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A discussion about a possible "official policy seal" for our policy pages to replace the green tick mark,( ) has been going on for the last few days at WP:ATT, Official policy seal.
This is the latest iteration. Previous iterations are available in my sandbox. Here is a Diff of how this will look on the {{ policy}} template.
Before I invest any more time on this, I seek comments from the wider community to assess if this proposal is worth pursuing. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:20, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Here is a version (#2) without caption and with ribbons as requested by some editors:
I have to agree with all of David Levy's objections; particularly the cross-wiki consistency, and size/colour comments. However, (just to be difficult!), how about draft#3, in white instead of gold, with the green/blue tick in the center? I'd still be recognizable and minimal, but would get the redesign-proposal's point across. -- Quiddity 04:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
I have only one thing to say about this, KISS. The checkmark is humble and it is simple. Fanfare to a minimal. If you want to use something else, ok, but do not forget the awesome power of simple. -- Ned Scott 04:11, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
I can see that there is no traction for this proposal. At least we have now a dozen seals in the public domain at commons... ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:33, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Last attempt I did yesterday night, below. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:32, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm more for keeping it as a simple check mark. It gets the point across nicely without being distracting. — Remember the dot ( talk) 04:57, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
For what it's worth, support seal with checkmark. -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ ♥ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 18:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Is there a method in place already to censure people for using deletion tags incorrectly, repeatedly? I find it is an incredibly common problem - if I see something on TV that is notable and yet does not have its own article, I usually try to add it. Every single time I add an article, someone tries to have it speedy-deleted instantly. We are not talking about random, meaningless articles here; instead we are talking about content that is universally approved and accepted as notable, except it does not have sources yet. When I go back, and do more work that the other person could have helped with, and add sources from Google, there is no dispute.
There are dozens and dozens of editors who go through new pages and just wantonly apply speedy deletion and prod tags to new articles that are short, temporarily unsourced, or otherwise don't meet their approval. Despite the fact that they are not candidates for regular deletion (let alone speedy), these same editors constantly mark things for speedy-deletions regardless, assuming that someone else will come back behind them and clean it up if it was a mistake.
This is hugely detrimental to the project, and it is a form of newbie-biting. Do we have a force in place to correct this behaviour specifically? People who have no idea what the speedy-deletion criteria even ARE should not be using speedy-deletion tags, and yet they are doing it, because it is an easy way to get their edit count up without contributing, doing research, or doing any real work.
So please tell me I'm overlooking a place where I can report these habitual abusers? I wish there was a specific unit or group of people specifically watching for this sort of thing, because it literally happens with /every single/ article I have created, both as an anon (previously) and as a registered user (now). John the Apostate 22:20, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
(undent) You're sort of missing the point of WP:ATT if you write the article and add sources later. Ideally, you should be writing from sources, not writing and then finding sources to back up what you say. Mr.Z-man talk ¢ Review! 23:45, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Wait... what's this? "create in userspace"!? Doesn't that amount to "Please don't actually use the wiki to make an encyclopedia?"
OUW!
We're here to work together to make great articles. Not to race each other to see who can delete articles fastest. Focus here folks! :-)
Articles are started in the main namespace, and when you see one, your first question should be "how do I improve this?", not "which CSD tag shall I apply today?".
My first article on wikipedia got wikified and tidied practically before I released the submit button. That fast! Was I hooked? Boy was I ever. I'm still here editing years later :-P
-- Kim Bruning 02:01, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
and then goes on to say that they then look to see if there are references they can use. If folk are going to be allowed to add "interesting facts not previously noted" without context and to be referenced as and when sources are found (and just left hanging if there is nothing? Are these people going to go to a major library or just do a Google search for their citations?) then both WP:Not is going to need rewriting and the article stubs people will be needing counseling."if I see something on TV that is notable and yet does not have its own article, I usually try to add it..."
Every deletion is a person displeased, and some of those people will make no further contributions, and frankly when I see things like this and this and they're hanging around for months and years I have to wonder if all the policies and guidelines on content aren't just pretense. Cryptonymius 05:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think user pages and user subpages should be searchable on Google. Some people like to keep private versions that lean towards a POV not approved by consensus. In at least one case the user subpage appears higher in Google search rankings than Wikipedia's own article. It should be relatively easy to fix the software to treat user pages and subpages like talk pages and not let them be searchable. Thoughts? -- Ideogram 12:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I have recently noticed that a Wikiseek is now the default action for text entered in the search box that appears to the left of each article.
Is this helpful to our users while Wikiseek typically produces inferior results to the Go button?
[Wikiseek is a search engine that has indexed only Wikipedia pages, plus a very few pages that are linked to from Wikipedia. It was created by startup Searchme, Inc.
Despite press reports to the contrary, it has no affiliation with the charitable organization Wikimedia Foundation or private corporation Wikia, and is unrelated to the never-released web search application Wikiasari.
Wikipedia users are cautioned that using the Wikiseek button often produces an inferior result to using the Go button on Wikipedia.
An ironic example of this is if one enters "Wikiseek" into the search button of Wikipedia; choose the Wikiseek button and no useable results will currently be displayed, choose the conventional "Go" button and you are taken directly to this article!
Further examples of futile searches with Wikiseek (even though there are eponymous articles) would be " Amber House" and " Cabragh House" (even though these particular problems were reported in 2006...] W. Frank 17:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Definition of "allegation":
al·le·ga·tion /ˌælɪˈgeɪʃən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[al-i-gey-shuhn] *Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –noun
(from dic.com)
Wikipedia's official guidelines regarding the use of the term:
Alleged (along with allegedly) and purported (along with purportedly) are different from the foregoing in that they are generally used by those who genuinely have no predisposition as to whether the statement being cited is true or not. Newspapers, for instance, almost universally refer to any indicted but unconvicted criminal as an alleged criminal. Therefore, there is no neutrality problem with using them. However, there may be a problem of ambiguity—they should only be used where the identity of the alleger is clear.
...
O.J. Simpson allegedly murdered his ex-wife and a friend of hers in 1994. [In the context of crimes, alleged is understood to mean "alleged by government prosecutors".]
(Taken from WP:WTA#So-called.2C_supposed.2C_alleged.2C_purported)
Currently on Wikipedia, there are some articles with that word in their article name. Noted:
and on and on. Please see this google search to find lots more
These articles discuss the allegations, and then give examples of when the term is used.
But, there are also articles like this:
etc.
So I was wondering, what is the current status of these articles? I don't think it makes sense for some articles to have "allegations" in the title, while others don't. I think either they all should, or they all shouldn't. Thoughts? -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 20:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand what you mean by "unverifiable". What is "unverifiable" about Israeli apartheid? For some people, it is considered a fact. Opposite goes for Holocaust. Some people don't consider the holocaust of fact. I think these selective titles may be an example of Systematic bias ( Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias) -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 20:51, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Even Israeli apartheid should not have "allegations" in the title. It's superfluous, non-neutral and unprofessional. We should write in an objective style without implying a point-of-view. — Omegatron 21:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
So...are you proposing a page move or what? If you are, just make your proposal at WP:RM and be done with it. The discussion here seems more like soapboxing. -- Minderbinder 21:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I do not know where this is headed. but it seems to me that there are very clear cases where the word "allegation" can be used. Leave these to be discussed in the specific articles. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:34, 15 March 2007 (UTC) Here's how I think we should make the distinction between allegation and a fact.
What do you gusy think about that? Bless sins 22:00, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Wily, that sounds about right. But look at the Islam and antisemitism article, which is filled with allegations that Islam is antisemitic. What do you think of moving it to Islam and antisemitism allegations?-- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 22:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
(Resetting indent). There's an important distinction here. At least 90% of the facts that give rise to the idea of apartheid are not under dispute - characterizing it as "apartheid" is an interpretation that by its very nature is subjective. The Holocaust is a proper name for a series of specific events that are accepted by 99.99% of anyone who calls himself/herself a historian. (Oh, and Noam Chomsky quite clearly holds fringe positions, and isn't even a historian, nor - as it turns out - such a great linguist). -- Leifern 00:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I've long believed that we should avoid using the word "allegations" in article titles. There will obviously be the need for some exceptions (eg. the 1993 Michael Jackson article), but the word is too easly co-opted for political ends.
The Allegations of Israeli Apartheid title is a bad compromise, and was chosen during highly politicized negotiations last summer. At the time of the article's creation, the concept was relatively marginal. Since then, it has been referenced by a former American president, a United Nations report, and countless journalists. And yet, the "allegations" title has been retained, due to ongoing political divisions on the page itself.
It may be noted, by way of contrast, that the disputed concept of New antisemitism is not referred to as Allegations of new antisemitism, notwithstanding similar objections that have been raised around the concept's viability. CJCurrie 03:54, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
CJCurrie, that's a good point. I've added New antisemitism to the list uptop. -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 04:07, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Blueboar, I understand your concerns. But what about science which has mainstream consensus among scientists, but not among the general populace? I think it would be incredibly silly and stupid to have an Allegations of Evolutionary theory article. As gracenotes said, I think that if there is relevant, sourced, notable dispute of a subject, then the article should not allege it as a fact. For instance the holocaust is considered fact by the vast majority of historians. But there is a notable minority which disagree with the extent of the holocaust. But that does not mean that the Holocaust article should be moved to Allegations of the Holocaust. And the holocaust itself is such a controversial subject that a move to "Allegations..." would be offensive. And that is my point with the Israeli apartheid article. Most historians agree that Israel has isolated and separated the Palestinians in the occupied territories. But there is a notable minority (mostly from the United States and Israel) that claim there is no persecution of Palestinians. But moving the article (as it currently stands) to "Allegations..." is offensive. As user Tiamut earlier above said: "Those who use it are not alleging that Israel is an apartheid state, they are insisting it is. That term and its associated debate deserve representation in an article titled after the concept itself." -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 14:12, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Also, I find the allegation that I am violating WP:POINT to be entirely self-defeating. The whole point of the Village pump is to discuss issues BEFORE doing something major. If I had went and move all those articles to "Allegations of..." (or vice versa), that would have been a WP:POINT.-- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 14:15, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I've found this: WP:WTA#So-called.2C_supposed.2C_alleged.2C_purported. Added to top.-- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 14:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Added Pallywood.-- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 14:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. If you find anymore, feel free to add them. -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 14:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
The article Allegations of Israeli Apartheid is, strictly speaking, about the allegations rather than the actuality of any discrimination or colonialism which would be better served by an article entitled something else. At least, that was the reason behind the writing of the article by my understanding. That isn't even considering the compromises that reaching that title entailed. Islamofascism is about the neologism, Islamophobia unfortunately conflates a neologism with a real phenomenon along with allegations of the phenomenon, and New antisemitism is similar. -- Coroebus 20:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I think it's time to put all of the "Allegations . . ." articles up for Afd, as they all violate our rules against WP:NOR#Synthesis_of_published_material_serving_to_advance_a_position, codified at WP:SYNT. MortonDevonshire Yo · 21:03, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Sign under the statement with which you most agree. Discuss in comments section.
