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For a good deal of time, we've been certain that there's a problem with how we handle deletions. The one that most people are sure about is that VFD is getting too big to handle. There are, of course, those who claim that VFD is an anachronism, useless, etc. (these people are often those residing in the extreme inclusionist camp), but their views don't carry wide support among the community.
Naturally, we've had proposals combatting the problem of an ever-expanding VFD, some of which can be viewed on Wikipedia talk:Candidates for speedy deletion, Wikipedia:Managed Deletion, Wikipedia:Categorized Deletion and Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion. I originally wrote the following essay rebutting some common objections against Preliminary Deletion, but I found that the ideas outlined within would give a very good idea of where we could steer policy-writing in the future, regardless of Preliminary Deletion's outcome. Thusly, I have decided to share this with the community at large, since I believe that as our community grows, so will the size of VFD, and by extension our problem with maintaining such a behemoth.
[responding to the suggestion of expanding speedy deletion criteria]
Shall we rereview the results of Managed Deletion? I'd love to expand speedy deletion criteria, but that proposal would get shot down easily. There's a reason why nobody's drafted such a proposal — nobody but a few deletionists (or centrists leaning towards the deletionist side) want it.
The largest complaint about Managed Deletion was that it placed too much power in admins' hands. A good part of the community distrusts three admins to handle a deletion, so our alternative is to let one admin decide? That makes even less sense.
There's another compelling reason not to expand speedy deletion criteria. We might expand them, but the inclusionists always whine about the deletion of prose. It's one thing to delete "ioshgohgoaghoeg". It's another to delete a paragraph or two which some inclusionists might actually claim to be notable; these are borderline cases which some admins delete, but some admins don't. Expanding the speedy deletion criteria destroys the beautiful, if flawed, process of VFD.
Now, I'm going to discourse on why VFD is one of those genius-istic systems that some recognise and some don't, much like the U.S. Electoral College. VFD is not merely a place to delete articles. VFD is a place where borderline articles are placed when people don't know what to do with them.
For example, take a poorly written article on some rather obscure subject, say, a 1920s Bulgarian actor well known within his home country only, for pioneering filmmaking there. Google probably won't yield too many results on him. It may look like vanity. So following our current system, an editor places it on VFD, which basically advertises to Wikipedia: "Hello, I'm an article which is so confusing, nobody knows what I'm about or whether I should even be here. Can somebody help sort me out?" Anyone who knows the actor can easily describe how he is encyclopedic and should be kept.
Speedying full-fledged prose destroys this process, and as such, is probably not too feasible.
[responding to charges against Preliminary Deletion, such as "confusing bureaucracy", "instruction creep" or "too many problem resolution pages"] <snip>
Wikipedia is growing. We're getting more visitors. The population always contains a few baddies. At first we had one or two baddies, nothing our system couldn't handle. But as we grew bigger and bigger, we got more baddies, because we got more visitors. The percentage of baddies remains fixed, but not the total population. So naturally, we had to expand our systems for handling baddies as we grew larger.
Now, I'd say our current system is not scaling. Look at the debates on VFD. There are many contentious ones; however, there are always a few cases where practically everyone is for deleting the article; an obvious violation of policy, for example, such as irredeemably POV articles, or original research, or simply vanity pages. It's impractical to have them cluttering VFD, which is already damn bloody long to read, thank you.
So, our system simply isn't scaling. We will need to tackle this eventually, because people on dial-up simply cannot participate in VFD. Categorising VFD (another proposal) is an excellent start. But we will need to add extra pages. There is no doubt about this at all. We will need to expand our system for handling these, because there will be more people adding vanity pages, which will lead to more listings on VFD, which will lead to an extremely long page that only those on broadband can even read.
We have to cut down the size of VFD. The only way to cut down its size is to cut down the pages nominated, or move them elsewhere. The only way to cut down the amount of pages listed would be to loosen our policies, which surely a lot of people would oppose, or to develop other avenues for listing them, which leads back to "move them elsewhere". So it's your choice, folks. Either you centralise everything on one monolithic page, or you categorise deletions in some manner.
(this essay was originally posted on Wikipedia talk:Preliminary Deletion/Vote) Johnleemk | Talk 11:32, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Now that there are so many sources of these messages (stub, various COTWs, Countering systemic bias, more I do no know?), I'd like to propose that all such messages (yes, including the stub message) should be posted on the article talk pages from now on. If we do not tell readers on the article page that we think an article is good (the feature message), why do we tell them when we think one is rubbish, or too short? They might even work out the short bit for themselves. Do we need a poll? Filiocht 08:21, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Filiocht that the policy on this subject needs some clarification, although I'm not sure I agree with his suggestion. As has already been pointed out in this discussion there are quite a lot of tags on article pages, and many seem to be intended mainly for editors. This probably explains why those of us involved in the CSB discussion on the templates and their use didn't really see any big problem with pasting them to article pages. For me, the main argument is that it would serve Wikipedia in the long run to encourage editors to expand on lacking articles, and that tags on article pages will be a more effective way of doing that than tags on talk pages.
I also think that the CSB Article tag (that says "This is an article targeted by the WikiProject Countering systemic bias as in need of expansion") fills a purpose as an excuse, and perhaps a hint at an explanation, to a reader discovering that important African profiles and huge labor organizations only have semi-stubs, when Wikipedia has half a novel on each and every obscure programming language and Middle Earth creature. The wording was chosen on the basis that it makes a non-POV statement, instead of a value judgement such as "this article is too short". Currently, there doesn't even seem to be any generally accepted way to alert the reader to the fact that an article is short in relation to the subject matter it's dealing with, if it isn't short enough to be called a stub.
The other CSB template, called Limited geographic scope, fills another important reader information function. It highlights the fact that although the article is about a seemingly general topic, "the general perspective and/or specific examples represent a limited number of countries". This is very common (for some examples, take a look at Lawyer, Gang or Student activism) and can potentially irritatate and alienate a large number of readers and potential contributors. The template could be seen as a sort of "internal stub tag", indicating that important parts on the subject is dealt with in a stubby way or not at all.
The above is an attempt to explain some of the reasoning behind the well-meaning initiative that some fellow Wikipedians have chosen to call SPAM in capital letters. This does not mean that I don't see the other side of the argument. Neither does it mean that I won't accept not being allowed to paste CSB templates wherever I see fit. I'd just like some constructive dialogue on better ways to handle the problems this initiative made a serious attempt at addressing. I would welcome any wording suggestions that might lead to templates filling the purposes outlined above being generally accepted. Alarm 18:59, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This should not degenerate into a spat over a particular template. The issue here is consistency. I contend that his is lacking in the current situation. Filiocht 07:34, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
Once again: my suggestion was not about one message, it was about all messages. I could mirror Jallan's rant substituting the stub message for the bias one, but that gets us nowhere. I'd now ask anyone posting here to read the original question first. Filiocht 08:32, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)
What is the wiki policy about including Flash (.swf) animations in an article? 62.252.64.13 17:00, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
HowStuffWorks.com uses Flash very well in explaining a variety of topics. Examples: Home Networking, Internal Combustion, and Earthquakes. I'm not sure if a propreitary format like Flash belongs in Wikipedia but there's no doubt in mind that it is possible to use it to improve articles, especially technical articles. Salasks 03:08, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
SVG is now usable. You can get sodipodi and do drawings in it (not also Inkscape but I haven't tried that yet). It's then possible to animate them by hand editing. Since SVG is already avaialable as a plugin (I admit I'm using adobe's non free one) and will soon be available in mozilla by default, it is probably time to start to use it in Wikipedia. Using it will encourage its adoption. Mozzerati 21:38, 2004 Nov 24 (UTC)
There are problems about use of this type of template in signature? --[[User:Archenzo| Archenzo >> ███████]] 13:32, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Not to mention that they are just damned annoying. Images like this draw attention. When I'm looking at a talk page, the fact that YOU have been there is not so bloody important as to deserve such visual prominence. -- Jmabel 18:25, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
I think i heard in #wikipedia that in MediaWiki 1.4 the 5 template limit won't be there (they have a differnt solution for infinite loops), then using templates in sigs will work fine (which I intend to do since my sig is very long :) — siro χ o 08:16, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)
Many thanks! This was an experiment. The template is not now in my signature.--[[User:Archenzo| Archenzo ( Talk)]] 13:16, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I believe the guidelines need to be a tad clearer concerning deletion, redirection, or merging of fancruft articles. Pages have been made on minute characters from shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Animaniacs, DuckTales and Tiny Toon Adventures that do not belong here. Some, like the ones from Tiny Toons and Animaniacs, can be easily deleted, because the same information can be found on the show's main page. Others, like Buffy, have literally dozens of such pages to their name with a lot of information on them. Some have said that they could be moved to "minor character" gatherings on single articles, which has already been accomplished for shows like South Park. I think that's a good idea, but it still remains to be fancruft that makes little sense to anyone else, and even in these circumstances, I don't think deletion is out of the question. Any thoughts? Ian Pugh 17:23, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If an article about fancruft has potential to become encyclopedic or is encyclopedic, and the piece of fancruft is of reasonable notability within the surrounding fandom, I see absolutely no reason to delete it. If its a stub, you can of course merge it to some list. Wikipedia is not paper, and one of its greatest attributes is being able to have thousands upon thousands of articles about topics that people enjoy but a normal encyclopedia doesn't have space for. I don't understand the need to purify Wikipedia of any unimportant and not-so-notable topic. Half the point of it is to include all of those. — siro χ o 11:36, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
The idea of a separate wiki for such material is sort of appealing (mostly because hopefully there no one would use the term fancruft, which has very negative connotations in my mind). However, I don't like it as any sort of solution the way the current system works. (How does one move articles from one to the other? How does one get to one from the other? What if I want to link to information about Maglor from the Wikipedia article on Fëanor? For that matter, how to do I find the article on Maglor if I'm searching from here? What if I don't know enough about the subject to know which wiki I should look it up in?) We would also have to determine where to draw the line, which would be just as messy as the VFD notability discussions are today.
Of course, I do believe in merging small articles into larger, more useful articles. I'm working on convincing enough of the other Middle-earth editors. ;) [[User:Aranel| Aranel (" Sarah")]] 00:20, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Solution suggestion: I believe in classification. If everything has a classification then when making a CD or custom version of wikipedia one may automate the process of selection. I would assume such automatic selection would work better if things are in separate articles. -- Gbleem 03:00, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This topic must have been covered before somewhere else. I'm noticing a lot of centres, metres, harbours, and judgements going on in Wikipedia articles alongside centers, meters, harbors, and judgments. Is there an ongoing discussion about using Queen's versus American English, or has this already been decided somewhere? If anyone can just point me to a discussion already in place I'd appreciate it. Thehappysmith 15:10, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've copied the following from User talk:Tim Starling#Suggestion I posted on the Village pump bcz of its importance as a policy matter, not merely a no-brainer for Tim to implement. -- Jerzy (t) 01:45, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)
Along similar lines:
-- Jerzy (t) 01:45, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)
Personally, as an effort to counter the 'perceived America-centric bias' -- even though I am an ' American', I prefer to write in British English when writing, unless it seems to me that doing so will make it seem like a British imposition of viewpoint. I'm not thoroughly versed in the nuances of Britsh spellings versus American, but it's one way I try to fulfill the goals of CSB project. Question: Is 'King's English' similar in connotation to Queen's English'? Pedant 18:23, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)
21:41, 18 Nov 2004
Someone suggested American English is the dominant form in light of Latin American speakers. This reasoning is invalid. The whole body of speakers of a language do not make it what it is, any more than the whole body of users of Windows determine what it is. The programmers of a language are those who learn it as their first language (and the speakers don't even vote with their pocketbooks, by helping pay these "programmers" for their services). (A tiny minority of those for whom it is a second-language can also contribute as significantly; such people are so rare as to be notable, and Jack London might be one, for English.)
Even the exception to this principle sharpens the point: when a creole (language) emerges from a pidgin (non-language), the only role that the speakers of the pidgin take in the process is specifying the vocabulary. The pidgin-speakers each learned a different language from their parents, and may have contributed some vocabulary to the pidgin, but if they learn the creole, it is as a second language, from the next generation. It is those who learned that vocabulary from their pidgin-speaking parents who build a language on top of it.
Who are the "programmers" of English? There are some in India, Pakistan, and so on, but predominantly the
It's probably far from true that that means 290 M speaking American English and 117 M speaking the same Commonwealth dialect, but even so
I would not consider reading the "Erosion of British English usage and spellings" referred to above (unless someone assures me that it is mistitled and really concerns "Progress in Reunification of the Dialects of English"). Otherwise, its authors are in the dustbin of language history, with
Wikipedia is one of the reasons that individual dialects of English are blurring together; the internationalization of film is a far bigger one. Relative populations, the coherance of a single state, and (for a while still) per capita income, are going to give American English an influence in the result that is in many ways excessive and unfortunate. But languages, like species, evolve in response to real needs; don't forget that Yank arrogance has been insufficient to prevent the eager incorporation of "boondocks", "ketchup", "zen", "taco", "karma", and "Wanderjahr", to seize casually upon just a handful.
