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I recently joined with the intention of adding our non-profit agency. Making note of the neutral writing requirement, I assumed I would write a brief article outlining our mission statement and history of the agency. I don't intend to use it as an advertisement; I just thought it would be useful for people looking for information about the agency. I also don't want to create a conflict of interest issue. I either need advice on how and what would be appropriate to post or offers of feedback on the article after it's written to gauge appropriateness.
Thanks,
VanishedChildren'sAlliance 22:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)VanishedChildren'Alliance 10/03/07
If a newspaper takes down an article upon the subject's request, is it a copyright violation to link to the Google cache of that article? I don't see how it could be, unless the original article was itself a copyright violation, but I'd like a second (or more) opinion(s). Thanks, Mike R 17:55, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
when someone placed an image warning template on a user's talkpage and then this user removed it, without adhering to the message and disregarding the warning itself, is there any warning template or policy to warn this user about his actions? †Bloodpack† 22:53, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Please see my question here about why we are exposing the IP addresses of users that haven't even been directly blocked, when they are un-autoblocked. 1of3 19:04, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps I'm missing something. I can't seem to find any guidelines or policy on the inclusion of geographical features, highways, small towns and the like. I've tended to assume these are almost all notable in one way or another but I'm starting to doubt this perspective.
There is a constant influx of articles on towns of small size. Does every town and neighborhood deserve an article? Verification is of course easy with an atlas but that's my point. If Wikipedia is not a directory, is there a corollary of Wikipedia is not an atlas? Merely having Reliable Sources for a subject doesn't necessarily make it notable.
I admit up front I have strong biases for defining edges and limits for Wikipedia's content. I don't think I'm being unreasonable to expect an encyclopedia to have criteria for inclusion and exclusion, to not include every town in the world just because it exists. Well, my attitude assumes Wikipedia isn't an atlas. If it is, then I'll go on my merry way without questioning the basic inclusion of these features and focus instead on other issues. I really want to hear some discussion on this. Pig man 16:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I refer here to WP guidelines and policies concerning punishment, blocking, banning, censorship, verifiability, with un-written reference to assumption of good faith rules, arbitration life-sentencing and inability of the project to divide itself into a religious and a secular sphere.
It was an un-called for relief being punished for 18 months, and the only result was that the punishment has been of the project by the project. As ever, I only refer to facts that can be verified, and this isn't the time nor place and I'll just say that I have done a 'recce' and noted the plethora of articles which either still labour under mistruth or whose mistruth has profited from the very long punishment. (Doubtless a clever-dick will speed in and try and curry favour by maligning me, despite the project's guidelines, so that'll come as no surprise. i don't plan on responding to such..) My point here is solely that the project has only succeeded in punishing itself, whilst I have gained considerable free time to clarify the truth. Just as it always was, my entry is out of duty, to 'benefit society' (a legal concept). The persecutions of me will be no more justified ahead than in the past and the truth alone necessitates my personal effort. For enquiring minds I shall however endeavour to reveal something of relevant interest to today. The scope of my corrections before dwelt upon the 7 week period between 30 January 1933 and 23 March 1933 (the particular period of the 'Common-Plan' or conspiracy as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunals) whereas now it is possible for me to see the relevant religious element in this period as being descendant of a continuum to, in the latest, 800 AD. The illegal re-invention, in that year, of what we could call a christian 'Caliphate' bears directly forwards in spirit, philosophy and politics through to that 23 March 1933. I will shoulder the burden- in so far as denialists' hitherto non-existant respect for the project's laws determine- of supplying the most interesting textual verifications, in the sure understanding that by alerting the world through the project to this continuum I shall even further incur the odium of those for whom this 'caliphate' was, since 800 AD, their chief project. This is to say that I shall supply texts concerning historical events such that these will benefit disparate articles. The only other good news is that, as I am exceedingly interested in the entire 'caliphate', seeing it as exemplar towards our superscension of its co-terminal or slightly preceding twin and parallel absolutist concept, that the Wikipedia project's plethora of 'Common-Plan' flaws and denialism, since they have already been verified by me, become solely repetitious details for correction. Anyone who is concerned by the fact that I aslo persecuted and punished by a 'life-long' ban from 'catholicism' articles, might ask themselves in the first instance why a certain Ludwig Kaas - who's action is termed 'decisive' for the empowerment of Adolf Hitler, at Hitler's article, whether Kaas there should better be recognised as Monsignor Ludwig Kaas, or, whether the 'monsignor' Kaas article is or is not a 'catholic article'? If it is not, then it is not closed to me. If it is closed to me for the period of my life on earth (or the life of Wikipedia) then, logically, Ludwig Kaas is a 'catholic figure' and his status as Monsignor warrants immediate recognition as such at the Hitler article, and, that recognition also absolutely proves the point of contention verified by me through User:Bengalski from the eminent ecumenical historian, the late Klaus Scholder, that at the least Kaas is accused by this eminence as acting secretly upon the instructions of his religious mentor, (ie. boss) the future Pope Pius XII. Such an honest person would also be keen to see the allowance of full and true verification concerning the exact known elements of the final act of the Common-plan, which is to say, how it was that Kaas actually amassed the unitary vote of the Party he led, and gave this to Hitler in the rigged parliament against his own agreement with a previous chancellor in his party whose retention of his 'fraction' may have changed the entire course of mid and consquent 20C history, because it verifiably wasn't as Wikipedia anywhere reveals. Please don't call me, EffK 22:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
This is spawned from a discussion at WP:NOR.
There appears to be no policy or style guide on what the target reading age should be for Wikipedia articles. If there is, I haven't spotted it.
I am a great believer in Plain English (though not a great writer in it). However complex a subject should be, there should not be any need for any unnecessary complexity in the language. It is very tempting to write academic articles in academic prose, when we should recall that this is supposed to be an encyclopaedia for everyone. Often people think that clever English makes a piece seem more credible. I think that a really good piece of editing can bring the reading age down, and still keep the same content.
I've run a few random pages through a readability test (cut and paste of plain text to avoid distortions of links etc) and I have seen that pages appear to come out at requiring graduate level comprehension and low readabilities. I would suggest that biographies and descriptions of places that came up should not require high reading skills, I might forgive more esoteric scientific articles. Harry Potter did not fair well (14 years of education required for a children's book subject).
W3c guidelines support this approach.
Do you think that this is a worthwhile issue to pursue? Spenny 15:39, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I think the clarity of an article often depends most on how the information is organized and whether necessary context is given. "Big words" are less confusing than missing or disordered premises, which X42bn6 alludes to above in raising the idea of subtopic relationships. It's largely a matter of remembering to set forth the basics before you get into the details, which is often difficult to do because the obvious facts that a completely unversed reader needs to understand the topic are usually invisible or uninteresting to someone who would presume to write about it. Many articles have really lousy introductory paragraphs because of this. Postdlf 20:50, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I've opened a disscussion on the next generation of our license at Wikipedia:GSFDL comments from as many as posible are requested. Geni 02:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Anyone who cares to look over, comment upon and expand (or contract, per comment received) Wikipedia:In Wikipedia, X is an Article, not Evil is welcome to do so. LessHeard vanU 20:48, 4 October 2007 (UTC) LessHeard vanU 21:03, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Some editors want to delete part of Wikipedia:No personal attacks. The policy is the subject of a current ArbCom case, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Attack sites. I have initiated an RfC on the talk page to gain community input on the proposed policy change: Wikipedia talk:No personal attacks#RFC: External links to harassment. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:25, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
A request for comment for the requests for adminship process. All comments are welcome at the page. Ryan Postlethwaite 17:35, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
The Right to Vanish is a respected and well established policy on Wikimedia projects. Recently there have been some concerns over abuses, or questions about its use, scope, and wording. The page wording has not been updated, clarified and sharpened by vigorous discussion, as might have been the case if it were on en: rather than a soft redirect.
Without being certain what exact wording is best, I'd like to propose a significant and (hopefully) non-controversial rewrite of this page to bring it closer to a more current standard of style, specificity and clarity. See draft at: m:Talk:Right to vanish#Discussion of RtV implementation and wording, compared to current version.
FT2 ( Talk | email) 10:26, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I've noticed that some users are in the habit of copying entire mainspace pages to their sandbox for editing. The problem is that these sandbox pages then get listed in the mainspace in all the categories that the original page contained, because the categories are copied too. Sometimes these sandbox pages end up being maintained for months, even years.
This not only messes up the mainspace with sandbox entries which simply don't belong there, but it can also potentially be a method by which users can create alternative articles or POV forks by stealth. I propose therefore that a statement be included, possibly on the Wikipedia:About the Sandbox page or some relevant policy page, prohibiting or at least discouraging the use of categories on sandbox pages. Gatoclass 22:14, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
A humble suggestion follows. Motorrad-67 21:59, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
OK, Betacommand has indicated here that he would be willing to add this functionality, which I will call "being nice to the uploaders", to the bot that transfers free images from Wikipedia to Commons. He needs someone to write the "this is what is happenning" template, though, and I don't have time. Kevin Murray and CBM (Carl), you have both supported the idea of such a template. Would either or both of you have time to write something? I did a brief look for an explanation, and the bot page ( User:Betacommand/Commons), the bot request approval ( Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BetacommandBot Task 7) and Wikipedia:Commons are the best links I've found so far. A brief explanation of why the images are being moved, what the uploader can do to help, and answers to common questions, would seem to be what is needed. With a general overtone of helpfulness and "please carry on contributing photos" (that is the really important bit). Kevin and Carl, can you carry on with this? If you want a template as a starting point, have a look at Template:Commons ok, which also needs to be made more user-friendly. Carcharoth 22:59, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
This media file has been selected to be
copied to the
Wikimedia Commons. The move will be performed by
BetacommandBot.
commons:Image:Village pump (policy)/Archive BO
Wikipedia is not a collection of photographs or media files and appropriately licensed media are more accessible to other Wikimedia projects if placed on Commons. |
After reading yet another "complaint" I turned the Wikipedia:Academic use article into Wikipedia:Academic disclaimer. Now I need consensus on the issue of adding the Wikipedia:Academic disclaimer article into the permanently protected Template:Disclaimer-header. Who is for, who is against?
