit comes up on this page quite often, usually by those frustrated by acts of vandalism infliced on our beloved wikipedia by editors who take advantage of this policy.
Soooo, I'm wondering if there might be interest in a wikiproject and/or cabal devoted to following up on IP edits. Examples:
Anyway, this is sort of tongue-in-cheek, but maybe not so much. Every time the "IP issue" comes up, it eventually ends up with someone saying "well, that's the way it is, because Jimbo says so". Personally, I agree with Jimbo for the most part (with the exception that I do think that frequent-vandal IPs should simply be permanently blocked), the reality is that (god forbid) Jimbo could get run over by a bus tomorrow (or perhaps die of old age in a few decades), and it might not be a bad thing for the "anti-IP crowd" to be able to build their community up for the inevitable debate. IOW, yes, I'm makin trouble, but I'm makin trouble because I think it's better to have the trouble out in the open, rather than simmering slowly towards a rather unpleasant eruption in the future. SB Johnny 17:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I have created a proposal at Wikipedia:Copyright review, based off Wikipedia:Copyright problems, to merge the copyright verification processes together. Please discuss the proposal on its talk page, not here. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 19:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I added the Image:Joe Bastardi.jpg, but am now not sure if it qualifies as fair use? Could someone review. Hello32020 22:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I am now addicted to this stuff, Wikipedia as it's called. I lost my house, my family, my job, my clothes, even my computer! What can I do? I keep reading books and I get confused because I can't find the little edit button on the page. Can you recomend a doctor?
Help me.
User:Dfrg.msc User talk:Dfrg.msc 07:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Look mate, I dont even know. User:Dfrg.msc User talk:Dfrg.msc
I'm having a discussion at Talk:Narbonic over whether Wikipedia:External links says we shouldn't use external links in article texts. The user I'm discussing with says there's nothing there that says an external link can't be used, only that it's preferred to use an internal link than an external one.
Does this mean that where an article doesn't exist, people should feel free to use external links to websites? Or should WP:EL be changed to make this clearer? (I left a message at Wikipedia talk:External links but nobody responded). Fagstein 07:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone help in pointing me to a policy that describes how wikipedia constructs URL's? I need to be able to test URL blocking software for a particular set of directories within a domain whilst allowing generic access elsewhere. Does a document exist?
I solemely requested for a comprehensive project writing. Thanks for your usual coorperation. Bye for now.
Do it yourself, that's what Wikipedia is all about.-- Zaorish 21:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
How about writing it into the wikipedia codebase that all talk pages (once created) are forced to have the templates {{talkheader}} and {{todo}} imbedded at the top? I believe this will reduce lengthly discussions, alowing them to get to the point, as well as reducing flame wars, and showing that it is useful to sign posts. A lot of problems could hereon be (at least partially) solved in one. Idealy, if there is a way to only force the templates to be displayed at talk pages that have already been started by a human editor, that should absolutly be done (so as to not give false indication that a discussion has started). Is this possible? - Jack (talk) 20:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I would like to solicit wider comment on This conversation on AN/I where a third party was adding links to their site, containing last will/testaments of famous people. We need to come to a consensus on if this appropriate or not, and so I asked the CEO of the company to hold off on adding more such links until we can discuss it. -- Improv 21:35, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
After a couple of recent AfDs on fiction related articles, a few editors are complaining about how WP:FICTION is affecting these articles. The most recent of these is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kiddy Grade characters. Some editors think the guidelines could be tweaked a little in regards to minor characters, others are complaining that the guideline interferes with the create of subarticle stubs and should be eliminated or completely revised. So I'm asking for additional input Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction) about the issues. -- TheFarix ( Talk) 13:15, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
This is probably a stupid question, so thanks for your patience in answering. ^_^ -- Zaorish 18:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Golbez. That's what I'd assumed, but I feel we should commit to one eventually...I'll think more on this. Anyway, thanks for the clarification.-- Zaorish 21:24, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Methinks this is one of those debates for which there will be no solution so long as the Internet remains an international forum. 23skidoo 01:45, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
I propose we table this idea ;-) -- Carnildo 03:44, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Free-for-all on who makes the article first. Which is why gasoline is the aritlce title, instead of petrol, and why us Americans still haven't been able to get Orange (colour) changed to Color, because the WP:MOS states that whoever makes the first significant changes gets to decide the style. Hbdragon88 08:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
To clarify first: I'm fully behind the concept of What Wikipedia is not. Contrary to the opinion of one writer, I suspect that What Wikipedia is not is a shorter and ultimately less censoring list than trying to define everything that Wikipedia is.
Yet I'm wondering whether thought has been given to what an encyclopedia, and a wiki encyclopaedia, is. It seems to be assumed that we all know that what an encyclopaedia is, yet some articles deviate considerably from what I believe I read in The Guidelines, yet not from the more specific guideline required.
Let me give it a shot:
An encyclopaedia article provides a layperson with a working understanding, a clarification, of a defined term.
This definition captures a sense implied widely in the Style Guidelines by reminders that the audience of an encyclopaedia is diverse. However it makes a more distinct stand than the current guideline against the several articles that offer almost strictly academic or scientific treatises on a topic; these are clearly not aimed at a general audience (or designed only to impress them but not necessarily to further their knowledge).
