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Are internet sources that you have to pay to see valid?
For example: An article about a university makes claims about that university's rankings in various areas. Those claims are accompanied by sources. But when you click on the sources (e.g., U.S. News and World Report college rankings), you can only get the information by subscribing and paying money.
I don't think such "pay-to-see" sources should be considered valid. Only those who pay to see the material are able to verify the claims to their own satisfaction. starkt 05:11, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I think "pay for content" websites are vastly different from books and journals. As Someguy0830 mention, you can freely view the vast majority of those items at a public library. I think "pay for content" websites should be downgraded as "sources", in the interest of keeping up with the spirit of Wikipedia as being a free source of knowledge. I doubt you could eliminate "pay for content" sources but if an "important" claim in an article is made with only a "pay for content" as source, there should be a way to tag it and request a "free source". As a side note, I think this is a worthwhile topic to discuss on the discussion page of WP:RS Agne 06:13, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
It's simple; we use the best sources we can. Preferably those sources are free and easily available, but that's not always possible. If the only source we can find is pay-per-view, then so be it. In fact, we would be doing the world a favor by taking that tidbit of limited access information and making it free by putting it in our encyclopedia. Dragons flight 07:13, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Some editors have undertaken to delete all categories involving 'people by ethnic or national origin' by imposing new requirements that were not previously used and, of course, destroying all other editors work. Up until now, the 'proof' that was needed that a bio article should go into a F00 G00n category (such as 'English American' was that the article said so: the person came from country FOO and is now in country GOO. Now, a few editors are saying, in effect, that information in the article counts for nothing and they delete every article from the categories, depopulating the categories so as to force their deletion. These editors say there is no documented proof that the person is of the ethnic or national group they are listed in and no proof that the person 'self identifies' with that ethnic group or national origin. Is this what WP collectively wants to happen? Thanks Hmains 06:15, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
In what I believe was a misguided decision, Redirects for Deletion has recently been renamed Redirects for Discussion. The logic was that since CFD had undergone that change, RfD should too. The problem is, RfD and CfD are completely different. When a normal editor wishes to rename or merge a category they must list it on CfD, hence, categories for discussion, not just deletion. But one someone wants to change where a redirect points to, or turn a redirect into an article, or do anything besides delete it, they should do it themselves, with appropriate discussion on the redirect's talk page. This renaming of RfD obscures its purpose, and risks gumming it up by implying that it is a place for "discussion" of redirects. I really see no benefits to this name change and quite a few problems, but the administrator who renamed it no longer wishes to discuss it. To me, the correct name being "Redirects for deletion" seems straightforward and clear. Am I wrong? What does the community think? -- Nscheffey( T/ C) 16:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Where is the proper place to report on, and have someone do something about, the apparant slanders found in this article on a living person? Thanks Hmains 05:03, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
This is my first visit to the Village pump, so forgive me if my quick search missed previous discussions on this topic.
My question is, what if Wikipedia could have some advertizing on the site? I'm guessing there is philosophical opposition based on "information should be free" or something like that, but I wonder if advertizing could be included in a way that does not violate the foundation's mission or philosophy.
What I envision is, after the "external links" section on an article, there could be a "sponsored links" section. This could be populated with a bullet list of ads, from Google or Yahoo, or ads manually populated in a more controlled way. If it was done in a discrete and clear way, I don't think it would detract at all from the presentation of the article or the accomplishment of Wikipedia's mission.
And obviously, such ads would bring in a lot of revenue - probably hundreds of thousands USD per month (if Google ads were used). Instead of asking for donations, the Wikimedia Foundation would be busy just spending the money that came in. earnestcon 14:56, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree. Clinton's thumb gesture is well-documented and is citable trivia :-) If you read the literature on the thumb gesture it made a big cultural impact and it is not so trivial. "Buddy" and "Socks" are world famous -- I live on the opposite side of the planet to the USA and even I have heard of Buddy and Socks; they are household names. It's like you could not have an article on Roy Rogers without saying that his horse was called "Trigger" -- that would be sacrilege! The thing I find refreshing about the Wikipedia is it is not a "stuffy" encyclopedia. It has content that the people want (because they put it there), as opposed to 80 year old Oxford scholars who know nothing about pop culture! The Wikipedia is cutting edge when it comes to pop culture. You cannot use the argument that trivia is not "befitting" of an encylopedia, because this is a different encylopedia defined by the "people" or the "proletariat." If you are going to use that argument then I suggest you first delete all the 100's of biographies of pornstars that you would not see in a 'respectable' Oxford encyclopedia. Or what about all those 1000's of articles that go into every detail about every footballer that has ever lived? You would not see those articles in Britannica! I personally find those football star pages frightfully boring and trivial...that's my POV, but I wouldn't dream of imposing my POV on football fans to insist they delete all those pages that frightfully bore me to tears with trivial nonsense. I chose to ignore them instead. You see, it is this stuff that makes the Wikipedia special. It is written by the proletariat for the proletariat. Power to the people! bunix 12:29, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Someone just put this on my talk page:
Is that policy, or even Wikipedia style? Is it now mandatory to use </ref> for all external references? The "ref" approach makes navigation harder (when you click on the reference, it takes you to the reference line within the article, not the actual source). What's thinking on this? -- John Nagle 20:57, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I always try to use <ref> tags because I think it gives you a cleaner, easy-to-read, more professional-looking article. But this is not required by policy. JChap2007 20:59, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
External links should go only in the "External links" section, but I've seen it done otherwise where it seemed to be the best solution. I think the ref tags really only work well with actual citations and references. My opinion: what you were told is consensus but not policy, so try to follow it if at all possible, but if it doesn't make sense, don't do it. - Freekee 04:07, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I noticed recently on another user's userpage that they had a template that causes the summary of the featured article of the day to be summarised, with graphic, in his user page. As for today, this summary is of this page, and the summary includes an image that's fair use. As we know, fair use is not kosher for use on userpages -- I believe we either need to get a commitment never to have fair use images in articles of the day (which would be awesome!), never to include said images in the summary (decent), or must not permit people to use such templates on userpages. Which would be best? -- Improv 01:06, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Over on Talk:2006 redefinition of planet, a couple of editors have been deleting entries from the talk page, claiming that talk pages are reserved for discussions about how to improve the article, rather than general discussions of the topic. This seems to run contrary to my experience of article talk pages. What is the current consensus on this matter? Bluap 05:31, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
[Comment: this is a discussion extracted from the Karl Marx discussion page. At issue were (a) the way in which the section "Childhood" should be written - the version proposed below seems to have stood; (b) whether there should be a "German Jew" tag at the bottom.
The discussion on both issues applies to many other articles. Perhaps the time has come for a chat on various forms of "tagging"? Bellbird 13:52, 18 August 2006 (UTC)]
Discussion under: Karl Marx and (binary) categories
Karl Marx made quite clear (too clear, alas! - see On the Jewish Question) that he did not see himself as a Jew. Why force somebody into a religion and a nationality that he did not desire and that do not give a clear description of his upbringing?
The religion of origin of his parents is already detailed at the beginning of the biography here, so it is not a matter of concealing information. Rather - a) Judaism is a religion, in which Marx was not raised, and against which he had strong feelings; b) if we are to believe the article Jew, Jews are a nation - a nation into whom somebody can be conscripted for reasons having nothing to do with the religion or upbringing of the person. Very well, but then - where does that leave us? Under the rules of German nationalists, the French son of two born Germans is a German, no matter what he says. Shall we put Kleber under "German generals", then?
Marx seems to have believed that Judaism defined a nation against others. He did not believe in this or any other religion, though, to judge by the opening paragraphs of On the Jewish Question, he seems to have thought of himself as on the side of Christianity, and certainly did not think of himself as belonging to the nation defined (as he thought) by the religion. c) I certainly hope that nobody here believes that there is such a thing as the Jewish race. Marx would certainly have been classified under code 08, had he lived a hundred years later, but it is difficult to see what that says about him.
By the way, the use of German Jew at the bottom of pages seems somehow rather odd to me. It does not occur in xx.wikipedia.org, for xx = pretty much any language other than English. What do people here think of it?
--a
"a," you make some interesting points, but don't forget this is a biographical entry on Karl Marx. Marx's own opinions about ethnicity or religion as expressed in his works would probably fit better under "Marx's Thought." At any rate, Marx was born into a Jewish family, and that is a fact that needs to stay in the entry.--Dialecticas 22:04, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
By the way, "a," is this: ... your IP address? The only edit this person seems to make is cutting Jewish ancestry out of entries (see edit on Leopold Bloom). What's up with that? It's more than a little creepy.--Dialecticas 22:12, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Dialecticas: this is indeed this computer's IP address. As you could see from the user-contribution page, the only contributions I have made are (a) my changes to Marx's entry, and (b) a slight edit to Leopold Bloom's entry, in which I changed the wording of the description of Leopold Bloom's family to what seems to me to be correct (and seems to have stood as such).
What seems creepy to me is to define people in terms of ancestry, above and beyond their upbringing, education and self-perception. Neither here nor in Bloom's entry (Bloom is an imaginary character, by the way!) did I erase the ancestry of the person concerned, or occlude it in the least. It is simply a matter of how you define a person, and of respecting how he defines himself.
Even if Marx had been devoutly Jewish or devoutly Catholic, we would have to respect the division between public and private spheres. You cannot define somebody in terms of his private identity (if there is one!) first. Should Marx turn out to be (say) gay, you could not introduce him as "a great gay philosopher"; his sexuality would come up later, in the relevant section, if it affected his life. This is even more so if he had been a deeply closeted gay man, or a gay man who never had gay sex, or somebody who thought of himself as a straight person but whom you have determined to be gay by means of your all-mighty gaydar.
The edit to Leopold Bloom's entry was based on the same feeling. What must have crept you out was the fact that I was making an edit from an IP address. If I had thought that somebody would have thought me some sort of undead creature, I would have got a user name to protect my privacy first. Should I edit any further, I will get an user name, of course. It is very probable that I will not, as I am not liking the tone of all of this back-and-forth.
"From a Jewish family" is one of those current phrases that seek to state more than they do and end up saying something rather doubtful in itself. It reminds me of how, say, the men of the Amistad have been described as African-Americans; the latter is a perfectly good label that people can apply to themselves - yet the reason why the men were not killed for having freed themselves was precisely that they could prove that they were not Americans.
Marx happened to be of Jewish ancestry; Judaism was the religion of origin of both of his parents. He did not grow up in a family that observed holidays, traditions and customs, for the very good reason that his parents had converted from Judaism. (At least his father had; I do not know about his mother.) How Jewish his early environment was otherwise (whatever "Jewish" means when applied to an environment!) is an interesting question; it might throw some light on "On the Jewish Question", which is (to say the least) extremely harsh and rather hard to read nowadays. By the way, I do not agree with how "On the Jewish Question" is handled later in the article - namely, brushed over. It is not a criticism of Judaism and Christianity equally, but a statement of opposition (not merely criticism) to Judaism specifically. - a
"What seems creepy to me is to define people in terms of ancestry, above and beyond their upbringing, education and self-perception." - Yes, to me too, but not necessarily to Marx's contemporaries. There was an ethnic understanding of Jewishness as well as a religious one by this point in time and Marx would have been widely identified by others as a Jew, which would in turn have coloured attitudes towards him. That's worth bearing in mind, I think. Mattley (Chattley) 08:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree completely - yet (a) this is a case for not omitting a mention of Marx's "racial" origin (don't vomit yet - note the quotation marks! look ahead at the third paragraph if necessary), not for pinning the label "Jew" on him (or on anybody else who does not pin it on himself) in the very first sentence; (b) the word "ethnic" here (used also by Dialecticas) is very problematic; and it is precisely in this very problem that the issue lies.
"Ethnic" was an extremely uncommon word before the 1940s; it was sometimes used in anthropology as a synonym for "race", or for a "sub-race" or "collection of races" (see the OED). It came into currency when "race" became very unfashionable. It inherited part of the baggage of "race", in that it sometimes tends to denote a mysterious something that is transmitted by bloodlines. At the same time, one of the most common uses for "ethnic", especially at first, was as a synonym for a group of hyphenated Americans (also a problematic term!) - namely, Italian-Americans, Jewish Americans, Greek-Americans, etc. The second term is less common than the other two, at least nowadays and at least as a noun; this has to do with the early prevalence of (Classical) Reform Judaism in America, which emphasised that Jews were not a race or people, and that there were simply Americans of the Jewish religion. However, people think as if they used the second term when they think of (say) Katz's Delicatessen or bagels or Woody Allen movies as Jewish. We are talking about some cultural traits rather specific to some members of an immigrant population - cultural traits that, by now, have been selected, homogenised and packaged into something nice, safe and easy for everybody to consume. (Hence very little Yiddish theatre and very many bagels.)
There is no such thing as the Jewish race, period. (Whether "race" is a useful or healthy way to categorise human beings at all is another matter; for the record, I would tend to answer both questions in the negative.) Would Marx's contemporaries have seen him as "of the Jewish race"? Some did, to some extent; if I remember correctly (I am referring to a biography I do not have at hand), there is a letter from a friend of his to another rumouring that Demuth's son must be Marx's, as the former had the latter's "handsome purplish-black Jewish hair", or some such thing. Would Marx have seen himself as "of the Jewish race"? I do not know of anything showing that he did. At the same time, it is not impossible that he did; some people did at the time - and seeing oneself as "of the Jewish race" (or having some "Jewish racial traits") became fairly common in the late nineteenth century. ("Race" becomes very prominent in early Zionism - Max Nordau, Martin Buber - but it was not limited to it.) If somebody abandoned religious belief and practices, and lived in the general society - or, even more so, if he was brought up without Jewish religious belief and practices, and had always lived in the general society - he had to cope with being sometimes - or often - classified by both Christians and Jews under a mysterious category that described almost nothing about him and yet was supposed to be deeply meaningful. It is natural to try to tie such a phantom category to something concrete. In America, just about anybody who is "white" has the opportunity to describe himself in terms of his great-grandparents immigrant origins, under the assumption that this is all nice and tame. (A naturalised immigrant from Italy in the early 1920s was an Italian-American; now anybody with an Italian name can call himself Italian, and it is immediately understood that (a) he will not go fight for the king or Mussolini, (b) the real Italians live overseas, and will make fun of him if he goes to Italy as "a very proud Italian", (c) he has no direct connection with the actions depicted in "The Godfather", which, somehow, is in fact one of his favourite movies.) People in Europe did not have that option; hence, sometimes, an understanding in terms of race. Also: (a) one could think of one's racial traits as partial (if somebody truly looks "very Jewish", he is generally Armenian), and to be overcome if so wished, at least in so far as they were character traits; (b) the thought of oneself in terms of race neutralised the possibility that the phantom label would settle upon that of a nation, or a holy nation - that is, it protected one from thinking of oneself in terms of a history (largely a religiously articulated one) that one felt to be alien to oneself, that extended vertiginously into the past, that involved some extremely strong claims, and that was not the history of the country in which one lived, in which one had (generally) been born and educated (and in which, in many cases, one's ancestors had always been born, as far as the records went), and to which one felt inextricably tied.
Now, does this mean that we should describe Marx as "of the Jewish race"? Obviously not. We may, at some point in the article, remark that he was seen as such by some - and perhaps by himself, though I do not myself know of any evidence towards this - and that this may have had consequences X or Y.
Now, why should Marx not be described as "of the Jewish ethnicity"? (a) If ethnicity means "race", as in some technical literature, see the above; (b) If an ethnic group means what used to be called, quite imprecisely, a "tribe" ("the Igbo ethnic group"), then no; it may be a problematic term for the Igbo, too; (c) Marx did not eat at Katz's delicatessen. In fact, it is extremely unlikely that he even ate bagels, or even knew who Woody Allen was - or at the very least he failed to catch any his references when he saw him on TV.
There is another, perhaps more serious problem with *defining* Marx with the "Jewish" label, as opposed to describing the household that shaped him (including, if you wish, that his father had very likely converted in part for professional reasons), and mentioning his "racial origins" (quotation marks! quotation marks!) as they become relevant. ("Jew" or the workaround "from a Jewish family" (false in some literal ways, as discussed above!) are equivalent here. "Marx was from a Jewish family", as the first sentence of the biography, is equivalent to "Marx was a Jew" here: it is a definition. A precise *description* of his family is given immediately thereafter, so no additional information is being conveyed.) The problem is as follows.