Another issue is how should we line up the disclaimers in the Template:Disclaimer-header. In alphabetical order or in order of importance. If we chose the latter option how do we classify the dissclaimers? Mieciu K 10:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
What are the policies, if any, regarding editors who are children (i.e. under 16). I've run into a few recently, and have discovered just how frustrating it can be dealing with a kid who couldn't care less about policy. It made me wonder why children are even allowed to edit (certainly before 13, few children would be capable of producing quality content, I'd think). I was also rather disturbed to see that their user info pages contain so much personal info that anyone who wanted could very easily find them in real life. I seem to remember seeing that Wikipedia isn't beholden to the laws about collecting info on kids, so I'm curious if there are any policies about them at all? Collectonian 06:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
On September 30, I posted an RfC, Request for Comment: Featured Picture in the Culture Section of a Featured Country Article on the Talk:India page (see TOC there as well). Although the superficial content of RfC is a particular image, Image:Toda Hut.JPG, a Wikipedia Featured Picture, the underlying content concerns the topics pertinence, encyclopedicity, undue weight and notability for images. Specifically, with what precision can one apply these notions to images and what criteria does one use in that process? Are images for a certain page or section always to be chosen because they are "precisely" and "conventionally" representative, or can they be sometimes chosen because they point out a contrast or represent the unconventional? Among two candidate images, how does one decide which is more representative? Or, is that question a futile one if both images are reasonably representative? Similarly, assuming we could precisely define a representative image, could we nonetheless chose one image that is a little less representative, but graphically remarkable (like say a Wikipedia Featured Picture), over another that is a little more representative but graphically unremarkable? In my less than scientific survey of Britannica and Encarta (involving a few articles), I felt that Britannica seemed to be more conservative in its choice of images, i.e. preferring the more conventionally representative images, whereas Encarta at least some of the time either used images to provide contrast to the text or presented the unconventional viewpoint in the images as well as the text. It is such questions that are being explored in the RfC. Although we have received a few responses, most people have not addressed these questions. I would be very grateful if Village Pump readers could comment in the RfC. It is a bit on the long side, but your response will greatly help provide clarification. Regards, Fowler&fowler «Talk» 19:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that this website is meant to be an encyclopedia. As such, I believe that edits should not (except for legal reasons to ensure that this website be legal where it is hosted) change, add, or censor things to please people for some reason if it shall entail the sacrifice of encyclopedic value, because a report on truth should not be influenced by anything other than evidence and truth. Such reasons include social norms, potentially offensive content, controversial issues, and sensitive content, among other reasons. In addition, this should entail the fact that the burden of proof shall rest upon the those who want to edit it for one of those aforementioned reasons reasons to prove that it does not sacrifice any encyclopedic value, because the main priority should be about the encyclopedic value of Wikipedia. I use the phrase "encyclopedic value" to roughly mean that which keeps Wikipedia most informative, accurate, neutral, and proportionate attention to that which is important - in a nutshell, that which makes this encyclopedia a good reference for truth. I apologize if something similar is already there. However, I would like for this to be in a policy or guideline.-- A 19:40, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Ok, here's a conundrum: What should we do with administrators that repeatedly and knowingly act against written policy, like misapplying CSDs? I know some will say "it's just a small thing to speedy something that would (probably) have only sat there prodded for a week" and "WP:DRV can fix it" but what should we do with the administrators that just go and violate the same policy again even though we know they should know better? I am well aware of WP:IAR but most often they keep doing what they were doing even after being overturned several times (which - to me - violates the spirit of IAR). Are admins truly above us normal mortals without the "Bit" in this aspect. Are they permitted to do things with impunity, for which we would be warned and blocked for? Or what should they do with those administrators, their infractions might be minor, even if they sometimes cause surprisingly much wikidrama, but should they not be our rolemodels? So what should we do in those cases? Charon X/ talk 16:31, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
If specific details are so urgently needed, I will attempt to compile a list of them and either post it here or mail/post/give it to interested parties (to avoid said degeneration into a meta-debate). The admins in question are - as I firmly believe - far from applying the CSD malignly, they basically do what they believe in their best faith is right, and while this had been a hotly contested issue and a significant minority of users will most likely agree with their reasoning, the general consensus that was found points in the opposite direction, explicitly so. As it is 2.40 AM right now here and I'm rather tired, so I'll finish the compilation tomorrow. Charon X/ talk 00:43, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day seems to be controversial, but popular with some admins and thus a sacred cow. Is this an essay or a guideline? Reading through the talk pages leads me to believe that this has never had the support necessary to demonstrate consensus. Most recently it has been re-tagged as a guideline without broad support, but today’s effort has both established the guideline tag and had the page protected. Please join the discussion. -- Kevin Murray 08:03, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi all, per a recent discussion on ANI of a threat posted in an article, perhaps it would be useful to append a quick and easy template to the initial ANI emergency report (e.g., any threat of physical harm) to ensure coordination and minimize drama, people could sign on the lines and ensure that every step of the action is reported.
Issue described here
I agree that we should not be taking such threats lightly. Even if 99.9999% of these threats are juvenile vandalism, the one time in a million that it's not might result in deaths that could have been prevented, not to mention a major PR nightmare for Wikipedia. Can't you just see the bottom-ticker on
Fox News Channel now? "Wikipedia administrators dismissed killer's violent online threats as joke."
I also agree with FayssalF and others, however, that any response should be coordinated by the Foundation directly. I have left a
message for
User:Mikegodwin, the Foundation's general counsel, asking for his thoughts on the matter. --
Satori Son 13:20, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Claims made in infoboxes are by nature unattributed and lack nuance. How does the NPOV standard apply? Is a claim made in an infobox ipso facto a "claim of consensus"? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view#Infobox policy. -- BlueMoonlet 21:08, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
I recently took a picture of the W. H. Sammis Power Plant, including the road tunnel underneath it. Do I need to find some sort of other source for noting that the tunnel exists, since the tunnel appears in a picture? Nyttend 20:21, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Is it always "wikistalking" to follow the contribs of a user you disagree with? What is the standard? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Harassment#Wikistalking clarification. -- BlueMoonlet 21:08, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Hey all,
After a discussion with
User:Jc37, I've changed the desciption for
Category:IP addresses used for vandalism to read that all IPs being used for blatant vandalism should be added to the category, for referencing when dealing with future edits by these IPs. I am currently defining "blatant vandal" as an IP that has received at least a level 2 vandalism warning. However, the description also stipulates that shared IP addresses, because of their inconsistent nature being controlled by multiple people, should not be added, as it might cause bias against them and the loss of good faith, constructive edits. I would like to get some community input into making this an official policy to keep better track of our unregistered voters. Please add your opinion over at
Wikipedia talk:Vandalism#Category:IP addresses used for vandalism. Thanks!
Glass
Cobra 03:58, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
A while ago, the many many "<nationality> Freemasons" article cats were deleted. I wholly agree that they were excessive, and it was just one user who created them. However, upon looking at the main category ( Category:Freemasonry), there's a lot of folks in there simply because they are Freemasons and happen to have articles because they're famous for other things. I think in this case it's valid to create a new "Freemasons" subcat, but only as long as it isn't broken down further. However, I don't know whether I can just go ahead and remake it per BOLD, or if it's a DRV issue, but those policies seem to apply mainly to articles. Any ideas or precedents regarding going one way or the other? MSJapan 02:42, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
This this is becoming a new line of argument with some editors at WT:SPOILER, I've initiated a discussion about whether section titles are a form of original research at WT:NOR#Section Titles are Original Research?). Comments are welcome. -- Farix ( Talk) 18:23, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I encourage Wikipedians who watch this page to comment about a new proposal at Wikipedia talk:Fringe theories#Appeal to particular attribution. Thanks ScienceApologist 17:33, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 October 14#New Category:Wikipedia essays subcategory, Category:WikiProject essays may be of interest to people here. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:51, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
The administration in Wikipedia has exceeded its bounds in being reasonably patient with its new members, as well as treating long-term members with a sufficient amount of respect. New accounts are banned indefinitely for trivial reasons, and long term members are shut down because they fall back on an element of human nature -- getting upset. This problem compounds itself when fellow members of the community raise attention to such issues only to have a near 50% 50% agreement ratio based on what was the right course of action to take against a certain member. Usually this number is lopsided in the support section since it seems we are more adept to accepting other admin's actions in good faith, even though they showed scant the same in their own banning process. I am not going to summon any specific examples, neither do I have any other agenda in bringing this to attention except for that reason alone; that we might reflect a little more on an issue with our fellow members, new and old, and realize that every case is unique as the person themselves. Whether you've banned 1 person or 100's, there is no excuse to the harsh bans that occur on a daily basis. Reasons such as, "Is this person going to help Wikipedia or not" is shallow reasoning alone to shut someone out. I could testify that we would have 100's of extra productive, and helpful contributors granted our patience with each individual person were greater. "Assume Good Faith" reaches a greater extent than what has been the norm. Please reflect on this and use your judgement. EverybodyLovesPie 05:12, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Some very good points by EverybodyLovesPie and Dan T. -- Ned Scott 23:25, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Trivia is what Wikipedia does best. This debate has made this forum a little top heavy. Please do not archive this redirect while the topic is live. LessHeard vanU 15:31, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
I have been thinking about uploading a photo to Wikipedia. The problem is that I don't want to give up my ownership rights to the photo as I worked hard to take it. However I might consider uploading a reduced quality version. My question is, If I resized a photo, uploaded the smaller version to Wikipedia and the larger version to my website, would I be giving up my copyright for only the smaller version or all version? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.54.200.212 ( talk) 03:08, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Can a search engine test establish notability on itself? Is a Google hit count enough? I would say that this cannot be seen apart from other WP policies and guidelines, especially WP:V and WP:RS. Intangible2.0 03:07, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I have noted in a very large range of articles that there appears to be an almost offensive attitude by many american contributors when writing about issues which affect the whole of the english speaking community or whole of the world. What I mean can be summariesd in a number of examples:
1) International standards Vs regional ones.