Any notion that planning how WP should handle dialect differences can matter in the long run is just plain silly, in ignoring the nature both of WP and of language.
--
Jerzy
(t) 19:04, 2004 Nov 19 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Tutorial_(Keep_in_mind)#U.S._English_vs._British_English has summary and link to full policy. Niteowlneils 19:55, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I note that the reference to G. H. Hardy's homosexuality, a trait ascribed to him by a number of people who knew him (Snow, Littlewood, Turing) has been removed from his biography. This has been done not because the information was not correct, but because this sort of information is not regarded ny some people as suitable to a biography. Why is this, and is this any kind of policy? If it is a policy, what precisely is the policy and what is its basis?
I note for example that Michelanglo's biography discusses his sexuality extensively, and Swinburne's mentions masochism. Is this because it is considered relevant to the artist? Hardy was also a literary figure, and his romanticizing of Ramanujan's remarkable gifts might well have something to do with his sexuality both directly and indirectly.
As I pointed out, Hardy is also a literary figure; his A Mathematician's Apology is still in print after 64 years and is considered a classic; Graham Greene calling it "the best account of what it is like to be a creative artist". To say that he never married amounts to a wink and a nod under the circumstances; isn't it better simply to come right out with it? In any case it seems at least as relevant as his fascination with cricket or his atheism. User: Gene Ward Smith
Just to play devil's advocate for a moment; should a person's heterosexuality be mentioned? My own view is that for Oscar Wilde, for example, his sexuality is relevant because it played a major part in his public life, but for many other figures it isn't. Wikipedia is not here to provide role models but to be an encyclopaedia, at the end of the day. Filiocht 11:22, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In my opinion, homosexuality or bisexuality should be mentioned if there is some proof of it aside from rumors and urban legends. In the past, when homosexuality have been illegal, there have been truckloads of malicious rumors that have been used for defamatory purposes. They are not necessarily based in fact. I have also seen unfounded claims (althought I have not noticed any in Wikipedia as of yet) that most of the famous historical people have been closet homosexuals, which is about the same thing in reverse. If the persons have clearly had same-sex beloveds or have clearly indicated that they are homosexuals or bisexuals, that should be mentioned. That should be emphasized mainly if their fame or important event of their life or career was due to their sexuality (in Turing's case, the cause of his loss of security rating) - Skysmith 08:18, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
An interesting case study in this question is Rewi Alley, who I've been researching (very little of the article is live, I decided to write offline). Neither Alley nor previous biographers make any definite statement on his sexuality, but the most recent biography is a revisionist history which concludes that 1) he was homosexual and 2) this played a key role in his life's path, e.g. it was his motivation for going to China. Should such a hypothesis be mentioned as an aside? (which implies some doubt in it if we otherwise retell the traditional version of his life, which the new book calls haigography).
Oddly enough, I was just tinkering with Thornton Wilder's biography. I noticed that it did not mention his sexual orientation. I was going to add something, but since he was a closeted gay, I was not sure how appropriate it was. [[User:Dpbsmith| Dpbsmith (talk)]] 22:00, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
For years publications would customarily (US) use images without crediting the creator of that image, but that has changed in the US. Now credit is routinely given for photographs and artwork.
Is this official policy on Wikipedia?
In my view, it should be, unless the creator of the image has contributed it anonymously. Who made what images is a matter of history and knowledge as much as other article content.
This, however, raises another issue. Suppose a contributor to an article on Bugs Bunny (say, one Elmer Fudd) uploads one of his images for use in that article, and refers to himself in the caption in this fashion:
Cwazy Wabbit Eating a Cawwot (Photo by Elmer Fudd, 1999)
Anyone see a problem with this? (Other than Elmer's spelling?)
-- NathanHawking 01:17, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)
Virtually all people I've asked about contributing images to Wikipedia are agreeable, as long as they are credited prominently for their contribution.
An idea: many things are now possible with CSS. Would it be possible to have <<Credit:©author name>> tag of some kind included in the image syntax, that could be rendered in very small text under the regular caption, or even in a vertical strip along the side of the picture (as is often seen in newspapers and comic strips)? With css it could be rendered differently with different skins, or suppressed in a user's personal style sheet. What do you think? Catherine | talk 18:34, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I don't know if someone has already experienced the following issue in Wikipedia to date, but let me comment on it, just in case:
As there is no limitation on the uploading of images to Wikipedia, I believe that there is a chance that images that should not appear on any article (among others, pornography, images of disturbing violence, etc.), could get to appear. Even if this type of images appears for no more than an hour before the page is reverted, the damage is already done to those who come in contact with the material.
Is this risk already managed somehow? I would like to read your comments on this.-- Logariasmo 04:39, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
This is a terrible idea - how big a problem is this? The algorhythms cannot possibly filter out all offensive images - this will just lead to 'gaming' the system. Much better just to rely on people visiting the recent changes (is there a 'recently uploaded pictures' page? Intrigue 23:33, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You do have a very good point, though. I can see how implementing the algorithm as an automatic approval mechanism would encourage "gaming". Instead, we could send all new images to the approval queue, with those that the algorithm determines to be porn sending the image to a second queue, "probable porn". If and when a user's image gets sent to the porn queue, a message (or warning) is generated for that user instructing him to contact an admin if the image isn't porn, or to knock it off the image is porn. Unappealed images in the porn queue would be automatically deleted in three days. The regular pending-approval queue would have to be cleared out by admins on a regular basis, but the vast majority would be quick and obvious approvals.
Does this sound like a better solution, or are you entirely against the idea of a new images queue "safety net"? • Benc • 04:22, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
PS- Plese inform me if I have done something wrong (or if I am wrong) here, as I am new.
Eseer Erre 20:20, 09 Nov 2004 (UTC)
What is the policy on images, and determining if they are inappropriate? For instance, the penis article has images of penises including an erect one, whereas the ejaculation article has no pictures whatsoever. Where does one draw the line...? -- Rebroad 16:12, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Since Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement passed, I added a section on blocking for repeated reverts to the blocking policy. Please review and edit it as needed. —No-One Jones (m) 21:00, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
A poll has been started to determine whether a page should be set aside for endorsements of election candidates. --[[User:Eequor| ᓛᖁ ᑐ]] 10:27, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hello all, I've started a new policy proposal at Wikipedia:Graphic and potentially disturbing images. I'd appreciate if everyone would have a look and give their comments before voting begins. GeneralPatton 03:49, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hi all..
I'm considering doing a major rewrite of almost all Wikipedia articles relating to M*A*S*H (including the book, the movie, and the TV series. I'd like to try and set some sort of standard for flow and continuity in the information, particularly in the pages about the M*A*S*H characters. The current pages, having been created by a number of different users at different times with no collaboration, show a large discontinuity of standard. Some pages are titled by the character's full name and rank ( Major Charles Emerson Winchester III), others by just a first and last name ( Frank Burns), others still by nickname ( Hawkeye Pierce), and every variation in between. What I'd like to do is choose a standard for naming convention (or, if a standard is already in place for Wikipedia articles named after a person, use the existing standard), and rename the pages that don't match that standard while I'm going through and modifying/correcting/enhancing the articles themselves.
My question is, what would be the best way to go about doing this? Should I simply create a new article under the correct title, and then list the old article in VfD/turn it into a redirect to the new article? Or is there a more efficient way to have an existing article retitled? I've never taken on a Wikipedia project this large before, so I'd appreciate some feedback from some more experienced Wikipedians if possible.
Also, if there is an existing Wikipedia standard for titling articles with people's names (should the full name be used if possible, or the most commonly used name, or nicknames?), and also about using military ranks in article titles (ie. is it preferred to write "Lieutenant Colonel John Doe", or "Lt. Col. John Doe", or leave rank out of the title itself altogether?), I'd be grateful if somebody could point me towards the information.
Thanks!
Vaelor 07:31, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hello! Please look into the new opinion survey at Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_real_time_update, about suggestions on editing the respective articles. -- Simonides 09:44, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
What is the policy regarding pages named User:something where there is no user named "something"? e.g. User:Sam Raymond. -- Paddu 14:48, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Several long time Wikipedians that are helping process Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old are not doing so according to the current Wikipedia:Deletion process, presumably because the process has changed as VfD has changed. Some simply delete with no more documentation than the Edit summary, others put the documentation in the Talk page, instead of pointing Talk to the VfD subpage, etc. I have added an HTML comment to "old", recommending reviewing the current processing article. Is there anything else we can do to make sure everyone processes the old VfD noms the same way? Niteowlneils 17:58, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I just created the entry on Darwin Vest who went missing in 1999 and was presumed dead in 2004. I marked it under Category:2004 deaths, but am not sure. I guess it depends on the presumption - if the presumption is that he died soon after disappearing, then he should be in Category:1999 deaths, but if the presumption is that he was kidnapped and died at some point in the intervening time, then it's anyone's guess. (p.s. did I do the right thing in this post by putting [[:Category:..., to avoid adding this page to the category? If not, please correct it!) PhilHibbs 11:15, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is there an agreed policy on the use of either "External link" or "External links" when there is one external link only? It seems natural to me to use "External link" when there is one link, and "External links" once there is two or more links. -- Edcolins 09:37, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
Having searched around I've not been able to find any policy, only a general guide lines, on the use of external URLs and yet in the articles I've been reading they have been used very sparingly. Is there a policy to avoid going outside? In one particular article, for example, members of the Board of the BBC are listed and although Wiki articles have been produced for the main members the rest have broken internal links. Yet on the BBC's own web site there are articles on all their Board members. Wouldn't it be better to provide a good external link rather than an internal broken link?
Maxx 09:05, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The main objection to external link is that wikipedia has no control over their validity (in many senses: survival, contents, POV). Haven't you ever trip over a list of very useful links only to discover that half of them are dead? Another thing (minor but annoying) is the issue of importance and encyclopedicity of ext links. Whe you run google, you always have several hudred or even thou links. Which ones do you think must be in the article? And which ones do you think other will think must be there as well? Without strictest control every article on a popular topic may turn into a link farm. Mikkalai 01:32, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the opinions. For the example I quoted, as they meet the professor test for fame (three are actually professors!), I've created stubs, as suggested, and placed external links there.
Maxx 15:59, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I had just added an external link to a forum, however I was then told not to. I'd just like to know what the policy is for that. Can I link to a forum with a general topic or should I link to the specific section? (for example, should I link to a programming forum of the C++ part of it?) And also, just how general in the links should I be? Should I put them in related topics (for example, computers, if I'm linking to a programming forum) or should I only put it in a very specific related section?
Thank you.
Cap'n Refsmmat 23:35, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)
The policy is not hard and fast; there is a general tendency not to link to forums (they are easily enough to find with a search engine and they are not particularly encyclopedic) but certainly there is an argument for linking to a prominent forum that corresponds more or less exactly to the topic of the particular article. I would not link the same forum from lots of articles: that becomes the equivalent of spam, however well-intentioned. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:34, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)
The number of colons required here is ridiculous.
Anyways, it can be applied to links that already exist. However, you cannot punish people for doing something wrong before a rule is made. I know why you don't want the links now, so I'll let them be and move on to more important things. The policy you came up with sounds nice to me, except for the bit about having to be around for a year. It should be something like "Must be around for a year, or have upwards of 200 active members" or something like that. The number can change, it's just a guess. It's just that the forum may be on a popular topic and thus get many members quickly.
I promise you I will not try to make those links again. I will be careful what I link to and where. Just please tell me what you think the policy should be. In fact, I removed the remaining link just now.
Cap'n Refsmmat 21:12, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)
I think my suggestion for a policy would be: do not link to fora, unless there is a very good reason (e.g. the article is about the forum itself). google is far more useful for finding a forum that will answer your question. Links on WP should have a good chance of being long-lived. dab 20:44, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
So is it that Wikipedia has no control over clones whatever. Once they suck out the info that's it... or couldnt you embed some sort of encyption which would automatically refer back to the upgraded Wikipedia editing ? I'm new to this but have immediately found myself the start of a dispute(well, I found objectionable historical revisionism peddled under supposedly pukka guise ).... Within Wikipedia ,so far as you can protect an article under dispute and close it, I am happy - at least until that particular battle might go the wrong way . But the damage has already been done out there in all the clones , and what I see in the way of contributions seems to be the tip of a very nasty Iceberg straight out of the scariest conspiracy theory bucket. OK so repairs can be effected -presumably when the clones update their links they suck in the editing changes ,don't they ? And maybe you can use the banning to weed out dangerous liars but there does seem to be a factual issue as well as a search issue . I don't want to believe that wikipedia itself is a front for revisionist conspiracy but do I have to cross-check every last edit history and cross reference through all other edits by that user and then submit you a regiment of names all linked to their proveable lies ? Please note this is not an idle ,in-the-future hypothetical issue but one of real dispute to do with presentations within and outside Wikipedia even in the coming days ( I refer to academic lecture in one of the top 5 Universities of the world )and I wouldn't waste time here if I didn't know I can prove the error in a statement ( involving Appeasement and the British Government just prior to WW2 ). It might require a bit of neck-sticking into verbatim use of copyrights . Question : how can you prove anything if you can't quote from Books ; and would Dispute warrant a fair-use if I gotta answer to a judge as well after you guys ? Flamekeeper 00:44, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)PS Seems to me the Disputes list page is a bit too hard to discover.
