There is a proposal on the treatment of creation of articles for current events. It's based on a combination of existing policies/guidelines, but as an interpretation of how they applies to current events. The basic premise is that, as an encyclopedia, we should not be in the business of tracking breaking news on a minute by minute basis, and we should be cautious about overuse of sources published in the heat of the moment. We have no need for a "scoop", so should act without unnecessary haste, and "wait for the dust to settle" before using potentially unreliable sources. This is especially important when the potentially unreliable sources are concerning previously unknown living people due to WP:LIVING issues. Comments welcome at WP:DUST. Regards, MartinRe 22:14, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe a revision of the "Common Name" guideline needs to be made in order to alleviate the conflict that certain applications of that guideline has with other guidelines and policies (like WP:NC(P)). I would like to get a broad consensus on what would be the best way to clearify and revise the guideline. Please direct any comments to the guideline's talk page. Thanks! Agne 19:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

On Talk:Boston (disambiguation) under the heading "Most Commonly" I suggested that the relative importance of Boston, Lincolnshire was being undersold. TiffaF has made what seems like a reasonable proposal, including highlighting a precedent:

"I agree Boston should point to this disambiguation page, and Boston, Lincolnshire should be the first entry. See Newark, which is structured in this way..."

What neither of us know is how much publicity this needs before it is implemented. I almost went on a did it on the basis of "Be Bold", but hesitated and would welcome comment. SMeeds 10:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Just because it's the first doesn't mean it's the most important. It should go to Boston, Massachusetts. -- Golbez 10:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Bear in mind no one is suggesting that Boston should redirect to Boston, Lincolnshire, though maybe a case could be made for that based on pre-existence, but rather that it should go to Boston (disambiguation) which seems the even-handed way of doing it. The case of Newark shows how it probably should work. SMeeds 14:04, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

The way I've seen it, most often, would have Boston redirect to Boston Massachusetts with a reference at the top pointing to the Boston disambig page. RJFJR 16:53, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The standard is to have Name as the most commonly referenced copy of Name, with a "for other uses, see Name (disambiguation)", or "For the town in linconshire, see". For an axample, look at cambridge

I have to side with the above and disagree with the original poster. Boston, MA is a global city and I would say that Newark is a poor comparison since it doesn't have the global stature of Boston to set itself apart from the other Newarks. I agree that there should be a comment line on the article to point to the disambig but the redirect should go directly to Boston, MA Agne 18:17, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I am pleased now to see that Boston, Lincolnshire gets second billing to Boston, Massachusetts. That is all I was ever looking for. As I have said on Talk:Boston (disambiguation), I am ducking out of this conversation now. Thanks for your help. SMeeds 08:40, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I (re)propose this thing. -- Cat out 00:22, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

The proposal Wikipedia:Candidates and elections ( WP:C&E) had a fairly good reception when introduced, with a couple of objections from people who thought it was not inclusive enough. It then sat idle for a while, and has now been tagged as inactive. I'd like to revive discussion on it to establish a policy on the subject. I'd appreciate it if people who have not read it go check it out and comment on its talk page. Thanks. -- Mwalcoff 22:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

A recent article linked from Slashdot (and discussed there) claims that Wikipedia is not primarily written by the most prolific editors, but mostly by outsiders with low edit count, and often even without an account. These raw contributions are then polished by the inside core, racking up high editcounts while fixing punctuation and moving images around. I think there is at least some truth to this. This is certainly another argument against editcountitis in deciding conflicts or awarding adminship. Question: Does Wikipedia give an adequate voice to contributors with substantial contributions but few edits?-- Stephan Schulz 20:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about those statistics, but anyone is free to reason with anyone, regardless of edit count. — Centrx→ talk • 20:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

That's why the administrators are called wikipedia's maintainence crew. I don't see what you mean by giving people a significant enough "voice", as anyone can discuss things on talk pages if they so choose. (What are we supposed to do, take random IP pages and canvass their opinions?) If anything, this simply reaffirms WP:BITE. -- tjstrf 20:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, occasional editors are rarely seen on policy pages, they are not allowed to vote in ArbCom or Board elections, and many people require high edits counts (in the thousands!) to support someone for admin. Occasional editors are, indeed, free to discuss on talk pages, but they do not very much shape the Wikipedia processes. And I know that I tend to give more weight to people which have been around (which means I check if they have a substantial edit count). Maybe having something like a "bytes added" counter in addition to a pure edit count would be useful. -- Stephan Schulz 21:00, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

All those tasks you listed are meta activities, where your usefulness and success depends on your ability to read, comprehend, memorize, develop coherent arguments based on, and apply Wikipedia's policy. It's quite different than both adding new content where your usefulness is in your access to rare knowledge, and cleanup/sift type editing where your usefulness is dependant on good spelling/grammar and time devotion to the project. It takes many types of editors to build Wikipedia. -- tjstrf 21:26, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this is both false (the most prolific editors are often responsible for a good deal of original content) and, even if it were true, not a bad thing. As mentioned in an earlier thread, making the right edits for the wrong reasons is still beneficial to the project, whether they're major or minor. Deco 20:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how it's happened but I tend to spend most of my time deleting rather than adding and cleaning up content - mainly because it just fits in better with my schedule. I've noticed that a number of editors have distain for people like me. In their mind we are a lower class of editor. -- Charlesknight 21:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I've thought about this for a while, and while I just can't see any reason it would be a bad idea, I think it would be perceived as an unusual idea, so I wanted to ask for opinions from other editors.

The question is this: if an editor is not yet ready to write an article, but is assembling sources and the like, may he or she create the article talk page that would accompany the article once it is created? This, to my mind, is better than rushing to get an inadequate stub out into article namespace. If another editor is unaware of the first editor's efforts and starts a stub in article namespace, they'll see that the corresponding talk page already exists -- so this already has an advantage over the frequent practice of starting an article in one's user space and then moving it to article namespace when ready.

Does anyone have comments or suggestions regarding this practice? -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

• It seems to me it has the potential to be a bad idea, leaving behind a whole bunch of stub talk pages for articles that never end up getting written, with little chance of someone coming back later to clean them out. I've seen a similar issue with people creating redirects before writing the main article. Fan-1967 16:25, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

• Well, we have {{ db-talk}} for them, and I'm sure that either we have some special page to find them, or otherwise people likely periodically run queries on offline dumps to find them. So if anything, I'd be more concerned that the talk page would be removed prematurely. -- Interiot 16:30, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

It's easy enough to move a title, once the article has begun to develop, with the talk that naturally accrues. Whether a new page should be merged with an existing page is an issue that develops naturally as content develops. Why would one find it desirable to delineate structure before entering content? To exclude the wrong kind of information? -- Wetman 18:30, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I must point out your reference to delineating structure before entering content isn't found anywhere in my suggestion. -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

CSD G8 says: "Talk pages of pages that do not exist, unless they contain deletion discussion that isn't logged elsewhere or notes that would help in creating an article." Thus db-talk could not be applied to such pages, and I hope would not be applied by a sensible person. I think there's nothing wrong with creating an article in this manner, if that's how you work. Deco 22:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't fear stubs, especially if you already have sources. Fagstein 21:21, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

...but also displeased to see users changing articles to their own biased opinions! I edited the article on the History of communication and added that what was written on the page was simply a theory devised by evolutionists and not 100% factual. Another user removed what I wrote and added that creationism was a "fairy tale". Such attitude should not be tolerated here, as well as such a biased point of view being displayed in our articles! I am not trying to promote creationism, nor to bring down evolutionism, but to point out that evolutionism is a theory, not a fact. A very strong theory, perhaps, but not fact.

EDIT: Upon further inspection, this user happens to be an admin. I'm surprised such an offensive, biased person has been given administrator privileges.

-- Ravenstorm 12:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

You are welcome to start a section or new article on the non-evolutionary history of communication, if you can find references. Your addition was not in an encyclopedic style, refering to 'this page' and simply providing a link to another article rather than any references. Please note that NPOV does not mean 'balanced', just that all sides are put forward with appropriate weightings in the appropriate articles. I also refer to evolution and theory, where you can find more information on the concept of scientific theory. Such matters have been debated ad nausium. LinaMishima 12:17, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

His talk page comment was inappropriate, but the revert was appropriate, as your edits did not comply with the encyclopedic tone we expect from articles. Also note that Wikipedia is NOT a soapbox or instrument of social change. -- tjstrf 15:34, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Do I really need a source to note that the theory of evolution and all of it's subsidiaries are all, as I just said, a theory? I can find one if that is necessary. I am not searching to change the way people think, in fact, the reason I added that edit was for that exact reason! If Wikipedia is going to be biased in the evolutionism-creationism debate by stating evolutionism as fact instead of maintaning a neutral, factual point of view, well then I don't see why I should even bother.

I digress. I will be more subtle in adding my comments to the article, since this is not my encyclopedia. If that is still not possible, I will retreat myself from the article. -- RavenStorm 16:00, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

It's possible that you don't understand what the word "theory" means. When you have educated yourself on that matter, you'll find it easier to debate such issues with informed editors. -- jpgordon ^∇∆∇∆ 16:17, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Second, I will elaborate on that subject at Talk:History of communication. --  _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus |  talk}  16:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

For the records, I have apologized for my talk page comment, which was indeed rather brusque, but I considered the edit in question highly inappopriate and controversial, certainly not something that should be readded to a high-visibility (DYK) article. Btw, I have not reverted your edits: you were reverted by two other users (although I completly agree with their revert for the reasons stated on talk). As for the merit of your edit, I replied at Talk:History of communication, where I recommed we continue this discussion (VP pages are not archived...).--  _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus |  talk}  16:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

has anyone else noticed a large increase in unnecessary templates? you know, those ones where a category exists and works just fine except someone saw fit to make a template also? i guess they find categories too hard to use or something? i have no idea, but it's getting out of hand. perhaps we need more guidance on the matter in the help section, maybe the newbies simply don't get it. and perhaps some people who love to enforce could focus themselves on this for a little while. 151.201.46.144 22:42, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Precisely what are you complaining about? Are you speaking of navigation templates? Because those are quite helpful. However, without context none of us will know what you are asking, and it would help if we had some specific examples, as most judgments are best made case-by-case. -- tjstrf 22:45, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd guess the original poster is indeed talking about navigation templates. To my mind navigation templates are useful, but are often incorrectly stuck at the bottom of articles where they are useless of navigation. For examples of useful navigation templates, see History of Albania and History of Middle-earth. Clicking on the links in the navigation templates allows you to cycle around the articles. A category doesn't do this. In this sense, navigational templates are being used like website frames to create mini-contents pages for small areas of the encyclopedia. Sometimes these will overlap with categories, but the categories, as in Category:History of Albania and Category:The History of Middle-earth tend to be broader and include other articles outside the "contents listing" of the navigational templates. Carcharoth 22:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Navigation templates are of essence for easy browsing of single-subject article trees that have been forked due to length or complexity. Categories are best used for the connection of interrelated subjects. While they may be one and the same to the editor, to the reader they serve two seperate functions. -- tjstrf 23:03, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Why are they useless for navigation at the bottom? First, there are two places that are easily reached, the top and the bottom. A navigation template at the top tends to clutter the article, making the reader scroll down to the actual text. The bottom is not a bad place then, is it? Also, often people will use the navtemplate after reading the article, in which case they are useful at the bottom. Shinobu 06:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Try using the examples I gave. They allow you to click between the articles and decide which one you want, without having to scroll down to the bottom each time to find the navbox again. The trick is to keep the navboxes small enough to not interfere with the article. They are usually not more intrusive than a long Table of Contents would be. Carcharoth 08:12, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone know if there is a policy (or guideline) on linking to RSS feeds? The example I came across was a webcomic Megatokyo. It seems the infobox used by WikiProject Webcomics has a parameter to show RSS feed links. I'm not entirely sure, but it seems lik this is just offerng people the option to subscribe to the comic, which seems a bit strange for Wikipedia to do. Surely we should link to the comic website, and then let people click the RSS feed button there if they want to. Thoughts? Carcharoth 18:58, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, there is no official policy or guideline in this. However, if you want more information, you could view WP:RSS. -- S iva1979 ^{Talk to me} 22:25, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

That link is about how to subscribe to various Wikipedia data streams by RSS. I am talking about Wikipedia providing external links to non-Wikipedia RSS data streams. To my mind, clicking an RSS link is actually subscribing to something (it is like saying: add me to your mailing list). I may be misunderstanding RSS, but if that is what it is doing, then we should, IMO, discourage use of RSS links as external links in Wikipedia. Carcharoth 22:38, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Throw ( talk · contribs · count) has been uploading all of his images, claiming the source as a Flickr account. However, it just appears that he himself uploaded those photos to his own Flickr account, and then uploaded them here, which would be no different than just uploading a random image that was saved on a hard drive. Can this really be counted as a source? I mean, there has to be a real source from where that user got the pictures so he could upload them to the Flickr account.

Oh, I also have some real beefs with the way the user acts. He used to tag it with CC by 2.0 deeds, even though they're clearly not his works, and he even still writes that text in (tagging it now with the lovable {{ fairuse}} tag). He also is rather incivil to anybody who touches "his" images; see [1] [2] [3] (the second one also removing the IFD tag). I even discussed it with him [4], but he showed disregard for the philisophy of "fair use," calling the free iamge "ugly" before deleting the entire discussion [5]. Hbdragon88 03:45, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

You might want to post this on the administrator's noticeboard or related noticeboards (start at WP:AN), to get the attention of an admin. This sort of behaviour certainly isn't acceptable. Carcharoth 19:00, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Is it acceptable to use a fair use image on a compendium of series episodes? In particular, I'm referring to List of Utawarerumono episodes, which contains a fair use screen shot from each episode. User:Zoe| (talk) 22:43, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Fair_use/Fair_use_images_in_lists. Kotepho 22:49, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how that answers my question. User:Zoe| (talk) 23:35, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

The matter is unsettled at this time. Personally, I believe we are outside the bounds of Wikipedia's fair-use policies but probably inside the bounds of legality. That is, I believe the use of such images is not permitted on Wikipedia but that we could change the policy to permit such use. I'd be against changing policy, however; I think we should try to avoid use of copyrighted images except where necessary. -- Yamla 23:43, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that if it's legal, which it is, it should be allowed. Any restrictions beyond that of legality would souly be to limit illistaration. I think that is counter to wikipedia's interests. The list that started the whole controversey is List of Stargate SG-1 episodes. That page is now a Featured list. I think that it's FL status indicates that the community thinks it's ok. Also, Igonore al rules is a policy. If it's legal and imporves wikipedia, do it. Tobyk777 20:25, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Ignore all rules "policy" status is rather ironic. However, ignore all rules cannot be used to ignore consensus, or the unnegotiable NPOV. In this case, I believe you would be all right with using them, so long as no one complains, but you should be sure to write detailed neough episode summaries to merit their usage as more than mere decoration. -- tjstrf 22:11, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

It appears that many users (aspiring admins or even some sysops) are on a mission to merely increase the number of articles edited (without pausing to procrastinate on the revision made by others) rather than the quality of the articles. This is counterproductive to sustaining the interest and participation of other users.

Anyone who keeps editing 10 or more pages everyday is not serious about the quality. I hope Wiki policy members ponders over this suggestion. Thank you.

Netking 10:42, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Great job making a blanket statement. I watch over dozens, probably hundreds of military related articles. That's just where my expertise lies. I've probably edited 20 unique pages today. I completely wrote a new article today as well. Does my breadth of editing hinder my depth of editing? Nope. It just means that I have no life. ⇒ SWATJester ^Ready Aim _Fire! 10:55, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

People who make style or cleanup changes to large numbers of articles are still serving a legitimate and useful function. Whether it's done for the purpose of edit inflation or just because that particular editor enjoys that type of work is irrelevant to the outcome. Deco 10:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

If the target function is "inflation" then it does compromise the quality and hence the "usefulness" is not fully supported.

That the goal is inflation is irrelevant. The only thing that decreases the quality of Wikipedia is poor editing. Good editing and having a high edit count are not mutually exclusive. Guidelines already state (or at least imply) how important it is to do quality work. I would guess that the edits of edit whores are usually minor, like spelling and punctuation fixes. Taking the time to write badly slows them down. - Freekee 15:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I have over fourteen hundred articles on my watch list. Shall I paste them here, so that you can determine which ten I am to watch? -- Golbez 23:44, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a completely fallacious contention. There are many types of small but valuable edit, and there is no reason why one couldn't make good edits to hundreds of articles in a day, if one had sufficient time on one's hands. Even in fields that one knows nothing about there are opportunities to make good edits of many kinds, eg spelling and grammar corrections, presentational improvements, wikilinks and category refinements. Sumahoy 00:06, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Problem is, most defenders of "unlimited editing" will always declare they are good in editing. They may or may not be good, but they can't be the jury to judge their own work. Common sense dictates that humans have finite energy and knowledge. The limit of "10" was just a random pick for discussion and not a limit selected rationally. Even if there was an occasional involvement to edit 100 pages in a day, it can't be a regular activity with quality.