As you will see in the page Jew, many people see Jews as a nation. Nowadays, most such people are either traditionally religious or Zionists (or outsiders who have adopted the discourse of either quite enthusiastically). Now, there were only a few proto-Zionists in Marx's time; the notion of Jews as a modern nationality hadn't quite arisen yet. (Though: see his friend Moses Hess.) However, the notion of Jews as a holy nation, as the chosen people - meaning *the* nation (or this is how Marx takes it) was extremely powerful - more so than nowadays, both among people of the Jewish and the Christian religion, given higher levels of piety all around. The holy nation will get you, even if you don't want to. See Who is a Jew?, and read it in the eyes of somebody who (like Marx) had absolutely no desire to be conscripted into a religion and a nation that he seems to have felt were quite alien to him. May this explain "On the Jewish Question"? In my view, yes, at least in part, and it may be discussed in the appropriate section, thought that might fall under the No Original Research rule. Does this mean that we must do what he may have felt was being done to him? No.
All of this may be difficult for some people in America to understand. In America, people are separated by their "roots" (meaning the countries or nations or labels in which their (favourite) ancestors happened to be born) by the Atlantic. The latter is an insulating body of water that keeps electric shocks from going through. (Occasionally, the insulation fails, as is now shown, say, by one or two young Americans who go search for their roots in Afghanistan in order to solve their identity problems - random controversial example.) In Europe, historically, the problem of nations has been a very serious business. Marx was a European. Take him seriously.
The fact that Kleber was seen as a German by some (including both suspicious French colleagues and just about any classical German nationalist, who, of course, would have seen him as a traitor) may have been a factor in his French patriotism. It does not mean that he should be defined as a "German general", or that his alleged Germanness should be his card of introduction.
A last word: "tag the Jew" seems to be a very popular sport in the English wikipedia. I have noticed it is also becoming fairly popular in the North American mainstream media; wikipedia just seems to accentuate certain trends. In the French media, say, this would be unthinkable - or is unthinkable for all except a few mavericks and monomaniacs working within current enthusiasms. (Compare to previous enthusiasms for all things Viking or Japanese; this is exoticism at work, and is probably uncomfortable for at least some people from Japan, or anybody who minds objectification, exoticism and enthusiasm.) The same is true of fr.wikipedia.org, for that matter. I cannot say that the French are not in the right here. This is a cultural difference in the writing of biographies - yet one for which there are excellent reasons, at least on the continental side. Biographies used to be written in the same way in America, but then the roots game started. That game, though, is no game. - a
I can see reference elsewhere to Wiki polcy on articles and vanity publishing but not as far as I can tell, on illustrations . I refer to the image "Reich in Prison" on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich which I have mentioned it that article's talk page.
To me, aside from my own opinion of the quality of the illustration - it adds nothing to the article which is already provided with photographs . I really feel it smacks of vanity publishing.
Rrose Selavy 15:37, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Just browsing thru Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents today when I noticed the following exchange (Warning: I have stripped off the names because I am quoting out of context for a reason):
I find it hard not to rant about this, but I've seen the phrase "assume good faith" thrown out enough times by people accused to causing trouble to feel it is a code phrase meaning "I am a troll or a dick. Of course I should be banned from Wikipedia." Using those three words is not a get-out-of-free-card; if one Wikipedian posts a statement clearly stating that several other well-known Wikipedians are engaging in some unusual form of communal sex, & that Wikipedian is accused of being disruptive, responding with "assume good faith" will not be very convincing -- if at all.
(Note, I don't know anything about the individuals involved in the exchange I saw on WP:AN/I. If I have to judge the parties in the exchange I read, I suspect that B is more likely the party in the right than A -- an inference that makes this incident all the more aggrivating!)
After all, if someone from the non-wikipedia world, say from the political sphere, is accused to being a criminal & all of her/his misdeeds are provided in a list (e.g., corruption, neptoism, general incompetence), just how convincing would a defense beginning "assume good faith" be to you? This is no longer an example of Wikipedia jargon, it's become a lame phrase whose intent is to turn an inquiry over one party's behavior into a vague counterattack about the accuser's motives. Using these three words has become an ad hominem argument that only serves to weaken the intent of the policy of WP:AGF -- don't suspect another editor of being a troublemaker if there is another explanation for her/his behavior.
So how should the above exchange have been improved on? I'd suggest something like this:
Notice that there is no counterattack on A which suggest that her/his motives are less than honorable. In short, B is simultaneously observing the guidelines of WP:AGF while at the same time subtly reminding A to respect them. No one is accused with this wording, which is a good thing: I've seen how a clumsy use of words can lead to a perceived insult, a flamewar between the parties, & possibly a case before the ArbCom.
So when should these words be used? Only by a third party, someone who steps into the gradually heated discussion between A & B, with the intent that the accused's acts could be interpreted in a non-sinister fashion. And the third party ought to immediately explain what this non-sinister intent is -- in a way that convinces the accuser that she/he has misunderstood the situation. -- llywrch 00:39, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Due to the recent turmoil on community pages, a large community straw poll is being conducted. Wikipedia:Communities strawpoll is now open for voting. Despite resolutions made on this page, many others are facing turmoil similar to what this page is, or once did face. In an effor to solve the issue, I invite all Wikipedians to vote there by September 18th on this page following the procedures and ballot instuctions explained there. Thank You. Ericsaindon2 06:19, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources is internally inconsistent. In the first paragraph it says: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29&action=edit§ion=53 "Do not include copies of primary sources (specifically text; maps and other images can be very useful) in Wikipedia." Later it says, "Some short texts such as short poems and national anthems are usually included in their article." So we should not include any source material, but some source material is usually included. You should not do A, but in some cases A is usually done. What kind of rule is that? It's one I protested against early on, and I still do. Either we have the rule, but then we follow it. Or we do not have the rule. And yes, we can also have a rule that only holds in some cases, but then the rule should be written as such, and not as a blanket rule. - Andre Engels 11:59, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
This never happened to me, but I am just wondering why if a user is blocked, said user loses all of the contents of his/her userpage.
Please help my wandering mind,
-- BrainiacOutcast 14:45, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
just hitting the random article button and I came across this - SummerSlam 2003. Nowhere in the article does it indicate that all of this is pre-determined. Do we not have a tag or policy that covers it? Yes I know that we could say "yes it's obvious!" but shouldn't an Encyclopedia should spell it out? I also notice that's it listed in the category "2003 in sports" - this also would appear to be misleading. A number of other wrestling events are also put in the various year categories for sports.
A pre-determined event is not a sport, it's physical Theatre (or sports entertainment as I understand it's called in the states). Surely they should only appear under the sports entertainment category or something similar that outlines that those are pre-determined?).
-- Charlesknight 15:30, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Further to that - if you check the professional wrestling page it states that Modern professional wrestling is a performing art, where the participants create an entertainment show simulating a combat sporting match.
So clearly those types of events should not be in the sports category?
-- Charlesknight 15:37, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Ah yes - many thanks. What about my second question about the categories - oh wise one... --
Charlesknight 15:47, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, the Professional wrestling page itself is in the performing arts category and all of the wrestling articles link back to that page. -- Charlesknight 16:14, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Hah - this is like pulling a loss thread on a jumper, professional wrestling is listed as being part of the Performing_arts, but it is also a part of the WikiProject_Professional_wrestling which is in WikiProject_Sports.
This really is all over the shop isn't it? -- Charlesknight 16:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
The issue of whether or not users should be allowed to remove warning messages from their talk page (and under what circumstances) has been a running dispute for the better part of a year now. In an attempt to bring wider community input to the issue, a poll has been created: Wikipedia:Removing warnings poll. Dragons flight 17:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Is there a uniform standard for writing summarys in articles? I have seen articles about books and movies that just mention the beggining setup of the plot, while others provide a full sumary of the book/movie the takes up 4 or 5 paragraphs. Is there a standard and is there anyway that one could be implimented? Cnriaczoy42 21:01, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Heads up. Some people refuse to accept that Hong Kong is part of China. We have a couple of sparse discussions at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 August 6#Category:Hong Kong people and Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 August 6#Category:People of Hong Kong descent.
Hong Kong is not an ethnicity nor a nationality. Other than this, I'm unaware of any categorization of people by the city or town where ancestors were born. No other "colonies" of any civilization are treated as countries for "descent". Macau isn't treated this way. Nor was Hong Kong ever a "city-state" (like Athens) that warred and settled treaties with other nations. Hong Kong reverted to China after the end of a treaty between China and Britain (not Hong Kong and Britain).
I would like to add that both Macau and China are treated the same way and they are not considered to be part of Mainland China neither internationally, locally, or in China. Both Hong Kong and Macao have their own olympic teams separate from the Chinese team, as does Taiwan. They are both not included in any neighboring Chinese province but are their own autonomous entities known as SARs (no pun intended) Special Administrative Regions. And you're statement on that no other entries or places in the world receieve similar treatmant is simply blantantly false, all insular areas for article purposes are essentially treated as countries such as American Samoa the B.I.O.T., Somaliland, Nagorno-Karabakh, Navassa Island, Palestinian terrirories ( Gaza and West Bank), New Calendonia and Transniestria to name a few. Some are unincorporated areas of certain countries, some are territories, some are disputed territories which are controlled from within but not recognized, some are de facto independant countries, some are uninhabited islands. Furthermore Hong Kong and also Macao which you claim are far differant both have their own internet domain country codes (.hk and .mo if i am not mistaken) and both have their own entries into the CIA word factbook as do the majority of the aforementioned "country-like" entities and insular areas. 71.142.78.14 03:03, 22 August 2006 (UTC) (<---- this comment was mine i was logged out, Qrc2006 03:04, 22 August 2006 (UTC))
Someone has been running around linking biographies and various things to Rotten.com. I am sure that it's entertaining to read those articles, but they are definitely ambiguous mixtures of fact and "humorous" fiction. I believe that WP should generally link to serious sources of fact, not humorous semi-fictional encyclopedias, on topics of general interest. -- Zaorish 02:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The one who added it to Richard Scarry, which I corrected recently, is User:Hajor. He seems to have been a fine little gnome otherwise. I may have been exaggerating when I said "someone has been running around", it may just be that fans of the site want to spread it around.-- Zaorish 00:28, 15 August 2006 (UTC) P.S. There's another one at secret society, let's see if we can find who added it.
Well, I found one user who has been adding them: User:Jerkcity. BaseballBaby started deleting some of the links, and I posted a note suggesting we coordinate to avoid overlaps. He responded there, and I posted a note to his talk page which he responded to uncivilly and has now deleted, with another rather uncivil note. I'm considering continuing to delete these, but haven't really come into a strong conflict situation like this before and would like a third opinion. I could see why someone who is a partisan of the site might feel they were being singled out by a campaign to winnow out links to that site. Do I need to hold off, or should I go ahead and start deleting anything that doesn't meet WP:EL? Thanks for any advice. Mike Christie (talk) 03:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
This looks like long term problem. I had a dispute with someone adding rottem.com everywhere many months ago. IMO a technical solution is needed - ability to see what links had been added over time to the article and if they have been removed in the past they could be removed immediatelly again or the software would not allow to insert them. Pavel Vozenilek 16:09, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I think rotten.com links can be useful and encyclopedic as a referance to criticism, parody, or like or dislike of a certain subject. Whether the material is viewed as legitimate or not is a POV issue, im sure many people take rotten.com as seriously as the Daly Show or Colbert Report and read between the lines. Plus i think its a useful link! any thoughts? Qrc2006 03:09, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Is there a policy regarding what is allowable as a pop culture reference such as video game, comic, film, TV, or literature? I've run across a number of articles in which whole sections of references seem out of place in an encyclopedia. Commonly, there are sections with nothing but references to video games. I couldn't find any specific policies, but I did find an essey on trivia which pursuasively argues that content should be both interesting and important. I took this as an affirmation that many of these irrelevent references could be cleared away. Accordingly, I began to delete content (an example is Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency#ARPA and DARPA in fiction). Before too long, I got a vandalism warning from another user. After some discussion, it was recommended that I first post to an article's discussion page before deleting content. I don't mind doing that (well, truth be told, it would be something of a pain), but this sort of approach is unlikely to result in any sort of consistancy. It would be much easier, and, more importantly, much more likely to yield quality content, if there were a policy governing allowable pop culture references. Thanks for your attention. -- BehemothCat 02:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Maybe this is the wrong place to bring this point up, but my problem with pop culture references in the Wikipedia is they are so U.S.-centric. If we are going to have them, let's talk about popular impact in Europe, Asia etc too. And yes, references to video games do seem trivial to me, but that's my POV and I guess the younger generation would disagree. I suppose we have to prevent generational amd cultural bias. I guess its upto the editors within each page to come to a consensus and fight it out. I don't think one can define in a policy what is trivial and what is not (very difficult to define "trivial" to cover all cases). But we can make a policy to prevent cultural and generational bias. I must say, one of the things I find "refreshing" about Wikipedia, as opposed to tradition encyclopedias, is the up-to-date-ness of pop cultural entries and the lack of stuffiness. I think it is important to err a little on the side of being different. bunix 04:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
IMO, these are perfectly reasonable facts, but they generally belong in the article about the pop culture phenomenon (i.e. the Simpsons episode article or the video game articles) rather than in the article about the thing being mentioned, unless the references are unusually significant and have recieved significant coverage. e.g. the articles on Locke and Rousseau do not need to mention that characters on Lost are named after them. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:24, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Two things. First, relevance is not inherently reciprocal. Simpsons Episode X may include Stephen Hawking: a link and some context are needed for the reader to understand the reference. But Simpsons Episode X is not therefore relevant to the reader's understanding of Stephen Hawking, which is the purpose of an article about him. Second, remember, no one is concerned with deleting information here: the function "What links here" will always give the reader a full list of toys and game that link to the title of the article. The lists currently do not provide any more than this information, and when they are separated in the normal way as X in popular culture, they are quickly identified as cruft and voted for speedy deletion, which is a conclusive demonstration, is it not?. -- Wetman 04:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC).
Just to add some moral clarity to the discussion, this reference added to Chrysler Building was possibly the most egregiously worthless trivia that I have ever seen. The biggest problem is with these topics that are essentially stock characters, because they're such a well-known landmark that it's an easy association to establish location (Empire State Building in NYC, Big Ben in London), and so it's more rare for a work of fiction that deals with that place not to show or reference it. The article in these cases should simply state that fact, that "Because the Chrysler Building is such a well-known landmark..." and only mention the most substantial references (such as King Kong for the Empire State Building). Postdlf 15:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Create separate page "XYZ in popular culture", just like Gorilla article has. This way the main article is kept clean. Pavel Vozenilek 19:54, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
i think its important to mention that what is important and what is differant than what is academic, i think many people would find that unacademic pop culture referances are worthy of inclusion and are helpful and neccisary in articles and hell they can be written better to make them academc then swell!! Qrc2006 03:13, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
As far as I'm aware, when a list is found that is redundant with a category (for example, List of beat 'em ups, a list I contributed greatly to), the usual action is to AfD the list. Although I agree that this is the right course of action, I also see the point of its detractors, who point out that these lists usually contain items that don't yet have articles (and thus aren't included in the category), which are subsequently lost when the list is deleted or redirected to the category.
My policy proposal is that, when a list is found to be redundant with a category, that list's title be changed from "list of X" to "list of X in need of articles", the list be added to the appropriate category, and then all blue links be removed from the list, leaving only red links or entries that aren't links yet.
For example, applying this proposal to List of computer and video fighting games, we would end up with an article titled "List of computer and video fighting games in need of articles", which would be included in the category Category:Fighting games, and consist solely of:
As articles were created for these entries, they'd be removed from the list, and once the list was empty it would be deleted. This would satisfy both the need to remove redundancy, and the list-makers' lament of losing list items that don't have articles. If this proposal is already covered by another policy, please let me know. Luvcraft 01:04, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
support great idea, that way those interested in video games, who are the most likely to be clicking on the video game category while surfing will see the no article yet games and will create them!