There is nothing wrong with most of the current titles. The topics which there is serious uncertianty about have alleged in them. The ones where uncertianty is uncertian do not. Calling the Holocaust, for example, alleged, is giving undue weight to antisemites.-- Sefringle 02:12, 22 March 2007 (UTC) The term is so frequently used in newspaper accounts regarding criminal activity, that it by now has acquired that connotation, and should only be used when specifically criminal accusations that have not yet been decided are the topic Many of the uses are more general, and hence inappropriate. DGG 02:32, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I was recently editing some articles and came across a number of geographical locations (primarily unincorporated towns) that were tagged {{ importance}}. I seem to recall in the past several people arguing to keep such articles when they came up in AfD debates by saying that geographical locations are inherently notable and do not require additional "proof of importance" beyond the fact that they exist. I have been looking around in the policies and guidelines and I am having a hard time finding where it is stated that this is the case. Is it an actual policy somewhere, or is it merely consensus? If it exists in policy I would like to know where so that I can reference it. It would also be very helpful to know what the policy is regarding geographical locations and notability. Thanks! Arkyan 23:28, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the help thus far. I went and looked at WP:LOCAL as well as the discussion there, and it feels like there is still some need for clarification and consensus. I'm hoping to spark some discussion on the issue again, so I've commented on the talk page there. Would really appreciate any constructive thoughts and ideas anyone would have! Thanks! Arkyan 17:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
The bot which created an article about every place in the US 2000 census was supported by consensus, and all articles which have come up for deletion have also met consensus keeps. It may not be posted in a policy anywhere, but there has long been consensus to keep those articles. A real place is important due to its existence, unlike most other things which fall under question about notability. You would need a strong consensus to delete them. Corvus cornix 22:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
See User:Uncle G/On notability#Notability is not a blanket. Uncle G 14:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
I have a serious issue with the promotion of articles to Good status, which no one has been able to address to my satisfaction. I am concerned with the fact that a GA candidate can be passed or failed by a single editor. Even speedy deletes have the grace of two editors, and AFD discussions rarely close with less than three contributions. I would like to know in which forum I could pursue this discussion with the end to change in GA policy. Thanks. Denni talk 06:26, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
It just occurred to me that since meaningful edit summaries are not optional policy, perhaps the default for new users ought to be to require them? -- BenBurch 17:28, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
My attention was drawn to an edit on my Talk page, & as I researched the facts around it, I became more troubled at what happened. Maybe I'm behind the times, coming from left field, etc., but I don't like what I have found.
First, I am against spam -- in Wikipedia, in my email, anywhere. No reputable business knowingly uses spam to advertise, pure & simple.
However, it appears that it is far easier for a website to be listed as a spammer than it is to remove it. In the case I encountered, someone on an IRC channel claimed that the website "touregypt.net" was identified as a target of a spammer. Another Wikipedian (who, I want to point out, was acting in good faith) acted on this claim & began to "delink" every link to that website, without regard to who added it; the editor obviously was working as fast as she could. (By "delink" I mean that a nowiki tag was inserted so that one could not click-thru; one could still follow the link by copying the text of the URL into the browser.)
As a result, in several articles, talk pages, & many other places where it was clearly part of the context we lost references (I believe several of these edits have since been reverted).
Note: I have no problem with IRC being used to quickly respond to emergencies. in this case, ifa spammer had been obviously adding links to this website in Wikipedia, alerting Admins to this fact would be very much appropriate, but then the site should be nominated for inclusion in the spam list, & discussion follow before it is added.
This editor was contacted by several established & knowledgable Wikipedias, who demanded an explanation. She explained about the IRC channel, & referred them to this site on meta, where the website had been listed without any sign of a discussion that I have been able to find. This forum for discussion is not well-publicized (unlike, for example, WP:AfD), & a Wikipedian can contribute for a long period of time without even knowing meta.wikipedia.org even exists. However, there is currently a petition by a number of Wikipedians (some of whom have demonstrated extensive knowledge of Egyptology) to remove this website from the spam list. In short, four things happened that I think are wrong:
As I said above, I admit that I may be out of the loop here. However, I feel that this is a violation of the spirit of Wikipedia -- where we discuss & create concensus upon matters. Some Wikipedians claim that they are smart enough to know when they can safely ignore all rules in order to improve Wikipedia; in this case, I think it is clear that rules were ignored & stupid edits were made which harmed Wikipedia. -- llywrch 17:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
This discussion considers two seperate cases, which indeed show resemblance. Since I am involved in one of the cases, I will offer my view on this case.
When spam is being identified, first of all all links that that spammer added are being removed. There is no question whether that link is a good one or a bad one, these will go, per the english wikipedia spam guidelines:
Adding external links to an article or user page for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed, and is considered to be spam. Although the specific links may be allowed under some circumstances, repeatedly adding links will in most cases result in all of them being removed.
That is what happened with the links added by the COI spammers that added theeuropeanlibrary.org. AFAIK no links added by other persons were removed (if that happened, it happened in an external links section where these links are questionable anyway, per the english wikipedia guidelines on external links, "If the site or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source first." and I am sorry if that happened). Now theeuropeanlibrary.org is a good site, and a careful examination of the situation was made. At that time only 10 links to the europeanlibrary.org were available, and the only ones added at that moment were by the addresses which have a COI, clearly suggesting promotion of a site that was not yet linked on wikipedia. The edits by the COI-editor have been discussed with the editor, and s/he was pointed to the appropriate policies and guidelines. Since the spamming by these addresses continued nevertheless, the site was blacklisted on shadowbot.
As a further note, shadowbot reverts once, and adds a message to the users talkpage. If the user readds, shadowbot does not remove (except when in angry mode under a heavy attack, but then its operation is even more carefully monitored; that is an exceptional situation). Normally, repeated addition gets reviewed by shadowbots operators, and when appropriate, will not be reverted. The europeanlibrary did not get blacklisted on meta, the spam is not (yet) crosswiki (and even then, it might be really inappropriate to do that). But I could stuff some more beans in it, when you want your own site not to be used as a source, consider spamming your very own link across several wikis, that really helps the community forward (maybe wikipedia has to consider not using such a site as a source and keeping a lacune in its contents). I have suggested my contact at the european library to reconsider his/her stance, and I promised him/her that we would make sure the site gets removed from the blacklist when the COI-spamming stops (it will also be removed when shadowbot reverts too many (which may be 1) good edits to articles).
For touregypt.com: I have not seen the spam-records for this addition, but I am sure there are records for that. But when the spamming is cross-wiki (i.e. also on other-language wikis) addition to meta is considered. I will for now assume good faith and think that the person who added it to the meta-blacklist considered the site carefully.
Blacklisting on meta means, that the link can not be used in a document at all; pages with that link can not be saved, even when the editor does not add that link at that very moment. When touregypt.net was meta-blacklisted a user provided the service to clean en.wikipedia from that link; otherwise other editors would run into the problem of not being able to save the page on wiki; that is completely besides the question whether blacklisting was appropriate (and the same user is already helping finding alternatives).
Blacklisting happens speedy, I am sorry, but first discussing for 7 days results in a lot of spam being added before something can be done about it (WP:SNOW?). That results indeed in some mistakes being made, we know that, and we are more than willing to correct the mistakes. Seen the layout and contents of the sites in question (and the style of writing and the purpose of the site in the case of touregypt.net) I expect that many facts stated there can also be verified with other sources. By the way, we don't have to provide a deeplink to an external document in a reference, if I state that Jennifer Couzin wrote an article about opening doors and native knowledge and add the reference "Jennifer Couzin, Science, 2007, volume 315, issue 5818, p. 1518-1519", anyone can find the source, and verify my statement, a deeplink is only a service and a nice extra for a non-paper encyclopedia.
So the only problem that stays, is that the system can be tricked/wikipedia can be disrupted (per the beans-case above), but that can be done with every policy and guideline we are working under here. Hope this explains. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 11:45, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I know Wikipedia was started as a resource anyone can edit, but the fact is I feel it's time Wikipedia abandon this. Full stop. There has been simply too much bad-faith editing and outright vandalism by anonymous IPs and everytime this sort of thing hits the media, it makes all Wikipedianss look bad. Case in point: a vandal posted that the actor Sinbad had died. Although it was caught and corrected and the article is currently locked down, it was too late to stop the AP from reporting on the situation: [2] and in turn this story is appearing on forums (I saw it at TrekBBS of all places) where it's being used as ammunition by people who would like to see Wikipedia either disappear or become basically a clone of traditional published encyclopedias where only people with PhDs are allowed to contribute and articles take months or even years to be approved. As someone who regularly has to revert anonymous edits and who now treats every non-registered edit as "Vandalism unless proven otherwise" I feel a good 90% of the bad press regarding Wikipedia and it's alleged inaccuracies would be eliminated if we simply required people to get a username. There are vandals who do register, of course, and Special:Newpages regularly shows nonsense articles created by registered users ... but they still comfortably fit within the 10% minority. 23skidoo 17:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I have just been doing some recent change monitoring. Most of the anon IP edits were good ones, and by far the worst vandalism was from a logged-in user.-- Runcorn 19:16, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
At the moment, what will it take to ban unregistered editors? Cold day in Hell, to be honest. I see plenty of well-intentioned edits from anons. The biggest problem I see from anons is inserting junk such as their pet's birthday, or adding their favourite entries to list articles. Not exactly "vandalism" per se, just a misunderstanding of what WP is. Vandals (of the kind that blank pages and replace them with "fuck you all, you suck cock", or add "and your mom" to serial prose) are still in the minority, and while that is still the case I don't see a reason to block them out - blocking article creation is enough. Chris cheese whine 05:48, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
There is currently a push to change WP:BLOCK to allow short blocks without warning upon any incident of vandalism from IP addresses, and indefinite blocks without warning for any registered account that has only made unconstructive edits. Input would be appreciated at Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy. TomTheHand 20:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Are mailing lists encyclopedic? I was drawn to this questions regarding this afd, and the corresponding article. A question being raised in the afd is the existence of several other articles on mailing lists. Wikipedia:Notability (web) doesn't mention anything specifically about this. So, my question to others is: what is the community's opinion on the notability/encyclopedic nature of articles on mailing lists? Can they considered worthy of a wikipedia article? What criteria should apply to them? Thanks. -- Ragib 08:08, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Shouldn't we have a rule that one ought to clean up an article before adding anything new to it? I've seen too many pages fall into disrepair because people keep dropping in their own contributions when there are still obvious spelling errors, citiation requests, pastel boxes, and just plain unwikified text. Squidfryerchef 18:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
In the link Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion#Proposed_Change, Radiant! 'just blew off a well intentioned suggestion' that certain steps should be added to process, and damned the matter as a perennial suggestion that comes up once an month, effectively closing the discussion with that judgemental dismissal. If he's right, that indicates there is a body of thought thinking similar to myself, that the current practices are very wrong to keep and retain good and knowledgeable expert editors which can otherwise move the project to a higher average quality. So I'm asking some Admin to set up a straw poll, on whether this, and further, that the voting be split into a section by whether the respondent is an Admin, or a regular editor. I have the utmost respect for that group of editors, and frankly feel they are the most victimized group within our community, but as a rule they are the most active and most influential. In this case, I feel short term self-interest may be biasing what is a better practice for the long term health of any Wiki project and the greater interests of the community as a whole need to be thought through carefully. This is a matter which BITES people and alienates them repeatedly, and should not be born because of convenience. Like a little gas-pedal pressure, it has great effects on the long term results--if held in place unchanged we'd see one result--if modified at some point (now, or at 90 mph, etcetera) another different outcome. // Fra nkB 18:59, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Are there any limits on what qualifies for a WikiProject? Wikipedia:WikiProject Centrist Party appears to have one participant, a person apparrently actively involved in the party; on the talk page of the article about the party I had, some time ago, raised questions about notability that I don't believe have been addressed. I'm not going to fight to get the article deleted, but what (if anything) does it mean for this to be a WikiProject? - Jmabel | Talk 19:23, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
(The following message, but not the replies posted below it, was copied from Wikipedia talk:Maintenance by The Transhumanist 00:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC))...
I have a couple of friends who work in the visual electronic entertainment industry. I now avoid watching anything with them because instead of enjoying the film or television program, they sit there commenting on technical features in the film, lighting, cuts etc. I think that with people who regularly edit Wikipedia articles instead of viewing articles for the information they contain (as most readers do) they view the article for how well put together it is and if it can be improved.
One manifestation of this I have noticed, which in my opinion is the growing tendency, is to add what are editorial comments to the article page instead of on to the talk page. If a person edits an article page and write in plain text. "This page is not good enough it needs more information" the comment will either be moved to the talk page or it will be deleted as vandalism. However if a person puts a template at the top of a page then they feel that is justified (eg {{ cleanup-bio}}, but in essence it is contributing nothing more to the article than the plain text does.
