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I seem to remember the decision somewhere along the line (memory isn't what it was) that if a page survived a vote for deletion with a keep consensus (as opposed to being kept because of no consensus) then it couldn't be re-listed for deletion again? If this is the case I would question whether this deletion nomination was valid seeing as the articles in question have been nominated twice before, and the consensus was keep on both occasions. It may be academic because the consensus this time around looks like it's going to be a keep too, I just couldn't find any reference to the decision that I'm sure was made. -- Francs2000 | Talk File:Uk flag large.png 17:11, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
CSD G4 (the one about re-deletion of recreations) has caused some confusion from time to time with its present phrasing. So there's a suggestion for a mild rephrasing at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion.
Note that there is no intent to change to the meaning, scope, intent or effect of the policy. Please comment, particularly if you think it is a significant change. Thanks. - Splash 15:54, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
I was looking at the Nature of Abu Ghraib abuse article and I noticed that the photos showing nudity were censored/blurred. It seemed a bit odd to me to blur the penis's in the images when considering that some of the other photos in that article are rather graphic and the article itself is quite adult themed in nature. So I was wondering if it is wikipedia policy to blur nudity or was it just that the original photos that the uploading user got a hold of were blurred. Thanks - Akamad 14:03, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
I have a friend who is now going out with another friend. She drew a picture of herself and my other friend to celebrate their relationship, and released it on deviantART. Neither myself nor her uploaded her pic here to Wikipedia; the otherfriend (boyfriend) was the one who did it. I'd like to release the picture into the public domain so the IFD doesn't delete the pic. Am I able to do so? I'm not the original artist but I know she won't mind if I were to do so...
Thanks~
-- LoganK 03:10, September 5, 2005 (UTC)
I noticed that the articles for Six Feet Under, the popular HBO TV series, and Runaways_(comics), an ongoing Marvel Comics series, have large amounts of "spoiler" information in links and written within the articles themselves. These are just two examples I quickly found while browsing Wikipedia.
My question is...Should Wikipedia be a storehouse of spoiler information or should these articles and other like them be edited to remove the spoiler content?
-- Randomengine 19:30, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
Is there a policy about linking to websites which violate copyright? In particular, to websites which contain copyrighted lyrics and are not official album or artist pages? In particular, I am referring to Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z, which seems to have an excessive number of links to the same page, but there are other music pages I've encountered which link to lyrics. User:Zoe| (talk) 06:40, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
CSD A7 (non-notable bios) has come up for discussion a good deal during deletion and undeletion debates. At Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Interpretation of WP:CSD A7 (non-notable bios) is a proposal to clarify the interpretation of this critrion, and particularly the meaning of "Claim of notability". Please read it and comment if you are at all interested. DES (talk) 00:30, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
I hsent an e-mail to info after reading the article in wired magazine about the criticism that wikipedia is not taken seriously as an academic source. I wrote up a proposal to add academia controled pages in parallel with the publicly contributed pages.
Please take a look at tell me what you think:
Academic Verification Proposal
I am sure this is an issue being addressed elsewhere an I would be happy to discuss this matter with other people.
I am also posting this on the technical comment page
If an article is VfDed, and the success of that VfD would orphan an image, what is the appropriate time to IfD the image? If this is before the close of the VfD, does the IfD page deal with this appropriately, or should such orphan image deletions be automagic as part of VfD? Hipocrite - «Talk» 12:47, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
I propose that using the definite article "The" at the start of an article title should be a part of convention if it aids disambiguation. I have made the suggestion already at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beginning of name). In some cases, this could help prevent unnecessary pipe linking or redirects. -- Supermorff 11:39, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
A proposal for conventions for category naming, consolidating existing conventions mostly from WP:CG and including new conventions and rules pertaining to "by country" categories, is at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories). Please read it and discuss on its talk page. The intent is for this new page to be the official policy for category naming (subpage of Wikipedia:Naming conventions). -- Rick Block ( talk) 04:24, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
I discovered today that the Rambot-generated article Martin County, Minnesota has for nearly three years talked about McLeod County in its first paragraph. Is there any way to check the other Rambot articles, and was Rambot quite such a good idea? Susvolans ⇔ 17:03, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
Hey all,
I've just been experimenting with the 'signature' you get from editing User data in the Preferences screen. Here's the rather flashy result: splintax (talk) timestamp: 16:26, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
What I'm concerned about is this warning...
Raw signatures (without automatic link; please don't use templates for this)
Could anyone explain to me what exactly this is referring to, and confirm that I'm not breaking the rules by doing this? If there is a problem with what I'm doing, please post a comment on my talk page. :-)
Thanks. splintax (talk) timestamp: 16:26, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
What is Wikipedia's policy regarding placing copyrighted material in the discussion page of article (but not in the article itself) for reference purposes? The source article is from the NY Times. There is a link to this in the main Wikipedia article, but at the other end of the link one learns that the article is available to NYT subscribers only. Meanwhile, the full NY Times article appears on the corresponding discussion page.
I think that initially, the NYT article was available to anyone on the Internet, but was later put into their archives and so is now restricted. I wish to refrain from mentioning the particular Wikipedia article itself, so as not to annoy the user who pasted the article in case there's no problem with what he/she did. If there is a problem then I'll bring it up to that contributor directly. S. Neuman 16:01, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
How do we present differing views of the same concept? There is discussion at Talk:Space on whether we use a disambiguation page or present an overview with links to fuller articles. Plese comment. The subject has already been on RFC and attracted little comment and it seems to cut somewhat to the heart of the disambiguation policy. Please post your comments at Talk:Space#Comments. Thanks. Steve block talk 07:31, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
I was wondering whether we have any clear standard on the use of Iran/Persia at different historical periods, as we do on Danzig/Gdansk. A recent series of edits at The Book of One Thousand and One Nights raised this issue. We ended up with [[Persian Empire|Persia]] ( Iran), which is not the worst of possiblities, but we shouldn't have to sort this out in each individual article. -- Jmabel | Talk 19 September 2005 (UTC)
The problem is that there keep being edit wars over this. I'd like to prevent that by actually having a policy. Otherwise, the same issue is going to be handled differently in hundreds of articles with no rhyme or reason… and wasting a lot of time. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:28, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
Please see User talk:GordonWatts/RfA#Was Wikipedia Policy on RfA followed in my RfA?. Basically, Gordon thinks that policy requires RFA voters to always support a candidate who is a "trusted member of the community", and I say that's just a guideline and the idea that people have to vote a certain way is hogwash. Comments appreciated. ~~ N ( t/ c) 21:13, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Recently, the new speedy delete criteria for unsourced images has caused a lot of additional discussion about all facets of image copyright handling on Wikipedia. After extensive consultation with quite a few Wikipedians I have created two new templates: {{ fairusenoalternative}} and {{ fairusereplace}}. These are intended to replace our use of the generic {{ fairuse}}. I have posted a lengthy description of these templates on Wikipedia_talk:Fair_use#Template_changes. -- Gmaxwell 16:59, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Jimbo recently issued a new speedy deletion criterion:
Zzyzx11 (Talk) 00:55, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Voting is now open at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Blatant copyvio material. I urge anyone intersted to stop by, read the proposal and the discussion, and express your views. DES (talk) 19:34, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
Why in the hell would you guys get rid of those? Are you kidding, why would you take away such valuable information? I just can't believe that. This was the only site I could find easily accessable sports franchise statistics (sifting through team pages is a LOT of red tape). I can't tell you how upset this makes me. :(
Someone just added the address of the MCI Center into the article's introductory sentence: "The MCI Center is a sports and entertainment arena at 601 F St NW, Washington, DC 20004..." This certainly feels wrong and I'd like to remove it, but I can't think of where to find a clearer statement as to why this is inappropriate. Do we have a set policy on the inclusion of addresses in articles? It's uncommon at the very least. Postdlf 17:28, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Ah, you beat me to it! I strongly agree that we must not change our undeletion policy to neglect content of deleted articles, and must not remove the words " (ie that Wikipedia would be a better encyclopedia with the article restored)" which reflect the view that a major consideration is content, from that policy without the widest possible consensus. Is Wikipedia about content or process? -- Tony Sidaway Talk 18:17, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Note that Tony Sidaway's "agreement" here is facitious, as it is his view, if I understand his comments elsewhere correctly, that the proposal I have made is ill advised. I think that wikipedia in general should be about content, but that the undeletion policy in particular should be about correcting errors in the deletion process -- content issues should be handled during the deletion discussiuons, and the undeletion procedure should generally attempt to remove process errors so that the actual consenus reached in the deletion discussion can prevail, or when the process has been too badly thwarted for that, the process is restarted to allow a proper consensus on what to do with a disputed page to be determined. It is my view that my proposal does not make a substantial change in current policy, but merely clarifies it and removes phrases now being cited out of context. (The text i propose removing is after all a parenthetical note.) But in any case, I want the undeletion policy to reflect a wide consensus, so I again urge everyone to visit the links above, and express your considered views after reading what has already been said. DES (talk) 20:14, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
This isn't really a policy issue, but I suspect this is the most widely read of the the Pumps, so I thought I'd let you know about two changes to the structuring of Wikipedia:Copyright problems.
Those of you using Bmicomp's autocopyvio script will need to file by hand until it is updated (or update it yourself), mainly because of the subpage structure. Thanks. - Splash talk 02:54, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Hi all, I've started this new idea: Wikipedia:Easy navigation - it's still very embryonic, but I'd be happy to receive comments. -- Francis Schonken 12:17, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
I was wondering if the people running the Wikipedia project could actually promise me that everything i read in here is the best of quality. And if they cant (i am pretty sure they cant), how then can i ever trust Wikipedia again, knowing that there are some naughty boys/girls out there, who might deliberately insert erroneous, incorrect data in the articles. Is anyone punishing this kind of abuse?Is anyone doing anything about it? Is there a legal foundation for this project?
I posted this on the Wikipedia: articles for deletion talk page too. I'm not sure if this is simply a clarification for AFD, or if an new policy is needed.
There is currently a dispute going on at the methodological naturalism (MN) article. One editor has been trying to merge it into naturalism (philosophy) (PN). Other editors oppose the merge. The editor redirected MN to PN, and was reverted twice. Another editor put the article up for AFD to let people vote on what to do with the article, but the person who wants to merge removed the AFD on the article saying "no one wanted to delete the article, so AFD doesn't apply". He replaced the AFD with a "two versions" flag. An article RFC was filed, and some responses came in to keep the articles separate, but the editor who wants to do the merge still insists he is right, and has indicated he will be changing the "two versions" to primarily redirect with the disputed version being teh original separate article. This is a content dispute that has thus far been unresolved.
The AFD page says "Articles for Deletion (AfD) was created to provide a place where Wikipedians decide what should be done with problematic articles".
My question is this: Is an AfD an acceptable way to resolve whether an article should be merged or kept separate? It seems to fit the original definition of "what should be done with problematic articles". The argument against an AFD was that since no one suggested "deleting" the article, then an AFD is inappropriate. What someone was suggesting was "merge/redirect" and those opposed say "keep". Anyway, I've looked at all the options under merging an article and none of them have any voting mechanisms or anything to resolve the content dispute around something that is strictly merge or keep. So, the question is would an AFD be a legitimate way to decide what to do with the article even though none of the original editors say "delete"?