Qrc2006 03:19, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm finding there are certain articles where people are more concerned at getting images up on the subject then actually posting info on the subject. It basically starts turning into a gallery first and a place for info second. I can't seem to find any rules or policies against this, but it seems like there would be some. Are there rules or policies against this? Where are they listed so I can reference them? Is there a place on Wikipedia for galleries, do they go into articles, or does Wikipedia just not want those things? Any and all help is greatly appreciated. Thanx! Roguegeek 18:53, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Just some general comments. I agree that there are some articles where there are simply too many images, especially with articles that are brief to begin with. I've noticed, for example, that an article on an actor or an actress will often become top-heavy with images, almost to the point where it becomes a fan page. I wouldn't want to see a "maximum images" rule brought in, because there are occasions where a person's career is so varied that multiple images are necessary to properly illustrate it. But there needs to be a balance between images and text, with the emphasis on the text (unless for some reason the article demands otherwise). I certainly feel that stubs should be limited to no more than one image simply to avoid the "Wiki is not a gallery" argument. 23skidoo 18:50, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I have an article I created a few weeks ago, and has been edited by a few different people. One person has now suggested it be deleted, I disagreed ( his reasons do not make sense), and he placed a prod on it. Another user removed the prod, the objector re-added the prod, I deleted it and suggested he put an AFD on it, and he re-added the prod again. The prod says "If this template is removed, it should not be replaced." so what do I do now? If I revert again and he adds it he would be viloating the 3R rule, but I don't want an edit war.-- Brat32 00:22, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I am new to contributing to Wikipedia. I contributed a short article this afternoon about a municipal politician. Within minutes it was deleted, with the reason given that only state/provincial and federal politicians qualify for inclusion in Wikipedia. I note, however, that there are many examples throughout Wikipedia of municipal politicians, from cities as well as towns, who have been profiled. It appears the rules are being applied arbitrarily. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Marty55 ( talk • contribs) .
An interesting disagreement is underway on the WP:BLP policy page, specifically here about this, and not using negative-sounding labels such as "conspiracy theorist" in the lead section of an article on a living person. Additional insight there would be appreciated! Thanks. rootology ( T) 02:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't know where else to post about this. Personal websites are used extensively through the Scientology series articles as secondary sources of information. That is, their opinion is quoted and cited. I am convinced that if reliable published sources were used, if Wikipedia guidelines and policies were actually followed and fulfilled, the Scientology series articles would make good reading. Editors continually give reasons such as "it is just a guideline" and even experienced editors, such as administrator User:ChrisO quote from newsgroups and provides a link to a reposited copy of a google group. I don't mean to single an individual editor out because at least half a dozen are of similar mind. I could use some direction about how to handle this kind of group thinking by a bunch of editors who agree, but who don't have enough combined weight to actually change WP:RS. Terryeo 03:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Last night I marked a few pages for deletion that I honestly believe should be deleted ( Voices (song) and Seven Silver Fish ). This morning I looked and users had taken off the deletion tags. How is this kind of situation handled? I've not marked many things for delete before but they aren't supposed to be taking off those tags are they? Stezton 08:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
I've taken a look at the specific case.
Seven Silver Fish have no albums, thus are not sufficiently important for an article...so I agree with your belief. However, I disagree with deleting
Voices (song). This is because the originating band is very famous. It appears that the editors are writing an exposition on each song. Now just because this song only has one sentence (so far) does not merit deletion. We must
assume good faith that the editors are intending to flesh that article out eventually.
bunix 09:20, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Yep, should be no problemo. bunix 23:53, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Just thought that I've written up the Wikipedia:German de-adminship solution, comments and suggestions are welcomed to improve onto it. - Mailer Diablo 15:12, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm a recent newbie and have a wikiquette/policy question, that I can't see a clear answer to on the policy pages.
OK, here's a hypothetical (but one that has probably happened to all of us!) Say that you write a paragraph for an article and introduce it in there for the first time. Let's say you spent two hours carefully writing the prose, and it is clearly isn't vandalism or a copyvio, and you clearly have put a lot of thought into it....(it may be imperfect, and need a further citation...but you figure that, hey, nothing is perfect and the evolutionary wiki process will fine tune it eventually).
Now, let's say an existing editor that regularly "patrols" that article, hates your paragraph and removes it immediately. (Sounds familiar to everyone? :-)
Now here's the wikiquette question: is (1) the onus on that editor to in fact not remove it but go to the discussion page first and argue for its deletion, or (2) is the onus on the introducer of material to accept this deletion and go to the discussion page to argue for its inclusion?
In other words, I am unclear if in wiki-world one errs to the side of inclusion or deletion. I've seen plenty of discussion pages where a deletionist editor has flamed some poor hapless contributor with the words: "you should have discussed this before putting this here." Alternatively I can find just as many discussion pages where a contributing editor has said: "this should have been discussed before deletion."
So, what are the "correct" do's and don'ts of the discussion process? In the same way there are road rules that say which driver has "right of way," is there a set of wiki road rules for the discussion-deletion process?
I can see that heavy handed trigger happy deletionists are good to have around on the wikipedia as they do a great job of keeping out the crazies....and their swift deletions with no discussion seem welcome in those cases. But this does make them appear rude when, in their zealotry, good-faith contributions get deleted without discussion. Kinda collatoral damage, so to speak :-) Are there some guidelines to help them understand when and when not discussion-before-deletion is expected? bunix 11:55, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Guys, you are all making very interesting comments and saying what to do if someone deletes stuff. That's cool. But that was not really my original question. My question is what are the "road rules"? For example on roads, automobiles on a main road have right of way and the ones on a minor road have to "give way." So I'm not asking what to do if the cars on the minor road violate that, I'm trying to find out the highway definition of what constitutes a "minor road" and a "major road" in the first place! And it makes sense to me that the Wikipedia needs a better defined "highway code." So using this analogy I'm trying to find out a consensus as to how deletions should be carried out and how much discussion should take place beforehand. Is "discussion" like the major road and "deletion" like the minor road, or is it the other way around? Is it that on Wikipedia that all roads are of considered equal in width and therefore I'm asking the wrong question? bunix 22:49, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
In the comment (above) that Rick Block makes about the "be bold" imperative, Rick suggests that this equally means "boldly delete" as well as "boldly add." That's a very interesting statement that deserves comment and analysis from you other guys. I like the way Rick thinks, as he is getting to the heart of my original question. So in the light of Rick's statement, I think I can now rephrase my original question in a clearer way: is the wiki consensus that "boldly delete" and "boldly add" are equally weighted, or is the imperative to err more on the side of "boldly adding"? bunix 02:47, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
This thought came to mind while reading(and doing a little bit of editing) the Streetlight Manifesto article, but is important to discuss for many band articles. If you'll look under the "Musical influences and style" section, one quote reads "In fact Streetlight have performed the two songs merged together live, with "Keasbey Nights" in the middle." Now, this is obviously true to me, as I've heard it and it's posted all over the internet. Many such notes from live shows appear in other music-related articles. See Rules of the Game for another example.
Now, in general it is illegal to record an artist's concert from what I understand. Some artists sell or upload recordings of their concerts but those are hard to access. This information is important to have in articles but it violates the unverified claim or no original research policies. Is there some way to resolve this with Wikipedia policies? KevinPuj 02:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
There's a similar argument going on at Monsters of Grace. I attended the Canadian premiere of the show, and it was booed by some audience members, which I noted (and which was also noted in media coverage however none of that media coverage from 1999 appears to have survived on the Internet). Because I cannot provide an online or print source, the claim is being made that it is OR, even though it is relating an event that happened. The article at Goldfrapp cites comments made on stage by the band as the source of a rumor that they were going to be doing the theme for Casino Royale, however in that case there was some Internet-based coverage, so that was easier to identify. 23skidoo 02:00, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
What do I do if people refuse to follow existing naming conventions because they see them as "cumbersome"? -- NE2 21:20, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
This is a genuine question and not an attempt to flame etc -- is WP primarily American / for the American audience? It seems that for many articles, there's a section relating to how that subject might occur in America -- e.g. " Soup" has an American History of soup. There also appear to be many (seemingly random) roads/places in America listed, and many articles which imply the reader has some cultural background to America. I'm not complaining, just wondering what the consensus was on this?
many thanks
-- Kierenj 09:38, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
There is a systematic bias that is considered in the policy WP:BIAS. For the most part it's an unconscious bias that is shaped by the demographic of the wikipedia editors. There is a concentrated effort to neutralize the bias and any occurrence that you see, feel free to Be Bold tidy it up. Agne 09:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
At the minimum, you could add the template {{ globalize}} to articles that you consider excessively parochial. Regarding the roads, there was a debate some time ago on inclusion/deletion of B roads (minor roads) in the UK so yes, these things are debated. As Agne says, be bold. You've got me interested in soup now though - how does the history of soup differ in the USA from anywhere else...? Tonywalton | Talk 10:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Another area where there is a distinct US bias is in various articles about US States. There are many instances where they are written from a perspective of a US Writer to a US Reader. An example would be in our geography terminology. When we use phrases such as Midwest, a non-native will naturally think of the connotation of "Middle" & "West" as laid out on a geographical map. They won't immediately realize that the phrase Midwest has taken on an archaic sense and has become more "cultural" or "historical" then in actually relating to Geography. As a whole we should be more conscientious about this and in places where a reader would be assuming to read "Geographical location" (like in the intro of a State's article) we should strive to put more geographically accurate descriptors that is understandable to all--not just US reader. Later in article we can include "historical" or "Cultural" terminology Agne 12:13, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to propose a new standard called Balanced Point of View (BPOV) which remain a separate and editable article for practical, reference, and historic reasons.
The full text of the article at the time of writing:
Balanced Point of View (BPOV) is a suggested alternative to the neutral point of view (NPOV) principle in order to correct some of the mistakes in the NPOV principle.
The goal of BPOV is to make Wikipedia a more informed, self-conscious, and intelligent area. The members of Wikipedia's production of knowledge are all members of specific cultures, geographic locations, historical times, genders, class, and race. All these, and more, affect the knowledge being produced in Wikipedia.
Thus, a BPOV is needed to ensure that;
First and foremost, we should let BPOV become the new guideline because;
-- Bjornar 18:43, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Neutral Point of View (NPOV) is a fundamental Wikipedia principle which states that all articles must be written from a neutral point of view, that is, they must represent views fairly and without bias. This includes maps, reader-facing templates, categories and portals. According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable."
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view is one of Wikipedia's three content policies. The other two are Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in the main namespace. Because the three policies are complementary, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should therefore try to familiarize themselves with all three. These three policies are non-negotiable and cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus.
A question, if I may: what failing, exactly, in the current policy does this address? The only significant variances from the NPOV policy that I see are that it is more ambiguous and has worse grammar. Is it intended to be aimed at identifying, rather than eliminating, bias? -- tjstrf 20:20, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Comment Unfortunately, we can all talk here until we turn blue. The fact is the NPOV policy is not open to be changed here. It is a mandate of the Wikimedia Foundation; not merely a Wikipedia policy (like the writing style guide). It is one of the few policies we can freely debate but never change from within this project. Changes to core Wikimedia policies such as this must come directly from the Foundation. Perhaps the best way to do this aside from becoming a director or lobbying a director for change is via the Meta-Wiki version of this page: m:Meta:Babel. Davodd 22:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
If a person register a sockpuppet account for the purpose of remaining anonymous and not associated with the main account, and do not break rules, including any restrictions on sockpuppets (such as rigging votes or supporting other account in discussions)... In other words, if both sockpuppers behave perfectly legally and independent of one another...
Are administrators allowed to tag the sockpuppet account as such, or put references to the sockpuppet account on my main account (or in any other way link those accounts)?
WP:SOCK details what sockpuppets may and may not do, but it doesn't say under which circumstances admins or other users may reveal or accuse of sockpuppetry.
Wikipedia:Suspected_sock_puppets allows users to post suspicions, but also provides no rules regarding whether any policy violation is required for an accusation to take place.
Is it logical and fair to accuse someone of sockpuppetry if they did not break any rules? After all, sockpuppet accounts are registered with the very purpose of not being associated with main account (unless it's a case of admin/regular/bot separation of accounts).
In either case, if there is a clear-cut policy on this question, I'd like to know it, and if there isn't, I'd like to ask one to be established. -Wane 06:31, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I tagged an autobiographical article for db-bio, and it got userfied. I left the user a note saying his user page was his to do with as he wants, and he apparently he took it to heart. Looks like he's looking for a job, and is using us as a webhost for his résumé, which is more detailed and extensive than anything I've ever seen. Is there a policy somewhere to set limits on this? (He's also created an article under his full name, with a redirect to the user page, but I've tagged that for speedy as a CSD R2.) -- Fan-1967 18:54, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Since you guys are talking about it, I also came across a user page that may be questionable. It's for Fir0002. Just seems a little extreme to me and definitely shaping up to be a "personal web page" which guidelines specifically state are not allowed. Thoughts? Roguegeek 22:01, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
There's a debate going on as to whether the early Scottish kings should be named according to their English or Gaelic names. I support using the English names, as do a few other people, whilst the principle contributors to the article want Gaelic names used. Any comment would be appreciated: Talk:Cináed I of Scotland -- Nydas 06:41, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I've been thinking recently that creators of articles arnt really given alot of chance to argue against deletion, or speedy deletion and i think that maybe a policy could be adopted to rectify this problem, i am proposing the following.
thats my point, i think creators should have the special right to defend the legitamacy of their article, i have fallen victim to this system of supposed fairness, being a non american the article was deleted during my sleep hours, which makes it completely unfair for a large amount of users who do not have the chance to defend their articles and wake to find it deleted. Zepher25 12:35, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
well it appears i am defeated, but this is my opinion and i will not diverge from it. Zepher25 14:02, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone please point me to section of the policy where it states that you may not link to a page multiple times in the same table?
E.g.
Artist | Song | Album |
---|---|---|
A | X | D |
A | Y | D |
A | Z | D |
Only the first line referenced to album D I added also links to album D on the next line(s).
But my changes were changes were reverted?
What is the proper policy? Thank you
-- CedricVonck 14:17, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
This particiualary affects technical information, for instance excerpts from manufacturer manuals which are stamped "confidential".
My questions:
The reason why i write it: today i found a sufficient formulation: "Confidentiality: These forums are not confidential. Please do not discuss matters covered under an non-disclosure agreement (NDA)." (freescale semiconductor)
The background: SEGA programming references. There are bits and pieces on the net, i even had them on my computer. But they are clearly stamped confidential. It is not verifyable how they made their way on the net. For superstition reason, i can not use any of this information.
It is affecting probably .1 percent of wikipedia articles. Hence it is only affecting a minority of users. User:Yy-bo 14:51, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Non_Disclosure User:Yy-bo 17:39, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
There's an ongoing discussion on Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view over how the NPOV, V and NOR policies relate to each other. There seem to be two camps, one proposing that NPOV is the primary policy, and the other that they must all be satisfied. -- Barberio 17:31, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I beg pardon if these already exist; using Special:Whatlinkshere has suggested to me that they do not. Just as we have the WP: quasi-namespace for shortcuts to pages in the Wikipedia: namespace, why not add a few shortcuts for special pages? S: happens to be taken by Wikisource, so I figure SP: or SPEC: would be the next choices. As one example, SPEC:RC could link to Special:Recentchanges. If nothing else, it would make my job at the help desk just a smidge easier, from time to time. Thoughts? If this is a good idea, do we prefer SP: or SPEC:? Luna Santin 19:23, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
It would appear redirects to special pages don't work, see SP:NP (and the other ones at Special:Prefixindex/SP:). -- Rick Block ( talk) 00:44, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
I have made a few suggested wikipedia policy changes and have posted them at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard. Courtney Akins 01:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Hey I currently have an article in an AFD and the more I look at it, the more I realize it might have a place in Wikibooks or StrategyWiki (take a look at the article). Although I'd like it to stay as it is, I just have a quick question about alternate solutions. Can I nominate or move the article for either of the earlier two ideas while it's in an AFD? or is it too late? -- Clyde Miller 03:04, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Recently there have been a number of cases posted to the administrators' noticeboard about editors who self-identify as children posting personal information, such as their addresses, to their user pages. This presents a possible violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and is at the very least unwise as it could invite unwanted attention. I have created a draft policy ( WP:COPPA) for discussion. It is early and rough; please whack away at it as needed. I think most of the rationale is there. Thatcher131 (talk) 16:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
(also listed at WP:RFC/POLICIES) Wikipedia:Stephen Colbert's Neologisms Lack Truthiness -- In light of many articles and vandalisms regarding Stephen Colbert's neologisms, I proposed this guideline, suggested by User:VoiceOfReason, which suggests that the user go to List of neologisms on The Colbert Report and list the item there. Might help with dealing with things like "Wikiality" and " Unicorn husbandry". Any thoughts? ~ Porphyric Hemophiliac § 00:00, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I asked a question on Jimbo's talk page but it seems difficult to get feedback from him (what I can understand).