There are exceptions to this, for example I think that the {{ unreferenced}} placed in a "Reference" section at the bottom of an article, serves a dual purpose. It is a maintenance template but it also adds information that a passing reader of the page (who is not familiar with Wikipeda) needs to know. But a passing reader does not need to know {{ wikify}} "This article (or section) may need to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards." Comments like this should in my opinion be placed on talk page. -- Philip Baird Shearer 09:45, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps what is needed is a little icon that can be placed in the top right corner of articles needing work. The presence of the icon would indicate that there are tags which need to be addressed on the article's talk page. The advantages would be that at 3/8" x 3/8" it would be fairly unobtrusive, and would also take the place of multiple tags. One icon fits all. The Transhumanist 00:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. The templates serve to both inform & remind the casual reader that the article/site is in continuous development, and also act as a lure for curious-readers to become new-editors. Some of the templates could use an aesthetic update (See Wikipedia:Template standardisation/article. I really like flamurai's fairly recent ' blanca' additions), but moving them all to the talkpage would be dishonest and disadvantageous. -- Quiddity 02:55, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
As a related aside I was going to post below, See {{
DATE}}, which should help make that problem solution more effective, if people use it. Virtually all the cleanup tags I'm familiar with will be satisfied by that template which needs substituted, but that will come out loud and clear the first time one doesn't! <g> It produces date={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}} as a reminder, and "date=February 2007" when applied like this: {{
clean|{{subst:DATE}}}}
, for example. That date= after the pipe is precisely the input parameter most of the the IN-YOUR-FACE tags are designed to take. The tagging overloading a page can and should be handled by using a version of '|small=1' switching which is common to an increasing number of tags should they be kept on main pages. Another alternative there would be the hide/show tagging modes many navigation templates are sporting these days.
{{Commons-gallery|United States Navy ships}}
So I'm thinking of the laid back style of these two Commons-gallery tags (which are showing combinations of three different operations modes between the two examples here), with the size and plain link of that one in the category. As can plainly be seen, the text wraps right about them. {{Commons-gallery|flowers}}
::That Iconic notice could be even more sophisticated in assuming service page similar to the /doc pages now being used for template documentation. That is a local sub-page, an {{/cleanup}} page, which acts as a storage register to some hypothetical {{clean-status}} 'display template' in a page's head section-- if the register's got includable content, then the 'display macro' on the article places the edit message automatically and once put in place, never need be removed, as it depends on the content in {{{{PAGENAME}}/cleanup}} for activation and a link to display. So it would hold a simple #if: test like are frequently used in testing for named parameters, if there is nothing to include... the article is clean without a tag display, which stays silent.
See Wikipedia:Template standardisation/article. This sort of input would probably be welcome over there. Also, what does everyone think of this? -- Random832 00:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
As this section is getting close to its sell by date, I will cut and past to there, so that there is a record of this exchange. Please post any additional comments on that page -- Philip Baird Shearer 13:00, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
The following is quoted from the discussion of 1 Essjay should step down from Arbcom at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Essjay/Straw Poll#Discussion:
Can we get an exact timeline here? He was appointed what, a week ago? This was a delayed scandal, really, I am pretty sure we knew he was "Ryan Jordan" before he was appointed to ArbCom. It just took a while before someone wrote the Wikipedia article and I guess everyone found out and this became a trainwreck. So I am currently thinking Essjay was appointed to ArbCom with Jimbo knowing about the identity thing. -- W.marsh 14:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- The situation was known on February 1, well before the ArbCom appointment, see here. In fact, it was slashdotted on Feb 7 as well. It just didn't gain traction because Brandt has not yet mananged to browbeat the New Yorker into issuing a correction. It has been discussen on Essjay's talk page many times between then and now. Dmcdevit resigned on the 14th. Thatcher131 14:32, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- Can you lead me to the slashdot article? I missed that article. SYSS Mouse 14:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- Hmmm. Let me look for it. Thatcher131 14:37, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- It appears as a comment in this thread started on Feb 7. Commenter appears to be Daniel Brandt from all appearances. Thatcher131 14:40, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
The exact comment by Everyman (197621) appears to have been at An example of Wikipedia's problem. — Jeff G. 11:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
It was noticed by January 11th, and I posted about it on essjay's talk page around february 5th. Night Gyr ( talk/ Oy) 20:51, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
I was recently editing some articles and came across a number of geographical locations (primarily unincorporated towns) that were tagged {{ importance}}. I seem to recall in the past several people arguing to keep such articles when they came up in AfD debates by saying that geographical locations are inherently notable and do not require additional "proof of importance" beyond the fact that they exist. I have been looking around in the policies and guidelines and I am having a hard time finding where it is stated that this is the case. Is it an actual policy somewhere, or is it merely consensus? If it exists in policy I would like to know where so that I can reference it. It would also be very helpful to know what the policy is regarding geographical locations and notability. Thanks! Arkyan 23:28, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the help thus far. I went and looked at WP:LOCAL as well as the discussion there, and it feels like there is still some need for clarification and consensus. I'm hoping to spark some discussion on the issue again, so I've commented on the talk page there. Would really appreciate any constructive thoughts and ideas anyone would have! Thanks! Arkyan 17:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
The bot which created an article about every place in the US 2000 census was supported by consensus, and all articles which have come up for deletion have also met consensus keeps. It may not be posted in a policy anywhere, but there has long been consensus to keep those articles. A real place is important due to its existence, unlike most other things which fall under question about notability. You would need a strong consensus to delete them. Corvus cornix 22:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
See User:Uncle G/On notability#Notability is not a blanket. Uncle G 14:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
This is currently a discussion regarding non administrator closure at WP:Deletion process here. Regards, Navou banter / contribs 21:15, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
It's been proposed we move Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons → Wikipedia:Biographical information on living people —( Discuss) to better emphasise that the policy applies to all information not just in biographies. There appears to be existing consensus for move but decided since it's a critical policy it's better to list it just in case since. Discuss in the BLP talk page, not here Nil Einne 16:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia has no policy on articles about words. I wanted to propose that we actually create such a policy, but I believe the chance of it happening is approximately zero at this point. In the meantime, I've written an essay about this, Wikipedia:Articles about words, which attempts to explain what our general practice is on word articles. Please come read this essay and then use the talk page to tell me how much the essay horribly sucks. -- Xyzzyplugh 20:05, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I need some clarification on our policy regarding open proxies. m:Meta:No open proxies should be clear: "Open proxies are banned from editing Wikimedia projects. Anonymizers and other companies or organizations that offer open proxies may be blocked indefinitely by an administrator." But the policy is vague regarding whether soft or hard blocks should be imposed. The discussion at Wikipedia:Advice to users using Tor to bypass the Great Firewall is germane. The problem is we have a lose-lose situation. Perhaps the majority of cases brought to WP:RFCU involve open proxies, much of the time Tor proxies. We get a ton of vandalism and other nasty behavior (see, for example, Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Verdict), with miscreants creating sometimes dozens, perhaps hundreds of sockpuppet accounts, and then proceeding to use them at will on easily accessible open proxies. The obvious solutions is simply to hard-block the open proxies. But what about our users behind the Great Firewall? With the vagueness in the policy, some of us have been hard-blocking, while others of us have been soft-blocking Tor proxies in particular. I've found myself reversing other admin's decisions, or being reversed myself; so far, no unpleasantry has ensued, but I'd really appreciate some sense of the community on this, or at least a pointer to established policy. -- jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 19:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I also block OPs as AO, AC-disabled. Obviously, they cannot then be used to create accounts.-- Runcorn 22:03, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Can some people please give some outside opinions on the use of this and this picture on the Human feces article? (at the article talk page)
People have been removing the pictures because it's gross and because they claim it's irrelevant. However, being gross shouldn't matter, as per "Wikipedia is not censored". As for the relevance, what could be more relevant on an article called "Human feces" than a photo of real human feces? Of course, there's the option of having drawings instead (as we do on the articles about sex), but it would be sort of difficult to draw human feces and have it look obviously like human feces...as oppossed to just a lump.
I have a feeling that when we take away the "the pictures are gross" factor, it is really within Wikipedia policies and completely relevant to have those two pictures on the article. Two earlier request for comments from last year are on Talk:Human feces and seem to show there was consensus to keep an image of human feces on the article.
But then again, we do have Wikipedia:Profanity, which says "Including information about offensive material is part of Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not." This is clearly a case of including offensive material, but i'm not sure whether it's also a case of "being offensive" or not. So some more opinions would be nice. -- `/aksha 05:40, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
The picture is offensive indeed, but, beyond that, it is also needless. It serves no informative purpose, as everybody (every human being on this earth) knows what feces look like. As I've said several places, there is no other serious reason to keep those shit images in the articles than to provide amusement and adverse reactions under the pretext of needing article images. They are also a potential source for vandalism.--
Kamikaze 09:46, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
This image is not necesary at all. As someone said, we all know what human feces are and what they look like. Wikipedia isn't censored of course but it has an encyclopedic mission. Being offensive when is not required just for the sake of shocking and entertainment isn't part of that mission. I propose the images (there are two of them) to be deleted.-- Raja Lon Flattery 19:12, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia needs to make a statement and a policy on "___ in popular culture" or "_____ in fiction" sections. As it seems policy on them is currently entirely piecemeal and random.
Many articles (particularly mythological concepts) quickly acquire long lists of appearances in popular culture or fiction, the list eventually spins off to it's own page, then eventually gets nominated for deletion and is either removed or merged back into the original page and it all starts again.
I think it's clear that some policy decision needs to be made on this.
On one hand I think it's clear people are interested in the section, that they can be relevant and understanding sometimes means understanding how it is used in culture or fiction. But they are also very long lists, and have no promise to us that they stay manageable. If something was genuinely important in 700 different stories, it seems wrong to remove that information, although it makes an eyesore, I mean, no object promises to just be in 10 or less stories just to give us a nice looking "see also" list.
On the other hand, EVERYTHING ON EARTH has been referenced by family guy. And it is hard to see serious topics dwarfed by lists of every time apu on simpsons mentioned it. And making another page makes sense, but often the page eventually gets nominated for deletion as listcruft, maybe justifiably. Still, they are often lists many people helped write, that many people find interesting, and if they contain more than just a title they can even be encyclopedic to some degree (it could, for example be worth mentioning that Pan is referenced in a Shakespeare play, but if that is important, where is the line?).
Is there any sort of policy that could be written about this? so many pages have these lists, and they disappear and reappear pretty much at the passing taste of editors, growing until they grow ugly then either being deleted or splitting and growing again until they get unwieldy and end up deleted until eventually someone sees the page and says "ahh, this was an important concept in such and such anime" and throws a section in mentioning that, starting the whole cycle again.
Honestly, I don't know what I'd recommend, as people DO seem to want the information on the lists, and I think it may be some people's first wiki-edits adding something to them but at the same time they are horrible eyesores that are inappropriate in serious articles and separate pages of them are unencyclopedic listcuft. Owlofcreamcheese 19:20, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
What do people think?
I think a big problem is that things don't promise to be a pleasing length. If there are two important stories that feature such and such that makes it look nice, if there are 25, it makes a sprawling list that is unsightly and dwarfs the article itself, but it's not like it should be punished for having the audacity to appear in more things and be more culturally significant! Owlofcreamcheese 19:20, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
This problem (and IMO it is a problem) is even when when dealing with articles on sports cars. There seems no way to win the battle against "Appearances in video games" sections, even though these days (almost) every video game features (almost) every modern sports car, to the point that these sections become useless trivia. Zun aid © ® 09:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
One of the problems, as it appears to me, is that there is a widespread belief that simply listing a whole load of examples of, or occurrences of in film and on television, of a particular concept or thing, magically, after some mystical critical mass has been reached, creates an actual encyclopaedia article about that concept or thing. This belief comes about, I think, from people seeing existing articles that are no more than lists of occurrences of a thing in film and on television, that editors have ammassed over the years, and thinking as a consequence that (a) that is how encyclopaedia articles should look, and (b) that is how encyclopaedia articles are constructed. In other words: Bad articles are used as guidelines for new articles.