I can imagine that this position may, erm, create debate. Especially since I believe I have seen a guideline that acknowledged that an encyclopaedia was a resource for research.
I agree with that position, but surely we don't understand the term 'research' to be unrestricted. 'Research'--in terms related to an encyclopaedia--might mean high-school or even early university students. We surely don't mean academic research in the more advanced sense because that population has its own considerable private resources expressly for that purposes.
In my view, too many of the articles here have used this forum to offer rambling, pedantic academic surveys of their field, rather than focusing on clarification and enlightenment of a general reader.
I'm being too harsh on some authors: what is likely happening is that these authors are having trouble marshalling the diverse ideas into some coherent whole. In either case, I believe the central idea of 'clarification' may be a helpful reminder that a survey may not accomplish the desired goal. "Write to Clarify a General Audience" should be a guideline. "Not an academic or specialised reference" should be a "NOT".
Apologies. Forgot to sign my initial post. -- 207.81.127.107 22:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Would it be possible to create a simpler version of Wiki for (and maintained by) kids?
I can think of a lot of answers to that question.
1. Yes. The Wiki software is free, just download it from SourceForge, put it on your server and go.
2. Maybe. Apply for a wiki at WikiCities.
3. Probably not. Consider the amount of childish behavior on display right here at Wikipedia, among adults.
-- Zaorish 19:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
What do you do when there are conflicting sources, and they are all reliable? For instance, at Savielly Tartakower#Quotations, I found three references that said Tarakower made the comment about all rook endings being drawn, but I also found three equally good references saying that Tarrash said it. Bubba73 (talk), 21:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
On AfD I have nominated a group of articles on the grounds that they violate WP:OR, specifically synthesis of published material serving to advance a position. I was hoping to obtain a better understanding of how this policy should be interpreted.
According to a short discussion on one particular talk page, the creation of the aforementioned articles was encouraged by a college professor in his class to address why universal health care proposals have been defeated despite overwhelming public support for universal coverage. He admits that he devised a common article template for his students to use in order to answer this question or "puzzle", and the edit histories reveal a flurry of referenced assertions in the various sections of each article. Given that the templates conclude with a section entitled "Why the window of opportunity for health reform closed", I inferred that his belief that "health reform is/was an opportunity" was the position being advanced. I understand that research may be needed to make an article factual, but is this stringing together of facts original research even if not done be a single editor? Medtopic 05:47, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
I have been entering BOTH Categories, ‘Deaths by firearm’ & ‘Suicides by firearm’ in the same Article. As a result I have been getting some grief from some editors saying they don’t belong in the same Article; that ‘Suicides by firearm’ is a subcategory of ‘Deaths by firearm’. If this is so, I believe it should be changed. ‘Suicides by firearm’ (like ‘Suicides by hanging’) is a METHOD of suicide and, therefore, should be a Subcategory of ‘Suicides’. Thoughts?
With a couple of high-visibility examples fresh in my mind ( an old version of Medal of Honor: Flag and the current Irish bog Psalter), I'd like to start using a template like the following:
I haven't made or proposed a cleanup template before, and I'm not sure what principles I ought to have in mind. Thoughts? Melchoir 09:05, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, since no one has yelled at me yet, behold {{ newspaper}}. Melchoir 05:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, the driving idea behind the template is to warn against imitating news style. Whatever people read, they will always try to insert that style into Wikipedia. Essays, advertisements, biographies, video game guides, textbooks -- and newspapers. If we frankly alert editors to the unconscious root of their mistakes, they have an opportunity to think about how an encyclopedia is different. Melchoir 21:33, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Please discuss this new proposal here!-- Steven Fruitsmaak | Talk 12:13, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Some of these are just pure spam, some apparently aren't, but there seems to be an awful lot of links to blogs floating around (google result).
There are also articles on blogs, such as types of blogs, blogs by country, etc., that have little content other than very long lists of external links (see, e.g., gardening blog, and Romanian blogosphere). What's the policy on this sort of thing? Do these all need cleaning up or VfDs? -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd like a second opinion on this web site ( http://www.healthfreedomlaw.com). Does it fulfill the criteria to be a reliable source? David D. (Talk) 16:21, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I know that I have read somewhere, policy, guideline or discussion, that having a section headed trivia in an article, with a list, was unencyclopaedic. That instead if the item was important enough it should be worked into the body of the article. Someone is challenging this and I cannot find where I originally read this. Help please. Doc 23:56, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I decided to check an article on cyanide and happiness only to learn that it has been deleted. If Wikipedia has any article deleted due to google hits and alexia rating, how will it ever be a good source of knowledge. It won't.