Anyway, here it is, hoping that somebody will be able to bring clarity. And my apologies if the question was already raised and solved.
Here are the facts that puzzle me:
Is Wikipedia governed and managed by Wikimedia?
The way I understand the situation is that the foundation owns the name "Wikipedia", the domain names and the servers that Wikipedia is using, but that it does not "govern" or "manage" Wikipedia as it is neither the owner nor the editor of the content of Wikipedia. If "govern" and "manage" mean "organises, determines the content" and if Wikipedia means the encyclopedia, I certainly do not agree with that concept.
Some clarity is thus desired. To use the words of somebody who asked the same question on Jimbo's talk page, "I don't consider I work for anybody in particular but for a project and I consider this project owes nobody but everybody. Am I wrong ?"
I could find no real help in the Foundation's By-laws that are repeated in this page:
Cool! "develop", "maintain", "provide",...it does connect nicely with the view that the Foundation "supports" the encyclopedia.
But if we read a little further:
And here comes "manages" again.
Thinking about it, I was wondering to what extent the issue might originate in a confusion between:
Does this section of Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines contain a hint, when it says that "Jimmy Wales (and) the Board (may create a policy) for copyright (or) legal issues"?
Considering what the Foundation owns and controls, I understand it does have a certain amount of control related to two orders of issue:
but I have difficulty in accepting a general statement that the Foundation governs or manages Wikipedia. Bradipus 15:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
A style guide called Wikipedia:Manual of Style (ALL CAPS) is proposed. Please tell us if you like the guide, what is missing, what should be changed or amended, etc.
The purpose of the style guide is to curb the use of all caps. I consider this guide to be natural, but still necessary. If anyone wants to ask any questions on the talk page, we'll gladly answer them. Shinobu 18:46, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
The capital letters MoS only says "Initial capitals and all capitals should not be used for emphasis", but the MoS(AC) is much broader. Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (emphasis) for the rationale(s) of having this style guide on a separate page. Of course, having MoS(AC) as a section of MoS(CL) would be possible too, but a separate MoS-page is a bit easier to find. Shinobu 23:19, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
The .dae extension is for the COLLADA format (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COLLADA ). I would like to contribute some 3D models that I have authored using PD, CC:AT, and/or CC:SA:AT licenses. The first 3D model I'd like to submit is publicly available at http://people.redhat.com/tiemann/unitcube.dae and is licensed "Public Domain" by me. It is the unit cube. I hope this will open the floodgates for other modelers to begin adding their own creative 3D works with appropriate Wikipedia licensing.
-- Michael Tiemann 14:09, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
A discussion is being held on Wikipedia talk:Civility regarding the status of WP:CIVIL as an official policy and whether it should be merged with Wikipedia: Etiquette. — GT 21:55, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
How likely is it that a proposal for article consistency (e.g. "Every biographical article should have an infobox based on that person's occupation/belief") is established? I have this horrible feeling that despite the fact that Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, it will continue to grow away from the consistent (and thereby professional) look it should have. Arguments against the idea that consistency implies professionalism are welcome. 24.126.199.129 06:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Is a violation of Wikipedia policy for two different users to have similar usernames? I have recently noticed that a new user is editing under the username User:Tommyboy25. -- TommyBoy 06:59, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
This has been brought up on WP:AN, but really it belongs here.
CAT:CSD is, of late, spending most of its time backlogged. This morning, some 350 items are in the category. I picked three at random, and they were all misuses of the speedy deletion system:
As long as people keep abusing speedy delete in this way, CAT:CSD will remain overfull and the speedy method will slow down. People can't nominate 350+ articles a day, a good 100+ of them wrongly, and expect the couple of admins who look after this category to send the abused ones to AfD for them.
When the speedy delete criteria are abused, the user in effect is asking an admin to act out of process and to take the flak for it.
So, what can the community do? Well, people need to be educated in the use of the speedy criteria. Also, people who use the automatic vandalfighting programs need to be more circumspect (or the programs need altering - too many false nominations come from people who can click one button to nominate for delete but give no reason nor any thought to what they are doing).
Admins need to be harder about not deleting out of process: these articles don't belong here, are awful and won't survive AfD so we delete them out of process... and the nominator comes to believe that tagging things wrongly is fine (it works, after all!) and keeps doing it.
Finally, the point is coming where we need to widen the CSD themselves. If the vast majority of users already think that hoaxes, non-notable websites, non-notable corporations and spam are reasons for speedy deletion, then it is time for the community to act and make them reasons for speedy deletion. All of these are specifically excluded from the CSD, and yet one of them is given as a reason for speedy deletion in about a third of all deletion nominations. ➨ ЯEDVERS 09:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
There has been a lengthy debate on WP:AN/I about how much proof is required that a model in a sexual pose has given permission for the photo to be uploaded to wikipedia.There was much complaint that we dont have any policies in place to cover such situations so I've started a page here where people can come up with ideas about how we should handle such situations. Everything is in a very early stage. Please come and help us write a proposal. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 10:53, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that in the last few months there have been more articles being written on physical locations here, and consequently more AfD's of these sorts of articles. Since there is no guideline for notability of buildings and other physical locations, I've started working on the one here. I'd appreciate any input on the guidelines (the only one I'm adament about is that this doesn't apply to schools; because that would be an instant kiss of death for this) as well as any help with the process of formally suggesting this as a guideline. Thanks.-- Isotope23 13:06, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
A quick proposal for a minor extension to the page move mechanism: Give an option to disable the automatic redirect which is created at the page's old location. If the automatic redirect isn't created, then the old location becomes empty (as though the article were deleted), and can be the target of a subsequent page move. Note that the rule that the page move target must be empty or a trivial redirect still applies (for non-administrative moves).
This will allow many moves which currently must be handled by administrators to be performed by users, such as swapping two pages. Note that no information can be lost; all page histories are preserved by such moves. Consensus must be reached on controverisal page moves, like any controversial article change.
A few concerns:
The default behavior would be to create the redirect, as is done today.
Thoughts?
-- EngineerScotty 21:13, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Can't think of a single occasion where one wouldn't want to keep a redirect at the old location — with the one notable exception of clearing obstructed move targets. This could cut the administrator workload of
WP:RM by half, if not more. Definitely worth considering. But playing article-hide-and-seek with pagemove vandals sure won't be fun. A general option to omit the redirect is out of the question.
PAGENAME/outofway
. (If PAGENAME/outofway
already exists, try PAGENAME/outofway2
etc. until a slot is free.)
PAGENAME1
over an obstructed target PAGENAME2
, 'outofway' PAGENAME2
to PAGENAME2/outofway
, and normally rename PAGENAME1
to the now free title of PAGENAME2
. Tag PAGENAME2/outofway
for speedy deletion.Or, if PAGENAME2
had a significant history, normally move PAGENAME2/outofway
to a new PAGENAME3
, then tag the redirect which this leaves at PAGENAME2/outofway
for for speedy deletion. Alternatively you can rename PAGENAME2
first and outofway the redirect.
PAGENAME1
to PAGENAME1/outofway
, rename PAGENAME2
to PAGENAME1
, outofway the redirect left at PAGENAME2
to PAGENAME2/outofway
, and move PAGENAME1/outofway
to PAGENAME2
. Then tag the redirects left at PAGENAME1/outofway
and PAGENAME2/outofway
for deletion.PAGENAME/outofway
for deletion.PAGENAME
to PAGENAME/outofway2
, and rename the original page from PAGENAME/outofway
back to PAGENAME
. Then tag both redirects at PAGENAME/outofway
and PAGENAME/outofway2
for deletion.Bad-faith hiding of a page is impossible because tracing back "what has happened" to a suddenly disappeared page is easy, due to the fixed target locations. Add a link to PAGENAME/outofway
on the "page doesn't exist" error page that you get when you click a redlink. Tell people to check it just like they should check the deletion log. This helps to prevent accidental recreation of a page during a move in progress too.
Also, conditional on the existence of PAGENAME/outofway
, show a warning on the page history of PAGENAME
, similar to the red "you're editing an old version" box. It will say that there is another version of the page from a move in progress that needs to be resolved first. This prevents that spoofed pages can go unnoticed. Ideally, an outofway page shouldn't need to exist longer than a few minutes anyway, depending on the speed of the speedy deletions. Those usually will be easy decisions about empty redirects with no histories, no comparison to the regular (and needlessly inefficient) movework that an admin would have to do otherwise. Perhaps create a special deletion tag for this too.
The codingwork for the developers should consist of little more than a few path checks, some number generation, and the combination of a move and delete with special parameters. Any cases overlooked how this system could seriously get abused? Comments? Femto 20:20, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I want to say that I find it troubling that there is a backlog of (probably) over 200 images waiting to be speedily deleted. The process is supposed to be a fast way of removing content deemed unacceptable by its criteria, yet this backlog seems to have sprung up recently. Why is this? Alr 20:06, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29 bobblewik 19:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Some Wikipedia biographies deal with individuals who have graduated from unaccreditted institutions (see for instance Kent Hovind). These statements are often deleted, usually on the grounds that specifying the unaccreditted nature of the institution is spiteful, or a pointless criticism. I was wondering what your thoughts were on this and whether there are any policies on academic qualifications, to hopefully short-circuit a lot of circular debate and get on with more useful things. -- Davril2020 10:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Can I create my own sketch from a copyrighted material? For example, a scientific publication has a table and a graph, and I want to cite a part of a table or a section of a graph. The citation is not a mechanical reproduction, but a new tabulation or graph image that reflect the contents of the copyrighted article pertinent to the issue. Barefact 14:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I would like to propose a new naming convention (see Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions#Stars) and would welcome any comments. Thanks AndrewRT - Talk 19:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I've been seeing these a bit more often, recently, and I'm thinking that they're a bit problematic -- some users check "raw signature" without putting any wikilinks into their signature; when that happens, there's no easy way to get to their userpage, contribs, user talk page, or any of that fun stuff without digging through the page history. In the event their signature doesn't match their username, finding their diffs in history can be additionally problematic. With that in mind, I'd venture a proposal that all signatures be required or strongly encouraged to include a link to either of the user's main page or talk page. Thoughts? Luna Santin 02:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
this is messedrocker
(talk)
02:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)I suggested a while ago at WT:SIG that there be a requirement, or at least a guideline to the effect of, "link to either your user page or your user talk page". I'd also go further and suggest "contains the text of your user name in some recognisable form" and "doesn't contain to personal advocacy or other spammage in link form or otherwise." Alai 21:22, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
The Wikipedia project for birds has established the convention that bird species names be capitalized, despite it not being an accepted general convention. According to one of the promulgators of the new policy, it's a convention that's used by a significant number of bird journals and texts for clarity reasons (but not even all of them!). The major English encyclopedias, novels, periodicals, etc., do not use this convention. I don't think it's appropriate for Wikipedia. Worse, this capitalization convention has spread to cover all mammals, hence the strange capitalization in articles such as lion, blue whale, and previously, before being edited by other Wikipedians, horse and so on.
I propose that the mammal and birds wikiprojects stop this harmful policy. Exeunt 00:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
In "Trivia" sections of articles discussing works of fiction, there is a rampant problem of an apparent belief that "Triva" means "The Rules of Wikipedia don't apply here." I see all sorts of speculation, original research, and unsourced/unverifiable statements in trivia sections, and it needs to stop. Is there any policy statement that addresses this specific problem, or some way to make one? Sorry if this has been said already, and thanks in advance. -- Digital Watches!
I just saw Ryulong's user page was vandalized. Shouldn't user pages be protected so that only that user and administrators can edit them? My impression was that User pages are intended to serve as the user's homepage on Wikipedia. Am I mistaken? If not, I see no reason for anyone else to edit that page. Will 05:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
User:Pedant 06:55, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I've recently had my user page and talk page vandalized repeatedly by one particular troll, and I've found the trashing gets picked up very quickly indeed, often before I see it. Further, allowing my pages to remain open to editting and trashing does create a record of a person's bad behavior - although I am skeptical of the ability of wikipedia admins to be very effective against a determined and persistent vandal. -- Dan 20:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I was surprised to find that I can't use images from another language Wikipedia (at least, it didn't work for me). Wikipedia should have a common pool for all images, or at least an easy way to acquire them from foreign language wikis. 24.126.199.129 19:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
seems to me like Wikipedia does not want accent marks over letters in English articles. I am not really talking about words like cafe or decor, but more like proper names/biographies in the English language. A no accent mark policy makes good sense especially when we're talking about biographies of persons with lots of accent marks over their names. With the English keyboard, one cannot find the articles if the accent marks are incorporated into the article name b/c a searcher has no convenient way to make the mark or is unaway that the name has a mark. What is the policy though?
See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Male_Domination.3F.
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military vehicles): please comment on the talk page. — Michael Z. 2006-08-15 20:50 Z
This post has been moved to the proposal page Wikipedia:German page approval solution
If there is a merger that you feel did not qualify, do you list it on deletion review or another location? Hello32020 17:59, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I am constantly finding biographies in Wikipedia which contain statements such as "the person was depressed" or "they entered into a period of depression". And, more often than not, the word 'depression' is linked to 'clinical depression'.
The condition of 'clinical depression' requires a medical diagnosis. If a person states that they feel 'depressed', without such a diagnosis, this should be entered into the biography linked to 'depression (mood)’.
If a written policy covering this does not presently exist – one should.
If a policy should be applied, it's the idea that words should not be systematically linked, your exemple is typical of the abusive use of links.
Christopher Lims 21:45, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Where is the best place to ask about the financial policy of the Wikimedia Foundation? I only ask because I recently followed the "Donations" link on the sidebar to reach WikiMedia:Fundraising, and noticed that the page says "See Budget/2005 for our latest budget, which details where the money will go [...]" - this is a bit worrying, as surely the 2006 budget should be available somewhere? I looked around a bit more and found Meta:Talk:Finance_department, with three plaintive appeals for some updates on the financial situation. Who is the best person to contact about this? And even if the financial details are available somewhere, who can I ask to update the links on those pages? Carcharoth 21:07, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
We are having a debate on the naming rules for Cities of Japan. The specific MoS for Japanese related topics is at WP:MOS-JA. There is currently a debate at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) regarding the fact that the city naming rule in the MoS violates the Common names policy. Does a Manual of Style have priority over Common Names? The main contention is that the resulting article titles from applying the MoS are almost never used as names for the cities. Some comments would be highly appreciated. -- Polaron | Talk 08:17, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
[3] -- SPUI ( T - C) 10:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I am trying to change the article Great standing on the Ugra river to Great Stand on the Ugra River, purely for reasons of English language conventions. This means that I have to redirect people from the original one. There is no way that I can see to migrate a change through many pages. Perhaps this is something that others have wanted to deal with. Is there a way to propose such changes? It seems like a major policy issue to have a name that actually is grammatically and semantically correct in English. The capitalization of such names is also a problem since redirects for every possible capitalization pattern do not make sense.
Thanks,
Nathan
Editors defy WP:V's intent. When confronted with the particular and specific portion of WP:RS which spells out how the edit is counter to the intent of WP:V, the editors simply revert their shit back in and state, "oh, WP:RS is just a guideline". In earlier instances editors have stated, I'm just going to revert it every time" (and no more discussion about whether the edit follows policy or not). Mostly it is personal opinion appearing on personal websites, cited as secondary sources that I'm talking about. While you would think a concensus of editors would agree toward more stable, reliable articles, the situation is just the opposite. A consensus of editors agree to cite newsgroup information, personal opinion, original research and personal websites. What to do, what to do? <a disguntled Scientology Series editor> Terryeo 20:34, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
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Are internet sources that you have to pay to see valid?