Some offending articles in the past have been Aviation joke ( AfD discussion), Portrayals of Mormons in popular media ( AfD discussion), Elephant joke ( AfD discussion), Shaggy dog story ( AfD discussion), and What is black and white and red all over? ( AfD discussion), for examples. All of those were, when they came to AFD, simple collections of variations upon, or occurrences of, the thing that the article was supposed to be about. As can be seen from both the discussions and the articles as they stand now, what makes an encyclopaedia article is something markedly different.
The difference in article construction is one of effort. It is easy to watch a television series, see a character that is supposed to be (say) a Mormon who blows xyr nose, and to think "I know. I'll add a bullet point to Wikipedia's article on Mormons saying that there's a Mormon character in this episode of this television series, who blows xyr nose.". It is comparatively harder (albeit not very difficult on an absolute scale) to actually go and find secondary sources that have analysed a wide range of Mormon characters in film and television as a serious academic exercise, and then condense and summarize those sources into an encyclopaedia article. It is, however, the path of greater effort that needs to be trod in order to create a proper encyclopaedia article upon a subject. Simply amassing raw data, and hoping that an encyclopaedia article will magically arise from it, doesn't work.
I think that there are at least three important maxims to bear in mind:
Turning bad articles into good (or at least fair) articles often discourages or even stops this cargo cult article writing, as editors see what articles should actually look like, and how they should actually be written. The rate of addition of protologisms to LOL (Internet slang) decreased once the article itself became more than a list of word variations, and started to contain actual analysis. Similarly, chav now suffers far less from original research (excluding outright " My friend is a chav!" vandalism) now that the article shows by copious example that what we want is content based upon sources.
Uncle G 03:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Please comment on the discussion currently taking place on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Final Fantasy#Banning spoiler warnings completely. Kariteh 21:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I know that an editor is not allowed to copy information from the web "word for word." But, i found that someone did this a while ago and since then the article has changed and evolved.
This Diff
[3]
Was copied from this website
[4].
But that was August 4, 2006.
Since then it has changed. Do i remove that info since it was copied? Or do i leave it because it has been changed since then?
Yaanch
Speak! 01:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I am sure the answer is somewhere already, but I am having trouble locating it. What is the copyright status of screenshots, such as this? Thanks! -- Bossi ( talk ;; contribs) 18:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
I posted such a thing here, about dealing with already banned users who continue to post and try to interact on Wikipedia as ban evasion. Please take a look, thanks! - Denny 15:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Hello... I posted an addition to the arguments to avoid in deletions essay, labeled as WP:FORTHEPEOPLE. Would more people be willing to look into this? I feel it has merit. - Denny 23:44, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Am I right in thinking that we don't include images in mainspace where they are purely cosmetic and add no value to the article? Chris cheese whine 21:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
As many of you know, the policy pages Wikipedia:No original research (WP:NOR) and Wikipedia:Verifiability (WP:V) were recently merged together under the title: Wikipedia:Attribution (WP:ATT), while the Guideline page Wikipedia:Reliable sources (WP:RS) was merged into a FAQ page attached to WP:ATT.
Jimbo Wales has expressed some concerns about how this was done. He has suggested a straw poll to determine what the community consensus on this is. The poll is still in the formative stage (tweeking the wording and format)... but should be ready for people to cast their votes soon. Please see: Wikipedia:Attribution/Poll. Blueboar 13:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Attribution/Community discussion
≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:14, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I posted these originally at WP:RFC/POLICIES but I'm told that doing so rarely garners a response because that page is used mostly to "advertise" new proposed guidelines and stuff. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ contrib ツ 00:33, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I have the title of this section, but haven't worked out my thoughts. I welcome others' contributions in advance of that. My question, essentially, is are there segments of the intellectual community that do not want Wikipedia to succeed. More broadly, the type of knowledge it represents. If so, what are we dealing with? I am not sure how this very general question could translate to policy, but maybe. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ismark ( talk • contribs) 19:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC).
I don't think user pages and user subpages should be searchable on Google. Some people like to keep private versions that lean towards a POV not approved by consensus. In at least one case the user subpage appears higher in Google search rankings than Wikipedia's own article. It should be relatively easy to fix the software to treat user pages and subpages like talk pages and not let them be searchable. Thoughts? -- Ideogram 12:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Please see WT:CSD#Alerting criterion R2 if you have any input on the matter; thank you. Gracenotes T § 15:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
A change has been proposed at WP:U for a slight expansion of the current ban on usernames which reference "reproductive and excretory functions of the body" to include flatulence and vomiting. RJASE1 Talk 21:50, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
I have penned a policy proposal that consists of two provisions in Wikipedia:Readability#Policy_proposal, in a section of the essay written by me. Please discuss it here or under Wikipedia talk:Readability/proposal discussion page. Thank you! Wooyi 22:20, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I, Jason Gastrich, politely request the overturn of my ban. I promise to stay away from Christianity- and religion-related articles, and to edit quietly under this account, and only this one.
No more sockpuppetry, or meatpuppetry.
I ask that the community seek forgiveness and let me return. -- Jason Gastrich 11:05, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Based on complaints that the policies were too lengthy, complex and convoluted, several people have revised the username policy page, to clarify it, remove redundancy, and incorporate material from a few related policies, in particular WP:SOCK and WP:DOP. This is not a change in policy, just a reworking of the relevant pages. The draft can be found at the link above; unless there are big objections, the intent is to move this over the present username policy as a new version; the second step would be to verify that it contains all relevant material from the related policies mentioned above, and complete the merge with a redirect. Please comment on the draft's talk page rather than here. >Radiant< 12:58, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I have done a little look for this. But after about 10 minutes thought it might just be easier to ask people who might know.
Are there any essays/guidelines explaining how editors should not use their personal authority on a subject (eg. as a politician, university professor, leader of a band's fan club etc.) to add
Original research to articles without
Attribution. I am looking for something that specifically deals with someone saying that they have in depth knowledge through personal experience on the subject, so it doesn't really matter that they haven't sourced their contributions, because they are "true".--
ZayZayEM 00:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Try User:Uncle G/On sources and content#Tips for editors, also. Uncle G 01:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
The problem here is that there are a lot of people with a lot of knowledge who are in professions without much in the way of professional, peer-reviewed publications available to cite as reference; there is also the problem that some knowledge inevitably does not make its way into those publications that do exist. To use myself as a close-at-hand example, I'm an infantryman in the U.S. Army. Say that I am creating or editing an article on battle drills. I could describe, in the article, a given battle drill as described in, say, the Ranger Handbook. But what if I want to point out that although battle drill X is described in such and thus a manner in the Handbook, it is often in the real world performed in a slightly different fashion? My knowledge in the matter would be professionally-based and learned from other, more experience professionals but I can see no way to include the material in an article without violating the "no original material" rule, unless I can find somewhere that such a variation is recorded in print so that I can cite it as a reference.
I'm not taking a position here; I fully understand why it's invalid to just say "I'm a professional, so take my word for it". But, the essential quandary is still there; how can editors contribute the knowledge that they have accumulated professionally but which represents the accumulated "oral knowledge", so to speak, of their profession? -- Molon Labe 08:22, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I have designed a new policy for choosing the TFA in a way that will make everyone happy and solve a lot of problems. Please add to the debate at Wikipedia:SweeTFA proposition! David Spart ( talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) 22:18, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm attempting to reopen the discussion orignally begun here. This is a proposed amendment to WP:FUC#9 and the proposal is located at Wikipedia:Fair use/Amendment/Fair use images in portals2. - ΖαππερΝαππερ Babel Alexandria 22:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia has no policy on articles about words. I wanted to propose that we actually create such a policy, but I believe the chance of it happening is approximately zero at this point. In the meantime, I've written an essay about this, Wikipedia:Articles about words, which attempts to explain what our general practice is on word articles. Please come read this essay and then use the talk page to tell me how much the essay horribly sucks. -- Xyzzyplugh 20:05, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I have a suggestion that I HOPE could be considered as one of the ways to scale back vandalism on Wikipedia. A lot of the vandalism I see on Wikipedia I think are by people who just happrn to see an article and they perhaps just see the "edit" link, so they click it and type something simple which comes to mind and hit save. My suggestion is this: Wikipedia (I think I had read somewhere) is supposed to be open and allow anonymous submissions as well. However, I think one of the ways to curb vandalism but allow through real legit. (albeit) anonymous entries would be this.
If you're an anonymous user, (meaning you don't subscribe for a free ID) you'd still be able to submit entries for Wikipedia articles. However, the part that cuts down on vandalism would be--- that you must get TWO people (with real IDs) to nominate your anonymous submission for inclusion into the real live article. I was toying around in my head if the two nominations should be made by admins, or just anyone with a real ID but I figure that should be up for discussion too and their may not be enough admins to overlook all entries... (Although then again there would have to be enough admins to revert that same number of vandalism instances so this argument might be moot.) If the person is a vandal there's less of a chance they will get the two required nominations to make the vandalism part of the live article. But people who are anonymous and submiting real credible stuff will likely get their two nominations by someone. Does anyone think the idea could be workable? Again by becoming a legit user they can bypass the whole credibility check of their entry. Sure Sockpuppets may be an issue but they can be handled as they are now. CaribDigita 01:54, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I spend time each day on edit patrol and sometimes I'll have to revert the same article three times in as many minutes, I never give it that third edit, I just report it, but my point is that the vandals are using bots as well, or at least it seems like it. Sue Rangell[ citation needed 00:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry if this has been proposed before. People seem to love creating categories, and other people object to having huge indigestible wads of categories at the end of an article. Maybe the answer is to have a short list of visible categories and another link called "More categories". If you click on "more", you see that huge list. For instance, I could imagine the end of Turkey Vulture looking like this (but in blue):
If you click on "More categories", you might see:
This would put the power of hypertext at the service of curious users without cluttering up the articles. Why shouldn't somebody who reads that the TV has a good sense of smell wonder what other birds do too? Why shouldn't they get an answer with a scroll and two clicks? Of course people would have to do the work. But there seems to be a strong impulse to work this way; maybe it should be indulged.
By the way, I thought of this when participating in the debate at Category_talk:Biota_by_country, which may need some more thoughts. — JerryFriedman 05:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
It's not a bad idea, but I think it will just shift the current arguments about what categories are important enough to exist into arguments about what categories are important enough to be visible. And there will still be plenty of categories created that aren't even fit for hiding. Postdlf 16:13, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Honestly, having sections of any sort that could be hidden or shown would I believe be the next evolutionary step to Wikipedia. For being not paper, this place sure does set everything up like it was, having to have a totally separate page for anything that doesn't quite fit in a main article. Owlofcreamcheese 17:37, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
When I try to go through categories, I would like to point out another viewpoint here to try and resolve. Often when I go to some categories, I see that there are hundreds (or even thousands!) of articles that are in that category. This sometimes get to be very time consuming to try and find something specific if you are actually going to use the category system to look up a piece of related information.... IMHO the main reason to be using the category system as a reader. The point being is how many people here actually look on page seven (listed 200 articles per page) of the category listing to actually find an article? Even with alphabet bars and other navigational techniques, it becomes something nearly meaningless.
See Category:Biography articles of living people for a good example.
My question as it relates to these hidden categories is how would this help at all in this situation? To me, it would cause some of these categories to grow even more substantially. Perhaps there is some minor value added to these sort of monster categories, but I'm not sure what it really is. -- Robert Horning 21:19, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
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A discussion about a possible "official policy seal" for our policy pages to replace the green tick mark,( ) has been going on for the last few days at WP:ATT, Official policy seal.