Excellent idea. We should encrypt everything! Nobody would be able to read about Admiral Akbar, or Slashdot, and our secrets would be safe! Mark Richards 16:55, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Great, so I'll have friends to send food-parcels and to feed my dog Pavlov. Auto-update is what I refer to ,so change nasty E word to the software question at hand. Any takers? As to Revisionism -I'm just reporting what I see, but Pavlov is very sociable . If R can run riot in one branch doesn't it worry the roots or leaves ? Flamekeeper 18:52, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Fixedreference.org take snapshots of the wiki and this supplies some cloning. They took one (English ) in July and before in April . How big is a Snapshot ? Flamekeeper 19:37, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Sorry Matt,um first I'm saying there are revisers, who've always been at it ,just that now it is that much easier. I don't mean heavy obvious-neo-anything but more like drifting re-education . The kind of thing which can save and preserve eg. certain Churches from their scandals, affect voting long term by eradicating the past(Japan?). Goldwarriors mention their politics without mincing .Or stop us uncovering anything dirty and conspiratorial . The point I make is that wiki becomes the sort of global info "gold-standard" , fair enough,positive etc . But if you find diametric variation from fact repeated under this reputation and left up for long periods it turns the positive (editable) into a form of mental pollution . How to safeguard the positive? That's what I'm asking . Say, it'd be OK if the snapshot also took built in edit "command" continuance....Because the trouble is down-web they lock it up . Can the wiki control who takes a snapshot to the extent of requiring acceptance of a continuous feed say delayed a week , because the disputes take awhile to boil to flagging Flamekeeper 20:00, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The dicussion at the VfD Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of "Shit happens" jokes, see also Copyright status raised an issue common to numerous lists of jokes in wikipedia. Most of jokes in these lists were published in usenet/internet/... wherever. Therefore many of them by default are under the copyright. The "fair use" clause IMO is hardly applicable here, since the se lists are not "quotaitons", but complete texts. It is known that many catch phrases from T-shirts are patented. IMO this issue deserves attention.
(Another issue is whether these lists belong to article space or Wikibooks or Wikisource.) Mikkalai 22:48, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Most important: normal policies should apply;
If you copy something from somewhere you should either:
or
or
In each case you point out which one you are claiming and either cite your sources / show your evidence / state your claim.
As a general principle, in order to claim fair use, you should probably write something noticable about the history / meaning and or cultural associations of the joke rather than just listing the joke.
The key point is that we can mostly assume that jokes are either original (so shouldn't be in Wikipedia) or copied (so shouldn't be in Wikipedia without one of the above). This contrasts with encyclopedic contributions which are normally original works of the contributor.
BJAODN should be seen as an area of ongoing work / stupidity and not an area for inclusion in mirrors or paper copies of Wikipedia. As such, whilst the wikipedia project will make good faith efforts to avoid copyright infringement, it is more difficult to be sure of the proper source of all materials in this area.
In all cases, materials on Wikipedia which infringe copyright will be deleted on request from the copyright holder according to the normal policies.
Mozzerati 21:02, 2004 Nov 23 (UTC) (aka Mr Killjoy)
Am I correct in my interpretation that material in Wikipedia cannot be copied into derivative work that is distributed as copyright? I keep finding articles copied straight out of Wikipedia which are on websites purporting to claim copyright over, for example, things that, for example, I have written. It isn't that I really care, but I was wondering about what the policy is about lifting material verbatim off this site and passing it off as material owned by the derivative website. It violates the GNU License (and the Wikipedia:Copyrights agreement) since it neither acknowledges Wikipedia nor does it allow that the material in the site in public domain. Guettarda 15:17, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There are some pages in the Wikipedia namespace that have notices saying that they are depreciated in favor of copies available at meta. Is there a reason why we don't just change them into redirects? If I don't see any objection either here or on their Talk pages, I'm going to change them into redirects, and remove them from the Topical Index. I'm doing this as part of the WikiProject Wikipedia Namespace.
Here are the pages:
JesseW 10:46, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I've put up Wikipedia:Divulging personal details for discussion on when it is appropriate to include personal details in articles. In my particular case, I've identified a person who has been working under a pseudonym even though the legal name was not widely known (though verifiable). I've posted this at WP:RFC, but as this is urgent (possibly the harm has already been done, if mirrors have scraped us since) I also want to bring it up on the pump. — David Remahl 13:13, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hi all,
I am an administrator from he_Wiki. In a recent months we have been attacked by 2 internet trolls. The last one started to vandilise he_wiki during this week. I want to ask if you have any policy regarding internet trolls in en_wiki. If you do have, what are your suggestions dealing with this phenomena.
Gilgamesh he 09:29, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Well, in that case he is in clear violation of community rules - you might need some kind of sanction process for people who continue to do this. Mark Richards 17:42, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is the person an administrator? "Restoring a deleted page" is something an administrator can do. If so,
If he is not an administrator, but a user who post the same content again and again, after deletions, then simply blocking him may be the answer. Blocking a user is something an administrator can do. (That means you can do it).
Sometimes, the user does not stop even after being blocked. That is because the user may use multiple IP addresses, for example. You can block a range of IP addresses as a solution. If the problem user is using open proxies, you may need some special tool to block proxies. Also, your community may decide to report the vandalism to the ISP of that user.
Also, if the user is posting only to one specific page, and the page is not that important, then an administrator can protect the page.
For the future, here are what you can do.
Please feel free to ask for details. Hope this helps.
Tomos 19:14, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Preliminary Deletion has been rewritten, and now includes a section at the end answering some common questions/objections. I urge those who voted against this policy or had their doubts to please read the section in question and voice their concerns on the proposal's talk page. Thanks in advance. Johnleemk | Talk 11:36, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This article is a link in the GFDL article, and a lot of its ideas were incorporated into the GFDL article. Here is the article:
Why You Shouldn't Use the GNU FDL
[copy of the above article removed - please see the external link if you want to read it]
I proposed this idea over at Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission, which provides form letters to send to non-Wikipedians who have images, text, or data collections that might be useful for Wikipedia, and might potentially be willing to license them under the GFDL. Although I get many polite "no thank you" responses to this request, I've been somewhat at a loss when people say "sure, how do I do that?"
Most of these people do not edit Wikipedia themselves, nor are likely to jump through the hoops to upload and tag their own contributions.
Would it make sense to provide a simple licensing form/template at the bottom of requests for permission, for people to use to respond -- something that could then be pasted into the Talk page or Image Description page as evidence that the creator wishes to license their work? Something along the lines of this (please edit mercilessly):
IMAGES As the creator and copyright holder of the image currently named <TITLE.EXT> (found at <URL> as of this date), I hereby licence said image under the GFDL, as a contribution to Wikimedia and its downstream users." <NAME>, <DATE> TEXT As the creator and copyright holder of the text found at <URL> as of this date, I hereby licence said text under the GFDL, as a contribution to Wikimedia and its downstream users." <NAME>, <DATE> As the creator and copyright holder of the text found at <URL> as of this date, I hereby licence that portion of the text included in this email (below) under the GFDL, as a contribution to Wikimedia and its downstream users." <NAME>, <DATE>, <TEXT>
Most of my requests have been aimed at webmasters, not dead-tree authors, so these samples are geared toward that end -- other variants welcome. I don't know much about the Creative Commons licensing process either, so if there's a simple way to describe those options to potential contributors as well, I'm all ears.
Please comment -- this ought to be legal and bulletproof, and I'm no copyright expert. [[User:CatherineMunro| Catherine\ talk]] 08:26, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
That's right... I was a bit too late to get the question.. My suggestion a bit different. How about this?
This idea is not getting a work or a portion of a work on GFDL. If you do that, what you must do is defined by the license, eh, cumbersome. So instead of first getting the work under GFDL and then bring it to Wikipedia in a GFDL-compliant way, I think it would be easier just to get a permission for you to post the author's work and thereby place it under GFDL and subject to other Wikipedia policies as just like other contents. You offer to announce the original author in the comment summary, which is one of the most important requirement of GFDL, though it is not that much compliant with it in other technicalities. If the author prefers the URL be explained together, you can offer to place it on a note page, for example, or describe the source and its URL in the "external links" part of the article, if that is appropriate. How does that sound? Tomos 05:12, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
(Motivation: Since Yasser Arafat's death, many things have been said or written in the media, blogs, etc. about the causes of his death. On Death of Yasser Arafat, there was some kind of policy (somewhat controversial) that probable speculations were not to be detailed in length: that is, the article would not give in detail what some presumably rather uninformed media would comment about the possible causes of his death. On the other hand, we have to draw a line somewhere; since we will very probably never get some authoritative source for his medical case, and the question attracts considerable attention, then I suggested we may add some bits from some investigative magazine who very probably had insider sources.)
I think we have a policy problem here. When we have authoritative, safe sources, we can probably just report them and ignore the non-authoritative ones. But what should we do in cases where the real information is hidden? Can we report somewhat detailed news from reputable newspapers who claim they got it from "insider sources"? David.Monniaux 08:40, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Still, if the reporting about the unverified source is widespread, we should discuss that reporting, even if the information itself can't be verified. Rick K 07:07, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
I proposed a streamlining of the Arbitration Committee's policy in August, and, given that it is now 3 months on, I have just opened a ratification vote about it. James F. (talk) 03:28, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hi, can you have a look at the section on Formatting that was added to Talk:CPR_summary. I have a feeling this sort of formatting is not encouraged on Wikipedia, is that correct? Tjwood 17:55, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm drafting a proposal to formally extend the cases under which an article can be speedily deleted at Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD. I welcome all discussion. I'd like to start the vote by 7 December, so that the two-week vote will end on 21 December, just before the holidays, but that's far from a fixed date. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 21:48, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I've created a new resource at wikipedia:News sources as an alternative to wikipedia:News collections and sources. The rational for its existence is to provide a way of listing news sites that is organised by geographical region and that presents the available links in an unbiased manner. The page uses subpages so that the existence of many links from the same country does not drown out the links we do have from the other countries. I took the links from the existing page of sources as a starting point for this new resource. Once I had finished it became apparent that we are missing links not only to many countries but also to whole continents. All input in encouraged. Barnaby dawson 17:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
RE the article Alfa Romeo. Throughout this article it is loaded with links to outside references, some of which are no longer valid. We don't want to arbitrarily delete them before asking if this massive use of outside links is acceptable form at Wikipedia? JillandJack 17:02, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
What exactly constitutes consensus in voting on a wikipedia article? preliminary deletion got 73% of votes. I would have thought that this was more than enough to let it pass. If there is a set policy regarding this could it be linked to? Barnaby dawson 12:09, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Ah, but what exactly constitutes a vote? Over at Wikipedia talk:Three revert rule enforcement a number of editors are taking the view that making a comment constitutes a vote. Is that really right? jguk 13:06, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The point here is that there ought to be a page clarifying these points. However I have been unable to find one. Anyone know if such a page exists? Barnaby dawson 15:23, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'd like to encourage wider input at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
The disagreements concern:
Thanks. Maurreen 07:54, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
OK, I've just noticed two edits which parse a [[Infosecpedia:Foo]] tag: [3], [4].
Is there any policy on when or how to use links to external Wikis? — Matt 12:30, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The more I read about the GFDL license the more I think that Wikipedia should be duel licensed with a creative commons license.
After deciding which Creative Commons license to use (probably CC by atribution ) all the new materials added would be CC/GFDL but the old materials would still be GFDL unless people authorized their work to also be CC.
Overtime most of the GFDL only stuff would be replaced by CC/GFDL material. Mozilla Firefox is doing a similiar procedure converting their code from MPL to MPL/GPL/LGPL code 'trilicense'.