For example: An article about a university makes claims about that university's rankings in various areas. Those claims are accompanied by sources. But when you click on the sources (e.g., U.S. News and World Report college rankings), you can only get the information by subscribing and paying money.
I don't think such "pay-to-see" sources should be considered valid. Only those who pay to see the material are able to verify the claims to their own satisfaction. starkt 05:11, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I think "pay for content" websites are vastly different from books and journals. As Someguy0830 mention, you can freely view the vast majority of those items at a public library. I think "pay for content" websites should be downgraded as "sources", in the interest of keeping up with the spirit of Wikipedia as being a free source of knowledge. I doubt you could eliminate "pay for content" sources but if an "important" claim in an article is made with only a "pay for content" as source, there should be a way to tag it and request a "free source". As a side note, I think this is a worthwhile topic to discuss on the discussion page of WP:RS Agne 06:13, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
It's simple; we use the best sources we can. Preferably those sources are free and easily available, but that's not always possible. If the only source we can find is pay-per-view, then so be it. In fact, we would be doing the world a favor by taking that tidbit of limited access information and making it free by putting it in our encyclopedia. Dragons flight 07:13, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Some editors have undertaken to delete all categories involving 'people by ethnic or national origin' by imposing new requirements that were not previously used and, of course, destroying all other editors work. Up until now, the 'proof' that was needed that a bio article should go into a F00 G00n category (such as 'English American' was that the article said so: the person came from country FOO and is now in country GOO. Now, a few editors are saying, in effect, that information in the article counts for nothing and they delete every article from the categories, depopulating the categories so as to force their deletion. These editors say there is no documented proof that the person is of the ethnic or national group they are listed in and no proof that the person 'self identifies' with that ethnic group or national origin. Is this what WP collectively wants to happen? Thanks Hmains 06:15, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
In what I believe was a misguided decision, Redirects for Deletion has recently been renamed Redirects for Discussion. The logic was that since CFD had undergone that change, RfD should too. The problem is, RfD and CfD are completely different. When a normal editor wishes to rename or merge a category they must list it on CfD, hence, categories for discussion, not just deletion. But one someone wants to change where a redirect points to, or turn a redirect into an article, or do anything besides delete it, they should do it themselves, with appropriate discussion on the redirect's talk page. This renaming of RfD obscures its purpose, and risks gumming it up by implying that it is a place for "discussion" of redirects. I really see no benefits to this name change and quite a few problems, but the administrator who renamed it no longer wishes to discuss it. To me, the correct name being "Redirects for deletion" seems straightforward and clear. Am I wrong? What does the community think? -- Nscheffey( T/ C) 16:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Where is the proper place to report on, and have someone do something about, the apparant slanders found in this article on a living person? Thanks Hmains 05:03, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
This is my first visit to the Village pump, so forgive me if my quick search missed previous discussions on this topic.
My question is, what if Wikipedia could have some advertizing on the site? I'm guessing there is philosophical opposition based on "information should be free" or something like that, but I wonder if advertizing could be included in a way that does not violate the foundation's mission or philosophy.
What I envision is, after the "external links" section on an article, there could be a "sponsored links" section. This could be populated with a bullet list of ads, from Google or Yahoo, or ads manually populated in a more controlled way. If it was done in a discrete and clear way, I don't think it would detract at all from the presentation of the article or the accomplishment of Wikipedia's mission.
And obviously, such ads would bring in a lot of revenue - probably hundreds of thousands USD per month (if Google ads were used). Instead of asking for donations, the Wikimedia Foundation would be busy just spending the money that came in. earnestcon 14:56, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree. Clinton's thumb gesture is well-documented and is citable trivia :-) If you read the literature on the thumb gesture it made a big cultural impact and it is not so trivial. "Buddy" and "Socks" are world famous -- I live on the opposite side of the planet to the USA and even I have heard of Buddy and Socks; they are household names. It's like you could not have an article on Roy Rogers without saying that his horse was called "Trigger" -- that would be sacrilege! The thing I find refreshing about the Wikipedia is it is not a "stuffy" encyclopedia. It has content that the people want (because they put it there), as opposed to 80 year old Oxford scholars who know nothing about pop culture! The Wikipedia is cutting edge when it comes to pop culture. You cannot use the argument that trivia is not "befitting" of an encylopedia, because this is a different encylopedia defined by the "people" or the "proletariat." If you are going to use that argument then I suggest you first delete all the 100's of biographies of pornstars that you would not see in a 'respectable' Oxford encyclopedia. Or what about all those 1000's of articles that go into every detail about every footballer that has ever lived? You would not see those articles in Britannica! I personally find those football star pages frightfully boring and trivial...that's my POV, but I wouldn't dream of imposing my POV on football fans to insist they delete all those pages that frightfully bore me to tears with trivial nonsense. I chose to ignore them instead. You see, it is this stuff that makes the Wikipedia special. It is written by the proletariat for the proletariat. Power to the people! bunix 12:29, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Someone just put this on my talk page:
Is that policy, or even Wikipedia style? Is it now mandatory to use </ref> for all external references? The "ref" approach makes navigation harder (when you click on the reference, it takes you to the reference line within the article, not the actual source). What's thinking on this? -- John Nagle 20:57, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I always try to use <ref> tags because I think it gives you a cleaner, easy-to-read, more professional-looking article. But this is not required by policy. JChap2007 20:59, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
External links should go only in the "External links" section, but I've seen it done otherwise where it seemed to be the best solution. I think the ref tags really only work well with actual citations and references. My opinion: what you were told is consensus but not policy, so try to follow it if at all possible, but if it doesn't make sense, don't do it. - Freekee 04:07, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I noticed recently on another user's userpage that they had a template that causes the summary of the featured article of the day to be summarised, with graphic, in his user page. As for today, this summary is of this page, and the summary includes an image that's fair use. As we know, fair use is not kosher for use on userpages -- I believe we either need to get a commitment never to have fair use images in articles of the day (which would be awesome!), never to include said images in the summary (decent), or must not permit people to use such templates on userpages. Which would be best? -- Improv 01:06, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Over on Talk:2006 redefinition of planet, a couple of editors have been deleting entries from the talk page, claiming that talk pages are reserved for discussions about how to improve the article, rather than general discussions of the topic. This seems to run contrary to my experience of article talk pages. What is the current consensus on this matter? Bluap 05:31, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
[Comment: this is a discussion extracted from the Karl Marx discussion page. At issue were (a) the way in which the section "Childhood" should be written - the version proposed below seems to have stood; (b) whether there should be a "German Jew" tag at the bottom.
The discussion on both issues applies to many other articles. Perhaps the time has come for a chat on various forms of "tagging"? Bellbird 13:52, 18 August 2006 (UTC)]
Discussion under: Karl Marx and (binary) categories
Karl Marx made quite clear (too clear, alas! - see On the Jewish Question) that he did not see himself as a Jew. Why force somebody into a religion and a nationality that he did not desire and that do not give a clear description of his upbringing?
The religion of origin of his parents is already detailed at the beginning of the biography here, so it is not a matter of concealing information. Rather - a) Judaism is a religion, in which Marx was not raised, and against which he had strong feelings; b) if we are to believe the article Jew, Jews are a nation - a nation into whom somebody can be conscripted for reasons having nothing to do with the religion or upbringing of the person. Very well, but then - where does that leave us? Under the rules of German nationalists, the French son of two born Germans is a German, no matter what he says. Shall we put Kleber under "German generals", then?
Marx seems to have believed that Judaism defined a nation against others. He did not believe in this or any other religion, though, to judge by the opening paragraphs of On the Jewish Question, he seems to have thought of himself as on the side of Christianity, and certainly did not think of himself as belonging to the nation defined (as he thought) by the religion. c) I certainly hope that nobody here believes that there is such a thing as the Jewish race. Marx would certainly have been classified under code 08, had he lived a hundred years later, but it is difficult to see what that says about him.
By the way, the use of German Jew at the bottom of pages seems somehow rather odd to me. It does not occur in xx.wikipedia.org, for xx = pretty much any language other than English. What do people here think of it?
--a
"a," you make some interesting points, but don't forget this is a biographical entry on Karl Marx. Marx's own opinions about ethnicity or religion as expressed in his works would probably fit better under "Marx's Thought." At any rate, Marx was born into a Jewish family, and that is a fact that needs to stay in the entry.--Dialecticas 22:04, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
By the way, "a," is this: ... your IP address? The only edit this person seems to make is cutting Jewish ancestry out of entries (see edit on Leopold Bloom). What's up with that? It's more than a little creepy.--Dialecticas 22:12, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Dialecticas: this is indeed this computer's IP address. As you could see from the user-contribution page, the only contributions I have made are (a) my changes to Marx's entry, and (b) a slight edit to Leopold Bloom's entry, in which I changed the wording of the description of Leopold Bloom's family to what seems to me to be correct (and seems to have stood as such).
What seems creepy to me is to define people in terms of ancestry, above and beyond their upbringing, education and self-perception. Neither here nor in Bloom's entry (Bloom is an imaginary character, by the way!) did I erase the ancestry of the person concerned, or occlude it in the least. It is simply a matter of how you define a person, and of respecting how he defines himself.
Even if Marx had been devoutly Jewish or devoutly Catholic, we would have to respect the division between public and private spheres. You cannot define somebody in terms of his private identity (if there is one!) first. Should Marx turn out to be (say) gay, you could not introduce him as "a great gay philosopher"; his sexuality would come up later, in the relevant section, if it affected his life. This is even more so if he had been a deeply closeted gay man, or a gay man who never had gay sex, or somebody who thought of himself as a straight person but whom you have determined to be gay by means of your all-mighty gaydar.
The edit to Leopold Bloom's entry was based on the same feeling. What must have crept you out was the fact that I was making an edit from an IP address. If I had thought that somebody would have thought me some sort of undead creature, I would have got a user name to protect my privacy first. Should I edit any further, I will get an user name, of course. It is very probable that I will not, as I am not liking the tone of all of this back-and-forth.
"From a Jewish family" is one of those current phrases that seek to state more than they do and end up saying something rather doubtful in itself. It reminds me of how, say, the men of the Amistad have been described as African-Americans; the latter is a perfectly good label that people can apply to themselves - yet the reason why the men were not killed for having freed themselves was precisely that they could prove that they were not Americans.
Marx happened to be of Jewish ancestry; Judaism was the religion of origin of both of his parents. He did not grow up in a family that observed holidays, traditions and customs, for the very good reason that his parents had converted from Judaism. (At least his father had; I do not know about his mother.) How Jewish his early environment was otherwise (whatever "Jewish" means when applied to an environment!) is an interesting question; it might throw some light on "On the Jewish Question", which is (to say the least) extremely harsh and rather hard to read nowadays. By the way, I do not agree with how "On the Jewish Question" is handled later in the article - namely, brushed over. It is not a criticism of Judaism and Christianity equally, but a statement of opposition (not merely criticism) to Judaism specifically. - a
"What seems creepy to me is to define people in terms of ancestry, above and beyond their upbringing, education and self-perception." - Yes, to me too, but not necessarily to Marx's contemporaries. There was an ethnic understanding of Jewishness as well as a religious one by this point in time and Marx would have been widely identified by others as a Jew, which would in turn have coloured attitudes towards him. That's worth bearing in mind, I think. Mattley (Chattley) 08:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree completely - yet (a) this is a case for not omitting a mention of Marx's "racial" origin (don't vomit yet - note the quotation marks! look ahead at the third paragraph if necessary), not for pinning the label "Jew" on him (or on anybody else who does not pin it on himself) in the very first sentence; (b) the word "ethnic" here (used also by Dialecticas) is very problematic; and it is precisely in this very problem that the issue lies.
"Ethnic" was an extremely uncommon word before the 1940s; it was sometimes used in anthropology as a synonym for "race", or for a "sub-race" or "collection of races" (see the OED). It came into currency when "race" became very unfashionable. It inherited part of the baggage of "race", in that it sometimes tends to denote a mysterious something that is transmitted by bloodlines. At the same time, one of the most common uses for "ethnic", especially at first, was as a synonym for a group of hyphenated Americans (also a problematic term!) - namely, Italian-Americans, Jewish Americans, Greek-Americans, etc. The second term is less common than the other two, at least nowadays and at least as a noun; this has to do with the early prevalence of (Classical) Reform Judaism in America, which emphasised that Jews were not a race or people, and that there were simply Americans of the Jewish religion. However, people think as if they used the second term when they think of (say) Katz's Delicatessen or bagels or Woody Allen movies as Jewish. We are talking about some cultural traits rather specific to some members of an immigrant population - cultural traits that, by now, have been selected, homogenised and packaged into something nice, safe and easy for everybody to consume. (Hence very little Yiddish theatre and very many bagels.)
There is no such thing as the Jewish race, period. (Whether "race" is a useful or healthy way to categorise human beings at all is another matter; for the record, I would tend to answer both questions in the negative.) Would Marx's contemporaries have seen him as "of the Jewish race"? Some did, to some extent; if I remember correctly (I am referring to a biography I do not have at hand), there is a letter from a friend of his to another rumouring that Demuth's son must be Marx's, as the former had the latter's "handsome purplish-black Jewish hair", or some such thing. Would Marx have seen himself as "of the Jewish race"? I do not know of anything showing that he did. At the same time, it is not impossible that he did; some people did at the time - and seeing oneself as "of the Jewish race" (or having some "Jewish racial traits") became fairly common in the late nineteenth century. ("Race" becomes very prominent in early Zionism - Max Nordau, Martin Buber - but it was not limited to it.) If somebody abandoned religious belief and practices, and lived in the general society - or, even more so, if he was brought up without Jewish religious belief and practices, and had always lived in the general society - he had to cope with being sometimes - or often - classified by both Christians and Jews under a mysterious category that described almost nothing about him and yet was supposed to be deeply meaningful. It is natural to try to tie such a phantom category to something concrete. In America, just about anybody who is "white" has the opportunity to describe himself in terms of his great-grandparents immigrant origins, under the assumption that this is all nice and tame. (A naturalised immigrant from Italy in the early 1920s was an Italian-American; now anybody with an Italian name can call himself Italian, and it is immediately understood that (a) he will not go fight for the king or Mussolini, (b) the real Italians live overseas, and will make fun of him if he goes to Italy as "a very proud Italian", (c) he has no direct connection with the actions depicted in "The Godfather", which, somehow, is in fact one of his favourite movies.) People in Europe did not have that option; hence, sometimes, an understanding in terms of race. Also: (a) one could think of one's racial traits as partial (if somebody truly looks "very Jewish", he is generally Armenian), and to be overcome if so wished, at least in so far as they were character traits; (b) the thought of oneself in terms of race neutralised the possibility that the phantom label would settle upon that of a nation, or a holy nation - that is, it protected one from thinking of oneself in terms of a history (largely a religiously articulated one) that one felt to be alien to oneself, that extended vertiginously into the past, that involved some extremely strong claims, and that was not the history of the country in which one lived, in which one had (generally) been born and educated (and in which, in many cases, one's ancestors had always been born, as far as the records went), and to which one felt inextricably tied.
Now, does this mean that we should describe Marx as "of the Jewish race"? Obviously not. We may, at some point in the article, remark that he was seen as such by some - and perhaps by himself, though I do not myself know of any evidence towards this - and that this may have had consequences X or Y.
Now, why should Marx not be described as "of the Jewish ethnicity"? (a) If ethnicity means "race", as in some technical literature, see the above; (b) If an ethnic group means what used to be called, quite imprecisely, a "tribe" ("the Igbo ethnic group"), then no; it may be a problematic term for the Igbo, too; (c) Marx did not eat at Katz's delicatessen. In fact, it is extremely unlikely that he even ate bagels, or even knew who Woody Allen was - or at the very least he failed to catch any his references when he saw him on TV.
There is another, perhaps more serious problem with *defining* Marx with the "Jewish" label, as opposed to describing the household that shaped him (including, if you wish, that his father had very likely converted in part for professional reasons), and mentioning his "racial origins" (quotation marks! quotation marks!) as they become relevant. ("Jew" or the workaround "from a Jewish family" (false in some literal ways, as discussed above!) are equivalent here. "Marx was from a Jewish family", as the first sentence of the biography, is equivalent to "Marx was a Jew" here: it is a definition. A precise *description* of his family is given immediately thereafter, so no additional information is being conveyed.) The problem is as follows.