This is the latest iteration. Previous iterations are available in my sandbox. Here is a Diff of how this will look on the {{ policy}} template.
Before I invest any more time on this, I seek comments from the wider community to assess if this proposal is worth pursuing. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:20, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Here is a version (#2) without caption and with ribbons as requested by some editors:
I have to agree with all of David Levy's objections; particularly the cross-wiki consistency, and size/colour comments. However, (just to be difficult!), how about draft#3, in white instead of gold, with the green/blue tick in the center? I'd still be recognizable and minimal, but would get the redesign-proposal's point across. -- Quiddity 04:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
I have only one thing to say about this, KISS. The checkmark is humble and it is simple. Fanfare to a minimal. If you want to use something else, ok, but do not forget the awesome power of simple. -- Ned Scott 04:11, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
I can see that there is no traction for this proposal. At least we have now a dozen seals in the public domain at commons... ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:33, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Last attempt I did yesterday night, below. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:32, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm more for keeping it as a simple check mark. It gets the point across nicely without being distracting. — Remember the dot ( talk) 04:57, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
For what it's worth, support seal with checkmark. -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ ♥ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 18:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Is there a method in place already to censure people for using deletion tags incorrectly, repeatedly? I find it is an incredibly common problem - if I see something on TV that is notable and yet does not have its own article, I usually try to add it. Every single time I add an article, someone tries to have it speedy-deleted instantly. We are not talking about random, meaningless articles here; instead we are talking about content that is universally approved and accepted as notable, except it does not have sources yet. When I go back, and do more work that the other person could have helped with, and add sources from Google, there is no dispute.
There are dozens and dozens of editors who go through new pages and just wantonly apply speedy deletion and prod tags to new articles that are short, temporarily unsourced, or otherwise don't meet their approval. Despite the fact that they are not candidates for regular deletion (let alone speedy), these same editors constantly mark things for speedy-deletions regardless, assuming that someone else will come back behind them and clean it up if it was a mistake.
This is hugely detrimental to the project, and it is a form of newbie-biting. Do we have a force in place to correct this behaviour specifically? People who have no idea what the speedy-deletion criteria even ARE should not be using speedy-deletion tags, and yet they are doing it, because it is an easy way to get their edit count up without contributing, doing research, or doing any real work.
So please tell me I'm overlooking a place where I can report these habitual abusers? I wish there was a specific unit or group of people specifically watching for this sort of thing, because it literally happens with /every single/ article I have created, both as an anon (previously) and as a registered user (now). John the Apostate 22:20, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
(undent) You're sort of missing the point of WP:ATT if you write the article and add sources later. Ideally, you should be writing from sources, not writing and then finding sources to back up what you say. Mr.Z-man talk ¢ Review! 23:45, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Wait... what's this? "create in userspace"!? Doesn't that amount to "Please don't actually use the wiki to make an encyclopedia?"
OUW!
We're here to work together to make great articles. Not to race each other to see who can delete articles fastest. Focus here folks! :-)
Articles are started in the main namespace, and when you see one, your first question should be "how do I improve this?", not "which CSD tag shall I apply today?".
My first article on wikipedia got wikified and tidied practically before I released the submit button. That fast! Was I hooked? Boy was I ever. I'm still here editing years later :-P
-- Kim Bruning 02:01, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
and then goes on to say that they then look to see if there are references they can use. If folk are going to be allowed to add "interesting facts not previously noted" without context and to be referenced as and when sources are found (and just left hanging if there is nothing? Are these people going to go to a major library or just do a Google search for their citations?) then both WP:Not is going to need rewriting and the article stubs people will be needing counseling."if I see something on TV that is notable and yet does not have its own article, I usually try to add it..."
Every deletion is a person displeased, and some of those people will make no further contributions, and frankly when I see things like this and this and they're hanging around for months and years I have to wonder if all the policies and guidelines on content aren't just pretense. Cryptonymius 05:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think user pages and user subpages should be searchable on Google. Some people like to keep private versions that lean towards a POV not approved by consensus. In at least one case the user subpage appears higher in Google search rankings than Wikipedia's own article. It should be relatively easy to fix the software to treat user pages and subpages like talk pages and not let them be searchable. Thoughts? -- Ideogram 12:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I have recently noticed that a Wikiseek is now the default action for text entered in the search box that appears to the left of each article.
Is this helpful to our users while Wikiseek typically produces inferior results to the Go button?
[Wikiseek is a search engine that has indexed only Wikipedia pages, plus a very few pages that are linked to from Wikipedia. It was created by startup Searchme, Inc.
Despite press reports to the contrary, it has no affiliation with the charitable organization Wikimedia Foundation or private corporation Wikia, and is unrelated to the never-released web search application Wikiasari.
Wikipedia users are cautioned that using the Wikiseek button often produces an inferior result to using the Go button on Wikipedia.
An ironic example of this is if one enters "Wikiseek" into the search button of Wikipedia; choose the Wikiseek button and no useable results will currently be displayed, choose the conventional "Go" button and you are taken directly to this article!
Further examples of futile searches with Wikiseek (even though there are eponymous articles) would be " Amber House" and " Cabragh House" (even though these particular problems were reported in 2006...] W. Frank 17:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Definition of "allegation":
al·le·ga·tion /ˌælɪˈgeɪʃən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[al-i-gey-shuhn] *Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –noun
(from dic.com)
Wikipedia's official guidelines regarding the use of the term:
Alleged (along with allegedly) and purported (along with purportedly) are different from the foregoing in that they are generally used by those who genuinely have no predisposition as to whether the statement being cited is true or not. Newspapers, for instance, almost universally refer to any indicted but unconvicted criminal as an alleged criminal. Therefore, there is no neutrality problem with using them. However, there may be a problem of ambiguity—they should only be used where the identity of the alleger is clear.
...
O.J. Simpson allegedly murdered his ex-wife and a friend of hers in 1994. [In the context of crimes, alleged is understood to mean "alleged by government prosecutors".]
(Taken from WP:WTA#So-called.2C_supposed.2C_alleged.2C_purported)
Currently on Wikipedia, there are some articles with that word in their article name. Noted:
and on and on. Please see this google search to find lots more
These articles discuss the allegations, and then give examples of when the term is used.
But, there are also articles like this:
etc.
So I was wondering, what is the current status of these articles? I don't think it makes sense for some articles to have "allegations" in the title, while others don't. I think either they all should, or they all shouldn't. Thoughts? -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 20:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand what you mean by "unverifiable". What is "unverifiable" about Israeli apartheid? For some people, it is considered a fact. Opposite goes for Holocaust. Some people don't consider the holocaust of fact. I think these selective titles may be an example of Systematic bias ( Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias) -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 20:51, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Even Israeli apartheid should not have "allegations" in the title. It's superfluous, non-neutral and unprofessional. We should write in an objective style without implying a point-of-view. — Omegatron 21:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
So...are you proposing a page move or what? If you are, just make your proposal at WP:RM and be done with it. The discussion here seems more like soapboxing. -- Minderbinder 21:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I do not know where this is headed. but it seems to me that there are very clear cases where the word "allegation" can be used. Leave these to be discussed in the specific articles. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:34, 15 March 2007 (UTC) Here's how I think we should make the distinction between allegation and a fact.
What do you gusy think about that? Bless sins 22:00, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Wily, that sounds about right. But look at the Islam and antisemitism article, which is filled with allegations that Islam is antisemitic. What do you think of moving it to Islam and antisemitism allegations?-- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 22:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
(Resetting indent). There's an important distinction here. At least 90% of the facts that give rise to the idea of apartheid are not under dispute - characterizing it as "apartheid" is an interpretation that by its very nature is subjective. The Holocaust is a proper name for a series of specific events that are accepted by 99.99% of anyone who calls himself/herself a historian. (Oh, and Noam Chomsky quite clearly holds fringe positions, and isn't even a historian, nor - as it turns out - such a great linguist). -- Leifern 00:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I've long believed that we should avoid using the word "allegations" in article titles. There will obviously be the need for some exceptions (eg. the 1993 Michael Jackson article), but the word is too easly co-opted for political ends.
The Allegations of Israeli Apartheid title is a bad compromise, and was chosen during highly politicized negotiations last summer. At the time of the article's creation, the concept was relatively marginal. Since then, it has been referenced by a former American president, a United Nations report, and countless journalists. And yet, the "allegations" title has been retained, due to ongoing political divisions on the page itself.
It may be noted, by way of contrast, that the disputed concept of New antisemitism is not referred to as Allegations of new antisemitism, notwithstanding similar objections that have been raised around the concept's viability. CJCurrie 03:54, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
CJCurrie, that's a good point. I've added New antisemitism to the list uptop. -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 04:07, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Blueboar, I understand your concerns. But what about science which has mainstream consensus among scientists, but not among the general populace? I think it would be incredibly silly and stupid to have an Allegations of Evolutionary theory article. As gracenotes said, I think that if there is relevant, sourced, notable dispute of a subject, then the article should not allege it as a fact. For instance the holocaust is considered fact by the vast majority of historians. But there is a notable minority which disagree with the extent of the holocaust. But that does not mean that the Holocaust article should be moved to Allegations of the Holocaust. And the holocaust itself is such a controversial subject that a move to "Allegations..." would be offensive. And that is my point with the Israeli apartheid article. Most historians agree that Israel has isolated and separated the Palestinians in the occupied territories. But there is a notable minority (mostly from the United States and Israel) that claim there is no persecution of Palestinians. But moving the article (as it currently stands) to "Allegations..." is offensive. As user Tiamut earlier above said: "Those who use it are not alleging that Israel is an apartheid state, they are insisting it is. That term and its associated debate deserve representation in an article titled after the concept itself." -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 14:12, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Also, I find the allegation that I am violating WP:POINT to be entirely self-defeating. The whole point of the Village pump is to discuss issues BEFORE doing something major. If I had went and move all those articles to "Allegations of..." (or vice versa), that would have been a WP:POINT.-- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 14:15, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I've found this: WP:WTA#So-called.2C_supposed.2C_alleged.2C_purported. Added to top.-- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 14:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Added Pallywood.-- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 14:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. If you find anymore, feel free to add them. -- Ķĩřβȳ ♥ Ťįɱé Ø 14:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
The article Allegations of Israeli Apartheid is, strictly speaking, about the allegations rather than the actuality of any discrimination or colonialism which would be better served by an article entitled something else. At least, that was the reason behind the writing of the article by my understanding. That isn't even considering the compromises that reaching that title entailed. Islamofascism is about the neologism, Islamophobia unfortunately conflates a neologism with a real phenomenon along with allegations of the phenomenon, and New antisemitism is similar. -- Coroebus 20:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I think it's time to put all of the "Allegations . . ." articles up for Afd, as they all violate our rules against WP:NOR#Synthesis_of_published_material_serving_to_advance_a_position, codified at WP:SYNT. MortonDevonshire Yo · 21:03, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Sign under the statement with which you most agree. Discuss in comments section.