Please sign your posts. We have no idea who you are. The problem is, that there have been thousands of editors who have released their material to the GFDL, who may object to re-releasing them to any other license. It is also impossible to recontact all of those editors to even see IF they agree to that release. That means the dual licensing would have to refer only to items released AFTER a particular point in time, and meaning dual versions of articles and of Wikipedia itself. Rick K 07:04, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
You're not the first person to bring this up. The next problem is that the cvs system that MediaWiki uses isn't accurate enough to tell who contributed what parts of an article when. The historical diff is only a best guess and isn't accurate enough for this use. However, I'm not a coder - maybe we could get a more accurate cvs system? I've been down this same road before - but who knows, perhaps the horse will learn to sing this time.
Also, I believe that attribution-sharealike might be closer to the licensing scheme most Wikipedians would want. The straight attirbution variant does not require that derivative works be released back to the community. An even better system would have one or more required license(s) that submitted work would have to be released under, and then allow the user to specify what additional licenses they wish to release their work under. This would include public domain and granting non-exclusive copyright to the WikiMedia foundation. Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom says that the easiest way to do this would be to fork the Wikipedia community and start over with an empty database.
But perhaps the conventional wisdom might be proven wrong even at this late date. Coders? Could we upgrade to a better cvs system? crazyeddie 07:05, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Here's a previous discussion on the subject: Wikipedia_talk:Creative_commons_migration crazyeddie 22:52, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
For people who are reading this exchange and are bumping up against the copyleft incompatibility problem for the first time, you might want to show your support by dual or multi- licensing your work. To dual-license your work under the CC-by-sa, put this at the top of your userpage: {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} crazyeddie 07:49, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Completely fresh at this, but with an idea:
Would it be an idea to make a category for national anthems, listing all of them in the same standard form used in many other categories, ex. Feature X of country Y, Capital X of country Y etc.? Instead of such as now, we're searching for "Ja, vi elsker" or "God save the Queen", one could have a list with "National Anthem of Norway: JVE" and "National Anthem of Great Britain: GSTQ".
Example of what I mean: List_of_capitals_and_larger_cities_by_country
Very sorry if I put things in wrong category, or if I'm just generally being dim. Hi, I'm new here. -- TVPR 22:05, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that registered user accounts were intended for the use of one individual only, not for a "group." The reason I bring it up is because of the following account: User:Asexual same-sex marriage, on whose user page is the following message:
"We are group of people who are advocates of the asexual same-sex marriage, and we want the marriage between asexual same-sex partners to be recognized by society. Please help asexual same-sex couples to get all legal rights the normal couples (the gay or the different sex ones) have. Our main problem is that our sanctioned platonic love bond is not recognized in most of the states. In the states where our marriage is recognized we are categorized as gay couples, which is not our case as long as we are against sexual relashionships in a same-sex married couple. """thank you."
Now, this smacks of advertising to me (never mind that the user(s) has been making non-NPOV edits to the Same-sex marriage article which reflect his/her/their stated mission.
Anyone?
Exploding Boy 21:26, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
I think the question is more about whether user accounts can be used by more than one person--difficult to police, I know, but worth figuring out, I think. But the question of whether to allow advertising on user pages is also a valid one. And you can't be the emperor of China. The position is taken. Exploding Boy 00:07, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)
I've recently been coming across entries which include a value and the 'equivalent' in other currencies (usually Pound Sterling, Euro, and US Dollar) of the form "The new waterway will cost about £150M (€220M,US$240M)... ". With the recent slide of the USD and rise of the EUR this values will increasingly get out of date, and as there is no template in use to locate or provide these alternatives then updating them manually when an editor discovers them will be the only way, which is unlikely to happen regularly. Without any accuracy they will lose all value.
I believe that we either need to scrap the alternatives, only listing in the local currency, or need to template the location or calculation of such alternatives to ease maintainence.
Comments? --[[User:VampWillow| Vamp: Willow]] 11:43, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Part of a larger problem. Even amounts in a single currency get outdated by inflation, needing an additional amount in "currentcy" to not mislead the reader (though Wikipedia arguably hasn't existed long enough yet for that to be a big problem). Would suggest keeping it down to local currency as much as possible for the short run, new syntax/autolinking of currencies/updated Manual of Style for the long run. JRM 12:21, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)
All currency amounts should be associated with a date, for example:
Gdr 15:13, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)
Local currency associated (explicitly or implicitly) with a date should pretty much always be there, but I agree with SimonP that it's not always enough. An example of a way to handle this (from the article Nicolae Ceausescu) is "Ceauşescu's official annual salary was 18000 lei (equivalent to 3,000 U.S. dollars at the official exchange rate)." Note that, in this case we need to say "at the official exchange rate" because the black market rate differed by a factor of 10 or so.
Also tricky is that the local-currency number may be totally unavailable or totally meaningless. For example,
-- Jmabel | Talk 07:54, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
Check out intermodal. Oh, wait, you can't. It redirects to wiktionary, which makes editing and viewing the history of the originating article difficult for casual viewers. You have to manually edit the URL.
Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? Wiktionary links, IMO, should be only within an article, not a redirect. yes/no? -- Golbez 06:09, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't this page be deleted or redirected to something in wikipedia? We have no content to provide at that title, and actually there is a wiktionary link on every "This page doesn't exist" page. ✏ Sverdrup 20:17, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Looking through VfD, I noticed a case in which a substub, properly marked as a speedie, was actually under continuing work, and this somehow did not become clear before a painful controversy got started. It seems like this could be helped by making the option of working on a user subpage more well known, and changing policy such that stubs, if made by logged in users, are not deleted but moved to user subpages as a first response. Thoughts? JesseW 07:28, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
For several years now there's been a very low-intensity edit war over on the DDT article over how much funding the American Council on Science and Health gets from industry sources and whether that has an impact on their impartiality. An anonymous user - it seems to have been the same one throughout, the wording he's used is consistent - has kept trying to play down industry connections, and other users have found sources showing they're more significant than he lets on. I finally split out that material into the article American Council on Science and Health so that DDT could remain more stable from now on and the anonymous user came in and made his changes again over there, but this time he announced that he was Jeff Stier (the Associate Director of ACSH, in charge of external affairs among other things). Assuming this is true, how do we handle contributions from "involved" people like this? On the one hand he's got access to a great deal of information, but on the other hand it just gives weight to my perception that he's been rather partisan. Bryan 16:45, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC) (small update: I emailed Jeff Stier to confirm that it is him, and he responded that it was.)
Based on some preliminary discussions, a proposal has been formulated for the next Arbitration Committee election, to be held in December. -- Michael Snow 04:46, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
In most cases, disputed articles are resolved by means of the Talk page. But often they arent. In some cases the article is locked, and development stalls, in other cases there is a valid NPOV point but no progress is made until one or other contributor gives up and goes away, which is fair but not the best version of neutrality (see stale NPOV discussion above).
Ideally the handling of disputed articles should:
A way that might work is to refine the use of tags so that heavy handed measures (NPOV or PROT on a whole article is quite heavy) are much less needed and mostly reserved for dealing with pollicy breach not article disagreement. Compare two articles:
In fact, on Paraphilia, I chose {{POVCheck}} and not {{NPOV}}, meaning "This article may need to be reworded to conform to a neutral point of view; however, the neutrality of this article is not necessarily disputed", which was more accurate, so as not to mislead readers of the present article that there was more doubt than was the case. Because I didnt want visitors to be faced with an article that was 70% right and yet be told at the top, "this is all disputed".
What comes across clearly to me is,
Examples of new small scale tags I'd suggest (ok they arent perfect but its an idea someone else could develop upon):
In summary, the changes would be:
wiki can keep more articles open and reduce the number where the whole article is marked as disputed, without in any way reducing people's power to contribute individually.
Its a raw suggestion with many holes in right now, but the heart of it - better use of tags disputing a word or section without casting the whole article into doubt, ways to say "yes we disagree on X but lets come back to it" and ways for a sysop to say "use that wording until you get a better consensus", could help free up many locked and stalled articles, allow faster ways to resolve edit wars, and that would benefit everybody.
FT2 21:21, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Welcome anonymous editing, and comment at Wikipedia talk:Welcome anonymous editing.
The proposed policy-page is written in the community voice. If you disagree with the gist of it, please expand and edit it to reflect the current unwritten wikipedia policy as regards anonymous editing, and its ideal reception. It is not intended to create new policy, but to codify the current practise.
Please use the talkpage if you disagree with current practise or disagree with codifying it into policy. You may of course disagree with the way the policy is formulated, in which case you should enjoy the liberty of wiki-editing and improve the wording to reflect the true wikipedia policy as it is currently practised but not codified. -- unsigned
What is the Wikipedia redirect policy on pages that have been created for simple redirects because of plurals and/or grammarical usage? I have noticed that User:SPUI has been adding a lot of redirects. See Special:Contributions of SPUI, 500 edits per page -- AllyUnion (talk) 15:22, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Would someone please advise me & the community on image deletion policy; specifically a couple of things:
I've trawled around wikipedia image & deletion policy, but cannot get a handle on it :( -- Tagishsimon (talk)
Shouldn't articles that are specific to trademarked names be using the HTML trademark tag in the text? I.e. ®, which results in a ®. I've only seen one article thus far ( Civilization (board game)) that has actually done this, so I just wondered if this was of concern as a legal issue. Thank you. — RJH 00:10, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I think it's easier if we develop a Bayesian Flitering Edit system. The RC patrol can mark edits for a Bayesian filter to show what kind of changes are considered as "spamish" or "trollish"... in our case, "vandalism." Then in the RC changes, have a percentage listing how much of a chance that the article was vandalised by the edit. Factors would include large amounts of missing text, large amounts of added links, and so on, and so forth.
Basically the idea is: we take the approach of vandalism the same approach we take spam. The more users agreeing the specific edit was vandalism, the more our filtering system will understand what edits were vandalism and what edits are not vandalism.
After all, if we can develop Bayesian filters for spam which learn what is wanted and what is not wanted, why not have the same ability for our edits?
Granted, there are some complex technical issues that will need to be addressed, and whether or not we will consider developing a trust network... but I think it is safe to say if we did a rating system, we could base it on a person's access control and whether they are an Admin, Board member, etc.
Or, the system would automatically mark you down if your vote of the edit is against the majority.
Of course, to prevent abuse, we can exclude certain known vandals from preventing from editing, and prevent anonymous people from voting as well.
Additionally, the filtering system would work to our advantage: Both bad and good edits would be marked by the system. This way, our system would have more and more accurate reflection of what is a good edit and what is a bad edit.
-- AllyUnion (talk) 09:24, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I am sure this must have been mentioned a million times before, but I will post it anyway. Anonymous users should not be able to edit. That would end 99% of vandalism. Moreover, to get an account, people must have a valid ISP assigned email address. This would solve the problem of blocking a range of IPs to block one user. Someone must have been opposed to these changes, because I am sure it must have been mention many times before. OneGuy 17:46, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It has been discussed, and most people think it is a bad idea. Sure, let's have the conversation again, it might be different this time, but people value anons being able to edit, and to be honest, the most troublesome contributors have accounts. Anons are easy to spot. Intrigue 20:10, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I started this article Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement. I was not sure if that was the right way for RfC, creating a new article? At any rate, as soon as I posted it, someone voted to "oppose" it. O well, I am not sure if he even read the whole thing before he voted. Apparently most people are going to oppose the idea. I still would like to see more comments here: Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement.
Look at all those Wikipedia content stealers which score better than us in Google searches: searching for Embree Trefethen I got several of them :-((( But what can be done ? Nothing. GFDL was the wrong choice, IMO.
At first sight (I haven't checked the links because I don't want them to earn any cent of money from this):
Granted, some add some value by providing additional useful links (last I checked — of course, some of these added links are mere commercials...)
(Sorry for the rant. This is not intended as trolling, but as sharing of my feelings with respect to this.)
--FvdP 21:12, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I did a Google search on a string "Henry Percy raised a small group of retainers, likely about 200" which occures in Wikipedia on the Battle of "Battle of Shrewsbury" page. Google returns www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/battle_of_shrewsbury and clicking on "repeat the search with the omitted results included." returns 38 pages. Most of the clones tend to have a clear mention of Wikipedia at the bottom of their pages, but these sites:
-- Philip Baird Shearer 19:44, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Maybe they are employing some form of PageRank stealing? Like an advanced version of a Google bomb? Well, somehow, "thefreedictionary.com" has managed to worm its way to the top... I've never heard of this site until recently. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:04, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There was one thing that I thought about for a while, and I do not know the details of the license well enough. Perhaps someone else can help. The "stealers" frequently combine Wikipedia content with advertising bars. Does that constitute a compound document that in itself must again be put under a free license? Some of the ads use advertising slogans, e.g. from ebay "3..2..1.etc." ould that place these slogans under a free license, so that the open source community could adapt and reuse these slogans for their purpose? If that were the consequences of our licence, maybe those who are paying for the ads would no longer want that? And then these stealers would stop? 80.171.66.113 19:32, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
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For a good deal of time, we've been certain that there's a problem with how we handle deletions. The one that most people are sure about is that VFD is getting too big to handle. There are, of course, those who claim that VFD is an anachronism, useless, etc. (these people are often those residing in the extreme inclusionist camp), but their views don't carry wide support among the community.