On an number of pages I have noted that references are made to american standards such as the ASTM or ANSI without specifying what the standard is or what country it originates from, in some cases completely failing to mention the existance of other countries standards, and especially when there is a divergant ISO standard. (The USA often seems to feel no need to adhere to ISO standards, even when they contribute strongly to such standards).
One recient example of this was on an article on sound insulation created by (I assume) an american contributor, which provided a clear and detailed article on the american stnadards for design and measurement of this are, but completely failed to mention that the standards referenced are specific to the USA, and differ in significant ways from the ISO standards followed by much of the rest of the world). I created a draft article on the ISO and UK approach to this topic, and cross referenced it to the original articel. I sublequently found that my cross-references and notes about "in the USA" had been removed from the original artical. (a subsequent edit was left in place)
2) Reference to national and international organisations
Today I was reading articles on Ulcers and Gangerene, and I noticed that there were references to the Center for Desease Control (CDC). Once again this is the name of a major American (US) establishment, but the article failed to state wheather it was refereing to this organisation or to the english language name of another countries organisation (reference was made to Austrialian medical research projects), or possibly to a WHO organisation.
These are just two examples.
I would ask / propose that anyone contributing to an article should ensure that unless it is clearly intended to be country specific that references to standards and organisations should be clearly identified indicating what country or organisiation they are refering to.
Just some food for thought
Anruari 14:15, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Do we have any guideline or policy that says anything about mirrors which use Wikipedia content without being compliant with the GFDL? If an external site is using information from Wikipedia, obviously it can't be reliable, but if they have additional information, is it appropriate to link to it?
I'm asking this after investigating some copyvio issues at John S. McCain, Sr.. This article was originally taken from a pd usgov website. Additions were made by Wikipedia editors over the course of a few years. In late 2006, http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ seems to have copied our article and added it to an existing page on their website, without complying with the GFDL. Our article was later mistakenly deleted as a copyright violation, but I restored the deleted revisions today. As it turns out, arlingtoncemetery.net is used as an external link or a source on quite a lot of pages. The site has some content that may be original, and they've got some pretty pictures, but as stated above, they also have at least once copied from Wikipedia without attribution. Should we be linking to this site at all? --- RockMFR 22:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
We should not blacklist sites which have pages that violate copyright. The blacklist is for spam, and in exceptionally rare cases, harassment. Think of the implications if we blocked sites with problems. Discussing those sites would be a chore. 1of3 01:09, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Recently, someone did this to WP:NPOV. Someone reverted it, of course, but the vandalism is still in the history. Ironically, this historical edit can now still be used for Cyber-bullying. Even though the page was restored, the offending party still can link to the diff and e-mail it to someone as an attack, saying: "See! Even Wikipedia agrees with me! You suck nyaa-nyaa (so on and so forth)."
Of course, there is a function to totally obliterate edits from an article history, but that seems to be used in only rather extreme cases. What (if any) is the consensus viewpoint on dealing with not-so-extreme cases where vandalism remains in the edit history, potentially satisfying the objectives of the vandal through edit-history links? dr.ef.tymac 21:22, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Quick thoughts - "yesno no". I'm not sure that this is a primary reason for modifying page handling. But if it can be done without degradation to the project, then it's harmless and courteous. The main problem I see is this:
According to policy and practice, the difference between editors and administrators is little except tool access. Editors are expected to be free to undertake dispute resolution, and related matters, every bit as much as anyone else, and on equal footing. A proposal like this elevates administrators, because it would mean that a regular user contemplating a dispute resolution case and collating evidence would be unable to see precisely those edits they might most need to. It would greatly impede non-administrators' ability to undertake dispute resolution, if the diffs they needed were selectively likely to be removed from their sight. That to me is a terminal problem. A better solution would be to change the header for old pages, if this is a concern. FT2 ( Talk | email) 09:57, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
The project is periodically hit with "Real life emergency" type panic-button incidents (like people saying "I'm going to commit suicide") where a bunch of people call police and stress out about what's almost certainly a troll. The most recent example that I'm aware of is this one today on AN/I.
I'd like to propose a formalized handling of these situations, and I know this will probably not be popular with some folks, but I hope this will spark some conversation that will allow us to be proactive instead of reactive.
Erase and block. - I propose that anytime someone posts some sort of thing like this (suicide threats, etc) that we treat it like a personal threat. Erase it, block the user indef (it's not infinite, but it forces them to use an unblock request to explain themselves) and deny them the soap box.
As far as I know there hasn't been a single non-trolling example of this so far. The preponderance of evidence indicates that this is a button that manipulative people can use to get attention on Wikipedia with no regard to the deep anguish and stress this causes their victim. A poster in the thread above mentioned that this has been a "very stressful day" because of this nonsense. By allowing these to stay, we're hurting the people who care and get sucked into these mind games.
We all want to be the person who saved Kitty Genovese, but instead, the people who take those posts seriously and act on them are becoming victims of emotionally manipulative narcissists.
Finally, none of us are qualified to determine the difference between real and fake threats, the same way we aren't qualified to determine legit legal threats. To protect ourselves and the well meaning editors who get caught up in these imbroglios, let's agree on straight forward way of handling all such situations that doesn't require special knowledge.
Regards,
CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 23:43, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not so sure that either formal policy is a good idea. On the one hand, we don't want to create a duty where none exists. On the other hand, we don't want to tie the hands of independent editors that want to intervene. - Chunky Rice 00:11, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Revert and ignore sounds good to me. Friday (talk) 01:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Shouldn't the procedure for handling a death threat and a suicide threat be pretty much the same? Not because both involve threat of death, but because both are serious threats that should be passed to the proper authorities, and the people making them should be blocked (per the general principle of "don't cause disruption by issuing threats"). Of course, it depends on whether you see such things as manipulative threats, or a plea for help. Carcharoth 01:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
The first step to dealing with these problems should be to request an urgent CheckUser. This gives information which would be essential in any further action, and also ensures that no editor is acting alone. Beyond that, I'm not sure that we can have any "one-size-fits-all" protocol. The Office should be informed, yes, but this can be done in many ways. Similarly for the Police: it doesn't have to be the Foundation which informs them directly, it could be an ISP or a Chapter member or a trusted indiviual in that jurisdiction (not every WP user lives in Florida!) Physchim62 (talk) 15:59, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
(outdent)There is a relevant essay Wikipedia:Potentially Suicidal Users that follows similar logic to my recommendations (although it's not a policy or guideline), and WP:SUICIDE redirects there now too. ~ Eliz 81 (C) 02:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
My mind has just registered that ALL many Québec place names are unapproved translations. I have double checked with government sites "
Office québécois de la langue française", and the
Commission de la toponymie du Québec
[3] and the Government of Québec has a very clear policy on name translations, it is not done (except for name places overlapping borders, where use of actual French name may be accompanied by an English equivalent. This is not a new policy.
How is it then that all the place names got translated? To be sure, I checked on France's place names, no problem there, all proper names have been kept in French. English name places have not been translated to French Salton Sea. I can't even begin to imagine why this has come to be... Some of you may think, hmm, bilingual Canada... but names places and bilingualism status are provincial jurisdictions and not federal. Québec is officially French only.
I haven't brought this up over there on those pages as debate is already heated enough with Nation issues, and this is completely aside. I'm certain no Wikipedia policy may override local governments... Certainly there is some model, banner, tag, request page, where this issue can be handled outside of individual pages. Yours truly, Tracy-- Tallard 08:10, 7 October 2007 (UTC)(-- Tallard 7 octobre 2007 à 06:04 (CEST))
PS, If this debate has already taken place, and I imagine it may have many years ago, please direct me to the archive, that would be a start to correct this huge mistake.
What I suggest, (hopefully some kind of Bot or template) is a massive redirect campaign, which would affect approximately 90% a great deal of Québec name places (non border), so users entering whatever informal translated form they choose to use will be redirect to the properly named place. In France, Brussels and Switzerland (as far as I've come) even accents are preserved, exception being a very few major cities such as Geneva.--
Tallard 09:30, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia policy can 'overrule' any local law it wants; it is subject only to the laws of the United States of America and the state of Florida. Quebec has no jurisdiction. -- Golbez 10:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Tallard, I am an Italian, but when I read and edit the English-language Wikipedia I accept that it is written in English, to the point that Italy is not called "Italia", Rome is not called "Roma", Naples is not called "Napoli" and so on. As I see it, it is not a question of linguistic policy or overriding anything: it is just that Italian-speking people say "Roma" and "mela", while English-speking people say "Rome" and "apple". Or am I missing something? Happy editing, Goochelaar 10:43, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Denise Anthony, Sean Smith, and Tim Williamson's Explaining quality in internet collective goods: zealots and good Samaritans in the case of Wikipedia, page 18: "To deal with the negative impact of this group of contributors Wikipedia has instituted a policy that requires contributors to register after some number of anonymous contributions."
I found this after a post on Slashdot which also linked to a Dartmouth press release: "According to Anthony, Wikipedia now requires that anonymous contributors who make numerous edits must register."
I've never heard of this requirement, and WP:REG and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ#Do I have to register to edit pages? says the opposite. Is this a policy in another language Wikipedia? -- Jeandré, 2007-10-18 t11:54z
In the revisions of 11:33, 11 October 2007 for the Aswan Dam page ( history), two links to images are removed (the images themselves have not been deleted), with the explanation:
What is the (English) Wikipedia policy on images that may be illegal for non-copyright reasons in various jurisdictions?
Wikipedia:Image use policy and Wikipedia:List of policies#Legal and copyright only discuss copyright (and libel), and do not address this issue, and I can't find other policies.
Given that the English Wikipedia servers are located in the US, and that some jurisdictions have very restrictive laws (such as "no photographs of people"), I assume that Wikipedia follows US law.