There is nothing wrong with most of the current titles. The topics which there is serious uncertianty about have alleged in them. The ones where uncertianty is uncertian do not. Calling the Holocaust, for example, alleged, is giving undue weight to antisemites.-- Sefringle 02:12, 22 March 2007 (UTC) The term is so frequently used in newspaper accounts regarding criminal activity, that it by now has acquired that connotation, and should only be used when specifically criminal accusations that have not yet been decided are the topic Many of the uses are more general, and hence inappropriate. DGG 02:32, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I was recently editing some articles and came across a number of geographical locations (primarily unincorporated towns) that were tagged {{ importance}}. I seem to recall in the past several people arguing to keep such articles when they came up in AfD debates by saying that geographical locations are inherently notable and do not require additional "proof of importance" beyond the fact that they exist. I have been looking around in the policies and guidelines and I am having a hard time finding where it is stated that this is the case. Is it an actual policy somewhere, or is it merely consensus? If it exists in policy I would like to know where so that I can reference it. It would also be very helpful to know what the policy is regarding geographical locations and notability. Thanks! Arkyan 23:28, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the help thus far. I went and looked at WP:LOCAL as well as the discussion there, and it feels like there is still some need for clarification and consensus. I'm hoping to spark some discussion on the issue again, so I've commented on the talk page there. Would really appreciate any constructive thoughts and ideas anyone would have! Thanks! Arkyan 17:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
The bot which created an article about every place in the US 2000 census was supported by consensus, and all articles which have come up for deletion have also met consensus keeps. It may not be posted in a policy anywhere, but there has long been consensus to keep those articles. A real place is important due to its existence, unlike most other things which fall under question about notability. You would need a strong consensus to delete them. Corvus cornix 22:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
See User:Uncle G/On notability#Notability is not a blanket. Uncle G 14:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
I have a serious issue with the promotion of articles to Good status, which no one has been able to address to my satisfaction. I am concerned with the fact that a GA candidate can be passed or failed by a single editor. Even speedy deletes have the grace of two editors, and AFD discussions rarely close with less than three contributions. I would like to know in which forum I could pursue this discussion with the end to change in GA policy. Thanks. Denni talk 06:26, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
It just occurred to me that since meaningful edit summaries are not optional policy, perhaps the default for new users ought to be to require them? -- BenBurch 17:28, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
My attention was drawn to an edit on my Talk page, & as I researched the facts around it, I became more troubled at what happened. Maybe I'm behind the times, coming from left field, etc., but I don't like what I have found.
First, I am against spam -- in Wikipedia, in my email, anywhere. No reputable business knowingly uses spam to advertise, pure & simple.
However, it appears that it is far easier for a website to be listed as a spammer than it is to remove it. In the case I encountered, someone on an IRC channel claimed that the website "touregypt.net" was identified as a target of a spammer. Another Wikipedian (who, I want to point out, was acting in good faith) acted on this claim & began to "delink" every link to that website, without regard to who added it; the editor obviously was working as fast as she could. (By "delink" I mean that a nowiki tag was inserted so that one could not click-thru; one could still follow the link by copying the text of the URL into the browser.)
As a result, in several articles, talk pages, & many other places where it was clearly part of the context we lost references (I believe several of these edits have since been reverted).
Note: I have no problem with IRC being used to quickly respond to emergencies. in this case, ifa spammer had been obviously adding links to this website in Wikipedia, alerting Admins to this fact would be very much appropriate, but then the site should be nominated for inclusion in the spam list, & discussion follow before it is added.
This editor was contacted by several established & knowledgable Wikipedias, who demanded an explanation. She explained about the IRC channel, & referred them to this site on meta, where the website had been listed without any sign of a discussion that I have been able to find. This forum for discussion is not well-publicized (unlike, for example, WP:AfD), & a Wikipedian can contribute for a long period of time without even knowing meta.wikipedia.org even exists. However, there is currently a petition by a number of Wikipedians (some of whom have demonstrated extensive knowledge of Egyptology) to remove this website from the spam list. In short, four things happened that I think are wrong:
As I said above, I admit that I may be out of the loop here. However, I feel that this is a violation of the spirit of Wikipedia -- where we discuss & create concensus upon matters. Some Wikipedians claim that they are smart enough to know when they can safely ignore all rules in order to improve Wikipedia; in this case, I think it is clear that rules were ignored & stupid edits were made which harmed Wikipedia. -- llywrch 17:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
This discussion considers two seperate cases, which indeed show resemblance. Since I am involved in one of the cases, I will offer my view on this case.
When spam is being identified, first of all all links that that spammer added are being removed. There is no question whether that link is a good one or a bad one, these will go, per the english wikipedia spam guidelines:
Adding external links to an article or user page for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed, and is considered to be spam. Although the specific links may be allowed under some circumstances, repeatedly adding links will in most cases result in all of them being removed.
That is what happened with the links added by the COI spammers that added theeuropeanlibrary.org. AFAIK no links added by other persons were removed (if that happened, it happened in an external links section where these links are questionable anyway, per the english wikipedia guidelines on external links, "If the site or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source first." and I am sorry if that happened). Now theeuropeanlibrary.org is a good site, and a careful examination of the situation was made. At that time only 10 links to the europeanlibrary.org were available, and the only ones added at that moment were by the addresses which have a COI, clearly suggesting promotion of a site that was not yet linked on wikipedia. The edits by the COI-editor have been discussed with the editor, and s/he was pointed to the appropriate policies and guidelines. Since the spamming by these addresses continued nevertheless, the site was blacklisted on shadowbot.
As a further note, shadowbot reverts once, and adds a message to the users talkpage. If the user readds, shadowbot does not remove (except when in angry mode under a heavy attack, but then its operation is even more carefully monitored; that is an exceptional situation). Normally, repeated addition gets reviewed by shadowbots operators, and when appropriate, will not be reverted. The europeanlibrary did not get blacklisted on meta, the spam is not (yet) crosswiki (and even then, it might be really inappropriate to do that). But I could stuff some more beans in it, when you want your own site not to be used as a source, consider spamming your very own link across several wikis, that really helps the community forward (maybe wikipedia has to consider not using such a site as a source and keeping a lacune in its contents). I have suggested my contact at the european library to reconsider his/her stance, and I promised him/her that we would make sure the site gets removed from the blacklist when the COI-spamming stops (it will also be removed when shadowbot reverts too many (which may be 1) good edits to articles).
For touregypt.com: I have not seen the spam-records for this addition, but I am sure there are records for that. But when the spamming is cross-wiki (i.e. also on other-language wikis) addition to meta is considered. I will for now assume good faith and think that the person who added it to the meta-blacklist considered the site carefully.
Blacklisting on meta means, that the link can not be used in a document at all; pages with that link can not be saved, even when the editor does not add that link at that very moment. When touregypt.net was meta-blacklisted a user provided the service to clean en.wikipedia from that link; otherwise other editors would run into the problem of not being able to save the page on wiki; that is completely besides the question whether blacklisting was appropriate (and the same user is already helping finding alternatives).
Blacklisting happens speedy, I am sorry, but first discussing for 7 days results in a lot of spam being added before something can be done about it (WP:SNOW?). That results indeed in some mistakes being made, we know that, and we are more than willing to correct the mistakes. Seen the layout and contents of the sites in question (and the style of writing and the purpose of the site in the case of touregypt.net) I expect that many facts stated there can also be verified with other sources. By the way, we don't have to provide a deeplink to an external document in a reference, if I state that Jennifer Couzin wrote an article about opening doors and native knowledge and add the reference "Jennifer Couzin, Science, 2007, volume 315, issue 5818, p. 1518-1519", anyone can find the source, and verify my statement, a deeplink is only a service and a nice extra for a non-paper encyclopedia.
So the only problem that stays, is that the system can be tricked/wikipedia can be disrupted (per the beans-case above), but that can be done with every policy and guideline we are working under here. Hope this explains. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 11:45, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I know Wikipedia was started as a resource anyone can edit, but the fact is I feel it's time Wikipedia abandon this. Full stop. There has been simply too much bad-faith editing and outright vandalism by anonymous IPs and everytime this sort of thing hits the media, it makes all Wikipedianss look bad. Case in point: a vandal posted that the actor Sinbad had died. Although it was caught and corrected and the article is currently locked down, it was too late to stop the AP from reporting on the situation: [2] and in turn this story is appearing on forums (I saw it at TrekBBS of all places) where it's being used as ammunition by people who would like to see Wikipedia either disappear or become basically a clone of traditional published encyclopedias where only people with PhDs are allowed to contribute and articles take months or even years to be approved. As someone who regularly has to revert anonymous edits and who now treats every non-registered edit as "Vandalism unless proven otherwise" I feel a good 90% of the bad press regarding Wikipedia and it's alleged inaccuracies would be eliminated if we simply required people to get a username. There are vandals who do register, of course, and Special:Newpages regularly shows nonsense articles created by registered users ... but they still comfortably fit within the 10% minority. 23skidoo 17:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I have just been doing some recent change monitoring. Most of the anon IP edits were good ones, and by far the worst vandalism was from a logged-in user.-- Runcorn 19:16, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
At the moment, what will it take to ban unregistered editors? Cold day in Hell, to be honest. I see plenty of well-intentioned edits from anons. The biggest problem I see from anons is inserting junk such as their pet's birthday, or adding their favourite entries to list articles. Not exactly "vandalism" per se, just a misunderstanding of what WP is. Vandals (of the kind that blank pages and replace them with "fuck you all, you suck cock", or add "and your mom" to serial prose) are still in the minority, and while that is still the case I don't see a reason to block them out - blocking article creation is enough. Chris cheese whine 05:48, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
There is currently a push to change WP:BLOCK to allow short blocks without warning upon any incident of vandalism from IP addresses, and indefinite blocks without warning for any registered account that has only made unconstructive edits. Input would be appreciated at Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy. TomTheHand 20:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Are mailing lists encyclopedic? I was drawn to this questions regarding this afd, and the corresponding article. A question being raised in the afd is the existence of several other articles on mailing lists. Wikipedia:Notability (web) doesn't mention anything specifically about this. So, my question to others is: what is the community's opinion on the notability/encyclopedic nature of articles on mailing lists? Can they considered worthy of a wikipedia article? What criteria should apply to them? Thanks. -- Ragib 08:08, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Shouldn't we have a rule that one ought to clean up an article before adding anything new to it? I've seen too many pages fall into disrepair because people keep dropping in their own contributions when there are still obvious spelling errors, citiation requests, pastel boxes, and just plain unwikified text. Squidfryerchef 18:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
In the link Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion#Proposed_Change, Radiant! 'just blew off a well intentioned suggestion' that certain steps should be added to process, and damned the matter as a perennial suggestion that comes up once an month, effectively closing the discussion with that judgemental dismissal. If he's right, that indicates there is a body of thought thinking similar to myself, that the current practices are very wrong to keep and retain good and knowledgeable expert editors which can otherwise move the project to a higher average quality. So I'm asking some Admin to set up a straw poll, on whether this, and further, that the voting be split into a section by whether the respondent is an Admin, or a regular editor. I have the utmost respect for that group of editors, and frankly feel they are the most victimized group within our community, but as a rule they are the most active and most influential. In this case, I feel short term self-interest may be biasing what is a better practice for the long term health of any Wiki project and the greater interests of the community as a whole need to be thought through carefully. This is a matter which BITES people and alienates them repeatedly, and should not be born because of convenience. Like a little gas-pedal pressure, it has great effects on the long term results--if held in place unchanged we'd see one result--if modified at some point (now, or at 90 mph, etcetera) another different outcome. // Fra nkB 18:59, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Are there any limits on what qualifies for a WikiProject? Wikipedia:WikiProject Centrist Party appears to have one participant, a person apparrently actively involved in the party; on the talk page of the article about the party I had, some time ago, raised questions about notability that I don't believe have been addressed. I'm not going to fight to get the article deleted, but what (if anything) does it mean for this to be a WikiProject? - Jmabel | Talk 19:23, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
(The following message, but not the replies posted below it, was copied from Wikipedia talk:Maintenance by The Transhumanist 00:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC))...
I have a couple of friends who work in the visual electronic entertainment industry. I now avoid watching anything with them because instead of enjoying the film or television program, they sit there commenting on technical features in the film, lighting, cuts etc. I think that with people who regularly edit Wikipedia articles instead of viewing articles for the information they contain (as most readers do) they view the article for how well put together it is and if it can be improved.
One manifestation of this I have noticed, which in my opinion is the growing tendency, is to add what are editorial comments to the article page instead of on to the talk page. If a person edits an article page and write in plain text. "This page is not good enough it needs more information" the comment will either be moved to the talk page or it will be deleted as vandalism. However if a person puts a template at the top of a page then they feel that is justified (eg {{ cleanup-bio}}, but in essence it is contributing nothing more to the article than the plain text does.