Naturally, we've had proposals combatting the problem of an ever-expanding VFD, some of which can be viewed on Wikipedia talk:Candidates for speedy deletion, Wikipedia:Managed Deletion, Wikipedia:Categorized Deletion and Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion. I originally wrote the following essay rebutting some common objections against Preliminary Deletion, but I found that the ideas outlined within would give a very good idea of where we could steer policy-writing in the future, regardless of Preliminary Deletion's outcome. Thusly, I have decided to share this with the community at large, since I believe that as our community grows, so will the size of VFD, and by extension our problem with maintaining such a behemoth.
[responding to the suggestion of expanding speedy deletion criteria]
Shall we rereview the results of Managed Deletion? I'd love to expand speedy deletion criteria, but that proposal would get shot down easily. There's a reason why nobody's drafted such a proposal — nobody but a few deletionists (or centrists leaning towards the deletionist side) want it.
The largest complaint about Managed Deletion was that it placed too much power in admins' hands. A good part of the community distrusts three admins to handle a deletion, so our alternative is to let one admin decide? That makes even less sense.
There's another compelling reason not to expand speedy deletion criteria. We might expand them, but the inclusionists always whine about the deletion of prose. It's one thing to delete "ioshgohgoaghoeg". It's another to delete a paragraph or two which some inclusionists might actually claim to be notable; these are borderline cases which some admins delete, but some admins don't. Expanding the speedy deletion criteria destroys the beautiful, if flawed, process of VFD.
Now, I'm going to discourse on why VFD is one of those genius-istic systems that some recognise and some don't, much like the U.S. Electoral College. VFD is not merely a place to delete articles. VFD is a place where borderline articles are placed when people don't know what to do with them.
For example, take a poorly written article on some rather obscure subject, say, a 1920s Bulgarian actor well known within his home country only, for pioneering filmmaking there. Google probably won't yield too many results on him. It may look like vanity. So following our current system, an editor places it on VFD, which basically advertises to Wikipedia: "Hello, I'm an article which is so confusing, nobody knows what I'm about or whether I should even be here. Can somebody help sort me out?" Anyone who knows the actor can easily describe how he is encyclopedic and should be kept.
Speedying full-fledged prose destroys this process, and as such, is probably not too feasible.
[responding to charges against Preliminary Deletion, such as "confusing bureaucracy", "instruction creep" or "too many problem resolution pages"] <snip>
Wikipedia is growing. We're getting more visitors. The population always contains a few baddies. At first we had one or two baddies, nothing our system couldn't handle. But as we grew bigger and bigger, we got more baddies, because we got more visitors. The percentage of baddies remains fixed, but not the total population. So naturally, we had to expand our systems for handling baddies as we grew larger.
Now, I'd say our current system is not scaling. Look at the debates on VFD. There are many contentious ones; however, there are always a few cases where practically everyone is for deleting the article; an obvious violation of policy, for example, such as irredeemably POV articles, or original research, or simply vanity pages. It's impractical to have them cluttering VFD, which is already damn bloody long to read, thank you.
So, our system simply isn't scaling. We will need to tackle this eventually, because people on dial-up simply cannot participate in VFD. Categorising VFD (another proposal) is an excellent start. But we will need to add extra pages. There is no doubt about this at all. We will need to expand our system for handling these, because there will be more people adding vanity pages, which will lead to more listings on VFD, which will lead to an extremely long page that only those on broadband can even read.
We have to cut down the size of VFD. The only way to cut down its size is to cut down the pages nominated, or move them elsewhere. The only way to cut down the amount of pages listed would be to loosen our policies, which surely a lot of people would oppose, or to develop other avenues for listing them, which leads back to "move them elsewhere". So it's your choice, folks. Either you centralise everything on one monolithic page, or you categorise deletions in some manner.
(this essay was originally posted on Wikipedia talk:Preliminary Deletion/Vote) Johnleemk | Talk 11:32, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Now that there are so many sources of these messages (stub, various COTWs, Countering systemic bias, more I do no know?), I'd like to propose that all such messages (yes, including the stub message) should be posted on the article talk pages from now on. If we do not tell readers on the article page that we think an article is good (the feature message), why do we tell them when we think one is rubbish, or too short? They might even work out the short bit for themselves. Do we need a poll? Filiocht 08:21, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Filiocht that the policy on this subject needs some clarification, although I'm not sure I agree with his suggestion. As has already been pointed out in this discussion there are quite a lot of tags on article pages, and many seem to be intended mainly for editors. This probably explains why those of us involved in the CSB discussion on the templates and their use didn't really see any big problem with pasting them to article pages. For me, the main argument is that it would serve Wikipedia in the long run to encourage editors to expand on lacking articles, and that tags on article pages will be a more effective way of doing that than tags on talk pages.
I also think that the CSB Article tag (that says "This is an article targeted by the WikiProject Countering systemic bias as in need of expansion") fills a purpose as an excuse, and perhaps a hint at an explanation, to a reader discovering that important African profiles and huge labor organizations only have semi-stubs, when Wikipedia has half a novel on each and every obscure programming language and Middle Earth creature. The wording was chosen on the basis that it makes a non-POV statement, instead of a value judgement such as "this article is too short". Currently, there doesn't even seem to be any generally accepted way to alert the reader to the fact that an article is short in relation to the subject matter it's dealing with, if it isn't short enough to be called a stub.
The other CSB template, called Limited geographic scope, fills another important reader information function. It highlights the fact that although the article is about a seemingly general topic, "the general perspective and/or specific examples represent a limited number of countries". This is very common (for some examples, take a look at Lawyer, Gang or Student activism) and can potentially irritatate and alienate a large number of readers and potential contributors. The template could be seen as a sort of "internal stub tag", indicating that important parts on the subject is dealt with in a stubby way or not at all.
The above is an attempt to explain some of the reasoning behind the well-meaning initiative that some fellow Wikipedians have chosen to call SPAM in capital letters. This does not mean that I don't see the other side of the argument. Neither does it mean that I won't accept not being allowed to paste CSB templates wherever I see fit. I'd just like some constructive dialogue on better ways to handle the problems this initiative made a serious attempt at addressing. I would welcome any wording suggestions that might lead to templates filling the purposes outlined above being generally accepted. Alarm 18:59, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This should not degenerate into a spat over a particular template. The issue here is consistency. I contend that his is lacking in the current situation. Filiocht 07:34, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
Once again: my suggestion was not about one message, it was about all messages. I could mirror Jallan's rant substituting the stub message for the bias one, but that gets us nowhere. I'd now ask anyone posting here to read the original question first. Filiocht 08:32, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)
What is the wiki policy about including Flash (.swf) animations in an article? 62.252.64.13 17:00, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
HowStuffWorks.com uses Flash very well in explaining a variety of topics. Examples: Home Networking, Internal Combustion, and Earthquakes. I'm not sure if a propreitary format like Flash belongs in Wikipedia but there's no doubt in mind that it is possible to use it to improve articles, especially technical articles. Salasks 03:08, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
SVG is now usable. You can get sodipodi and do drawings in it (not also Inkscape but I haven't tried that yet). It's then possible to animate them by hand editing. Since SVG is already avaialable as a plugin (I admit I'm using adobe's non free one) and will soon be available in mozilla by default, it is probably time to start to use it in Wikipedia. Using it will encourage its adoption. Mozzerati 21:38, 2004 Nov 24 (UTC)
There are problems about use of this type of template in signature? --[[User:Archenzo| Archenzo >> ███████]] 13:32, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Not to mention that they are just damned annoying. Images like this draw attention. When I'm looking at a talk page, the fact that YOU have been there is not so bloody important as to deserve such visual prominence. -- Jmabel 18:25, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
I think i heard in #wikipedia that in MediaWiki 1.4 the 5 template limit won't be there (they have a differnt solution for infinite loops), then using templates in sigs will work fine (which I intend to do since my sig is very long :) — siro χ o 08:16, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)
Many thanks! This was an experiment. The template is not now in my signature.--[[User:Archenzo| Archenzo ( Talk)]] 13:16, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I believe the guidelines need to be a tad clearer concerning deletion, redirection, or merging of fancruft articles. Pages have been made on minute characters from shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Animaniacs, DuckTales and Tiny Toon Adventures that do not belong here. Some, like the ones from Tiny Toons and Animaniacs, can be easily deleted, because the same information can be found on the show's main page. Others, like Buffy, have literally dozens of such pages to their name with a lot of information on them. Some have said that they could be moved to "minor character" gatherings on single articles, which has already been accomplished for shows like South Park. I think that's a good idea, but it still remains to be fancruft that makes little sense to anyone else, and even in these circumstances, I don't think deletion is out of the question. Any thoughts? Ian Pugh 17:23, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If an article about fancruft has potential to become encyclopedic or is encyclopedic, and the piece of fancruft is of reasonable notability within the surrounding fandom, I see absolutely no reason to delete it. If its a stub, you can of course merge it to some list. Wikipedia is not paper, and one of its greatest attributes is being able to have thousands upon thousands of articles about topics that people enjoy but a normal encyclopedia doesn't have space for. I don't understand the need to purify Wikipedia of any unimportant and not-so-notable topic. Half the point of it is to include all of those. — siro χ o 11:36, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
The idea of a separate wiki for such material is sort of appealing (mostly because hopefully there no one would use the term fancruft, which has very negative connotations in my mind). However, I don't like it as any sort of solution the way the current system works. (How does one move articles from one to the other? How does one get to one from the other? What if I want to link to information about Maglor from the Wikipedia article on Fëanor? For that matter, how to do I find the article on Maglor if I'm searching from here? What if I don't know enough about the subject to know which wiki I should look it up in?) We would also have to determine where to draw the line, which would be just as messy as the VFD notability discussions are today.
Of course, I do believe in merging small articles into larger, more useful articles. I'm working on convincing enough of the other Middle-earth editors. ;) [[User:Aranel| Aranel (" Sarah")]] 00:20, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Solution suggestion: I believe in classification. If everything has a classification then when making a CD or custom version of wikipedia one may automate the process of selection. I would assume such automatic selection would work better if things are in separate articles. -- Gbleem 03:00, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This topic must have been covered before somewhere else. I'm noticing a lot of centres, metres, harbours, and judgements going on in Wikipedia articles alongside centers, meters, harbors, and judgments. Is there an ongoing discussion about using Queen's versus American English, or has this already been decided somewhere? If anyone can just point me to a discussion already in place I'd appreciate it. Thehappysmith 15:10, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've copied the following from User talk:Tim Starling#Suggestion I posted on the Village pump bcz of its importance as a policy matter, not merely a no-brainer for Tim to implement. -- Jerzy (t) 01:45, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)
Along similar lines:
-- Jerzy (t) 01:45, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)
Personally, as an effort to counter the 'perceived America-centric bias' -- even though I am an ' American', I prefer to write in British English when writing, unless it seems to me that doing so will make it seem like a British imposition of viewpoint. I'm not thoroughly versed in the nuances of Britsh spellings versus American, but it's one way I try to fulfill the goals of CSB project. Question: Is 'King's English' similar in connotation to Queen's English'? Pedant 18:23, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)
21:41, 18 Nov 2004
Someone suggested American English is the dominant form in light of Latin American speakers. This reasoning is invalid. The whole body of speakers of a language do not make it what it is, any more than the whole body of users of Windows determine what it is. The programmers of a language are those who learn it as their first language (and the speakers don't even vote with their pocketbooks, by helping pay these "programmers" for their services). (A tiny minority of those for whom it is a second-language can also contribute as significantly; such people are so rare as to be notable, and Jack London might be one, for English.)
Even the exception to this principle sharpens the point: when a creole (language) emerges from a pidgin (non-language), the only role that the speakers of the pidgin take in the process is specifying the vocabulary. The pidgin-speakers each learned a different language from their parents, and may have contributed some vocabulary to the pidgin, but if they learn the creole, it is as a second language, from the next generation. It is those who learned that vocabulary from their pidgin-speaking parents who build a language on top of it.
Who are the "programmers" of English? There are some in India, Pakistan, and so on, but predominantly the
It's probably far from true that that means 290 M speaking American English and 117 M speaking the same Commonwealth dialect, but even so
I would not consider reading the "Erosion of British English usage and spellings" referred to above (unless someone assures me that it is mistitled and really concerns "Progress in Reunification of the Dialects of English"). Otherwise, its authors are in the dustbin of language history, with
Wikipedia is one of the reasons that individual dialects of English are blurring together; the internationalization of film is a far bigger one. Relative populations, the coherance of a single state, and (for a while still) per capita income, are going to give American English an influence in the result that is in many ways excessive and unfortunate. But languages, like species, evolve in response to real needs; don't forget that Yank arrogance has been insufficient to prevent the eager incorporation of "boondocks", "ketchup", "zen", "taco", "karma", and "Wanderjahr", to seize casually upon just a handful.