Proposed resolution:
If a photographer wants to risk prosecution in Egypt by taking pictures of the dam while in Egypt, and by broadcasting this fact by posting those pictures publicly on the internet, that's their business and their risk. Whether Egypt has a law further forbidding the possession or distribution of said pictures is of course completely irrelevant to anyone not actually in Egypt. Postdlf 23:24, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
User:Tgm1024 brings up an interesting point on Talk:Ejaculation. They wish to remove the video of a person ejaculating on the grounds that it is original research, and that there is no verifiable source that shows that it's an "average" or "normal" act of ejaculation. My objection to this is that we have, as far as I can tell, no policy that mandates this across the whole of Wikipedia, and attempting to formulate one would lead to, let us say, no pictures on Sheep which were taken by ordinary users and not veterinarians or biologists. Is there a policy? Should there be a policy? What is a good way to proceed? The Wednesday Island 22:36, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I'm a new wikipedian, and I'm curious if it's ok to post original research on ones userpage. I currently have started a section with some my mathematical work on it. I am aware of the GFDL and I am completely ok with what it entails in regards to my work. A math-wiki 05:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
I've come across a couple of instances recently where pages appear to exist purely for the purpose of providing warnings to consumers etc about questionable business practices. Examples would include the now deleted "Alex Finch" and "Ayman Ahmed El-Difrawi" who were linked to Lou Pearlman. These pages often attract edit wars, which causes me to notice them through browsing recent changes.
I've now identified four similar articles, all about medical schools, all of which seem to focus on the lack of accreditation of qualifications granted by those schools, and in such a way that in all four cases I suspect that the articles concerned are basically attack pages. There is a possibility that in some cases the articles were originally intended as an advertisement of the "school" concerned, and there are often two factions attempting to edit each page, one of which insists that it is a bona fide medical school in good standing, the other insisting that it is a diploma mill. It appears that in such cases the truth may be somewhere between these viewpoints, although I'm not really qualified to assess the standing of such institutions myself.
However, it seems to me that there's no clear policy on such issues, and whilst I'm tempted to AfD all 4 articles as being non notable and inappropriate, I feel that some form of policy on the issue of being a consumer watchdog needs to be formulated. Alerting consumers to potential fraud is of course a praiseworthy objective, but I don't think it's the purpose of Wikipedia, and I don't think that Wikipedia should allow itself to be used for that purpose. Creating or using an article about an organisation, product or person as a means of warning that that person, organisation or product may involve some form of misrepresentation or fraud is as inappropriate to Wikipedia as creating or using such an article as an advertisement for some sort of goods or services.
The four articles are St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine, St Matthews University, University of Health Sciences Antigua, and Caribbean Medical University. I can't see any real assertion of notability on any of these pages either. DMcMPO11AAUK/ Talk/ Contribs 09:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
In responding to a WP:3O, I've encountered a question of interpretation of the section on foreign language sources. The discussion is at Talk:Sejny#Third opinion. Abbreviated, it boils down to whether or not the call for "clear citation" means quoting the original in its base language and providing the translation there or simply full citation. (See footnote #1 on this version of the article to see the translation interpretation implemented, if what I mean is not clear.) I'm inclined to the latter view, but the editor in question is very anxious to do what policy requires so I told him I would seek wider opinion. I first asked the question at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability, but not having received an answer for half a day (the one response is another editor involved at the relevant conversation and unrelated to the topic) left a note there saying I'd ask here. -- Moonriddengirl 11:55, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
We of the Military history WikiProject have been planning to tag our style guide as part of the official MoS. In light of this, we would like to invite community comments regarding this; if you have any opinion, suggestions, and so forth, please drop by WT:MILHIST#MOS. Thanks! Kirill 20:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Let me start this off with a quick observation, one that I'm sure I'm not alone in noticing. It seems to me that the featured article of the day is targeted by a major amount of vandalism every day, especially by IPs. It's my thinking, then, that it might be useful to have a policy of semi-protection on each day's particular featured article. Now, I'm not sure if this has been discussed previously. However, in any case, I was thinking about doing a small study of the featured articles of the past few months, possibly further back, to prove that the vast majority of edits to featured articles on a particular day are vandalism. Would this be worth doing, or would Wikipedians be against a proposal like this? Glass Cobra ( Review) 21:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Why can't mathematical symbols be linked to their relevant pages? Currently there is a "did you know" article which consists purely of an equation. It has something to do with eigenvalues and matrices. I have an interest in that because I'm doing some openGL programming, but the article might as well be written in another language since I can't click on any of the symbols to educate myself about them. There's even one I recognise (equivalent to a For loop) but I can't tell you its name because I can't click on it and find out. I hate it when I encounter one of these impenetrable pages that can tell me nothing (unless I guess at where I have to look for background information, which is a painfully slow process). Fix this oversight so I can learn to speak algebra. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.131.5.200 ( talk) 23:23, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I know your pain, it's taken me considerable time to get even a vague understanding of set theory and stuff like that. I think your proposal is a very good idea. I think it would be best implimented if there was a mathematical notation's page that contained all the symbols used in mathematics and gave a through description of the meaning and use of it. A math-wiki 05:06, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) advises editors to:
“ | Pre-emptively disambiguate the names of monarchs, of modern countries in the format "{Monarch's first name and ordinal} of {Country}". Examples: Edward I of England; Alfonso XII of Spain; Henry I of France. | ” |
This runs counter to our basic naming conventions, namely "use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things". I've seen no argument as to why this special style is necessary, and it produces silliness such as Victoria of the United Kingdom instead of Queen Victoria, William I, German Emperor instead of Kaiser Wilhelm I, Mary I of Scotland instead of Mary, Queen of Scots, and so on. Where there is no "common name", using this system might be reasonable, but the way it is enforced right now defies common sense. Separately, it disregards our normal style of disambiguation; even John (King of England) is a person I can more readily identify than John of England, which sounds like some kind of loo.-- Father Goose 21:23, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
There has been substantial disruptive editing at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/latest. Although the page says in bold that editors may remove themselves from the list and should not be reverted, certain editors are in fact reverting on the grounds that editors don't own their contributions and have no right to ask to left off the ranked list, and that a ranked list is useless unless everyone is listed. I have filed an RFC requesting community input on whether on editors should be allowed to remove their names from the list. Thatcher131 16:32, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Do the Wikipedia Talk page guidelines about preserving chronological order in Talk page topics also apply to the individual posts within that topic (or section)? If not, then is there some other Wikipedia guideline for this? I find that when too many people break the chronological order, the posts become very confusing to interpret. Am I the only one bothered by this? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 21:36, 18 October 2007 (UTC) Updated: Fowler&fowler «Talk» 02:03, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
One of our choices, if the material we have written, doesn't belong on the wikipedia is to take it to other wikis.
I visited the citizendium after reading about it on the The Times. Larry Sanger, a co-founder of the wikipedia is one of the founders of this project. Third time the charm?
Now everything we submit we submit underl the {{ gfdl}} -- which is why the wikipedia has so many mirrors.
If I understand it properly the citizendium's interpretation of the {{ gfdl}} is that once an editor makes a change to an article, it stops feeding readers the wikipedia's copy, and starts feeding the version modified by the citizendium editor. If I understand it correctly, the article's edit history on the citizendium includes its edit history here on the wikipedia. If I understand it correctly they regard this as necessary in order to honor {{ gfdl}} liscenses of the original contributors.
So, would the citizendium be in breach of original contributors liscenses if the wikipedia community decides to delete an article, after a citizendium editor has forked a version there? Its historry mechanism will no longer be able to show the individual contributions of the individual editors.
Why am I even considering defecting from the wikipedia? Afd. In my experience the deletion fora are the weakest aspects of the wikipedia, because breaches of civility are so routine there.. The citizendium plans to replace {{ afd}}, and our other deletion fora, with some other processes.
Well, maybe that is a problem to be discussed at the citizendium's village pump. But just how much cooperation should the wikipedia provide to competing wikis?
Now, if an article I have been a big contributor to gets deleted, I am still the original copyright holder of my contributions to that article. It seems to me that there should be no liscense problem with me submitting material I contributed to the wikipedia to another wiki. And I know I was the only contributor to the deleted article, there should be no liscense problem with accessing my text from the google cache. But, if someone else had made even a single spelling correction, then I can no longer use the google cache version, because the other contributors have their own rights under the GFDL, which include they have to be credited -- have I got that right?
If I was the only defector, or one of only a handful, of defectors, and defectors only wanted to copy the full edit history of a handful of articles there might be administrators willing to help on an ad-hoc basis. But, if there are going to be a lot of defectors that would obviously be insufficient.
I have read that some commercial wikis have a tool that will automatically build an archive, that allows a customer to pack up an article, and its edit history, or all the articles on a list of articles, and their edit history, so that the customer can carry it waway, and automatically unpack it into another wiki that uses the same software. If the wikipedia had access to this kind of tool, should it be made available to defectors? Is this a service defectors, or other wikis, should have to pay?
What about all those mirrors of the wikipedia? Do they have give readers access to the edit history so they too can honour the original contributors rights under the GFDL?
Cheers! Geo Swan 17:46, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
I was asked to write a note about my first experience on the citizendium.
The details are in my note. I'll mention here though that my memory that the citizendium served wikipedia pages, until someone edited one, and kept the wikipedia edit history available, after forking off a new version on the citizendium was completely incorrect.
I am sure there is another wiki that does this. But it is not the citizendium.
Cheers! Geo Swan 11:45, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I've come across a couple of articles that are titled in Old Norse. My understanding is that articles should be under the most common or pertinent English spelling. Non-English names should redirect to the English version. Is this correct? This is particularly an issue here where the names uses a non-English alphabet. An example would be Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson where the note at the top of the article currently refers instead to the anglicization in the opening rather than the reverse. Again, my understanding is because this is the English Wikipedia, articles should be organized under English with other forms/languages being mentioned/included at the top of the article. Can someone point me at policy/guidelines on this? I've probably just missed something obvious... Pig man 16:57, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Very occasionally, when I have made a change to an article to bring it into line with WP:MOS, I have been challenged by another editor who claims that a certain project does things differently. I am not sure how best to reply to such situations.
It seems to me that Wikipedia should be cohesive and local guidelines should only resolve matters not already covered by top-level guides. If separate projects are to have their own special-case exceptions to guidelines should they not first get a consensus for such an inconsistency here?