Otherwise, I see no other way to resolve this content dispute and a slow revert war will continue, along with all teh debates that are spilling over into the articles related to the article in question. FuelWagon 20:36, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Votes for undeletion#The scope of VfU in which it has been proposed that VfU be renamed Wikipedia:Deletion Review and empowered to review AfD (and other XfD) debates improerply closed when no deletion occured. Pleaase reveiw the discussion and consider expressign a view. if this change is made it should have a wide consensus. DES (talk) 17:27, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Page in question is My Antonia. Two users (perhaps the same user?) are repeatedly adding/replacing links on that page that go directly to the sales pages for two editions of this book recently published by the University of Nebraska's press. One of the users works for that university's business office.
My opinion is that this violates the What Wikipedia is not clause on advertising:
I've reverted twice, so before I do it again, I thought it best to solicit some opinions. Thanks. | Keithlaw 23:28, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
I am sure that this issue was discussed in the past, but I see a lot of articles which contains emotional qualifications of some events (i.e. "liberated", "occupied", etc.). I think that Wikipedia should have policy which would forbid such kind of event qualifications. Instead of this, events should be described more neutral. In other words, this is the question of (N)POV (and I am not sure if the question is covered by NPOV rules), but people often make edit wars about such things. What others think about this issue? -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 23:19, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Maybe we can make some dictionary of "better words" (does it exist?). (My English is not so good, so I would like not to work on such project, but...) -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 23:19, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, then I think: Wikipedia does this better: what's this about a "brilliant military campaigner", isn't that just emotional stuff glossing over the fact he chased thousands of people to meet their death? Is that "Brilliant"? Even how the word "greatly" is used in that sentence I think repulsive - The reason I think wikipedia does this better is because of the NPOV concept. In general (considering both examples): maybe, yes, a "list of neutral words", as suggested by Angela might work; on the other hand: it comes all down to NPOV, which maybe can't be captured in instructions like "use this word instead of that word". Nor "captivity" nor "brilliant" nor "great(ly)" is a wrong word in itself - it's only about whether such word is used in a NPOV logic, or an "emotional" logic: and maybe the NPOV guideline suffises to explain that "slight" difference, that is so important for wikipedia. -- Francis Schonken 12:17, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[...] a brilliant military campaigner who, in a series of diplomatic stratagems and wars against Austria and other powers, greatly enlarged Prussia's territories and made Prussia the foremost military power in Europe. [...] [4]
Yes, it has to be beaten out case by case (see the endless discussions over use of the term "terrorism"). If you disagree with a wording, you can change it, but if it is changed back, you have to argue about it. Some wordings are fixed by tradition, i.e. Alexander the Great does not endorse the "greatness" of what was really an imperialist madman, but is purely conventional. dab (ᛏ) 13:01, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments. Except some clear situations like "liberation of slaves" (and similar), I think that the term "liberation" should be removed from articles. Terms like "captured", "conquered" and "occupied" are better for any military/political related story. However, it should be widely implemented, not partialy. Yes, occupation has the meaning as DES described. But, it should not be implemented partialy, in some of articles -- because it is often contrast to the term "liberation". I can't imaginge how many articles use the term "liberation/liberated" in the meaning of winning some war. And consequences of such terms are long term edit wars, as well as bad feelings. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 09:10, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Just to say what do I mean with problems of the term of liberation: It is the fact that French people felt defeat of Nazi Germany as liberation. But, I can't say the same for Latvians, Suddet Germans, Germans from a lot of European parts etc. Or what were liberations in Yugoslav wars or in Rwandan war? And if we go further through history, we can see that modern states are based on a lot of conqeusts, where "liberation" is just political term to unify some people. And there are always the second party, which feels that some event was not liberation, but occupation. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 09:10, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
But, this is just the small part of the set of similar terms. Even terms which do nothing with some personal/political feelings (such as Francis said for "brilliant military campaigner") are not good inside of encyclopedic articles. Encyclopedia is not the place for poetry ;) (except for rational describing of poetry, of course). And the number of such terms and term usage is indefinite. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 09:10, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
I looked into the article Words_to_avoid and I think that emotional terms need one section, not separated terms like "liberation" or "brilliant" (and where to put them together?); as well as description why emotional (and/or poetic) terms are not good inside of encyclopedic article. However, I don't think that I am able to make such set of suggestions because my English is rudimentar; i.e., it is good enough for talk pages, but not good enough for article pages; as well as it is not good enough to find small meaning differences between some terms. If anyone is interested to do so, I would be glad to help her/him/them. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 09:10, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
without mentioning ANY context, and least of all IRAQ. So no, wat you said about "liberated" without context is simply missing the point. What you now say about liberated, adding the context Iraq has nothing to do with the guideline "words to avoid", it is only about how to formulate it in a NPOV way. "The official US version of the story is that the US liberated Iraq, while at the same time suicide bombers see themselves as liberators of the same" is perfectly NPOV. Nothing to do with "avoiding words". -- Francis Schonken 09:27, 17 September 2005 (UTC)"Liberated" does express a PoV, albiet soemtimes a widely-accepted PoV, and must be used with care as with any words that express a PoV
Francis, I didn't talk about prohibition of some words at all. (It is clear that slaves are liberated during US Civil War; after the war they were not slaves anymore.) Maybe it is related to "Words to avoid", maybe to NPOV. I am not sure. But, we should have clear policy where "liberation of Iraq" or "brilliant mass killer" would not be welcome. (As well as I don't see that "brilliant" is useful in the sense of adjective at all.) So, the intention is not to rename Alexander the Great (in primary school we called him "Alexander of Macedon" [I think it is good translation from Serbian to English] and such naming is better then Alexander the Great; but we can generalize that there are personal names with "Great" inside of them and that we don't intend to change personal names), but to remove emotional talk from encyclopedic descritption because in this moment Wikipedia is full of emotional descriptions. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 02:44, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
Please, look this diff for example. Yes, this matter is related to (N)POV questions, but... In the case inside of link no one word is "emotional by nature", as well as my comment was not correct: I am sure that Ho Shi Min was willing to pay such number of [Vietnam] soldiers for independent Vietnam, as well as I am sure that Joseph Laniel was willing to pay such number of [French] soldiers to keep the colony. So, both sentences are true, there are no words "emotional by nature" and in the first example, it is clear that it is written by some French (or someone who likes France or doesn't like Ho Shi Min or Vietnam...). And what to do with that? -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 02:44, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
I think that some guide with descritption "why emotional talk is not good inside of articles", "how to avoid emotional talk", "why not to use liberation in the sense of military actions", "why do we not need adjective brlliant", "why Alexander the Great is not the example of emotional talk" etc. -- can be very useful. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 02:44, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
I have put up Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barbara Schwarz based on the use of this article to focus on a mentally disabled person. Fred Bauder 17:51, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
This is a great web site! One question, how can you guarantee that the information provided here is valid? I would love to use this info, but I don't want to post anything on my web site that is false.
Thanks!
See also Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia for a review of how articles are written, checked for mistakes, improved, and generally quality-assured. -- Sitearm | Talk 05:31, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
When an anonymous editor edit an article (or create) a new one (s)he is not warned that his IP address will be registered and shown. Since in many case the presence of his/her IP address could be a signature more than a choosen nickname, the user should be warned. AnyFile 16:51, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
Autopilots 18:32, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
see MediaWiki:Licenses, Why one screenshots per article? -- Shizhao 09:16, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Just wanted to make you guys aware of a proposal at Wikipedia:No version protection. Basically, this calls for protecting a page on no version, aka a blank page. This is done through a template that sorta combines {{ twoversions}} and {{ protected}}. Please keep discussion on the talk page for the proposal, to avoid fragmentation. -- Phroziac ( talk) 05:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed that sometimes articles are written in british spelling and most of the time I've seen it in American spelling. My question is, is there any establish policy concerning british and american spellings. I personally leave it alone since I know the difference between something being spelled wrong or British (not to imply british spelling is wrong). Bubbleboys 21:40, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Question 1:
What if we had, just for a crazy example, a 4-2 concensus to have a certain intro a certain way?
Would that be binding on later editors?
Question 2:
What if, say, another editor later added his vote, and claimed it was then 4-3, and enough editors kept voting?
Would the "concensus" change?
Implications:
What saith the Village Pump -- and its wise counselors?--
GordonWattsDotCom 04:49, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
(comments below merged from Talk page) TenOfAllTrades( talk) 11:55, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Rather than ask how to "enforce consensus" [5], the question should be what do you do with an editor who declares voting "open" [6], takes prior comments from editors and votes for them [7], accumulates a bunch of these proxy "votes" in his favor, then 30 minutes after posting his "vote", declares voting "closed" [8], and declares that he has "consensus" (4-2) for his version of content?
I posted my dispute with Gordon's ballot stuffing immediately after his "vote" [9] As did one other editor who added his vote against Gordon's POV. [10]. Changing Gordon's "consensus" to a 4-3 split.
Gordon likes to portray this as me going against "consensus", but he conveniently ignores that he rigged the election. So, I'm open to suggestions as to what to do with an editor who employs such tactics. FuelWagon 18:37, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Question 1:
What if we had, just for a crazy example, a 4-2 concensus to have a certain intro a certain way?
Would that be binding on later editors?
Question 2:
What if, say, another editor later added his vote, and claimed it was then 4-3, and enough editors kept voting?
Would the "concensus" change?