Mostly already implemented. -- Qu e ntin Smith 10:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
To avaid a revert war on the bittorrent page I'm bringing the question of trademark notices here. Background: "BitTorrent" is a trademark and I work for the owner of that mark. Trademarks that are not activly defended are subject to possible dilution and eventual loss so I added a trademark notice to the BitTorrent" page. It's been reverted twice. The third time I put a small ™ and a footnote but that too was reverted by a user who seems uninterested in meaningful discussion. So 1) what is wikipedia policy on trademark notices 2) faced with a letter from a trademark owners corporate legal what would wikipedia do? Sorry if there is help on this already - I couldn't find it. Trapper 19:20, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
It is my considered opinion that the inclusion of "current" team rosters in sports articles serves no encyclopedic purpose. Wikipedia articles are intended to be "timeless". Frequently the rosters in the articles are out of date, and will become increasingly so if the individual fan who is maintaining the roster happens to stop. We should abolish "current rosters" from sports team articles on the grounds that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia rather than a sports gazetteer. Kelly Martin ( talk) 16:47, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
If the current team roster is going to included, how about doing it as a separate article, such as St. Louis Cardinals current team roster or St. Louis Cardinals (2006)? Maurreen 15:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
It would appear that lists of words violate the provision that Wikipedia should not have articles which define individual words, nor should it include Lists of such definitions. However, we have Category:Lists of words, Category:Lists_of_slang and Category:Lists of phrases, among others. Policy is descriptive, not prescriptive. Is this policy still being applied (in which case, all of these articles must be deleted), or not (in which case the wording of the policy needs to be changed). I have raised the issue at Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Lists_of_Words. Guettarda 21:49, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi...Can anyone tell me which of the world's timezones wikipedia uses when an article mentions a specific time? Are they standardized to one timezone?
thanks!
We have a controversy brewing over at China and People's Republic of China. I would like China to cover people, history, culture, and geography, and People's Republic of China to cover politics, government, and economy. This split is motivated by the current political situation where the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China both claim to be the rightful rulers of all of China. In particular my moving of the Culture section from People's Republic of China to China has prompted a strong reaction from one editor who called it vandalism. Cooler and wiser heads are requested. -- Ideogram 21:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
There is a currently an ongoing dispute at Talk:Democracy (disambiguation) about what properly goes into a disambiguation page. The article is currently under RFC, and comments are requested. Thanks! — Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 22:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Categories that are members of Category:Sports in the United States by city tend to contain a bunch of articles all sorted under the first letter of the city name. For example, the Category:Sports in Baltimore contains a ton of articles under "B" for "Baltimore", which seems redundant. It would make more sense to me to sort the articles under the team name instead, so "Baltimore Americans" would be under "A" and "Baltimore S.C." would be under "S". This was brought to my attention when all of the teams in Category:Sports in Rochester, New York were actually re-alphabetized under "R" instead of under the team name where they were previously. Any thoughts? Powers 14:54, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
There is a disagreement on Go about what categories Go should be in. I'll let the protagonists speak for themselves if they want to, as they have rehearsed the arguments. Stephen B Streater 07:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Postdlf wrote: I get really annoyed by how unfocused these discussions become; whether we should on our own initiative decide that certain content should not be provided to children, whether and why certain schools may have blocked Wikipedia and what we can and should do about it, and what we are legally permitted to do overlaps only superficially. The analysis is completely different for each issue and they can't be discussed all in one cacophony.
How about all the folks objecting to:
on Wikipedia--setting up your own mirrors, imposing the editorial policies, POV, and agendas of your choice, and documenting human knowledge as you see fit (excluding those bits which you find heretical, offensive, or otherwise inconvenient)? Think of all the wikis we could sprout! That way, those of us who want to write a serious, comprehensive encyclopedia can do so, without all the tiresome arguments of how Wikipedia needs to get rid of X? GFDL means you can fork off whenever you like, taking the whole 200Gb or so, and start your stuff there. If Wikipedia were to remove everything which some demagogue thinks objectionable to children (or to adults--"protect the kids" is mainly a phenomenon in Western democracies where it is used as a rationale to justify circumvention of the free speech laws), we'd have nothing left.
An encyclopedia for children is a great idea. But Wikipedia should, first and foremost, be an encyclopedia for mature adults (though not an adults-only encyclopedia; there is a difference)--just because some net-nanny doesn't like our editorial policies and decisions, doesn't mean we should bend over to please every censor in the world. Those with legal authority over Wikipedia's servers in Florida, we ought to watch; however, I'm not aware of any attempt to bust Wikipedia as a porn site. As a general reference work; Wikipedia easily passes the lemon test, and likely has little to worry about. (Any material which doesn't pass the lemon test, such as the occasional groatse post, ought to be removed; but about this there is little controversy).
My apologies if the above rant skirts regulations a bit. But I'm in a grumpy mood today. :) -- EngineerScotty 21:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
In all the above debate (now removed) most people were not arguing that wikipedia was equivalent to a porn site. That was the strawman set up as people were not willing to address the actual argument. i.e. wikipedia could be more kid friendly. David D. (Talk) 21:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Just a small straw poll, as I was thinking the other day. I will take no position on this, I just want to see what Wikipedians in general think. This isn't a question of policy really, just of personal preference.