Thoughts? Gaius Cornelius 21:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
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I recently joined with the intention of adding our non-profit agency. Making note of the neutral writing requirement, I assumed I would write a brief article outlining our mission statement and history of the agency. I don't intend to use it as an advertisement; I just thought it would be useful for people looking for information about the agency. I also don't want to create a conflict of interest issue. I either need advice on how and what would be appropriate to post or offers of feedback on the article after it's written to gauge appropriateness.
Thanks,
VanishedChildren'sAlliance 22:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)VanishedChildren'Alliance 10/03/07
If a newspaper takes down an article upon the subject's request, is it a copyright violation to link to the Google cache of that article? I don't see how it could be, unless the original article was itself a copyright violation, but I'd like a second (or more) opinion(s). Thanks, Mike R 17:55, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
when someone placed an image warning template on a user's talkpage and then this user removed it, without adhering to the message and disregarding the warning itself, is there any warning template or policy to warn this user about his actions? †Bloodpack† 22:53, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Please see my question here about why we are exposing the IP addresses of users that haven't even been directly blocked, when they are un-autoblocked. 1of3 19:04, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps I'm missing something. I can't seem to find any guidelines or policy on the inclusion of geographical features, highways, small towns and the like. I've tended to assume these are almost all notable in one way or another but I'm starting to doubt this perspective.
There is a constant influx of articles on towns of small size. Does every town and neighborhood deserve an article? Verification is of course easy with an atlas but that's my point. If Wikipedia is not a directory, is there a corollary of Wikipedia is not an atlas? Merely having Reliable Sources for a subject doesn't necessarily make it notable.
I admit up front I have strong biases for defining edges and limits for Wikipedia's content. I don't think I'm being unreasonable to expect an encyclopedia to have criteria for inclusion and exclusion, to not include every town in the world just because it exists. Well, my attitude assumes Wikipedia isn't an atlas. If it is, then I'll go on my merry way without questioning the basic inclusion of these features and focus instead on other issues. I really want to hear some discussion on this. Pig man 16:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I refer here to WP guidelines and policies concerning punishment, blocking, banning, censorship, verifiability, with un-written reference to assumption of good faith rules, arbitration life-sentencing and inability of the project to divide itself into a religious and a secular sphere.
It was an un-called for relief being punished for 18 months, and the only result was that the punishment has been of the project by the project. As ever, I only refer to facts that can be verified, and this isn't the time nor place and I'll just say that I have done a 'recce' and noted the plethora of articles which either still labour under mistruth or whose mistruth has profited from the very long punishment. (Doubtless a clever-dick will speed in and try and curry favour by maligning me, despite the project's guidelines, so that'll come as no surprise. i don't plan on responding to such..) My point here is solely that the project has only succeeded in punishing itself, whilst I have gained considerable free time to clarify the truth. Just as it always was, my entry is out of duty, to 'benefit society' (a legal concept). The persecutions of me will be no more justified ahead than in the past and the truth alone necessitates my personal effort. For enquiring minds I shall however endeavour to reveal something of relevant interest to today. The scope of my corrections before dwelt upon the 7 week period between 30 January 1933 and 23 March 1933 (the particular period of the 'Common-Plan' or conspiracy as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunals) whereas now it is possible for me to see the relevant religious element in this period as being descendant of a continuum to, in the latest, 800 AD. The illegal re-invention, in that year, of what we could call a christian 'Caliphate' bears directly forwards in spirit, philosophy and politics through to that 23 March 1933. I will shoulder the burden- in so far as denialists' hitherto non-existant respect for the project's laws determine- of supplying the most interesting textual verifications, in the sure understanding that by alerting the world through the project to this continuum I shall even further incur the odium of those for whom this 'caliphate' was, since 800 AD, their chief project. This is to say that I shall supply texts concerning historical events such that these will benefit disparate articles. The only other good news is that, as I am exceedingly interested in the entire 'caliphate', seeing it as exemplar towards our superscension of its co-terminal or slightly preceding twin and parallel absolutist concept, that the Wikipedia project's plethora of 'Common-Plan' flaws and denialism, since they have already been verified by me, become solely repetitious details for correction. Anyone who is concerned by the fact that I aslo persecuted and punished by a 'life-long' ban from 'catholicism' articles, might ask themselves in the first instance why a certain Ludwig Kaas - who's action is termed 'decisive' for the empowerment of Adolf Hitler, at Hitler's article, whether Kaas there should better be recognised as Monsignor Ludwig Kaas, or, whether the 'monsignor' Kaas article is or is not a 'catholic article'? If it is not, then it is not closed to me. If it is closed to me for the period of my life on earth (or the life of Wikipedia) then, logically, Ludwig Kaas is a 'catholic figure' and his status as Monsignor warrants immediate recognition as such at the Hitler article, and, that recognition also absolutely proves the point of contention verified by me through User:Bengalski from the eminent ecumenical historian, the late Klaus Scholder, that at the least Kaas is accused by this eminence as acting secretly upon the instructions of his religious mentor, (ie. boss) the future Pope Pius XII. Such an honest person would also be keen to see the allowance of full and true verification concerning the exact known elements of the final act of the Common-plan, which is to say, how it was that Kaas actually amassed the unitary vote of the Party he led, and gave this to Hitler in the rigged parliament against his own agreement with a previous chancellor in his party whose retention of his 'fraction' may have changed the entire course of mid and consquent 20C history, because it verifiably wasn't as Wikipedia anywhere reveals. Please don't call me, EffK 22:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
This is spawned from a discussion at WP:NOR.
There appears to be no policy or style guide on what the target reading age should be for Wikipedia articles. If there is, I haven't spotted it.
I am a great believer in Plain English (though not a great writer in it). However complex a subject should be, there should not be any need for any unnecessary complexity in the language. It is very tempting to write academic articles in academic prose, when we should recall that this is supposed to be an encyclopaedia for everyone. Often people think that clever English makes a piece seem more credible. I think that a really good piece of editing can bring the reading age down, and still keep the same content.
I've run a few random pages through a readability test (cut and paste of plain text to avoid distortions of links etc) and I have seen that pages appear to come out at requiring graduate level comprehension and low readabilities. I would suggest that biographies and descriptions of places that came up should not require high reading skills, I might forgive more esoteric scientific articles. Harry Potter did not fair well (14 years of education required for a children's book subject).
W3c guidelines support this approach.
Do you think that this is a worthwhile issue to pursue? Spenny 15:39, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I think the clarity of an article often depends most on how the information is organized and whether necessary context is given. "Big words" are less confusing than missing or disordered premises, which X42bn6 alludes to above in raising the idea of subtopic relationships. It's largely a matter of remembering to set forth the basics before you get into the details, which is often difficult to do because the obvious facts that a completely unversed reader needs to understand the topic are usually invisible or uninteresting to someone who would presume to write about it. Many articles have really lousy introductory paragraphs because of this. Postdlf 20:50, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I've opened a disscussion on the next generation of our license at Wikipedia:GSFDL comments from as many as posible are requested. Geni 02:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Anyone who cares to look over, comment upon and expand (or contract, per comment received) Wikipedia:In Wikipedia, X is an Article, not Evil is welcome to do so. LessHeard vanU 20:48, 4 October 2007 (UTC) LessHeard vanU 21:03, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Some editors want to delete part of Wikipedia:No personal attacks. The policy is the subject of a current ArbCom case, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Attack sites. I have initiated an RfC on the talk page to gain community input on the proposed policy change: Wikipedia talk:No personal attacks#RFC: External links to harassment. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:25, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
A request for comment for the requests for adminship process. All comments are welcome at the page. Ryan Postlethwaite 17:35, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
The Right to Vanish is a respected and well established policy on Wikimedia projects. Recently there have been some concerns over abuses, or questions about its use, scope, and wording. The page wording has not been updated, clarified and sharpened by vigorous discussion, as might have been the case if it were on en: rather than a soft redirect.
Without being certain what exact wording is best, I'd like to propose a significant and (hopefully) non-controversial rewrite of this page to bring it closer to a more current standard of style, specificity and clarity. See draft at: m:Talk:Right to vanish#Discussion of RtV implementation and wording, compared to current version.
FT2 ( Talk | email) 10:26, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I've noticed that some users are in the habit of copying entire mainspace pages to their sandbox for editing. The problem is that these sandbox pages then get listed in the mainspace in all the categories that the original page contained, because the categories are copied too. Sometimes these sandbox pages end up being maintained for months, even years.
This not only messes up the mainspace with sandbox entries which simply don't belong there, but it can also potentially be a method by which users can create alternative articles or POV forks by stealth. I propose therefore that a statement be included, possibly on the Wikipedia:About the Sandbox page or some relevant policy page, prohibiting or at least discouraging the use of categories on sandbox pages. Gatoclass 22:14, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
A humble suggestion follows. Motorrad-67 21:59, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
OK, Betacommand has indicated here that he would be willing to add this functionality, which I will call "being nice to the uploaders", to the bot that transfers free images from Wikipedia to Commons. He needs someone to write the "this is what is happenning" template, though, and I don't have time. Kevin Murray and CBM (Carl), you have both supported the idea of such a template. Would either or both of you have time to write something? I did a brief look for an explanation, and the bot page ( User:Betacommand/Commons), the bot request approval ( Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BetacommandBot Task 7) and Wikipedia:Commons are the best links I've found so far. A brief explanation of why the images are being moved, what the uploader can do to help, and answers to common questions, would seem to be what is needed. With a general overtone of helpfulness and "please carry on contributing photos" (that is the really important bit). Kevin and Carl, can you carry on with this? If you want a template as a starting point, have a look at Template:Commons ok, which also needs to be made more user-friendly. Carcharoth 22:59, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
This media file has been selected to be
copied to the
Wikimedia Commons. The move will be performed by
BetacommandBot.
commons:Image:Village pump (policy)/Archive BO
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After reading yet another "complaint" I turned the Wikipedia:Academic use article into Wikipedia:Academic disclaimer. Now I need consensus on the issue of adding the Wikipedia:Academic disclaimer article into the permanently protected Template:Disclaimer-header. Who is for, who is against?