As you will see in the page Jew, many people see Jews as a nation. Nowadays, most such people are either traditionally religious or Zionists (or outsiders who have adopted the discourse of either quite enthusiastically). Now, there were only a few proto-Zionists in Marx's time; the notion of Jews as a modern nationality hadn't quite arisen yet. (Though: see his friend Moses Hess.) However, the notion of Jews as a holy nation, as the chosen people - meaning *the* nation (or this is how Marx takes it) was extremely powerful - more so than nowadays, both among people of the Jewish and the Christian religion, given higher levels of piety all around. The holy nation will get you, even if you don't want to. See Who is a Jew?, and read it in the eyes of somebody who (like Marx) had absolutely no desire to be conscripted into a religion and a nation that he seems to have felt were quite alien to him. May this explain "On the Jewish Question"? In my view, yes, at least in part, and it may be discussed in the appropriate section, thought that might fall under the No Original Research rule. Does this mean that we must do what he may have felt was being done to him? No.
All of this may be difficult for some people in America to understand. In America, people are separated by their "roots" (meaning the countries or nations or labels in which their (favourite) ancestors happened to be born) by the Atlantic. The latter is an insulating body of water that keeps electric shocks from going through. (Occasionally, the insulation fails, as is now shown, say, by one or two young Americans who go search for their roots in Afghanistan in order to solve their identity problems - random controversial example.) In Europe, historically, the problem of nations has been a very serious business. Marx was a European. Take him seriously.
The fact that Kleber was seen as a German by some (including both suspicious French colleagues and just about any classical German nationalist, who, of course, would have seen him as a traitor) may have been a factor in his French patriotism. It does not mean that he should be defined as a "German general", or that his alleged Germanness should be his card of introduction.
A last word: "tag the Jew" seems to be a very popular sport in the English wikipedia. I have noticed it is also becoming fairly popular in the North American mainstream media; wikipedia just seems to accentuate certain trends. In the French media, say, this would be unthinkable - or is unthinkable for all except a few mavericks and monomaniacs working within current enthusiasms. (Compare to previous enthusiasms for all things Viking or Japanese; this is exoticism at work, and is probably uncomfortable for at least some people from Japan, or anybody who minds objectification, exoticism and enthusiasm.) The same is true of fr.wikipedia.org, for that matter. I cannot say that the French are not in the right here. This is a cultural difference in the writing of biographies - yet one for which there are excellent reasons, at least on the continental side. Biographies used to be written in the same way in America, but then the roots game started. That game, though, is no game. - a
I can see reference elsewhere to Wiki polcy on articles and vanity publishing but not as far as I can tell, on illustrations . I refer to the image "Reich in Prison" on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich which I have mentioned it that article's talk page.
To me, aside from my own opinion of the quality of the illustration - it adds nothing to the article which is already provided with photographs . I really feel it smacks of vanity publishing.
Rrose Selavy 15:37, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Just browsing thru Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents today when I noticed the following exchange (Warning: I have stripped off the names because I am quoting out of context for a reason):
I find it hard not to rant about this, but I've seen the phrase "assume good faith" thrown out enough times by people accused to causing trouble to feel it is a code phrase meaning "I am a troll or a dick. Of course I should be banned from Wikipedia." Using those three words is not a get-out-of-free-card; if one Wikipedian posts a statement clearly stating that several other well-known Wikipedians are engaging in some unusual form of communal sex, & that Wikipedian is accused of being disruptive, responding with "assume good faith" will not be very convincing -- if at all.
(Note, I don't know anything about the individuals involved in the exchange I saw on WP:AN/I. If I have to judge the parties in the exchange I read, I suspect that B is more likely the party in the right than A -- an inference that makes this incident all the more aggrivating!)
After all, if someone from the non-wikipedia world, say from the political sphere, is accused to being a criminal & all of her/his misdeeds are provided in a list (e.g., corruption, neptoism, general incompetence), just how convincing would a defense beginning "assume good faith" be to you? This is no longer an example of Wikipedia jargon, it's become a lame phrase whose intent is to turn an inquiry over one party's behavior into a vague counterattack about the accuser's motives. Using these three words has become an ad hominem argument that only serves to weaken the intent of the policy of WP:AGF -- don't suspect another editor of being a troublemaker if there is another explanation for her/his behavior.
So how should the above exchange have been improved on? I'd suggest something like this:
Notice that there is no counterattack on A which suggest that her/his motives are less than honorable. In short, B is simultaneously observing the guidelines of WP:AGF while at the same time subtly reminding A to respect them. No one is accused with this wording, which is a good thing: I've seen how a clumsy use of words can lead to a perceived insult, a flamewar between the parties, & possibly a case before the ArbCom.
So when should these words be used? Only by a third party, someone who steps into the gradually heated discussion between A & B, with the intent that the accused's acts could be interpreted in a non-sinister fashion. And the third party ought to immediately explain what this non-sinister intent is -- in a way that convinces the accuser that she/he has misunderstood the situation. -- llywrch 00:39, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Due to the recent turmoil on community pages, a large community straw poll is being conducted. Wikipedia:Communities strawpoll is now open for voting. Despite resolutions made on this page, many others are facing turmoil similar to what this page is, or once did face. In an effor to solve the issue, I invite all Wikipedians to vote there by September 18th on this page following the procedures and ballot instuctions explained there. Thank You. Ericsaindon2 06:19, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources is internally inconsistent. In the first paragraph it says: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29&action=edit§ion=53 "Do not include copies of primary sources (specifically text; maps and other images can be very useful) in Wikipedia." Later it says, "Some short texts such as short poems and national anthems are usually included in their article." So we should not include any source material, but some source material is usually included. You should not do A, but in some cases A is usually done. What kind of rule is that? It's one I protested against early on, and I still do. Either we have the rule, but then we follow it. Or we do not have the rule. And yes, we can also have a rule that only holds in some cases, but then the rule should be written as such, and not as a blanket rule. - Andre Engels 11:59, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
This never happened to me, but I am just wondering why if a user is blocked, said user loses all of the contents of his/her userpage.
Please help my wandering mind,
-- BrainiacOutcast 14:45, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
just hitting the random article button and I came across this - SummerSlam 2003. Nowhere in the article does it indicate that all of this is pre-determined. Do we not have a tag or policy that covers it? Yes I know that we could say "yes it's obvious!" but shouldn't an Encyclopedia should spell it out? I also notice that's it listed in the category "2003 in sports" - this also would appear to be misleading. A number of other wrestling events are also put in the various year categories for sports.
A pre-determined event is not a sport, it's physical Theatre (or sports entertainment as I understand it's called in the states). Surely they should only appear under the sports entertainment category or something similar that outlines that those are pre-determined?).
-- Charlesknight 15:30, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Further to that - if you check the professional wrestling page it states that Modern professional wrestling is a performing art, where the participants create an entertainment show simulating a combat sporting match.
So clearly those types of events should not be in the sports category?
-- Charlesknight 15:37, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Ah yes - many thanks. What about my second question about the categories - oh wise one... --
Charlesknight 15:47, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, the Professional wrestling page itself is in the performing arts category and all of the wrestling articles link back to that page. -- Charlesknight 16:14, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Hah - this is like pulling a loss thread on a jumper, professional wrestling is listed as being part of the Performing_arts, but it is also a part of the WikiProject_Professional_wrestling which is in WikiProject_Sports.
This really is all over the shop isn't it? -- Charlesknight 16:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
The issue of whether or not users should be allowed to remove warning messages from their talk page (and under what circumstances) has been a running dispute for the better part of a year now. In an attempt to bring wider community input to the issue, a poll has been created: Wikipedia:Removing warnings poll. Dragons flight 17:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Is there a uniform standard for writing summarys in articles? I have seen articles about books and movies that just mention the beggining setup of the plot, while others provide a full sumary of the book/movie the takes up 4 or 5 paragraphs. Is there a standard and is there anyway that one could be implimented? Cnriaczoy42 21:01, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Heads up. Some people refuse to accept that Hong Kong is part of China. We have a couple of sparse discussions at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 August 6#Category:Hong Kong people and Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 August 6#Category:People of Hong Kong descent.
Hong Kong is not an ethnicity nor a nationality. Other than this, I'm unaware of any categorization of people by the city or town where ancestors were born. No other "colonies" of any civilization are treated as countries for "descent". Macau isn't treated this way. Nor was Hong Kong ever a "city-state" (like Athens) that warred and settled treaties with other nations. Hong Kong reverted to China after the end of a treaty between China and Britain (not Hong Kong and Britain).
I would like to add that both Macau and China are treated the same way and they are not considered to be part of Mainland China neither internationally, locally, or in China. Both Hong Kong and Macao have their own olympic teams separate from the Chinese team, as does Taiwan. They are both not included in any neighboring Chinese province but are their own autonomous entities known as SARs (no pun intended) Special Administrative Regions. And you're statement on that no other entries or places in the world receieve similar treatmant is simply blantantly false, all insular areas for article purposes are essentially treated as countries such as American Samoa the B.I.O.T., Somaliland, Nagorno-Karabakh, Navassa Island, Palestinian terrirories ( Gaza and West Bank), New Calendonia and Transniestria to name a few. Some are unincorporated areas of certain countries, some are territories, some are disputed territories which are controlled from within but not recognized, some are de facto independant countries, some are uninhabited islands. Furthermore Hong Kong and also Macao which you claim are far differant both have their own internet domain country codes (.hk and .mo if i am not mistaken) and both have their own entries into the CIA word factbook as do the majority of the aforementioned "country-like" entities and insular areas. 71.142.78.14 03:03, 22 August 2006 (UTC) (<---- this comment was mine i was logged out, Qrc2006 03:04, 22 August 2006 (UTC))
Someone has been running around linking biographies and various things to Rotten.com. I am sure that it's entertaining to read those articles, but they are definitely ambiguous mixtures of fact and "humorous" fiction. I believe that WP should generally link to serious sources of fact, not humorous semi-fictional encyclopedias, on topics of general interest. -- Zaorish 02:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The one who added it to Richard Scarry, which I corrected recently, is User:Hajor. He seems to have been a fine little gnome otherwise. I may have been exaggerating when I said "someone has been running around", it may just be that fans of the site want to spread it around.-- Zaorish 00:28, 15 August 2006 (UTC) P.S. There's another one at secret society, let's see if we can find who added it.
Well, I found one user who has been adding them: User:Jerkcity. BaseballBaby started deleting some of the links, and I posted a note suggesting we coordinate to avoid overlaps. He responded there, and I posted a note to his talk page which he responded to uncivilly and has now deleted, with another rather uncivil note. I'm considering continuing to delete these, but haven't really come into a strong conflict situation like this before and would like a third opinion. I could see why someone who is a partisan of the site might feel they were being singled out by a campaign to winnow out links to that site. Do I need to hold off, or should I go ahead and start deleting anything that doesn't meet WP:EL? Thanks for any advice. Mike Christie (talk) 03:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
This looks like long term problem. I had a dispute with someone adding rottem.com everywhere many months ago. IMO a technical solution is needed - ability to see what links had been added over time to the article and if they have been removed in the past they could be removed immediatelly again or the software would not allow to insert them. Pavel Vozenilek 16:09, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I think rotten.com links can be useful and encyclopedic as a referance to criticism, parody, or like or dislike of a certain subject. Whether the material is viewed as legitimate or not is a POV issue, im sure many people take rotten.com as seriously as the Daly Show or Colbert Report and read between the lines. Plus i think its a useful link! any thoughts? Qrc2006 03:09, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Is there a policy regarding what is allowable as a pop culture reference such as video game, comic, film, TV, or literature? I've run across a number of articles in which whole sections of references seem out of place in an encyclopedia. Commonly, there are sections with nothing but references to video games. I couldn't find any specific policies, but I did find an essey on trivia which pursuasively argues that content should be both interesting and important. I took this as an affirmation that many of these irrelevent references could be cleared away. Accordingly, I began to delete content (an example is Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency#ARPA and DARPA in fiction). Before too long, I got a vandalism warning from another user. After some discussion, it was recommended that I first post to an article's discussion page before deleting content. I don't mind doing that (well, truth be told, it would be something of a pain), but this sort of approach is unlikely to result in any sort of consistancy. It would be much easier, and, more importantly, much more likely to yield quality content, if there were a policy governing allowable pop culture references. Thanks for your attention. -- BehemothCat 02:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Maybe this is the wrong place to bring this point up, but my problem with pop culture references in the Wikipedia is they are so U.S.-centric. If we are going to have them, let's talk about popular impact in Europe, Asia etc too. And yes, references to video games do seem trivial to me, but that's my POV and I guess the younger generation would disagree. I suppose we have to prevent generational amd cultural bias. I guess its upto the editors within each page to come to a consensus and fight it out. I don't think one can define in a policy what is trivial and what is not (very difficult to define "trivial" to cover all cases). But we can make a policy to prevent cultural and generational bias. I must say, one of the things I find "refreshing" about Wikipedia, as opposed to tradition encyclopedias, is the up-to-date-ness of pop cultural entries and the lack of stuffiness. I think it is important to err a little on the side of being different. bunix 04:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
IMO, these are perfectly reasonable facts, but they generally belong in the article about the pop culture phenomenon (i.e. the Simpsons episode article or the video game articles) rather than in the article about the thing being mentioned, unless the references are unusually significant and have recieved significant coverage. e.g. the articles on Locke and Rousseau do not need to mention that characters on Lost are named after them. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:24, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Two things. First, relevance is not inherently reciprocal. Simpsons Episode X may include Stephen Hawking: a link and some context are needed for the reader to understand the reference. But Simpsons Episode X is not therefore relevant to the reader's understanding of Stephen Hawking, which is the purpose of an article about him. Second, remember, no one is concerned with deleting information here: the function "What links here" will always give the reader a full list of toys and game that link to the title of the article. The lists currently do not provide any more than this information, and when they are separated in the normal way as X in popular culture, they are quickly identified as cruft and voted for speedy deletion, which is a conclusive demonstration, is it not?. -- Wetman 04:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC).
Just to add some moral clarity to the discussion, this reference added to Chrysler Building was possibly the most egregiously worthless trivia that I have ever seen. The biggest problem is with these topics that are essentially stock characters, because they're such a well-known landmark that it's an easy association to establish location (Empire State Building in NYC, Big Ben in London), and so it's more rare for a work of fiction that deals with that place not to show or reference it. The article in these cases should simply state that fact, that "Because the Chrysler Building is such a well-known landmark..." and only mention the most substantial references (such as King Kong for the Empire State Building). Postdlf 15:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Create separate page "XYZ in popular culture", just like Gorilla article has. This way the main article is kept clean. Pavel Vozenilek 19:54, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
i think its important to mention that what is important and what is differant than what is academic, i think many people would find that unacademic pop culture referances are worthy of inclusion and are helpful and neccisary in articles and hell they can be written better to make them academc then swell!! Qrc2006 03:13, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
As far as I'm aware, when a list is found that is redundant with a category (for example, List of beat 'em ups, a list I contributed greatly to), the usual action is to AfD the list. Although I agree that this is the right course of action, I also see the point of its detractors, who point out that these lists usually contain items that don't yet have articles (and thus aren't included in the category), which are subsequently lost when the list is deleted or redirected to the category.
My policy proposal is that, when a list is found to be redundant with a category, that list's title be changed from "list of X" to "list of X in need of articles", the list be added to the appropriate category, and then all blue links be removed from the list, leaving only red links or entries that aren't links yet.
For example, applying this proposal to List of computer and video fighting games, we would end up with an article titled "List of computer and video fighting games in need of articles", which would be included in the category Category:Fighting games, and consist solely of:
As articles were created for these entries, they'd be removed from the list, and once the list was empty it would be deleted. This would satisfy both the need to remove redundancy, and the list-makers' lament of losing list items that don't have articles. If this proposal is already covered by another policy, please let me know. Luvcraft 01:04, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
support great idea, that way those interested in video games, who are the most likely to be clicking on the video game category while surfing will see the no article yet games and will create them!