Netking 09:23, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I have over fourteen hundred articles on my watch list. Shall I paste them here, so that you can determine which 100 I am to watch? -- Golbez 23:44, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

So are you suggesting we should all refrain from making minor corrective edits? Fagstein 19:52, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Even if you are doing quality work on a single article, there's no need to try to limit the number of edits involved. Whenever I make major changes to an article, I try to use a sequence of small, easily summarized edits. If I have to worry about some edit quota, I could just as easily make one huge edit with the summary "rewrite varous stuff, diff speaks for itself". As you would put it, this is counterproductive to sustaining the interest and participation of other users. Melchoir 20:08, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

You also totally deprecate those of us who vandal patrol wide categories. Just because some of us have a 500 page watchlist we refresh every 20 seconds does not mean we are not helpful editors. If you really want an example of something non-contributive to do on Wikipedia, I'd suggest you look at the practice of inventing ridiculous new regulation proposals. -- tjstrf 22:26, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Netking: I'll put my head on the block. I challenge you to look at the 100+ edits I've made in the last 24 hours (based on the timestamp of this comment) and identify three that were, in your view, inappropriate. - Jmabel | Talk 00:21, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I am concerned about the sections "In popular culture" for events that are seens as tragic e.g. Jonestown. See Talk:September_11,_2001_attacks#Attacks_in_popular_culture Some contributors may find a section "In popular culture" for tragic events inappropriate. I understand this and I have some sympathy for this, but this should be applied consistently. Why is this okay for Jonestown but not for the September_11,_2001_attacks. What is or should be the policy on this? Andries 14:13, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored, I'm afraid. Although such things may include aspects of questionable content, the effects on popular culture provide a vital comentary on the event itself. At most such things should be spun off into a seperate article, but never wholesale removed if they are properly referenced. LinaMishima 15:25, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

LinaMishima, thanks for your reply. I cannot say that I like your reply, but I think if this is the policy then it should be applied consistently and not make exceptions for e.g. the Holocaust. Of course, I realize that it is a very sensitive subject for a lot of people, but for me other articles are sensitive (e.g. Jonestown) and I think it is wrong to make distinction. Andries 17:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

As mentioned on Talk:September_11,_2001_attacks, the "pop culture" section became way too long, and was split off into a separate subarticle. (see discussion) Has nothing to do with this being a "sensitive subject". There is an extensive category (and subcategories) of articles relating to 9/11, with the amount of material quite large. To maintain a reasonable article size, some material (especially that less central to the topic) will be split off into subarticles. -- Aude ( talk contribs) 17:57, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

For Jonestown there is just one article. Should this article grow so large, exceeding recommended article size, then it would be appropriate to split off sections into subarticles, per WP:SUMMARY. -- Aude ( talk contribs) 17:57, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

To me, this goes beyond the issue of "tragic events", but is more an issue of "trivia sections" in articles. I personally don't care for these sections and think they distract from the quality of the article. Look at some examples in Wikipedia:Featured_articles#History, which tend not to have "trivia" sections or list of pop culture references. Though, pop culture sections are okay (in my opinion) if they are properly referenced, put into prose format, and explained why they are relevant/notable in relation to the event. You might check out WP:TRIVIA and Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information for more guidance. -- Aude ( talk contribs) 18:08, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, no exceptions have been made for Holocaust, they simply have a far more sensible and explained section entitled "Impact on culture". LinaMishima 19:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Create separate leaf page "XYZ in popular culture". This has worked well for articles like Gorilla or Tachyon. Pavel Vozenilek 19:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I have brought this up before, but there has not been a satisfactory resolution. Practice, and until recently English Wikipedia policy, has been to not delete user talk pages of users with a significant editing history unless they are suffering from harassment or there is some other extreme circumstance. However, Wikipedia:User page has been modified to include a link to m:Right to vanish and the exceptional circumstances required for deletion are not mentioned, which gives the impression that anyone can request deletion of their talk page under right to vanish. Is this what we want? I do not mind if it is, I just want there to be consistency about it. The deletion of user talk pages has often been reversed in the past. The only ones to stick that I know of are cases when there has been harassment, when a sympathetic admin has deleted the page with no one who might object noticing, or when Jimbo has deleted the page due to a request by the user or to stop an edit war of deleting and restoring (Rbj came back and a new page was started, while Locke Cole's page was started over with new messages after he left. Neither page was restored.). Also, occasionally a talk page is deleted as part of an agreement that an editor will leave.

I think ordinary users should get the same treatment as vandals, those who are admins or have friends who are admins, and those who appeal to Jimbo. I propose that Wikipedia:User page be modified to say either that editors may request the deletion of their talk pages under right to vanish, or that user talk pages are not deleted except in extreme circumstances, such as harassment of the user.

Some may want there to be some qualifications for deletion by right to vanish, such as not being a "serial vanisher". This makes sense to me, although I would give a user a second chance before denying deletion requests. At least one editor did not want to delete the talk page of a user who has warning on his or her talk page, but since the user is leaving and the page will be restored upon returning, I do not think it matters.

For the no deletion option, some may want to allow the blanking and protecting of a user's talk page as a compromise. The history would still be visible to all users, but would it would be less visible and the deleted content would no longer be indexed by search engines, although it would take a little while for the page to stop showing up in search results based on the previous contents of the page. Also, protecting the page prevents additional messages from being posted. This would be done for those who are truly leaving Wikipedia and who want to vanish, so there is no point in further messages, positive or negative. If the user does return, the page can be unprotected and reverted to its pre-blanking state.

Finally, there is a question of what to do when the policy, guidelines or practices on the English Wikipedia, or any other project, are in conflict with those on Meta, unless there is a policy somewhere about this that I do not know about.

This is what spurred this second post on the subject. The requested deletion of his talk page under right to vanish, and as of my writing this, the consensus was to delete and the page has been deleted. I put this at the bottom so that hopefully people will read my post before going off to comment and to stop them from thinking that this is just a response to that particular situation. -- Kjkolb 12:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I think in general, if someone wants to leave and delete their user page and user talk page, we should accomodate them. Usually when people want this, it is because they are problem users anyway (not all! but usually). Better to let people walk away with dignity, why not?-- Jimbo Wales 09:01, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Because talk pages contain part of the history of the community. Delete them and we lose that information. Geni 12:06, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I really think it depends on the nature of the discussion on the page. If it does not reflect poorly on the user and provides valuable documentation of the discussion surrounding a decision or conflict, then deleting it because the user decides one day to hate Wikipedia seems silly. A possible compromise may be for other interested users to summarize the relevant discussion in a neutral manner on a public page prior to its erasure. Deco 09:51, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

An aside: I've come across user talk pages where Right To Vanish was invoked, the talk page blanked, but editing continued after a bit. I've been puzzled as to whether to restore these -- Samir धर्म 10:38, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

The issue I identify here is this: I've seen several cases of admins denying requests from users to delete their talk pages. But I've also seen several cases of admins that decide to leave the project and just go ahead and delete their own pages. That's not ideal because it creates a divisive distinction: those who need to ask and thus depend on another person's judgement to have their talk pages deleted, and those who don't need to ask because they have access to the tool on their own. If this were to need solving (I'm not convinced that something needs to be done about it), I would think that we would need to amend policy to determine that an admin should not be allowed to delete his/her own talk page, but rather request that another admin do it, just as an admin is not allowed to protect a page to resolve an issue with which s/he has been directly involved. Generally though, I would say that people should be allowed to have their talk pages deleted when they decide to leave the project (but only in this situation), unless this was verified to be an attempt to hide a history of inappropriate behavior from the general community with an ulterior motive. As far as restoring a page already deleted, I would say that if it ever happened that someone presented a reasonable, policy-sound request to have access to a segment of the deleted talk page, an admin could provide the data without needing to restore the page itself. Redux 20:13, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

• I suggest we archive said talk page and protect all archives to prevent editing (user isn't gonna respond anyway) and place a "this user has vanished"-note on their talk page. This allows people to peruse old discussions by this user that are important to the community, but avoid the talk page being vandalized or the user getting any more communication from others. - Mgm| ^(talk) 07:32, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
  • The only problem with this, as far as I can see, is that it will not satisfy some of the people who want to leave. I suspect that their talk pages will be deleted if they complain enough, have powerful friends, or if admin(s) decide the ill will/wasted time caused by refusing to delete that particular talk page is more detrimental than the loss of the talk page, and then we'll be back to the same unequal treatment that we have currently (although I can understand why some people would want to have their talk pages deleted rather than archived, as someday I may wish to leave and not be bothered, though I doubt it will be because I am angry at the project). I suggest that we give people options. They can request that their talk page be deleted or that it be blanked and protected. The advantages to the community of only blanking the page could be given.
  • There should also be something in the policy about users who come back. They should be warned that if they start editing again, their talk page will be restored. Also, a user should not be allowed to keep coming back and then asking that his or her page be deleted over and over again. Instead of making a rule about how many times they can have the page deleted, I suggest leaving to the admin's discretion. Finally, if a user really does leave, but people keep creating a new talk page, it should be protected against recreation.
  • I have a suggestion for the new wording at Wikipedia:User page: "In the past, user talk pages were only deleted in extreme circumstances because they serve as a valuable record for the community. For example, conversations that took place on the talk page will no longer be readable, and conversations that took place on the talk page and another page will no longer be understandable. It is still strongly suggested that the page simply be blanked instead of deleted. A message saying that the user has left Wikipedia can be put in its place so that the page is not reverted and new messages are not added. If desired, the page can be protected, with or without a message. If a user truly thinks it is necessary to deleted his or her talk page, the request will be honored. Protection from recreation will be implemented if necessary. However, user talk pages that have been blanked or deleted will be restored if the user continues to edit." What do you think? -- Kjkolb 03:34, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
    • It should be evaluated on a case by case basis. Michael 06:44, 5 September 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)

I'm not sure this is the correct forum for such a question, as this page is for discussing the policies themselves, not possible violations of them. Nevertheless I will answer your question. "TommyBoy" and "Tommyboy25" are sufficiently different that there's no real expectation that people will confuse the two of you. If he someday began to impersonate you or if otherwise the similarity began to cause problems then maybe he would be requested to choose a new username, but until then there shouldn't be any issue with allowing him to remain at Tommyboy25. — GT 09:15, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

You should also look into his signature and be sure he doesn't edit it to call himself TommyBoy. In that case, there could also be problems. Michael 06:38, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I was looking at our article on primary sources and noticed that it stated that:

As a general rule, however, modern historians prefer to go back to available primary sources and to seek new (in other words, forgotten or lost) ones. Primary sources, whether accurate or not, offer new input into historical questions and most modern history revolves around heavy use of archives and special collections for the purpose of finding useful primary sources

So tying in with our original research policy, what I'm thinking is that primary sources need evaluation as to their importance and interpretation, and then that interpretation would constitute original research, yes? Any interpretation would need to be published in a reliable source to be acceptable to Wikipedia, yes? I was also thinking that the relevance of a primary source is something which needs to be determined, through its use as a primary source in a secondary source. A primary source has no relevance to impart to its field or subject by itself, it is something that critics, historians and experts bestow through publishing their research, yeah? Relevance, meaning that a primary source has information to bear, is not something we can determine, but rather must be determined for us through secondary sources, yeah?

Can we decide what has relevance within any given field, or is that in violation of WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:NOR? Do we need secondary sources to determine relvance for us? Steve block Talk 11:08, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

• Certainly we shouldn't provide or imply some interpretation of a primary source that is not supported by secondary sources. That would be a novel analysis of the sort that is prohibited by the original research policy. Relevance of a primary source to a topic should also be established by secondary sources in general, though this might not require the primary source actually being discussed in a secondary source: e.g. if a historian makes a criticism of an individual in a book, and that individual publishes a response to that criticism on his website, then I would say the response is probably relevant. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

• It is impossible for us to rely solely on secondary sources to determine the relevancy of a primary source to a topic without violating NPOV. Relevancy is best determined by the content of the primary source as well as its verifiability. The standard we have been using has been, "Wikipedia articles may use primary sources only if they have been published by a reliable publisher e.g. trial transcripts published by a court stenographer, or historic documents that appear in edited collections." I agree with the publication standard. Any additional standard such as requiring that these sources be established by secondary sources in general is not in my view appropriate or warranted. As far as including a synthesis, or interpretation of a primary source I would hold to the standard that has already been articulated which is that any synthesis, analysis or interpretation be from a verifiable secondary source. Edward Lalone 22:28, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

This is an interesting problem. For example, during the 1960s while in college my wife was on a friendly basis with Julia Mullock. According to my wife, Julia mentioned that she was Jewish, yet I do not know of anywhere here or elsewhere that mentions that. So if I put that in the wikipedia entry, it would be original research & ineligible, right? Aside from the sort of 'so what' aspect. -- Dan 20:17, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, yes, it would be original research. There's no reason to doubt your story that Mullock is Jewish and said so to your wife -- but no one can go back in time and verify that she did say that. Any change of policy which would make that claim of an unrecorded personal communication a usable source would also allow Colleen Nestler to attribute a lot of ... surely very interesting statements to David Letterman. =) As a side note, you might yet be able to find a usable source that says Mullock is Jewish; this Jewish-themed website chose to reprint a blurb about a biopic of Mullock; even if the blurb doesn't explicitly say she is Jewish, the fact that the website chose to carry that blurb implies strongly that someone knows she is. -- Antaeus Feldspar 14:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiService. mrholybrain 11:07, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Is there any guidance of listing individual chapters for books and/or serialized fiction? Does anyone have opinions on if it should be done or not? (There are multiple instances of it cropping up in a wikiproject that I participate in, including creating separate articles just to list chapter titles.) -- Kunzite 03:29, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Not policy, but seems like Wikipedia:Fancruft might be worth reading. -- Rick Block ( talk) 03:45, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Generally speaking, I find it difficult to imagine a book chapter with sufficient notability in and of itself to deserve an article. Not to say such chapters don't exist - I just haven't seen one. Similarly, in a typical book I would expect, at best, a few chapters to have sufficient notability to deserve coverage in the article on the book. I invite you to cite specific examples however, in order to prove that you're not asking a leading question. Deco 08:08, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Here you go:

• List_of_One_Piece_manga_chapters (used to be chapter list, now merged into media and release)
• Hikaru_no_Go_media_and_release_information (media and release)
• List of Bleach manga chapters This is one up for deletion.
• Full_metal_alchemist#Chapter guide An editor wants to make this into its own page.

-- Kunzite 14:24, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

(I looked in the FAQ for this but did not find an answer).

I read an article about a political writer that I felt violated the POV guidelines. I added the POV tag to the article and explained why under the article's Talk section. Is that the correct procedure? What is to stop the article's author from simply deleting my POV tag?

Hanover81 01:09, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Nothing is to stop the other author from removing it, but if the other author does remove it, it is considered vandalism, and if the other author does it repeatedy, he/she may be blocked. You followed the correct procedure 100% :-) — Mets501 ( talk) 01:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Of course there is a better way to remove a Neutral Point of View tag, & that is to resolve the differences of opinion. Someone, perhaps you, should try to improve the article in such a way that it clearly and in a balanced fashion represents both points of view. When a reasonable attempt has been made to do so, it is also reasonable to propose removing the tag. This normally works by indications on the discussion page that one has made what they consider a pivotal change—they give it a day or two—and then remove the tag. Doesn’t always work, but if you work in good faith, it often does. Williamborg (Bill) 01:41, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

thank you Williamborg, I was editing the Powell page at the same time as you. I readded a few changes. Please let me know what you think. I like Wikipedia and use it sometimes in my work so NPOV is important to me. If you think my changes are acceptable I'd support removing the NPOV tag from the Powell article. Hanover81 02:33, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Removed the tag; your edits were fine; although I detect you are sensitive that he not be titled a historian, I see no problem there.

Appreciate your kind comments. You’re most welcome of course. We as Wikipedians are supposed to strive toward a neutral points of view. And almost everyone appreciates a well written NPOV article that doesn’t set off our alarms when we read it.

Keep up the excellent editing. Skål - Williamborg (Bill) 03:09, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

The only stylish way to do it, is to discuss issues that violate a neutral treatment in the Talkpages. Perhaps the article can be edited to satisfy your point-of-view after all. The tags are a last resort. They have been manipulated as weapons so consistently that many of the more fastidious Wikipedians avoid them entirely. -- Wetman 13:08, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I would like to propose a policy to prevent users from blanking, or removing content from their own user talk pages. It is currently considered bad etiquette, but it is still allowed. When a user does this, it makes disscussion hard to follow, and if information is needed in the future, finding it would require searching through page history after page history.