Any notion that planning how WP should handle dialect differences can matter in the long run is just plain silly, in ignoring the nature both of WP and of language.
--
Jerzy
(t) 19:04, 2004 Nov 19 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Tutorial_(Keep_in_mind)#U.S._English_vs._British_English has summary and link to full policy. Niteowlneils 19:55, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I note that the reference to G. H. Hardy's homosexuality, a trait ascribed to him by a number of people who knew him (Snow, Littlewood, Turing) has been removed from his biography. This has been done not because the information was not correct, but because this sort of information is not regarded ny some people as suitable to a biography. Why is this, and is this any kind of policy? If it is a policy, what precisely is the policy and what is its basis?
I note for example that Michelanglo's biography discusses his sexuality extensively, and Swinburne's mentions masochism. Is this because it is considered relevant to the artist? Hardy was also a literary figure, and his romanticizing of Ramanujan's remarkable gifts might well have something to do with his sexuality both directly and indirectly.
As I pointed out, Hardy is also a literary figure; his A Mathematician's Apology is still in print after 64 years and is considered a classic; Graham Greene calling it "the best account of what it is like to be a creative artist". To say that he never married amounts to a wink and a nod under the circumstances; isn't it better simply to come right out with it? In any case it seems at least as relevant as his fascination with cricket or his atheism. User: Gene Ward Smith
Just to play devil's advocate for a moment; should a person's heterosexuality be mentioned? My own view is that for Oscar Wilde, for example, his sexuality is relevant because it played a major part in his public life, but for many other figures it isn't. Wikipedia is not here to provide role models but to be an encyclopaedia, at the end of the day. Filiocht 11:22, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In my opinion, homosexuality or bisexuality should be mentioned if there is some proof of it aside from rumors and urban legends. In the past, when homosexuality have been illegal, there have been truckloads of malicious rumors that have been used for defamatory purposes. They are not necessarily based in fact. I have also seen unfounded claims (althought I have not noticed any in Wikipedia as of yet) that most of the famous historical people have been closet homosexuals, which is about the same thing in reverse. If the persons have clearly had same-sex beloveds or have clearly indicated that they are homosexuals or bisexuals, that should be mentioned. That should be emphasized mainly if their fame or important event of their life or career was due to their sexuality (in Turing's case, the cause of his loss of security rating) - Skysmith 08:18, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
An interesting case study in this question is Rewi Alley, who I've been researching (very little of the article is live, I decided to write offline). Neither Alley nor previous biographers make any definite statement on his sexuality, but the most recent biography is a revisionist history which concludes that 1) he was homosexual and 2) this played a key role in his life's path, e.g. it was his motivation for going to China. Should such a hypothesis be mentioned as an aside? (which implies some doubt in it if we otherwise retell the traditional version of his life, which the new book calls haigography).
Oddly enough, I was just tinkering with Thornton Wilder's biography. I noticed that it did not mention his sexual orientation. I was going to add something, but since he was a closeted gay, I was not sure how appropriate it was. [[User:Dpbsmith| Dpbsmith (talk)]] 22:00, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
For years publications would customarily (US) use images without crediting the creator of that image, but that has changed in the US. Now credit is routinely given for photographs and artwork.
Is this official policy on Wikipedia?
In my view, it should be, unless the creator of the image has contributed it anonymously. Who made what images is a matter of history and knowledge as much as other article content.
This, however, raises another issue. Suppose a contributor to an article on Bugs Bunny (say, one Elmer Fudd) uploads one of his images for use in that article, and refers to himself in the caption in this fashion:
Cwazy Wabbit Eating a Cawwot (Photo by Elmer Fudd, 1999)
Anyone see a problem with this? (Other than Elmer's spelling?)
-- NathanHawking 01:17, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)
Virtually all people I've asked about contributing images to Wikipedia are agreeable, as long as they are credited prominently for their contribution.
An idea: many things are now possible with CSS. Would it be possible to have <<Credit:©author name>> tag of some kind included in the image syntax, that could be rendered in very small text under the regular caption, or even in a vertical strip along the side of the picture (as is often seen in newspapers and comic strips)? With css it could be rendered differently with different skins, or suppressed in a user's personal style sheet. What do you think? Catherine | talk 18:34, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I don't know if someone has already experienced the following issue in Wikipedia to date, but let me comment on it, just in case:
As there is no limitation on the uploading of images to Wikipedia, I believe that there is a chance that images that should not appear on any article (among others, pornography, images of disturbing violence, etc.), could get to appear. Even if this type of images appears for no more than an hour before the page is reverted, the damage is already done to those who come in contact with the material.
Is this risk already managed somehow? I would like to read your comments on this.-- Logariasmo 04:39, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
This is a terrible idea - how big a problem is this? The algorhythms cannot possibly filter out all offensive images - this will just lead to 'gaming' the system. Much better just to rely on people visiting the recent changes (is there a 'recently uploaded pictures' page? Intrigue 23:33, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You do have a very good point, though. I can see how implementing the algorithm as an automatic approval mechanism would encourage "gaming". Instead, we could send all new images to the approval queue, with those that the algorithm determines to be porn sending the image to a second queue, "probable porn". If and when a user's image gets sent to the porn queue, a message (or warning) is generated for that user instructing him to contact an admin if the image isn't porn, or to knock it off the image is porn. Unappealed images in the porn queue would be automatically deleted in three days. The regular pending-approval queue would have to be cleared out by admins on a regular basis, but the vast majority would be quick and obvious approvals.
Does this sound like a better solution, or are you entirely against the idea of a new images queue "safety net"? • Benc • 04:22, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
PS- Plese inform me if I have done something wrong (or if I am wrong) here, as I am new.
Eseer Erre 20:20, 09 Nov 2004 (UTC)
What is the policy on images, and determining if they are inappropriate? For instance, the penis article has images of penises including an erect one, whereas the ejaculation article has no pictures whatsoever. Where does one draw the line...? -- Rebroad 16:12, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Since Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement passed, I added a section on blocking for repeated reverts to the blocking policy. Please review and edit it as needed. —No-One Jones (m) 21:00, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
A poll has been started to determine whether a page should be set aside for endorsements of election candidates. --[[User:Eequor| ᓛᖁ ᑐ]] 10:27, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hello all, I've started a new policy proposal at Wikipedia:Graphic and potentially disturbing images. I'd appreciate if everyone would have a look and give their comments before voting begins. GeneralPatton 03:49, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hi all..
I'm considering doing a major rewrite of almost all Wikipedia articles relating to M*A*S*H (including the book, the movie, and the TV series. I'd like to try and set some sort of standard for flow and continuity in the information, particularly in the pages about the M*A*S*H characters. The current pages, having been created by a number of different users at different times with no collaboration, show a large discontinuity of standard. Some pages are titled by the character's full name and rank ( Major Charles Emerson Winchester III), others by just a first and last name ( Frank Burns), others still by nickname ( Hawkeye Pierce), and every variation in between. What I'd like to do is choose a standard for naming convention (or, if a standard is already in place for Wikipedia articles named after a person, use the existing standard), and rename the pages that don't match that standard while I'm going through and modifying/correcting/enhancing the articles themselves.
My question is, what would be the best way to go about doing this? Should I simply create a new article under the correct title, and then list the old article in VfD/turn it into a redirect to the new article? Or is there a more efficient way to have an existing article retitled? I've never taken on a Wikipedia project this large before, so I'd appreciate some feedback from some more experienced Wikipedians if possible.
Also, if there is an existing Wikipedia standard for titling articles with people's names (should the full name be used if possible, or the most commonly used name, or nicknames?), and also about using military ranks in article titles (ie. is it preferred to write "Lieutenant Colonel John Doe", or "Lt. Col. John Doe", or leave rank out of the title itself altogether?), I'd be grateful if somebody could point me towards the information.
Thanks!
Vaelor 07:31, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hello! Please look into the new opinion survey at Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_real_time_update, about suggestions on editing the respective articles. -- Simonides 09:44, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
What is the policy regarding pages named User:something where there is no user named "something"? e.g. User:Sam Raymond. -- Paddu 14:48, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Several long time Wikipedians that are helping process Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old are not doing so according to the current Wikipedia:Deletion process, presumably because the process has changed as VfD has changed. Some simply delete with no more documentation than the Edit summary, others put the documentation in the Talk page, instead of pointing Talk to the VfD subpage, etc. I have added an HTML comment to "old", recommending reviewing the current processing article. Is there anything else we can do to make sure everyone processes the old VfD noms the same way? Niteowlneils 17:58, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I just created the entry on Darwin Vest who went missing in 1999 and was presumed dead in 2004. I marked it under Category:2004 deaths, but am not sure. I guess it depends on the presumption - if the presumption is that he died soon after disappearing, then he should be in Category:1999 deaths, but if the presumption is that he was kidnapped and died at some point in the intervening time, then it's anyone's guess. (p.s. did I do the right thing in this post by putting [[:Category:..., to avoid adding this page to the category? If not, please correct it!) PhilHibbs 11:15, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is there an agreed policy on the use of either "External link" or "External links" when there is one external link only? It seems natural to me to use "External link" when there is one link, and "External links" once there is two or more links. -- Edcolins 09:37, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
Having searched around I've not been able to find any policy, only a general guide lines, on the use of external URLs and yet in the articles I've been reading they have been used very sparingly. Is there a policy to avoid going outside? In one particular article, for example, members of the Board of the BBC are listed and although Wiki articles have been produced for the main members the rest have broken internal links. Yet on the BBC's own web site there are articles on all their Board members. Wouldn't it be better to provide a good external link rather than an internal broken link?
Maxx 09:05, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The main objection to external link is that wikipedia has no control over their validity (in many senses: survival, contents, POV). Haven't you ever trip over a list of very useful links only to discover that half of them are dead? Another thing (minor but annoying) is the issue of importance and encyclopedicity of ext links. Whe you run google, you always have several hudred or even thou links. Which ones do you think must be in the article? And which ones do you think other will think must be there as well? Without strictest control every article on a popular topic may turn into a link farm. Mikkalai 01:32, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the opinions. For the example I quoted, as they meet the professor test for fame (three are actually professors!), I've created stubs, as suggested, and placed external links there.
Maxx 15:59, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I had just added an external link to a forum, however I was then told not to. I'd just like to know what the policy is for that. Can I link to a forum with a general topic or should I link to the specific section? (for example, should I link to a programming forum of the C++ part of it?) And also, just how general in the links should I be? Should I put them in related topics (for example, computers, if I'm linking to a programming forum) or should I only put it in a very specific related section?
Thank you.
Cap'n Refsmmat 23:35, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)
The policy is not hard and fast; there is a general tendency not to link to forums (they are easily enough to find with a search engine and they are not particularly encyclopedic) but certainly there is an argument for linking to a prominent forum that corresponds more or less exactly to the topic of the particular article. I would not link the same forum from lots of articles: that becomes the equivalent of spam, however well-intentioned. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:34, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)
The number of colons required here is ridiculous.
Anyways, it can be applied to links that already exist. However, you cannot punish people for doing something wrong before a rule is made. I know why you don't want the links now, so I'll let them be and move on to more important things. The policy you came up with sounds nice to me, except for the bit about having to be around for a year. It should be something like "Must be around for a year, or have upwards of 200 active members" or something like that. The number can change, it's just a guess. It's just that the forum may be on a popular topic and thus get many members quickly.
I promise you I will not try to make those links again. I will be careful what I link to and where. Just please tell me what you think the policy should be. In fact, I removed the remaining link just now.
Cap'n Refsmmat 21:12, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)
I think my suggestion for a policy would be: do not link to fora, unless there is a very good reason (e.g. the article is about the forum itself). google is far more useful for finding a forum that will answer your question. Links on WP should have a good chance of being long-lived. dab 20:44, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
So is it that Wikipedia has no control over clones whatever. Once they suck out the info that's it... or couldnt you embed some sort of encyption which would automatically refer back to the upgraded Wikipedia editing ? I'm new to this but have immediately found myself the start of a dispute(well, I found objectionable historical revisionism peddled under supposedly pukka guise ).... Within Wikipedia ,so far as you can protect an article under dispute and close it, I am happy - at least until that particular battle might go the wrong way . But the damage has already been done out there in all the clones , and what I see in the way of contributions seems to be the tip of a very nasty Iceberg straight out of the scariest conspiracy theory bucket. OK so repairs can be effected -presumably when the clones update their links they suck in the editing changes ,don't they ? And maybe you can use the banning to weed out dangerous liars but there does seem to be a factual issue as well as a search issue . I don't want to believe that wikipedia itself is a front for revisionist conspiracy but do I have to cross-check every last edit history and cross reference through all other edits by that user and then submit you a regiment of names all linked to their proveable lies ? Please note this is not an idle ,in-the-future hypothetical issue but one of real dispute to do with presentations within and outside Wikipedia even in the coming days ( I refer to academic lecture in one of the top 5 Universities of the world )and I wouldn't waste time here if I didn't know I can prove the error in a statement ( involving Appeasement and the British Government just prior to WW2 ). It might require a bit of neck-sticking into verbatim use of copyrights . Question : how can you prove anything if you can't quote from Books ; and would Dispute warrant a fair-use if I gotta answer to a judge as well after you guys ? Flamekeeper 00:44, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)PS Seems to me the Disputes list page is a bit too hard to discover.