Isn't this covered under Wikipedia:No binding decisions? the iBook of the Revolution 03:34, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
What's the policy on new articles like Nazi moon base? Are they so over the top and non-credible that we just leave them be in their own little wikipedian twilight? Does it seem true that even touching an article like that, to add a disclaimer or whatever, could damage WP's credibility more than ignoring it? Or should it be AfD'd or speedied as nonsense or patent nonsense? Wyss 18:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
New AFD. Dragons flight 19:39, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I have ran into two instances where this one guy edited the Motorola i930 page by just inserting the words "SUCK A PENIS" and another guy just adding Chit-Chat to the article. I have had it with "Genital Edits" (i.e. Suck a Penis), which I call "Article Crapping" and Chit-Chat Style Edits (Adding personal comments and/or anything considered Chit-Chat) and I have made it clear on the Motorola i930 discussion page that all chit-chatting belongs to the Wikipedia Sandbox and that "Article Crapping" would be dealt with harshly. Can you make it policy that all chit-chat style edits can only be posted on the Sandbox AND that Article Crapping (i.e. writing either Penis, or some Genital Reference on an article, considered vandalism, but I call that "Article Crapping") will NOT be tolerated? Thanks. — Vesther 17:18, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I recently created and uploaded Image:Cube_root_of_positive_X.png. I tagged it {{ PD-self}} but did I really have the rights to such a mundane picture? It was graphed in Mathematica with the following instruction:
\!\(Plot[\@x\%3, \ {x, 0, 2}, \ AspectRatio \[Rule] Automatic, \ PlotPoints \[Rule] 20000]\)
— Ambush Commander( Talk) 19:37, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
How far should this be carried? I thought the guideline before was that attaching a website as an external link implied that it could have been used as a source for the article, but I see in Wikipedia:Cite sources that it says that policy has basically been discontinued. So that implies to me that almost every article would have a references section or use footnotes? That does not seem like a good idea, because it would cause excess clutter. Spalding 18:43, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Is there a guideline on how to apply disambiguating phrases (clarifiers) to articles on peopple with common names? For example, Bill White is a common name. Right now we have three subjects with that name, disambiguated as (baseball), (mayor), and (activist). The last of those is being questioned, but I can't find the general guideline for how to proceed. Any suggestions? - Willmcw 22:31, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Indirectly the topic has come up on wikipedia talk:Easy navigation; as a consequence I had already added something to the wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Qualifier between brackets or parentheses guideline proposal. But that's not "version 1.0" of that proposal yet, so you can always have a look and try to improve (or cummunicate what you think about it on wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)) -- Francis Schonken 16:03, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I don't understand the intricacies of copyright. If I come across a site that uses Wikipedia articles (even if it says "partly derived from") but then licenses under CC-BY-SA 2.0, and not the GFDL, are they infringing? The particular site also "partly derive[s]" from Wikitravel which is where I suppose they draw their license from. - Splash talk 04:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Other than the general guidelines of WP:V, WP:NOR and similar pages, are there any specific guidelines dealing with the publication of a notable person's personal information? After a rather icky episode in which someone posted a former porn star's real name and current work address (See: WP:AN/I under Jordi Capri and Tawnee Stone), I am thinking about writing up some specific guidelines collecting all the reasons it is bad to publish unverifiable & unencyclopedic personal information, so that there will be an easy page to reference next time something like this happens. However, I don't want to duplicate material if a similar page already exists somewhere? Dragons flight 17:05, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
I've archived the old discussion and written up something new on the subject. Edit away. — Charles P. (Mirv) 20:14, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Hello,
Can someone post an article about someone not famous, like a relative or friend? Or does the person have to be famous somewhere in a meaningful context? What if I wanted to post an article about myself (or themselves)?
Please e-mail me at [edited out] with an answer at your convience. Wikipedia is one of my favorite websites, and I enjoy reading it everyday.
Senor Boogie Woogie
Fellow editors,
I had thought we had a blanket policy saying that copyrighted images that do not fall under fair use will be deleted, whether the copyright owner gives permission or not. As stated on the upload page:
Contradicting this wise policy is, on the copyright tags page, the very existence of the tags "permission", "copyright", "noncommercial", "noncommercialprovided", and "CopyrightedNotForProfitUseProvidedThat". The page mentions that users shouldn't upload pictures that fall into this category, but people continue to do so (see black triangles); I believe that the existence of the tags will be seen as permission to upload these copyrighted images to Wikipedia. This is because people do not read instructions, and will never do so no matter how lengthily we exhort them.
And then there is the "permissionandfairuse" tag, which will always be subject to abuse.
I propose that each of the above tags include a message in the template saying that new images must not be uploaded with that tag, and newly uploaded images with the tag will be deleted in 24 hours. The downside of course is that many uploaders may simply change the tag to "fair use". We can warn against that in the template, too, and I think it's worthwhile. Tempshill 17:24, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
I've been subjected to weeks of harassment, including an RfC based on a objectively false statement, for disputing the inclusion of an obvious NPOV violation as a factual statement. The intervening admin, who's already stated that the disputed statements are inappropriate, nevertheless declared that my deletion of them was "misbehavior" in violation of "consensus," and protected the page with the violations in place. Have I missed something? Is NPOV-violation now OK? Are editors supposed to simply ignore it rather than following guidelines? (And when did 2 of 4 users become a recognized consensus, anyway?) Is there any way to return the relevant page to rational discussion rather than the current circus? Monicasdude 03:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
The dispute involves the Bob Dylan page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan
The specific matter at issue -- the interpretations of a group of songs as "religious" or "secular" involves these alternative texts: [11] and I took the position that, if the article was going to present lyrics interpretations, whether summarily or in detail, it should report the range of interpretations rather than one set, as required by NPOV policy.
The intervening admin stated that unsourced lyrics interpretations/characterizations weren't allowed as original research [12] but has indicated that my opposition to inserting such comments is inappropriate behavior [13] (even though, by that time, a clear majority of those commenting on the talk page and the RfC opposed the text I'd deleted, and at the time of the original intervention comments were evenly divided.)
The RfC is here: [14] Please note that the description of events, especially as presented on the summary page, is objectively false. Monicasdude 16:13, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
The title of this thread is that of this page: I'm seeking to ascertain and identify what is current concensus on some policy that many seem to think needs to be changed -based on recent actions in contravention of policy: Featured Article policy and RfA policy, but people just want to run their mouths -instead of helping define what exactly the current concensus is, so I can know what policy is supported, and what policy is ignored as "outdated."-- GordonWatts 17:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Would you care to indicate what policy issue you have in mind, exactly? DES (talk) 20:34, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Is it WP policy to use the term "international" to mean "not-US" (or perhaps "not-US-or-Canadian")? This is how the term is used in e.g. the "Comprehensive charts" section of The Trouble with Love Is. Previously there was a division between "USA" and "International" (the latter referring only to the UK and Australia, though perhaps allowing for additions about Moldova, Guinea-Bissau, etc. etc.). I changed "International" to "Elsewhere", as neither the UK nor Australia seemed more international to me than the US did; but another editor has changed it back to "International" with the comment "International is a more appropriate term for the other charts of other countries I think". -- Hoary 14:49, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Thank you all for your comments. I've merged the two tables, more or less as fvw suggested (though without bothering to create a new column for "nation"). -- Hoary 01:56, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
i wrote something that was definitely opinionated on the discussion page of the Billie Joe Armstrong article. mind you this was on the discussion page, not the article. A zealous wikipedian soon thereafter reverted my edits on the discussion page to the previous version. In the edit summary, this wikipedian cited the policy of wikipedia not being a discussion forum (the exact edit summary read: Revert "sold out". WP:NOT a discussion forum.). Now wikipedia articles are obviously not to be used as discussion forums, i understand that very well, but am I right in saying that it is ok to have discussions and state opinions on the discussion page? if someone could tell me what the correct interpretation of policy is in this case, i would appreciate it. If i'm wrong, i will gladly admit it, but right now, I'm not sure.-- Alhutch 18:55, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
The answer is "yes, but. . ." (from Wikipedia:Talk page):
HTH. — Charles P. (Mirv) 18:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
thanks for the help. i was wrong.-- Alhutch 19:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
I WAS SENT AN ARTICLE BY A FRIEND OF MINE, CLICKED ON THE LINK, THEN GOT THIS!
IN THE PAST, I HAVE USED WIKIP. FOR CHILDREN'S HOMEWORK BUT HAVE NEVER ALTERED ANY TEXT - CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN? THANKS PLEASE EMAIL <email address removed, see history if you want it>
User:195.93.21.65 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. You have new messages. This is your last warning. The next time you vandalize a page you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.
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These people have the nerve to delete an important image I uploaded (an early 1900s photo of downtown Jacksonville) without even notifying me, then go to MY talk page and tell me that basically they want to delete everything I have uploaded. Somebody tells me I can't use an image because the originator doesn't want it used for COMMERCIAL purposes, but yet I am NOT using it for commercial purposes. -- Revolución ( talk) 02:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
A notice at the top of the My watchlist page now states that images lacking verifiable source and copyright information ... will be deleted. I think the use of verifiable here is a mistake. It is not supported by the policy page that is referenced. A very normal and good contribution of an image occurs when a user takes a photo with their own digital camera and uploads this to Wikimedia. But this would clearly not be verifiable, just as when I write about my first hand experience, this information is not verifiable. I suspect this is not the rigth place for this criticism. I would appreciate if someone forward it to the right place. We should not discourage people from contributing their photos. -- Etxrge 08:23, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Why are images worse than article text? Mozzerati 11:58, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
All over Wikipedia small numbers are written in numerals! Wikipedia is replete with 7's and 4's and 3's. Names of centuries are written as "16th century", rather than as "sixteenth century"! It goes without saying that numbers between ten and ninety-nine are almost invariably written with numerals. None of this is acceptable. Basic style for magazines and books (and certainly encyclopedias) is that numbers under one hundred are spelled out, as are round numbers beyond that. There are exceptions for articles on mathematical topics, or ones that are thick with numbers, as well as some other circumstances, but in general, numbers under one hundred must be spelled out! Is there an existing wikiguideline stating this, or not?? Babajobu 00:20, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Here's a recent article from Reuters:
I see plenty of numbers below 100 written as numerals. So what's the problem? -- ran ( talk) 01:27, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, okay then, here's an encyclopedia article from Encarta:
I quote:
In the United States, tornadoes occur in all 50 states.
The Tri-State Outbreak of March 18, 1925, had the highest death toll: 740 people died in 7 tornadoes that struck Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana.
Perhaps "Tornado" should be considered a scientific article: after all, there are many occurrences of one- and two-digit numerals occurring together with units. But what about the two examples above? The numbers are not used in a mathematical or scientific context. -- ran ( talk) 02:12, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
I think what Encarta illustrates is this: this isn't a rule that's consistently followed at all. To give an analogy: some rules of grammar of standard written English should always be followed (e.g., subject-verb agreement), but other rules are less commonly followed, though they still exist (e.g. don't end a relative clause with a preposition). The numbers rule that you present seems to be of the latter category.
Here's another example, from the Britannica this time: [19]. You see "25 countries" and "13 English-speaking countries". And here's the World Book: [20]. You see "48th among all the states". I believe that many writers here on Wikipedia are consciously and subconsciously influenced by existing, established encyclopedias. If three of the most influential English-language encyclopedias in the world don't consistently follow the rule you're proposing, then you're probably going to encounter a lot of resistance in trying to promote your proposal.