There are exceptions to this, for example I think that the {{ unreferenced}} placed in a "Reference" section at the bottom of an article, serves a dual purpose. It is a maintenance template but it also adds information that a passing reader of the page (who is not familiar with Wikipeda) needs to know. But a passing reader does not need to know {{ wikify}} "This article (or section) may need to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards." Comments like this should in my opinion be placed on talk page. -- Philip Baird Shearer 09:45, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps what is needed is a little icon that can be placed in the top right corner of articles needing work. The presence of the icon would indicate that there are tags which need to be addressed on the article's talk page. The advantages would be that at 3/8" x 3/8" it would be fairly unobtrusive, and would also take the place of multiple tags. One icon fits all. The Transhumanist 00:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. The templates serve to both inform & remind the casual reader that the article/site is in continuous development, and also act as a lure for curious-readers to become new-editors. Some of the templates could use an aesthetic update (See Wikipedia:Template standardisation/article. I really like flamurai's fairly recent ' blanca' additions), but moving them all to the talkpage would be dishonest and disadvantageous. -- Quiddity 02:55, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
As a related aside I was going to post below, See {{
DATE}}, which should help make that problem solution more effective, if people use it. Virtually all the cleanup tags I'm familiar with will be satisfied by that template which needs substituted, but that will come out loud and clear the first time one doesn't! <g> It produces date={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}} as a reminder, and "date=February 2007" when applied like this: {{
clean|{{subst:DATE}}}}
, for example. That date= after the pipe is precisely the input parameter most of the the IN-YOUR-FACE tags are designed to take. The tagging overloading a page can and should be handled by using a version of '|small=1' switching which is common to an increasing number of tags should they be kept on main pages. Another alternative there would be the hide/show tagging modes many navigation templates are sporting these days.
{{Commons-gallery|United States Navy ships}}
So I'm thinking of the laid back style of these two Commons-gallery tags (which are showing combinations of three different operations modes between the two examples here), with the size and plain link of that one in the category. As can plainly be seen, the text wraps right about them. {{Commons-gallery|flowers}}
::That Iconic notice could be even more sophisticated in assuming service page similar to the /doc pages now being used for template documentation. That is a local sub-page, an {{/cleanup}} page, which acts as a storage register to some hypothetical {{clean-status}} 'display template' in a page's head section-- if the register's got includable content, then the 'display macro' on the article places the edit message automatically and once put in place, never need be removed, as it depends on the content in {{{{PAGENAME}}/cleanup}} for activation and a link to display. So it would hold a simple #if: test like are frequently used in testing for named parameters, if there is nothing to include... the article is clean without a tag display, which stays silent.
See Wikipedia:Template standardisation/article. This sort of input would probably be welcome over there. Also, what does everyone think of this? -- Random832 00:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
As this section is getting close to its sell by date, I will cut and past to there, so that there is a record of this exchange. Please post any additional comments on that page -- Philip Baird Shearer 13:00, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
The following is quoted from the discussion of 1 Essjay should step down from Arbcom at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Essjay/Straw Poll#Discussion:
Can we get an exact timeline here? He was appointed what, a week ago? This was a delayed scandal, really, I am pretty sure we knew he was "Ryan Jordan" before he was appointed to ArbCom. It just took a while before someone wrote the Wikipedia article and I guess everyone found out and this became a trainwreck. So I am currently thinking Essjay was appointed to ArbCom with Jimbo knowing about the identity thing. -- W.marsh 14:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- The situation was known on February 1, well before the ArbCom appointment, see here. In fact, it was slashdotted on Feb 7 as well. It just didn't gain traction because Brandt has not yet mananged to browbeat the New Yorker into issuing a correction. It has been discussen on Essjay's talk page many times between then and now. Dmcdevit resigned on the 14th. Thatcher131 14:32, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- Can you lead me to the slashdot article? I missed that article. SYSS Mouse 14:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- Hmmm. Let me look for it. Thatcher131 14:37, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- It appears as a comment in this thread started on Feb 7. Commenter appears to be Daniel Brandt from all appearances. Thatcher131 14:40, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
The exact comment by Everyman (197621) appears to have been at An example of Wikipedia's problem. — Jeff G. 11:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
It was noticed by January 11th, and I posted about it on essjay's talk page around february 5th. Night Gyr ( talk/ Oy) 20:51, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
I was recently editing some articles and came across a number of geographical locations (primarily unincorporated towns) that were tagged {{ importance}}. I seem to recall in the past several people arguing to keep such articles when they came up in AfD debates by saying that geographical locations are inherently notable and do not require additional "proof of importance" beyond the fact that they exist. I have been looking around in the policies and guidelines and I am having a hard time finding where it is stated that this is the case. Is it an actual policy somewhere, or is it merely consensus? If it exists in policy I would like to know where so that I can reference it. It would also be very helpful to know what the policy is regarding geographical locations and notability. Thanks! Arkyan 23:28, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the help thus far. I went and looked at WP:LOCAL as well as the discussion there, and it feels like there is still some need for clarification and consensus. I'm hoping to spark some discussion on the issue again, so I've commented on the talk page there. Would really appreciate any constructive thoughts and ideas anyone would have! Thanks! Arkyan 17:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
The bot which created an article about every place in the US 2000 census was supported by consensus, and all articles which have come up for deletion have also met consensus keeps. It may not be posted in a policy anywhere, but there has long been consensus to keep those articles. A real place is important due to its existence, unlike most other things which fall under question about notability. You would need a strong consensus to delete them. Corvus cornix 22:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
See User:Uncle G/On notability#Notability is not a blanket. Uncle G 14:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
This is currently a discussion regarding non administrator closure at WP:Deletion process here. Regards, Navou banter / contribs 21:15, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
It's been proposed we move Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons → Wikipedia:Biographical information on living people —( Discuss) to better emphasise that the policy applies to all information not just in biographies. There appears to be existing consensus for move but decided since it's a critical policy it's better to list it just in case since. Discuss in the BLP talk page, not here Nil Einne 16:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia has no policy on articles about words. I wanted to propose that we actually create such a policy, but I believe the chance of it happening is approximately zero at this point. In the meantime, I've written an essay about this, Wikipedia:Articles about words, which attempts to explain what our general practice is on word articles. Please come read this essay and then use the talk page to tell me how much the essay horribly sucks. -- Xyzzyplugh 20:05, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I need some clarification on our policy regarding open proxies. m:Meta:No open proxies should be clear: "Open proxies are banned from editing Wikimedia projects. Anonymizers and other companies or organizations that offer open proxies may be blocked indefinitely by an administrator." But the policy is vague regarding whether soft or hard blocks should be imposed. The discussion at Wikipedia:Advice to users using Tor to bypass the Great Firewall is germane. The problem is we have a lose-lose situation. Perhaps the majority of cases brought to WP:RFCU involve open proxies, much of the time Tor proxies. We get a ton of vandalism and other nasty behavior (see, for example, Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Verdict), with miscreants creating sometimes dozens, perhaps hundreds of sockpuppet accounts, and then proceeding to use them at will on easily accessible open proxies. The obvious solutions is simply to hard-block the open proxies. But what about our users behind the Great Firewall? With the vagueness in the policy, some of us have been hard-blocking, while others of us have been soft-blocking Tor proxies in particular. I've found myself reversing other admin's decisions, or being reversed myself; so far, no unpleasantry has ensued, but I'd really appreciate some sense of the community on this, or at least a pointer to established policy. -- jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 19:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I also block OPs as AO, AC-disabled. Obviously, they cannot then be used to create accounts.-- Runcorn 22:03, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Can some people please give some outside opinions on the use of this and this picture on the Human feces article? (at the article talk page)
People have been removing the pictures because it's gross and because they claim it's irrelevant. However, being gross shouldn't matter, as per "Wikipedia is not censored". As for the relevance, what could be more relevant on an article called "Human feces" than a photo of real human feces? Of course, there's the option of having drawings instead (as we do on the articles about sex), but it would be sort of difficult to draw human feces and have it look obviously like human feces...as oppossed to just a lump.
I have a feeling that when we take away the "the pictures are gross" factor, it is really within Wikipedia policies and completely relevant to have those two pictures on the article. Two earlier request for comments from last year are on Talk:Human feces and seem to show there was consensus to keep an image of human feces on the article.
But then again, we do have Wikipedia:Profanity, which says "Including information about offensive material is part of Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not." This is clearly a case of including offensive material, but i'm not sure whether it's also a case of "being offensive" or not. So some more opinions would be nice. -- `/aksha 05:40, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
The picture is offensive indeed, but, beyond that, it is also needless. It serves no informative purpose, as everybody (every human being on this earth) knows what feces look like. As I've said several places, there is no other serious reason to keep those shit images in the articles than to provide amusement and adverse reactions under the pretext of needing article images. They are also a potential source for vandalism.--
Kamikaze 09:46, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
This image is not necesary at all. As someone said, we all know what human feces are and what they look like. Wikipedia isn't censored of course but it has an encyclopedic mission. Being offensive when is not required just for the sake of shocking and entertainment isn't part of that mission. I propose the images (there are two of them) to be deleted.-- Raja Lon Flattery 19:12, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia needs to make a statement and a policy on "___ in popular culture" or "_____ in fiction" sections. As it seems policy on them is currently entirely piecemeal and random.
Many articles (particularly mythological concepts) quickly acquire long lists of appearances in popular culture or fiction, the list eventually spins off to it's own page, then eventually gets nominated for deletion and is either removed or merged back into the original page and it all starts again.
I think it's clear that some policy decision needs to be made on this.
On one hand I think it's clear people are interested in the section, that they can be relevant and understanding sometimes means understanding how it is used in culture or fiction. But they are also very long lists, and have no promise to us that they stay manageable. If something was genuinely important in 700 different stories, it seems wrong to remove that information, although it makes an eyesore, I mean, no object promises to just be in 10 or less stories just to give us a nice looking "see also" list.
On the other hand, EVERYTHING ON EARTH has been referenced by family guy. And it is hard to see serious topics dwarfed by lists of every time apu on simpsons mentioned it. And making another page makes sense, but often the page eventually gets nominated for deletion as listcruft, maybe justifiably. Still, they are often lists many people helped write, that many people find interesting, and if they contain more than just a title they can even be encyclopedic to some degree (it could, for example be worth mentioning that Pan is referenced in a Shakespeare play, but if that is important, where is the line?).
Is there any sort of policy that could be written about this? so many pages have these lists, and they disappear and reappear pretty much at the passing taste of editors, growing until they grow ugly then either being deleted or splitting and growing again until they get unwieldy and end up deleted until eventually someone sees the page and says "ahh, this was an important concept in such and such anime" and throws a section in mentioning that, starting the whole cycle again.
Honestly, I don't know what I'd recommend, as people DO seem to want the information on the lists, and I think it may be some people's first wiki-edits adding something to them but at the same time they are horrible eyesores that are inappropriate in serious articles and separate pages of them are unencyclopedic listcuft. Owlofcreamcheese 19:20, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
What do people think?
I think a big problem is that things don't promise to be a pleasing length. If there are two important stories that feature such and such that makes it look nice, if there are 25, it makes a sprawling list that is unsightly and dwarfs the article itself, but it's not like it should be punished for having the audacity to appear in more things and be more culturally significant! Owlofcreamcheese 19:20, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
This problem (and IMO it is a problem) is even when when dealing with articles on sports cars. There seems no way to win the battle against "Appearances in video games" sections, even though these days (almost) every video game features (almost) every modern sports car, to the point that these sections become useless trivia. Zun aid © ® 09:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
One of the problems, as it appears to me, is that there is a widespread belief that simply listing a whole load of examples of, or occurrences of in film and on television, of a particular concept or thing, magically, after some mystical critical mass has been reached, creates an actual encyclopaedia article about that concept or thing. This belief comes about, I think, from people seeing existing articles that are no more than lists of occurrences of a thing in film and on television, that editors have ammassed over the years, and thinking as a consequence that (a) that is how encyclopaedia articles should look, and (b) that is how encyclopaedia articles are constructed. In other words: Bad articles are used as guidelines for new articles.