The question is, which would you rather have as an article (as a general question):
1. Reasonably well written, useful, and expansive article that is nearly completely lacking in sources.
or
2. Short, less useful article that is fully sourced and highly accurate.
Dark Shikari 13:37, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi folks. I am fairly new to WP though I 've tried to add whatever I know to whatever I could think of. I noticed how pages with content for a very mature audience might be accessible to young people. Shouldn't there be safeguards against this. Perhaps there should be a warning about age requirements before entering such pages. I must clarify that I am not talking about sexuality here but offensive language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bunty.Gill ( talk • contribs)
We already have a site disclaimer. I don't see why we should sink to grundyism. -- Tony Sidaway 17:27, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Maybe we should just put the answer to this question in a template (like user:Raul654/protection)- I'm getting really tired of having to retype the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again. Raul654 17:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Assuming that Wikipedia hasn't violated any laws, and so is in no danger of prosecution, what exactly is the "danger"? Postdlf 17:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I have proposed these two images be made into templates by anyone that knows how to do it. These images should flag pages that may not be appropriate for children. File:Wikipedia-Children12.png Ashwin Narasimhan 18:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
That is exactly what I meant Postdtf. If a children's Wikipedia is created, we are not going to need these, because, that propably will not be blocked by parental control programs. If we don't flag pages, eliminate offensive content all together, or create a children's wikipedia, Wikipedia will be of no use to children any more. Ashwin Narasimhan 18:30, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
There is no subject matter that I wouldn't want to see. I would be benefited by having Wikipedia unblocked, because my school blocks Wikipedia, which is still my primary source of information. Ashwin Narasimhan 18:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
We should encourage editors to make use of the linkimage tool for pornographic images. Johntex\ talk 19:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
This has nothing to do with what any particular person finds offensive. It is a discussion about the fact that wikipedia is blocked by insitutions or parents and thus many children have no access to the resource. I agree, a children's wikipedia that is tame enough not to be blocked would be a useful addition to the wikipedia family. Above Postdlf asked "Why do they block it? What exactly, in your opinion, would have to change for them to unblock it? " One very good reason that wikipedia gets blocked is the weird things people put on their user page (see an example of this on Cyde Weys page in the Explore section top right). Whether one finds this kind of stuff offensive or not, it is hard to argue that this will not cause school to block wikipedia on their computers. David D. (Talk) 19:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps we should cut to the core of the issue. I suspect that some of the folks participating in this discussion feel that there are some things that simply should not be in the encyclopedia because they find them offensive. If that's the situation, can we get to that now rather than later? It'll save a lot of time. If not, then we might as well get that question out of the way now. - CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 20:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
There is no easy resolve for this issue. It's a cultural thing. A naked breast might not upset a German parent, might anger an American parent, and might outrage someone from an even more conservative country (pardon the stereotypes). I remember the one semester I spent in Germany in sixth grade. Our biology book had real photos of naked 5, 15, and 25 year-olds of both sexes to demonstrate human development. - newkai | talk | contribs 20:28, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I get really annoyed by how unfocused these discussions become; whether we should on our own initiative decide that certain content should not be provided to children, whether and why certain schools may have blocked Wikipedia and what we can and should do about it, and what we are legally permitted to do overlaps only superficially. The analysis is completely different for each issue and they can't be discussed all in one cacophony. Postdlf 21:00, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Rather than try to find a good place to post this, I'll drop it down here. I'm opposed to censoring any thing short of pornography on Wikipedia. When I was in high school (back in the day), Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World were removed from the school library because of the sexual content (I will leave finding the sexual content in Nineteen Eighty-Four as an execise for the reader). -- Donald Albury( Talk) 03:09, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates. I believe this is the correct and proper answer. I've created WP:CAUTION as a redirect to this. Whenever it comes up, we can just say "see WP:CAUTION". We could perhaps create more rudely worded redirects (several come to mind), but WP:BITE also comes to mind. -- Rick Block ( talk) 03:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
A stable version test is currently underway regarding the article Elephant. The discussion of stable versions is being held at Wikipedia talk:Stable versions now. — xaosflux Talk 03:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Is this right? A fairuse New York City coat of arms image was removed from this navigational template for specialized NYC public schools. All transcluded instances of this template are of course in articlespace - articles on the eight schools and the test you take to get into them. Image remover Durin argues in his explanatory essay as follows:
Well, perhaps the remedy should be to remove such inclusion if/when detected, not to remove images from the template altogether? I understand and respect copyright law, but this really is copyright paranoia IMO. - CrazyRussian talk/ email 14:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
{{
mainspaceonly|[[Image:Foo]]}}
, the image will only be shown in the main article namespace and not on the template page or in any other namespace. Again, this should never be used for purely decorative images, since that would not be fair use, but I think a reasonable person can respect the New York infobox.