Qrc2006 03:19, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm finding there are certain articles where people are more concerned at getting images up on the subject then actually posting info on the subject. It basically starts turning into a gallery first and a place for info second. I can't seem to find any rules or policies against this, but it seems like there would be some. Are there rules or policies against this? Where are they listed so I can reference them? Is there a place on Wikipedia for galleries, do they go into articles, or does Wikipedia just not want those things? Any and all help is greatly appreciated. Thanx! Roguegeek 18:53, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Just some general comments. I agree that there are some articles where there are simply too many images, especially with articles that are brief to begin with. I've noticed, for example, that an article on an actor or an actress will often become top-heavy with images, almost to the point where it becomes a fan page. I wouldn't want to see a "maximum images" rule brought in, because there are occasions where a person's career is so varied that multiple images are necessary to properly illustrate it. But there needs to be a balance between images and text, with the emphasis on the text (unless for some reason the article demands otherwise). I certainly feel that stubs should be limited to no more than one image simply to avoid the "Wiki is not a gallery" argument. 23skidoo 18:50, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I have an article I created a few weeks ago, and has been edited by a few different people. One person has now suggested it be deleted, I disagreed ( his reasons do not make sense), and he placed a prod on it. Another user removed the prod, the objector re-added the prod, I deleted it and suggested he put an AFD on it, and he re-added the prod again. The prod says "If this template is removed, it should not be replaced." so what do I do now? If I revert again and he adds it he would be viloating the 3R rule, but I don't want an edit war.-- Brat32 00:22, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I am new to contributing to Wikipedia. I contributed a short article this afternoon about a municipal politician. Within minutes it was deleted, with the reason given that only state/provincial and federal politicians qualify for inclusion in Wikipedia. I note, however, that there are many examples throughout Wikipedia of municipal politicians, from cities as well as towns, who have been profiled. It appears the rules are being applied arbitrarily. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Marty55 ( talk • contribs) .
An interesting disagreement is underway on the WP:BLP policy page, specifically here about this, and not using negative-sounding labels such as "conspiracy theorist" in the lead section of an article on a living person. Additional insight there would be appreciated! Thanks. rootology ( T) 02:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't know where else to post about this. Personal websites are used extensively through the Scientology series articles as secondary sources of information. That is, their opinion is quoted and cited. I am convinced that if reliable published sources were used, if Wikipedia guidelines and policies were actually followed and fulfilled, the Scientology series articles would make good reading. Editors continually give reasons such as "it is just a guideline" and even experienced editors, such as administrator User:ChrisO quote from newsgroups and provides a link to a reposited copy of a google group. I don't mean to single an individual editor out because at least half a dozen are of similar mind. I could use some direction about how to handle this kind of group thinking by a bunch of editors who agree, but who don't have enough combined weight to actually change WP:RS. Terryeo 03:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Last night I marked a few pages for deletion that I honestly believe should be deleted ( Voices (song) and Seven Silver Fish ). This morning I looked and users had taken off the deletion tags. How is this kind of situation handled? I've not marked many things for delete before but they aren't supposed to be taking off those tags are they? Stezton 08:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
I've taken a look at the specific case.
Seven Silver Fish have no albums, thus are not sufficiently important for an article...so I agree with your belief. However, I disagree with deleting
Voices (song). This is because the originating band is very famous. It appears that the editors are writing an exposition on each song. Now just because this song only has one sentence (so far) does not merit deletion. We must
assume good faith that the editors are intending to flesh that article out eventually.
bunix 09:20, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Yep, should be no problemo. bunix 23:53, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Just thought that I've written up the Wikipedia:German de-adminship solution, comments and suggestions are welcomed to improve onto it. - Mailer Diablo 15:12, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm a recent newbie and have a wikiquette/policy question, that I can't see a clear answer to on the policy pages.
OK, here's a hypothetical (but one that has probably happened to all of us!) Say that you write a paragraph for an article and introduce it in there for the first time. Let's say you spent two hours carefully writing the prose, and it is clearly isn't vandalism or a copyvio, and you clearly have put a lot of thought into it....(it may be imperfect, and need a further citation...but you figure that, hey, nothing is perfect and the evolutionary wiki process will fine tune it eventually).
Now, let's say an existing editor that regularly "patrols" that article, hates your paragraph and removes it immediately. (Sounds familiar to everyone? :-)
Now here's the wikiquette question: is (1) the onus on that editor to in fact not remove it but go to the discussion page first and argue for its deletion, or (2) is the onus on the introducer of material to accept this deletion and go to the discussion page to argue for its inclusion?
In other words, I am unclear if in wiki-world one errs to the side of inclusion or deletion. I've seen plenty of discussion pages where a deletionist editor has flamed some poor hapless contributor with the words: "you should have discussed this before putting this here." Alternatively I can find just as many discussion pages where a contributing editor has said: "this should have been discussed before deletion."
So, what are the "correct" do's and don'ts of the discussion process? In the same way there are road rules that say which driver has "right of way," is there a set of wiki road rules for the discussion-deletion process?
I can see that heavy handed trigger happy deletionists are good to have around on the wikipedia as they do a great job of keeping out the crazies....and their swift deletions with no discussion seem welcome in those cases. But this does make them appear rude when, in their zealotry, good-faith contributions get deleted without discussion. Kinda collatoral damage, so to speak :-) Are there some guidelines to help them understand when and when not discussion-before-deletion is expected? bunix 11:55, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Guys, you are all making very interesting comments and saying what to do if someone deletes stuff. That's cool. But that was not really my original question. My question is what are the "road rules"? For example on roads, automobiles on a main road have right of way and the ones on a minor road have to "give way." So I'm not asking what to do if the cars on the minor road violate that, I'm trying to find out the highway definition of what constitutes a "minor road" and a "major road" in the first place! And it makes sense to me that the Wikipedia needs a better defined "highway code." So using this analogy I'm trying to find out a consensus as to how deletions should be carried out and how much discussion should take place beforehand. Is "discussion" like the major road and "deletion" like the minor road, or is it the other way around? Is it that on Wikipedia that all roads are of considered equal in width and therefore I'm asking the wrong question? bunix 22:49, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
In the comment (above) that Rick Block makes about the "be bold" imperative, Rick suggests that this equally means "boldly delete" as well as "boldly add." That's a very interesting statement that deserves comment and analysis from you other guys. I like the way Rick thinks, as he is getting to the heart of my original question. So in the light of Rick's statement, I think I can now rephrase my original question in a clearer way: is the wiki consensus that "boldly delete" and "boldly add" are equally weighted, or is the imperative to err more on the side of "boldly adding"? bunix 02:47, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
This thought came to mind while reading(and doing a little bit of editing) the Streetlight Manifesto article, but is important to discuss for many band articles. If you'll look under the "Musical influences and style" section, one quote reads "In fact Streetlight have performed the two songs merged together live, with "Keasbey Nights" in the middle." Now, this is obviously true to me, as I've heard it and it's posted all over the internet. Many such notes from live shows appear in other music-related articles. See Rules of the Game for another example.
Now, in general it is illegal to record an artist's concert from what I understand. Some artists sell or upload recordings of their concerts but those are hard to access. This information is important to have in articles but it violates the unverified claim or no original research policies. Is there some way to resolve this with Wikipedia policies? KevinPuj 02:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
There's a similar argument going on at Monsters of Grace. I attended the Canadian premiere of the show, and it was booed by some audience members, which I noted (and which was also noted in media coverage however none of that media coverage from 1999 appears to have survived on the Internet). Because I cannot provide an online or print source, the claim is being made that it is OR, even though it is relating an event that happened. The article at Goldfrapp cites comments made on stage by the band as the source of a rumor that they were going to be doing the theme for Casino Royale, however in that case there was some Internet-based coverage, so that was easier to identify. 23skidoo 02:00, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
What do I do if people refuse to follow existing naming conventions because they see them as "cumbersome"? -- NE2 21:20, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
This is a genuine question and not an attempt to flame etc -- is WP primarily American / for the American audience? It seems that for many articles, there's a section relating to how that subject might occur in America -- e.g. " Soup" has an American History of soup. There also appear to be many (seemingly random) roads/places in America listed, and many articles which imply the reader has some cultural background to America. I'm not complaining, just wondering what the consensus was on this?
many thanks
-- Kierenj 09:38, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
There is a systematic bias that is considered in the policy WP:BIAS. For the most part it's an unconscious bias that is shaped by the demographic of the wikipedia editors. There is a concentrated effort to neutralize the bias and any occurrence that you see, feel free to Be Bold tidy it up. Agne 09:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
At the minimum, you could add the template {{ globalize}} to articles that you consider excessively parochial. Regarding the roads, there was a debate some time ago on inclusion/deletion of B roads (minor roads) in the UK so yes, these things are debated. As Agne says, be bold. You've got me interested in soup now though - how does the history of soup differ in the USA from anywhere else...? Tonywalton | Talk 10:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Another area where there is a distinct US bias is in various articles about US States. There are many instances where they are written from a perspective of a US Writer to a US Reader. An example would be in our geography terminology. When we use phrases such as Midwest, a non-native will naturally think of the connotation of "Middle" & "West" as laid out on a geographical map. They won't immediately realize that the phrase Midwest has taken on an archaic sense and has become more "cultural" or "historical" then in actually relating to Geography. As a whole we should be more conscientious about this and in places where a reader would be assuming to read "Geographical location" (like in the intro of a State's article) we should strive to put more geographically accurate descriptors that is understandable to all--not just US reader. Later in article we can include "historical" or "Cultural" terminology Agne 12:13, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to propose a new standard called Balanced Point of View (BPOV) which remain a separate and editable article for practical, reference, and historic reasons.
The full text of the article at the time of writing:
Balanced Point of View (BPOV) is a suggested alternative to the neutral point of view (NPOV) principle in order to correct some of the mistakes in the NPOV principle.
The goal of BPOV is to make Wikipedia a more informed, self-conscious, and intelligent area. The members of Wikipedia's production of knowledge are all members of specific cultures, geographic locations, historical times, genders, class, and race. All these, and more, affect the knowledge being produced in Wikipedia.
Thus, a BPOV is needed to ensure that;
First and foremost, we should let BPOV become the new guideline because;
-- Bjornar 18:43, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Neutral Point of View (NPOV) is a fundamental Wikipedia principle which states that all articles must be written from a neutral point of view, that is, they must represent views fairly and without bias. This includes maps, reader-facing templates, categories and portals. According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable."
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view is one of Wikipedia's three content policies. The other two are Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in the main namespace. Because the three policies are complementary, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should therefore try to familiarize themselves with all three. These three policies are non-negotiable and cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus.
A question, if I may: what failing, exactly, in the current policy does this address? The only significant variances from the NPOV policy that I see are that it is more ambiguous and has worse grammar. Is it intended to be aimed at identifying, rather than eliminating, bias? -- tjstrf 20:20, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Comment Unfortunately, we can all talk here until we turn blue. The fact is the NPOV policy is not open to be changed here. It is a mandate of the Wikimedia Foundation; not merely a Wikipedia policy (like the writing style guide). It is one of the few policies we can freely debate but never change from within this project. Changes to core Wikimedia policies such as this must come directly from the Foundation. Perhaps the best way to do this aside from becoming a director or lobbying a director for change is via the Meta-Wiki version of this page: m:Meta:Babel. Davodd 22:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
If a person register a sockpuppet account for the purpose of remaining anonymous and not associated with the main account, and do not break rules, including any restrictions on sockpuppets (such as rigging votes or supporting other account in discussions)... In other words, if both sockpuppers behave perfectly legally and independent of one another...
Are administrators allowed to tag the sockpuppet account as such, or put references to the sockpuppet account on my main account (or in any other way link those accounts)?
WP:SOCK details what sockpuppets may and may not do, but it doesn't say under which circumstances admins or other users may reveal or accuse of sockpuppetry.
Wikipedia:Suspected_sock_puppets allows users to post suspicions, but also provides no rules regarding whether any policy violation is required for an accusation to take place.
Is it logical and fair to accuse someone of sockpuppetry if they did not break any rules? After all, sockpuppet accounts are registered with the very purpose of not being associated with main account (unless it's a case of admin/regular/bot separation of accounts).
In either case, if there is a clear-cut policy on this question, I'd like to know it, and if there isn't, I'd like to ask one to be established. -Wane 06:31, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I tagged an autobiographical article for db-bio, and it got userfied. I left the user a note saying his user page was his to do with as he wants, and he apparently he took it to heart. Looks like he's looking for a job, and is using us as a webhost for his résumé, which is more detailed and extensive than anything I've ever seen. Is there a policy somewhere to set limits on this? (He's also created an article under his full name, with a redirect to the user page, but I've tagged that for speedy as a CSD R2.) -- Fan-1967 18:54, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Since you guys are talking about it, I also came across a user page that may be questionable. It's for Fir0002. Just seems a little extreme to me and definitely shaping up to be a "personal web page" which guidelines specifically state are not allowed. Thoughts? Roguegeek 22:01, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
There's a debate going on as to whether the early Scottish kings should be named according to their English or Gaelic names. I support using the English names, as do a few other people, whilst the principle contributors to the article want Gaelic names used. Any comment would be appreciated: Talk:Cináed I of Scotland -- Nydas 06:41, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I've been thinking recently that creators of articles arnt really given alot of chance to argue against deletion, or speedy deletion and i think that maybe a policy could be adopted to rectify this problem, i am proposing the following.
thats my point, i think creators should have the special right to defend the legitamacy of their article, i have fallen victim to this system of supposed fairness, being a non american the article was deleted during my sleep hours, which makes it completely unfair for a large amount of users who do not have the chance to defend their articles and wake to find it deleted. Zepher25 12:35, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
well it appears i am defeated, but this is my opinion and i will not diverge from it. Zepher25 14:02, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone please point me to section of the policy where it states that you may not link to a page multiple times in the same table?
E.g.
Artist | Song | Album |
---|---|---|
A | X | D |
A | Y | D |
A | Z | D |
Only the first line referenced to album D I added also links to album D on the next line(s).
But my changes were changes were reverted?
What is the proper policy? Thank you
-- CedricVonck 14:17, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
This particiualary affects technical information, for instance excerpts from manufacturer manuals which are stamped "confidential".
My questions:
The reason why i write it: today i found a sufficient formulation: "Confidentiality: These forums are not confidential. Please do not discuss matters covered under an non-disclosure agreement (NDA)." (freescale semiconductor)
The background: SEGA programming references. There are bits and pieces on the net, i even had them on my computer. But they are clearly stamped confidential. It is not verifyable how they made their way on the net. For superstition reason, i can not use any of this information.
It is affecting probably .1 percent of wikipedia articles. Hence it is only affecting a minority of users. User:Yy-bo 14:51, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Non_Disclosure User:Yy-bo 17:39, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
There's an ongoing discussion on Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view over how the NPOV, V and NOR policies relate to each other. There seem to be two camps, one proposing that NPOV is the primary policy, and the other that they must all be satisfied. -- Barberio 17:31, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I beg pardon if these already exist; using Special:Whatlinkshere has suggested to me that they do not. Just as we have the WP: quasi-namespace for shortcuts to pages in the Wikipedia: namespace, why not add a few shortcuts for special pages? S: happens to be taken by Wikisource, so I figure SP: or SPEC: would be the next choices. As one example, SPEC:RC could link to Special:Recentchanges. If nothing else, it would make my job at the help desk just a smidge easier, from time to time. Thoughts? If this is a good idea, do we prefer SP: or SPEC:? Luna Santin 19:23, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
It would appear redirects to special pages don't work, see SP:NP (and the other ones at Special:Prefixindex/SP:). -- Rick Block ( talk) 00:44, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
I have made a few suggested wikipedia policy changes and have posted them at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard. Courtney Akins 01:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Hey I currently have an article in an AFD and the more I look at it, the more I realize it might have a place in Wikibooks or StrategyWiki (take a look at the article). Although I'd like it to stay as it is, I just have a quick question about alternate solutions. Can I nominate or move the article for either of the earlier two ideas while it's in an AFD? or is it too late? -- Clyde Miller 03:04, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Recently there have been a number of cases posted to the administrators' noticeboard about editors who self-identify as children posting personal information, such as their addresses, to their user pages. This presents a possible violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and is at the very least unwise as it could invite unwanted attention. I have created a draft policy ( WP:COPPA) for discussion. It is early and rough; please whack away at it as needed. I think most of the rationale is there. Thatcher131 (talk) 16:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
(also listed at WP:RFC/POLICIES) Wikipedia:Stephen Colbert's Neologisms Lack Truthiness -- In light of many articles and vandalisms regarding Stephen Colbert's neologisms, I proposed this guideline, suggested by User:VoiceOfReason, which suggests that the user go to List of neologisms on The Colbert Report and list the item there. Might help with dealing with things like "Wikiality" and " Unicorn husbandry". Any thoughts? ~ Porphyric Hemophiliac § 00:00, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I asked a question on Jimbo's talk page but it seems difficult to get feedback from him (what I can understand).