Archiving of such pages should still be allowed. --GW_Simulations _{User Page | Talk} 20:41, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

This would, I presume, not apply to vandalism? -- tjstrf 20:55, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Reversion of blatant vandalism and abuse would be exempt. It would be treated in much the same way as any other talk page. --GW_Simulations _{User Page | Talk} 21:07, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Personally, if I see someone blank their talk page, I just leave them a nice note explaining how to archive pages, telling them blanking is frowned upon, and asking them to please not do it again. Works like a charm most of the time. (Of course, if they're blanking an ongoing dispute or ongoing vandal warnings, then I restore it.) Do we really need a policy on this, or would it just be more instruction creep? -- tjstrf 21:13, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Tjstrf, I consider it too much work to archive my user talk page. I prefer to remove it. If you consider this so important you can archive my talk page. Thanks in advance for helping. Andries 10:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Some very old editors, myself included, do not believe in creating personal talk page archives. Those conversations (unlike article talk pages) are usually discussions between myself and one other user and once they are completed to all parties satisfaction I don't see any need to provide others (and all of Google) with easy access to those conversations. Dragons flight 21:24, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point. Maybe I'll trim my archives of any discussions not relevant to third parties... -- Golbez 21:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict, directed at Dragon's Flight) Yes, navigating anything related to your talk page would be quite difficult. 87 kb? No offense intended, but I don't see how anyone even finds their own comments on that page. Also, wouldn't page move archiving actually do a better job of obscuring past conversations, since the history is relocated as well? -- tjstrf 21:45, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

"(User talk blanking) is currently considered bad etiquette"... By whom? Refactoring/cleaning-up is good. Eugène van der Pijll 21:56, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:TP --GW_Simulations _{User Page | Talk} 22:24, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? Can't find it there. Eugène van der Pijll 22:29, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I would be absolutely opposed to such a policy. I've seen far too much harassment of good faith users who simply don't want to keep particular messages. I've seen such users being sent vandalism warning templates, and being threatened with blocks, and eventually getting very angry over something that should never have been an issue in the first place. There are certain posts that should be left in place — block notices and warnings for the duration of a block, sockpuppet templates placed by administrators, etc. But unwanted messaages sent to an ordinary, non-troublesome user who is making good edits and otherwise minding his own business? Administrators are actually more likely to block someone for harassment who keeps restoring those messages. Removing messages from your talk page is not disruptive, unless it's done like this. Also, there are cases (I've known some) where a user removes a post from his talk page because that post indirectly gives personal information about him. It would be nice if such users could do so disrceetly, without having a whole pile of busybodies descending on his page to restore the unwanted message, and generally draw more attention to it. If an editor's management of his own talk page does not interfere with writing an encyclopaedia, then that editor should be left in peace. AnnH ♫ 23:37, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Management of such user talk pages can be creative, to say the least. This is definitely a case of following the spirit of the law, rather than the letter. At the risk of stepping on WP:BEANS, I once saw an editor who moved their talk page (and its history) to a subpage of their user page, and then managed to get someone to speedy delete that subpage because "it was a subpage and I don't need it any more". Thus they managed to delete a large chunk of their talk page history, possibly (though this was not certain) to hide certain exchanges that had taken place with other editors. But seriously, in general I agree with AnnH - editor's should in general be left in peace to manage their own talk pages. I'm still dithering over which archiving method to use for my user talk page, and whether to refactor to keep related topics together... Carcharoth 00:26, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

This is just another negative outcome of the technological limitations of wiki-as-a-discussion-board. When LiquidThreads comes along, the hassle of archiving will become obsolete. Deco 10:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

A good general rule at Wikipedia is Avoid unnecessary interference. I delete pointless and offensive posts without a qualm. My Talkpages are for constructive Talk. -- Wetman 13:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

See WP:BSP. mrholybrain 00:55, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Manual of Style (trademarks) is one of those obscure guide pages that is occassionally important. At present there is some confusion of whether writing things like "I ♥ NY", where ♥ substitutes for "love" are allowed or not. In the spirit of the guideline, I think they should be actively discouraged, but before rewriting that part of the guideline, I'd like to draw a little more attention to what is ordinarily an obscure talk page. Please comment at: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (trademarks)#Symbols as words. Dragons flight 19:15, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I have very little experience as a Wikipedia editor, so perhaps these are stupid questions but,

1. If every comment should be signed and signing is the same for everyone (simply involving typing four tildes at the end) is there any reason the system can’t add the tildes/signature its self to save us humans the work?

2. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:DoubleRedirects : “Each row contains links to the first and second redirect, as well as the first line of the second redirect text, usually giving the "real" target page, which the first redirect should point to” Under what conditions would it not be desirable to make the first redirect point directly to the target of the second redirect? Surely the process that gathers this information could be upgraded a little to make the change without intervention.

165.165.204.124 16:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

These might belong more at the Proposals pump. For #1, I could imagine the following: there's a little check box next to "minor edit" and "watch page" called "sign". If it's checked when you save your edit, it inserts your signature after the last character you added. (But if it's checked and you sign anyway, it doesn't add a second sig.) Upon editing a page, the box would be checked by default if and only if:

1. You have it enabled (or not disabled) in your personal preferences, AND
2. One of following is true:
   • It is a Talk: page (or Wikipedia talk:, User talk:, ...)
   • The page already contains signatures. (to account for AfD, Refdesks, pumps...)

Moreover, the function would be completely disabled and invisible on articles, categories, and templates.

Does that sound about right? Melchoir 16:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe that description on the special double redirects page is telling how to read the listing, not telling what the text is on the redirect pages themselves. - Freekee 03:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

There are certainly legitimate cases where you don't want to skip redirects. For example, if an article refers to chair, which currently redirects to furniture, but might later have its own article at chair. It is my opinion however that the software should follow multiple redirects in a row. As for tildes, this is just the smallest problem with our current discussion system, among the large number that LiquidThreads aims to fix. Deco 07:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

A self-proclaimed new editor posted a stream of conciousness rant as a new section on a page I watch. Seeing that the issue this editor brought up was indeed a good addition, but lacking time to clean it up properly, I cut and pasted the changes to the article's talk page with a note that the info was useful but needed to be made encyclopedic, with the hope the person in question would do so. About 24 hours later the same editor tried again, with a note that "everyone" agrees the info should be on the page. Again, I cut the info and placed it on the talk page, with a note that discussions about the merits of the of the edits should not be placed on the main article space. A few minutes later the person, claiming they had no other way to reach me, asked if they could at least put a heading regarding the information. (Rather than simply doing it themselves.) I cut the info again, reminding the person that discussion belongs on the talk page, and shortly thereafter rewrote the content, making a short NPOV, properly wikified addition that was a summary of the information. (Sorry I'm being vague I don't wish to stir up more trouble by posting the article I'm talking about.)

I started a dialogue with this person, who on one hand feels we reached a good compromise and on the other is posting about having been a victim of 3RR. I don't think this is a case of 3RR, but I thought I would ask here. What would other editors do in a situation where you see a clumsy edit that you don't have time to clean up? I can't stand leaving these efforts on the page, and feel that pasting the info on the talk page for discussion is a good compromise. I realize different people have different wiki learning curves but I'm really frustrated trying to deal with this person, who keeps saying "but I was being BOLD". Any advice about what I can say to this person would be helpful.

Thanks for your help. 71.34.113.170 01:52, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Actual discussion, including moving stuff to the talk page to discuss it, trumps 3RR and Being Bold everytime, IMO. Edit warring, enforcing 3RR and Being Impatient Bold are confrontational ways of editing. Initiating discussion is the mature, reasonable way, and is always best. If the editor shows signs of being particularly impatient, give them a timescale for the discussion. Carcharoth 02:01, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

From reading your description (obviously cannot give full judgment without specific case), he was being bold, when he made the initial edit. After that, he was being non-cooperative by evading discussion, actual severity or possible rulebreaks unknown. WP:BOLD applies to original actions prior to dispute, and is there so that people don't go "but I'm too scared/shy to edit! What if no one likes it?". After your edits are disputed, that's where collaboration is supposed to take over. -- tjstrf 02:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

It looks like a good time to post the matter at Requests for Comment. Durova 15:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with Carcharoth's assertion that 3RR does not apply if there is discussion. If you get to the third contentious edit on anything, you should stop and take a breather. Discussion doesn't mean "I reverted your edit and here's why". Discussion means "I think your edit should be reverted and here's why".

Yes, I know this is really hard to do when there's an egregiously bad piece of text in article mainspace. You have to use your judgment. If the text says "John Seigenthaler was suspected of..." then you have to take it out and rely on the "gross violation of policy" defense. If, on the other hand, it's just a POV rant, then it's probably better to let it stand after your second attempt and let another editor step in. If this doesn't prevent an edit war, then issue an RFC and go through the dispute resolution process. Consider this (proposed) guideline: Other than slander, libel, copyright violations and incivility in the article itself, the biggest sin on Wikipedia is edit-warring. Avoid it at all costs. -- Richard 19:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Responding to your comment about 3RR and discussion, I don't think I was clear about what I meant. I was really trying to say that blocking for 3RR is something that, in my opinion, shouldn't be done if discussion has started and it looks like a consensus may be reached. In other words, a series of straight reverts with both sides screaming 3RR at each other and not attempting to discuss things, is bad. But if there is dialogue going on, then nurturing that is better than an admin coming along and using a block. Carcharoth 09:20, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your opinions. I may have gotten a little carried away, since I was thinking only of not leaving a bunch of crap (not libelous, just heavily POV and ranty to the point of being garbled) in the article and not about 3RR, but really there were only 2 reversions in a 24-hour period and we worked it out after that. I had reacted when I saw an IP editor keep repeating the same mistake (and I had explained what the problem was on the talk page) and I tried to remedy this the best I could. (I'm not really an IP; I have 2000 mainspace edits.) I'm just frustrated the person started bringing up 3RR, claiming they feel bitten, rather than addressing the issues I had with what they added. (Which I pointed out without name calling, while they accused me of censorship and other things bordering on uncivil.) I guess I'm more thick-skinned. If someone had pointed out what I had done wrong, I would have learned what to do right and not repeat the mistake. So it's hard for me to hear: "But I'm still learning!" when I have given them the tools to learn. But not everyone is like me, thank god. So I'm trying to learn from this. I'll try to be more careful/patient in the future. In other words: BE TIMID! And other than arguing about whether or not I was being mean to this person, we have worked out the issue, so no need for comments or dispute resolution at this point, though I let the person know that was an option. 71.34.113.170 01:48, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) bobblewik 20:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Copied from here and placed under its own title to clarify topic. Comments would be greatly appreciated, as well as ideas about where to get more input. Carcharoth 23:05, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

There are specific guidelines that say that merging and demerging, especially if it involves moving large chunks of text, is not something to be done lightly. It took me a while to pick up on this myself, but cutting and pasting large chunks of text around Wikipedia destroys the attribution. What I mean by this is that if you move text from one article to another (either merging or splitting articles), then the edit history (and the list of who wrote which bits of the article) is lost. What is usually required is a merge of the edit histories, which needs some admin magic, I believe. (Compare this to a page move, where the edit history of the article is moved from the old location to the new one). At the very least, when merging or splitting, a link to the old pages is needed to allow the edit histories to be traced back, though this solution is less than ideal. This is why encouraging boldness in these cases can backfire. You really need to know what you are doing before doing a merge or split. Carcharoth 21:13, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Articles that are merged should almost never have their histories merged. The only -- only -- time this should happen is when a fork of an article is made. If a page is merged and someone disagrees with said merge they are absolutely free to unmerge. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 21:43, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

How is the act of cutting and pasting text from one location to another to do a merge, different from cutting and pasting from one location to another when moving a page? We are told not to do the latter, but it seems we are told it is OK to do the former. This has always really confused me. Wikipedia:Merge says this about page moves:

"Do not move or rename a page by copying/pasting its content, because doing so destroys the edit history. (The GFDL requires acknowledgement of all contributors, and editors continue to hold copyright on their contributions unless they specifically give up this right. Hence it is required that edit histories be preserved for all major contributions until the normal copyright expires.) If you come across a cut-and-paste move that should be fixed by merging the page histories, please follow the instructions here to have an administrator repair it."

But the same page says that you can cut and paste to do a page merge, as long as you leave a link in the edit summary saying 'from where' and 'to where' you did the cut and paste. This leaves the edit history for that cut and paste text at a different location to where the text ends up. I realise that this is how things are done, but the system seems to be saying: "move pages this way because we want to preserve the edit history in one location, but move chunks of text this way and spread the edit history around over several different pages." Do you see what is causing the confusion?

I keep raising this point, and no-one really seems that bothered about it. I think that merging and splitting of pages will eventually mean that in some cases it will become really difficult to trace back who wrote what in an article. That makes a mockery of both GFDL and editor attributions. Carcharoth 22:46, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

One wonders if a merge tab is needed. It would copy the text to the end of the target article and add a correctly linked comment. Then all the editor needs to do is move the text around in the new article. Vegaswikian 21:32, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a tool more often useful to vandals than to anyone else. - Jmabel | Talk 06:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I can't see how a merge tab would work in practice, but the status quo allows a form of vandalism that involves moving large chunks of text around Wikipedia and putting a "reasonable" edit summary explaining the move. The trouble is, if the edit summary does not say where and from where the text is moved, then it is very difficult to trace the origins of the text. I've seen this happen with the best of intentions (ie. not vandalism), but in effect it still messes things up horribly (see Talk:History_of_Greek_and_Roman_Egypt for an example). This "cut and paste loss of attribution" could, IMO, already be a major problem. Normally, after a period of, say, 5 years, you could go through the history and versions of a Wikipedia article and expect to see the text evolve and see different editors add different bits. But when a "cut and paste" event occurs, and the edit summaries are inadequate, then what you see is a large chunk of text disappear with no clue as to where it went, or conversely, a large chunk of text arrives with no clue as to where it came from. Now, you might say that it came from the editor adding it. But in fact, it could have been copied from another Wikipedia article, and in fact be the work of lots of Wikipedia editors and not the one doing the cut and paste move. Even using edit summaries to link back to the original is not ideal, as the edit history is not all being kept in one place. Carcharoth 09:38, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

What's Wikipedia's policy on using google maps screenshots on Wikipedia? -- Dijxtra 16:18, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK they're copyright, so you can't add them. You can make them an external link, however. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 16:21, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe a screenshot of their graphical display (their GUI, or the actual map), or the "hybrid" would be copyrighted. The actual satellite images themselves if cropped out with no Google content I don't believe are copyrighted as I think they're the work of the US Federal government. If you need for some reason to link to Google's fancy stuff (hybrid maps, etc.) probably best to just directly link to the appropriate spot, as I did on this article. So, on this Google maps linke where that image displays the name of the nearby town, the state highways, and so on, I think it would be fair to take a cropped version of the satellite images. Just note that Google watermarks lots of stuff, so that may complicate things. Unless you really have a pressing need to show the image in your article, and can make it work with all this and copyright law, better to just link. rootology ( T) 16:25, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

If you want satellite data akin to Google Maps/Earth, you should probably use NASA WorldWind instead, as that does come from NASA data. The photographic imagery on Google Maps is copyrighted, it does not come from NASA. -- Interiot 16:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, that clears that up. I didn't know it was from a private mapping company. Thanks. rootology ( T) 16:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

And anywhere you need to / feel it's useful to link to an external map it's much better to use one of the many templates (for example {{ coor dms}}, see also WP:GEO) that link to multiple mapping sites. Thanks/ wangi 16:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I thought of that. But, at the moment, I'm populating redlinks on List of inhabited islands of Croatia and it seems to me that it is fairly relevant to include a satelite photo of an island since the shape of an island is an important property... unline the shape of, for instance, a city. What is your personal oppinion, is it sane to put a satelite photo in every article about an island? -- Dijxtra 16:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Why not produce original artwork? The physical shape of an island cannot be protected by copyright, so there is nothing stopping you from taking the satellite photo and tracing the outline to produce your own map. — Haeleth Talk 00:02, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

My interpretation of their terms of use is that it is basically verboten to use their imagery in Wikipedia. Alr 19:48, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

ya know, i process mail for a living. i tried to add an article about some of the machines we use at work. much to my chagrin, wikipedia has turned into and idiotic feudalistic playground for bored assholes. there are dozens, if not hundreds of articles about stupid, idiotic fictional characters in video games and books and movies.

there is not an article about mail processing system that is used every day to process hundreds of millions of envelopes.

and my article got rejected?

why?

when i first came to wikipedia i started many stub articles. stubs are an excellent way to grow. nowdays, you cant. there are hundreds of rules and regulations about adding crap. and worst of all, some little shitbag king-for-a-day moderator (who is chosen how exactly? the same way the 'brilliant' slashdot moderators are i suppose - way to go, copy slashdot, king of accuracy) decides to reject the article. its fucking stupid. the whole reason wikipedia is a success is because there were no fucking rules about who could add what.

but the "real rules" behind the rules are this:

if its something bored white 20-35 year old males enjoy, like comic books or lord of the rings, it will be added.

if its not, then they will think up some rule for why it doesnt fit.

wikipedia is just, dead. its stupid. the idea is dead because the people running it are disconnected from the users and dont care about them.

its just turning into more and more of an upper middle class pissing contest about abstract bullshit.