Some offending articles in the past have been Aviation joke ( AfD discussion), Portrayals of Mormons in popular media ( AfD discussion), Elephant joke ( AfD discussion), Shaggy dog story ( AfD discussion), and What is black and white and red all over? ( AfD discussion), for examples. All of those were, when they came to AFD, simple collections of variations upon, or occurrences of, the thing that the article was supposed to be about. As can be seen from both the discussions and the articles as they stand now, what makes an encyclopaedia article is something markedly different.
The difference in article construction is one of effort. It is easy to watch a television series, see a character that is supposed to be (say) a Mormon who blows xyr nose, and to think "I know. I'll add a bullet point to Wikipedia's article on Mormons saying that there's a Mormon character in this episode of this television series, who blows xyr nose.". It is comparatively harder (albeit not very difficult on an absolute scale) to actually go and find secondary sources that have analysed a wide range of Mormon characters in film and television as a serious academic exercise, and then condense and summarize those sources into an encyclopaedia article. It is, however, the path of greater effort that needs to be trod in order to create a proper encyclopaedia article upon a subject. Simply amassing raw data, and hoping that an encyclopaedia article will magically arise from it, doesn't work.
I think that there are at least three important maxims to bear in mind:
Turning bad articles into good (or at least fair) articles often discourages or even stops this cargo cult article writing, as editors see what articles should actually look like, and how they should actually be written. The rate of addition of protologisms to LOL (Internet slang) decreased once the article itself became more than a list of word variations, and started to contain actual analysis. Similarly, chav now suffers far less from original research (excluding outright " My friend is a chav!" vandalism) now that the article shows by copious example that what we want is content based upon sources.
Uncle G 03:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Please comment on the discussion currently taking place on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Final Fantasy#Banning spoiler warnings completely. Kariteh 21:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I know that an editor is not allowed to copy information from the web "word for word." But, i found that someone did this a while ago and since then the article has changed and evolved.
This Diff
[3]
Was copied from this website
[4].
But that was August 4, 2006.
Since then it has changed. Do i remove that info since it was copied? Or do i leave it because it has been changed since then?
Yaanch
Speak! 01:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I am sure the answer is somewhere already, but I am having trouble locating it. What is the copyright status of screenshots, such as this? Thanks! -- Bossi ( talk ;; contribs) 18:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
I posted such a thing here, about dealing with already banned users who continue to post and try to interact on Wikipedia as ban evasion. Please take a look, thanks! - Denny 15:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Hello... I posted an addition to the arguments to avoid in deletions essay, labeled as WP:FORTHEPEOPLE. Would more people be willing to look into this? I feel it has merit. - Denny 23:44, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Am I right in thinking that we don't include images in mainspace where they are purely cosmetic and add no value to the article? Chris cheese whine 21:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
As many of you know, the policy pages Wikipedia:No original research (WP:NOR) and Wikipedia:Verifiability (WP:V) were recently merged together under the title: Wikipedia:Attribution (WP:ATT), while the Guideline page Wikipedia:Reliable sources (WP:RS) was merged into a FAQ page attached to WP:ATT.
Jimbo Wales has expressed some concerns about how this was done. He has suggested a straw poll to determine what the community consensus on this is. The poll is still in the formative stage (tweeking the wording and format)... but should be ready for people to cast their votes soon. Please see: Wikipedia:Attribution/Poll. Blueboar 13:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Attribution/Community discussion
≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:14, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I posted these originally at WP:RFC/POLICIES but I'm told that doing so rarely garners a response because that page is used mostly to "advertise" new proposed guidelines and stuff. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ contrib ツ 00:33, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I have the title of this section, but haven't worked out my thoughts. I welcome others' contributions in advance of that. My question, essentially, is are there segments of the intellectual community that do not want Wikipedia to succeed. More broadly, the type of knowledge it represents. If so, what are we dealing with? I am not sure how this very general question could translate to policy, but maybe. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ismark ( talk • contribs) 19:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC).
I don't think user pages and user subpages should be searchable on Google. Some people like to keep private versions that lean towards a POV not approved by consensus. In at least one case the user subpage appears higher in Google search rankings than Wikipedia's own article. It should be relatively easy to fix the software to treat user pages and subpages like talk pages and not let them be searchable. Thoughts? -- Ideogram 12:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Please see WT:CSD#Alerting criterion R2 if you have any input on the matter; thank you. Gracenotes T § 15:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
A change has been proposed at WP:U for a slight expansion of the current ban on usernames which reference "reproductive and excretory functions of the body" to include flatulence and vomiting. RJASE1 Talk 21:50, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
I have penned a policy proposal that consists of two provisions in Wikipedia:Readability#Policy_proposal, in a section of the essay written by me. Please discuss it here or under Wikipedia talk:Readability/proposal discussion page. Thank you! Wooyi 22:20, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I, Jason Gastrich, politely request the overturn of my ban. I promise to stay away from Christianity- and religion-related articles, and to edit quietly under this account, and only this one.
No more sockpuppetry, or meatpuppetry.
I ask that the community seek forgiveness and let me return. -- Jason Gastrich 11:05, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Based on complaints that the policies were too lengthy, complex and convoluted, several people have revised the username policy page, to clarify it, remove redundancy, and incorporate material from a few related policies, in particular WP:SOCK and WP:DOP. This is not a change in policy, just a reworking of the relevant pages. The draft can be found at the link above; unless there are big objections, the intent is to move this over the present username policy as a new version; the second step would be to verify that it contains all relevant material from the related policies mentioned above, and complete the merge with a redirect. Please comment on the draft's talk page rather than here. >Radiant< 12:58, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I have done a little look for this. But after about 10 minutes thought it might just be easier to ask people who might know.
Are there any essays/guidelines explaining how editors should not use their personal authority on a subject (eg. as a politician, university professor, leader of a band's fan club etc.) to add
Original research to articles without
Attribution. I am looking for something that specifically deals with someone saying that they have in depth knowledge through personal experience on the subject, so it doesn't really matter that they haven't sourced their contributions, because they are "true".--
ZayZayEM 00:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Try User:Uncle G/On sources and content#Tips for editors, also. Uncle G 01:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
The problem here is that there are a lot of people with a lot of knowledge who are in professions without much in the way of professional, peer-reviewed publications available to cite as reference; there is also the problem that some knowledge inevitably does not make its way into those publications that do exist. To use myself as a close-at-hand example, I'm an infantryman in the U.S. Army. Say that I am creating or editing an article on battle drills. I could describe, in the article, a given battle drill as described in, say, the Ranger Handbook. But what if I want to point out that although battle drill X is described in such and thus a manner in the Handbook, it is often in the real world performed in a slightly different fashion? My knowledge in the matter would be professionally-based and learned from other, more experience professionals but I can see no way to include the material in an article without violating the "no original material" rule, unless I can find somewhere that such a variation is recorded in print so that I can cite it as a reference.
I'm not taking a position here; I fully understand why it's invalid to just say "I'm a professional, so take my word for it". But, the essential quandary is still there; how can editors contribute the knowledge that they have accumulated professionally but which represents the accumulated "oral knowledge", so to speak, of their profession? -- Molon Labe 08:22, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I have designed a new policy for choosing the TFA in a way that will make everyone happy and solve a lot of problems. Please add to the debate at Wikipedia:SweeTFA proposition! David Spart ( talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) 22:18, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm attempting to reopen the discussion orignally begun here. This is a proposed amendment to WP:FUC#9 and the proposal is located at Wikipedia:Fair use/Amendment/Fair use images in portals2. - ΖαππερΝαππερ Babel Alexandria 22:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia has no policy on articles about words. I wanted to propose that we actually create such a policy, but I believe the chance of it happening is approximately zero at this point. In the meantime, I've written an essay about this, Wikipedia:Articles about words, which attempts to explain what our general practice is on word articles. Please come read this essay and then use the talk page to tell me how much the essay horribly sucks. -- Xyzzyplugh 20:05, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I have a suggestion that I HOPE could be considered as one of the ways to scale back vandalism on Wikipedia. A lot of the vandalism I see on Wikipedia I think are by people who just happrn to see an article and they perhaps just see the "edit" link, so they click it and type something simple which comes to mind and hit save. My suggestion is this: Wikipedia (I think I had read somewhere) is supposed to be open and allow anonymous submissions as well. However, I think one of the ways to curb vandalism but allow through real legit. (albeit) anonymous entries would be this.
If you're an anonymous user, (meaning you don't subscribe for a free ID) you'd still be able to submit entries for Wikipedia articles. However, the part that cuts down on vandalism would be--- that you must get TWO people (with real IDs) to nominate your anonymous submission for inclusion into the real live article. I was toying around in my head if the two nominations should be made by admins, or just anyone with a real ID but I figure that should be up for discussion too and their may not be enough admins to overlook all entries... (Although then again there would have to be enough admins to revert that same number of vandalism instances so this argument might be moot.) If the person is a vandal there's less of a chance they will get the two required nominations to make the vandalism part of the live article. But people who are anonymous and submiting real credible stuff will likely get their two nominations by someone. Does anyone think the idea could be workable? Again by becoming a legit user they can bypass the whole credibility check of their entry. Sure Sockpuppets may be an issue but they can be handled as they are now. CaribDigita 01:54, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I spend time each day on edit patrol and sometimes I'll have to revert the same article three times in as many minutes, I never give it that third edit, I just report it, but my point is that the vandals are using bots as well, or at least it seems like it. Sue Rangell[ citation needed 00:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry if this has been proposed before. People seem to love creating categories, and other people object to having huge indigestible wads of categories at the end of an article. Maybe the answer is to have a short list of visible categories and another link called "More categories". If you click on "more", you see that huge list. For instance, I could imagine the end of Turkey Vulture looking like this (but in blue):
If you click on "More categories", you might see:
This would put the power of hypertext at the service of curious users without cluttering up the articles. Why shouldn't somebody who reads that the TV has a good sense of smell wonder what other birds do too? Why shouldn't they get an answer with a scroll and two clicks? Of course people would have to do the work. But there seems to be a strong impulse to work this way; maybe it should be indulged.
By the way, I thought of this when participating in the debate at Category_talk:Biota_by_country, which may need some more thoughts. — JerryFriedman 05:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
It's not a bad idea, but I think it will just shift the current arguments about what categories are important enough to exist into arguments about what categories are important enough to be visible. And there will still be plenty of categories created that aren't even fit for hiding. Postdlf 16:13, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Honestly, having sections of any sort that could be hidden or shown would I believe be the next evolutionary step to Wikipedia. For being not paper, this place sure does set everything up like it was, having to have a totally separate page for anything that doesn't quite fit in a main article. Owlofcreamcheese 17:37, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
When I try to go through categories, I would like to point out another viewpoint here to try and resolve. Often when I go to some categories, I see that there are hundreds (or even thousands!) of articles that are in that category. This sometimes get to be very time consuming to try and find something specific if you are actually going to use the category system to look up a piece of related information.... IMHO the main reason to be using the category system as a reader. The point being is how many people here actually look on page seven (listed 200 articles per page) of the category listing to actually find an article? Even with alphabet bars and other navigational techniques, it becomes something nearly meaningless.
See Category:Biography articles of living people for a good example.
My question as it relates to these hidden categories is how would this help at all in this situation? To me, it would cause some of these categories to grow even more substantially. Perhaps there is some minor value added to these sort of monster categories, but I'm not sure what it really is. -- Robert Horning 21:19, 20 March 2007 (UTC)