Anyway, here it is, hoping that somebody will be able to bring clarity. And my apologies if the question was already raised and solved.
Here are the facts that puzzle me:
Is Wikipedia governed and managed by Wikimedia?
The way I understand the situation is that the foundation owns the name "Wikipedia", the domain names and the servers that Wikipedia is using, but that it does not "govern" or "manage" Wikipedia as it is neither the owner nor the editor of the content of Wikipedia. If "govern" and "manage" mean "organises, determines the content" and if Wikipedia means the encyclopedia, I certainly do not agree with that concept.
Some clarity is thus desired. To use the words of somebody who asked the same question on Jimbo's talk page, "I don't consider I work for anybody in particular but for a project and I consider this project owes nobody but everybody. Am I wrong ?"
I could find no real help in the Foundation's By-laws that are repeated in this page:
Cool! "develop", "maintain", "provide",...it does connect nicely with the view that the Foundation "supports" the encyclopedia.
But if we read a little further:
And here comes "manages" again.
Thinking about it, I was wondering to what extent the issue might originate in a confusion between:
Does this section of Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines contain a hint, when it says that "Jimmy Wales (and) the Board (may create a policy) for copyright (or) legal issues"?
Considering what the Foundation owns and controls, I understand it does have a certain amount of control related to two orders of issue:
but I have difficulty in accepting a general statement that the Foundation governs or manages Wikipedia. Bradipus 15:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
A style guide called Wikipedia:Manual of Style (ALL CAPS) is proposed. Please tell us if you like the guide, what is missing, what should be changed or amended, etc.
The purpose of the style guide is to curb the use of all caps. I consider this guide to be natural, but still necessary. If anyone wants to ask any questions on the talk page, we'll gladly answer them. Shinobu 18:46, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
The capital letters MoS only says "Initial capitals and all capitals should not be used for emphasis", but the MoS(AC) is much broader. Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (emphasis) for the rationale(s) of having this style guide on a separate page. Of course, having MoS(AC) as a section of MoS(CL) would be possible too, but a separate MoS-page is a bit easier to find. Shinobu 23:19, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
The .dae extension is for the COLLADA format (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COLLADA ). I would like to contribute some 3D models that I have authored using PD, CC:AT, and/or CC:SA:AT licenses. The first 3D model I'd like to submit is publicly available at http://people.redhat.com/tiemann/unitcube.dae and is licensed "Public Domain" by me. It is the unit cube. I hope this will open the floodgates for other modelers to begin adding their own creative 3D works with appropriate Wikipedia licensing.
-- Michael Tiemann 14:09, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
A discussion is being held on Wikipedia talk:Civility regarding the status of WP:CIVIL as an official policy and whether it should be merged with Wikipedia: Etiquette. — GT 21:55, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
How likely is it that a proposal for article consistency (e.g. "Every biographical article should have an infobox based on that person's occupation/belief") is established? I have this horrible feeling that despite the fact that Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, it will continue to grow away from the consistent (and thereby professional) look it should have. Arguments against the idea that consistency implies professionalism are welcome. 24.126.199.129 06:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Is a violation of Wikipedia policy for two different users to have similar usernames? I have recently noticed that a new user is editing under the username User:Tommyboy25. -- TommyBoy 06:59, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
This has been brought up on WP:AN, but really it belongs here.
CAT:CSD is, of late, spending most of its time backlogged. This morning, some 350 items are in the category. I picked three at random, and they were all misuses of the speedy deletion system:
As long as people keep abusing speedy delete in this way, CAT:CSD will remain overfull and the speedy method will slow down. People can't nominate 350+ articles a day, a good 100+ of them wrongly, and expect the couple of admins who look after this category to send the abused ones to AfD for them.
When the speedy delete criteria are abused, the user in effect is asking an admin to act out of process and to take the flak for it.
So, what can the community do? Well, people need to be educated in the use of the speedy criteria. Also, people who use the automatic vandalfighting programs need to be more circumspect (or the programs need altering - too many false nominations come from people who can click one button to nominate for delete but give no reason nor any thought to what they are doing).
Admins need to be harder about not deleting out of process: these articles don't belong here, are awful and won't survive AfD so we delete them out of process... and the nominator comes to believe that tagging things wrongly is fine (it works, after all!) and keeps doing it.
Finally, the point is coming where we need to widen the CSD themselves. If the vast majority of users already think that hoaxes, non-notable websites, non-notable corporations and spam are reasons for speedy deletion, then it is time for the community to act and make them reasons for speedy deletion. All of these are specifically excluded from the CSD, and yet one of them is given as a reason for speedy deletion in about a third of all deletion nominations. ➨ ЯEDVERS 09:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
There has been a lengthy debate on WP:AN/I about how much proof is required that a model in a sexual pose has given permission for the photo to be uploaded to wikipedia.There was much complaint that we dont have any policies in place to cover such situations so I've started a page here where people can come up with ideas about how we should handle such situations. Everything is in a very early stage. Please come and help us write a proposal. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 10:53, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that in the last few months there have been more articles being written on physical locations here, and consequently more AfD's of these sorts of articles. Since there is no guideline for notability of buildings and other physical locations, I've started working on the one here. I'd appreciate any input on the guidelines (the only one I'm adament about is that this doesn't apply to schools; because that would be an instant kiss of death for this) as well as any help with the process of formally suggesting this as a guideline. Thanks.-- Isotope23 13:06, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
A quick proposal for a minor extension to the page move mechanism: Give an option to disable the automatic redirect which is created at the page's old location. If the automatic redirect isn't created, then the old location becomes empty (as though the article were deleted), and can be the target of a subsequent page move. Note that the rule that the page move target must be empty or a trivial redirect still applies (for non-administrative moves).
This will allow many moves which currently must be handled by administrators to be performed by users, such as swapping two pages. Note that no information can be lost; all page histories are preserved by such moves. Consensus must be reached on controverisal page moves, like any controversial article change.
A few concerns:
The default behavior would be to create the redirect, as is done today.
Thoughts?
-- EngineerScotty 21:13, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Can't think of a single occasion where one wouldn't want to keep a redirect at the old location — with the one notable exception of clearing obstructed move targets. This could cut the administrator workload of
WP:RM by half, if not more. Definitely worth considering. But playing article-hide-and-seek with pagemove vandals sure won't be fun. A general option to omit the redirect is out of the question.
PAGENAME/outofway
. (If PAGENAME/outofway
already exists, try PAGENAME/outofway2
etc. until a slot is free.)
PAGENAME1
over an obstructed target PAGENAME2
, 'outofway' PAGENAME2
to PAGENAME2/outofway
, and normally rename PAGENAME1
to the now free title of PAGENAME2
. Tag PAGENAME2/outofway
for speedy deletion.Or, if PAGENAME2
had a significant history, normally move PAGENAME2/outofway
to a new PAGENAME3
, then tag the redirect which this leaves at PAGENAME2/outofway
for for speedy deletion. Alternatively you can rename PAGENAME2
first and outofway the redirect.
PAGENAME1
to PAGENAME1/outofway
, rename PAGENAME2
to PAGENAME1
, outofway the redirect left at PAGENAME2
to PAGENAME2/outofway
, and move PAGENAME1/outofway
to PAGENAME2
. Then tag the redirects left at PAGENAME1/outofway
and PAGENAME2/outofway
for deletion.PAGENAME/outofway
for deletion.PAGENAME
to PAGENAME/outofway2
, and rename the original page from PAGENAME/outofway
back to PAGENAME
. Then tag both redirects at PAGENAME/outofway
and PAGENAME/outofway2
for deletion.Bad-faith hiding of a page is impossible because tracing back "what has happened" to a suddenly disappeared page is easy, due to the fixed target locations. Add a link to PAGENAME/outofway
on the "page doesn't exist" error page that you get when you click a redlink. Tell people to check it just like they should check the deletion log. This helps to prevent accidental recreation of a page during a move in progress too.
Also, conditional on the existence of PAGENAME/outofway
, show a warning on the page history of PAGENAME
, similar to the red "you're editing an old version" box. It will say that there is another version of the page from a move in progress that needs to be resolved first. This prevents that spoofed pages can go unnoticed. Ideally, an outofway page shouldn't need to exist longer than a few minutes anyway, depending on the speed of the speedy deletions. Those usually will be easy decisions about empty redirects with no histories, no comparison to the regular (and needlessly inefficient) movework that an admin would have to do otherwise. Perhaps create a special deletion tag for this too.
The codingwork for the developers should consist of little more than a few path checks, some number generation, and the combination of a move and delete with special parameters. Any cases overlooked how this system could seriously get abused? Comments? Femto 20:20, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I want to say that I find it troubling that there is a backlog of (probably) over 200 images waiting to be speedily deleted. The process is supposed to be a fast way of removing content deemed unacceptable by its criteria, yet this backlog seems to have sprung up recently. Why is this? Alr 20:06, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29 bobblewik 19:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Some Wikipedia biographies deal with individuals who have graduated from unaccreditted institutions (see for instance Kent Hovind). These statements are often deleted, usually on the grounds that specifying the unaccreditted nature of the institution is spiteful, or a pointless criticism. I was wondering what your thoughts were on this and whether there are any policies on academic qualifications, to hopefully short-circuit a lot of circular debate and get on with more useful things. -- Davril2020 10:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Can I create my own sketch from a copyrighted material? For example, a scientific publication has a table and a graph, and I want to cite a part of a table or a section of a graph. The citation is not a mechanical reproduction, but a new tabulation or graph image that reflect the contents of the copyrighted article pertinent to the issue. Barefact 14:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I would like to propose a new naming convention (see Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions#Stars) and would welcome any comments. Thanks AndrewRT - Talk 19:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I've been seeing these a bit more often, recently, and I'm thinking that they're a bit problematic -- some users check "raw signature" without putting any wikilinks into their signature; when that happens, there's no easy way to get to their userpage, contribs, user talk page, or any of that fun stuff without digging through the page history. In the event their signature doesn't match their username, finding their diffs in history can be additionally problematic. With that in mind, I'd venture a proposal that all signatures be required or strongly encouraged to include a link to either of the user's main page or talk page. Thoughts? Luna Santin 02:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
this is messedrocker
(talk)
02:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)I suggested a while ago at WT:SIG that there be a requirement, or at least a guideline to the effect of, "link to either your user page or your user talk page". I'd also go further and suggest "contains the text of your user name in some recognisable form" and "doesn't contain to personal advocacy or other spammage in link form or otherwise." Alai 21:22, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
The Wikipedia project for birds has established the convention that bird species names be capitalized, despite it not being an accepted general convention. According to one of the promulgators of the new policy, it's a convention that's used by a significant number of bird journals and texts for clarity reasons (but not even all of them!). The major English encyclopedias, novels, periodicals, etc., do not use this convention. I don't think it's appropriate for Wikipedia. Worse, this capitalization convention has spread to cover all mammals, hence the strange capitalization in articles such as lion, blue whale, and previously, before being edited by other Wikipedians, horse and so on.
I propose that the mammal and birds wikiprojects stop this harmful policy. Exeunt 00:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
In "Trivia" sections of articles discussing works of fiction, there is a rampant problem of an apparent belief that "Triva" means "The Rules of Wikipedia don't apply here." I see all sorts of speculation, original research, and unsourced/unverifiable statements in trivia sections, and it needs to stop. Is there any policy statement that addresses this specific problem, or some way to make one? Sorry if this has been said already, and thanks in advance. -- Digital Watches!
I just saw Ryulong's user page was vandalized. Shouldn't user pages be protected so that only that user and administrators can edit them? My impression was that User pages are intended to serve as the user's homepage on Wikipedia. Am I mistaken? If not, I see no reason for anyone else to edit that page. Will 05:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
User:Pedant 06:55, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I've recently had my user page and talk page vandalized repeatedly by one particular troll, and I've found the trashing gets picked up very quickly indeed, often before I see it. Further, allowing my pages to remain open to editting and trashing does create a record of a person's bad behavior - although I am skeptical of the ability of wikipedia admins to be very effective against a determined and persistent vandal. -- Dan 20:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I was surprised to find that I can't use images from another language Wikipedia (at least, it didn't work for me). Wikipedia should have a common pool for all images, or at least an easy way to acquire them from foreign language wikis. 24.126.199.129 19:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
seems to me like Wikipedia does not want accent marks over letters in English articles. I am not really talking about words like cafe or decor, but more like proper names/biographies in the English language. A no accent mark policy makes good sense especially when we're talking about biographies of persons with lots of accent marks over their names. With the English keyboard, one cannot find the articles if the accent marks are incorporated into the article name b/c a searcher has no convenient way to make the mark or is unaway that the name has a mark. What is the policy though?
See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Male_Domination.3F.
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military vehicles): please comment on the talk page. — Michael Z. 2006-08-15 20:50 Z
This post has been moved to the proposal page Wikipedia:German page approval solution
If there is a merger that you feel did not qualify, do you list it on deletion review or another location? Hello32020 17:59, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I am constantly finding biographies in Wikipedia which contain statements such as "the person was depressed" or "they entered into a period of depression". And, more often than not, the word 'depression' is linked to 'clinical depression'.
The condition of 'clinical depression' requires a medical diagnosis. If a person states that they feel 'depressed', without such a diagnosis, this should be entered into the biography linked to 'depression (mood)’.
If a written policy covering this does not presently exist – one should.
If a policy should be applied, it's the idea that words should not be systematically linked, your exemple is typical of the abusive use of links.
Christopher Lims 21:45, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Where is the best place to ask about the financial policy of the Wikimedia Foundation? I only ask because I recently followed the "Donations" link on the sidebar to reach WikiMedia:Fundraising, and noticed that the page says "See Budget/2005 for our latest budget, which details where the money will go [...]" - this is a bit worrying, as surely the 2006 budget should be available somewhere? I looked around a bit more and found Meta:Talk:Finance_department, with three plaintive appeals for some updates on the financial situation. Who is the best person to contact about this? And even if the financial details are available somewhere, who can I ask to update the links on those pages? Carcharoth 21:07, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
We are having a debate on the naming rules for Cities of Japan. The specific MoS for Japanese related topics is at WP:MOS-JA. There is currently a debate at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) regarding the fact that the city naming rule in the MoS violates the Common names policy. Does a Manual of Style have priority over Common Names? The main contention is that the resulting article titles from applying the MoS are almost never used as names for the cities. Some comments would be highly appreciated. -- Polaron | Talk 08:17, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
[3] -- SPUI ( T - C) 10:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I am trying to change the article Great standing on the Ugra river to Great Stand on the Ugra River, purely for reasons of English language conventions. This means that I have to redirect people from the original one. There is no way that I can see to migrate a change through many pages. Perhaps this is something that others have wanted to deal with. Is there a way to propose such changes? It seems like a major policy issue to have a name that actually is grammatically and semantically correct in English. The capitalization of such names is also a problem since redirects for every possible capitalization pattern do not make sense.
Thanks,
Nathan
Editors defy WP:V's intent. When confronted with the particular and specific portion of WP:RS which spells out how the edit is counter to the intent of WP:V, the editors simply revert their shit back in and state, "oh, WP:RS is just a guideline". In earlier instances editors have stated, I'm just going to revert it every time" (and no more discussion about whether the edit follows policy or not). Mostly it is personal opinion appearing on personal websites, cited as secondary sources that I'm talking about. While you would think a concensus of editors would agree toward more stable, reliable articles, the situation is just the opposite. A consensus of editors agree to cite newsgroup information, personal opinion, original research and personal websites. What to do, what to do? <a disguntled Scientology Series editor> Terryeo 20:34, 1 September 2006 (UTC)