if you keep adding more and more rules, then the only articles that will be created are by people who have enough time and bureaucratic know how to send an article through. which means, basically, the rich, the well off, the bored, the idle.

ordinary people who know a great deal about how the world works and how the food gets to your plate and how this little computer you are using right now, how it comes to be.... they are being cut out, shuffled out, de facto barred from contributing by this bureaucratic nonsense, red tape delusion, and so-called 'quality' control. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.185.250.195 ( talk • contribs)

Eh, this page is only for discussion of the main page. And for those interested, he or she is referring to the rejection of an submission at Wikipedia:Articles for creation/2006-07-05#OPEX. And to commentor, all you must do for your submission to be accepted is follow the advice given by the reviewer; just provide another link to establish notability and resubmit. It's nothing worth getting upset over. Hyenaste  ^(tell) 19:26, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

It looks, to me, like a pretty abrupt way of rejecting an article. Also, it didn't explicitly say that a resubmission with more links to notable sources would be welcome, which a new user (and we can assume that most unregistered users are going to be new, surely?) might not know. I typed opex mail corporation (minus quotes) into Google and got 139,000 results; the first two pages contain some trade news articles as well as official pages. That's certainly enough to get started with. And had the original moderator carried out the same search they would surely have come to conclusions regarding notability beyond "Denied." Nach0king 10:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I do see that it says "Needs sourcing", but coming so soon after Denied, it doesn't seem to me to be in language that would be welcoming to a newcomer. I do realise that it doesn't explicitly say the article isn't welcome... but nor does it say that it IS welcome, either. Nach0king 10:39, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

As the reviewer of that article, I suppose I should make some sort of comment here. The Articles for creation page receives dozens and dozens of proposed articles per day. There is a constant backlog of requests. Looking back on that article, I certainly wish in hindsight that I had provided a more detailed explanation to the poster; but the sheer volume of requests makes it difficult to take the time to do so. I would also point out that, thanks to a lot of collaborative effort, AfC procedures have changed and improved since that article was processed; among other things, there are now templates that allow reviewers to provide longer, more meaningful explanations to submitters while still cranking out the reviews in a speedy fashion. I would encourage the experienced editors reading this to get involved in the AfC process; the more people there are sharing the work, the more time can be spent on each request. Kickaha Ota 13:54, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

According to Alexa Wikipedia's share of internet traffic hit an all-time high on Saturday, so I don't think your rant will kill it any more than any of the other rants from people who have stated that it is already dead. Chicheley 23:22, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone created the article yet? It seems a reasonable request, and I think the editor who reviewed the request should have made it clearer that with another citation, the request would be granted. Though having looked through that page and the volume of submissions, I begin to sympathise. Carcharoth 22:52, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I made it. BhaiSaab ^talk 01:18, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

FYI - Article is at OPEX (Corporation) and could use some attention. Megapixie 08:45, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

The original poster's message read just like the countless rants I've read, basically saying "Wikipedia sucks because it won't accept an article about me or my band/forum/webcomic/company". However, in this case, it looks like Wikipedia did accept the article. I just wish people would tone down their aggression and not insult the entire Wikipedia editor body just because an article they wrote got rejected or deleted. JIP | Talk 08:39, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia 'accepted' the article after the rant. But not because of it. :-) Carcharoth 22:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

But without the rant, it wouldn't have been created by now, would it? Causality at work, I think. ;-p -- drrngrvy ^tlk @ 15:10, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

LOL! But the rant was not the sole cause of the article's creation. The rant caused the issue to be reviewed, and the review led to the article's creation. Anyway, we both know what we mean. Carcharoth 09:26, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I change the article of Savage Islands with information about the dispute of Spain about the island. Not about if the Spain has right or not only I probe with a link to the diary os sesion of the spanish senate that Spain doesn´t recognize the soberany of Portugal. The wikipedist Pedro [ [6]] "La esfera alrededor de las islas Canarias" that's about the waters, not the islands - the islands are no sphere! Portugal has no problems with no country! it just has Olivenza because our neighbours are like gypsies, not because of gypsie culture of Southern Spain, but because it invades other people's property: Spain = Turkey part II 1/2 (as in Cyprus) - and still Portugal does nothing. See, it even respects those who doesnt deserve it, in my opinion, that's because we have chilcken and monkeys insted of politicians, but that's another issue. "

I think that is imposible to work in this article of Wikipedia with this vandalism and I know that is not the first problem of this wikipedist. Pedro [ [7]] is a vandal and a racist and must be block For Pedro: Spain=gypsies=thieves. That is racism about the spaniards and the gypsies. Noviscum 08:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

THIS MAKES ABSOLUTLY LITTLE SENSE, IS THERE A WAY TO REMOVE LARGELY UNINTELLIGEABLE PROPOSALS/COMMENTS FROM W.P. ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE UNFRUITFUL IN GETTING THEIR POINT ACCROSS AND HAVE NOT RECEIEVED ANY RESPONSES? I also think that perhaps this user should be contacted and asked to provide this comment in their native lanaguges, im assuming Portuguese so that someone may translate it to make more sense of his comment? Qrc2006 03:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Users who don't speak english shouldn't be on the English wikipedia. If he only speaks protugese, he should be on the protugese wikipedia. Also, this request should go on WP:AIV, this is just the non-sensical proposal for one user to be blocked. Tobyk777 03:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Many users for whom English is a 2nd language make major contributions to the English Wikipedia. Remember, many of the more important regional contributions are best understood by the residents of the region, residents who over much of the world speak English only as a 2nd language. It does require additional effort on our part to understand their phrasing, but an encyclopedia is about understanding the concepts, so we should make the effort.

Here’s a brief summary of what Noviscum said:

1. Noviscum edited an article on the Savage Islands, including information about the dispute between Spain and Portugal over territorial rights.
2. The Spanish Senate does not recognize the sovereignty of Portugal to the Savage Islands (in a session to which Noviscum linked the article).
3. Wiki editor Pedro [ [8]] indicated that the conflict is about the waters around the islands, not the islands.
4. PedroPVZ is accused of asserting that Spanish people have a gypsy culture—they take what is not theirs by right.
5. PedroPVZ is also accused (by quotation) of equating Spain to Turkey (referring to the conflict for Cyprus).
6. Noviscum thinks that is impossible to edit the Savage Islands article on Wikipedia because of what he views as PedroPVZ’s continuing vandalism and racism.
7. He indicates that PedroPVZ must be blocked because he is a vandal and a racist. Noviscum considers it racism to equate Spaniards with Gypsies (and perhaps it is, or perhaps it is an indication of Spanish racism).

I’ll research the facts of the Savage Island territorial dispute and see if we can sort out the correct position to take in the article. Williamborg (Bill) 20:22, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

It has been almost a week without recurrence. We can hope that a rewrite of Savage Islands to address the dispute in as balanced a fashion as possible has achieved peace between Portugal & Spain (or at least Portuguese & Spanish contributors). Skål - Williamborg (Bill) 03:32, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Is it a wikipedia policy not to have lyrics on the pages of songs? Is this a copyright issue? I would have thought if a song is important enough to warrant its own encyclopaedia article, surely the lyrics are the first thing you'd want to include in it. Suicup 14:40, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• Yup, song lyrics are copyrighted unless they're so old that they've entered the public domain. If you get reprint permission from the copyright holder, go ahead (with appropriate copyright and permission notice attached). Durova 15:25, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
• Standard caveat: the author must release the work under the GFDL or a strictly more liberal license such as fair use, and we don't reprint long works; those usually go in Wikisource. In particular a simple permission letter or Creative Commons license is not adequate. Deco 22:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
• Wikipedia policy also frowns on links to sites which contain lyrics if the site owner is not the rights owner to the lyrics. We don't link to copyright violations any more than allowing them here. User:Zoe| (talk) 02:57, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

This post has been moved to the proposal page Wikipedia:German page approval solution

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military vehicles): please comment on the talk page. — Michael  Z. 2006-08-15 20:50 Z

See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Male_Domination.3F.

Wikipedia:Privacy_of_article_subjects

At 14:14, 8 Sept 2006, I was blocked because of vandalism occurring at my IP address, 161.88.255.139. This is apparently the address of a firewall at my place of employment, so I share it with many other employees here. (If I find out who it was, he/she is in trouble :-) The details of my little story are at the end of [9], if you are interested.

I found it annoying that the vandal causing the problem was operating anonymously, while I was being a good citizen and logging in. I wonder if it would be possible to have two grades of IP blocking: the usual grade would only block the IP address when used anonymously, but allow edits from logged-in users. In extreme emergencies, I suppose it would be necessary to have a total block on an IP address, independent of the logged-in state. William Ackerman 18:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

This is already the case; we already allow blocking by anonymous IP only. You should complain to the blocking admin. -- Yamla 18:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Is there any interest in creating a new Wikia project to host articles on Internet Memes that do not, and cannot be made to meet Wikipedia's policy on verifiability and prohibition on Original research? I was thinking about this in discussions on P-P-P-Powerbook, which has been up for AFD several times because there are no third-party reliable sources on the subject (and therefore Wikipedia should not have an article on the subject), and it has been kept repeatedly because it is a great story, and one can trivially verify the primary sources (the original discussion thread on Something Awful and a self-published PDF bragging about it).

The situation would be resolved if there were a place to transwiki such articles. We could keep a stub to point to the new Wiki (at least until it got going, so it wouldn't turn into an intellectual ghetto) whenever an article was transwikied, and we could undelete and transwiki a batch of articles to seed the new Wiki. I began the process of starting such a new Wiki, but then realized that it would be a time committment that I personally cannot make at this time, but I thought that others might be interested. Robert A.West ( Talk) 11:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

If you want transwiki to be a viable option, be sure to have the appropriate license on the new location. We can't transwiki to Wikinews because the license there is incompatible. GRBerry 12:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• If we do this, we may want to consider expanding its scope slightly wider to allow for the transition of a lot of stuff that doesn't really fit. Perhaps a pop culture wiki would be nice. On the other hand, this kind of thing would fit better on Wikia, as it's not really a WMF-suitable project. -- Improv 16:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

There have been edits made to WP:EL that have caused edit reverts by a handful of editors. This is an important policy and looks to be undergoing a re-write, and as such, could use the opinion of not less than this small village.-- I already forgot 05:11, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

In case anyone is interested... apparently someone bought a Google AdSense ad for the word crowdsourcing, and pointed it at the corresponding wikipedia page. It's not clear who did this, or why they'd pay to spotlight content they don't control. But apparently some blogs [10] [11] and media folks have noticed already. -- Interiot 05:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Ha, that's certainly interesting. An odd topic to pic, that's for sure, but interesting nonetheless. Can you say " Wikipedia in popular culture entry"? – Someguy0830 ( Talk | contribs) 05:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Either someone wants to spread awareness of the topic, or one of the primary editors of that article is quite vain indeed. :-) Deco 05:13, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

This also means that we should make the external links on that page in strict conformance of WP:EL! Pascal.Tesson 05:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe Jeff Howe really wants someone to write an article on him from that redlink. -- tjstrf 15:50, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a weird question, but how are images treated under the WP:V policy? I mean, for commons or other public domain images, how do we know the photographer photographed (or drew) the thing that the caption talks about? For fair use images this is less of a concern because it's easier to determine the context.

Obviously, if someone's been to the Eiffel Tower before, they know that the picture in the article corresponds to the Eiffel Tower. The sources describe this tower, which matches the picture. But what if this context doesn't exist? How would we know that the picture corresponds to the Eiffel Tower? Are we supposed to be able to verify the subject of the images or we don't really care, we trust the people who put them up? ColourBurst 23:43, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• If the picture came from a WP:RS, it should be, in most cases, possible to verify that the image Wikipedia has is the same as from the source. Are there any examples of controversial or disputed images which were produced (drawn, shot) by Wikipedia editors or persons who are not reliable sources? -- EngineerScotty 23:49, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Image:AuroraAFXMatador.jpg and Image:PineMatador.jpg have at times been used on the AMC Matador article. -- Interiot 00:16, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

It's obvious that neither of those is the real thing.  :) Here's another example that I'm responsible for (it's use in the English Wikipedia, though not the image itself--the picture was used in the French wikipedia, I believe)--see dwarf tarantula. If someone wants to axe the image, go ahead.  :) -- EngineerScotty 00:36, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll point out a specific example: in Eurasian (mixed ancestry), the boy in the picture is supposedly Eurasian, but the only evidence we have of this is that the uploader claims he is. He probably is, but how would we prove this? And we can't use any images of Eurasian celebrities in the article, because that violates fair use. ColourBurst 21:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Here's the situation... I nominated Kiwi Gaming for deletion. During the AFD discussion, another editor and I formed a compromise solution in which the Kiwi Gaming article would be merged into a new article about the company's parent Christchurch Casino. The other editor is ready to go with this compromise. I, on the other hand, have reservations because a consensus to delete the Kiwi Gaming has already been formed.

Now, I know AFD is NOT a vote. Nonetheless, I think numbers mean something and need to be weighed in the decision on how to close this AFD debate.

The current "non-vote" is 5 delete (including me, the nominator), 2 keep and 1 Redirect. If we go forward with the compromise, the new "vote" would be 4 delete (without me), 1 keep and 3 redirect. The new "non-vote" seems to point to a "no consensus" situation which would be default to a "keep" unless the closing admin decided otherwise.

In any event, my instinct is that the nominator doesn't "own" the AFD and can't just withdraw it once other people have started expressing opinions. As I see it, the nominator can change his mind and vote against deletion but he can't just arbitrarily terminate the AFD process.

I think the other editor and I now need to convince the other "voters" to get on board the "Redirect" compromise.

Your thoughts on this situation are solicited and welcomed.

-- Richard 04:42, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Agree, withdrawl of nomination does not stop an ongoing AFD that has any signifigant disucssion to it. In practice if the situation of an article changes signifigantly during a debate, it often changes the outcome, post a note of the compromise to the afd discussion, and feel free to spam the other debaters with a link to it to review "new statements that may affect your vote". — xaosflux ^Talk 04:53, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit conflict] In a deliberative assembly, a mover ceases to own the motion once the assembly takes it up. While we don't vote (except when we do), AFD is a deliberative process. Suppose that the nonvote was 25/2/1. Should a nominator be able to stymie consensus by changing his mind? On the other hand, nothing can prevent you from changing your recommendation, in which case the nonvote is 4/2/2, which doesn't look like consensus to me, and probably won't to most admins. Robert A.West ( Talk) 05:00, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Generally, the only time an AfD can be closed early due to nomination withdrawal is if all discussion up to that point has been a series of unanimous keeps, or if there's been no discussion at all. Once any actual debate starts, you have to leave it open. I agree with Xaosflux: make a note of your compromise on the AfD and ask everyone involved to come back and reconsider their votes. Of course, the closing admin will take into account your compromise and may choose to go with that regardless of what the discussion consensus ends up being. -- Aaron 05:58, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

There's no parliamentary procedure or anything like that. The nominator has begun a discussion, and that's that. The discussion proceeds, people express their opinions, and an administrator eventually decides whether or not there is a rough consensus to delete and closes the discussion.

Usually, the admin considers the nominator's opinion the same way as anyone else's opinion. Normally the nominator is counted as a "delete" vote unless he or she says otherwise. Withdrawing the nomination would count either as a keep vote or no vote, depending on how the admin judged the nominator's intention.

In a reasonably sane, civil discussion, however, two dynamics are common. First, if a nominator "withdraws the nomination," it is usually because the article has been improved or good references have been added or new facts have been brought forth. Withdrawing the nomination is significant because other participants tend to give some extra weight to that opinion. When a nomination is "withdrawn" there is usually an obvious lack of consensus to delete already. Newcomers glancing at the discussion will see that "the keeps have it" and that even the nominator is no longer pushing for a delete, and there is usually little additional activity.

In situations where the nominator feels embarrassed at having goofed, saying that the nomination is withdrawn will usually cut discussion short and minimize further hurt feelings.

Because usually a nomination is a well-argued opinion and because it's at the top of the discussion, it does tend to have a good deal of influence on the discussion... and if a nominator withdraws the nomination, that, too, tends to have a good deal of influence on the discussion.

So, "withdrawing a nomination" is a meaningful thing to do. A nominator can and does exercise influence over and AfD, and usually has a bit more influence than the people that follow. But the nominator does not own or control the AfD. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:33, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

This stems out of a dispute on-going at Stormfront (website), an article on a white-supremacist hate site. The claim has been made that the article cannot including reference links to the website being discussed, on the grounds that the reference links are a violation of the policy against self-promotion. Instead, the references have been deleted outright or are being included as hidden comments.

Is this a correct intepretation of the Wikipedia policies? Are there any precedent of such a prohibition? Is hate speech sufficiently repugnant that we should prohibit any reference links to such sites?