Also, I would go on to suggest that if the Bill Clinton article in Encarta switched all of its <100 numbers to spelled out numerals, it would actually decrease readability. Compare "42nd president of the United States" and "forty-second president of the United States", for instance. This may be a matter of pure habit on my part, of course, but this habit exists precisely because it is enforced by existing, established encyclopedias. -- ran ( talk) 03:31, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
I understand completely your frustration with substandard spelling, grammar and style that sometimes pop up on Wikipedia. Some people here write as if they're chatting on MSN. =) So yes, guidelines will definitely be helpful. -- ran ( talk) 04:06, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
We read: That's crap! Not even a throwaway tabloid newspaper would do that! . . . Even the trashiest tabloid in the world does not do this. What a throwaway tabloid newspaper (let alone the trashiest tabloid in the world) wouldn't do must have something going for it, surely. Why get so excited? While WP is indeed littered with mistakes ( here is one of last night's discoveries), "42" for "forty-two" or vice versa is not wrong and causes no misunderstanding. One may be preferable to the other, but rather than getting steamed up about how Chicago says this or that, note that that estimable book is written for intelligent people to use as guidelines, most if not all of which may be broken for good reason. Now, stripped of exclamation points, etc., what is it that you are advocating? -- Hoary 08:20, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
For me, "16th century" is much easier to read than "sixteenth century". When I'm looking for something in encyclopedia I want raw data, not brilliant prose. It's much easier to extract data from numbers than from words. Grue 09:52, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Hey, at least this doesn't involve French, where 95 (ninety-five) for example is written out as quatre-vingt-quinze... or four-twenty-fifteen :) Wyss 09:04, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
I really must note that we scientists essentially always use numerals for everything. Is an encyclopedia anti-scientific? I hope not. JohnSankey 05:48, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
There is a discussion taking place at vandalism over whether or not repeated reverts that are contrary to the manual of style constitute vandalism. -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 18:30, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
I encountered this article while in RC patrol: Downelink.com. What is the policy regarding articles dedicated to describing websites? Is it an immediate candidate for AfD?
After seeing words like "controversial", "so-called", and scare quotes showing up in article after article where if I were the original author I would not have used the word or quotes, I tried to put myself in the position of the author and understand what thought was being expressed.
Controversy in the Wikipedia itself includes its usage as propaganda. "So-called" is used to disagree with or disparage, as in "so-called campaign finance reform". Scare quotes can also serve a point of view by marking the editor's disagreement or disparagment of the source material.
They are three means by which an editor's POV enter an article without drawing much attention. I've seen the term stealth POV used to describe this.
Controversy is inherent to politics. Politics is all about persuasion to change law, culture, and attitude. Even a politician who says "no comment" or avoids stating their position is controversial for not taking a position. I've never seen an edit to an article on a political topic where the word "controversy" or "controversy" was added by one who was in aggreement or neutral on the subject of the article. It's often an empty word. The text of the article should speak for itself and make it evident what the disagreement is and who is in disagreement.
An example of what I think an appropriate use of the word controversial is in Designated hitter. Baseball has a lot of rules and some change but very few are controversial. The text itself doesn't just drop the word in and move on but explains the two sides of the issue.
There's a style guide article on weasel terms and perhaps these are just further examples of that guideline. patsw 02:32, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
I think there should be a new speedy delete criterion to get rid of patently non-notable company articles, which say things like "John Smith Honda is a car dealership in Lincoln, Nebraska." This would be analagous to WP:DVAIN, for basically the same reasons. I'd like to get comments before I embark on writing a more formal proposal. Thanks, SCZenz 00:10, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
I think what you're really after is a CSD to remove blatant corporate spam, rather than nn company articles. How you would construct the phrasing for that, I don't know, but a confident admin could already rely on WP:VAND which speedies pure spam. - Splash talk 17:59, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi there,
I posted this question on Commons Village pump, but nobody was quite constructive. So I ask here: if I upload a bunch of Yugoslav dinar banknotes on commons, will they live or will they be deleted? -- Dijxtra 17:38, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
The article Webb is currently a disambiguation page. I was wondering where I should put information about the origin of the name, on the page itself or on a Webb (name) page. Is there any policy on this already. -- βjweþþ ( talk) 15:36, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm certain that know policy for this exists, so I have started a page to discuss the policy. Maybe a new page is not the proper way to do this, but it seemed prudent to me. You can take part in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Mid-term filling of open ArbCom positions. Thanks, Ingoolemo talk 02:51, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
Hello all. I know that I have in the past seen a policy that at least casually mentions consistency across articles (or, more to the point, the lack thereof), but now that I need to refer an editor to it, I can't seem to remember which one it was contained within. Anybody know off the top of their head? The situation I've encountered is basically one where an editor is insisting that one article's criticism be modeled along the same lines (almost exactly -- templatized almost) as another unrelated article's criticism. As you might imagine this is rather a partisan dispute. Beyond citing WP:POINT, it would be useful to be able to refer this editor to that policy on consistency (or the lack thereof) and how trying to force one article into the mold of an unrelated one just to prove a point is less than helpful. · Katefan0 (scribble) 19:01, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
There is a proposal to expand the scope of VfU to include the ability to examine disputed non-delete outcomes of the various deletion debates, as a community-based alternative to admins needing to overrule one another. The suggestion at Wikipedia talk:Votes for undeletion#The scope of VfU has received clear support from those involved.
To finish the job, we should have a chat about how this might work. A proposal has been constructed which hopes to address the concerns over 'mechanics' that some expressed if we simply import the present VfU majoritarian system. A discussion on this needs to be had at:
Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion/Deletion review proposal, or on its talk page.
Hopefully we can architect a process that will work effectively. - Splash talk 00:58, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry if this has been discussed before, but I would propose that the rollback function be made availlable to all users. In contrast to the admins' other powers, articles can be "rolled back" by normal users, even anons simply by using the history tab. Restricting rollback to admins does nothing to stem edit wars, since passionate edit warriors will take the trouble to use the history tab to save a previous version of an article. At present, IMHO all this restriction does is to discourage non-admins from doing RC patrol, for this is the only time any user would have to use rollback at a high frequency (thus using the history tab a huge hassle). If we let everybody use rollback, it will make it easier for all of us to to fight vandalism. Borisblue 17:51, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
First, let me say how many times I have found great, concise, organized information here!!! This project is an inspirational example of human collaboration.
Second, let me point out for the record that I was the founder of a company mentioned below, but I no longer have financial interest or association with that field.
Third, I believe the issue I am raising here might be commonplace, so I hope this discussion will be helpful for the whole project. Or if it has already been addressed, please point or advise... but I didn't find anything in my search so far.
The issue relating to NPOV is this: articles that promote one company or it's products and fault another. Please see these examples taken as a set:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchpad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirque_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alps_Electric_Corporation
Am I correct thinking that statements like
are not appropriate?
I imagine great temptation by marketing departments to use thinly-disguised articles for promotion. This could result in endless edit-wars or other nonsense. Further, one "side" might bring significant commercial dollars and marketing agenda to bear, overwhelming volunteer efforts to set things straight. Has this issue been addressed?
What about detailed comparison of product features, customer-service anecdotes, and so on? They aren't likely to fit the NPOV criteria. Is there a blanket prohibition against such topics? Being a newbie, as well as a previously-related party, I didn't think it right to jump in and make massive edit changes. What is a general solution in such a situation?
Thanks and best regards for the work so far, 67.182.252.213 04:53, 26 September 2005 (UTC) George Gerpheide, founder, Cirque Corporation
...... minor formatting fix by Hoary 07:46, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the verrrry rapid feedback and solid advice. I wholeheartedly agree that detailed product features evaluations and customer-service anecdotes are inappropriate, and certainly won't add them. Hopefully, a good contributor will fix the pages mentioned above to meet the spirit of WP!! Thanks again 67.182.252.213 02:11, 29 September 2005 (UTC) George
How far should this be carried? I thought the guideline before was that attaching a website as an external link implied that it could have been used as a source for the article, but I see in Wikipedia:Cite sources that it says that policy has basically been discontinued. So that implies to me that almost every article would have a references section or use footnotes? That does not seem like a good idea, because it would cause excess clutter. Spalding 18:43, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
A simple question. Is it a policy or a guideline? It doesn't actually say definitively either way on the page, and as a result there's some wikilawyering going on at Talk:Thomas Woods over whether or not some uncited assertions can remain in the article. I had always assumed it was a policy, but it doesn't specifically say that. Anybody? · Katefan0 (scribble) 19:44, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy#Unlisting_a_page_from_AFD for a proposal I have made for a re-wording of this section. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 16:15, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Can anyone let me know what the policy is for referring to songs or albums where the name is solely in a foreign language?-- Spigot the Bear 17:58, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
I noticed the preview header now says "Remember that this is only a preview, and has not yet been saved! Please check the version you are about to save for possible vandalism introduced in prior edits.". When did the bold stuff get added? I could have sworn it wasn't there Thursday... Stillnotelf 15:38, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
On Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English), there is curently a debate over the use of esstsett, thorn and eth in English Wikipedia. I avoid editing Icelandic articles because I simply cannot read what the words say. I feel that using these letters makes Wikipedia less useful and that is wrong to use them when we don't use Chinese, Japanese, Cyrillic or any number of other scripts. More voices on the debate would be good. Rmhermen 16:29, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm looking through the pages for nut trees and find incredible numbers of invalid links. Am I correct that a link to a WP page that doesn't exist is coloured red, and those that do exist are coloured blue? Shouldn't we delete invalid links? It seems to me to make the articles inappropriately confusing. JohnSankey 15:28, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads-up. I'll leave them alone. JohnSankey 21:49, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
When there is an image in WP which is labelled with a copyright (e.g. Shagbark Hickory) is it proper to replace it with an image which is released under the standard GNU release of Wikipedia text (or public domain) to 'clean up' copyright issues within Wikipedia? JohnSankey 17:42, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I am confused. I thought the new policy allowed the share-alike licenses on Wikipedia, and a few days ago laboriously changed all my uploaded images to that license. Today I started to upload some more images (figures for Mathieu function), and noticed that the nifty new template seems to imply that these licenses are not allowed in Wikipedia. Please clarify!!!! TIA --- CH (talk) 00:29, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Let me ask my question again in another way: please see Image:MathieuCosine example.gif. Is this acceptable under the current Wikipedia policy, or will my images all be removed after 7 days? --- CH (talk) 01:35, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
There is an increasing number of cases where two resources with the same information exists: One is a "list of.." article, the other a category. Example: List of Macintosh games and Category:Apple Macintosh games.
What should we do in this case?
Thanks for any feedback. Peter S. 14:30, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Note that at wikipedia:categorisation of people (which is guideline and not proposed guideline) a distinction is made:
Recent efforts to apply categories broader for the sensitive topics re. humans are as far as I know inconclusive, so the "old" Categorisation of people guideline is still effective regarding that. A sensitive/non-sensitive combination category ("gay authors",...) is by definition also sensitive.
I don't see why Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes would be "largely moribund" - if it needs an update, OK, even if that would be a major update. But that's an important guideline! And high time it gets beyond "proposed" stage (as far as I remember that guideline was effective before the {{proposed}} template even existed, and that guideline has gone through the thentime "thinktank" procedure, so I don't even know whether the "proposed" template is on its place there).
-- Francis Schonken 09:48, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
The article on Liberalism is the subject of disputes, which is not unusal for political topics. However, I want to raise the issue of whether a politician should be allowed to edit articles which cover his own party. The user in question is User:Wilfried Derksen, who is the former international secretary of the Dutch political party Democraten'66 and the current vice-president of the pan-European Liberal grouping ELDR. (I don't understand how he has time to combine this with editing at Wikipedia, but he does).