Dragons flight 22:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)I really am fed up reading this garbage about how the inclusion of a visual image in a template is decorative. It usually isn't. Because people have different settings on computers and browsers they often find that some templates' headlines are not clearly readable; one browser I used to use reduced most templates to unreadable spider-writing. In some cases, the use of a visual image is definitionary, i.e., it in visual form communicates the topic of the template for those who cannot read the headline, or who may be young and not fully understand the a complex headline. The use of images purely as definitionary visual aids is lawful under fair use when the image in question communicates. However if the image is obscure and so possesses no recognitionary value then in law it would be deemed decorative and then would be a breach of fair use. Using a visual image that, for example, showed that a template is about royalty, if that image is universally and unambiguously communicative through worldwide recognition, is perfectly allowed under fair use and would not be deemed in law decorative. Using a visual image that is unknown, not instantly recognisable and does not contextualise and communicate, would be deemed decorative and so an abuse of the law. That is the opinion of numerous legal experts I know, who think WP's interpretation of the law on this issue as meaning fair use images cannot be used in templates, is patent and utter nonsense. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 22:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Is fan art based on copywritten works GFDLable? This is an example in question... Image:6teen-tricia.png. -- Zanimum 17:31, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Fanart and fanfiction are all derivative works, and, strictly speaking, are copyright violations unless the copyright holder has explicitly given permission for the creation of the derivative works. That means that in almost all cases fanart and fanfiction can never be licenced under the GFDL. Blank Verse 03:40, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
A major change was made to Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories and subcategories by a user who, to say the least, does not like the guideline or its emphasis. I reverted it, but I wanted to mention it here. The user seems to want to policy to fit a handful of articles he is interested in, rather than understanding it is a policy for the whole encyclopedia. (There are a couple typos on the page that could be fixed). 2005 20:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
A proposal has been written to create stable, linked-to versions of good and featured articles using links to the versions that were certified as good or featured. This policy would avoid forking of articles, cleanly preserve article history, and keep articles as dynamic as ever, while at the same time giving the benefits to article credibility that stabilization is intended to give. Feedback is appreciated. JDoorj a m Talk 20:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
In the article July 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting, an editor has objected to the use of the phrase "unborn child" as POV and replaced it with the word "fetus." The context is that a pregnant woman was shot in the arm when she covered her belly with her arms to protect her progeny. The question here is: is the phrase "unborn child" inherently POV and should it be listed at Wikipedia:Words to avoid? My own sense is that "unborn child" carries no POV in an article that is entirely unrelated to abortion, contraception, etc. Aesthetically speaking, unborn child seems much better than fetus and using medical terminology is unnecessary. However, I'm curious to hear other editor's opinions. GabrielF 21:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Keep in mind that pregnant mothers and their family and friends think of the fetus as a child. "Fetus" is a biological or medical term used to refer to the young of any animal, not just humans. The shot mother wasn't trying to protect some fetus, she was trying to protect her baby. This can be avoided in general use by referring to it in the more usual way, not affected by abortion debates. For this example, the best sort of sentence would be like "this pregnant mother was trying to protect the child she was carrying". When a mother intends to have the child, there is no reason to suggest that it is not a child and there is no reason to muddle the matter. — Centrx→ talk • 22:29, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm partial to Centrix and FearEireann's sentiments. The power and POV in both phrases is inherently tied into the abortion debate. Apart from that debate, context is the key--otherwise you are needlessly interjecting the abortion debate into foreign subjects. In an article about fetal development, it would be inappropriate to try and interject "unborn child" into a medical/scientific article. In the context of the Seattle Shootings, the mother was acting in a maternal matter of protecting what she perceived as her unborn child. That was an emotive action and describing the baby as an unborn child in contrast to a fetus is appropriate. Agne 23:03, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I was just wondering how it is that Wikipedia can have a policy like this: Wikipedia is not an advertising service. Promotional articles about yourself, your friends, your company or products; or articles written as part of a marketing or promotional campaign, may be deleted in accordance with our deletion policies. For more information, see Wikipedia:Spam. and at the same time allow external links on article pages as well as individual users who post external links to sites from their user pages? How can Wikipedia control whether or not a user is really just a PR person for a company or an employee trying to get more links to their comapny's website? After all, even if they aren't, does Wikipedia want to continue to promote some companies to the detriment of other companies that aren't being linked to? A Wikipedia external link must carry more value than any equal link just about anywhere else on the web. Since when is Wikipedia a personal blogging service and link farm for the already elite?
New policy suggestion: No external linking from User pages. (Why can't users just mention there favorite sites instead of hyperlink to them, anyway?)
Also, why should companies that meet only one of the three criteria get external links and Wikipedia articles about them and others don't. Anybody can pay to have an "independent" article or two written about them if that is all that it takes. It would be nearly impossible to verify that the article was written without compensation of some sort. Hardware review sites are a prime example. A company sends a free product to a hardware review site to review and Bam! a free link to the retailer's website and an independent article about them and their product. External linking to Fortune 500 or these types of websites and companies seems completely unfair to the thousands and thousands of other businesses out there trying to compete with them. Since when is Wikipedia a directory like DMOZ anyway? Wouldn't the mention of the business be enough? Why the external link also?
New policy suggestion #2: Get rid of all the external links to commerce websites altogether. It is the only solution that is fair to everyone.
I have personally seen Wikipedia articles that at the end have an External Links section and the article creator links to just one commerce website that relates to the article. How fair is that? (Just another reason for New policy suggestion #2.) This particular situation prompted me to create this post. I understand that Wikipedia's policies on these subjects are clearly stated but I believe that the underlying facts detailed above dictate that fairness to all should prevail and Wikipedia can then truly become "only" a source for information as it should be, instead of a vaguely disguised advertiser for Fortune 500 companies and the like. (unsigned, from user:162.40.22.161)
Regarding use of the "nofollow" tag on pages: "For what it's worth, external links on userpages all contain – automatically – the attribute" I cannot find a "nofollow" tag on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon There are embedded links to two commercial web sites. One sells products, the other sells advertizing. I am concerned that Wikipedia will become a resource for those who want to promote their own web sites.