Excellent idea. We should encrypt everything! Nobody would be able to read about Admiral Akbar, or Slashdot, and our secrets would be safe! Mark Richards 16:55, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Great, so I'll have friends to send food-parcels and to feed my dog Pavlov. Auto-update is what I refer to ,so change nasty E word to the software question at hand. Any takers? As to Revisionism -I'm just reporting what I see, but Pavlov is very sociable . If R can run riot in one branch doesn't it worry the roots or leaves ? Flamekeeper 18:52, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Fixedreference.org take snapshots of the wiki and this supplies some cloning. They took one (English ) in July and before in April . How big is a Snapshot ? Flamekeeper 19:37, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Sorry Matt,um first I'm saying there are revisers, who've always been at it ,just that now it is that much easier. I don't mean heavy obvious-neo-anything but more like drifting re-education . The kind of thing which can save and preserve eg. certain Churches from their scandals, affect voting long term by eradicating the past(Japan?). Goldwarriors mention their politics without mincing .Or stop us uncovering anything dirty and conspiratorial . The point I make is that wiki becomes the sort of global info "gold-standard" , fair enough,positive etc . But if you find diametric variation from fact repeated under this reputation and left up for long periods it turns the positive (editable) into a form of mental pollution . How to safeguard the positive? That's what I'm asking . Say, it'd be OK if the snapshot also took built in edit "command" continuance....Because the trouble is down-web they lock it up . Can the wiki control who takes a snapshot to the extent of requiring acceptance of a continuous feed say delayed a week , because the disputes take awhile to boil to flagging Flamekeeper 20:00, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The dicussion at the VfD Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of "Shit happens" jokes, see also Copyright status raised an issue common to numerous lists of jokes in wikipedia. Most of jokes in these lists were published in usenet/internet/... wherever. Therefore many of them by default are under the copyright. The "fair use" clause IMO is hardly applicable here, since the se lists are not "quotaitons", but complete texts. It is known that many catch phrases from T-shirts are patented. IMO this issue deserves attention.
(Another issue is whether these lists belong to article space or Wikibooks or Wikisource.) Mikkalai 22:48, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Most important: normal policies should apply;
If you copy something from somewhere you should either:
or
or
In each case you point out which one you are claiming and either cite your sources / show your evidence / state your claim.
As a general principle, in order to claim fair use, you should probably write something noticable about the history / meaning and or cultural associations of the joke rather than just listing the joke.
The key point is that we can mostly assume that jokes are either original (so shouldn't be in Wikipedia) or copied (so shouldn't be in Wikipedia without one of the above). This contrasts with encyclopedic contributions which are normally original works of the contributor.
BJAODN should be seen as an area of ongoing work / stupidity and not an area for inclusion in mirrors or paper copies of Wikipedia. As such, whilst the wikipedia project will make good faith efforts to avoid copyright infringement, it is more difficult to be sure of the proper source of all materials in this area.
In all cases, materials on Wikipedia which infringe copyright will be deleted on request from the copyright holder according to the normal policies.
Mozzerati 21:02, 2004 Nov 23 (UTC) (aka Mr Killjoy)
Am I correct in my interpretation that material in Wikipedia cannot be copied into derivative work that is distributed as copyright? I keep finding articles copied straight out of Wikipedia which are on websites purporting to claim copyright over, for example, things that, for example, I have written. It isn't that I really care, but I was wondering about what the policy is about lifting material verbatim off this site and passing it off as material owned by the derivative website. It violates the GNU License (and the Wikipedia:Copyrights agreement) since it neither acknowledges Wikipedia nor does it allow that the material in the site in public domain. Guettarda 15:17, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There are some pages in the Wikipedia namespace that have notices saying that they are depreciated in favor of copies available at meta. Is there a reason why we don't just change them into redirects? If I don't see any objection either here or on their Talk pages, I'm going to change them into redirects, and remove them from the Topical Index. I'm doing this as part of the WikiProject Wikipedia Namespace.
Here are the pages:
JesseW 10:46, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I've put up Wikipedia:Divulging personal details for discussion on when it is appropriate to include personal details in articles. In my particular case, I've identified a person who has been working under a pseudonym even though the legal name was not widely known (though verifiable). I've posted this at WP:RFC, but as this is urgent (possibly the harm has already been done, if mirrors have scraped us since) I also want to bring it up on the pump. — David Remahl 13:13, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hi all,
I am an administrator from he_Wiki. In a recent months we have been attacked by 2 internet trolls. The last one started to vandilise he_wiki during this week. I want to ask if you have any policy regarding internet trolls in en_wiki. If you do have, what are your suggestions dealing with this phenomena.
Gilgamesh he 09:29, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Well, in that case he is in clear violation of community rules - you might need some kind of sanction process for people who continue to do this. Mark Richards 17:42, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is the person an administrator? "Restoring a deleted page" is something an administrator can do. If so,
If he is not an administrator, but a user who post the same content again and again, after deletions, then simply blocking him may be the answer. Blocking a user is something an administrator can do. (That means you can do it).
Sometimes, the user does not stop even after being blocked. That is because the user may use multiple IP addresses, for example. You can block a range of IP addresses as a solution. If the problem user is using open proxies, you may need some special tool to block proxies. Also, your community may decide to report the vandalism to the ISP of that user.
Also, if the user is posting only to one specific page, and the page is not that important, then an administrator can protect the page.
For the future, here are what you can do.
Please feel free to ask for details. Hope this helps.
Tomos 19:14, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Preliminary Deletion has been rewritten, and now includes a section at the end answering some common questions/objections. I urge those who voted against this policy or had their doubts to please read the section in question and voice their concerns on the proposal's talk page. Thanks in advance. Johnleemk | Talk 11:36, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This article is a link in the GFDL article, and a lot of its ideas were incorporated into the GFDL article. Here is the article:
Why You Shouldn't Use the GNU FDL
[copy of the above article removed - please see the external link if you want to read it]
I proposed this idea over at Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission, which provides form letters to send to non-Wikipedians who have images, text, or data collections that might be useful for Wikipedia, and might potentially be willing to license them under the GFDL. Although I get many polite "no thank you" responses to this request, I've been somewhat at a loss when people say "sure, how do I do that?"
Most of these people do not edit Wikipedia themselves, nor are likely to jump through the hoops to upload and tag their own contributions.
Would it make sense to provide a simple licensing form/template at the bottom of requests for permission, for people to use to respond -- something that could then be pasted into the Talk page or Image Description page as evidence that the creator wishes to license their work? Something along the lines of this (please edit mercilessly):
IMAGES As the creator and copyright holder of the image currently named <TITLE.EXT> (found at <URL> as of this date), I hereby licence said image under the GFDL, as a contribution to Wikimedia and its downstream users." <NAME>, <DATE> TEXT As the creator and copyright holder of the text found at <URL> as of this date, I hereby licence said text under the GFDL, as a contribution to Wikimedia and its downstream users." <NAME>, <DATE> As the creator and copyright holder of the text found at <URL> as of this date, I hereby licence that portion of the text included in this email (below) under the GFDL, as a contribution to Wikimedia and its downstream users." <NAME>, <DATE>, <TEXT>
Most of my requests have been aimed at webmasters, not dead-tree authors, so these samples are geared toward that end -- other variants welcome. I don't know much about the Creative Commons licensing process either, so if there's a simple way to describe those options to potential contributors as well, I'm all ears.
Please comment -- this ought to be legal and bulletproof, and I'm no copyright expert. [[User:CatherineMunro| Catherine\ talk]] 08:26, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
That's right... I was a bit too late to get the question.. My suggestion a bit different. How about this?
This idea is not getting a work or a portion of a work on GFDL. If you do that, what you must do is defined by the license, eh, cumbersome. So instead of first getting the work under GFDL and then bring it to Wikipedia in a GFDL-compliant way, I think it would be easier just to get a permission for you to post the author's work and thereby place it under GFDL and subject to other Wikipedia policies as just like other contents. You offer to announce the original author in the comment summary, which is one of the most important requirement of GFDL, though it is not that much compliant with it in other technicalities. If the author prefers the URL be explained together, you can offer to place it on a note page, for example, or describe the source and its URL in the "external links" part of the article, if that is appropriate. How does that sound? Tomos 05:12, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
(Motivation: Since Yasser Arafat's death, many things have been said or written in the media, blogs, etc. about the causes of his death. On Death of Yasser Arafat, there was some kind of policy (somewhat controversial) that probable speculations were not to be detailed in length: that is, the article would not give in detail what some presumably rather uninformed media would comment about the possible causes of his death. On the other hand, we have to draw a line somewhere; since we will very probably never get some authoritative source for his medical case, and the question attracts considerable attention, then I suggested we may add some bits from some investigative magazine who very probably had insider sources.)
I think we have a policy problem here. When we have authoritative, safe sources, we can probably just report them and ignore the non-authoritative ones. But what should we do in cases where the real information is hidden? Can we report somewhat detailed news from reputable newspapers who claim they got it from "insider sources"? David.Monniaux 08:40, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Still, if the reporting about the unverified source is widespread, we should discuss that reporting, even if the information itself can't be verified. Rick K 07:07, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
I proposed a streamlining of the Arbitration Committee's policy in August, and, given that it is now 3 months on, I have just opened a ratification vote about it. James F. (talk) 03:28, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hi, can you have a look at the section on Formatting that was added to Talk:CPR_summary. I have a feeling this sort of formatting is not encouraged on Wikipedia, is that correct? Tjwood 17:55, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm drafting a proposal to formally extend the cases under which an article can be speedily deleted at Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD. I welcome all discussion. I'd like to start the vote by 7 December, so that the two-week vote will end on 21 December, just before the holidays, but that's far from a fixed date. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 21:48, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I've created a new resource at wikipedia:News sources as an alternative to wikipedia:News collections and sources. The rational for its existence is to provide a way of listing news sites that is organised by geographical region and that presents the available links in an unbiased manner. The page uses subpages so that the existence of many links from the same country does not drown out the links we do have from the other countries. I took the links from the existing page of sources as a starting point for this new resource. Once I had finished it became apparent that we are missing links not only to many countries but also to whole continents. All input in encouraged. Barnaby dawson 17:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
RE the article Alfa Romeo. Throughout this article it is loaded with links to outside references, some of which are no longer valid. We don't want to arbitrarily delete them before asking if this massive use of outside links is acceptable form at Wikipedia? JillandJack 17:02, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
What exactly constitutes consensus in voting on a wikipedia article? preliminary deletion got 73% of votes. I would have thought that this was more than enough to let it pass. If there is a set policy regarding this could it be linked to? Barnaby dawson 12:09, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Ah, but what exactly constitutes a vote? Over at Wikipedia talk:Three revert rule enforcement a number of editors are taking the view that making a comment constitutes a vote. Is that really right? jguk 13:06, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The point here is that there ought to be a page clarifying these points. However I have been unable to find one. Anyone know if such a page exists? Barnaby dawson 15:23, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'd like to encourage wider input at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
The disagreements concern:
Thanks. Maurreen 07:54, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
OK, I've just noticed two edits which parse a [[Infosecpedia:Foo]] tag: [3], [4].
Is there any policy on when or how to use links to external Wikis? — Matt 12:30, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The more I read about the GFDL license the more I think that Wikipedia should be duel licensed with a creative commons license.
After deciding which Creative Commons license to use (probably CC by atribution ) all the new materials added would be CC/GFDL but the old materials would still be GFDL unless people authorized their work to also be CC.
Overtime most of the GFDL only stuff would be replaced by CC/GFDL material. Mozilla Firefox is doing a similiar procedure converting their code from MPL to MPL/GPL/LGPL code 'trilicense'.