The issue is essentially this: may George W. Bush edit George W. Bush? What if he deletes anything negative about himself? Or writes too much praise? Is conflict of interest a problem? Or is it simply left to others to correct things? And do the usual standards (e.g. assumption of good faith) apply to users who are also politicians. Ruzmanci 14:11, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
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I seem to remember the decision somewhere along the line (memory isn't what it was) that if a page survived a vote for deletion with a keep consensus (as opposed to being kept because of no consensus) then it couldn't be re-listed for deletion again? If this is the case I would question whether this deletion nomination was valid seeing as the articles in question have been nominated twice before, and the consensus was keep on both occasions. It may be academic because the consensus this time around looks like it's going to be a keep too, I just couldn't find any reference to the decision that I'm sure was made. -- Francs2000 | Talk File:Uk flag large.png 17:11, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
CSD G4 (the one about re-deletion of recreations) has caused some confusion from time to time with its present phrasing. So there's a suggestion for a mild rephrasing at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion.
Note that there is no intent to change to the meaning, scope, intent or effect of the policy. Please comment, particularly if you think it is a significant change. Thanks. - Splash 15:54, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
I was looking at the Nature of Abu Ghraib abuse article and I noticed that the photos showing nudity were censored/blurred. It seemed a bit odd to me to blur the penis's in the images when considering that some of the other photos in that article are rather graphic and the article itself is quite adult themed in nature. So I was wondering if it is wikipedia policy to blur nudity or was it just that the original photos that the uploading user got a hold of were blurred. Thanks - Akamad 14:03, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
I have a friend who is now going out with another friend. She drew a picture of herself and my other friend to celebrate their relationship, and released it on deviantART. Neither myself nor her uploaded her pic here to Wikipedia; the otherfriend (boyfriend) was the one who did it. I'd like to release the picture into the public domain so the IFD doesn't delete the pic. Am I able to do so? I'm not the original artist but I know she won't mind if I were to do so...
Thanks~
-- LoganK 03:10, September 5, 2005 (UTC)
I noticed that the articles for Six Feet Under, the popular HBO TV series, and Runaways_(comics), an ongoing Marvel Comics series, have large amounts of "spoiler" information in links and written within the articles themselves. These are just two examples I quickly found while browsing Wikipedia.
My question is...Should Wikipedia be a storehouse of spoiler information or should these articles and other like them be edited to remove the spoiler content?
-- Randomengine 19:30, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
Is there a policy about linking to websites which violate copyright? In particular, to websites which contain copyrighted lyrics and are not official album or artist pages? In particular, I am referring to Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z, which seems to have an excessive number of links to the same page, but there are other music pages I've encountered which link to lyrics. User:Zoe| (talk) 06:40, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
CSD A7 (non-notable bios) has come up for discussion a good deal during deletion and undeletion debates. At Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Interpretation of WP:CSD A7 (non-notable bios) is a proposal to clarify the interpretation of this critrion, and particularly the meaning of "Claim of notability". Please read it and comment if you are at all interested. DES (talk) 00:30, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
I hsent an e-mail to info after reading the article in wired magazine about the criticism that wikipedia is not taken seriously as an academic source. I wrote up a proposal to add academia controled pages in parallel with the publicly contributed pages.
Please take a look at tell me what you think:
Academic Verification Proposal
I am sure this is an issue being addressed elsewhere an I would be happy to discuss this matter with other people.
I am also posting this on the technical comment page
If an article is VfDed, and the success of that VfD would orphan an image, what is the appropriate time to IfD the image? If this is before the close of the VfD, does the IfD page deal with this appropriately, or should such orphan image deletions be automagic as part of VfD? Hipocrite - «Talk» 12:47, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
I propose that using the definite article "The" at the start of an article title should be a part of convention if it aids disambiguation. I have made the suggestion already at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beginning of name). In some cases, this could help prevent unnecessary pipe linking or redirects. -- Supermorff 11:39, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
A proposal for conventions for category naming, consolidating existing conventions mostly from WP:CG and including new conventions and rules pertaining to "by country" categories, is at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories). Please read it and discuss on its talk page. The intent is for this new page to be the official policy for category naming (subpage of Wikipedia:Naming conventions). -- Rick Block ( talk) 04:24, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
I discovered today that the Rambot-generated article Martin County, Minnesota has for nearly three years talked about McLeod County in its first paragraph. Is there any way to check the other Rambot articles, and was Rambot quite such a good idea? Susvolans ⇔ 17:03, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
Hey all,
I've just been experimenting with the 'signature' you get from editing User data in the Preferences screen. Here's the rather flashy result: splintax (talk) timestamp: 16:26, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
What I'm concerned about is this warning...
Raw signatures (without automatic link; please don't use templates for this)
Could anyone explain to me what exactly this is referring to, and confirm that I'm not breaking the rules by doing this? If there is a problem with what I'm doing, please post a comment on my talk page. :-)
Thanks. splintax (talk) timestamp: 16:26, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
What is Wikipedia's policy regarding placing copyrighted material in the discussion page of article (but not in the article itself) for reference purposes? The source article is from the NY Times. There is a link to this in the main Wikipedia article, but at the other end of the link one learns that the article is available to NYT subscribers only. Meanwhile, the full NY Times article appears on the corresponding discussion page.
I think that initially, the NYT article was available to anyone on the Internet, but was later put into their archives and so is now restricted. I wish to refrain from mentioning the particular Wikipedia article itself, so as not to annoy the user who pasted the article in case there's no problem with what he/she did. If there is a problem then I'll bring it up to that contributor directly. S. Neuman 16:01, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
How do we present differing views of the same concept? There is discussion at Talk:Space on whether we use a disambiguation page or present an overview with links to fuller articles. Plese comment. The subject has already been on RFC and attracted little comment and it seems to cut somewhat to the heart of the disambiguation policy. Please post your comments at Talk:Space#Comments. Thanks. Steve block talk 07:31, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
I was wondering whether we have any clear standard on the use of Iran/Persia at different historical periods, as we do on Danzig/Gdansk. A recent series of edits at The Book of One Thousand and One Nights raised this issue. We ended up with [[Persian Empire|Persia]] ( Iran), which is not the worst of possiblities, but we shouldn't have to sort this out in each individual article. -- Jmabel | Talk 19 September 2005 (UTC)
The problem is that there keep being edit wars over this. I'd like to prevent that by actually having a policy. Otherwise, the same issue is going to be handled differently in hundreds of articles with no rhyme or reason… and wasting a lot of time. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:28, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
Please see User talk:GordonWatts/RfA#Was Wikipedia Policy on RfA followed in my RfA?. Basically, Gordon thinks that policy requires RFA voters to always support a candidate who is a "trusted member of the community", and I say that's just a guideline and the idea that people have to vote a certain way is hogwash. Comments appreciated. ~~ N ( t/ c) 21:13, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Recently, the new speedy delete criteria for unsourced images has caused a lot of additional discussion about all facets of image copyright handling on Wikipedia. After extensive consultation with quite a few Wikipedians I have created two new templates: {{ fairusenoalternative}} and {{ fairusereplace}}. These are intended to replace our use of the generic {{ fairuse}}. I have posted a lengthy description of these templates on Wikipedia_talk:Fair_use#Template_changes. -- Gmaxwell 16:59, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Jimbo recently issued a new speedy deletion criterion:
Zzyzx11 (Talk) 00:55, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Voting is now open at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Blatant copyvio material. I urge anyone intersted to stop by, read the proposal and the discussion, and express your views. DES (talk) 19:34, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
Why in the hell would you guys get rid of those? Are you kidding, why would you take away such valuable information? I just can't believe that. This was the only site I could find easily accessable sports franchise statistics (sifting through team pages is a LOT of red tape). I can't tell you how upset this makes me. :(
Someone just added the address of the MCI Center into the article's introductory sentence: "The MCI Center is a sports and entertainment arena at 601 F St NW, Washington, DC 20004..." This certainly feels wrong and I'd like to remove it, but I can't think of where to find a clearer statement as to why this is inappropriate. Do we have a set policy on the inclusion of addresses in articles? It's uncommon at the very least. Postdlf 17:28, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Ah, you beat me to it! I strongly agree that we must not change our undeletion policy to neglect content of deleted articles, and must not remove the words " (ie that Wikipedia would be a better encyclopedia with the article restored)" which reflect the view that a major consideration is content, from that policy without the widest possible consensus. Is Wikipedia about content or process? -- Tony Sidaway Talk 18:17, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Note that Tony Sidaway's "agreement" here is facitious, as it is his view, if I understand his comments elsewhere correctly, that the proposal I have made is ill advised. I think that wikipedia in general should be about content, but that the undeletion policy in particular should be about correcting errors in the deletion process -- content issues should be handled during the deletion discussiuons, and the undeletion procedure should generally attempt to remove process errors so that the actual consenus reached in the deletion discussion can prevail, or when the process has been too badly thwarted for that, the process is restarted to allow a proper consensus on what to do with a disputed page to be determined. It is my view that my proposal does not make a substantial change in current policy, but merely clarifies it and removes phrases now being cited out of context. (The text i propose removing is after all a parenthetical note.) But in any case, I want the undeletion policy to reflect a wide consensus, so I again urge everyone to visit the links above, and express your considered views after reading what has already been said. DES (talk) 20:14, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
This isn't really a policy issue, but I suspect this is the most widely read of the the Pumps, so I thought I'd let you know about two changes to the structuring of Wikipedia:Copyright problems.
Those of you using Bmicomp's autocopyvio script will need to file by hand until it is updated (or update it yourself), mainly because of the subpage structure. Thanks. - Splash talk 02:54, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Hi all, I've started this new idea: Wikipedia:Easy navigation - it's still very embryonic, but I'd be happy to receive comments. -- Francis Schonken 12:17, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
I was wondering if the people running the Wikipedia project could actually promise me that everything i read in here is the best of quality. And if they cant (i am pretty sure they cant), how then can i ever trust Wikipedia again, knowing that there are some naughty boys/girls out there, who might deliberately insert erroneous, incorrect data in the articles. Is anyone punishing this kind of abuse?Is anyone doing anything about it? Is there a legal foundation for this project?
I posted this on the Wikipedia: articles for deletion talk page too. I'm not sure if this is simply a clarification for AFD, or if an new policy is needed.
There is currently a dispute going on at the methodological naturalism (MN) article. One editor has been trying to merge it into naturalism (philosophy) (PN). Other editors oppose the merge. The editor redirected MN to PN, and was reverted twice. Another editor put the article up for AFD to let people vote on what to do with the article, but the person who wants to merge removed the AFD on the article saying "no one wanted to delete the article, so AFD doesn't apply". He replaced the AFD with a "two versions" flag. An article RFC was filed, and some responses came in to keep the articles separate, but the editor who wants to do the merge still insists he is right, and has indicated he will be changing the "two versions" to primarily redirect with the disputed version being teh original separate article. This is a content dispute that has thus far been unresolved.
The AFD page says "Articles for Deletion (AfD) was created to provide a place where Wikipedians decide what should be done with problematic articles".