Just to weigh in on the no external links on userpages issue, there can sometimes be valid reasons for having external links on a user page (see for example Interiot's toolserver apps). Sometimes users may also choose to have commonly used resources (journal search engine, other online reference works and so on) linked from their user page for convenience. I don't think, therefore, a blanket ban would be a good idea, a limit to only links that could not be useful for editing purposes, but that would no doubt be a problematic rule to enforce. -- Daduzi talk 05:03, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Would I be correct in assuming fair use images can't be used in userboxes? I've been removing them from userboxes as I see them, but something I saw made me start wondering. — JD don't talk| email] 10:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
The current blocking policy of Wikipedia is that if anyone, whether registered or unregistered user, performs an action deserving of a block from a certain IP, the IP is completely blocked. That is, even veteran registered users in good standing with Wikipedia logging in from that IP will be unable to perform any edits. I strongly recommend that this policy be modified simply to have two types of block: a standard (partial) block, and a full block.
This is because while the current blocking policy works well for American and European users, who have the large majority of IPv4 addresses, most Asian users are confined to having to share IPs with most other users. This should be all and well, considering there is a fair assumption that Asians are largely not as well-connected as Westerners, and even if they used Wikipedia, they wouldn't mostly be using the English Wikipedia.
However, there is a grey area between both worlds. Singapore is highly connected to the internet, with the largely English-educated population frequent users of Wikipedia, as it is being seen more or less as a one-stop resource, or at the least a gathering of knowledge. As a result, their frequent visits to Wikipedia have led to many of them becoming extremely commited users regularly contributing information to Wikipedia. However, there is also a problem. The largest ISP in Singapore, Starhub, uses one IP address for all its users ( 202.156.6.54), due to the constraints in obtaining new IP addresses.
As with everywhere, small minority of users also like to continually vandalise Wikipedia, thus drawing a disproportionate amount of attention to this IP address. Although the talk page has a notice indicating that administrators should refrain from blocking this IP, there are also autoblock features in MediaWiki, causing us to be automatically and fully blocked everytime an explicit act of vandalism is conducted. This causes great reprecussions, especially as repealing such a block is inconvenient given our timezone. Thus, to better filter out antisocial activity such as trolls and vandals without affecting those veteran users with good intentions, I strongly recommend this change of policy.
The standard block will block any newly registered users or unregistered users editing from that IP, while veteran users will still be able to perform edits as normal. This will benefit users of shared IPs greatly, such that the more well-meaning users will not be affected greatly by blocks.
Aware that there might be some even more dedicated elements who will attempt to hack into veteran users' accounts and use them to perform vandalism, the full block will still be available. However, I do hope there will be few situations where the full block will ever be called into play.
Benefactors from this change of policy also include school campuses, where with this new policy, veteran users can continue to contribute regularly while the vandals will be unable to tamper with the massive and awesome databank that Wikipedia is today. Thank you for reading this. Ariedartin JECJY 13:21, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
What's the policy for commercial spam in user spaces? I assumed it was that it's bad, and warned User:Supplements ((talk)) as such, and I'm pretty sure I was right. However, what about spam in user talk pages or archives, such as this? Should it be blanked, completely deleted, or left alone? I'm thinking blanked, but I have no idea.
Please note:
Now that an increasing number of articles are being referenced, I am more frequently questioning exactly what claims a given reference is supposed to be documenting. If a reference footnote is at the end of a paragraph, does it support the entire paragraph, or the last sentence? Should we adopt some sort of markup (perhaps HTML comments?) to disambiguate this? -- Beland 18:01, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I have no hesitation about removing external links as spam, since for the most part they are off-topic, clearly commercial or affilliate linking. However, I just found someone who seems on a compaign to add his site to a number of articles. I removed one, since he was trying to hide/embed the links into the middle of a paragraph. The rest however are under External Links, and there are possibly of value, neverthless it seems a somwhat spammy activity. How do I get another opinion? -- Brat32 02:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I hate the new strikeouts on red links. They look like deleted or contested information, rather than just a link that hasn't yet been created. This is a serious detriment to any article with any red link. Tempshill 15:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Within the last twelve months, Wikipedia articles on US politicians currently in office, and those running for office, have increasingly become mouthpieces for the politicians' campaigns. It's obvious that campaign staffers and volunteers are editing these articles all the time - look for the barely-notable or non-notable lists of beneficial laws introduced; early political history with a brave challenge to difficult odds; lists of faith and community links; streets and days named after the politician; service on committees and task forces.
This is all pretty depressing. The volunteers who make up the bulk of Wikipedia editors have not, in the last year, had the energy or focus to push back the tide of self-promotion that is ruining the current-politician articles, with the probable exception of the very top group of US politicians. I myself have not. A grass roots effort to energetically filter out the propaganda, and keep it out, seems unlikely to beat the continuous pressure from the campaigns. I do not know of a great solution to this other than to force a tag on all articles about "current politicians" (and I realize the definition of this could be broad or narrow) saying Warning: Wikipedia articles about politicians are usually edited pervasively by the politicians' campaign staff and volunteers. This violates Wikipedia policy and is discouraged. Take this article with a larger grain of salt than usual.