Obviously, I tend to think this new policy goes a little to far, and that there shouldn't be any blanket rule prohibiting us from referencing hate sites (keeping in mind, of course, that they are tend to be highly unreliable references). -- Alecmconroy 00:02, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:RS#Partisan, religious and extremist websites. Extremist web-sites may be used to provide information or citations for their own claims and opinions. -- tjstrf 00:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The site is already linked on the article in question. The problem is that dozens of <ref> tags were included, each with a link ot the site; several of us suspect that this is likely to inflate the pagerank. If the site is linked as a source, and can be referenced as such, then one link is enough I feel. Guy 09:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The Pagerank can't really be an issue, as most of the referenced links were Google-cached versions of the page, which obviously don't affect pagerank. I agree that 60 or so references are excessive, but hiding them altogether is IMHO not a good policy, especially for those statements which might be contested.-- ExplicitImplicity 13:49, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Why are we even worrying about how our article affects pagerank? If the references are valid and necessary, they should be allowed in. If there are far more references than necessary, we should prune them. But we shouldn't create our own special set of rules that we apply only to hatesites. Obviously, we have to guard against linkspam, but are we really not going to be allowed to reference sites based on their political speech? I know _I_'m not trying to promote the Nazi site, and I'm pretty confident that most of the other editors on this article aren't trying to promote the nazis either.

There's an even larger issue here-- is there ANY precedent whatsoever of us hiding references inside comments? It seems like this is an ad hoc policy someone just decided to enforce on this this particular article, presumbably because Racists Nazis are evil (which, of course, they are) . I don't think Wikipedia works this way-- if someone wants to start hiding controversial references, they should propose such a policy, not just DO it and then enforce it.

-- Alecmconroy 19:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Sadly, WP:RS is arguably the single most frequently violated guideline on Wikipedia. There is little chance of any further strengthening of the guideline having any effect. -- Aaron 19:27, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

As I said on the other page, there's no rule that references have to be live links. It's often convenient for the reader, but it's certainly not policy, and often impossible in any event. In the case of hate sites, which are problematic enought to begin with, I see no issue with having references that are not live. Jayjg ^(talk) 18:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Cross-posting from the AN/I thread that I don't see why the obvious solution of leaving the references visible as plain-text URLs does not seem to have been considered. I'm completely uninvolved in this dispute, but concerned at the implications of this "hidden reference" idea. References are there for the benefit of article readers, and making people go way out of their way to view the page source or track down a previous version of the article just to find the references is silly. Opabinia regalis 03:38, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Unlinked references are certainly better than hidden once, but even that is problematic. If we're going to have different rules for linking to sites with hate speech, then we're going to have to start judging what is and is not hate speech. Can you imagine the debates? Sure, the Neo-Nazis and the KKK are easy calls, but how about the Nation of Islam? the Jewish Defense League? or the Westboro Baptist Church (the "God Hates Fags" people)? Ugh-- what a nightmare. -- Alecmconroy 22:12, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi. This concerns a disagreement on how to write the article on Michael Roach, a modern religious teacher. Following the policies laid out at WP:BLP, we have excluded basically all criticism of Mr. Roach from the article, on the grounds that it is not reliably sourced. This (at least from my point of view) is not controversial, and it is definitely required by the BLP rules. The question regards how to treat an external link that is critical of the subject. The article currently links to a few sites run by or otherwise associated with Roach, which, naturally prevent him in a generally favorable light. However, some editors have also added a link to diamond-cutter.org (that's a Buddhist reference, not a threat of violence!), a website devoted to presenting negative information and claims about Mr. Roach. I haven't examined this website a great deal, and I don't know a lot about the situation, but the website doesn't appear to be blatantly scurrilous, but apparentely simply gives its (anonymous) author's opinion of the facts. Now, I will be the first to agree that the putative facts described on diamond-cutter.org definitely do not belong in any Wikipedia article (unless we have another, more credible source for them). The question is, is this acceptable even as an external link (labelled to a "critical website", naturally)?— Nat Krause^{( Talk!)} 00:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I am one of the editors who objects to this site. It is not so much the information it contains are the anonymity of the authors. WP:EL says that links to unreliable sources should be avoided, and WP:RS indicates that anonymous sources are unreliable. Combine that with the requirements of WP:BLP and I think the link should not be listed. If it were not anonymous, the link could be presented as the views of so-and-so or such-and-such a group. As it is, it appears to be anonymous, unverified, original research, and that appears to be just the sort of link which is discouraged, even for non-BLP articles... — Hanuman Das 06:22, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Please refer to the content I removed here [12]. Initially, I thought it was just some newbie who decided to include their phone number as a citation for the POV claims and/or to get people to call them to talk to them about their claims. However as I began to write a suggestion to the IP (which is apparently a NATted ISP IP) it began to occur to me that there is a more sinister possibility behind this. The POV statement I removed is the kind which may anger some people. By linking it to a phone number, this may be one of those stupid attempts to cause problems for the owner of the phone number. A search on Google in fact gives a name for the phone number from the phonebook. Thankfully, this edit was not up for long but I'm wondering whether it might be an idea for us to permanently delete this edit given that we have no idea whether the person who owns the number has any connection to the statement in question (and even if he or she does, whether he or she agreed to allow it on wikipedia). It is potentially libellous or at the very least could cause problems for a potentially innocent party. N.B. In retrospect, it may have been a mistake for me to draw attention to the inclusion of the phone number in my edit summary but it's a bit late now. Nil Einne 17:18, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the google results more carefully and re-reading the edit, it looks like it's a business. So it may even be some lame advertising attempt. However, it still feels to me like something which may merit permanent deletion. Nil Einne 17:24, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

meh, It's been reverted and it that phone number doesn't seem matched to anything, as this article has a large history (>500 edits) admin deletion of the edit is painful, but someone with oversight permisions could do it rapidly. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:31, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Given the subject matter (and the fact that you caught it immediately afterwards, so there aren't any versions "between"), it might be an attack on the business. That article's history might need a good cleanup anyway, given the long list of vandalisms and reverts among those 500+ edits. (A prefect job for an admin who wants to do some zen deletion meditation :).) -- SB_Johnny| ^talk| _books 17:33, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

It's no problem. I just deleted that revision and everything is perfect again now :-) — Mets501 ( talk) 17:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Curiosity-borne question: I thought it required Oversight access to permanently delete a diff from the history. Can any Admin do it now? Newyorkbrad 19:08, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Admins can delete a dif but they can still see it, with oversight it's gone for good and admins can't see it. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 21:58, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense, thanks for reply. Newyorkbrad 22:02, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay issue solved then :-) Nil Einne 17:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

There's a proposal in the works that would streamline enforcement of content policies and guidelines. The nutshell version is:

An editor whose contributions fall outside the realm of normal scholarship may be subject to administrative action after a consensus of uninvolved Wikipedians agrees that these edits constitute persistent violation of content policies and guidelines such as WP:V, WP:RS and WP:NOR. Arbitration committee action shall not be necessary for administrators to block editors who ignore impartial consensus. Banning is an option if repeated blocks fail to curb problem behavior.

This grows out of a discussion at Wikipedia:Expert Retention where a variety of editors agreed that content policies need more consistent enforcement. Administrators rarely impose blocks for content disputes without an ArbCom ruling. Editors who passionately espouse fringe beliefs can succeed at exhausting the patience of rules-abiding editors because current enforcement skews toward problem editors who violate other policies such as WP:3RR or WP:NPA. This proposal would establish an impartial consensus standard as an alternative to ArbCom. Active editors welcome input to build a broader consensus. Durova 22:35, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems to be a good thing. Would not solve all of the problems, but many of them abakharev 06:57, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

This has been renamed Wikipedia:Disruptive editing, extensively worked on, and promoted to Guideline. Now being tested at Wikipedia:Blocking policy to see if it is acceptable. Fred Bauder 13:33, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Assuming this comes to fruition ( Larry Sanger's ambitions have in the past exceeded his ability to marshal resources in support of his causes, so it's entirely possible that it won't)... will this affect Wikipedia in any fashion?

A few particular questions:

• Should we be citing this as a source? My immediate thoughts are no--it's a wiki, and we've long regarded wikis as not reliable sources--an ironic position for us to take; further more, it's an encyclopedia per the duck test (regardless of what Sanger chooses to call it--and his "we're not good enough yet to be an encyclopedia" rant struck me as little more than a veiled swipe at Wikipedia...), and ignoring the issue of citing historical encyclopedias, encyclopedias should not be citing each other. Instead, they should be citing more authoritative primary and secondary sources.
• If it does take off and succeed, Wikipedia editors will have the option of importing content from it as it will be GFDL licensed; just as it is beginning life as a fork of Wikipedia. Copyright won't be an issue, but there is still the ethical issue of plagiarism to consider; I would suggest that articles including content from Citizendium should include an appropriate template crediting the source, much as we do so for the public domain 1911 Britannica. Likewise, I would hope that Citizendium does the same for Wikipedia. (If Citizendium does succeed, it might be a useful tool in the everlasting fight against trolls and POV-pushers that plagues this site).

I'm assuming that people will be free to contribute to both projects, should they desire. While I will wait and see concerning Citizendium, my personal long-term goal is to contribute to an excellent open-source encyclopedia. Right now, Wikipedia is the best of the bunch and I have no plans to leave; but my long-term loyalty lies with the destination, not with the vehicle I use to get there. I've got no stake whatsoever in whatever acrimony lies between Sanger and Jimbo. -- EngineerScotty 18:38, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

We will adopt (steal) every good idea they have; make fun of their gaffs (There are certain pits Larry is almost sure to fall into); and import any article they have which is better than what we have (with due credit given). Fred Bauder 13:31, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

A lot depends on whether Citizendium adopts an NPOV policy, and then whether a community of self-identified experts will be willing to follow it. Then again, the Catholic Encyclopedia is POV, and we've still been able to use much of their work. Melchoir 23:20, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

According to the document up at the site; they will have policies similar to WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. -- EngineerScotty 23:34, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Let's say that Citizendium does end up having articles that are better due to the experts. In the case of those articles, Wikipedia should then use that same knowledge and standard and quality as a benchmark to strive for. If it isn't better for a given article, don't bother then. The competition should make it better for everyone. There is no way that they can keep up with the sheer numbers or popularity. You can perhaps think of Wikipedia as the XP of knowledge (with occasional bugs) -- Victortan 17:25, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The major difference, content there remains at the same quality, no subtle drive-by-shotingediting with bogus content, as that would never reach the published phase. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 18:48, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Hello! In 2005 I created a series of trolls and sockpuppets to disrupt Wikipedia. Some of them were rather notorious. I even managed to drive away a few major contributors. In any case, I just logged on to check my contributions at it amazed me that many of my "hoax" articles and edits are STILL on Wikipedia. It seems that the hoax editing I did with "throw away" accounts (like this one) was obscure and plausible sounding enough to NEVER get reverted. As long as I didn't draw any attention to my hoax editing through using my "high profile" accounts, nobody caught on. Of course the high profile account names were exclusively used for "trolling" rather than "hoaxing" or vandalism. It occured to me early on that any vandalism done by those accounts would be immediately spotted.

Hey have you also noticed User:Essjay hasn't edited since the 14th of August? Malsherbes 05:38, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

And now you're using this account for trolling too. Go away. Deco 06:00, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Of course, since you didn't actually name any of the articles, we have no clue if you are speaking the truth or just bullshitting us. However, if the articles you've allegedly created are as obscure as you claim, the chance of them being linked to or searched for is virtually nil, so the damage done to Wikipedia is also virtually nil. Enjoy your mediocre hoax articles. -- tjstrf 06:05, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Deco is right, of course, but has anyone requested a checkuser on this person? As for the second "point," Essjay has been working as one of the supervisors of the Board election. Newyorkbrad 12:46, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Those of us who use Tor are told that the open proxy thing can be worked around by forcing new connections, as though the whole issue with Tor being blocked by the open proxy purge is an accidental byproduct -- as though it would be OK to use a Tor node that wasn't an open proxy.

That's as crazy as it sounds. All Tor nodes are open proxies.

No they aren't. Not all tor nodes exit the tor network on port 80. Additionally, not all tor nodes exit the tor network at all. DreadWingKnight 11:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Worse, over at project on open proxies, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_on_open_proxies there is talk about an automated Tor banning bot being busy blocking sites today.

In other words, there is a drive to say "Anyone using Tor must not be allowed to edit". That's the wrong approach.

I've mentioned elsewhere: If someone is logged in, and can be held responsible for their edits, they should not be denied the ability to edit, certainly not if the goal is that anyone can edit.

The idea of requiring that you go through a secure login site isn't inherently a problem. Sadly, I don't believe that Tor supports HTTPS connections (otherwise it might show up as a man-in-the-middle attack), and the warning on the Tor advice for china users even tell you,

Tor is a Socks4a/5 proxy. It supports any connections that communicate over TCP including HTTPS. Intermediary proxies for browsers that don't properly support Socks4a/5 may not support https, but tor does. I have tested this personally. DreadWingKnight 11:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

This is not a privacy solution—any edits you make will be immediately visible, and an attacker with access to the network, such as the Chinese Government, will be able to correlate your edits with your IP address.

This means that no one from China can chance writting anything on Wiki that goes against China policy. That's bad enough, but it's one step down the road to a religious government doing the same thing and forcing any edits to conform to a religious doctrine.

Sadly, I don't believe that Tor has a config option to exclude certain nodes as exit nodes -- only to exclude them completely. Perhaps it's time to develop a page showing the list of nodes to exclude in order to be able to edit pages? Although doing that will just make the job of blocking Tor nodes easier.

Finally, there's concern about how well this works with dynamic IP DSL connections. I run a Tor node. I have a DSL connection. I get a new IP address every two-four days. Should my system be blocked for being a Tor node? If I bypass Tor and connect directly, even though other people can use Tor? Since I can force a new IP address by turning my DSL modem off and then back on?

This policy does not make sense from any of these viewpoints: 1. Goal of wiki -- open editing 2. Goal of Tor -- bypassing tracability of people like the government of China 3. Technical -- identifying specific machines, given the ease of getting a new IP address 4. Technical -- the idea of blocking connections specifically from Tor routers, given that no attempt is made to tell if the connection comes from a Tor router or some other process running on the same machine.

The Wiki project on open proxies said that this was the place to argue against this policy. So, I am. While I'm still able to -- if I keep waiting, more and more nodes will be blocked, and then what will I do? -- Keybounce 04:51, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Sadly, though, open proxies such as the Tor network are frequently used by banned users and vandals to vandalise Wikipedia. Thus we have no choice but to get out our banhammers. MER-C 04:55, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand something.

I've mentioned elsewhere: If someone is logged in, and can be held responsible for their edits, they should not be denied the ability to edit, certainly not if the goal is that anyone can edit.

As a logged in user, I am not anonymous. I am not a banned user. I do not vandalize. If you are familiar with the early history of the US of A, imagine if the federalist papers had not been published under a fake name, but had to be published under the person's real name?

Now consider that this is, effectively, what you require of anyone in China by saying "We will ban all of the Tor network, even if you identify yourself to us, unless you are identifying yourself to China at the same time".

Or, do you really want your ISP to turn all of your browsing history, your search engines to turn all of your search history, and all the other details of your life over, for nothing more than an unchallenged, unrestricted broad suponea, without even the more restricted, challenged, and challengable search warrant?

Keep in mind: We've had every search engine except Google turn their records over, and admit it. We've had AOL goof up and show people's search records publically. Are you really certain that the ACLU pizza example is impossible?

I'm in the USA. I don't trust our current government. I am opposed to its policies. Yes, in this environment, I run through Tor for my own safety. The name "keybounce" has a fairly old history on the internet, and as far as I've determined, it's been exclusively me the whole time (no one else has used that name so far that I've found). Am I to be considered a vandal because I don't trust Bush? -- Keybounce 20:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

This Jimbo interview may provide some comfort. Wikimedia will not bow to censors, or reveal huge amounts of private information to the US Government.

I didn't accuse you of vandalism. I said that open proxies are used by banned vandals to circumvent IP blocks. If they are Tor nodes, you can request them be blocked anons only, account creation disabled so that you may edit as normal. MER-C 12:41, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd like some sort of consensus on whether it is OK for Wikipedians to make requests of administrators on IRC, and what procedures administrators taking requests from IRC should follow. Specifically, when a "move" request is made.

I am not impartial on this debate. There is a lot of mistrust and bad faith towards my own requests for article moves which I have done on IRC as a user, as documented in my request for adminship. I feel if a stronger procedure existed there would be less ill will, so I'm proposing an

IRC move request procedure:

---

An administrator receiving a request for a move on IRC ought to...:

• If a user requests a move privately:
  • Advise the user as to whether you are looking into it, or say you're busy/not interested, or tell the user to ask publicly in #wikipedia (on irc.freenode.net).

• If a user requests a move publicly (in #wikipedia or #wikipedia-en):
  • If you wish to help the user, say publicly (in the channel) that you're looking into it.

• If the move is non-trivial or debatable:
  • Advise the user to use WP:RM instead (or to help the user do so). Done.