My question is this: Is an AfD an acceptable way to resolve whether an article should be merged or kept separate? It seems to fit the original definition of "what should be done with problematic articles". The argument against an AFD was that since no one suggested "deleting" the article, then an AFD is inappropriate. What someone was suggesting was "merge/redirect" and those opposed say "keep". Anyway, I've looked at all the options under merging an article and none of them have any voting mechanisms or anything to resolve the content dispute around something that is strictly merge or keep. So, the question is would an AFD be a legitimate way to decide what to do with the article even though none of the original editors say "delete"?
Otherwise, I see no other way to resolve this content dispute and a slow revert war will continue, along with all teh debates that are spilling over into the articles related to the article in question. FuelWagon 20:36, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Votes for undeletion#The scope of VfU in which it has been proposed that VfU be renamed Wikipedia:Deletion Review and empowered to review AfD (and other XfD) debates improerply closed when no deletion occured. Pleaase reveiw the discussion and consider expressign a view. if this change is made it should have a wide consensus. DES (talk) 17:27, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Page in question is My Antonia. Two users (perhaps the same user?) are repeatedly adding/replacing links on that page that go directly to the sales pages for two editions of this book recently published by the University of Nebraska's press. One of the users works for that university's business office.
My opinion is that this violates the What Wikipedia is not clause on advertising:
I've reverted twice, so before I do it again, I thought it best to solicit some opinions. Thanks. | Keithlaw 23:28, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
I am sure that this issue was discussed in the past, but I see a lot of articles which contains emotional qualifications of some events (i.e. "liberated", "occupied", etc.). I think that Wikipedia should have policy which would forbid such kind of event qualifications. Instead of this, events should be described more neutral. In other words, this is the question of (N)POV (and I am not sure if the question is covered by NPOV rules), but people often make edit wars about such things. What others think about this issue? -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 23:19, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Maybe we can make some dictionary of "better words" (does it exist?). (My English is not so good, so I would like not to work on such project, but...) -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 23:19, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, then I think: Wikipedia does this better: what's this about a "brilliant military campaigner", isn't that just emotional stuff glossing over the fact he chased thousands of people to meet their death? Is that "Brilliant"? Even how the word "greatly" is used in that sentence I think repulsive - The reason I think wikipedia does this better is because of the NPOV concept. In general (considering both examples): maybe, yes, a "list of neutral words", as suggested by Angela might work; on the other hand: it comes all down to NPOV, which maybe can't be captured in instructions like "use this word instead of that word". Nor "captivity" nor "brilliant" nor "great(ly)" is a wrong word in itself - it's only about whether such word is used in a NPOV logic, or an "emotional" logic: and maybe the NPOV guideline suffises to explain that "slight" difference, that is so important for wikipedia. -- Francis Schonken 12:17, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[...] a brilliant military campaigner who, in a series of diplomatic stratagems and wars against Austria and other powers, greatly enlarged Prussia's territories and made Prussia the foremost military power in Europe. [...] [4]
Yes, it has to be beaten out case by case (see the endless discussions over use of the term "terrorism"). If you disagree with a wording, you can change it, but if it is changed back, you have to argue about it. Some wordings are fixed by tradition, i.e. Alexander the Great does not endorse the "greatness" of what was really an imperialist madman, but is purely conventional. dab (ᛏ) 13:01, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments. Except some clear situations like "liberation of slaves" (and similar), I think that the term "liberation" should be removed from articles. Terms like "captured", "conquered" and "occupied" are better for any military/political related story. However, it should be widely implemented, not partialy. Yes, occupation has the meaning as DES described. But, it should not be implemented partialy, in some of articles -- because it is often contrast to the term "liberation". I can't imaginge how many articles use the term "liberation/liberated" in the meaning of winning some war. And consequences of such terms are long term edit wars, as well as bad feelings. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 09:10, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Just to say what do I mean with problems of the term of liberation: It is the fact that French people felt defeat of Nazi Germany as liberation. But, I can't say the same for Latvians, Suddet Germans, Germans from a lot of European parts etc. Or what were liberations in Yugoslav wars or in Rwandan war? And if we go further through history, we can see that modern states are based on a lot of conqeusts, where "liberation" is just political term to unify some people. And there are always the second party, which feels that some event was not liberation, but occupation. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 09:10, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
But, this is just the small part of the set of similar terms. Even terms which do nothing with some personal/political feelings (such as Francis said for "brilliant military campaigner") are not good inside of encyclopedic articles. Encyclopedia is not the place for poetry ;) (except for rational describing of poetry, of course). And the number of such terms and term usage is indefinite. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 09:10, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
I looked into the article Words_to_avoid and I think that emotional terms need one section, not separated terms like "liberation" or "brilliant" (and where to put them together?); as well as description why emotional (and/or poetic) terms are not good inside of encyclopedic article. However, I don't think that I am able to make such set of suggestions because my English is rudimentar; i.e., it is good enough for talk pages, but not good enough for article pages; as well as it is not good enough to find small meaning differences between some terms. If anyone is interested to do so, I would be glad to help her/him/them. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 09:10, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
without mentioning ANY context, and least of all IRAQ. So no, wat you said about "liberated" without context is simply missing the point. What you now say about liberated, adding the context Iraq has nothing to do with the guideline "words to avoid", it is only about how to formulate it in a NPOV way. "The official US version of the story is that the US liberated Iraq, while at the same time suicide bombers see themselves as liberators of the same" is perfectly NPOV. Nothing to do with "avoiding words". -- Francis Schonken 09:27, 17 September 2005 (UTC)"Liberated" does express a PoV, albiet soemtimes a widely-accepted PoV, and must be used with care as with any words that express a PoV
Francis, I didn't talk about prohibition of some words at all. (It is clear that slaves are liberated during US Civil War; after the war they were not slaves anymore.) Maybe it is related to "Words to avoid", maybe to NPOV. I am not sure. But, we should have clear policy where "liberation of Iraq" or "brilliant mass killer" would not be welcome. (As well as I don't see that "brilliant" is useful in the sense of adjective at all.) So, the intention is not to rename Alexander the Great (in primary school we called him "Alexander of Macedon" [I think it is good translation from Serbian to English] and such naming is better then Alexander the Great; but we can generalize that there are personal names with "Great" inside of them and that we don't intend to change personal names), but to remove emotional talk from encyclopedic descritption because in this moment Wikipedia is full of emotional descriptions. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 02:44, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
Please, look this diff for example. Yes, this matter is related to (N)POV questions, but... In the case inside of link no one word is "emotional by nature", as well as my comment was not correct: I am sure that Ho Shi Min was willing to pay such number of [Vietnam] soldiers for independent Vietnam, as well as I am sure that Joseph Laniel was willing to pay such number of [French] soldiers to keep the colony. So, both sentences are true, there are no words "emotional by nature" and in the first example, it is clear that it is written by some French (or someone who likes France or doesn't like Ho Shi Min or Vietnam...). And what to do with that? -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 02:44, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
I think that some guide with descritption "why emotional talk is not good inside of articles", "how to avoid emotional talk", "why not to use liberation in the sense of military actions", "why do we not need adjective brlliant", "why Alexander the Great is not the example of emotional talk" etc. -- can be very useful. -- millosh ( talk (sr:)) 02:44, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
I have put up Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barbara Schwarz based on the use of this article to focus on a mentally disabled person. Fred Bauder 17:51, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
This is a great web site! One question, how can you guarantee that the information provided here is valid? I would love to use this info, but I don't want to post anything on my web site that is false.
Thanks!
See also Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia for a review of how articles are written, checked for mistakes, improved, and generally quality-assured. -- Sitearm | Talk 05:31, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
When an anonymous editor edit an article (or create) a new one (s)he is not warned that his IP address will be registered and shown. Since in many case the presence of his/her IP address could be a signature more than a choosen nickname, the user should be warned. AnyFile 16:51, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
Autopilots 18:32, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
see MediaWiki:Licenses, Why one screenshots per article? -- Shizhao 09:16, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Just wanted to make you guys aware of a proposal at Wikipedia:No version protection. Basically, this calls for protecting a page on no version, aka a blank page. This is done through a template that sorta combines {{ twoversions}} and {{ protected}}. Please keep discussion on the talk page for the proposal, to avoid fragmentation. -- Phroziac ( talk) 05:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed that sometimes articles are written in british spelling and most of the time I've seen it in American spelling. My question is, is there any establish policy concerning british and american spellings. I personally leave it alone since I know the difference between something being spelled wrong or British (not to imply british spelling is wrong). Bubbleboys 21:40, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Question 1:
What if we had, just for a crazy example, a 4-2 concensus to have a certain intro a certain way?
Would that be binding on later editors?
Question 2:
What if, say, another editor later added his vote, and claimed it was then 4-3, and enough editors kept voting?
Would the "concensus" change?
Implications:
What saith the Village Pump -- and its wise counselors?--
GordonWattsDotCom 04:49, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
(comments below merged from Talk page) TenOfAllTrades( talk) 11:55, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Rather than ask how to "enforce consensus" [5], the question should be what do you do with an editor who declares voting "open" [6], takes prior comments from editors and votes for them [7], accumulates a bunch of these proxy "votes" in his favor, then 30 minutes after posting his "vote", declares voting "closed" [8], and declares that he has "consensus" (4-2) for his version of content?
I posted my dispute with Gordon's ballot stuffing immediately after his "vote" [9] As did one other editor who added his vote against Gordon's POV. [10]. Changing Gordon's "consensus" to a 4-3 split.
Gordon likes to portray this as me going against "consensus", but he conveniently ignores that he rigged the election. So, I'm open to suggestions as to what to do with an editor who employs such tactics. FuelWagon 18:37, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Question 1:
What if we had, just for a crazy example, a 4-2 concensus to have a certain intro a certain way?
Would that be binding on later editors?
Question 2:
What if, say, another editor later added his vote, and claimed it was then 4-3, and enough editors kept voting?
Would the "concensus" change?