The above disclaimer could of course usefully apply to our medical articles or various other categories, but I single out the politician articles because the actors behind these edits have an agenda and so are more persistent than the worst vandals here, and harder to combat because the edits are not obvious vandalism. Tempshill 16:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Please visit Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep to comment, alter and improve this proposal. The original is from m:instruction creep and ported over here in hopes that this will be customized to better fit WP. (Sister project Wikinews has - n:Wikinews:Instruction creep) - Davodd 17:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm just curious is this is against the policy or not. I know you may write and edit biographies of celebrities here on Wikipedia, but, I am curious if one may write and edit biographies of everyday people as well. -- Nekrogami 21:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
A user placed a reference to the launch of Gears of War on the November 12 page, and I removed it with the edit comment "Release of a video game doesn't qualify". They then asked on my talk page:
My feeling is that the launch of video games is too trivial to be added to the events in date articles. There are probably thousands, certainly hundreds, of video games released each year. This particular one does state "It is already considered the most important Xbox 360 game of 2006." but it might be difficult to draw a line for only the most important games. Usually, whether a game is important in the overall history of the platform is only apparent after some years have passed. This one hasn't yet been released.
I've taken this to the Village pump because it potentially affects all the date articles. Anyone got pointers to policy on this matter?- gadfium 00:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I realize that the release of a game isn't quite as influential as say, any of the other events on said page, but they still are pretty big. Halo and Halo 2 were beyond big, and Gears of War is looking to follow suit. There is an extreme amount of excitement in the industry about this game, which is why the games launch is being called "Emergence Day". I really don't want to argue about this anymore, as it's really trivial, but in my opinion, a user-created Encycopledia should let any user post whatever they want, as long as it is accurate. What I posted was accurate. The game is "highly anticipated", and it is being release for the Xbox 360. I didn't say anything about the game itself, and there was no opinion in my edit. But whatever, I'm kind of new to this, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Magus05 - 02:30, 4 August UTC
I propose that we finally begin to employ the Holocene calendar for all of our articles and dates. It may not be standard elsewhere, but we must start somewhere! We will establish the trend and others will follow. Not only should Wikipedia use it, but it should replace the current system in common use everywhere. It is similar to shifting to the metric system. HE clearly is superior to the BC/AD system. Thank you. 129.15.127.254 14:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I've discovered someone who apparently has multiple accounts, he's not doing anything malicious, He's just using the accounts to post his random thoughts and fill the pagees with UserBoxes and pictures. I don't think he has actually yet posted to any article, all that's happening is that each account spends it's time updating it's own or other user's page, or posting to the talk page of his other accounts. Should it be ignored? -- Brat32 16:40, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Template:Db-advert seems a good addition to the ((db)) tag family. -- SB_Johnny | talk 17:46, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I've hobbled the tag now (still there if you want to take a look, but it doesn't add articles to the deletion category any more). Here's an article that's a perfect example of what this tag would be useful for (just found on NPP):
It's not even creative. SB_Johnny | talk 23:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
If any one is intrested Wikipedia:Notability (royalty) is currently working towards creating a notability policy for royalty. Matthew Fenton ( contribs) 20:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I've written a rough draft of this policy to stem the rising flood of bad new articles. Discuss and edit it freely. C. M. Harris 22:17, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
As you are probably aware, there are many slang glossaries on Wikipedia with widespread acceptance, yet virutally all of them violate the following policy:
Wikipedia is not a dictionary
Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a usage or jargon guide. Wikipedia articles are not:
This has created a situation where editors trying to enforce policy frequently nominate such glossaries for deletion, with most of the glossaries surviving the process with a consensus of Keep or No concensus. This ongoing battle has been raging on with respect to slang glossaries for at least the past two years. Yet the glossaries have survived, and more continue to be created. Based on the results of the majority of the Article for Deletion (AfD) discussions, the general concensus seems to be that slang glossaries should have a place on Wikipedia. The relevant policy is no longer consistent with general consensus, and this schism has resulted in a large number of pointless AfD discussions which serve only to waste the time and effort of those involved. When the majority of Wikipedians defy a policy, it is time to reevaluate the policy.
There are quite a few slang glossaries on Wikipedia at this time, some being years old. Here is a partial list:
and of course, my favorite...
Therefore, I propose that the policy be ammended to reflect the defacto acceptance of slang glossaries on Wikipedia. They are here, and based on the results of AfD discussions, they seem to be here to stay. So shouldn't the policy be updated? If the policy was changed to allow slang glossaries or changed to provide for their speedy deletion, either of these solutions would save a lot of time and effort wasted on fruitless AfDs. You are welcome to join this discussion. -- List Expert 23:00, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I've continued this discussion on the talk page of the policy at issue. Please respond at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Slang glossaries. -- List Expert 23:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
do translations by Wikipedians, such as Catullus 1, constitute a violation of WP:NOR and/or WP:NPS? Read the debate at User talk:Sophysduckling#More About Catullus. Also, are the poems of Catullus notable enough to have an article about each one? -- Samael775 19:15, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
An issue arose at Talk: Jim Hawkins that I think to be better addressed here (or perhaps on the mailing list) than in an RfC. A user claiming to be the subject edited his article and the attendant talk page from several IP addresses, each of which, save one, is registered to the BBC, the corporation at which the subject works. An AfD on the article was closed as no consensus, after which the IP editorostensibly the subject—expressed that he no longer desired to edit and, threatening legal action (under some novel legal theory, surely), requested that the {{ notable Wikipedian}} template, referencing that the subject has edited Wikipedia and the user names or IPs with which such editing has been undertaken, be removed.