• If the move is trivial:
  1. Check if the move is already proposed on WP:RM, if so, follow ordinary WP:RM procedures, or advise the user to wait for another sysop to finalise it. Done.
  2. If there is nothing technically stopping the user from making the move him or herself using the "move" button, advise the user to do so. Done.
  3. If the user is not using an identified account on IRC, advise the user to identify (/msg nickserv login ...), or otherwise request their Wikipedia user name
  4. If you are prepared to go ahead with the move at this stage, advise the user that you are doing the move for him/her.
  5. In all deletion/move comments, include who requested the move, e.g. "Move requested by USERNAME on IRC #wikipedia" or "Move requested on IRC #wikipedia by (un)identified IRC-NICK, user claims to be USERNAME"
  6. If you forget to include the requester in any of the page deletion/move comments, add it to the talk page of the relevant page(s).

---

The above is a first draft. This is also a wiki, so I'd suggest cleaning it up directly (edit it) rather than proposing minor changes. Comments, changes, suggestions welcome. — Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 00:16, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Uh - what? Sorry, I don't understand any of this. If a request is reasonable, by all means you can follow it. I don't think we need more instruction creep outlining what specific requests administrators can follow. Cowman109 ^Talk 00:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that users should be able to request admin assistance in any way they want to: talkpages, email, IRC, and carrier pigeon are all acceptable. An admin should respond to all of them in the same way. -- Carnildo 00:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

That's very optimistic, Carnildo. In my experience, the IRC channels can get pretty thick with OT chatter and giggles (and every time I'm there, I'm the worst offender), so it's not unusual for a request to get ignored or worse. We very nearly need to note that IRC is so disconnected to Wikipedia at this point as to be only a service offered and not part of the site's process at all. Geogre 01:13, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

There are many other channels than the chatty #wikipedia, and I don't see what the problem is you are trying to fix. — Centrx→ talk • 01:16, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

You mean the one Pengo is trying to fix? Me either, really, but "there are other channels," but only people who spend a lot of time on any of them know which do which. I was merely observing that a lot of admins on IRC don't want to deal with requests and aren't very polite about them. Some are, some are not, but a form won't help: staying off of IRC is better advice than trying to find a form that will automatically get someone to respond. (And I see so little actual use to IRC at present that I don't know why we bother.) Geogre 02:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

No, no, no, no, no, no, no - This is m:Instruction creep, it does not solve anything, and it isn't really needed. Administrators remain responsible for their actions regardless of what prompted them. Whether they randomly came across something requiring action or were prompted to do so by someone's request, they still carried out the action, so they are still ultimately responsible for it. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 01:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflicted) My two cents: Instruction creep is bad. If somebody wants to help, they help.. otherwise the person looking for help goes off and finds a policy page where they can find out what to do. Also note that a lot of people who need help and show up in #wikipedia don't need a sysop, but somebody who knows their way around copyright or purging caches or something else a newbie wouldn't know. Michael Billington ( talk • contribs) 01:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm probably going against the grain here (Or I'm just plain wrong) but I thought the situation is this:- 1. Trivial moves can be done by the user themselves unless there's some technical problem that prevents them doing it -such as the move destination already exists and has a history. 2.Potentially controversial move are posted on WP:RM so that the community can decide what to do about it. I don't have IRC (and have no interest in getting it) Does that mean if one of my articles is going to be moved (controvertially) that neither I nor the non IRC wikipedia community will have no say in it? I'm all for cutting out the red tape, but surely the procedure is there for that purpose - If it's become unwieldy and slow then let find a way to make it work that doesn't require us all to be on IRC. (expecting a right grilling now!!). -- Mcginnly | Natter 02:06, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Three words: speedy move request. If the issue is that requested moves take too long, then try to define uncontroversial moves which could be speedy moved. Move requests are funny beasts. The requestor always thinks his/hers is uncontroversial - until suddenly people oppose it and it dies. Regardless, I'm highly unlikely to back any process that involves using IRC. There are plenty of folks here that are not particularly computer-literate. One of WP's advantages is an easy interface. IRC doesn't even employ a standard client and will be unusable by many. — Wknight94 ( talk) 02:56, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

IRC is not part of process. Yes, it can be a convenient way to get an administrator's attention (when it works), but an administrator that decides to help someoen over IRC does so of their own will, not because of any policy. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 03:14, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm confused, I see a solution here, but I don't see a problem. What problem does this fix? -- Golbez 03:59, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem as I see is the disenfranchisement of non-IRC using 'pedians in commenting on move requests -- Mcginnly | Natter 09:51, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't see a problem here. If someone asks me on IRC to move a page, I see if it's a logical move, and if it is, I do it. If not, I suggest they go to WP:RM. I will decline more moves than I accept. I think most of us act in the same fashion. -- Golbez 12:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Can;t they just use admins' talk pages? I have done uncontroversial but admin-only moves based on talk page requests (and the moves are my responsibility no matter where they were suggested to me). Kusma (討論) 09:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

So what constitutes an uncontroversial move? No one has defined this in any way as long as I've been part of this issue. If we could make a policy for this, neither IRC nor admin poking would be necessary - just create a speedy move. If no one can define what is and isn't controversial as far as moves are concerned, then I'm not sure WP:RM should be bypassed like this. — Wknight94 ( talk) 10:56, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it is possible to codify this ("I know it when I see it"). But non-admin users are also allowed to make moves that they believe to be uncontroversial just by using the "move" button. I don't think that the presence of a target with trivial history that needs to be deleted always necessitates a WP:RM. That's what we have WP:CSD#G6 for. Kusma (討論) 11:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Well I still recommend a speedy move tag so that someone will at least have a chance to see it on their watchlist in case they really wanted the article named the way it is - even if it seems ridiculous to the move requestor. Like I said, I've seen a lot of supposedly uncontroversial moves become controversial in a hurry. (See Talk:Fire + Water where folks thought it was quite uncontroversial to fly in the face of this guideline and this guideline and this project). — Wknight94 ( talk) 13:19, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Come to think of it, why would a move ever need to speedied? What is the huge hurry that a user needs to find his/her favorite admin and get a move done right this instant?! — Wknight94 ( talk) 13:19, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Anybody who opposes the move can just move the article back. I really think this is no big deal. It should be perfectly fine to ask an admin familiar with the subject area to perform a blocked move (especially as reverting it will be automatically unblocked by this). I am not talking about move-protected pages, of course. Kusma (討論) 13:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks like the problem is "Getting spanked in an RFA for requesting page moves via IRC instead of through WP:RM or whatever." Ξxtreme Unction| _{yakkity yak} 15:46, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is, and has always been, all about creating an encyclopedia. We strive to have the best written content possible, and although the social interaction is fun, the overriding goal of this site is creating the encyclopedia. However, the maintenance and administration of the site are also important, thus we need sysops/admins to not only write articles but also to generally monitor and "police" the site. There are a number of admins who do a great job in article writing and editing, such as User:Geogre and User:Lucky_6.9. I think their contributions should be applauded.

It has become apparent that as this site has grown, a large number of active admins have ceased to edit or create articles and solely devote their energies to the administrative/social side of the project. This has led to a fundamental "disconnect" between those who administer the site and those who actually write articles. Therefore, the question arises, how can this system sustain its legitimacy when many of the influential administrators on Wikipedia are totally divorced from the realities and experiences of actually "writing an encyclopedia," which by all accounts is why we are here.

Perhaps there should be a two-tier administrator system, in which admins with significant mainspace contributions, such as those named above, would hold more functions than the class of admins that contribute little, or in some cases, nothing, to the articles. Admins without proven contributions to the articles could still handle important tasks such as New page patrolling, welcoming new users, etc., but would not have the full power of the "encyclopedic" admins, such as User:Geogre or User:Bishonen just to name a few. This also would encourage non-article-contributing admins to work more on the articles and the encyclopedia side of Wikipedia if they want to attain promotion to "full" admin status. Wikipedia as a whole would benefit. -- Pewlosels 03:47, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

If I may be so bold, it is my belief that Wikipedia:administrators are not here to build the encyclopedia. Cowman109 ^Talk 03:50, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a bad idea. Why should it matter where admins volunteer their time, as long as it benefits the project? fThis would only cause more problems than we already have. Naconkantari 03:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Er, variations on this have been proposed for some time, not to be pessimistic but I doubt an AN/I thread can really change much, these ammount to extraordinary and basically unprecidented changes in how Wikipedia works. Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump, WT:RFA or Wikipedia:WikiProject on Adminship would be more on topic, as this is not an issue that directly requires admin intervention. Your interest in ideas to improve Wikipedia is appreciated though. -- W.marsh 03:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

ceased to edit or create articles

solely devote their energies to the administrative/social side of the project

totally divorced from the realities and experiences of actually "writing an encyclopedia"

non-article-contributing admins

I don't believe this is true. Surely there's some exaggeration and equivocation going on in the phrases I quoted above. Obviously, writing articles is of paramount importance, but so is lots of other work. I'll use myself as an example, not because I think I'm so important - I know better than that - but simply because I'm most familiar with my own contributions. I've been helping out with a bunch of move requests lately. I've spent a lot of time mediating between editors on controversial articles who aren't seeing eye to eye. I also revert a lot of vandalism. Now, none of these is actual "encyclopedia writing" as such, but I wouldn't say that they're "totally divorced from the realities of writing an encyclopedia," either. I'd say they're rather intimately linked to those realities. I like writing, but I know that there are others who have much more of a flair for it than I. I think of myself as supporting them. I don't think the work I do should be denigrated.

I'm certain Pewlosels post is well-motivated, but I don't think it's productive to cast the issue in such polarized terms, nor to be blind to the fact that Wikipedia needs people doing a lot of non-writing work so the hard-core writers don't have to mess around with it, and can do their excellent writing.

What's more, it's not clear to me - which administrative powers would one want to reserve for those admins who spend more time writing, and less time using the admin tools anyway? Like blocking for example - why take blocking powers away from someone who spends so much time vandal-fighting that they don't get much writing done? Surely that would be a perversion of good sense. I'm not opposed in principle to a two-tier admin system, but I'd need to see a lot more details, and I'd have to be convinced that it's precisely the admins who write more articles who also need more administrative tools. That's not at all obvious or clear to me. - GTBacchus^{( talk)} 04:19, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that it necessarily follows that someone who spends most of their time in non-article spaces are necessarily disconnected from reality. Jimbo Wales and Radiant! are two examples of people who do most of their work in non-article spaces but are still well-respected by a chunk of the community. Maybe people who stay away from articles are more likely to be disconnected, but there are counterexamples at the least.

I do think people who contribute significant amounts of encyclopedic content should be given a lot of recognition for their work, but I also think adminship shouldn't really be viewed as an award. If you want to have two classes of administrators, "regular administrators", and "influential FA-contributing administrators", then that's more of a culture thing, not necessarily a "who has their janitor bits turned on" thing. -- Interiot 04:57, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't edit so much nowadays, but I do heavy work cleaning up backlogs at Orphaned fair use images, CFD, etc, and even with a bot, it's still a lot of grunt work, I used to help also in other areas (at one point I handed out over 1000 blocks a month for vandalism). So, do I understand that my contributions aren't worthy and I'm unneeded since I don't do main namespace editing? -- Drini 05:16, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Once appointed as an administrator, you have additional power and responsibility. Doing any of the admin tasks takes time and in many cases requires a lot of effort to work out what is needed in each case. Some decisions are easy but others are far from clear cut. All of this has an affect on an admins abality to continue all of the editing they may like to do. I think having some admins who only work on admin tasks helps since they are generally more knowlegable in the tools we should be using. Without them we would have major problems keeping control. So to treat them differently does not seem to make sense. Vegaswikian 05:33, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Your contributions are worthy and needed. The issue here is that if you don't edit, you are less suited to make a judgement on the editors who edit, except for pretty obvious vandals and dicks. Adminship is both a mop and a stick. If you are used to a mop only, you should not be using the stick. -- Irpen 05:27, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I#m not sure what you have in mind, admin functions are those that require the extra buttons they are mainly technical. I can't see any logical split. The normal sequence of events seems to be (1) edit articles (2) become admin (3) stop/reduction in article editing as too involved in admin work. Now if we manage some split (which as I say I cannot envisage here how you intend to split the tools), that ultimately would then lead to less people doing a certain area of work, which means those left would have to take up the slack - leaving less time for article editing, so we then take those tools away and around we go. -- pgk 09:54, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I support this and am sure you will see nothing but admins oppose it. The idea that people are made admins because of their mainspace contributions and from that point no longer need them seems odd. If you were elected by the people because of the amazing mainspace work you do, why should that all cease now that you are an admin, we may as well never make admins then if it means losing an editor. I would think the idea is to give them additional tools to participate in additional functions, not drop the old function(writing articles) so that they can then be a vandal cop. -- NuclearUmpf 11:12, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not an admin and I am opposing it in good faith because I think it creates more bureaucracy than is needed. It seems to be making levels within levels where they were never intended to be. An admin should be trusted to act the same in all areas. Period. Ansell 11:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Your dichotomy between 'article contributing admins' and 'non-article-contributing admins' is a totally false one. You namecheck some users who have contributed significantly to our articles, and say 'their contributions should be applauded'. Indeed this is true. However, the contributions of users who do other things -- WP:CP, image tagging, OTRS and so on -- should also be applauded. These jobs are all important and valuable.

You also use language which suggests you misunderstand the nature of adminship: you don't have to be an admin to do new page patrolling or to welcome users, and adminship isn't some sort of 'promotion'. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\ ^talk 12:13, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

NuclearUmpf, you said "if you were elected by the people because of all the amazing mainspace work you do..." I wasn't. I was elected because I displayed an understanding of Wikipedia process and policy, and because I'm friendly and a resonably good communicator. As least, that's the message I got from my RfA. If you think mediating between disputing parties, and helping stop edit wars by judiciously using protection tools, for example, entails a disconnect from writing the encyclopedia, then you're simply incorrect. I don't doubt that there exist admins who are disconnected from the writing process, but it's not a simple matter of counting namespace edits. It sounds like people are asking for a technical solution to a personality conflict, which doesn't seem very likely to work. If someone seems disconnected, talk to them. That's the very first step of dispute resolution. If you have trouble talking to them, try asking a friendly admin for help. Some of us are admins because we're kind of good at that stuff. - GTBacchus^{( talk)} 12:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry but I didnt say there was a disconnect so I am not sure what you are reffering to. But many admins are elected because of their mainspace work, for them to stop doing that makes the point they were elected null does it not? Dont you think you are elected and expected to continue what you were doing, not drop it to do other things? If the community picked you because you resolve disputes well and instead you spend your time working on AfD or clerking RfC then you are not doing what the community expected of you. Perhaps admins should be picked by by what they are expected to do. Admins of area X, not limiting them, but giving admins elected to Area X more of a say of what goes on in Area X. -- NuclearUmpf 12:54, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

To expand on this point, maybe admins picked for an area that do not participate significantly in that area for a decent enough time should be put up for re-call, say 2 months. This prevents a disconnect from the area they were elected to help in. -- NuclearUmpf 12:58, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if I conflated your comments with those of others above. I figured when you said "I support this," you were agreeing with what Pewlosels said, about "non-writing admins" being disconnected from the project of writing an encyclopedia. Sorry if I put words in your mouth.