Please sign your posts. We have no idea who you are. The problem is, that there have been thousands of editors who have released their material to the GFDL, who may object to re-releasing them to any other license. It is also impossible to recontact all of those editors to even see IF they agree to that release. That means the dual licensing would have to refer only to items released AFTER a particular point in time, and meaning dual versions of articles and of Wikipedia itself. Rick K 07:04, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
You're not the first person to bring this up. The next problem is that the cvs system that MediaWiki uses isn't accurate enough to tell who contributed what parts of an article when. The historical diff is only a best guess and isn't accurate enough for this use. However, I'm not a coder - maybe we could get a more accurate cvs system? I've been down this same road before - but who knows, perhaps the horse will learn to sing this time.
Also, I believe that attribution-sharealike might be closer to the licensing scheme most Wikipedians would want. The straight attirbution variant does not require that derivative works be released back to the community. An even better system would have one or more required license(s) that submitted work would have to be released under, and then allow the user to specify what additional licenses they wish to release their work under. This would include public domain and granting non-exclusive copyright to the WikiMedia foundation. Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom says that the easiest way to do this would be to fork the Wikipedia community and start over with an empty database.
But perhaps the conventional wisdom might be proven wrong even at this late date. Coders? Could we upgrade to a better cvs system? crazyeddie 07:05, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Here's a previous discussion on the subject: Wikipedia_talk:Creative_commons_migration crazyeddie 22:52, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
For people who are reading this exchange and are bumping up against the copyleft incompatibility problem for the first time, you might want to show your support by dual or multi- licensing your work. To dual-license your work under the CC-by-sa, put this at the top of your userpage: {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} crazyeddie 07:49, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Completely fresh at this, but with an idea:
Would it be an idea to make a category for national anthems, listing all of them in the same standard form used in many other categories, ex. Feature X of country Y, Capital X of country Y etc.? Instead of such as now, we're searching for "Ja, vi elsker" or "God save the Queen", one could have a list with "National Anthem of Norway: JVE" and "National Anthem of Great Britain: GSTQ".
Example of what I mean: List_of_capitals_and_larger_cities_by_country
Very sorry if I put things in wrong category, or if I'm just generally being dim. Hi, I'm new here. -- TVPR 22:05, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that registered user accounts were intended for the use of one individual only, not for a "group." The reason I bring it up is because of the following account: User:Asexual same-sex marriage, on whose user page is the following message:
"We are group of people who are advocates of the asexual same-sex marriage, and we want the marriage between asexual same-sex partners to be recognized by society. Please help asexual same-sex couples to get all legal rights the normal couples (the gay or the different sex ones) have. Our main problem is that our sanctioned platonic love bond is not recognized in most of the states. In the states where our marriage is recognized we are categorized as gay couples, which is not our case as long as we are against sexual relashionships in a same-sex married couple. """thank you."
Now, this smacks of advertising to me (never mind that the user(s) has been making non-NPOV edits to the Same-sex marriage article which reflect his/her/their stated mission.
Anyone?
Exploding Boy 21:26, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
I think the question is more about whether user accounts can be used by more than one person--difficult to police, I know, but worth figuring out, I think. But the question of whether to allow advertising on user pages is also a valid one. And you can't be the emperor of China. The position is taken. Exploding Boy 00:07, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)
I've recently been coming across entries which include a value and the 'equivalent' in other currencies (usually Pound Sterling, Euro, and US Dollar) of the form "The new waterway will cost about £150M (€220M,US$240M)... ". With the recent slide of the USD and rise of the EUR this values will increasingly get out of date, and as there is no template in use to locate or provide these alternatives then updating them manually when an editor discovers them will be the only way, which is unlikely to happen regularly. Without any accuracy they will lose all value.
I believe that we either need to scrap the alternatives, only listing in the local currency, or need to template the location or calculation of such alternatives to ease maintainence.
Comments? --[[User:VampWillow| Vamp: Willow]] 11:43, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Part of a larger problem. Even amounts in a single currency get outdated by inflation, needing an additional amount in "currentcy" to not mislead the reader (though Wikipedia arguably hasn't existed long enough yet for that to be a big problem). Would suggest keeping it down to local currency as much as possible for the short run, new syntax/autolinking of currencies/updated Manual of Style for the long run. JRM 12:21, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)
All currency amounts should be associated with a date, for example:
Gdr 15:13, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)
Local currency associated (explicitly or implicitly) with a date should pretty much always be there, but I agree with SimonP that it's not always enough. An example of a way to handle this (from the article Nicolae Ceausescu) is "Ceauşescu's official annual salary was 18000 lei (equivalent to 3,000 U.S. dollars at the official exchange rate)." Note that, in this case we need to say "at the official exchange rate" because the black market rate differed by a factor of 10 or so.
Also tricky is that the local-currency number may be totally unavailable or totally meaningless. For example,
-- Jmabel | Talk 07:54, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
Check out intermodal. Oh, wait, you can't. It redirects to wiktionary, which makes editing and viewing the history of the originating article difficult for casual viewers. You have to manually edit the URL.
Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? Wiktionary links, IMO, should be only within an article, not a redirect. yes/no? -- Golbez 06:09, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't this page be deleted or redirected to something in wikipedia? We have no content to provide at that title, and actually there is a wiktionary link on every "This page doesn't exist" page. ✏ Sverdrup 20:17, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Looking through VfD, I noticed a case in which a substub, properly marked as a speedie, was actually under continuing work, and this somehow did not become clear before a painful controversy got started. It seems like this could be helped by making the option of working on a user subpage more well known, and changing policy such that stubs, if made by logged in users, are not deleted but moved to user subpages as a first response. Thoughts? JesseW 07:28, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
For several years now there's been a very low-intensity edit war over on the DDT article over how much funding the American Council on Science and Health gets from industry sources and whether that has an impact on their impartiality. An anonymous user - it seems to have been the same one throughout, the wording he's used is consistent - has kept trying to play down industry connections, and other users have found sources showing they're more significant than he lets on. I finally split out that material into the article American Council on Science and Health so that DDT could remain more stable from now on and the anonymous user came in and made his changes again over there, but this time he announced that he was Jeff Stier (the Associate Director of ACSH, in charge of external affairs among other things). Assuming this is true, how do we handle contributions from "involved" people like this? On the one hand he's got access to a great deal of information, but on the other hand it just gives weight to my perception that he's been rather partisan. Bryan 16:45, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC) (small update: I emailed Jeff Stier to confirm that it is him, and he responded that it was.)
Based on some preliminary discussions, a proposal has been formulated for the next Arbitration Committee election, to be held in December. -- Michael Snow 04:46, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
In most cases, disputed articles are resolved by means of the Talk page. But often they arent. In some cases the article is locked, and development stalls, in other cases there is a valid NPOV point but no progress is made until one or other contributor gives up and goes away, which is fair but not the best version of neutrality (see stale NPOV discussion above).
Ideally the handling of disputed articles should:
A way that might work is to refine the use of tags so that heavy handed measures (NPOV or PROT on a whole article is quite heavy) are much less needed and mostly reserved for dealing with pollicy breach not article disagreement. Compare two articles:
In fact, on Paraphilia, I chose {{POVCheck}} and not {{NPOV}}, meaning "This article may need to be reworded to conform to a neutral point of view; however, the neutrality of this article is not necessarily disputed", which was more accurate, so as not to mislead readers of the present article that there was more doubt than was the case. Because I didnt want visitors to be faced with an article that was 70% right and yet be told at the top, "this is all disputed".
What comes across clearly to me is,
Examples of new small scale tags I'd suggest (ok they arent perfect but its an idea someone else could develop upon):
In summary, the changes would be:
wiki can keep more articles open and reduce the number where the whole article is marked as disputed, without in any way reducing people's power to contribute individually.
Its a raw suggestion with many holes in right now, but the heart of it - better use of tags disputing a word or section without casting the whole article into doubt, ways to say "yes we disagree on X but lets come back to it" and ways for a sysop to say "use that wording until you get a better consensus", could help free up many locked and stalled articles, allow faster ways to resolve edit wars, and that would benefit everybody.
FT2 21:21, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Welcome anonymous editing, and comment at Wikipedia talk:Welcome anonymous editing.
The proposed policy-page is written in the community voice. If you disagree with the gist of it, please expand and edit it to reflect the current unwritten wikipedia policy as regards anonymous editing, and its ideal reception. It is not intended to create new policy, but to codify the current practise.
Please use the talkpage if you disagree with current practise or disagree with codifying it into policy. You may of course disagree with the way the policy is formulated, in which case you should enjoy the liberty of wiki-editing and improve the wording to reflect the true wikipedia policy as it is currently practised but not codified. -- unsigned
What is the Wikipedia redirect policy on pages that have been created for simple redirects because of plurals and/or grammarical usage? I have noticed that User:SPUI has been adding a lot of redirects. See Special:Contributions of SPUI, 500 edits per page -- AllyUnion (talk) 15:22, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Would someone please advise me & the community on image deletion policy; specifically a couple of things:
I've trawled around wikipedia image & deletion policy, but cannot get a handle on it :( -- Tagishsimon (talk)
Shouldn't articles that are specific to trademarked names be using the HTML trademark tag in the text? I.e. ®, which results in a ®. I've only seen one article thus far ( Civilization (board game)) that has actually done this, so I just wondered if this was of concern as a legal issue. Thank you. — RJH 00:10, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I think it's easier if we develop a Bayesian Flitering Edit system. The RC patrol can mark edits for a Bayesian filter to show what kind of changes are considered as "spamish" or "trollish"... in our case, "vandalism." Then in the RC changes, have a percentage listing how much of a chance that the article was vandalised by the edit. Factors would include large amounts of missing text, large amounts of added links, and so on, and so forth.
Basically the idea is: we take the approach of vandalism the same approach we take spam. The more users agreeing the specific edit was vandalism, the more our filtering system will understand what edits were vandalism and what edits are not vandalism.
After all, if we can develop Bayesian filters for spam which learn what is wanted and what is not wanted, why not have the same ability for our edits?
Granted, there are some complex technical issues that will need to be addressed, and whether or not we will consider developing a trust network... but I think it is safe to say if we did a rating system, we could base it on a person's access control and whether they are an Admin, Board member, etc.
Or, the system would automatically mark you down if your vote of the edit is against the majority.
Of course, to prevent abuse, we can exclude certain known vandals from preventing from editing, and prevent anonymous people from voting as well.
Additionally, the filtering system would work to our advantage: Both bad and good edits would be marked by the system. This way, our system would have more and more accurate reflection of what is a good edit and what is a bad edit.
-- AllyUnion (talk) 09:24, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I am sure this must have been mentioned a million times before, but I will post it anyway. Anonymous users should not be able to edit. That would end 99% of vandalism. Moreover, to get an account, people must have a valid ISP assigned email address. This would solve the problem of blocking a range of IPs to block one user. Someone must have been opposed to these changes, because I am sure it must have been mention many times before. OneGuy 17:46, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It has been discussed, and most people think it is a bad idea. Sure, let's have the conversation again, it might be different this time, but people value anons being able to edit, and to be honest, the most troublesome contributors have accounts. Anons are easy to spot. Intrigue 20:10, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I started this article Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement. I was not sure if that was the right way for RfC, creating a new article? At any rate, as soon as I posted it, someone voted to "oppose" it. O well, I am not sure if he even read the whole thing before he voted. Apparently most people are going to oppose the idea. I still would like to see more comments here: Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement.
Look at all those Wikipedia content stealers which score better than us in Google searches: searching for Embree Trefethen I got several of them :-((( But what can be done ? Nothing. GFDL was the wrong choice, IMO.
At first sight (I haven't checked the links because I don't want them to earn any cent of money from this):
Granted, some add some value by providing additional useful links (last I checked — of course, some of these added links are mere commercials...)
(Sorry for the rant. This is not intended as trolling, but as sharing of my feelings with respect to this.)
--FvdP 21:12, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I did a Google search on a string "Henry Percy raised a small group of retainers, likely about 200" which occures in Wikipedia on the Battle of "Battle of Shrewsbury" page. Google returns www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/battle_of_shrewsbury and clicking on "repeat the search with the omitted results included." returns 38 pages. Most of the clones tend to have a clear mention of Wikipedia at the bottom of their pages, but these sites:
-- Philip Baird Shearer 19:44, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Maybe they are employing some form of PageRank stealing? Like an advanced version of a Google bomb? Well, somehow, "thefreedictionary.com" has managed to worm its way to the top... I've never heard of this site until recently. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:04, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There was one thing that I thought about for a while, and I do not know the details of the license well enough. Perhaps someone else can help. The "stealers" frequently combine Wikipedia content with advertising bars. Does that constitute a compound document that in itself must again be put under a free license? Some of the ads use advertising slogans, e.g. from ebay "3..2..1.etc." ould that place these slogans under a free license, so that the open source community could adapt and reuse these slogans for their purpose? If that were the consequences of our licence, maybe those who are paying for the ads would no longer want that? And then these stealers would stop? 80.171.66.113 19:32, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)