Because the IP addresses are readily available in the page's history and because the IP editor chose to identify himself as the subject, I don't see anything compelling to militate against our continuing with our present practices vis-à-vis such templates (a cursory look at Category:Notable Wikipedians turns up many templates containing IP addresses, most notably at Talk:Daniel Brandt but also, for example, at Talk:Kenneth Montgomery Keillor and Talk:Siva Vaidhyanathan; another editor at the talk page has disagreed. It is plain, I think, that our current practice, for which a consensus apparently exists, is to include in the {{ notable Wikipedian}} template IP addresses, and, if that practice is to be changed, a discussion involving more than a few editors must be had. Joe 02:02, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I have written this as an essay. If anyone thinks it should be something more, then edit it freely and mazel tov. Ashibaka tock 23:14, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Please consider the following proposal. What is analysis and what is opionion is an important subject if you wish to claim that WP is open.
Wikipedia:New proposal for alternative analysis
I am already. The idea that the administrators will not even discuss an idea which might improve WP and eliviate a major source of critisism, and an anti-Internet philospophy is bewildering. Especially when I agree with them that original articles should be NPOV and sourced and that they should not allow WP to become a blog. But there is a middle ground and I am having a very hard time determining the emotional/philosophical pre-disposition for their unwillingness to face a challenge. It appears at first glance to be a coterie who wish to advertise that they are one thing but in reality are another. On the other hand they may be fearful that any original thought may bring pressure upon the whole endeavor in which case they just need to keep pushing, back off, push again, etc.etc. until the sapiens decide it is better to go after the author than the forum.
I am completly willing to pay the price for the analysis I perform. -- Jb2ndr 11:43, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I just wrote an opinion essay based on a thought that has been bouncing around my head in the last few months. I probably posted it in the wrong place, but for now you can find it on Jimbo Wales' talk page here:
Comments are appreciated. I figure, given the number of people at Wikipedia, that this suggestion been made previously but I haven't seen any discussion of it. -- Ben Houston 19:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
This is the one I am talking about
Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 June 23#British "ethnic" categories again
I will also give the full list of 11 here - at least 10 of them (I'm not fully certain of Monica Ali) are 100% of Bengali parentage on both sides of the family, so no dilution there as occurs frequently in the US: Konnie Huq - Rupa Huq - Iqbal Ahmed - Afshan Azad - Shefali Chowdhury - Muhammad Abdul Bari - Pola Uddin, Baroness Uddin - Akram Khan (dancer) - Eenasul Fateh - Shami Chakrabarti - Monica Ali
I've given further reasons, such as self-identification, strong community identity and homogeneity, etc etc as valid reasons for having this category. But these reasons were all ignored. I repeat, British Bengalis are on a different order of identification compared to something like Swedish Brits.
Finally there is Category:British Asians. If British-Bengalis have no valid reason to exist, I can hardly think of a valid reason for British Asians which is a specifically British construct, and even more artificial at that! -- Peripatetic 17:16, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
(UTC)
I completely agree that, if British Asians is a valid category, so should be British Bengalis as a subcategory of "British Asians". Already there are Category:British Parsis and Category:Pakistani British people. So, I don't see any reason not to have British Bengalis as a category. Thanks. -- Ragib 22:00, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
The policy of only including facts from new articles has lead DYK to be comprised of uninteresting, obscure and very locale-specific facts. I think it is important to keep in mind that the general knowledge of the average administrator is on completely different level to that of the average main page reader.
I would suggest that we change DYK to have the first bullet be on "middle school level", the next two on high school level and leave the fourth and fifth to come from new articles.
The following is an example of what the first three bullets could look like:
Yes, I know the purpose of "DYK isn't ro rehash widely-known facts". I am saying the purpose should be to provide information that will be interesting to the largest possible audience and this layered approach which include a portion of what Wikipedia veterans will call widely-known facts is one way of doing that. - sYndicate talk 23:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I am not saying the size should be increased. I'm saying the level of obscurity of the first three points should be toned down so that more people (especially younger people) will find them interesting. - sYndicate talk 12:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
No problem. I am not saying we should change the articles to a "less than adult level". I am saying we should include some facts in DYK that some people would actually be able to respond 'yes' to. The average main page reader will not know '..that there is a pattern to the names of the class of medications called "monoclonal antibodies"', but more importantly, (s)he will not care. By having different tiers in DYK, the section can appeal to both the average reader and people who will find the above mentioned example interesting. - sYndicate talk 13:58, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea very much. It could bring many new readers into wiki-addiction. Which I think is a good thing =) -- euyyn 02:16, 19 July 2006 (UTC)