Anyway, I think the community elects admins because they trust their judgement. I think that people who are elected on those grounds should continue to exercise their judgement, not drop it and do other things. There's not some particular Area X where one is expected to use judgement; one is expected to apply it to various situations. That's why it's judgement, and not a simple algorithm. If you select someone for their good judgement, then it's silly to start micromanaging them and telling them how to apply it; the essence of good judgement is knowing how to apply it. If people are selecting admins based on their good article writing, that sounds kind of misguided, seeing as the admin tools don't really help one write articles. - GTBacchus^{( talk)} 13:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Putting aside my disagreement with the term "elected", then no I disagree. Admins are given the tools since their activity (which includes editing articles) shows they are trustworthy and unlikely to abuse those tools. If it were merely on the basis of their mainspace edits, then there would be little or no need for admin tools, adminship is not a promotion etc. etc. Admin tools don't help you writing articles, and most tools you shouldn't be using in the areas you are actively editing in anyway. Support votes on RFA are in my experience general, you don't support someone to do a specific piece of work. For the most part you couldn't do so anyway or it would be irrelevant. Your example of picking someone to resolve disputes is an example of this, resolving disputes does not require the use of the admin buttons, it is not an admin task. Admin tasks are things like closing AfDs as delete, protecting pages, blocking users, I can't vote for you to work in one of those areas because you are good at them, since until you get the admin tools I've no idea if you are or not (since you can't actually do them). You other example fails as well clerking RfC is not an admin task, it requires no admin facilities. -- pgk 13:21, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Whenever I start to concentrate more on cleaning up the mess that vandals make and less on articles, I burn out extremely quickly. So it's self-correcting for me. But this is a really bad idea. -- Golbez 13:02, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Admins are not paid employees (as the premise of the point suggests to me), they are just normal users with a few axtra buttons, which, in the grand scheme of things, don't even get used that much. Wikipedia only works because people do what they want to do, and happily what they want to do is normally in the interest of building an encyclopedia. When we start encouraging people to do things they don't want to do, or get annoyed when admins don't do what we want them to do, then Wikipedia won't work any more. Martin 13:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, this idea is idiotic. While I am a reasonable writer, I don't think I was given the admin bit because of the articles I created. After all, creating articles needs no administrative functions...and if I saw someone's RFA Q1 answer as "I only want to write more articles!" then I'd probably oppose. Why ruin a good thing? I probably spend 95% of my time trying to make Wikipedia a place where people who do write well and want to create articles (both admins and nonadmins) can concentrate on that, and not on recategorizing hundreds of articles or blocking spammers or being harassed by other editors (well intentioned or not). The other 5% of my time is little wikignome changes to articles, like taking a recent deaths obit and turning it into an article start. When I look at a writer-admin's contributions (such as BunchofGrapes or Bishonen or Violetriga) I like to think that by shouldering the lions share of administrator functions, they can continue to add quality content. Hopefully someone somewhere looks at my block logs, and my protection logs, and my page deletion logs and is thankful for my own contributions to the project instead of thinking in the back of their mind "What a f@cking waste of space that Syrthiss is, he better get back to making articles!111!!!!!!". Syrthiss 13:17, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Agree with most or all of the opposition above. Also: it's just impractical. In many previous proposals for regular review of admins, it has become clear that the necessary mechanisms would be extremely unwieldy. Reviewing 1000+ admins every year (for instance) means doing 20 a week on average. Which would be an excellent way to draw some group of people away from writing articles. And which group of people? Who are you going to appoint to decide when an admin has done "enough" mainspace writing? Not to mention the agony of defining "enough." Sure, writing an FA is an excellent thing. How about writing 50 stubs? Rescuing articles from CSD/PROD/AFD? Hmm? (These are rhetorical questions. I don't want individual answers. Especially since each individual will answer differently.) There are problems with divisions between people who dedicate themselves to writing and people who dedicate themselves to keeping the machine running. But trying to divide a diverse group of people into exactly two black-and-white groups is not going to ameliorate the problems. FreplySpang 13:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd recommend to the proposer that you read some actual RfAs - you'll get a much broader understanding of what people expect from admins, and how different the demands are. Some people want apologetic admins, others want unrelenting ones. Some people only require admins to have AfD experience, others expect five thousand main space edits plus five FAs or more and don't care about AfD. Some people think being an admin is an honourable position that should be granted to any bona fide, long-term contributor. Others insist that admins that do not participate in AfD, copyvio-resolution or similar administrative work are not worthy of "the mop", or wouldn't benefit from it. Finally, you'll find that admins instil terrible fear in some editors to the point that it's very difficult to constructively work with them on simple editing tasks. I'm sure I'm not the only admin to have considered creating a second account just so I wouldn't have to deal with "but, but, you're going to block me if I disagree with you". It's not like admins don't scrutinise each other's actions. If you have a specific complaint, you can make it at WP:AN etc., as you are no doubt aware, and if there's any basis to it, it will be dealt with. - Samsara ( talk • contribs) 13:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I had thought that policing NPOV and so on was part of building the encyclopaedia, so thanks to the proposer for setting me right on that. Speaking as an admin, I'd love to spend more time working on articles and if someone would be so good as to tell all the tendentious editors, POV warriors, trolls, spammers and assorted other distractions to fuck off and leave Wikipedia alone for a week I'm sure I'd get loads done. I made a resolution a while back to try and add an article a week, but most weeks I don't manage because I'm called off to help wth another problem editor or content dispute. Despite this I did manage to create Hanover Band and Stephen Darlington this week, which pleases me somewhat. I am seriously considering registering a role account. Just as a matter of interest, has anyone passed RfA without a high mainspace edit count recently? Guy 12:05, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Some of the related ideas

At the risk of top posting, I can point out that there are other proposals getting at the same thing. First, my own view.

1. It's true that the site has gotten more divided between inside and outside actors. Some people work between the pages of the encyclopedia, and some people work outside the covers. It's also true that this is growing and was not always there. In the dim mists of time, everyone wrote as well as controlled layout/content/hosting. Once the outside tasks grew large enough, once new toys were invented (like categories, then templates, then boxes), the amount of time all outside tasks could take grew. This allowed (not forced) those with a preference that way to get in a ton of edits, and every one of them outside.
2. It's also true that the divergence between inside and outside is so large now that there are people running about who have never heard of even the brightest stars of the other side. E.g. if I only wrote, I'd have no idea who Carnildo is except some guy who blocked inappropriately. Similarly, I was stunned to see some arbcom members proclaim total ignorance of who Giano was. (I straddle the worlds just barely enough to be known by most of both groups.)
3. If it is wrong to insist that everyone work inside, that doesn't mean that it is absurd to insist that outside work be understood as differentiated. Writing "Elvis presssly was a Singer in America" is "writing an article," and rolling back a vandal is "protecting Wikipedia," but neither is stellar.
4. It seems to me that we should be as horrified (and disqualify) an administrator who works outside only just as surely as we would be horrified that someone who worked only inside wanted tools. If we say, "Why do you need tools, if you only want to write," it's fair also to say, "Why do you want to delete and undelete, if you only work on cats and tags?" I.e. an administrator needs to do both or exercise tools only in a specialized way.

So, some other ideas folks have come up with, including me. I realize that they range near and far.

1. The Brag Bag: each person should keep a list of what they're proud of having done. This should be articles and actions. If you mediated a crisis at Gdansk, you should be able to brag about it. If you straightened out the mess at Robert, then good for you. If you presented the briefs in an ArbCom case, boast. If you created a template that has prevailed, be happy. Whatever it is, put it in your bag. Then, when conflict arises, no one can think you just sit on IRC all day... unless you do sit on IRC all day. If you have an overstuffed bag of articles, then, when there is an argument over content and content management, the person speaking to you can see that you might be somewhat expert. If you bag is stuffed with FA's, then your opponent might well understand that you know full well what "encyclopedic" means.
2. The Credentials File: This is a portfolio like the brag bag, but no one includes any rollback or deletions, as those things are necessary, but not laudable. (This from me: the archangel of deletionists.) Routine admin functions are routine. We should all go clean out CSD. We should all do RC patrol. We should all do NP patrol. We should all do these things, and so they're nothing to boast of: they should be assumed.
3. Renewal/Probational admins: This is where controversy begins. The idea is that each administrator gets automatically reappointed with any evidence of doing his/her job every year, but where any substantial complain causes a review/revocation after a year.
4. Assigned tasks: Each administrator should have to do certain things every year. Just as every administrator is expected to do mop stuff, perhaps we can make it requisite (with what sanctions, I don't know) that every administrator write or rewrite five articles a year. That's a very, very low bar. Perhaps a single FA or GA attempt a year. If a person doesn't do this, perhaps it should be citable in evidence of any future review of the administrator.
5. My favorite: Featured Wikipedians. If we set the bar very, very, very low, so this is not a contest, we have a new wikipedian every day whose Wikipedia biography (not real life, no references to real life, no references to outside websites at all) is written up as a "Get to know this Wikipedian: She or he is doing great stuff." If we do that, we can reduce the strangeness of each other, can show each other the strengths and interests of each other. It would also encourage people to know that they're going to be spotlighted and that they might want to get cracking. If nothing else, it would offer a carrot as well as threatening a stick to folks to get active all over.

Anyway, this is a review of what I've seen so far. Y'all are free to support or despise any part of it, exactly as your consciences dictate, but, if you find some of these things worthy, I encourage y'all to work it up as a full proposal. Geogre 13:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Not good policy, although I must admire your energy. Some jobs take up so much time, if done well, that extensive editing is just not possible. Fred Bauder 14:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it matters whether administrators edit articles or not, as long as they are helping Wikipedia. In a hospital, the administrators, the porters even, don't do operations, but the place couldn't function without them.

Right, but the porters don't refer to the surgeons as boils that need to be lanced. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 14:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I hope the surgeons dont refer to the porters as "trolls" and "uninformed masses" either =) -- NuclearUmpf 15:03, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Not met many surgeons, have you? ;-) Guy 23:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, I wish administrators would take a vow not to revert or rollback when they are editing articles where there isn't a problem. An article I'm working on recently saw reverts by a drop-in admin of 25kb of material that had been gradually removed by editors over the previous weeks and placed for discussion on the Talk page (the article is too vast). We have now restored most of our cuts, but our intervening additions had got mangled in the changes and some still need working back in, which takes time.

I've seen this drop-in-and-revert behaviour by other fast-moving admins who obviously didn't give themselves time to read and research properly the changes they reverted. I suspect that such admins are so used to reverting and rolling back that they can't help reaching for the same tools in a normal editing situation. The last thing articles need is revert-happy admins in a hurry qp10qp 14:37, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Good point, and that is part of what is wrong with this whole idea. To do work well it takes time. Time to read through talk pages, get up to speed, test the water before you make big changes. Time to think. Fred Bauder 14:46, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to drop my 2p in. I have been an active article writer since March 2004 with a brief voluntary break that summer, and a brief involuntary break this summer, and had the sysop bit from January 2005 to last month. Whether admin or not my approach is that article writing is the first and most important thing and it's what I enjoy, and my writing of articles did not diminish at all when I was an admin. But, just as if you want to live in a beautiful home you have to clean it, so we have administrative chores to do in order to make our encyclopaedia better. We don't call it "the mop" for nothing. So I do think that it's a bad thing (TM) for admins to give up their article work, because it suggests that editors are at the bottom of the tree, and that once promoted into adminship, you don't have to do that work any more. Really, it should be the other way round. David | Talk 15:49, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Or it suggests that those admins are sacrificing their article-writing time in order to do other jobs for Wikipedia that need doing. No 'tree' or hierarchy is implied. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\ ^talk 15:57, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I hate it that this is personalizing. That's precisely what we need to avoid. However, if it's back to "well, I find that I..." I will say that I've written more since being an admin. That's just a coincidence, though. I got here in 2002, signed up in 2003, got to be an admin in early 2004, I think, and I write. I do admin tasks, too. If I get dragged into arguments, my time gets gobbled up and I do little writing. If I actually mop things up, I don't lose any time at all. I don't think this is "you can't be an admin." Let's be honest and precise, if we're going to talk about this at all, please. It isn't maintaining a page, cleaning out a category, or even watching a page that takes time: it's chatting and fighting and arguing that takes time. That's not being an administrator, or it doesn't have to be. If folks want to consider me an inactive admin, they're free to. If they want to think that 230 articles is a low number, they may. Let's stop just asking, "Is this going to hurt me" and start asking, "Can this prevent the damage being done daily now by people being brusque, personal, incurious?" Geogre 16:32, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Well that pre-supposes that the damage being done is directly related to having admins who don't do much article editing. Since we have 1000+ admins many of whom will fall into that latter category, if there is a direct correlation between the two, then we would be totally over run with such disputes. If people have problems with some individuals and their approach to admin work then they should address that indivdual and the problems, just trying to extract a few characteristics of that admin and extrapolating that all admins with those characteristics must be treated as causing problems, is not too helpful. If you want to take the other extreme User:Freestylefrappe who was desysopped by arbcom has used socks since and been at the centre of numerous disputes and caused much animosity was also a reasonable article editor. Should we then decide that all admins who are good article editors are also likely to adopt the other characteristics? -- pgk 17:15, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Well said. However, the people who have been causing problems have also been long time non-editors who have announced indifference or scorn for article writing. That makes that particular attribute glaring. Myself, I think we are so large now that no one can be all things to all people and therefore that an answer, although never the answer, is to distinguish administrative functions. If administrators are drawn from the ranks of people who have specialized as editors, they should specialize as administrators as well. I won't argue with Carnildo on image rights, for example, even if I think he shouldn't be blocking people. In the absence of people limiting themselves, though, to their own comfort zones, and with the command that all arbitrators, in particular, step into any conflict of any nature, we're going to have some inexpert mediation, at least, if not some outright ignorance. Where some of the trouble has come from is people who may have very high value at, for example, software or rights or templates or categories not only getting involved in dispute resolution (where they may be frankly distrusted) and acting from personal prejudice. When a tagger wants to talk to me about content, I might well draw up to full height and sniff contemptuously, just as James Forrester does when people talk to him about copyright. That's my view, though, and I still think that everyone should have to do some of everything to at least be aware of the issues there. Geogre 18:50, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you on one level: I never did see anything wrong with a professor of classical Chinese literature hoeing corn for a year or two. But you proposal does bear a certain resemblance to such schemes, and I think experience has shown people intensely dislike such requirements. On the other hand administrators are expected to be courteous and helpful, not curt and dismissive. We have a few swelled heads. Fred Bauder 20:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

why are you comparing writing articles to "hoeing corn"? Article editing and writing takes an advanced level of skill and intelligence and being a puffed up admin simply IRC'ing all day and blocking people doesn't. Your analogy is not only 100% wrong, but it shows your subconcious disregard for those who actually write this damn thing. GreenCommander81 22:19, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Good point; but the essence of the suggestion is for us all to be familiar with all aspects of our common life, so as you point out, we don't loose touch. Fred Bauder 01:01, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Let's leave our cultural revolutions aside for a moment. It's true that you do betray a feeling of hierarchy, just as the writers do, and Wikipedia was supposed to have a flat hierarchy. The problem is that (queue user:Lar posting how contributions don't get anyone a free pass) we establish the things we're best at. There are people who are very good at conflict resolution, and that skill doesn't stem automatically from writing or software debugging or from beating people up over rights. It's a skill that can lie with any of these people. When our administrators behave top-down, they are violating the spirit and letter of the site. When they do this from admin to editor, it's horrible. When they do this from arbcom to admin, it's even worse, but only because our admins are an investment we've already made. (To keep our Cold War analogies going, it's why the Soviets wouldn't let physicists travel: they said the state had invested money in training them, so they couldn't be robbed of that by defection. If we lose an editor, it is a very, very bad thing. It is an evil amplified only by the amount of time and contribution an editor has to demonstrate to become an admin.) ArbCom is just dispute resolution admins. Admins are just editors who are supposed to never, ever step across the lines of policy. Editors are supposed to be the equal of each of these. None of these is supposed to be a promotion or a badge of office, and it's fair to say that you don't get a pass to put away your editing hat because you've put on the helmet of the cop. (And that's not my recommendation, anyway.) Geogre 01:10, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Good points, Geogre. I am reminded of a question someone raised at the ArbCom panel at Wikimania this year. The person asked (paraphrasing a little for emphasis) what does an editor do when another editor follows the rules (without gaming them) when arguing for their version of an article -- yet is "clearly wrong"? I don't remember what the ArbCom representatives said, but my answer (had I been able to answer) would be simple: just keep talking, try to find something you & your opponent will agree to -- & keep the discussion framed as an exchange between friends, or at least people who respect each other. If the dispute drags on too long, propose a brief break. I think most people (not just people participating in this project) will respond usefully if approached in this manner. -- llywrch 01:35, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Civil Disobedience?