Another issue is how should we line up the disclaimers in the Template:Disclaimer-header. In alphabetical order or in order of importance. If we chose the latter option how do we classify the dissclaimers? Mieciu K 10:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
What are the policies, if any, regarding editors who are children (i.e. under 16). I've run into a few recently, and have discovered just how frustrating it can be dealing with a kid who couldn't care less about policy. It made me wonder why children are even allowed to edit (certainly before 13, few children would be capable of producing quality content, I'd think). I was also rather disturbed to see that their user info pages contain so much personal info that anyone who wanted could very easily find them in real life. I seem to remember seeing that Wikipedia isn't beholden to the laws about collecting info on kids, so I'm curious if there are any policies about them at all? Collectonian 06:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
On September 30, I posted an RfC, Request for Comment: Featured Picture in the Culture Section of a Featured Country Article on the Talk:India page (see TOC there as well). Although the superficial content of RfC is a particular image, Image:Toda Hut.JPG, a Wikipedia Featured Picture, the underlying content concerns the topics pertinence, encyclopedicity, undue weight and notability for images. Specifically, with what precision can one apply these notions to images and what criteria does one use in that process? Are images for a certain page or section always to be chosen because they are "precisely" and "conventionally" representative, or can they be sometimes chosen because they point out a contrast or represent the unconventional? Among two candidate images, how does one decide which is more representative? Or, is that question a futile one if both images are reasonably representative? Similarly, assuming we could precisely define a representative image, could we nonetheless chose one image that is a little less representative, but graphically remarkable (like say a Wikipedia Featured Picture), over another that is a little more representative but graphically unremarkable? In my less than scientific survey of Britannica and Encarta (involving a few articles), I felt that Britannica seemed to be more conservative in its choice of images, i.e. preferring the more conventionally representative images, whereas Encarta at least some of the time either used images to provide contrast to the text or presented the unconventional viewpoint in the images as well as the text. It is such questions that are being explored in the RfC. Although we have received a few responses, most people have not addressed these questions. I would be very grateful if Village Pump readers could comment in the RfC. It is a bit on the long side, but your response will greatly help provide clarification. Regards, Fowler&fowler «Talk» 19:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that this website is meant to be an encyclopedia. As such, I believe that edits should not (except for legal reasons to ensure that this website be legal where it is hosted) change, add, or censor things to please people for some reason if it shall entail the sacrifice of encyclopedic value, because a report on truth should not be influenced by anything other than evidence and truth. Such reasons include social norms, potentially offensive content, controversial issues, and sensitive content, among other reasons. In addition, this should entail the fact that the burden of proof shall rest upon the those who want to edit it for one of those aforementioned reasons reasons to prove that it does not sacrifice any encyclopedic value, because the main priority should be about the encyclopedic value of Wikipedia. I use the phrase "encyclopedic value" to roughly mean that which keeps Wikipedia most informative, accurate, neutral, and proportionate attention to that which is important - in a nutshell, that which makes this encyclopedia a good reference for truth. I apologize if something similar is already there. However, I would like for this to be in a policy or guideline.-- A 19:40, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Ok, here's a conundrum: What should we do with administrators that repeatedly and knowingly act against written policy, like misapplying CSDs? I know some will say "it's just a small thing to speedy something that would (probably) have only sat there prodded for a week" and "WP:DRV can fix it" but what should we do with the administrators that just go and violate the same policy again even though we know they should know better? I am well aware of WP:IAR but most often they keep doing what they were doing even after being overturned several times (which - to me - violates the spirit of IAR). Are admins truly above us normal mortals without the "Bit" in this aspect. Are they permitted to do things with impunity, for which we would be warned and blocked for? Or what should they do with those administrators, their infractions might be minor, even if they sometimes cause surprisingly much wikidrama, but should they not be our rolemodels? So what should we do in those cases? Charon X/ talk 16:31, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
If specific details are so urgently needed, I will attempt to compile a list of them and either post it here or mail/post/give it to interested parties (to avoid said degeneration into a meta-debate). The admins in question are - as I firmly believe - far from applying the CSD malignly, they basically do what they believe in their best faith is right, and while this had been a hotly contested issue and a significant minority of users will most likely agree with their reasoning, the general consensus that was found points in the opposite direction, explicitly so. As it is 2.40 AM right now here and I'm rather tired, so I'll finish the compilation tomorrow. Charon X/ talk 00:43, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day seems to be controversial, but popular with some admins and thus a sacred cow. Is this an essay or a guideline? Reading through the talk pages leads me to believe that this has never had the support necessary to demonstrate consensus. Most recently it has been re-tagged as a guideline without broad support, but today’s effort has both established the guideline tag and had the page protected. Please join the discussion. -- Kevin Murray 08:03, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi all, per a recent discussion on ANI of a threat posted in an article, perhaps it would be useful to append a quick and easy template to the initial ANI emergency report (e.g., any threat of physical harm) to ensure coordination and minimize drama, people could sign on the lines and ensure that every step of the action is reported.
Issue described here
I agree that we should not be taking such threats lightly. Even if 99.9999% of these threats are juvenile vandalism, the one time in a million that it's not might result in deaths that could have been prevented, not to mention a major PR nightmare for Wikipedia. Can't you just see the bottom-ticker on
Fox News Channel now? "Wikipedia administrators dismissed killer's violent online threats as joke."
I also agree with FayssalF and others, however, that any response should be coordinated by the Foundation directly. I have left a
message for
User:Mikegodwin, the Foundation's general counsel, asking for his thoughts on the matter. --
Satori Son 13:20, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Claims made in infoboxes are by nature unattributed and lack nuance. How does the NPOV standard apply? Is a claim made in an infobox ipso facto a "claim of consensus"? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view#Infobox policy. -- BlueMoonlet 21:08, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
I recently took a picture of the W. H. Sammis Power Plant, including the road tunnel underneath it. Do I need to find some sort of other source for noting that the tunnel exists, since the tunnel appears in a picture? Nyttend 20:21, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Is it always "wikistalking" to follow the contribs of a user you disagree with? What is the standard? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Harassment#Wikistalking clarification. -- BlueMoonlet 21:08, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Hey all,
After a discussion with
User:Jc37, I've changed the desciption for
Category:IP addresses used for vandalism to read that all IPs being used for blatant vandalism should be added to the category, for referencing when dealing with future edits by these IPs. I am currently defining "blatant vandal" as an IP that has received at least a level 2 vandalism warning. However, the description also stipulates that shared IP addresses, because of their inconsistent nature being controlled by multiple people, should not be added, as it might cause bias against them and the loss of good faith, constructive edits. I would like to get some community input into making this an official policy to keep better track of our unregistered voters. Please add your opinion over at
Wikipedia talk:Vandalism#Category:IP addresses used for vandalism. Thanks!
Glass
Cobra 03:58, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
A while ago, the many many "<nationality> Freemasons" article cats were deleted. I wholly agree that they were excessive, and it was just one user who created them. However, upon looking at the main category ( Category:Freemasonry), there's a lot of folks in there simply because they are Freemasons and happen to have articles because they're famous for other things. I think in this case it's valid to create a new "Freemasons" subcat, but only as long as it isn't broken down further. However, I don't know whether I can just go ahead and remake it per BOLD, or if it's a DRV issue, but those policies seem to apply mainly to articles. Any ideas or precedents regarding going one way or the other? MSJapan 02:42, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
This this is becoming a new line of argument with some editors at WT:SPOILER, I've initiated a discussion about whether section titles are a form of original research at WT:NOR#Section Titles are Original Research?). Comments are welcome. -- Farix ( Talk) 18:23, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I encourage Wikipedians who watch this page to comment about a new proposal at Wikipedia talk:Fringe theories#Appeal to particular attribution. Thanks ScienceApologist 17:33, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 October 14#New Category:Wikipedia essays subcategory, Category:WikiProject essays may be of interest to people here. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:51, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
The administration in Wikipedia has exceeded its bounds in being reasonably patient with its new members, as well as treating long-term members with a sufficient amount of respect. New accounts are banned indefinitely for trivial reasons, and long term members are shut down because they fall back on an element of human nature -- getting upset. This problem compounds itself when fellow members of the community raise attention to such issues only to have a near 50% 50% agreement ratio based on what was the right course of action to take against a certain member. Usually this number is lopsided in the support section since it seems we are more adept to accepting other admin's actions in good faith, even though they showed scant the same in their own banning process. I am not going to summon any specific examples, neither do I have any other agenda in bringing this to attention except for that reason alone; that we might reflect a little more on an issue with our fellow members, new and old, and realize that every case is unique as the person themselves. Whether you've banned 1 person or 100's, there is no excuse to the harsh bans that occur on a daily basis. Reasons such as, "Is this person going to help Wikipedia or not" is shallow reasoning alone to shut someone out. I could testify that we would have 100's of extra productive, and helpful contributors granted our patience with each individual person were greater. "Assume Good Faith" reaches a greater extent than what has been the norm. Please reflect on this and use your judgement. EverybodyLovesPie 05:12, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Some very good points by EverybodyLovesPie and Dan T. -- Ned Scott 23:25, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Trivia is what Wikipedia does best. This debate has made this forum a little top heavy. Please do not archive this redirect while the topic is live. LessHeard vanU 15:31, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
I have been thinking about uploading a photo to Wikipedia. The problem is that I don't want to give up my ownership rights to the photo as I worked hard to take it. However I might consider uploading a reduced quality version. My question is, If I resized a photo, uploaded the smaller version to Wikipedia and the larger version to my website, would I be giving up my copyright for only the smaller version or all version? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.54.200.212 ( talk) 03:08, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Can a search engine test establish notability on itself? Is a Google hit count enough? I would say that this cannot be seen apart from other WP policies and guidelines, especially WP:V and WP:RS. Intangible2.0 03:07, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I have noted in a very large range of articles that there appears to be an almost offensive attitude by many american contributors when writing about issues which affect the whole of the english speaking community or whole of the world. What I mean can be summariesd in a number of examples:
1) International standards Vs regional ones.