Isn't this covered under Wikipedia:No binding decisions? the iBook of the Revolution 03:34, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
What's the policy on new articles like Nazi moon base? Are they so over the top and non-credible that we just leave them be in their own little wikipedian twilight? Does it seem true that even touching an article like that, to add a disclaimer or whatever, could damage WP's credibility more than ignoring it? Or should it be AfD'd or speedied as nonsense or patent nonsense? Wyss 18:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
New AFD. Dragons flight 19:39, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I have ran into two instances where this one guy edited the Motorola i930 page by just inserting the words "SUCK A PENIS" and another guy just adding Chit-Chat to the article. I have had it with "Genital Edits" (i.e. Suck a Penis), which I call "Article Crapping" and Chit-Chat Style Edits (Adding personal comments and/or anything considered Chit-Chat) and I have made it clear on the Motorola i930 discussion page that all chit-chatting belongs to the Wikipedia Sandbox and that "Article Crapping" would be dealt with harshly. Can you make it policy that all chit-chat style edits can only be posted on the Sandbox AND that Article Crapping (i.e. writing either Penis, or some Genital Reference on an article, considered vandalism, but I call that "Article Crapping") will NOT be tolerated? Thanks. — Vesther 17:18, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I recently created and uploaded Image:Cube_root_of_positive_X.png. I tagged it {{ PD-self}} but did I really have the rights to such a mundane picture? It was graphed in Mathematica with the following instruction:
\!\(Plot[\@x\%3, \ {x, 0, 2}, \ AspectRatio \[Rule] Automatic, \ PlotPoints \[Rule] 20000]\)
— Ambush Commander( Talk) 19:37, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
How far should this be carried? I thought the guideline before was that attaching a website as an external link implied that it could have been used as a source for the article, but I see in Wikipedia:Cite sources that it says that policy has basically been discontinued. So that implies to me that almost every article would have a references section or use footnotes? That does not seem like a good idea, because it would cause excess clutter. Spalding 18:43, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Is there a guideline on how to apply disambiguating phrases (clarifiers) to articles on peopple with common names? For example, Bill White is a common name. Right now we have three subjects with that name, disambiguated as (baseball), (mayor), and (activist). The last of those is being questioned, but I can't find the general guideline for how to proceed. Any suggestions? - Willmcw 22:31, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Indirectly the topic has come up on wikipedia talk:Easy navigation; as a consequence I had already added something to the wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Qualifier between brackets or parentheses guideline proposal. But that's not "version 1.0" of that proposal yet, so you can always have a look and try to improve (or cummunicate what you think about it on wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)) -- Francis Schonken 16:03, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I don't understand the intricacies of copyright. If I come across a site that uses Wikipedia articles (even if it says "partly derived from") but then licenses under CC-BY-SA 2.0, and not the GFDL, are they infringing? The particular site also "partly derive[s]" from Wikitravel which is where I suppose they draw their license from. - Splash talk 04:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Other than the general guidelines of WP:V, WP:NOR and similar pages, are there any specific guidelines dealing with the publication of a notable person's personal information? After a rather icky episode in which someone posted a former porn star's real name and current work address (See: WP:AN/I under Jordi Capri and Tawnee Stone), I am thinking about writing up some specific guidelines collecting all the reasons it is bad to publish unverifiable & unencyclopedic personal information, so that there will be an easy page to reference next time something like this happens. However, I don't want to duplicate material if a similar page already exists somewhere? Dragons flight 17:05, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
I've archived the old discussion and written up something new on the subject. Edit away. — Charles P. (Mirv) 20:14, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Hello,
Can someone post an article about someone not famous, like a relative or friend? Or does the person have to be famous somewhere in a meaningful context? What if I wanted to post an article about myself (or themselves)?
Please e-mail me at [edited out] with an answer at your convience. Wikipedia is one of my favorite websites, and I enjoy reading it everyday.
Senor Boogie Woogie
Fellow editors,
I had thought we had a blanket policy saying that copyrighted images that do not fall under fair use will be deleted, whether the copyright owner gives permission or not. As stated on the upload page:
Contradicting this wise policy is, on the copyright tags page, the very existence of the tags "permission", "copyright", "noncommercial", "noncommercialprovided", and "CopyrightedNotForProfitUseProvidedThat". The page mentions that users shouldn't upload pictures that fall into this category, but people continue to do so (see black triangles); I believe that the existence of the tags will be seen as permission to upload these copyrighted images to Wikipedia. This is because people do not read instructions, and will never do so no matter how lengthily we exhort them.
And then there is the "permissionandfairuse" tag, which will always be subject to abuse.
I propose that each of the above tags include a message in the template saying that new images must not be uploaded with that tag, and newly uploaded images with the tag will be deleted in 24 hours. The downside of course is that many uploaders may simply change the tag to "fair use". We can warn against that in the template, too, and I think it's worthwhile. Tempshill 17:24, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
I've been subjected to weeks of harassment, including an RfC based on a objectively false statement, for disputing the inclusion of an obvious NPOV violation as a factual statement. The intervening admin, who's already stated that the disputed statements are inappropriate, nevertheless declared that my deletion of them was "misbehavior" in violation of "consensus," and protected the page with the violations in place. Have I missed something? Is NPOV-violation now OK? Are editors supposed to simply ignore it rather than following guidelines? (And when did 2 of 4 users become a recognized consensus, anyway?) Is there any way to return the relevant page to rational discussion rather than the current circus? Monicasdude 03:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
The dispute involves the Bob Dylan page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan
The specific matter at issue -- the interpretations of a group of songs as "religious" or "secular" involves these alternative texts: [11] and I took the position that, if the article was going to present lyrics interpretations, whether summarily or in detail, it should report the range of interpretations rather than one set, as required by NPOV policy.
The intervening admin stated that unsourced lyrics interpretations/characterizations weren't allowed as original research [12] but has indicated that my opposition to inserting such comments is inappropriate behavior [13] (even though, by that time, a clear majority of those commenting on the talk page and the RfC opposed the text I'd deleted, and at the time of the original intervention comments were evenly divided.)
The RfC is here: [14] Please note that the description of events, especially as presented on the summary page, is objectively false. Monicasdude 16:13, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
The title of this thread is that of this page: I'm seeking to ascertain and identify what is current concensus on some policy that many seem to think needs to be changed -based on recent actions in contravention of policy: Featured Article policy and RfA policy, but people just want to run their mouths -instead of helping define what exactly the current concensus is, so I can know what policy is supported, and what policy is ignored as "outdated."-- GordonWatts 17:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Would you care to indicate what policy issue you have in mind, exactly? DES (talk) 20:34, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Is it WP policy to use the term "international" to mean "not-US" (or perhaps "not-US-or-Canadian")? This is how the term is used in e.g. the "Comprehensive charts" section of The Trouble with Love Is. Previously there was a division between "USA" and "International" (the latter referring only to the UK and Australia, though perhaps allowing for additions about Moldova, Guinea-Bissau, etc. etc.). I changed "International" to "Elsewhere", as neither the UK nor Australia seemed more international to me than the US did; but another editor has changed it back to "International" with the comment "International is a more appropriate term for the other charts of other countries I think". -- Hoary 14:49, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Thank you all for your comments. I've merged the two tables, more or less as fvw suggested (though without bothering to create a new column for "nation"). -- Hoary 01:56, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
i wrote something that was definitely opinionated on the discussion page of the Billie Joe Armstrong article. mind you this was on the discussion page, not the article. A zealous wikipedian soon thereafter reverted my edits on the discussion page to the previous version. In the edit summary, this wikipedian cited the policy of wikipedia not being a discussion forum (the exact edit summary read: Revert "sold out". WP:NOT a discussion forum.). Now wikipedia articles are obviously not to be used as discussion forums, i understand that very well, but am I right in saying that it is ok to have discussions and state opinions on the discussion page? if someone could tell me what the correct interpretation of policy is in this case, i would appreciate it. If i'm wrong, i will gladly admit it, but right now, I'm not sure.-- Alhutch 18:55, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
The answer is "yes, but. . ." (from Wikipedia:Talk page):
HTH. — Charles P. (Mirv) 18:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
thanks for the help. i was wrong.-- Alhutch 19:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
I WAS SENT AN ARTICLE BY A FRIEND OF MINE, CLICKED ON THE LINK, THEN GOT THIS!
IN THE PAST, I HAVE USED WIKIP. FOR CHILDREN'S HOMEWORK BUT HAVE NEVER ALTERED ANY TEXT - CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN? THANKS PLEASE EMAIL <email address removed, see history if you want it>
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.
These people have the nerve to delete an important image I uploaded (an early 1900s photo of downtown Jacksonville) without even notifying me, then go to MY talk page and tell me that basically they want to delete everything I have uploaded. Somebody tells me I can't use an image because the originator doesn't want it used for COMMERCIAL purposes, but yet I am NOT using it for commercial purposes. -- Revolución ( talk) 02:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
A notice at the top of the My watchlist page now states that images lacking verifiable source and copyright information ... will be deleted. I think the use of verifiable here is a mistake. It is not supported by the policy page that is referenced. A very normal and good contribution of an image occurs when a user takes a photo with their own digital camera and uploads this to Wikimedia. But this would clearly not be verifiable, just as when I write about my first hand experience, this information is not verifiable. I suspect this is not the rigth place for this criticism. I would appreciate if someone forward it to the right place. We should not discourage people from contributing their photos. -- Etxrge 08:23, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Why are images worse than article text? Mozzerati 11:58, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
All over Wikipedia small numbers are written in numerals! Wikipedia is replete with 7's and 4's and 3's. Names of centuries are written as "16th century", rather than as "sixteenth century"! It goes without saying that numbers between ten and ninety-nine are almost invariably written with numerals. None of this is acceptable. Basic style for magazines and books (and certainly encyclopedias) is that numbers under one hundred are spelled out, as are round numbers beyond that. There are exceptions for articles on mathematical topics, or ones that are thick with numbers, as well as some other circumstances, but in general, numbers under one hundred must be spelled out! Is there an existing wikiguideline stating this, or not?? Babajobu 00:20, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Here's a recent article from Reuters:
I see plenty of numbers below 100 written as numerals. So what's the problem? -- ran ( talk) 01:27, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, okay then, here's an encyclopedia article from Encarta:
I quote:
In the United States, tornadoes occur in all 50 states.
The Tri-State Outbreak of March 18, 1925, had the highest death toll: 740 people died in 7 tornadoes that struck Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana.
Perhaps "Tornado" should be considered a scientific article: after all, there are many occurrences of one- and two-digit numerals occurring together with units. But what about the two examples above? The numbers are not used in a mathematical or scientific context. -- ran ( talk) 02:12, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
I think what Encarta illustrates is this: this isn't a rule that's consistently followed at all. To give an analogy: some rules of grammar of standard written English should always be followed (e.g., subject-verb agreement), but other rules are less commonly followed, though they still exist (e.g. don't end a relative clause with a preposition). The numbers rule that you present seems to be of the latter category.
Here's another example, from the Britannica this time: [19]. You see "25 countries" and "13 English-speaking countries". And here's the World Book: [20]. You see "48th among all the states". I believe that many writers here on Wikipedia are consciously and subconsciously influenced by existing, established encyclopedias. If three of the most influential English-language encyclopedias in the world don't consistently follow the rule you're proposing, then you're probably going to encounter a lot of resistance in trying to promote your proposal.
Also, I would go on to suggest that if the Bill Clinton article in Encarta switched all of its <100 numbers to spelled out numerals, it would actually decrease readability. Compare "42nd president of the United States" and "forty-second president of the United States", for instance. This may be a matter of pure habit on my part, of course, but this habit exists precisely because it is enforced by existing, established encyclopedias. -- ran ( talk) 03:31, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
I understand completely your frustration with substandard spelling, grammar and style that sometimes pop up on Wikipedia. Some people here write as if they're chatting on MSN. =) So yes, guidelines will definitely be helpful. -- ran ( talk) 04:06, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
We read: That's crap! Not even a throwaway tabloid newspaper would do that! . . . Even the trashiest tabloid in the world does not do this. What a throwaway tabloid newspaper (let alone the trashiest tabloid in the world) wouldn't do must have something going for it, surely. Why get so excited? While WP is indeed littered with mistakes ( here is one of last night's discoveries), "42" for "forty-two" or vice versa is not wrong and causes no misunderstanding. One may be preferable to the other, but rather than getting steamed up about how Chicago says this or that, note that that estimable book is written for intelligent people to use as guidelines, most if not all of which may be broken for good reason. Now, stripped of exclamation points, etc., what is it that you are advocating? -- Hoary 08:20, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
For me, "16th century" is much easier to read than "sixteenth century". When I'm looking for something in encyclopedia I want raw data, not brilliant prose. It's much easier to extract data from numbers than from words. Grue 09:52, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Hey, at least this doesn't involve French, where 95 (ninety-five) for example is written out as quatre-vingt-quinze... or four-twenty-fifteen :) Wyss 09:04, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
I really must note that we scientists essentially always use numerals for everything. Is an encyclopedia anti-scientific? I hope not. JohnSankey 05:48, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
There is a discussion taking place at vandalism over whether or not repeated reverts that are contrary to the manual of style constitute vandalism. -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 18:30, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
I encountered this article while in RC patrol: Downelink.com. What is the policy regarding articles dedicated to describing websites? Is it an immediate candidate for AfD?