With the Arbitration Committee agreeing to hear the Giano case even when the crux of the case is the behavior of many of the admins and Arb Com members, it is clear how the ArbCom will end up ruling. They probably will simply tell us, as James F. already has done, that we're a "bunch of idiots," and to move on, as it were. If the ArbCom shall not listen to us and blatantly flaunt community wishes, we do have an option -- Civil Disobedience. We can simply refuse to implement future ArbCom decisions. They need us to enforce their decisions, particularly on bans. That way we can send a message to the Committe of Public Safety that we are serious and that we have serious concerns. GreenCommander81 04:08, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

No decision is pre-ordained. Please participate at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Giano/Workshop if you have opinions as to the outcome. Jimbo may have to settle this eventually, but we are going to give it a try. Before you go to war make sure there is a cause. Fred Bauder 10:53, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

So who were you before Tony Sidaway banned you, anyway? Choess 06:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

hm, and who are you, again? How about you address the point, not the IRC hipness quotient of the editor making it? dab (ᛏ) 08:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm an editor, and non-participant in IRC. The "point" made seemed sufficiently ludicrous as to require no further comment; I thought it was worth pointing out that the user appeared to be a sockpuppet and was perhaps not acting in the best of faith before he could inject too much additional heat into what's already a highly charged discussion. Choess 12:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

you were always free to not enforce arbcom rulings. There is no obligation to be active on Wikipedia at all, and if you do not believe in blocking someone, you are perfectly free to not do it, admin or no admin. The point is that there will always be admins around only too willing to implement arbcom rulings (which is after all perfectly fair as long as the arbcom isn't broken), so that your suggestion would seem to imply bouts of wheel warring. This will lead nowhere, and only lead to bitter infighting that will make us look pathetic from the outside I am afraid. If the arbcom doesn't have the integrity to honestly assess this case (which still remains to be seen), the only path open to us will be to campaign for the (partial) replacement of arbcom members, maybe for an early re-election. It is in any case in the best interest of the arbcom itself to examine this case with extra care and integrity, and I still hope they will. dab (ᛏ) 08:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

From his trolling pattern I'd say he smells like Wiki Brah, who is community banned. Who wants to do the honors? -- Tony Sidaway 10:17, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Certainly not you. Fred Bauder 10:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• Civil disobedience is the weakness of anyone asserting power on Wikipedia. Other than the hosts being taken away, no one has any power. We are all supposed to be of equal rank. When people leave the project, we will have :10 of soul searching. When people go on strike, we have :05 of soul searching. I, myself, have thought about civil disobedience, as it is the achilles heel. However, I neither support it nor call for it. At this point, doing something like that would be to lend credence to the people who are acting abusively. If they stomp around announcing that they speak for Jimbo (Geogre's Law #7: Anyone who tells you how he's buddies with Jimbo is really saying that he has no legitimate arguments for his point of view), to believe them is the worst move. Forcing the dispute resolution folks to either annoint or defrock them is the better course, initially. Geogre 10:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Is there a policy on list articles that essentially replicate the function of a category? I'm thinking about lists such as those in the category Lists of Museums. I don't see what Museums in China does, for instance, that Category:Museums in China doesn't already do. Cordless Larry 14:04, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

That list has two redlinks; lists can include topics that should have articles but don't yet. Categories can't. Also, this is less of an issue with this particular list, but lists can be annotated to explain the inclusion of the entry in the list, and can also be organized by other methods than alphabetization. Postdlf 14:30, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The guideline for lists is Wikipedia:List guideline. It has a section entitled "Purpose of lists". My experience at AfD is that lists serving the information purpose that are not violations of WP:NOR are most likely to be kept, those that have inclusion criteria and fulfill the development purpose are next most likely to be kept, and those that solely exist for navigation and can be replicated by a category are almost never kept. Having an information purpose can be as simple as a list of law schools in Canada describing which teach common law, which teach civil law, and which teach both. GRBerry 14:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

What is the policy on allowing external links to Uncyclopedia articles? Some examples are [13] [14]. In some articles, such as German Wikipedia, some context is given on the corresponding Uncyclopedia article. Should such links be removed? Thanks. -- Vsion 21:45, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

It's linkspam and should be removed. Cowman109 ^Talk 23:09, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

In the article Mad Libs#External links, there is a markup "[[Uncyclopedia:Mad Libs]]" which links to http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Mad_Libs . This is strange, is interwiki link to uncyclopedia acceptable? -- Vsion 02:17, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Nope, it fails WP:EL and should go. The only page that should link to Uncyclopedia is a page discussing Uncyclopedia itself. Ziggurat 02:22, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I removed the "Uncyclopedia" links from about 18 articles which are obvious spams. However, there are still many articles which I'm not too sure. They include: Captain Obvious, buttered cat paradox, Helengrad, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, Batroc the Leaper, Batroc the Leaper, Leeroy Jenkins, Time Cube, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Russian Reversal. Is this an organised spaming? Perhaps someone with more experience can help to clean it up. Also, the interwiki markup is pretty strange; shouldn't it be disabled? Thanks. -- Vsion 02:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's organized spamming. The same names don't keep coming up for the additions. Instead, I would imagine that it's the usual, juvenile, overly enthusiastic spamming. "Kewel! I have an Uncyclopedia article, and I think everyone should read it." <shrug> It's not an appropriate link, so kill it. If you see one or two accounts running amok, of course, post it to WP:AN or WP:AN/I so folks can warn and, if warnings fail, block the contributor(s). Geogre 14:48, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The phrasing of otheruses has pissed a lot of people off in the past, and I think it could be fixed rather simply by changing the word "uses" to "meanings." I posted at Template_talk:Otheruses#All_the_meaning_problems..., but I figured here is a more visible place to draw people out for discussion. Night Gyr ( talk/ Oy) 17:25, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I have noticed that some users, one in particular, have a habit of disemvowelling statements that others make on their talk page. Usually, the reason given is that "I don't want to read such nonsense". I was under the impression that, barring racist type remarks, we were NOT supposed to change in any way comments left on our talk pages. What is the specific policy on this? As an example, please refer to the talk page of Calton to see what i am talking about. Is this sort of behaviour permissable? I cannot find in ANY Wiki policies that I have gone over ANYTHING that allows this sort of thing, which honestly seems to be a form of self vandalism (if one could actually vandalise one's own talk page). TruthCrusader 16:35, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I had to look that word up, and then I was certain you couldn't really mean that, until I looked at the talk page in question. Wow, that is pretty rude, in my opinion, to disemvowel others' comments. Additionally, it's not smart dispute resolution, as it tends to increase the negativity and potential drama rather than decreasing it, as an admin should always be trying to do. What a poor way to de-escalate a disgruntled editor. If it's an attempt at humor, it's one that's almost guaranteed to fall flat every time. I'm a little bit shocked. - GTBacchus^{( talk)} 16:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

It is generally bad form to delete or otherwise alter messages on your talk page: however there is no fundamental reason not to. There's always the page history. It would be silly to have a policy against it. The Land 16:56, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

It's generally bad form to delete messages on your talk page; but significant alterations—particularly those aimed at misrepresenting the editor who originally made the comments—are quite rightly seen as vandalism. Whether merely making the editor seem illiterate counts is, perhaps, open to debate; but consider: would we tolerate someone who went around inserting spelling mistakes into other editors' comments, or would we simply block them? Kirill Lokshin 17:24, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems very incivil and potentially (although not necessarily) disruptive. Current policies and guidelines would seem to cover it adequately. -- Siobhan Hansa 17:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Can the user I pointed out be warned or blocked for this? I am curious if action can be taken retro-actively. TruthCrusader 17:42, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm curious what the point of their modification is... They're not trying to alter the meaning of the text. If they don't like a message, tell them to just speedy-archive it instead. -- Interiot 17:59, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems the user was warned [15] a couple of weeks ago. Which makes me wonder - why bring the issue here, now?

Users are, with few exceptions, allowed to manage pages in their user space as they see fit. Some do consider it a bad idea for a user to edit or blank the comments placed on his/her talk page, but there is no policy or guideline against it. In short, if Carlton wants to disemvowel statements on his talk page, he's free to do so. -- Aaron 18:07, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you think that the the civility policy doesn't apply to user talk pages, or do you think the practice isn't incivil? -- Siobhan Hansa 18:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Err, what about Wikipedia:Vandalism#Types of vandalism, in particular the "Changing people's comments" (and perhaps the "Random character vandalism") points? Speedy archiving (or even outright deletion) is fine; replacing signed comments with gibberish (but keeping the signature!) really isn't. Kirill Lokshin 18:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree, I think its better the comments are simply deleted then maimed in this fashion, while particularly comical, it also serves to make the user look foolish, not saying this is done on purpose, but other editors viewing the talk page may see it that way. I would reccomend this user just delete comments instead of changing them in this fashion. or at least post the dif of the original in the same section as the disemvowelling (sp?) -- NuclearUmpf 18:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand that we are given leeway with DELETING user comments on our talk pages, but CHANGING them in any way to mis-represent what the author stated seems to me to be in clear violation of the civility policy TruthCrusader 18:32, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

He isnt really misrepresenting what they say, just how they said it ... He is removing the vowels from comments he does not like. -- NuclearUmpf 18:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Which is changing what they stated, which IS mis-representing them. I think disemvowelling needs to be added to Wikipedia:Vandalism#Types of vandalism TruthCrusader 18:41, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to get into an arguement of symantics, but he is not changing what they said, its clearly there if you know its missing vowels. If he converted it to spanish it would still say what it says, just not how (english) they said it. -- NuclearUmpf 19:03, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

If you to go Calton's talk page, this is one of the comments he disemvowelled:

"If you remove sources from articles it makes it difficult for other editors to check the matters referred to. Please don't do this in order to make a point about Arbitrarion Committee decisions having to be kept to even if you don't like them. David | Talk 15:07, 9 September 2006 (UTC)"

it was changed to this:

"f y rmv srcs frm rtcls t mks t dffclt fr thr dtrs t chck th mttrs rfrrd t. Pls dn't d ths n rdr t mk pnt bt rbtrrn Cmmtt dcsns hvng t b kpt t vn f y dn't lk thm. - David | Talk 15:07, 9 September 2006 (UTC)"

I don't see WHY a statement like this should be rendered vowelless, it makes no sense to me and really smacks of being massively uncivil. TruthCrusader 18:48, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Not that I am defending it, but he does specifically state why he does it on his talk page. Perhaps the accusations of WP:POINT is what caused that to be disemvowelled(sp?). Anyway as I said I dont think its vandalism but someone should ask him to just delete the messages he doesnt like or speedy archive, though I see a new complaint coming shortly after he begins that proccess. -- NuclearUmpf 19:01, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

That specific statement is part of the problem. By disemvowelling a comment, he implies that it was "Especially bogus, hostile, and/or trolling", and that implication is itself uncivil. Melchoir 19:10, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

That is true and I did not look at it from that angle. While I would saying laying down a WP:POINT accusation is hostile, I agree with you that the removal of vowels should cease. I just worry that removing the comments entirely would also imply the same or be seen as such from the people who's comments are being removed. I think a policy needs to be expanded to cover this or similar issues. -- NuclearUmpf 19:24, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't call this disenvowelling "incivil"; it's much like saying "I don't like your comment, so I'm going to stuff these beans up my nose." I could say more, but I think we've all offered enough clues on this matter. -- llywrch 20:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I think I should say something here before I end up with a request for comment about my username. Messing with other people's signed comments is certainly a no-no, and what Calton did seems to match this disemvowelling thing, while he may or may not have been aware of the connotations of doing this as described in the disemvowelling article. Actually, upon reviewing this article's history he has made some significant edits of it and so probably knows what it meant and meant it as an insult to Dbiv. I was not aware of this whole thing myself, before reading this thread and article and really don't put much consideration into the article's subtly offensive point of view. Regardless of the article, I don't think writing without vowels is at all uncivil, rude, or derogatory and I'm not going to point out exactly why, because we should all know this. DVD+ R/W 17:31, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I invite review of this edit, to the speedy deletion template: [16]

I'm hoping this is a step towards discouraging template-warring and some of the speedy/prod/AfD ping pong that sometimes goes on. - GTBacchus^{( talk)} 23:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

(Please also see WT:RFA) I believe that the RfA process is under many pressures partly because there is no similar organized way to hold admins accountable for their actions or desysopp them if necessary. If we answer this latter question, we will see more people ready to say "adminship is no big deal." The consensus issue will also become less sensitive, and I'm sure that stuff like the Carnildo affair won't happen. To get the ball rollin':

1. Blocks are serious, last resort measures. It can be useful to desysopp an admin who has been blocked (justifiably) by a fellow admin, but for just like a week or so to allow him/her to cool off - this is different than the "cool off" mandated by blocks themselves. The second block should result in a 30-day "cool off," and the third block should lead to desysopping.
2. WP:ANI should also become a place where admins can receive advice and suggestions on how to perform potentially sensitive tasks. There are many admins who aren't abusive but simply make a mistake - they need immediate guidance of more experienced admins.
3. Maybe a bureaucrat's committee can be created (subordinate to ArbCom) to look into cases concerning proposal no. 1 and cases of serious admin abuse. Rama's arrow 10:23, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
4. Perhaps admins should be encouraged/required to hold an editor review each year to receive suggestions and criticism.
5. More and more admins should be encouraged/required to help at Admin Coaching. This way, they get to improve themselves and learn how to help others.
6. Promote greater teamwork and coordination between admins. If you create a WikiProject Admintasks or a similar device to inform/coordinate admins on backlogs and serious issues, we will see greater efficiency as well as a culture in which admins don't feel compelled to make sensitive decisions themselves, in their own interpretation of policy. Rama's arrow 10:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

That said, this process should not revolve around the question of desysopping. Rather how admins can improve and learn. The same for RfA - every productive editor is a prospective admin, so the process should encourage learning instead of creating a contest, vote-like atmosphere. Rama's arrow 11:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The answer for #2 is WP:AN, which already exists. -- Golbez 12:03, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• we need a working WP:RFDA. We may not have needed it in the past, but we do now.
• CAT:AOR should be understood as a matter of course. Admins too enamoured with their position of power, or too deluded with their own importance to subscribe to this shouldn't keep their buttons.
• IRC is not part of WP. An editor's merits and admin-worthiness are exclusively a function of their on-wiki work and behaviour.
• admins are WP editors trusted with some minimal good judgement. Tendencies to re-cast them as some sort of separate caste need to be firmly countered. Admins who have ceased to see themselves as members of the community of editors should hand in their mop.

dab (ᛏ) 12:12, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I like all of Dab's ideas. Rama's arrow 12:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

How do you propose to resolve the problem of the Tyranny of the Masses that has plagued all previous proposals for an admin recall policy? Or are you arguing that the chilling effect that would be caused by the threat of a de-sysopping attempt against an admin performing an unpopular task such as enforcing copyright policy or protecting an article in the wrong version will not be an issue? -- Allen3  ^talk 12:51, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

If there is to be a solution, it is that of balancing the scales and not tipping one side over another. In the rudimentary ideas laid out above, desysopping comes only if an admin is blocked thrice - in previous two, he/she is temporarily deprived of tools to "cool off." I'm not particularly enamoured to any proposal - I don't think recall is necessary, but unless we brainstorm we won't get the golden nugget either. Rama's arrow 12:57, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

That's why I want to see bureaucrats play a corrective influence on admins, so that the masses are not given authority over admins. That helps create a system of checks and balances, which is the model for good administration. Rama's arrow 12:58, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, the tasks admins generally perform (copyright enforcement, protection of articles and others) should not, understandably come under the microscope. Only real disputes should. We need to figure out more ideas to not create a police state while trying to reform. Rama's arrow 13:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• I like Dab's ideas. As for Rama's Arrow's, I prefer the idea of demotion, which I have on one of my subpages (go to my talk page, and at the top there is a link to it) to admin blocking. However, there is the problem of mob voting and an uneducated votership. We all feel that "democracy is evil" from time to time. I have said in the past and maintain it still that that does not invalidate a voting or consensus-making process. Instead, it shows us that we need to carefully consider the individual franchise, definitions of consensus, and quorum. In any case of reform of this nature, we would need to have admin-only voting (with a plebicite if we get it wrong (meaning estranging the editing community)), a recognition that status quo always enjoys an advantage over any change, and an insistence on high participation. My feeling is that we need several proposals and that we present each other with "A, B, C, D, or status quo" as choices. A high percentage for any alternative to the status quo, or for not-status quo, should indicate that proposals need more refinement. Geogre 15:21, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I've got an idea. How about something modeled after AfD? If someone specifically believes that an admin has acted improperly, instead of making them go through the convolutions of RfC or having them navigate the shark infested waters of AN/I, give users the means to get quick feedback to the effect of whether or not they have been the "victim" of a rouge admin. Here's how I would see the workflow: There's a Wikipedia:Administrator Review page. The user clicks an edit link, specifies an admin and review reason w/ an AfD style template, ala {{subst:adminreview|user=Chairboy|text=The article [[It puts the lotion on its skin]] was improperly deleted (it did not meet WP:CSD) and the admin blocked me when I asked him to review the situation. Also, we had a disagreement on a different subject at the same time, so I feel Chairboy blocked me improperly and should have involved another admin to avoid a conflict of interest.}}. This would be saved as Wikipedia:Administrator Review/Chairboy and would allow for a centralized depot for all "issues" each admin has. This would be transcluded the way AfD and RfA are and the result would almost always be a "Speedy close" or "Speedy RfC" that would then be expanded appropriately. This would give have a calming influence on frustrated users who feel wronged but aren't quite sure enough to begin an RfC, plus it would serve as a pressure release for users who need to hear from other admins that "Nope, in this instance Chairboy acted properly." Articles for Deletion has reduced a lot of tension from situations where users would have otherwise felt a single user was being capricious. Seeing everyone else agree that an article needs to go makes people stop and ask themselves "Wait, is it possible that I've misunderstood the situation?". An equivalent for admins could highlight administrators who have screwed up and give other admins the means to validate when the person has actually acted properly. This is less expensive than regular admin reviews, only targets admins who have gained the ire of others, and gives fast, unified feedback to the accusing party. Thoughts? - CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 15:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea, especially if its expanded to keep track of multiple incidents, then it can also help users in compiling a RfC and finding incidents that support them. I think community feedback, not just admin feedback is very important for both sides involved. -- NuclearUmpf 16:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I like this idea, too. The potential problem I'm seeing is with transclusion of a page like Wikipedia:Administrator Review/GTBacchus. After the 20th or so complaint on that page, it would become a transclusion nightmare with long-ago resolved disputes popping up again and again. Surely, only active cases should be transcluded to a main page, right? Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you described. - GTBacchus^{( talk)} 16:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Inactive items could be archived to a subpage, good point. The idea is that all of the past incidents (or non-incidents) would be available somewhere. - CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 16:51, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I have created a framework for evaluation at Wikipedia:Administrator Review. I look forward to feedback. - CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 05:45, 27 September 2006 (UTC)