On an number of pages I have noted that references are made to american standards such as the ASTM or ANSI without specifying what the standard is or what country it originates from, in some cases completely failing to mention the existance of other countries standards, and especially when there is a divergant ISO standard. (The USA often seems to feel no need to adhere to ISO standards, even when they contribute strongly to such standards).
One recient example of this was on an article on sound insulation created by (I assume) an american contributor, which provided a clear and detailed article on the american stnadards for design and measurement of this are, but completely failed to mention that the standards referenced are specific to the USA, and differ in significant ways from the ISO standards followed by much of the rest of the world). I created a draft article on the ISO and UK approach to this topic, and cross referenced it to the original articel. I sublequently found that my cross-references and notes about "in the USA" had been removed from the original artical. (a subsequent edit was left in place)
2) Reference to national and international organisations
Today I was reading articles on Ulcers and Gangerene, and I noticed that there were references to the Center for Desease Control (CDC). Once again this is the name of a major American (US) establishment, but the article failed to state wheather it was refereing to this organisation or to the english language name of another countries organisation (reference was made to Austrialian medical research projects), or possibly to a WHO organisation.
These are just two examples.
I would ask / propose that anyone contributing to an article should ensure that unless it is clearly intended to be country specific that references to standards and organisations should be clearly identified indicating what country or organisiation they are refering to.
Just some food for thought
Anruari 14:15, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Do we have any guideline or policy that says anything about mirrors which use Wikipedia content without being compliant with the GFDL? If an external site is using information from Wikipedia, obviously it can't be reliable, but if they have additional information, is it appropriate to link to it?
I'm asking this after investigating some copyvio issues at John S. McCain, Sr.. This article was originally taken from a pd usgov website. Additions were made by Wikipedia editors over the course of a few years. In late 2006, http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ seems to have copied our article and added it to an existing page on their website, without complying with the GFDL. Our article was later mistakenly deleted as a copyright violation, but I restored the deleted revisions today. As it turns out, arlingtoncemetery.net is used as an external link or a source on quite a lot of pages. The site has some content that may be original, and they've got some pretty pictures, but as stated above, they also have at least once copied from Wikipedia without attribution. Should we be linking to this site at all? --- RockMFR 22:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
We should not blacklist sites which have pages that violate copyright. The blacklist is for spam, and in exceptionally rare cases, harassment. Think of the implications if we blocked sites with problems. Discussing those sites would be a chore. 1of3 01:09, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Recently, someone did this to WP:NPOV. Someone reverted it, of course, but the vandalism is still in the history. Ironically, this historical edit can now still be used for Cyber-bullying. Even though the page was restored, the offending party still can link to the diff and e-mail it to someone as an attack, saying: "See! Even Wikipedia agrees with me! You suck nyaa-nyaa (so on and so forth)."
Of course, there is a function to totally obliterate edits from an article history, but that seems to be used in only rather extreme cases. What (if any) is the consensus viewpoint on dealing with not-so-extreme cases where vandalism remains in the edit history, potentially satisfying the objectives of the vandal through edit-history links? dr.ef.tymac 21:22, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Quick thoughts - "yesno no". I'm not sure that this is a primary reason for modifying page handling. But if it can be done without degradation to the project, then it's harmless and courteous. The main problem I see is this:
According to policy and practice, the difference between editors and administrators is little except tool access. Editors are expected to be free to undertake dispute resolution, and related matters, every bit as much as anyone else, and on equal footing. A proposal like this elevates administrators, because it would mean that a regular user contemplating a dispute resolution case and collating evidence would be unable to see precisely those edits they might most need to. It would greatly impede non-administrators' ability to undertake dispute resolution, if the diffs they needed were selectively likely to be removed from their sight. That to me is a terminal problem. A better solution would be to change the header for old pages, if this is a concern. FT2 ( Talk | email) 09:57, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
The project is periodically hit with "Real life emergency" type panic-button incidents (like people saying "I'm going to commit suicide") where a bunch of people call police and stress out about what's almost certainly a troll. The most recent example that I'm aware of is this one today on AN/I.
I'd like to propose a formalized handling of these situations, and I know this will probably not be popular with some folks, but I hope this will spark some conversation that will allow us to be proactive instead of reactive.
Erase and block. - I propose that anytime someone posts some sort of thing like this (suicide threats, etc) that we treat it like a personal threat. Erase it, block the user indef (it's not infinite, but it forces them to use an unblock request to explain themselves) and deny them the soap box.
As far as I know there hasn't been a single non-trolling example of this so far. The preponderance of evidence indicates that this is a button that manipulative people can use to get attention on Wikipedia with no regard to the deep anguish and stress this causes their victim. A poster in the thread above mentioned that this has been a "very stressful day" because of this nonsense. By allowing these to stay, we're hurting the people who care and get sucked into these mind games.
We all want to be the person who saved Kitty Genovese, but instead, the people who take those posts seriously and act on them are becoming victims of emotionally manipulative narcissists.
Finally, none of us are qualified to determine the difference between real and fake threats, the same way we aren't qualified to determine legit legal threats. To protect ourselves and the well meaning editors who get caught up in these imbroglios, let's agree on straight forward way of handling all such situations that doesn't require special knowledge.
Regards,
CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 23:43, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not so sure that either formal policy is a good idea. On the one hand, we don't want to create a duty where none exists. On the other hand, we don't want to tie the hands of independent editors that want to intervene. - Chunky Rice 00:11, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Revert and ignore sounds good to me. Friday (talk) 01:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Shouldn't the procedure for handling a death threat and a suicide threat be pretty much the same? Not because both involve threat of death, but because both are serious threats that should be passed to the proper authorities, and the people making them should be blocked (per the general principle of "don't cause disruption by issuing threats"). Of course, it depends on whether you see such things as manipulative threats, or a plea for help. Carcharoth 01:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
The first step to dealing with these problems should be to request an urgent CheckUser. This gives information which would be essential in any further action, and also ensures that no editor is acting alone. Beyond that, I'm not sure that we can have any "one-size-fits-all" protocol. The Office should be informed, yes, but this can be done in many ways. Similarly for the Police: it doesn't have to be the Foundation which informs them directly, it could be an ISP or a Chapter member or a trusted indiviual in that jurisdiction (not every WP user lives in Florida!) Physchim62 (talk) 15:59, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
(outdent)There is a relevant essay Wikipedia:Potentially Suicidal Users that follows similar logic to my recommendations (although it's not a policy or guideline), and WP:SUICIDE redirects there now too. ~ Eliz 81 (C) 02:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
My mind has just registered that ALL many Québec place names are unapproved translations. I have double checked with government sites "
Office québécois de la langue française", and the
Commission de la toponymie du Québec
[3] and the Government of Québec has a very clear policy on name translations, it is not done (except for name places overlapping borders, where use of actual French name may be accompanied by an English equivalent. This is not a new policy.
How is it then that all the place names got translated? To be sure, I checked on France's place names, no problem there, all proper names have been kept in French. English name places have not been translated to French Salton Sea. I can't even begin to imagine why this has come to be... Some of you may think, hmm, bilingual Canada... but names places and bilingualism status are provincial jurisdictions and not federal. Québec is officially French only.
I haven't brought this up over there on those pages as debate is already heated enough with Nation issues, and this is completely aside. I'm certain no Wikipedia policy may override local governments... Certainly there is some model, banner, tag, request page, where this issue can be handled outside of individual pages. Yours truly, Tracy-- Tallard 08:10, 7 October 2007 (UTC)(-- Tallard 7 octobre 2007 à 06:04 (CEST))
PS, If this debate has already taken place, and I imagine it may have many years ago, please direct me to the archive, that would be a start to correct this huge mistake.
What I suggest, (hopefully some kind of Bot or template) is a massive redirect campaign, which would affect approximately 90% a great deal of Québec name places (non border), so users entering whatever informal translated form they choose to use will be redirect to the properly named place. In France, Brussels and Switzerland (as far as I've come) even accents are preserved, exception being a very few major cities such as Geneva.--
Tallard 09:30, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia policy can 'overrule' any local law it wants; it is subject only to the laws of the United States of America and the state of Florida. Quebec has no jurisdiction. -- Golbez 10:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Tallard, I am an Italian, but when I read and edit the English-language Wikipedia I accept that it is written in English, to the point that Italy is not called "Italia", Rome is not called "Roma", Naples is not called "Napoli" and so on. As I see it, it is not a question of linguistic policy or overriding anything: it is just that Italian-speking people say "Roma" and "mela", while English-speking people say "Rome" and "apple". Or am I missing something? Happy editing, Goochelaar 10:43, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Denise Anthony, Sean Smith, and Tim Williamson's Explaining quality in internet collective goods: zealots and good Samaritans in the case of Wikipedia, page 18: "To deal with the negative impact of this group of contributors Wikipedia has instituted a policy that requires contributors to register after some number of anonymous contributions."
I found this after a post on Slashdot which also linked to a Dartmouth press release: "According to Anthony, Wikipedia now requires that anonymous contributors who make numerous edits must register."
I've never heard of this requirement, and WP:REG and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ#Do I have to register to edit pages? says the opposite. Is this a policy in another language Wikipedia? -- Jeandré, 2007-10-18 t11:54z
In the revisions of 11:33, 11 October 2007 for the Aswan Dam page ( history), two links to images are removed (the images themselves have not been deleted), with the explanation:
What is the (English) Wikipedia policy on images that may be illegal for non-copyright reasons in various jurisdictions?
Wikipedia:Image use policy and Wikipedia:List of policies#Legal and copyright only discuss copyright (and libel), and do not address this issue, and I can't find other policies.
Given that the English Wikipedia servers are located in the US, and that some jurisdictions have very restrictive laws (such as "no photographs of people"), I assume that Wikipedia follows US law.