After seeing words like "controversial", "so-called", and scare quotes showing up in article after article where if I were the original author I would not have used the word or quotes, I tried to put myself in the position of the author and understand what thought was being expressed.
Controversy in the Wikipedia itself includes its usage as propaganda. "So-called" is used to disagree with or disparage, as in "so-called campaign finance reform". Scare quotes can also serve a point of view by marking the editor's disagreement or disparagment of the source material.
They are three means by which an editor's POV enter an article without drawing much attention. I've seen the term stealth POV used to describe this.
Controversy is inherent to politics. Politics is all about persuasion to change law, culture, and attitude. Even a politician who says "no comment" or avoids stating their position is controversial for not taking a position. I've never seen an edit to an article on a political topic where the word "controversy" or "controversy" was added by one who was in aggreement or neutral on the subject of the article. It's often an empty word. The text of the article should speak for itself and make it evident what the disagreement is and who is in disagreement.
An example of what I think an appropriate use of the word controversial is in Designated hitter. Baseball has a lot of rules and some change but very few are controversial. The text itself doesn't just drop the word in and move on but explains the two sides of the issue.
There's a style guide article on weasel terms and perhaps these are just further examples of that guideline. patsw 02:32, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
I think there should be a new speedy delete criterion to get rid of patently non-notable company articles, which say things like "John Smith Honda is a car dealership in Lincoln, Nebraska." This would be analagous to WP:DVAIN, for basically the same reasons. I'd like to get comments before I embark on writing a more formal proposal. Thanks, SCZenz 00:10, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
I think what you're really after is a CSD to remove blatant corporate spam, rather than nn company articles. How you would construct the phrasing for that, I don't know, but a confident admin could already rely on WP:VAND which speedies pure spam. - Splash talk 17:59, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi there,
I posted this question on Commons Village pump, but nobody was quite constructive. So I ask here: if I upload a bunch of Yugoslav dinar banknotes on commons, will they live or will they be deleted? -- Dijxtra 17:38, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
The article Webb is currently a disambiguation page. I was wondering where I should put information about the origin of the name, on the page itself or on a Webb (name) page. Is there any policy on this already. -- βjweþþ ( talk) 15:36, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm certain that know policy for this exists, so I have started a page to discuss the policy. Maybe a new page is not the proper way to do this, but it seemed prudent to me. You can take part in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Mid-term filling of open ArbCom positions. Thanks, Ingoolemo talk 02:51, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
Hello all. I know that I have in the past seen a policy that at least casually mentions consistency across articles (or, more to the point, the lack thereof), but now that I need to refer an editor to it, I can't seem to remember which one it was contained within. Anybody know off the top of their head? The situation I've encountered is basically one where an editor is insisting that one article's criticism be modeled along the same lines (almost exactly -- templatized almost) as another unrelated article's criticism. As you might imagine this is rather a partisan dispute. Beyond citing WP:POINT, it would be useful to be able to refer this editor to that policy on consistency (or the lack thereof) and how trying to force one article into the mold of an unrelated one just to prove a point is less than helpful. · Katefan0 (scribble) 19:01, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
There is a proposal to expand the scope of VfU to include the ability to examine disputed non-delete outcomes of the various deletion debates, as a community-based alternative to admins needing to overrule one another. The suggestion at Wikipedia talk:Votes for undeletion#The scope of VfU has received clear support from those involved.
To finish the job, we should have a chat about how this might work. A proposal has been constructed which hopes to address the concerns over 'mechanics' that some expressed if we simply import the present VfU majoritarian system. A discussion on this needs to be had at:
Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion/Deletion review proposal, or on its talk page.
Hopefully we can architect a process that will work effectively. - Splash talk 00:58, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry if this has been discussed before, but I would propose that the rollback function be made availlable to all users. In contrast to the admins' other powers, articles can be "rolled back" by normal users, even anons simply by using the history tab. Restricting rollback to admins does nothing to stem edit wars, since passionate edit warriors will take the trouble to use the history tab to save a previous version of an article. At present, IMHO all this restriction does is to discourage non-admins from doing RC patrol, for this is the only time any user would have to use rollback at a high frequency (thus using the history tab a huge hassle). If we let everybody use rollback, it will make it easier for all of us to to fight vandalism. Borisblue 17:51, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
First, let me say how many times I have found great, concise, organized information here!!! This project is an inspirational example of human collaboration.
Second, let me point out for the record that I was the founder of a company mentioned below, but I no longer have financial interest or association with that field.
Third, I believe the issue I am raising here might be commonplace, so I hope this discussion will be helpful for the whole project. Or if it has already been addressed, please point or advise... but I didn't find anything in my search so far.
The issue relating to NPOV is this: articles that promote one company or it's products and fault another. Please see these examples taken as a set:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchpad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirque_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alps_Electric_Corporation
Am I correct thinking that statements like
are not appropriate?
I imagine great temptation by marketing departments to use thinly-disguised articles for promotion. This could result in endless edit-wars or other nonsense. Further, one "side" might bring significant commercial dollars and marketing agenda to bear, overwhelming volunteer efforts to set things straight. Has this issue been addressed?
What about detailed comparison of product features, customer-service anecdotes, and so on? They aren't likely to fit the NPOV criteria. Is there a blanket prohibition against such topics? Being a newbie, as well as a previously-related party, I didn't think it right to jump in and make massive edit changes. What is a general solution in such a situation?
Thanks and best regards for the work so far, 67.182.252.213 04:53, 26 September 2005 (UTC) George Gerpheide, founder, Cirque Corporation
...... minor formatting fix by Hoary 07:46, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the verrrry rapid feedback and solid advice. I wholeheartedly agree that detailed product features evaluations and customer-service anecdotes are inappropriate, and certainly won't add them. Hopefully, a good contributor will fix the pages mentioned above to meet the spirit of WP!! Thanks again 67.182.252.213 02:11, 29 September 2005 (UTC) George
How far should this be carried? I thought the guideline before was that attaching a website as an external link implied that it could have been used as a source for the article, but I see in Wikipedia:Cite sources that it says that policy has basically been discontinued. So that implies to me that almost every article would have a references section or use footnotes? That does not seem like a good idea, because it would cause excess clutter. Spalding 18:43, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
A simple question. Is it a policy or a guideline? It doesn't actually say definitively either way on the page, and as a result there's some wikilawyering going on at Talk:Thomas Woods over whether or not some uncited assertions can remain in the article. I had always assumed it was a policy, but it doesn't specifically say that. Anybody? · Katefan0 (scribble) 19:44, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy#Unlisting_a_page_from_AFD for a proposal I have made for a re-wording of this section. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 16:15, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Can anyone let me know what the policy is for referring to songs or albums where the name is solely in a foreign language?-- Spigot the Bear 17:58, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
I noticed the preview header now says "Remember that this is only a preview, and has not yet been saved! Please check the version you are about to save for possible vandalism introduced in prior edits.". When did the bold stuff get added? I could have sworn it wasn't there Thursday... Stillnotelf 15:38, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
On Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English), there is curently a debate over the use of esstsett, thorn and eth in English Wikipedia. I avoid editing Icelandic articles because I simply cannot read what the words say. I feel that using these letters makes Wikipedia less useful and that is wrong to use them when we don't use Chinese, Japanese, Cyrillic or any number of other scripts. More voices on the debate would be good. Rmhermen 16:29, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm looking through the pages for nut trees and find incredible numbers of invalid links. Am I correct that a link to a WP page that doesn't exist is coloured red, and those that do exist are coloured blue? Shouldn't we delete invalid links? It seems to me to make the articles inappropriately confusing. JohnSankey 15:28, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads-up. I'll leave them alone. JohnSankey 21:49, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
When there is an image in WP which is labelled with a copyright (e.g. Shagbark Hickory) is it proper to replace it with an image which is released under the standard GNU release of Wikipedia text (or public domain) to 'clean up' copyright issues within Wikipedia? JohnSankey 17:42, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I am confused. I thought the new policy allowed the share-alike licenses on Wikipedia, and a few days ago laboriously changed all my uploaded images to that license. Today I started to upload some more images (figures for Mathieu function), and noticed that the nifty new template seems to imply that these licenses are not allowed in Wikipedia. Please clarify!!!! TIA --- CH (talk) 00:29, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Let me ask my question again in another way: please see Image:MathieuCosine example.gif. Is this acceptable under the current Wikipedia policy, or will my images all be removed after 7 days? --- CH (talk) 01:35, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
There is an increasing number of cases where two resources with the same information exists: One is a "list of.." article, the other a category. Example: List of Macintosh games and Category:Apple Macintosh games.
What should we do in this case?
Thanks for any feedback. Peter S. 14:30, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Note that at wikipedia:categorisation of people (which is guideline and not proposed guideline) a distinction is made:
Recent efforts to apply categories broader for the sensitive topics re. humans are as far as I know inconclusive, so the "old" Categorisation of people guideline is still effective regarding that. A sensitive/non-sensitive combination category ("gay authors",...) is by definition also sensitive.
I don't see why Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes would be "largely moribund" - if it needs an update, OK, even if that would be a major update. But that's an important guideline! And high time it gets beyond "proposed" stage (as far as I remember that guideline was effective before the {{proposed}} template even existed, and that guideline has gone through the thentime "thinktank" procedure, so I don't even know whether the "proposed" template is on its place there).
-- Francis Schonken 09:48, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
The article on Liberalism is the subject of disputes, which is not unusal for political topics. However, I want to raise the issue of whether a politician should be allowed to edit articles which cover his own party. The user in question is User:Wilfried Derksen, who is the former international secretary of the Dutch political party Democraten'66 and the current vice-president of the pan-European Liberal grouping ELDR. (I don't understand how he has time to combine this with editing at Wikipedia, but he does).
The issue is essentially this: may George W. Bush edit George W. Bush? What if he deletes anything negative about himself? Or writes too much praise? Is conflict of interest a problem? Or is it simply left to others to correct things? And do the usual standards (e.g. assumption of good faith) apply to users who are also politicians. Ruzmanci 14:11, 2 October 2005 (UTC)