Proposed resolution:
If a photographer wants to risk prosecution in Egypt by taking pictures of the dam while in Egypt, and by broadcasting this fact by posting those pictures publicly on the internet, that's their business and their risk. Whether Egypt has a law further forbidding the possession or distribution of said pictures is of course completely irrelevant to anyone not actually in Egypt. Postdlf 23:24, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
User:Tgm1024 brings up an interesting point on Talk:Ejaculation. They wish to remove the video of a person ejaculating on the grounds that it is original research, and that there is no verifiable source that shows that it's an "average" or "normal" act of ejaculation. My objection to this is that we have, as far as I can tell, no policy that mandates this across the whole of Wikipedia, and attempting to formulate one would lead to, let us say, no pictures on Sheep which were taken by ordinary users and not veterinarians or biologists. Is there a policy? Should there be a policy? What is a good way to proceed? The Wednesday Island 22:36, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I'm a new wikipedian, and I'm curious if it's ok to post original research on ones userpage. I currently have started a section with some my mathematical work on it. I am aware of the GFDL and I am completely ok with what it entails in regards to my work. A math-wiki 05:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
I've come across a couple of instances recently where pages appear to exist purely for the purpose of providing warnings to consumers etc about questionable business practices. Examples would include the now deleted "Alex Finch" and "Ayman Ahmed El-Difrawi" who were linked to Lou Pearlman. These pages often attract edit wars, which causes me to notice them through browsing recent changes.
I've now identified four similar articles, all about medical schools, all of which seem to focus on the lack of accreditation of qualifications granted by those schools, and in such a way that in all four cases I suspect that the articles concerned are basically attack pages. There is a possibility that in some cases the articles were originally intended as an advertisement of the "school" concerned, and there are often two factions attempting to edit each page, one of which insists that it is a bona fide medical school in good standing, the other insisting that it is a diploma mill. It appears that in such cases the truth may be somewhere between these viewpoints, although I'm not really qualified to assess the standing of such institutions myself.
However, it seems to me that there's no clear policy on such issues, and whilst I'm tempted to AfD all 4 articles as being non notable and inappropriate, I feel that some form of policy on the issue of being a consumer watchdog needs to be formulated. Alerting consumers to potential fraud is of course a praiseworthy objective, but I don't think it's the purpose of Wikipedia, and I don't think that Wikipedia should allow itself to be used for that purpose. Creating or using an article about an organisation, product or person as a means of warning that that person, organisation or product may involve some form of misrepresentation or fraud is as inappropriate to Wikipedia as creating or using such an article as an advertisement for some sort of goods or services.
The four articles are St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine, St Matthews University, University of Health Sciences Antigua, and Caribbean Medical University. I can't see any real assertion of notability on any of these pages either. DMcMPO11AAUK/ Talk/ Contribs 09:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
In responding to a WP:3O, I've encountered a question of interpretation of the section on foreign language sources. The discussion is at Talk:Sejny#Third opinion. Abbreviated, it boils down to whether or not the call for "clear citation" means quoting the original in its base language and providing the translation there or simply full citation. (See footnote #1 on this version of the article to see the translation interpretation implemented, if what I mean is not clear.) I'm inclined to the latter view, but the editor in question is very anxious to do what policy requires so I told him I would seek wider opinion. I first asked the question at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability, but not having received an answer for half a day (the one response is another editor involved at the relevant conversation and unrelated to the topic) left a note there saying I'd ask here. -- Moonriddengirl 11:55, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
We of the Military history WikiProject have been planning to tag our style guide as part of the official MoS. In light of this, we would like to invite community comments regarding this; if you have any opinion, suggestions, and so forth, please drop by WT:MILHIST#MOS. Thanks! Kirill 20:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Let me start this off with a quick observation, one that I'm sure I'm not alone in noticing. It seems to me that the featured article of the day is targeted by a major amount of vandalism every day, especially by IPs. It's my thinking, then, that it might be useful to have a policy of semi-protection on each day's particular featured article. Now, I'm not sure if this has been discussed previously. However, in any case, I was thinking about doing a small study of the featured articles of the past few months, possibly further back, to prove that the vast majority of edits to featured articles on a particular day are vandalism. Would this be worth doing, or would Wikipedians be against a proposal like this? Glass Cobra ( Review) 21:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Why can't mathematical symbols be linked to their relevant pages? Currently there is a "did you know" article which consists purely of an equation. It has something to do with eigenvalues and matrices. I have an interest in that because I'm doing some openGL programming, but the article might as well be written in another language since I can't click on any of the symbols to educate myself about them. There's even one I recognise (equivalent to a For loop) but I can't tell you its name because I can't click on it and find out. I hate it when I encounter one of these impenetrable pages that can tell me nothing (unless I guess at where I have to look for background information, which is a painfully slow process). Fix this oversight so I can learn to speak algebra. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.131.5.200 ( talk) 23:23, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I know your pain, it's taken me considerable time to get even a vague understanding of set theory and stuff like that. I think your proposal is a very good idea. I think it would be best implimented if there was a mathematical notation's page that contained all the symbols used in mathematics and gave a through description of the meaning and use of it. A math-wiki 05:06, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) advises editors to:
“ | Pre-emptively disambiguate the names of monarchs, of modern countries in the format "{Monarch's first name and ordinal} of {Country}". Examples: Edward I of England; Alfonso XII of Spain; Henry I of France. | ” |
This runs counter to our basic naming conventions, namely "use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things". I've seen no argument as to why this special style is necessary, and it produces silliness such as Victoria of the United Kingdom instead of Queen Victoria, William I, German Emperor instead of Kaiser Wilhelm I, Mary I of Scotland instead of Mary, Queen of Scots, and so on. Where there is no "common name", using this system might be reasonable, but the way it is enforced right now defies common sense. Separately, it disregards our normal style of disambiguation; even John (King of England) is a person I can more readily identify than John of England, which sounds like some kind of loo.-- Father Goose 21:23, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
There has been substantial disruptive editing at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/latest. Although the page says in bold that editors may remove themselves from the list and should not be reverted, certain editors are in fact reverting on the grounds that editors don't own their contributions and have no right to ask to left off the ranked list, and that a ranked list is useless unless everyone is listed. I have filed an RFC requesting community input on whether on editors should be allowed to remove their names from the list. Thatcher131 16:32, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Do the Wikipedia Talk page guidelines about preserving chronological order in Talk page topics also apply to the individual posts within that topic (or section)? If not, then is there some other Wikipedia guideline for this? I find that when too many people break the chronological order, the posts become very confusing to interpret. Am I the only one bothered by this? Fowler&fowler «Talk» 21:36, 18 October 2007 (UTC) Updated: Fowler&fowler «Talk» 02:03, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
One of our choices, if the material we have written, doesn't belong on the wikipedia is to take it to other wikis.
I visited the citizendium after reading about it on the The Times. Larry Sanger, a co-founder of the wikipedia is one of the founders of this project. Third time the charm?
Now everything we submit we submit underl the {{ gfdl}} -- which is why the wikipedia has so many mirrors.
If I understand it properly the citizendium's interpretation of the {{ gfdl}} is that once an editor makes a change to an article, it stops feeding readers the wikipedia's copy, and starts feeding the version modified by the citizendium editor. If I understand it correctly, the article's edit history on the citizendium includes its edit history here on the wikipedia. If I understand it correctly they regard this as necessary in order to honor {{ gfdl}} liscenses of the original contributors.
So, would the citizendium be in breach of original contributors liscenses if the wikipedia community decides to delete an article, after a citizendium editor has forked a version there? Its historry mechanism will no longer be able to show the individual contributions of the individual editors.
Why am I even considering defecting from the wikipedia? Afd. In my experience the deletion fora are the weakest aspects of the wikipedia, because breaches of civility are so routine there.. The citizendium plans to replace {{ afd}}, and our other deletion fora, with some other processes.
Well, maybe that is a problem to be discussed at the citizendium's village pump. But just how much cooperation should the wikipedia provide to competing wikis?
Now, if an article I have been a big contributor to gets deleted, I am still the original copyright holder of my contributions to that article. It seems to me that there should be no liscense problem with me submitting material I contributed to the wikipedia to another wiki. And I know I was the only contributor to the deleted article, there should be no liscense problem with accessing my text from the google cache. But, if someone else had made even a single spelling correction, then I can no longer use the google cache version, because the other contributors have their own rights under the GFDL, which include they have to be credited -- have I got that right?
If I was the only defector, or one of only a handful, of defectors, and defectors only wanted to copy the full edit history of a handful of articles there might be administrators willing to help on an ad-hoc basis. But, if there are going to be a lot of defectors that would obviously be insufficient.
I have read that some commercial wikis have a tool that will automatically build an archive, that allows a customer to pack up an article, and its edit history, or all the articles on a list of articles, and their edit history, so that the customer can carry it waway, and automatically unpack it into another wiki that uses the same software. If the wikipedia had access to this kind of tool, should it be made available to defectors? Is this a service defectors, or other wikis, should have to pay?
What about all those mirrors of the wikipedia? Do they have give readers access to the edit history so they too can honour the original contributors rights under the GFDL?
Cheers! Geo Swan 17:46, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
I was asked to write a note about my first experience on the citizendium.
The details are in my note. I'll mention here though that my memory that the citizendium served wikipedia pages, until someone edited one, and kept the wikipedia edit history available, after forking off a new version on the citizendium was completely incorrect.
I am sure there is another wiki that does this. But it is not the citizendium.
Cheers! Geo Swan 11:45, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I've come across a couple of articles that are titled in Old Norse. My understanding is that articles should be under the most common or pertinent English spelling. Non-English names should redirect to the English version. Is this correct? This is particularly an issue here where the names uses a non-English alphabet. An example would be Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson where the note at the top of the article currently refers instead to the anglicization in the opening rather than the reverse. Again, my understanding is because this is the English Wikipedia, articles should be organized under English with other forms/languages being mentioned/included at the top of the article. Can someone point me at policy/guidelines on this? I've probably just missed something obvious... Pig man 16:57, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Very occasionally, when I have made a change to an article to bring it into line with WP:MOS, I have been challenged by another editor who claims that a certain project does things differently. I am not sure how best to reply to such situations.
It seems to me that Wikipedia should be cohesive and local guidelines should only resolve matters not already covered by top-level guides. If separate projects are to have their own special-case exceptions to guidelines should they not first get a consensus for such an inconsistency here?
Thoughts? Gaius Cornelius 21:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)